White Bodily Fluids
by Dirk Duggler
by Dirk Duggler
busybodies, prepare ye
the way of the Lord
Lying is a manly act. If you've been working on a written report since four AM because your grades suffer when you don't (being naturally an average student), and a gifted acquaintance (who writes his in an hour and scores top marks) says, "Did you get up early again?" then say, "What do you mean? I got up at ten." Don't let the manipulators force you into honesty.
I am a teacher of undergraduate courses. I have graying hair and a receding hairline. My salary is less than forty thousand. I shop for my suits, shirts and jackets at Value Village. I have never employed a tailor. My vehicles both have rust around the wheel wells. This spring after classes ended I spent a few days doing my own rust repair on them, grinding, sanding, fiberglassing, puttying and painting. I own a cabin (not a cottage) that cost me fifteen thousand. I live in River Heights in a common bungalow. When my wife and I are visiting in voluptuous and sumptuous houses of similar or slightly larger size than ours, we come back wondering if we should put out a greater financial effort and buy a better place. At the end of each summer, when we have overspent again, we agree to buckle down and not buy coffees, stop at McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin even once a week, and see what's in the freezer so we can save a few hundred dollars in September and October.
The student in the front row with a sundress and neat hair, attractively sweet and smiling, became quite distant after the third class in September when I gave my charges this analysis of the value of lies. She gave the appearance of being bored with the course after that and missed too many days. Another truism: "Don't overprepare. Too much information and students don't learn much." I expect that my upper-level undergraduates this year will require authority. I will say to myself, as if I was speaking to them (by way of deflecting the attitude that they will take that they want both entertainment and display of confident knowing in the subject they are studying under me), "I am not an authority on Mennonite Literature. I don't know what the word authority means. It has no meaning for me. I know a great deal, but I will not show that to you all at once, nor ever in any comprehensive way. Some of you may quit the class when you do not get the show of authority from me that makes you feel that you're getting well educated. Others will begin to miss numerous classes but stay for the credit. Some will settle for being entertained. You will, however, if you stick around, learn a great deal in this class because you will read many poems and stories together with me and I will quietly provide for you with questions that derive from my rich discoveries, which in turn themselves derived from my not saying much when the temptation is to say a great deal, and saying a great deal when the common requirement is to say little."
I am a teacher of undergraduate courses. I have graying hair and a receding hairline. My salary is less than forty thousand. I shop for my suits, shirts and jackets at Value Village. I have never employed a tailor. My vehicles both have rust around the wheel wells. This spring after classes ended I spent a few days doing my own rust repair on them, grinding, sanding, fiberglassing, puttying and painting. I own a cabin (not a cottage) that cost me fifteen thousand. I live in River Heights in a common bungalow. When my wife and I are visiting in voluptuous and sumptuous houses of similar or slightly larger size than ours, we come back wondering if we should put out a greater financial effort and buy a better place. At the end of each summer, when we have overspent again, we agree to buckle down and not buy coffees, stop at McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin even once a week, and see what's in the freezer so we can save a few hundred dollars in September and October.
The student in the front row with a sundress and neat hair, attractively sweet and smiling, became quite distant after the third class in September when I gave my charges this analysis of the value of lies. She gave the appearance of being bored with the course after that and missed too many days. Another truism: "Don't overprepare. Too much information and students don't learn much." I expect that my upper-level undergraduates this year will require authority. I will say to myself, as if I was speaking to them (by way of deflecting the attitude that they will take that they want both entertainment and display of confident knowing in the subject they are studying under me), "I am not an authority on Mennonite Literature. I don't know what the word authority means. It has no meaning for me. I know a great deal, but I will not show that to you all at once, nor ever in any comprehensive way. Some of you may quit the class when you do not get the show of authority from me that makes you feel that you're getting well educated. Others will begin to miss numerous classes but stay for the credit. Some will settle for being entertained. You will, however, if you stick around, learn a great deal in this class because you will read many poems and stories together with me and I will quietly provide for you with questions that derive from my rich discoveries, which in turn themselves derived from my not saying much when the temptation is to say a great deal, and saying a great deal when the common requirement is to say little."
Related to this business of authority is the way some colleagues relate to women. One woman of my acquaintance asked me why Bill Bentley (a well-known teacher of art history at our university with thirty-five years experience under his belt) never smiled at her. "I always give him a big smile when I pass him in the hallways," she said to me, "but he pretends not to know me. He never smiles back. I took expressionist history with him five years ago. He has a prodigious memory. I know he remembers me. I know he does, but he won't smile at me. What's with that?"
I thought I had an answer and told her that he probably has trouble relating to women. Later I thought that he probably has trouble with authority. Women who smile at you and then you smile back, means that you are not in control of the future with that female. A man must not smile easily or give too much of himself to a woman at all, any woman, wife or daughter, fellow passerby or new acquaintance, if he wishes to continue to be fed the sense that he is in the drivers' seat generally in this world. The world is a place that does not not truly vindicate hierarchies. Signs of successful manipulation ("control" for our purposes, or "authority," if you will) vaporize and disappear as quickly as shit down a toilet when you smile willingly, extemporize unwisely, stay silent when others wait for you to speak, defer to student opinion, practice your guitar a few hours a night when your day job is scholarship, or allow (by accident or deliberation) any of a thousand other simple deflections of order.
Apparently my book, recently published, has been shat on by a Ms. Meireanna Corbozzi who argues, in a review, I have it by way of the grapevine, that I don't know what Deleuze and Guattari's thesis is. Since theirs is the theoretical heart of my book, her criticism constitutes claiming that I am assuming a vapid authority and should give it up. I expect that she does not appreciate my treatment of the poets and story writers whom I treat to a Deleusian analysis, finding my stance unauthoritative, excessive, irreverent, full of things left out that might have been said, and unaware thus of the good things that might have been given about Mrs's. Wiebes, Friesen, Bergen, Ms's. Brandt, Birdsell, Klassen, Braun, Poetker and Toews. In most cases my analyses in the book praise little, criticize little and analyze a great deal a certain few of their works. No comprehensiveness speaks from those pages, I say without embarrassment. No authority fails to smile out of them, either. I wrote, I proliferated, I thought, I smiled, I published. Mia culpa.
Apparently my book, recently published, has been shat on by a Ms. Meireanna Corbozzi who argues, in a review, I have it by way of the grapevine, that I don't know what Deleuze and Guattari's thesis is. Since theirs is the theoretical heart of my book, her criticism constitutes claiming that I am assuming a vapid authority and should give it up. I expect that she does not appreciate my treatment of the poets and story writers whom I treat to a Deleusian analysis, finding my stance unauthoritative, excessive, irreverent, full of things left out that might have been said, and unaware thus of the good things that might have been given about Mrs's. Wiebes, Friesen, Bergen, Ms's. Brandt, Birdsell, Klassen, Braun, Poetker and Toews. In most cases my analyses in the book praise little, criticize little and analyze a great deal a certain few of their works. No comprehensiveness speaks from those pages, I say without embarrassment. No authority fails to smile out of them, either. I wrote, I proliferated, I thought, I smiled, I published. Mia culpa.
At this point in my life I have no regrets. My students tend to like me in the end, I tend not to remember bad reviews, I make friends with outcasts, I regularly give up those acquaintances who irritate me, I stalk no one, I consider knowledge of the world's human order increasingly tedious and not worth the effort, and I continue to become more clever. I will not end this story with any clevernesses.
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