Could Somebody Tell Me…

why lately I’ve had a little Aristotle obsession going? It isn’t the specifics of what Aristotle believed and wrote most of which are a little fuzzy after a decade and a half, so much as the encompassing scope, the willingness to pick up a part of the universe and start cataloguing and generalizing and explaining that this is how it is, moving along from natural science to rhetoric to logic to literary criticism.

I wasn’t consciously thinking of Aristotle, either, when I started classifying the way objects get invested with meaning, rising up, as it were, out of the sea of functionality to be briefly invested with symbolic value before sinking back into pure functionality. I have a pair of socks whose meaning ought rightly to be, you know, they keep my feet warm. But the ways they get invested with meaning seem to me to be these:
1) origins: The socks are made from wool of sheep grazing on my grandfather’s farm
2) intention: My grandfather worried about my poor cold feet and gave these socks to me telling me he wanted my feet to be warm
3) sacrifice: My grandfather gave up his morning cup of coffee from Starbucks for a month to buy me this pair of socks
4) star power: My grandfather saw a pair of socks like this on Kate Winslet and decided they’d look good on me, too.
5) association with an event: I wore these socks the night that my grandfather and I went to dinner and he met my future step-grandmother.
6) flattery: My grandfather told me how the color of these socks set off the color of my eyes so I feel pretty every time I wear them.
7) irritation: These are the socks my grandfather keeps leaving on the floor that I have to put in the dirty laundry whenever I am straightening the house, and man does it annoy me.
8 ) guilt: These socks are itchy and I only put them on when my grandfather is coming to visit and he asks if I like them and I lie and tell them they are the best socks ever and then he knits me another pair.

The thing that gets to me though, is that if a pair of socks can be brought up out of the sheer functionality that makes them socks to be given meaning, we do the opposite thing with people. They may wander through our lives with all of the story and associations that would make every single individual worthy of long contemplation of just the sorts of questions you would ask to unlock all of the stories that this person has inside of them, but pragmatically? The story needs to recede into pure functionality so you can get the check deposited and the line of twenty people waiting behind you for their Friday of evening to begin can move forward, even though the bank teller might be able to tear your heart open with the story of the first time they lost a pet.

It’s harder, maybe, being the mother, and feeling consumed by my functionality in other people’s lives. I don’t expect my children to wrap their minds around my full personhood, even though I was delighted when my twelve year old did ask “What music did you listen to when you were my age?” Maybe that particular question felt laden with my awareness of his awareness of the divergence of our stories: I had a story before my children existed, they are developing their own stories in which I hardly figure.

I guess were I feeling more rigorous about filling out my own personal philosophy I might question the opposition of function and symbolic meaning, thinking à la Virginia Postrel, that the best gifts are both useful and have a pleasingness, of aesthetic and symbolic dimensions. chilled, I put on the socks from my grandfather, noting like Pablo Neruda how my feet seem unworthy of the “woven fire of those luminous socks.” I end musing about books, which carry all of the externally-granted symbolic aspects — my grandfather recommended it! and just looking at the cover I can feel the prickle of grass under my legs, just starting to sweat, smell the freshness of the mowing, see the shadows of leaves dancing on the page as I lay under the tree at my grandfather’s reading it — and then build worlds of inner significance, too.

Posted by Mara Collins on May 6, 2009 | 6 comments

6 Comments

  1. Kimba
    May 7, 2009

    -Re: people wandering through our lives with stories worthy of contemplation which are lost to functionality–omg, yes!

    -My 4 y.o. asked me this morning if I had ever lived in any other house than our current one, and listened while I told her about some of the others, and I am grateful for this context to put that in.

    -Your grandfather knits socks? How cool.

  2. Mara Collins
    May 7, 2009

    - It’s like there are economies of attention, which are zero-sum, whether I like it or not, and all I can think is that it is sort of tragic, but makes the stories we do get more meaningful.

    - You have the coolest, least solipsistic 4 y.o. Your stories about her blow me away and I hope I get to meet her someday.

    - Both of my grandfathers are dead and I cannot picture either of them knitting, though my mother’s father whittled approximate three small wooden animals a week for years resulting in all of his grandchildren having nice collections of them, but I was being sort of silly for the sake of examples. It was, um, blogging license? On the other hand, my dad did knit, even though he no longer does and my mother started when I did (and in fact sent me socks that are very lovely).

  3. Kimba
    May 7, 2009

    (Sorry, I seem to think in bullet points lately.)

    -I think this may have something to do with why I chose a job where I get to hear people’s stories for a living. (Well, among other things, but that’s the cool part.)

    -Thank you. We pretty much adore her. I hope she (and I!) get to meet you someday.

    -I did wonder a little about those extemely contextual socks…but was also struck by the image of a knitting grandfather.

  4. jenny
    May 11, 2009

    (What I thought about writing a few days ago)

    You had me goin’ there for a minute. “Her grandfather knitted?” Thank you Kimba for teasing that out before I stuck my foot in it.

    I love it that you can imagine a grandfather who would not only know who Kate Winslet is but notice her socks and then knit you a pair. That is awesome.

    A recent visit with my own dear father reminds me that not all of us do the opposite thing with people. He’s perfectly oblivious to the twenty people waiting behind him in line while he teases stories and personal histories from the checkout girl and whomever else he happens to come into contact with. It’s one of those characteristics that I both adore and abhor, depending on my mood. This visit it was endearing.

    Yes, extremely contextual socks.

  5. unreliable narrator
    May 11, 2009

    Oooh oooh, I know this one! Okay, well, the first part anyway. I’m kind of sketchy on the whole sock thing. Since I still DO NOT UNDERSTAND how you people make woven cloth out of string and straight sticks WITH NO HOOKS ON THE ENDS. But anyway. Here’s one possible answer to the why Aristotle/classifying question: You’re becoming a literary deconstructionist!

    Okay, sounds far-fetched I know. But then I read this in Sven Birkerts’ intro lit textbook, when I was looking for a quick-and-dirty definition for my students:

    The whole point of deconstruction is to reveal the slipperiness and instability of meanings in literary texts—indeed, in all human systems of discourse.

    If it is true, argue the deconstructionists, that words [socks] are just arbitrary markers, each made distinct by its visual and phonic difference from all others, then it stands to reason that all words are in a sense equal. But what we find in all human communications is an implicit privileging of certain terms and values and, in the last analysis, ideologies. [tiresomely explains what ideologies are]

    The deconstructionists assume that these ideologies are often concealed in a text. The critic’s job is not simply to unfold the patterns and oppositions as a structuralist would, but to go further. The privileged terms or assumptions, such a critic might reason, exist at the expense of their opposites. [extended slighting and inaccurate description of what deconstructionism doesn't do: "is not so much a theory that asserts something as it is a set of intricate maneuvers for taking a text apart"]

    [Signal bit:] To get just a taste of how the deconstructionist might think about a problem, consider the well-known [!] flip of the causality argument. If a pin pricks the flesh, we customarily say that the pin (A) is the cause of the pain (B). The deconstructionist might assert, on the contrary, that the dominant rule of all causal sequences is that the cause precedes the effect. In this case, it is the pain (B) that made the person aware of the pin (A). Logically, then, the pain can be seen as the cause, the pin the effect. And with this tricky wedge, the critic could begin to wage assault [!] upon the ironclad assumptions of causal reasoning. Here again, however, the summary presentation must belie the complexity of the procedure. The student who is interested in learning more about how to apply this controversial and challenging discipline should refer to some of the works below. [Culler, de Saussure, Eagleton, de Man, Derrida, et al.]

    Okay, now scrambling for brain-fragments to try to remember why I’ve been saving that up and thought it was so apposite…and wow Sven sure seems annoying and deliberately thick-headed to me on this reading. (It also occurs to me VERY belatedly that possibly the strongest feminist reading of The Road would be to ask why the text has to kill off the mother.) But I’m no longer certain…I think it had something to do with Aristotle, though, and his kinds of causality, which is from…what, De Anima? No, surely the Metaphysics. And that this deconstructionist attempt to flip the causality is merely what Aristotle called the final cause, or maybe the efficient cause; and really isn’t as outlandishly wild and woolly as Sven is trying to make it sound.

    Okay, I am sounding dumber and dumber so I’m going to stop while I’m behind. But if I ever write a poem again I’m totally calling it…that’s right! “Extremely Contextual Socks.”

  6. Kimba
    May 12, 2009

    @Un, um–that’s mostly Greek to me (as it were), but your response to knitting reminds me of what you once said to me about “that stupid internet thing” (or something very much to that effect)–in other words, I think we’ll make a knitter out of you yet!

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