Tag: #52essays2017

The Hand That Extends: Lacan on Love, Transference, Plato’s Symposium, Essay 14 of #52essays2017

I first encountered the work of Jacques Lacan in my first year of grad school; I can think of no other theorist who more painfully highlighted my inadequacies by the impenetrability of their words. And the late nineties were not exactly a time in literary circles for transparency, if ever there was one. Derrida was still alive and well and… Read more

Origins of “Sludge” in Lady Mary Wroth and Life, Essay 13 of #52essays2017

Almost exactly ten years ago, I had an unfortunate lapse in judgement of the sexual variety, which had at least one terrible consequence and one pretty good one: The terrible shall remain my secret, but the good I happily claim, namely, a song called Sludge, destined for my band gutter & spine. At that time, playing drums and singing in… Read more

CERKL Gene: My Newly Identified Eye Disease Is Not an Eye Disease, Essay 10 of #52essays2017

Last week I visited my ophthalmologist and learned that my blindness is caused by a mutation to the CERKL (pronounced like circle) gene, which, it turns out, is oddly not specific to my damaged retinas. At Genecards.org I read, “CERKL (Ceramide Kinase Like) is a Protein Coding gene.” And on Wikipedia I learn that “ceramides are a family of waxy,… Read more

Mapping & Mixing the Senses at the Mall of America, Essay 8 of #52essays2017

This is my answer to the Mall of America Writer-in-Residence application question “What would you like to write about during your writer residency? ” which doubles as my #52essays2017, written with all four senses and remembered sight, offering this busy week of state and house-hopping. I will write about beauty with all four senses and remembered sight. What is beautiful… Read more

Adulterated Rose or, The Smell of Regrettable Youth, Essay 7 of #52essays2017

The guy with the hard metal name was beautiful in my degenerate eye. Beautiful with a girlfriend. And a Volkswagen bus. This was around the time of the earthquake of ’89, when the influences of flower power still loomed large in San Francisco. I’d been pining for so long and then he said they’d broken up. We climbed into his… Read more

1984: Late to the Party Again, Essay 6 of #52essays2017

In the year 1984, I was in sixth grade, a scholarship child in a private girl school. The eighth graders were reading George Orwell’s 1984 and had plastered the walls with images of our headmistress that read, “Big Sister is Watching YOU.” We didn’t know what it meant, but we understood that it was witty and smart and that that… Read more