Super Obvious point 1 ---

"Let me state that without my notes Shade's text simply has no human reality at all since human reality of such a poem as his (being too skittish and reticient for an autobiographical work), with the omission of many pithy lines carelessly rejected by him, has to depend entirely on the reality of its author and his surroundings, attachments and so forth, a reality that only my notes can provide.  To this statement my dear poet would probably not have subscribed, but, for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word" (Nabokov 28-29).

I feel I have been deceived a little.  My first obvious point has been staring me in the face from the preface to the back cover, but I didn't want to see it.  It's like how I knew my parents were Santa and the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny, but I didn't care to acknowledge it until forced to.  Going back to our conversation in class-- I like lies. 

 John Shade is not real.

I knew this, but didn't know this, and I'm in shock, a little.  I shouldn't be. I got through the foreward and a bit of the first canto, and I was thinking I was reading it weird.  Like it was just a poem written by a dead guy.  I typed in John Shade on the computer, google-ing him for confirmation.  He's not real, and I feel like he's died all over again- which is weird that I would be sad, because I don't know him. . . yet.  Maybe I won't feel so bummed when the poem is over.   

Another mirror

This is the mirror part of the painting from Van Eyck: The Betrothal of the Arnolfini and below is the whole painting.  I always loved the detail in the mirror, and how it shows the inverse of the scene. It is very different from Velasquez, because Van Eyck tries to capture the reflection, showing the scene from two angles; but I wonder if Foucault would say that Van Eyck achieved his goal of mirroring the representation or if he is showing an entirely different painting within the painting itself.  I'm maybe thinking the latter?

Foucault take one-- reflections

I have a confession to make.  I looked long and hard for Foucault sparknotes, enotes, Foucault for Dummies--- anything to help make my scrambled notes from the book and Dusty's lecture make sense.  I took four/five pages of notes from Dusty's talk, and I felt super smart at the end of the class, but at the end of the day, combining those to the few pages I read of the book, I was chilling in chaos. 

I did find some lecture notes online, which proved to be a little helpful. They are still confusing-- a bit-- but they are helping me decipher some of my notes, giving me a light bulb moment with the Las Meninas chapter.  I underlined these three lines on page 7: "it is a mirror. . . the painter is unable to see this looking glass shining so softly behind him. . .It is reflecting nothing."  The guy's lecture (his name is John Protevi from LSU-- I posted the links below) says,  "The Classical Age, based on representation, cannot represent representation to itself. It cannot see the light by which it sees; the fish cannot know it lives in water. Only historical difference can highlight the pre-suppositions of an age."  He talks about a mirror in room taking in painter, the painted and the painting,  the mirror (mimesis) can't reflect the situation.  James talked about the mirrored image in the Velasquez painting in his blog.  The "objective" observers (us) can see the images of the king and queen in the mirror, but those images are totally ignored by the spectators in the painting.  He suggests that the people milling around are the true focus of the painting.  I guess I'd agree in that they are in the focal spot of the piece.  They are the brightest objects of the darker room, and their action draws the eye.  But what I like about the mirror is that it wasn't the first thing I saw.  The subjects of the mirror are nowhere to be seen, but I think it's possible that you can't see them, because they are not there.  The mirror is the reflection of the painting the painter is working on.  The objective viewer is not really us, it is the king and queen looking onto their subjects, looking at the mirror, which reflects the painting, which is a representation of them.  Thus, the viewer is not really objective.  That lack of objectivity goes back to the structure and language, but I can't explain.  

But thinking of James' comment on the periphery, I like the guy hanging in the stairwell.  He's such a creeper, hanging in the stairwell, but I like how the doorway frame mimics the frames of all the other paintings in the room.  It's like the man in the doorway is also a painting, and that painting must be significant, because like the focal point of the room, it is also lit.   

The links to the lecture notes:

http://www.protevi.com/john/Foucault/PDF/OT_I.pdf 
http://www.protevi.com/john/Foucault/PDF/OT_II.pdf

Two truths and a lie

Truth 1: I did try out Prof. Sexson's challenge and lied to a loved one.  I am the world's worst liar, so I spent three hours setting up the stage for the lie, making Joe think there was something weighty on my mind that I had to tell him.  The lie itself didn't really compare to the three hours of him thinking something was seriously wrong.  He's not terribly pleased with this class.

Truth 2: I was reading Sarah's blog about truth and lies, and I thought it was kind of neat that she brought up the Matrix, and how people escape from a dream world to a reality, because I was thinking about the same thing, but in an inverse kind of way-- I was actually wondering if dreams are the true reality we aspire to reach. When we did our debate, I thought lies are good for the day, but truth is for the night.  Hedvig is the baby troll sneaked into the human nest, raised as their own. Her existence is the lie; but the lies in the house are merry ones.  They are happy with an attic full of wild game, grandfather, son/wife, daughter.  Maybe it is what they always dreamed of having or desired to have.  Their dreams are their lies.

Lie: Fiction. I just finished Nafisi's book- she uses it a debating ground for the purpose and use of fiction.  The Iranian government thought it should mainly be used as a vehicle for propaganda, but that seemed like such a literal and narrow minded view of the word.  Nafisi thought fiction existed to make us question the "fragile unreality" we live in.  Or not question really, but challenge?  "We speak of facts, yet facts exist only partially to us if they are not repeated and re-created through emotions, thoughts and feelings.  To me it seemed as if we had not really existed, or only half existed, because we could not imaginatively realize ourselves and communicate to the world."  So "reality" isn't really real until we challenge it, rehash it, relive it and own it.  We take what we see and re-create it into a kind of fiction.

I'd agree with Sarah that you can't truly peel truth from lies.  Those ideas are interconnected by imagination; even if you try to crack that nut with every scientific discipline, with tons of facts, I just don't think you could really separate them.