Electronic Leaves: Textualities, Old and New

Though it might seem like a strange question, it’s not.  Why have books turned out the way that they have, materially?  Why have they taken the form that they have today, and how might we see that form change in the future? 

-It’s in part the nature of paper itself.  Because we write on paper, folios were needed (covers).  To carry a large stack of papers around, we needed to a) fold them in half (made pages), and b) cover them with some form of water-resistant binding, both to hold them together and to protect them from damage.

It’s sort of a wild guess.  I need to read my sources and find out exactly why a book is a book.  This doesn’t even get into why a page looks as it does, with grots and white space.  Why left to right?  I suppose, as it has in other cultures, the reading pattern follows the writing pattern.  This is why some works are written to be read up to down.  I think I heard via PBS Documentary on Japan that the Japanese thought it proper to read top to bottom, because it corresponded naturally with the human body, head to toe.  Left to right must have seemed horrifically unbalanced and barbaric.  What does Left to Right say? Hand to hand?  This skips the mind, the face, a respectful addressing of the head, and is reminiscent of tossing a ball back and forth playfully.

This is merely babbling: I’m off to read something solid to begin to ground these fanciful, flyaway musings.

This blog will be pieced together in the midst of the ceaseless noise of everyday life: people talking to me, those sudden noises that make the mind skip its groove, the singing that never stops, music playing and then the interruption of music not playing suddenly, phones ringing, ringtones, buses going by in the road, writing at what essentially is a waystation in my life….or is it? 

I hope to write a great deal about things that I watch and read.  I read mostly things I shouldn’t be reading, and watch too many movies to boot.  I spend too much time writing curriculum that my students (Freshmen and Sophomores) often hate and view as "busywork."  I spend a lot of time answering my children’s questions, which can be a little incessant, endearing and infuriating at once.  They are smart kids, and ask good questions, and if I can just get a lot done by way of my academic work while they are at school and asleep, I’ll have done pretty well.  I think that one thing I’m afraid of is that I can’t ever get enough work done in my free hours. 

Then there’s the gym.  I want to be going daily, but with the bus ride (parking passes cost a lot extra, and I’m on the doctoral student budget plan), it eats 2 hours every day that I go.

This doesn’t even take into account scouting, soccer, piano lessons, meetings, go club stuff, bullies at school, or my psychotic student (first legit psycho student ever, I’m happy to say - quite a feat for having taught this class ten years).

I have got to delve a bit more deeply into my texts and narratives, examining and questioning methodologies, and getting right off the computer when my spouse needs to go online (which I’m doing right this minute)…..anyway, that’s in a cliched nutshell my plans for this writing space.  More about the title later.