bamboozled

I'm at my parents house, house-sitting. Initially, I was sad to relocate for the week, the place being a ways from campus. But now that I am here, I feel like I am on a special "retreat." My mom has made a sort of Eden out of the lawn; so when I'm out in one of the wooden rockers reading I can very easily imagine that I am a novelist, relaxing* on the "estate." The kitchen is stocked with fresh peaches, tomatoes, onions, dips, crackers, coffee, salmon, and cereals. The clean house has a peacefulness spread through all the rooms. In fact, the Stout-House is a perfect example of the Utopian household in Ben Jonson's poem, "To Penshurst." In the text, as in my parents' home, the mystification of labor surrounds the masters and guests of the place-- and comfort and necessities spring up, is if of their own accord, to meet any wanting hands.

I wonder if it will be possible to write anything interesting this week while I am in floating on the foam of reality.

*"The Writer on Holiday", an article from Roland Barthe's book Mythologies is another example of mystification. Instead of labor and effort becoming mystified, (as is the case in my home: first because of the distance between where our food/furniture/etc. is produced and purchased, and second because of my visiting here results in my not even collecting the mystified home-objects in the first place) Barthe's explores how the act of writing is specifically mystified by journalistic portrayals of authors on vacation. One of my favorite cultural reads from Barthe's book.