Literacy/la vie quotidienne

My half-year graduate seminar in "Comparative Culture" at Rikkyo started today. Our subjects this semester are (1) literacy and self-fashioning, (2) one's style and everyday life. I assigned reading of Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy (1982) and Michel de Certeau's Arts de faire (L'invention du quotidien, I, 1980). Almost unconsciously I chose these two titles, and then, apres coup, I realized that these are two Jesuit authors! My, my. How Buddhist I am. Both of these books were published during my undergraduate years, and I was somewhat aware of their contents at the time of their publication. Then after well more that twenty years, I am taking them up anew. Does this chronological gap mean anything? Well, maybe I'm returning to my former self in an idealized vision. Or taking up the thread that I once believed to be lost... La mer recommence toujours!