hats and boots

I had the plan to write a post at the end of the semester when I felt the familiar and tremendous sense of relief and accomplishment, when everything came together and I felt like I kicked the semester's butt. I wanted to sum up the papers I wrote and talk about my struggles, my successes, my travels, etc. But the end has been a little too anticlimactic for a big victory post.

And it's not really over, even though it is, technically. I still have a paper due tomorrow, but the thing is, I haven't really started it yet. And the other thing is, I am not about to stay up all night long writing furiously to finish it. Screw that. I don't believe in working that way anymore (did I ever? Maybe once in 2005). So I talked to my professor, and I'm taking an incomplete. I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks with my attention undivided and focused on researching a project that actually matters to me, a project I'd like to try to get published. She's cool with it. And so, with one email my semester came to an end.

Except not quite because I still have to do one more ridiculous project for the class that had so many massive assignments that I couldn't spend the time I needed to finish the class I actually cared about. I'm used to doing some small papers, maybe a midterm, and one final paper. This ridiculous class (the deformed and unwanted birth of the Renaissance and an introduction to contemporary critical theory) was one busy work assignment after another, and for the final assignment I am to do an ekphrasis. This is, according to wikipedia, a "graphic description of a visual art" and I've decided to do a highly eroticized Petrarchan sonnet about this guy:



I know..it's kind of creepy to write an erotic poem about a statue depicting someone who is clearly 12 years old. But I desperately want to do something that makes my class squirm when I read it out loud to them, especially over this statue. A few people did some poor readings of this guy that kind of pissed me off this semester.  One kid argued that Donatello's David is meant to secretly be a woman who is standing on the decapitated head of patriarchy. Why would you read a depiction of David from the Bible as a woman? Well, for one thing s(he) sure is sexy. Look at that hitched hip! S(he)'s like all of those sexy models we see everywhere. And you know, men are only attracted to sexy women. When my professor asked him to explain how the shepherd's hat and the boots fit into his reading he literally said, "Well, you know how much women love hats and boots." Yep. Bitches love accessories. Other people in the class kept saying that this sculpture was "homoerotic" and I think that meant that only gay men could possibly be attracted to young boys? Also, that's not what homoerotic even means. Homoeroticism is used as a way of understanding how men interact with each other. One single depiction of a sexy dude is not "homoerotic" it's just erotic. Therefore, I (a woman) will be writing an erotic poem describing this sexy (wo)man-child. I hope they think I'm being terrible inappropriate, because that's what I thought of their readings.  I'll post the poem when I'm done.

It does feel good to be (kind of) done with the semester. I can't wait to get back to life and laundry and cleaning my house and eating real food again. And maybe blogging more!