Greig Roselli — Teacher, Writer, Philosophy Sprinkles Maker

23.5.10

Thoughts from a Newly Minted Teacher: It Ain't Mr. Holland's Opus

Teaching is fun though. You feel like yer making a difference - but it ain't Mr. Holland's Opus.

21.5.10

“A Mere Labyrinth of Letters”: Preoccupations of Librarianship and Epistemological Conjecturing in Borges’ “The Library of Babel”

An illustration of the Library of Babel by Erik Desmazieres

Librarians share two major philosophical preoccupations:

The idea of a total library
The futility of such a library.

Librarians are “total” in their desire for a perfect, or a complete library, but, unfortunately, the totalitarian nature of librarians has fossilized the notion that if it isn’t in the library then it doesn’t exist. The "if it is not in the records it does not exist" idea is as old as recorded history. The promise of complete, total, accessible knowledge (the first preoccupation) is shadowed by the librarian's futile wading through miles and miles of totality (the hell) to search and find that one piece of totality that one is looking. The total nature of the catalog is supposed to mirror precisely what is on the shelf. But the maddening job of the cataloger is to constantly check the catalog against what is on the shelf and fix any errors; this process has the hope of finish but is bound to be endlessly nonfinished. Librarians spend hours cleaning records, assigning call numbers, shelving books in an endless cycle of return. This nature of librarianship is actually not only the preoccupations of Library Science but of Western Philosophy in general. Ever since the philosopher Thales posited that there must be something material that underlies all existence — we will forgive him for positing water — philosophers have searched for a univocity, or an absolute to explain that which undergirds reality. Of course, the philosophical search comes short. There is a futility in this search (think of Adam futile search to name all animals or Aristotle's futile search to give names to everything) although it does not cancel out the desire to search. That, my dear, is the paradox of the quest.

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Greig Roselli

I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.

Note on New Orleans Nightlife: Leaving the Bars

Nude Descending a Staircase

Now, in the city of New Orleans, a good time can be broken down into twos:

Hang out at a bar

Or

Hang out at a house (bar)

Both are pretty much the same choice in a city that looks with suspicion on people who don't drink.

If you tell your friends you're not drinking tonight, they'll inevitably say, "Oh, you don't drink?" and then whisper to each other, "Is he an alcoholic?"

Now, those who drink a lot are certainly prone to rules. If you hang out at bars, you'll find it's common practice to treat the bartender like a god. Don't mess with her (or him). Or you'll be kicked out.

Walking down South Carrolton Avenue near the Riverbend on most nights in the Spring, it is easy to find people outside drinking, grilling, walking, drinking - the local bars are filled and people are sitting out on patio decks in front of restaurants (this city has more food than the Vatican has indulgences) or coffee shops.

There's a grocery store near Dante and Cohn streets where people get a six pack: people ride their bikes along Carrolton, drink a bit, eat crayfish at the Fly (the park behind the Audubon Zoo). My buddy's getting married this coming weekend. He's having his birthday at the fly, a cozy municipal park with an unobstructed view of the Mississippi River.

A bit of nostalgia pervades this post.

This post is a valediction of sorts. I'm saying farewell. So, I conjure up images of a city.

New Orleans sleeps. The denizens here are notorious for the eazy but we still show up for work and we still dress snazzy when the occasion merits it.

It's funny. For a city that places emphasis on laissez-faire, it's easy to deconstruct that concept and rather interpret the city as rather insular and rigid.

We do party here. But our festivity borders on the vicissitudes of human suffering. Just today, a man doused in a sheen of silver paint loiters in front of the Robert's on S. Claiborne Avenue. He looks like a misplaced French Quarter performer. He shuffles around the parking lot as if lost.

On Facebook, a random user bemoans an LA Times article that paints a laissez-faire city more interested in the beat of tourist dollars and the mambo rather than collaborating to stop the oil leak in the gulf.

"Oh, we don't deal with crude oil, just the end consumer's access to gasoline."

Why so angry? The city is a paradox. When the mirror is put to the Cresent City's face we balk and turn our convivial nature to indignance.

Here the party scene is a masked insouciance for opting out of social responsibility. What can you do but pop another shot, neat? I think I finally understand Walker Percy's quote about dispelling anomie with a glass of bourbon. He must've lived here!

We love our traditions and culture (laissez-faire) but fail to wake up from our Mardi Gras slumber and DO something.

Our city is beautiful. The city struts herself like boys on a bar. We pop dollars (at Liuzza's last night, a feverish 30 something women showed we here stash of dollars she saved for her vacation here) and a group of petroleum engineers in front of John Besh's August raved about food but wouldn't even answer a question about the danger of oil exploration. The metaphor for the city (a parallax view) is of the nude descending a staircase.

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15.5.10

Flash Fiction: "Tar Pit Dream"

I dreamt last night that I lost Harrison. We were sitting in my Honda Coupe exchanging glances and soft words, not knowing it would be my last and as it started to rain I just figured it was the time-worn pattern of weather, not a thick wet shield that drenched the Crescent City in a goldfish bowl-like flood. We managed to cling together despite the rising of the dark, dirt water all around us; the cars, stacked neatly in row upon numbered row, submerged evenly, then the streetcars, then the first floor, then the second — water even filled up the cages in the Audubon Zoo. In my dream we both found refuge on Monkey Hill — I remember that, the highest spot in the city — and I could see from where I stood the spire of Saint Louis Cathedral — and the more I spoke to Harrison the more he sank and the more the cathedral looked dry and welcoming, the soot and sin scraped off Decatur and Bourbon like it had gone through a full-service gas station. When I awoke in my fevered drenched four-poster, a faint halo of Harrison's crown sinking into the tar colored water dovetailed in my mind's eye and with a throaty taste of peanut butter from the night before, stuck somewhere in my neck, and I gasped.

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Image Source: 'The naked young man sitting by the sea' (1836) by Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin; Musée du Louvre, Paris