The potentially prophetic power of the letter 'B'

It's 10 pm in Toronto, I have just cooked a very quick meal of courgette, ginger and potatoes after my - late - Canadian Literature class. It is by far my most interesting course - and please note that I decided to take it only after week 2 which could mean that late and quick decisions could be just as valuable as very pondered ones. Not only is the professor incredible (you just cannot imagine how eloquent and intelligent that man is. I just sit in my little seat and listen with awe and admiration to the man, hoping that some day I might come near his talent, but realising that that's probably vain hope.), the things we discuss are always so captivating and so relevant to the scope of the course. Anyway, we are dealing with Canadian poetry at this point (F.R. Scott and A.M. Klein) and today we read a poem by Klein entitled Krieghoff: Calligrammes that looks at the possibilities of words on a page with regard to their colour and shape. Klein investigates in this poem the different options in painting (Krieghoff is a Canadian painter) and in poetry and raises the question whether letters are adequate substitutes for colours and shapes. He gives the poet a creative power in the sense that he can arrange letters, their order and their lay-out on the page and thereby creating meaning and evoke specific mental images in the reader's head. The poem reveals the power of language: the first line says 'Let the blank whiteness of this page be snow' and then you immediately picture snow. One word has the potential to create a whole scene, something a painter needs a whole painting for. Klein then goes on giving meaning to the shape of letters: 'the ladder H that prongs above the chimney' for instance, or 'bosomed farmwife B', which brings me to the title of this post!

After the break (I am going to start to point out from this paragraph onwards how the letter B is omnipresent in my life, I have only noticed it today! So, 'break', a B-word), professor O'Connor came walking in with a pile of papers which all of us immediately recognised as our corrected in-class essays of two weeks ago... 'I am going to make you wait for this for another hour. Think of it as a reward for coming out in this dreadful weather - rain all day - and for staying with me till the end' he said. Anyway, as the hour slowly passed by, I could feel the jitters increase and at 8.45 I really started wondering why for goodness sake I didn't go to the 'washroom' (the Canadian word for restroom/bathroom/toilet) during the break! And then, at 8.50, he started his speech - for Professor O'Connor does not lecture, he gives speeches, with an unrivalled persuasion and ardour - on the Leacock in-class essay. I can't remember all of his words right now, but I distinctly remember him saying (and again, that made a big impression): 'I urge you to NOT just look at the letter that will be written at the bottom of the comment sheet included with your essay. I make it an issue to write at least one page of comments per student, so those hundreds or thousands of letters of comment are far more valuable than that one letter you might all be looking for in a couple of minutes'. He distributed the corrected essays, I took mine, my hands definitely shaking, (I can't deny I feel worried about the high standards in this class) and didn't open the booklet until I got out of the class... I got a B+ and really could not believe it! (of course I got a B, what other letter would suit my life at this point!) I was so extremely relieved to realise that there is still hope of getting a good mark for the major paper of this class! I am extremely satisfied with the result because I wasn't at all confident of what I wrote during that one awful hour in class two weeks ago. His concluding remark was: A solid effort, Anouk! I don't know why, but I've got the impression that professors find me (or my writing) 'solid'... and the letter that apparently accompanies 'solid writing' is B, as I got a B+ for my Swift paper as well (and about the same comment)

Moving on to a completetly different sort of 'B', yesterday Laura Grace invited me to come over to Knox for her Birthday. We (i.e. the Knox girls and I) watched Sense and Sensibility, had some birthday cake and laughed quite a lot! Simple formula, but fun nonetheless.

I don't know whether there will be any more Bs, in one form or another, in the following days, but I can tell you that I wouldn't mind at all! Bram (there, another B!) has got his first midterm tomorrow and Per and the French girls had their first one today. It is awfully quiet on MSN and everyone seems to be surrounded with this halo of studying effort. I hope everything has gone and will continue to go well for everybody! My first midterm is next Monday but, in the meantime I've got some papers to write and some assignments to hand in. So, busy as ever on this side of the Atlantic, but the B's all make it worthwile!