19 August 2008
s is for sock monkey
Another stuffed animal, although this one is something of an un-toy, not the kind of thing you'd give to a child (well, I might, if I knew any). I got this in Greenwich market, which is generally relentlessly twee, apart from one day during the week when the stalls are filled with stuffed animals, insane Catholic relics and the odd Nazi uniform. Twee or kitsch, let's say. This monkey was made by a slightly crazy/cute looking Japanese girl who sits at her stall making slightly crazy/cute looking toys. It is made out of socks, buttons, some sort of stuffing, and thread. It would be nice to have that sort of skill, or any at all really.
The problem with doing only generic work - let's say, teaching arguments and ideas, writing about arguments and ideas and arguing about arguments and ideas, is that there's nothing to fall back on, no finite body of knowledge, no set of skills with any content. All you have is your own repeated performance ('that was a good turn of phrase!' 'well put!' 'I didn't like that piece as much as the other'). Ultimately you come to depend almost entirely on external response as an indicator of how 'well' you're doing - student reports, requests to write, the approval of friends. It's hollow and disabling, a little spiral of bad infinity at the heart of being. Like the good/bad Sartrean I am, I envy the sock monkey its immanence, its there-ness. I wish I had more bad faith so I could believe that, yes, there is a thing there behind the words! Solid and immovable! Like a sock monkey! Sodding sock monkey. I'm going to rip its arms off.
