n. career, from the Old French word carriere, meaning “racecourse”
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A chosen profession or occupation
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The general progression of one’s life, esp. in one’s profession;
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A path or course (considered archaic);
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A rapid course or swift progression, as of the sun through the heavens;
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Speed (ref. Milton);
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The moment of highest pitch or peak activity;
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To rush headlong;
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Having undertaken a given occupation (Webster’s II: New Riverside University Dictionary, 1988).
Strangely, and prior to my reading of Gregory L. Ulmer’s Internet Invention: From Literacy to Electracy, I have not considered myself as the representative of anything. I have, however, thought about my career in measurable terms–social and aesthetic values; discourses (primarily, family, religion, and education), and morality (primarily, act/consequence–but, never the logical conclusion).
When I consider “racecourse” as an operating explanation of one’s career, I think about time. I can’t remember, now, if a TV sitcom, The Simpsons or Southpark reflected the sentiment of time (and our place in it) as something or someone caught between two “eternities.” I thought about that characterization of time, looked at the watch, clock, time-piece displayed on my wrist, and thought “Citizen.” If you were wondering: “Yes, I did.” I purchased that $600.00 Citizen watch as an undergraduate student and not because the brand was fashionable, however fashionably-pleasing, aesthetically-tasteful it was, I selected it to reflect my socio-economic status; I wanted to impress the crowd–whomever may have found themselves in the audience. On that undergraduate income, a full-paycheck, poorly spent on my Citizen, my citizenship, the audiences who gathered to listen to my words provided all of the endorsement and gratitude I needed. Then, I remembered (or, am remembering now), T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song to J. Alfred Prufrock; and, also, the mythology attached to the “stopped” watch. According to wisdom literature, the stopped-watch reflected the belief that someone had died or whose death was imminent–and, certainly, without a doubt, many members of my religious community had, or were, facing death, a time-less competitor.
Race-course.
Spectators. Athletes. Referees. –Whom, or what goes here, or there–between the twin eternities of birth and death? What rules, what administrative practices, will shape our citizenship, help us find the trajectory(ies) of our lives, enable us to perform (to shape and misshapen) our identity(ies)? Do I want to hold the responsibilities, the burdens, for an entire academic discipline? Am I no one other than a gate-keeper, a mediator, provoking and evoking decisions and the revisions of hundreds of careers? Maybe I’ll just run the race and navigate the course trajectory for myself hoping fully, hopefully, that others will want to engage a journey–not “my” journey; I gave up that ghost a long time ago, like the sun whose path was marked by the wheels of chariots across the sky
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The sun has set, indeed.
Peaks of Illumination: Epiphany, or Not?
From the Greek “epi,” or “to” and “phanein” meaning “appearance,” the word epiphany–think, epi + phenomena, refers to the Christian festival pointing to the metaphysical presentation of deity in human life. Interestingly, Ulmer refers to the Joycean epiphany(ies) captured in his fictional stories like “The Dead” with no reference to the Jewish exegetical practice informing the Joycean genre, his micro-fiction. Thus, readers might think about Fyodor Dostoevsky or Anton Chekov as literary exemplars who were not only included in the canon, and for whom the Supreme Court had not been convened to determine the obscenity (or lack of it) reflected in the text. After all, the biblical mandate was/is clear: “…graven images.” No pictures; just words, for no word could create such a sin-filled, sinful (no matter how one translates the vocalized, Hebrew phoneme) condition like that of human beings just trying “to be.” Yeah, I skin my shins every time; every-time I walk into the corners of those desks–’very-time.
