We here at Irvine Valley College, once known as the little college that could, the little college in the orange groves (Remember the days when the students raised $$ via orange picks?) are teetering on the edge of Spring break – the felicitous event runs this year from March 12-16. Rebel Girl expects that by the time she leaves campus tonight around 10:30 or so, the college will be all but abandoned, except for the midnight crew in the bio labs who spend the late night hours with sharp instruments poised above the skinned and prone cadavers of small animals. Meow! Yes, the semester has reached its official half-way mark. We're almost there folks. Hang on.
Last week, a student arrived in my office with the good news that begins about now: acceptance into the department of English the nearby UC, home of the fighting deconstructionist anteaters. I was, the student told me, happier about the event than either of his parents had been. I took him on a victory lap – cruising the hallways looking for the open doors of colleagues and staff so I could show him off and he could see that he had done good.
Meanwhile, both Captain America (b. 1941) and Jean Baudrillard (b.1929) have passed away. Captain America, who first emerged as an anti-fascist agent in WWII had recently been become a leader in the resistance movement to the federal Superhero Registration Act. Capt. America was gunned down by a sniper on the steps of the federal courthouse Wednesday. Baudrillard, French cultural theorist and philosopher, claimed that we live in a world where simulated feelings and simulated experiences have replaced reality. In 2005, he told the New York Times, “All of our values are simulated. What is freedom? We have a choice between buying one car or buying another car? It’s a simulation of freedom.” Baudrillard died after a long illness in Paris.
And now, some poetry. Yes, I know it's March, but here's a poem entitled "February,"—for the Spring that is just around the corner and for International Women's Day, which is—though few know it—celebrated today. From that wonderful and fierce Canadian, Margaret Atwood:
February
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It's his
way of telling whether or not I'm dead.
If I'm not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He'll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It's all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we'd do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it's love that does us in. Over and over
Again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and the pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You're the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.
