returned

quite a busy vacation, with lots of driving. p. has recounted it all in Spanish on his blog & so I won't do it again here, but I do want to share a few highlights.

1. Oswald's Bear Ranch. We saw a number of adult bears napping under trees, then got to play with two of the adorable cubs. One sat on my lap, leaned back, looked straight at me. They're adorable animals, but strong! And they seem very intelligent, too. If they didn't grow, I'd love to have one as a pet.

2. P. & I rode a tandem bicycle for the first time. We rode it around an island-- literally traced the entire circumference. Beautiful scenery, and since no motor vehicles are allowed on the island, we were able to enjoy most of it entirely on our own. Splendid.

3. Saw a huge ship travel through the narrow Soo locks in Sault Ste. Marie, passing from the Huron into the Superior. Did you know that Superior is 7 meters higher than Huron? In the locks, they have to lift the ship to send it on its way. Apparently watching the ships go through is a past time for some of the locals as well as the tourists. Lots of loud teenagers there... can you imagine? Why? When the boats pass through sooooooooo slowly?

4. Camping. And though we've discovered that P. is not a camper, we had some bright and shiny moments. I loved how easy it was to wake up very early. At first light, I was awake. The first morning after we camped, we got an early start to the destination we were aiming for. The second, I got in a walk by myself through some dunes near the lake while p. slept. We made fires, cooked, pitched tents, skipped rocks, hiked a bit, and told each other stories once it got dark. P. invented a character called Peekaboo Crane.

5. Drive through some marshlands at a State park whose name I can't remember. Saw loons and swans and eagles nests, and families of ducks! 3 sets of 2 adults (mom and pop?) and 3 or 4 ducklings on family outings. Marshland is beautiful.

We're home again, and it's nice to have returned here, though the rest of the summer will be incredibly busy. I'm teaching a course near the end of it, and before that, I've a lot of writing to do. My dissertation director hooked me up with an editor and seems there's some interest in publishing my manuscript... which means I've got to get that thing finished. It's all there, but revision is always an agonizing process for me. When I was on the job market, I revised those blasted cover letter and diss abstracts nearly every time I sent out an application. It was exhausting. I have a hard time letting go.

P. leaves to teach at a math camp July1, so hoping we'll enjoy each other some before he's gone, too. He jokes that it's very fortunate that there will be no real camping at mathcamp. No sleeping bags, no tents, and hopefully fewer mosquitos.

gone fishing

well, except for the fishing part. Had a traumatic experience seeing an Iron Chef behead a living squirming fish some time ago, and that officially took fish out of my (otherwise entirely vegetarian) diet.

but we're going. Our trip still isn't entirely planned out, but we're packed to camp. We're just going to drive in our desired direction and kinda play it by ear. We've got a book of campsites and phone numbers, and did enough checking about availability to find that it's really not crowded at all the week after memorial day.

I will be away from all phones and computers, and I'm pretty darn happy about that. No offense to any of you guys, of course. If you don't hear back from me in a few weeks, I've probably been eaten by a bear. Or something.

oh, oh, oh

haven't been able to write. been still a little down. p. is making me a milkshake. strawberry with vanilla. fresh. mmmmmmmmm.

tuesday we set off for the great to-us-as-yet-unknown upper peninsula and for our first camping trip together. i can't wait.

last weekend we went for a hike, in the woods, pretty darn close to home. took a trail we hadn't before and ran into all sorts of deer along the way. we ran into only one other person (and his dog) during our entire walk. the deer were very dear. fawns stared at us and even came closer. the mother, more cautious, put her body in front of them. turned a bend past the river and saw one no more than five feet away. it looked at us, curious. beautiful animals.

in michigan, in minnesota, there are chances of seeing bears and wolves and moose, and surely more sweet deer along the way.

right now i wish i could show you a picture of one of our cats, though. p. has finished milk-shaking, and lay down on a couch in my office. the cat is on top of him already, curled up dreamily, legs extended, head cocked. some day i'll post a picture.

can't wait to get out of town, to get all these anxious voices in my head (worries about my summer class, about next semester, about my manuscript) to quiet themselves down.

weekend

tonight's dinner:
grilled artichokes with tomato chipotle sauce
grilled mushroom & garlic tacos


P. is a god with the grill.

I'm still not done grading (I'm very close, though... have to be done by Wednesday, so this can't stretch on too much longer, anyway). We took a long drive today, listened to some Muriel Spark on audiobook, did some shopping (I have new pants, finally, and we have new camping gear), visited a bookstore to browse the travel books, made the drive home, chatted with elderly neighbor, did some cooking, lay in the hammock. This is what summer is about. We're hoping to go off camping next weekend for a while. Trying to decide between a tour of the Great Lakes (to Voyageurs National park via Michigan's Upper Peninisula and Isle Royale) or a somewhat further trek to the wonderous sights of Montana. We've never camped together, before, and P. is skeptical that I actually know how to start a fire that we can cook on, but it will be a blast when it happens. Can't wait.

i'm sad.

i'm not sure why. i'm just sad.

The visit with my parents was okay; sometimes even pleasant. We went for a walk Saturday after lunch, P. with my mom (who walks much slower than dad), and me with dad, who takes very long strides. Dad told lots of familiy stories, especially about grand-dad, his father, who I learned left WW II at the time he did because he won a hand of poker. (The squadron was sending 5 men home, I think; poker was how they decided who went.) He caught hops on cargo planes and toook a ship through the Pacific (where he saw a bit more action), and by the time he made it home he'd officially traveled around the world. But what a way to do it.

the glitch came Sunday morning, with folks insistance I find my diploma so they could have it framed for me. A sweet gesture, but it didnt' feel so good, being told to find it, them watching me pull out drawers of filing cabinets and rummage through my office before I finally found it sitting in its envelope on a book shelf.

They've called 3 times I think since they left on Sunday. Mom asked tonight (after a dozen questions I really didn't feel like answering) if I missed them. I couldn't bring myself to say yes, so I said "I've been really busy" instead. Am a bad person?

In an effort to make me feel better, P. called me to come and see a mess he made in the bathroom, pushed the button on his shaving cream and unintentionally shot it all over the mirror, the toilet, the shower doors. "You're not the only one who's clumsy," he says, adorably. His shaving cream is blue. It looks like toothpaste.

I'm still sad.

double life

My parents come to visit this weekend. I'm anxious. I have lived a double life with them for so long that it's hard not to turn into a different person when they're around. When they speak (especially dad) I find my thoughts wandering elsewhere. When I speak, it is stilloften with some crazed and juvenile desire to make them proud of me. There's not always much space for my speaking (because my folks are both talkers) and I'm thankful for that sometimes, because it takes some pressure off. And at the same time I wish it were possible to have an honest conversation with them, for them to know and like the person I am when they're not around. Of course the visits are a trial for P., too, who'se been pulled unwittingly into this double life with me.

I really should chill out a bit. There are masks I wear at school, and around strangers, and in uncomfortable circumstances. But they're starting to crack a bit. Will I be found out?

on mothers

There's no time like today to write about this, and yet when I sit down to do it, I'm not quite sure how to start or even what I want to say.

I started feeling more compelled to write about this today after reading Vindauga's blog here on birds, bees, and adoptees.

I can't remember a time I didn't know I was adopted. I don't remember any big talk about it. No rugs were every yanked out from under my feet; it seems I always knew. That's a credit to my parents. I guess they must have figured if they didnt' tell me, it might one day slip out, anyhow, and so it was never really a secret to me. I wasn't told very much about my biological parents, only that they were "very young" and wanted me to have a "better life," but I do remember fantasizing about my birth-mother when I was young, trying to picture what she looked like and what she was up to now. I never thought much about the birth-father in the picture.

In first grade, there was a picture of a pregnant mouse (and the same mouse later, with babies) in our science book. When my teacher told us that every one of us was born in the same way that the mouse was, I raised my hand to say that I wasn't born that way; I was adopted. As if it were something special. She thought I was joking, in the way that parents sometimes tell their biological children that they were adoped when they do something out of character or misbehave. She laughed. I went home from school crying. Mom cleared things up, and the teacher apologized, but I think that was the first time in my life that being adopted was something that made me different, but not special.

In 3rd grade, I was requried to do a project on family ancestry for some sort of "Christmas around the world" project that the school was pulling together. Not having any idea of where to go, I became an honorary Italian, because my father had lived in Italy for a while as a young boy, when his father was in the army air-corp. In 4th grade, I had to do a similar project. When I asked my parents where my ancestors were from, they said to just use theirs. I hated those projects.

In 6th grade or so I came upon the word "bastard" in a dictionary. It fit me. Child born to unmarried parents. I told a friend about it, and later when she fell out with me, she told it to a lot of other kids, laughing.

In 7th grade, I was required to write an autobiography of myself, from birth to present day. In itI said my birthmother had died giving birth to me and that's how I wound up adopted. My mom discovered what I'd written and had a long talk to me about it, and made me re-write what I'd written. I remember crying, almost hysterically, and her holding me in her arms. Before I turned the project in, I tore out those pages and replaced them with my original story. I was ashamed.

In 9th grade, when my grandfather died, a young and unthinking cousin said I couldn't be as sad as he was because he wasn't really my grandfather. Another, more distant cousin, my age, who hardly knew me, told him off. He's probably forgotten that. I never will.

In junior high and high school, the subject of my adoption seemed to become more and more taboo at home. When I dared ask about my birth parents, my parents didn't want to say much, and the snippets I got came with warnings. They were very young. 14, even. On the television talk shows, there were reunion stories all the time. When they came on, the channel was always changed. Birth families were called "white trash." Some were drug addicts.

My first year in college, I wrote a letter to the agency that handled my adoption (I found the address in an old address book of mom's) asking them for any non-identifying information they might have about my birthparents. It came back to me in about a month. I must have read through those sheets of paper hundreds of times. "Your birth mother was 18 years old when you were born. She was 5 feet 1 inch tall. She had dark brown hair and brown eyes. Her father was __ years old when you were born. He had brown hair and eyes. He was a banker and a farmer. Your birth mother's mother was ___ years old when you were born. She had ___ hair and ___ eyes. She was a secretary at a local high school. Your birth mother had three brothers. They were ___, ___, and ___ years old when you were born." There was information about my birth father, too. He was 18. He was planning to join the army after high school. There was information about what she wanted to do, too, and about lots of other things, too. My time of birth. My Apgar scores.

I told my parents I'd gotten this information some time after it came. They were a little taken aback. I said things to them like "Did you know that....? " and they claimed they did know. Like how the birthfather had gone to court to try to gain custody but backed out at the last minute. They knew. They never told me. I think my mom cried. They both gave me lots of warnings about what might happen should I attempt to actually find my birth parents.

Some years later, in graduate school, I found them. A kind internet contact and a lot of luck made it possible. I made two separate trips, once to see each of them. I met half-brothers and half-sisters. 6 of them. It turns out I'm Swedish. With a pinch of Irish.

I wound up telling my parents about this, too. It didn't go over well. This time my father cried, too. They felt betrayed. I wrote them a letter, trying to explain. I sent them a book. Neither helped. They were betrayed. I ruined Christmas. When they'd calmed down enough to talk to me, I received more warnings from dad. They might take advantage of me. I should cut things off immediately. Not only that-- mom and dad had been assured this would be a closed adoption, that what I'd done couldn't happen. They'd been advised to leave the state shortly after adopting me, and to "never come back." If they'd had known.... (question trailed off into silence, but still haunts me.) Dad told me I should cut things off. To spare the feelings of him and mom, I said I would. Then I went about doing my own thing and talking about it only with C., and later P., and sometimes also with the brother I grew up with (their biological son) who seeemed to understand.

The relationship I've been able to form with my birthmother, and especially with her daughters, has been a blessing. It's striking how much they remind me of myself at their ages; they were/are involved in all the same activities I seem to have been. The relationship with the other side of my biology is a bit more tragic. I have really nothing in common with him or his kids. When I visited his house, it was dirty and falling apart. One daughter didn't have a bed. Another daugher had been molested as a child at a daycare. One son was in jail. None of the kids was good at school. I felt lucky I hadn't grown up here. I felt ashamed. This man had sold his cattle (he was a future farmer of America) to hire a lawyer and fight for me. When this happened, my birthmother's family decided they'd take me in before they let him have me (my b-mother says he drank a lot and may have used drugs, too). Eventually the lawyer told him he didn't have a chance and everyone signed the papers and sealed my fate.

Every mother's day I feel a bit uneasy. I always call and send flowers or presents to mom, but I've never been able to bring myself to do anything for b-mom, because it would feel like another betrayal. But I do think of her, and of what she must have gone through to make the decision she did. I don't know how she did it, frankly. She hadn't even told her parents she was pregnant until she went into labour.

This year, though, tonight, I sent an email. Thank you for what you did. For my life. For not letting the desperation get to you as I'm afraid it might have with me.... I feel good about sending this out to her. I feel good about having found her, and b-father, and their parents, to let everyone know I turned out okay.... and yet I still feel guilty, too.

I feel guilty also for how much I long for a biological offspring of my own, now that P. and I are trying. I know I'd be fine, happy, even, if we wound up adopting (which we might, depending on a lot of things), but I long for that connection to grow up with.... er, to watch grow.

I love my parents. I just wish it were okay to love all of them, in my way. There's more to say. But not tonight.

dry spell

I've had a hard time writing lately.

My Shakespeare students have been presenting their research projects the past few days. They're stunningly good so far. Very smart, and sooo different from each other. I'm having a hard time keeping them from going over their allotted minutes, though. Had to postpone two of Monday's to today. I'm going to have to act as time police today, and that isn't fun at all. If I have them present the next time I teach this course, I should really schedule at least 2 more days for it.

I'm up to my neck in grading and planning for a summer course I'm teaching. I almost mean that literally.

8 more classes to get through. Then exams. Then grading. Then peace.

oops

I don't usually read Crooked Timber, but p. pointed me to this link they have over there today to Louis Armstrong singing Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again." Lovely.

proofs

Looks like Timna is working on proofs this week, too. I hate it. There's so much I wish I could change, but can't. So many horrible sentences. I think, "did I write that?" and then look back at the original and find that yes, yes, I did. There are a few icky errors that are the fault of the proofreaders and not me, but this whole porcess is making me nervous. It's doubtful more than a dozen people will ever read this article, but I still wish it were better written. I even have a better revision (one I sent out with job application materials), but since those revisions were made post my article getting accepted, they won't make it.

aragah.

dream

P. gave birth to a cat. I helped deliver it in the backseat of a car.
Also, I dived deep into the bottom of a pool to bring up 5 copper coins.
Also, I won $10,000, but it was contingent on my returning all but 2 books I just got through interlibrary loan. Of course I had a hard time picking just two, but I had made my first choice at least when the alarm went off.

Even my dreams are scatter-brained.




edited to add this Usage Note, brought to you by our friends at Dictionary.com & my own "dived? is that correct?" moment. Very interesting stuff, I think:

Either dove or dived is acceptable as the past tense of dive. Usage preferences show regional distribution, although both forms are heard throughout the United States. According to the Dictionary of American Regional English, in the North, dove is more prevalent; in the South Midland, dived. Dived is actually the earlier form, and the emergence of dove may appear anomalous in light of the general tendencies of change in English verb forms. Old English had two classes of verbs: strong verbs, whose past tense was indicated by a change in their vowel (a process that survives in such present-day English verbs as drive/drove or fling/flung); and weak verbs, whose past was formed with a suffix related to -ed in Modern English (as in present-day English live/lived and move/moved). Since the Old English period, many verbs have changed from the strong pattern to the weak one; for example, the past tense of step, formerly stop, became stepped. Over the years, in fact, the weak pattern has become so prevalent that we use the term regular to refer to verbs that form their past tense by suffixation of -ed. However, there have occasionally been changes in the other direction: the past tense of wear, now wore, was once werede, and that of spit, now spat, was once spitede. The development of dove is an additional example of the small group of verbs that have swum against the historical tide.

edited again to add this. At dinner with C.'s parents long ago, somehow a question of the origin of the word "hooker" came up at the dinner table. C's is the kind of family that doesn't hesitate to get up from the table to bring back an encyclopedia, a dictionary, or any other book relevant to conversation at hand. I loved this. I want to be this. At any rate, the entry for "hooker" was quite lengthy, and I remember laughing hysterically as C's father read some version of the following:

hook·er²
n.

1. One that hooks.
2. Slang. A prostitute.

Word History: In his Personal Memoirs Ulysses S. Grant described Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker as “a dangerous man... not subordinate to his superiors.” Hooker had his faults. He may indeed have been insubordinate; he was undoubtedly an erratic leader. But “Fighting Joe” Hooker is often accused of one thing he certainly did not do: he did not give his name to prostitutes. According to a popular story, the men under Hooker's command during the Civil War were a particularly wild bunch, and would spend much of their time in brothels when on leave. For this reason, as the story goes, prostitutes came to be known as hookers. However attractive this theory may be, it cannot be true. The word hooker with the sense “prostitute” is already recorded before the Civil War. As early as 1845 it is found in North Carolina, as reported in Norman Ellsworth Eliason's Tarheel Talk; an Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860, published in 1956. It also appears in the second edition of John Russell Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms, published in 1859, where it is defined as “a strumpet, a sailor's trull.” Etymologically, it is most likely that hooker is simply “one who hooks.” The term portrays a prostitute as a person who hooks, or snares, clients.

Who writes this stuff? Really, I'd like to know.

And the days are not full enough

And the Days Are Not Full Enough

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound

These days my days are not full enough. And by full enough I don't mean that I have nothing to do; for here, at the end of the semester, I've definitely got plenty. Conferences with students. Papers to grade. Exams to make, to give, to grade. Meeting to attend. Proofs to read. Errands to run. Kitchens to clean, showers to take, hair to shampoo rinse and repeat.

By full enough I mean having some sort of meaning to them. Sometimes I feel like my life can just slip away (like that field mouse) if I'm not careful enough. I catch myself not paying attention to what's around me. I'm always missing steps, bumping into things, forgetting and misplacing things, but I feel like there's plenty else I've been missing in the rush.

The good thing about this detox program is that in the evenings I'm feeling calmer. I'm not coming home unable to wind down, though I am tireder (I think) than usual.

I long for this summer, and for fuller days of thinking and reading and talking with people I care about, and for travelling and hiking and all sort of other filling things. But I also long for balance, and for the ability to make more of my moments not wasted. I want to live more deliberately, consciously. Somehow.

poetrymonth

addiction

I gave up coffee (and caffeine) in favor of baby-making this weekend. Over the weekend, it wasn't so hard. This afternoon... oh, mannnnnnnnnnnnnn I've got cravings! Headache coming on. Soooo soooo sleepy. Can't concentrate. Will sugar help? Let's find out.

weekendend

it's not been sooo long, but it feels like it's been ages since I wrote last. Busy week. After than depressing Tuesday, things looked up and down and up again a bit. Highlight of the week was a tornado warning during a class I was teaching. Some burly administrator came nearly running into my classroom, where some students had just finished a presentation, told us to get us to the basement. We went and talked some more Shakespeare there, huddled together on comfy couches & a less comfy floor. When the warning passed, another admin person came by and told us we could go back upstairs, but we stayed instead. It wasn't the most spectacular class ever, but it was fun. I like these students.

The weather has turned cold again, but at least there's no snow. p. & i have had a good weekend together. Saw The Interpreter last night. The story's not great, but Sean Penn is pretty amazing. Without saying a word, he can reveal such depth. His face.... so expressive. Wow.

Spent a lot of time looking at P's face too, this weekend, from closeup. My nose as reflected in his eyes looks HUGE.

thin skin

I have a student who sits in my afternoon class with a blank & angry stare most of the time. Sometimes she seems to be rolling her eyes. Is it me?

I've had a hard time getting this group of students to read, as I've said plenty of times already, and have finally dealt with it by pretending that everyone's read and breaking them into groups to answer some questions for discussion as that will force them to engage with the text on their own at least a little. This student, to her credit, is one who often reads, but she definitely doesn't seem to like me and her sighs and eyerolls bother me far more than they should. I'd like to sigh and roll my eyes at this class sometimes, too, but I've tried to muster up as much enthusiasm as I can just to get us through the end of it.

I need a thicker skin.

Last semester I had a student who exhibited similar body language when she came to class-- but at the end of the semester she wrote a very nice evalution for me (which I could identify because of her distinctive handwriting). Lesson should be-- can't always trust appearances. But the lesson I really need to learn is that it doesn't matter, they don't have to like me.

I wonder sometimes if I'm really cut out for this job. I dread the 75 minute class periods I have to teach every Tuesday and Thursday, and am even more wary of this compressed summer course I'm teaching for 4 hours daily (pre-travel). I do okay in shorter intervals, but being on-the-spot is still a very stressful experience for me. I love listening to people and learning about them. I've often felt very humbled reading papers for freshman comp of all things because of the details of their lives my students have chosen to share with me. I like watching them develop as thinkers. But I want them to like me, too, and that's a problem.

I think part of this stems from the total lack of friendships in this new place. I have some acquaintances at work, but none that I hang out with outside of work. I have P., I have some long distance friends, but in large part the students have turned into a primary source of emotional validation or stress. And that doesn't sound so healthy.

Punks. If they're not reading and we have poor discussions, it's not my fault, is it? So why do I feel so responsible?

blossoms

A student introduced me to this poet, who, she claims, is one of the best young poets alive today.

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bit into
the round jubilance of a peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

This poem comes from a splendid anthology called Staying Alive, which I picked up before a long plane trip once.

It is spring. I was sad when the magnolia blossoms (the first blooms of spring here) began falling from the trees and leaving naked branches in their stead... but then tiny green leaves started appearing on the trees, and white and pink and yellow and glorious deep purple came out on others. And then our yard broke out in an epidemic of wildflowers-- violets and whites and pale blues and yellows. I'd never seen anything like it. But then the neighbors started mowing their lawns. And then P. started getting antsy to mow ours...

I put him off for a week, saying, please, please, let it along a little longer, you're going to destroy all those flowers! This weekend when the mower came out, I took my camera outside and took photographs, and lay among those blooms and inhaled their scent and felt sad that they were going....

... but they didn't go. Although there are fewer blossoms than there were before, the white and the purple and the yellow blooms are still there, peaking up through the grass. And yet another tree has opened up its buds to spill forth blossoms.

O, I love this spring!

when i die

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

(Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself")

Some years ago, back when I was with C., a phone call came in the night. His grandmother had died. She'd been quite sick for a while. C's parents had been taking care of her, at home, and she'd finally passed away. They held a memorial service for her in the summer. It was the most beautiful thing of its sort I've ever been to. No priest and no body (she'd already been cremated), just all her family and friends, gathered in a white tent in her backyard, sharing memories. A string quartet played (she'd known the violinist, who once gave lessons to C.). She seems to have been an extraordinary woman. She was an avid birdwatcher. She took walks (in the mountains of Pennsylvania). She kept journals. She knew everyone. After her husband died, she took a bunch of classes at the college where C's father (her son) taught. One of the classes was an American poetry class. She loved Whitman.

In her last days, C's mother was spending a lot of time at her house. She'd read to her. Just days before her death, they finished Leaves of Grass. C's mother read this poem (an excerpt from "Song of Myself") at the memorial service. It's the most beautiful send-off I can imagine.

poetrymonth

clay and taxes

The Potter
(Pablo Neruda)

Your whole body has
a fullness or a gentleness destined for me.

When I move my hand up
I find in each place a dove
that was seeking me, as
if they had, love, made you of clay
for my own potter's hands.

Your knees, your breasts,
your waist
are missing parts of me like the hollow
of a thirsty earth
from which they broke off
a form,
and together
we are complete like a single river,
like a single grain of sand.

poetrymonth

In the summer after my second or third year of graduate school, I signed up for a ceramics course at the university. We did a lot of handbuilding, but were briefly introduced to the potter's wheel, too. Since this was a summer course, I was spending hours and hours in the studio every day. The textures of clay became very familiar to me, and during the weeks we were working on wheels, I could see the swirling clay bottom of a cyllinder every time I closed my eyes. It was a magical experience, one that maintained quite a grip on my sensory life. My sense of touch became strangely hightened, and in the dark with my lover that summer, I saw and felt things differently than I ever had before. Skin became clay in my hands, I myself was claylike in his.

That summer, I rode my bicycle for a mile or so to the ceramices studio every day, and C. rode with me there in the early morning. One day the seat on my bicycle came loose on the way. By the time I got there, it was totally hanging off. When I left the studio that afternoon I found that the seat had been tightened. C. had ridden home and back with a screwdriver and fixed things while I worked.

He was always fixing things for me.

I messed up that beautiful relationship. C. is engaged now, and marries (I think) next month. I wish I knew more about how he's doing.

I'm very lucky to have found a good things with P., who is currently trying to pay our taxes online. It was P. who made me love Neruda and Garcia Lorca and Miguel Hernandez and all sorts of other poets I'd never have met otherwise. It is P. whose body I fall asleep next to at night, and P. whose hands.... well, do magical things. After a day such as this, though, even his paying of taxes is a terribly romantic and beautiful thing.




winging it?

When I started teaching, I was spending on average of 3-5 hours preparing for each class I taught. If that sounds insane to you, it should. These were new preps, but I guess the excessive time spent had more to do with my own lack of confidence.

Today I felt like I was winging it, but things went fine.... and then I realized that no, actually I spent4 hours preparing for the 3 classes (2 preps) I had to teach this morning and afternoon. I was going to say "good for me!I didn't spend too much time prepping today"-- but then I remembered that I spent a bit of time last night preparing, too, which bumps up my hours of preparation to at least 6 (sigh). So that means I've spent nine hours preparing for and teaching today's classes. No wonder I have no life. No wonder it's felt so hard this week to get everything done-- the teaching + the committe work + cooking dinner + half-hearted efforts at cleaning + an occasional shower.

Please, please, let next year be easier.

SupposedlyI need to be doing some research, too, if I want this to turn into a tenure-track position and/or if I want to go on the market again next year. The good news is that I have proofs for my first article (submitted over a year ago) coming my way. I'm nervous about it, want to slip more revisions into it, but I'm not sure if that's kosher at this point. The bad news is that one article's not enough to boost my chances of finding a job somewhere near P. next fall--wherever that may be.

Oh, sweet summer, come.

rescue me, part ii.

because this part of what i want to say is too ugly and inarticulate to put in the same post as a seamus heaney poem.

I had a conversation today that's completely caused me to rethink what it is I'm doing here at ______ college and whether or not I do fit in and/or should stay. Of course the conversation comes after I've already shut the door for another possible job opportunity for next year (at bigger state school in another state).

Even posting about it feels a bit dangerous. Maybe I'll wimp out (wise up?) and delete it, but right now I'm still trying to process things and it feels good to write.

This afternoon I had coffee with Dr. Feminist Outspoken, who is leaving _____ college and moving on to a better (and better paid and better located) job next year. The conversation disturbed me in ways I can't quite make sense of yet...

Except for on small incident which I thought I was blowing out of proportion, I've felt nothing but good things from my department. They are collegial, they are progressive, they are down-to-earth. For the most part, they also seem to not like Dr. Outspoken too much. Okay, that's a huge understatement. Several of them roll their eyes at her in department meetings.

Dr. Outspoken tells me (over coffee in a public place with students and staff and who knows who else milling back and forth) that many if not all of the problems at _______college stem from sexism, that sexism is the reason our deparment has only one other tenured female. She tells me that Dr. Respectable (male) is actually the devil incarnate, that Dr. Other Tenured Female drinks too much and that... many more other things that I'm not supposed to know. Her comments make me rethink a comment made towards me by Dr. Respectable in a recent deparment meeting that somewhat embarrassed me in front of everyone, and they also make me feel a lot less secure about my job and prospects and ___ college than I did before.

Listening to all of this was rather unnerving, especially since, were her remarks overheard by the wrong people, I could be associated with those comments. I know I should take those comments with salt, too, but they did give me what I'm sure is a valuable glance at the dark underside of our department and college culture in general.

I imagine this is normal for most new profs, but ever since I arrived at ___ college, I've known that there's plenty about what goes on and what has gone on here that I don't know. I can sense certain rivalries between a few faculty folk, I've known the college has had some troubles in the past, but everybody does seem to put on a good show for the new folk. They don't talk about the bad times. You might see this as optimism, as commitment to move forward, but the not-talking about distasteful things also doesn't quite feel so good.

I've been curious, and now I know far more than I should. But balancing these comments against what I'm getting elsewhere... ? whew. It's all too confusing right now.

I'm sure I can't be making much sense, but hope/imagine the scenario might be familiar to someone out there. I'm not sure what else to write. I can't even formulate an intelligent question to ask. All I can say is... Wow.

rescue me

a short one today:

The Rescue
(Seamus Heaney)

In drifts of sleep I came upon you
Buried to your waist in snow.
You reached your arms out: I came to
Like water in a dream of thaw.

mysterious penguin dreaming

Today's poem, for a day I'd really rather be dreaming away.

In praise of dreams
(Wislawa Szymborska)

In my dreams
I paint like Vermeer van Delft.

I speak fluent Greek
and not just with the living.

I drive a car
that does what I want it to.

I am gifted
and write mighty epics.

I hear voices
as clearly as any venerable saint.

My brilliance as a pianist
would stun you.

I fly the way we ought to,
i.e., on my own.

Falling from the roof,
I tumble gently to the grass.

I've got no problem
breathing under water.

I can't complain:
I've been able to locate Atlantis.

It's gratifying that I can always
wake up before dying.

As soon as war breaks out,
I roll over on my other side.

I'm a child of my age,
but I don't have to be.

A few years ago
I saw two suns.

And the night before last a penguin,
clear as day.

I've always thought this poem would be great to teach in an undergrad poetry workshop (or a poetry class in general, as it provides a form that might be easily played with/imitated (like Wallace Stevens' famous "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" poem). And I love hearing about other people's dreams.

A friend who's now become a fabulous neuroscientist (and who also writes great poetry) introduced me to Jung's notion that in dreams, the rooms in a house represent different parts of your unconscious. I'd been dreaming about houses, with attics and basements, and dark narrow passageways through and around them.

Years later I went through a phase in which I was having a lot of intense and sometimes troubling dreams. My lover at the time gave me a book on interpreting dreams for my birthday. I loved the inscription: "Just in case you dream of something besides me." But it was very ominous book, and quite sexist, too, with different interpretations given for some unnamed (I suppose male) person and for "a young woman." I had to stop using it to analyze my own dreams for a while because it was quite distrubing. I was so hoping there would be an entry for "penguin," that I could write about, but sadly, there isn't. But here's the entry for "lizard" (to give you just a taste):

To dream of lizards, foretells attacks upon you by enemies.
If you kill a lizard, you will regain your lost reputation or fortune; but if it should escape, you will meet vexations and crosses in love and business.
For a woman to dream that a lizard crawls up her skirt, or scratches her, she will have much misfortune and sorrow. Her husband will be a victim to invalidism and she will be left a widow, and little sustenance will be eked out by her own labors.

Yikes. Guard yourselves against lizard-dreams. Especially you ladies.

poetrymonth

more poems... because it's addictive

This evening I bring you two poems by the fabulous Lucille Clifton. The first, a response to the Sharon Olds poem posted on jo(e)'s page, here. The second, for all you historians out there. (I'm starting to sound like a dj [deejay?], no? But if it's poetry & not discs I offer, perhaps a pj is a better word for it?)

I was inspired to collect African American women's poetry some years ago while prepping to teach an intro to poetry class. That's one class (and this is one poet) I'd love to teach again.

Poem in praise of menstruation

if there is a river
more beautiful than this
bright as the blood
red edge of the moon if
there is a river
more faithful than this
returning each month
to the same delta if there

is a river
braver than this
coming and coming in a surge
of passion, of pain if there is

a river
more ancient than this
daughter of eve
mother of cain and of abel if there is in

the universe such a river if
there is some where water
more powerful than this wild
water

pray that it flows also
through animals
beautiful and faithful and ancient
and female and brave

i am accused of tending to the past

i am accused of tending to the past
as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
this past was waiting for me
when i came,
a monstrous unnamed baby,
and i with my mother's itch
took it to breast
and named it
History.
she is more human now,
learning languages everyday,
remembering faces, names and dates.
when she is strong enough to travel
on her own, beware, she will.

poetry Rx: There are other poems of Lucille's here. I recommend the Lorena Bobbit poem & the Clark Kent series, especially if you're looking to put a little spunk back into your step.

poetrymonth

pretty how town

I was going to post this e.e. cummings poem for sunday, but then I found it here. So here's another one instead. You should read this one aloud.

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

I love the rhythm of this one, and also the uses of anyone, noone, someones. This poem also triggers a memory from my childhood: When I was learning to read, everytime I came across the word "nowhere," I would read it (aloud, sometimes, in reading group) as "now here." I remember being disappointed when my teacher corrected me with "no where" and couldn't understand why the word couldn't be what I'd thought it was, too.

And this: In first grade, to demonstrate that I should go to second or third grade for reading lessons, my teacher wrote a short passage of about five lines or so on the chalk board and had me read it aloud to another teacher. It was a silly passage about the antics of some "pet." I was a good reader, but every time I came upon the word "pet," I would read "cat" in its place. No one writes a story about a "pet," I thought. Good writers will be far more precise-- it matters if the pet is a cat or a dog or a mouse or an iguana. The teacher tried to appease me by adding this sentence to the end of the passage: "The pet was a cat." It didn't work. They bumped me up a grade, anyway.


poetrymonth

advice?

I have a hunch some of you out there teach first-year composition, too. If any one has recommendations for textbooks (or "real books"), I'd love to read them.

amazing

In the very moments I was typing out the marigold poem for you, P., sweet P., was typing out the very same poem in Spanish on his blog, here. He carries his laptop to the bathroom with him (where he seems to do some of his best thinking), and when he came out, he caught me having just clicked the "publish" button. Check out the time stamps. We posted in the very same minute.

Last night we spent some time reading poems to each other (it's happened before, and it's one of my favorite things). He read Garcia Lorca, and since Williams seemed to match the tone, I read to him the marigold poem. And it seems those images stayed with both of us.

There are always moments of wonder like these with P., moments that make me aware of how much more deeply connected we are than I'm often aware of.

There's something about that poem... the first time I encountered it, it was read aloud to me, too. I can't remember all the details of the circumstance-- I think what happened was this: Zack and Roxanne (two people I adore) had come to visit me my first or second year in graduate school. We visited a used bookstore together, and I think we all came back with books. Picture from Breughel was mine. Somehow we wound up passing around books of poetry and reading to each other. Zack found the marigold poem. Bless him wherever he is.

The three of us had taken a poetry-writing class together in college. The class met in the evening, and it was always dark when we left. I remember walking out of class into the cool spring nights with them, looking up at the moon, filled with poetry and love for them and every other person in the class, and for Professor A., whom one would never suspect of being able to teach a poetry workshop in such a way as that. It was beautiful to me that, long after the class, the three of us would be reading poems to each other. It's similarly beautiful to me, that years and years after that, I still have someone to read and listen to poems with.

I don't want poetry month to end.

poem for spring...

and for YelloCello, who liked the plum poem:


A Negro Woman (William Carlos Williams)

carrying a bunch of marigolds
wrapped
in an old newspaper:
She carries them upright,
bareheaded,
the bulk
of her thighs
causing her to waddle
as she walks
looking into
the store window which she passes
on her way.
What is she
but an ambassador
from another world
a world of pretty marigolds
of two shades
which she announces
not knowing what she does
other
than walk the streets
holding the flowers upright
as a torch
so early in the morning.


Unfortunately Blogger won't let me reproduce the poem exactly the way it looks on the page, with the lines undulating in a back and forth movement.... they seem to be walking, each line a new footstep or few...

but you can still get a sence (or rather sense, since, scents) of it, and of why Williams is so often called an "imagist" poet, too.,





Marigolds for everyone! Happy spring.

poetrymonth

another poetry post

This poem is for jo(e), and for her own recent and marvellous post about a monastery:

The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.

The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,

A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain.
'This man can't bear our life here and will drown,'

The abbot said, 'unless we help him.' So
They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back
Out of the marvellous as he had known it.

(From Seamus Heaney's Seeing Things)

I have seen the ship, the monks, the abbot, and the sailor drag their anchors, say their prayers, and climb their ropes a thousand times in my head.

poetrymonth

confession

So inspired am I by National Poetry month, I've got 3 more poems saved in draft form to post tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Can't get enough of everyone else's poems, either. Thank you.

national poetry month, part ii.

mystery post-it note attached to my office door this a.m. :

I need to speak with
you about a class
in the next day or
two.

Stanley Fish (in an essay "Is there a Text in this Class?") once described a reading list he'd left up on the board from a previous class that looked like this:

Jacobs-Rosenbaum
Levin
Thorne
Hayes
Ohman (?)

He told his following class of seventeenth-century poetry students that this was a religious poem, and asked them to explicate it as such. They did. I like the idea of getting students to play with language, though something about Fish's excercise (something I can't quite put my finger on) bugs the hell out of me and reminds me too much of fellow graduate students who waved around names like Derrida as if they were magical keys that could unlock the meaning (or non-meaning) of everything. Maybe it's the names themselves (with maybe the exception perhaps of "Ohman (?)" that I find distinctly unpoetic.

The mystery student's note is much more to my taste. The hesitancy of those first and third line breaks, as if the student isn't quite sure of who he needs to speak with or when or how urgent his need is. The student is no poet, but those lines make me think of the doctor William Carlos Williams' scribbling poems onto his prescription pads. [I love the idea of a poem as a prescription. It's lovely how just the few I read in your blogs the other day uplifted my spirits. I don't know if this has ever happened, but I love imagining a physician handing a poem to a weary patient. "You'll be fine. Read this and come back in a week."]

I didn't understand or even like WCW until I took a creative writing (poetry) class in college. I couldn't figure out what that red wheel barrow poem was doing in every poetry anthology around. I couldn't appreciate the elegance. And then there was this one (which I like much better):

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

A note dashed off by a husband to a wife, perhaps. But what's the tone here? It sounds so playful to me, so mischievous. In class, the poem inspired more conversation than I ever thought possible. I started to see just how deliberate those breaks were, how much the breaks themselves could communicate. We practiced using them in poems of our own, experimenting with how else those breaks can convey meaning or tone:

We appreciate
your interest
We are unable to
include you

We were forced
to be extremely
selective

Thank you
for allowing us
to pursue your
credentials

Please accept our
best wishes
for the future

This "poem" seems to be sneering. The words are conventional, but there's still some fun being had. And unlike Williams' poem in which perhaps a joke is being shared between lovers, here it's at the addressee's expense. Putting the word "credentials" on a line by itself seems to convey exactly what the hiring committee might think of the rejected applicant. It's the tone I heard in my head when reading the numerous rejection letters (for grad schools, for jobs) I've received up to this point. Oh, sure, most of them seem nice enough, and some are even apologetic, but the perceived meaning "you're not good enough for us" was still there. I know better, now, how random the search process is, how much regret our committee really does seem to have that we can't hire or even interview more... but I digress.

I guess what I'm trying to say is... it's national poetrymonth. That's all.

in honor of National Poetry month

How uplifting to find this new meme out there.

I adore this one:

Halley's Comet
(Kenneth Rexroth)

When in your middle years
The great comet comes again
Remember me, a child,
Awake in the summer night,
Standing in my crib and
Watching that long-haired star
So many years ago.
Go out in the dark and see
Its plume over water
Dribbling on the liquid night,
And think that life and glory
Flickered on the rushing
Bloodstream for me once, and for
All who have gone before me,
Vessels of the billion-year-long
River that flows now in your veins.


poetrymonth

Nothing comes of nothing. Speak again.

It's a terrible feeling, having nothing to say. Work is sucking the life out of me again, and even though things are going okay, I fear I've become terribly boring.

Our department is hosting campus visits this week and next. I'm one of the first to meet the candidates; am picking both up from hotels and taking to dinner the night before their job talks and full day of interviews. I'm curious about them, especially the woman. But I'm done caring about how many publications they have or what they can teach. I wonder about their senses of humor, the way they talk, what their non-academic interests are. I find myself longing to meet (for us to hire) someone I might hang out with. I even worry, "will they like me?" How pathetic is that? Were I in a bigger town I might sign up for yoga classes or dance lessons or aerobics or a book club or a knitting circle or anything that might involve meeting new people. But in this small factory town, you'd be hard pressed to find any of those things....

So I go to work, I come home, I talk to P. and play with the cats and go to bed and wake up and do it all over again. And in between I read all sorts of far more interesting blogs & look at very cute pictures of other people's kids and feel encouraged and lonely at the same time.

What's wrong with me?

update

For all the cursing I did about having committed myself to organize a panel with students and present a paper at this conference, it was actually quite quite fun. I finished writing my paper after 1 am this morning and did some more revisions on it when I woke up at 6. Met my students, drove them to the conference, ran a red light along the way and endured much teasing about it. We got seven or eight people in the audience which was more than I was expecting. The students shined-- they came across as the brilliant, brilliant young women that they are, both in their delivery and in their responses to questions and comments from the floor. Folks in the audience were impressed and said so. One suggested these undergrad essays could compete with those of some of her graduate students. I beamed. The students had a good time and received what I think is some helpful external validation on their writing, and they said nice things about me and my teaching. They said my class changed the way they think about lit. and (in a few cases) their own future teaching careers. This was so worth it.

And I have no idea how I did this on so little sleep, but somehow I managed to have a pretty darn good Shakespeare class this afternoon, too.

It's been a good day.

still writing. less fine-ish.

O, grumble grumble grumble.

last minute paper writing... and I feel fine (ish)

I tell my students not to do it, and yet here I am. Up this morning trying to write a conference paper for a panel presentation I'm giving tomorrow morning (!). Finding time to write this thing had been nearly impossible. I stay so busy during the weeks I'm teaching, and find myself so burnt out and exhausted during the weekend I'm able to do fairly little. I graded a lot over break, but also slacked off quite a bit, so got no work done on the paper. Every day this week has been a constant rush of trying to finish things up. Search committee stuff. Grading stuff. All manner of little things that seem to have piled up.

This may all change, but this morning I'm feeling pretty non-plussed about the paper. It is a panel on teaching, after all, and as I started taking some notes from my sources and filling in a few other ideas, I realize how much I already have to talk about. I only need to speak for 10 minutes, formally. I do that all the time, don't I? I've drafted short lectures to give to students in far less time than 24 hours.

So all I need to do is say a few things about other approaches for teaching what I taught, give a few choice reasons why many folks hesitate to do what I did, and then just describe the class's progression and insert a few choice anecdotes along the way. The students I'm brining with me (to present their final papers from the class) will do the rest. And I feel perfectly fine moderating the conversation we hope will ensue afterwards.

I really need to chill out about all of this. The stress level I've been experiencing this week (ha! all semester, all year, really!) is just insane. The stress at trying to make myself useful so I'd still have a job next year (my position was officially just a one-year job) led me to take on FAR too many other things I probably didn't need to: volunteering for all sorts of committees, judging a contest, helping out in honors interviews, giving presentations at festivals, deciding I must go to this conference (since it's local) and take students, etc., etc. I got my contract (for next year) yesterday, but I think all my panic was very unwarranted. I'm still up to my neck in teaching and all the additional things I've volunteered to take on. I have a hard time hearing myself think... but that's exactly what I need to get back to now.

Whoo. Self pep-talk and venting over. Back to work, z., you slacker.

search committee blues

It's strange being on the other side of this whole process, having the fate of so many hopeful and highly educated, fine, fine people in your hands.

We narrowed our applications down to 5 today. The process seems so very random to me. Some not strong applicants are getting phone calls just because they can teach a specific course we want someone to teach. Some amazingly gifted scholars and teachers are getting passed over because their case for being able to teach the classes we need is a teeny bit weaker. The job market sucks. I feel for these people.

And then there's the question of whether any of these people are still available or if they'll even want to come here once they hear about how lousy the salary is. (Another assistant prof. in my department is having a hard time paying her monthly bills!)

And now I'm wonder what the committee was saying about me last year. Yikes.

thirty

It happened. I turned thirty. Today's my birthday. So far, nothing feels out of order. Thankfully all the embarrassing stuff (being sung to in restaurants) was taken care of last week. Today feels conspicuously quiet. It's my last day of spring break, so I happily don't have to go into the office today. I did spend an hour or so at Big U. state library, though, and I'm having students over tonight for dinner to talk about a conference panel we're pulling together, so it feels rather un-birthday like. I want to find someway of marking today, just for myself. There needn't be any big celebration, but 30 does feel like a milestone of sorts, and I want to let it sink in. I spent most of last year telling folks I was 28 when they asked, somehow not remembering that I'd passed 29 already. 30 will be less forgettable, I think....

but what does it mean? What am I supposed to feel, now that my twenties are over? Do I rush at all the opportunities this new part of my life will have in store for me? Do I lament all the opportunities I missed out on in my twenties? Both? Neither?

I've never gone backpacking through Europe, or travelled to a new city or country exploring completely on my own (hideous MLA conferences don't count), or joined the Peace Corps, or held a really cool internship. These are things one should do in one's twenties.

I miss the friendships I had in my early twenties, in my college years, and I miss the openness of my mind to new ways of thinking in the first part of graduate school. I miss dancing. I miss late nights out. I miss and largely missed out on cool bars & martinis. (Parenthetical anecdote: as a wedding present, my brother and his wife sent us a blender with some liquor and margarita mix. When I got around to trying things out, I topped off both drinks with olives. whoops.)

I am, however, thrilled to finally be done with my dissertation, to have a "real" (?) job, to be married, to have pets, to be closer to starting my own family.

Instead of waiting for something to happen today, I should've tried to make it happen for myself. I could''ve scheduled a long hike, or invited friends, or gotten a haircut. But maybe writing will suffice.

I'm thirty. No turning back. Time to get on with things, & to cook a nice meal, at least, for my students.

public cat nibbling

I'm home from an exhausting few days' "vacation" at my parents' place, during which I was publicly embarrassed only twice-- both times with happy birthday songs in public places. One of those occasions involved a sombrero. My parents are all about public embarrassments, but usually they're unintentional, and they'd never before involved sombreros. I do turn thirty this week, though.

Sat down here to catch up on all your blogs and the little cat (who missed me, it seems) jumped up on my desk, where he kept walking over my wrists and rubbing up against my arms before he finally decided to nibble on my ear. Lovely.

Hmmm... I wonder if this post will provoke a fun google search--like "public ear nibbling" or "cats nibble somberos." I've gotten NONE that are notable yet....

There's still time.

A few highlights of the trip:
First: I got to see my uncle bud, whom I mentioned before, along with a lot of wonderful photos of his mother (and father) which my aunt had compiled for the memorial service. They met at a dance-- swing dance-- they could really "cut up a rug," I'm told. They went to New York City on their honeymoon. She was beautiful. He was dashingly handsome. Her real name was W-----, it turns out, a name which she hated and which no one ever pronounced right, anyway. She started being called Shorty while she was working at Kroger, and actually came to prefer that name, so much that she'd introduce herself as "Shorty" to anyone she met. Apparently all sorts of folks (including my parents) had a hard time finding out anything about her status during the time she was in the hospital beacuse no one knew (or could remember) her true first name. I was soooooooo close to getting in a morning hike in a place I love with my uncle... but thunderstorms were in the forecast. :(

Second: Went back to the college where I got my bachelor's degree to peek in on two of my former (and one of them fabulous!) English professors. The fabulous one has much to do with how I ended up studying what I studied and being what I am now. They remembered me, greeted me with great enthusiasm. The fabulous one even hugged me. Will I ever get to hug former students this many years later? It was strange talking shop with them, particularly with Dr. Fabulous, who is also an early modernist and was interested in how I teach Shakespeare and the rest of it. My head was spinning so from those conversations that I couldn't even sleep that night. I wish I'd had more time.

Finally: the sound of my own voice as a first-grader. We were living in Germany at the time (I'm a military brat) and, since international phone calls were soooo expensive then, our family and both sets of grandparets sent cassette tapes back and forth. My aunt got her hands on a few we'd sent and passed them back to mom. So strange, hearing that voice. My r's sound a lot like w's. I'm excited about getting to wear a "weal cowgiwl" outfit for a fasching parade. My brother was going to be a "weal cowboy" and my parents "a weal sherwiff" and "a weal sherwiff's wife." Yikes. I still remember riding in that covered wagon float and throwing candy. In the first grade, I was also apparently obsessed with my cousin, C----, who I speak to repeatedly on the tape, encouraging her to come visit and telling her about things I think she'd like.

On another tape, I'm reciting this very troubling poem about goblins who snatch away kids who won't say their prayers or mind their parents or respect authority. Yikes. I memorized lots of poems before I could even read... and I could recite them by heart on command. (Here's another, also in dialect, which I actually recited at a base Christmas party.) There are many things that I find troubling about the fact that THESE are the poems my mom had me memorize. What kind of a world was I being indoctrinated into? And all those lines about goblins "gitting" you "if you don't watch out"? No wonder I had so many nightmares as a kid.

Apparently mom liked Eugene Field, as I also learned this Little Boy Blue poem, which I loved then, and still find quite lovely, really. And another, about a boy falling asleep under a haystack!-- though I can't remember anything else about it now, but that image...

I'd lost those memories about early encounters with poetry. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed poems as a kid. I loved hearing the rhythm in my 6 year-old voice; to think about the pleasure I took then in saying the words and hearing how they fit together. That pleasure came back in a wonderful way when I took a poetry-writing class in college, but I'd never connected that to these early poems before...

I should start making a list of poems for my kids. Garcia Lorca has some poems for children (P. introduced me to them) which are simple, and short, and absolutely beautiful. There's a lovely one about a Mr. and Mrs. Lizard, for example, but I'll leave you with this one.

Caracola

Me han traído una caracola.

Dentro le canta
un mar de mapa.
Mi corazón
se llena de agua
con pececilos
de sombra y plata.

Me han traído una caracola.

which translates:

Seashell

Someone brought me a seashell.

Singing inside
is a sea from a map.
My heart
fills up with water
and litttle tiny fish,
silvery, shadowy.

Someone brought me a seashell.

[It's nice to be back.]

ouch

Woke up this morning with a terrible, terrible headache. Couldn't get myself out of bed until nearly 10am. Managed to get myself dressed and to work, but was totally unable to do anything. So I took some Motrin, closed the blinds in my office, turned the lights off, and lay down on the floor in front of the heater, willing the pain to go away. Much of it has, now (2 hours later!) but it's still there, a bit, threatening me. Moments like this make life itself seem so precarious. I am helpless, completely at the mercy of my own body, which in those moments I seem to have no control over. The pain has exhausted me. I'm tired, still nauseous, I just want to go home, crawl back into bed and fall asleep until it's really gone, until it's let go of me for good (or at least for a while). But I've got to finish writing up a midterm exam to give later this afternoon, & I'd wanted to finish grading their papers, too. Not sure the latter's going to happen. Sorry, kids, I'll have to say to my students. I'm only human. I'd wanted to blog about more interesting things, like this topic on women and arugmentiveness, etc. which many folks listed in my sidebar & elsewhere are taling about... but it seems that's going to have to wait, too.

The good news? Spring break is just hours away now. Thank God.

Dresden 101

In an upcoming week I'm having some of my first-year students read about the bombing of Dresden (in this book), which has brought this beautiful passage (from Vonnegut's Slaugherhouse Five) back to mind:

Billy looked at the clock on the gas stove. He had an hour to kill before the saucer came. He went into the living room, swinging the bottle like a dinner bell, turned on the television. He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.

Beautiful. P & i wept when we heard this on audiobook (beautifully read by Ethan Hawke) some several weeks ago.

My brother's a military pilot. Thanks be to God he was assigned a rescue plane and not a fighter (which they all seem to want). He's been to and from Iraq & other middle Eastern parts somewhat unknown twice now, and it looks like he's going back again this summer. He has a new baby, and he's going back. It's probably less dangerous for him now than it was in previous times, but it's never exactly safe, you know? Once, before the baby came, during a visit to his place, he told me a bit about what he'd seen, and about nearly life-ending events. It was late one night, we were out putting out this fire, everyone else had gone off to bed... He told me about his nightmares, about having had to kill some men who were shooting at him.... men who he knows had families and kids of their own. He was nearly crying. How can he profess to be a good father, he wondered, when he'd done these things? I'm sure he told me only because of the lateness of the hour, and the free-flowingness of the beer from a bit earlier in the night... He doesn't talk about this with his wife, he said. He doesn't want to put those images into her head.

I think they'll always be in mine.

There's so much that disturbs me about this country I live in. So much dangerous bullshit.

la hormiga atómica

My husband calls me the atomic ant. Can you see the resemblance? How I acquired the name is somewhat of a long story, but it has something to do with the brute strength with which I once carried heavy furniture, small refrigerators, and backpacks overflowing with books from the library for my dissertation research. (I might also mention I'm a bit under 5 feet tall.)

Now if I could just learn how to work at atomic speeds. Whatever that means.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Unfortunately, I seem to have lost all my previous comments. :(

one more week...

or 5 days, more precisely. Spring break is coming, though spring itself may not, I fear. The local weatherman predicts snow again on Wednesday. Grumble grumble.

The weekend has flown. I've spent much of today (though not as much as I should've) grading papers for my Shakespeare class, and after last week's excessive attention to freshman comp., this is a welcome relief. I'm breezing through these in comparison. But here's what I'm noticing: Some of the students have chosen to do a bit of outside research for their papers-- which is certainly fine.... But several of them are entirely losing their own voices as they bring in the other critics. That troubles me. I told them (before they handed in papers) to be sure, if they were using outside sources, to use the criticism to further their own arguments rather than letting the criticism use them. I can see that they're trying, but how do I grade these things? I'm concerned that they'll be expecting A's and getting B's or C's.... but maybe that's a good lesson.

Last night, P. took me to see the new Merchant of Venice film. I have mixed feelings about it. While I think they handled the anti-Semitism of the play sensibly and sensitively, they also made the play a bit too PC for my liking in their treatment of Portia, whose racist comments concerning the Prince of Morocco's devil-complexion are entirely cut out. She does come across as a bit cruel in the trial scene, though--which I think is entirely to Pacino's credit. Pacino's a rather fine Shylock, methinks. Even my husband, who oft calls Al Pacino "Mal (bad) Pacino" found him compelling here. Jeremy Irons was also wonderful here, too, though I was less impressed with Fiennes. I must give the film credit for exploring the darkness of the play and or not tying up everything in a neat bow. I'm still a little haunted by it.

This post is a mish-mash of weekend. But if I can just get myself to keep writing, eventually something good will come of it. At least I think so.

I kept hand-written journals (6 of them!) all through my college years. When I look back on them, I actually like what's written there. My mind was so open then. There was so much I was thinking about and through, trying to absorb. My mind has become so cluttered now that it's hard to focus on anything for very long. But it won't stay that way if I can do something about it. Breathe, z. Just breathe.

tempted

There's a new job in my field out in the ads today-- and it's for a university located in a part of the country I'd love to live in. The teaching load is lower than it is here, which means I'd be able to do research much more easily. The salary is significantly higher than I make here. The problem? It's a one-year visiting position. I know what they say about birds in hands and those in bushes, but I'm so ready to get out of this city and state. What to do, what to do? Were I to take a one year job, that'd mean I'd have to be applying again next year.... but if I stay here, I'll probably do that anyway. The other consideration is baby-making-- it's probably considerably less risky to have the kid here, while working the job I'm currently in (in a very friendly and supportive department, no less) than it would be to show up somewhere else where no one knows me and I still have to prove myself, and with my not knowing what complications I might have to face in pregnancy (for there may indeed be some). Argh. I'll probably stay put, I guess. Ohhhhhhhhh, but I'm dreaming.

How distracted are you?

To find out, go here. This video was designed for an experiment in psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. The experiment won an "Ignobel prize" in 2004. See if you can count the number of times that the players dressed in white shirts pass the ball to each other. Don't count the passes made by players in black shirts. What number do you come up with? It's harder than it sounds.

When you've finished (only then! Don't spoil it!), you can read about the scientists' findings here. Surprised? Do comment!

I'm hiding.

At the start of this semester, and most of last semester, if I'm remembering right, I kept the door of my office open while I was inside. I'm in a suite with a few other young professors. With the door open, I can see and hear them coming and going; I can be aware of students coming by. The past few weeks, though, I've not been feeling very social. I've been hiding in here with the door closed. I'm just so tired, and talking to anyone feels like a great effort. I want to crawl into a warm cave somewhere and hibernate for a while... at least until spring comes. But there are so, so, so many things to do in the next week and a half before spring break:

• write up and give 2 separate midterm exams
• finish grading and return 3 sets of papers
• prepare for and teach the rest of my classes
• prepare for and teach workshop for high school students this weekend
• meet with some students I'm taking to a conference
• prepare for and meet with students I'm hoping to take to England this summer
• get in touch with my dissertation director
• check up on this article of mine that was supposed to come out in "Spring 2005" (I've not even seen proofs yet)
• find, submit and send in some insurance forms
• eat
• live
• breathe
• sleep?

Uncle Bud

Last week I wrote about the death of a woman my cousins and I know as "Shorty." It took me a full week to get around to calling my uncle with condolances, one day after her memorial service. The fact that there was a memorial service (instead of a funeral) is itself significant, since that side of my family and the (unfortunately) Southern Baptist church they attend is all about 2 or 3 days of open-casket "visitations" + funeral. Apparently Shorty didn't like the idea of people gawking at her and didn't see much point in spending a lot of money "just to be put into the ground," so she was cremated, and the single memorial service was it.

My uncle told me all this on the phone, and plenty more, too. He told me the kinds of things uncles just don't tell nieces about (at least in the world my parents seem to live in). Apparently, Shorty's husband (my uncle's father) has Parkinson's, which I never knew about (though he does seem to shake quite a bit). As a result of the medication he's taking, my uncle says, he's convinced he sees "little people" everywhere he goes. They're always watching him. They tell him to do things. When they're angry with him, they punish him. In order to function, my uncle says, he has to maintain very close contact with his environment. When he walks, he drags his feet, keeping them on the ground. He hesitates at doorways, as if he's not sure quite what to do there. He doesn't have any hobbies and never has, my uncle says, and the biggest problem he has is being able to keep his mind occupied. He can't complete thoughts. His vision is deteriorating. His grip on reality is very tenuous.

My uncle is now the chief executor of the family estate. He has power of attourney over his father and will look out for him for the rest of his life. He's feeling a lot of pressure here, as my aunt takes care of all the finances in their family. He wants to leave his dad in his own place for as long as possible, since he suspects the change in environment might make things harder for him. He's having to set aside what used to be a hiking obsession-- no time now for multi-day camping trips or long hikes through the Smokies or along the Appalachain trail. And while he used to think life wouldn't be worth living if he ever had to give up his time in the woods, he's changed. These days, he enjoys a good book.... have I read any good books lately?

The intimacy of this conversation is beautiful and rare. No one else in my family talks to me this way, at such an equal level. My relationship with my parents has always been the sort where parents don't confide in children and many things that just aren't discussed at all. I am a different person when I'm around them. While there have been moments I've tried to open up to them and communicate, they don't really know me for me. They don't seem to want to know.

Two summers ago, when I was home for a week or so, my uncle and I went hiking one weekday morning by ourselves. I think he'd even taken off work to do it. It was the first time I can remember ever being alone with my uncle or having a meaningful conversation with him. I was shocked at how much he seemed to want to know about me, surprised at the questions he'd ask me. They weren't the impersonal "how's school?" kind of questions I generally get from family members. They were smart and provocative questions, about why I do what I do, and what I find meaningful. We talked about nature, and politics, and families, and technology, and culture, and stories, and it was amazing. He treated me as an equal, not as a child, and not as a stranger. I'll never forget that.

My folks don't think so highly of Uncle Bud. Though he's an incredibly intelligent man, he never went to college and "settled" for a job as a mechanic. He's fiercely independent and doesn't follow all those unspoken rules. He wears camoflague pants to church. He goes on strange diets. He hiked then biked obsessively, sometimes on important holidays. He let my aunt take care of most of the raising and disciplining of the kids. I don't think they approve of him holding me upside down by the ankles when I was little, either. But I love all these qualities about him, and I especially love that he sincerely seems interested in knowing who I am as a person.

I'm probably the shyest person in my family, and it's not always easy for me to talk about myself or to hold a conversation with someone I don't know well, but I want to be open with him and build on this relationship. I don't know why he's taken such an interest in me, but it's taught me a lot about the kind of aunt/parent/adult role model I want to be for all the kids in my life.

saturday cleaning

My mom's a domestic goddess. In our house, everything was always clean, and everything had its place. My dad was in the military-- where order goes, they were a match made in heaven. When my brother and I would complain about having to remake our beds (a rushed job wasn't good enough for mom), he'd tell us stories about boot camp and ROTC and having to make beds you could bounce a quarter off of. I've never been able to get this to work-- but maybe it has something to do with how I'm throwing the quarter.

One of mom's traditions is a weekly cleaning day. In high school, Thursday was the special day. We'd come home from school and swim practices to dust rags and vacuum cleaners. The house was always so spotless, many times I wasn't even sure what I was cleaning. I couldn't see the dust I was supposed to be wiping off, but Mom could, so I wiped, wiped, wiped. My brother did the vacuuming on account of him being less likely to bang vaccuum into wall and leave marks. (I'm still a bit clumsy that way.)

As much as I loathed weekly cleaning days growing up, and the daily maintenence required to keep the folks happy (daily bed making and room tidying, not being allowed to leave my books and papers spread out over the floor), now that I'm on my own I really marvel at how well they were able to keep things together. I'm convinced that my house will never look as clean and sparkling as theirs does, no matter how hard I try.

Though at the time it could feel oppressive, there was and is still something very calming about walking into and moving and living inside of a clean house. There's a part of me that sighs with joy everytime I walk into their pristine house... and there's another part that feels a bit uncomfy after I've been there too long.

but to the point: Ever since we moved in together, it seems, P. and I have been saying "we really should set aside one day a week to clean the house." We say this everytime the house gets sooooo dirty/disorganized/oppressive that neither one of us can stand it and one or the other or both of us break down and spend hours grumpily cleaning as much as we can. Today felt different. We got up in the morning, did the laundry, P. cleaned the kitchen while I reorganized the disaster the bedroom had become and picked up in the living room, and unloaded the dishwasher, then we worked on the bathroom together. And the strangest thing happened: we had the nicest time doing it. We were nesting. And the feeling of having accomplished all of this lingers. I can breathe again.

I would say "mom would be proud,"and I guess that's true, but at the same time I'm feeling guilty about all the cleaning projects we didn't get to: both offices are a mess, the carpet could use a good cleaning, the kitchen floor could be mopped, the laundry and storage rooms tidied, and the shower could be scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed some more. Our landlord left it looking pretty icky when we moved in; I've tried cleaning it many times and still can't get all the mildew to go away. If any of you cleaning gurus happen to be reading this, I could use some suggestions about how to deal with this one...

We're hoping we can keep neat all the rooms we worked on today and get back to these other projects... maybe next Saturday.

tumors

In the past two weeks, three of my students have developed tumors. Tumors? 18-20 year olds? Does this seem bizarre to anyone else? I'm seriously starting to wonder if there might be some serious environmental problem going on here.

In my last semester teaching at Big State U., a smart student started missing numerous classes. I finally got in touch with him (by email I think) to ask what was going on... and it turned out he'd recently been diagnosed with lymphoma, and the chemotherapy was making him too nauseous to come to class. Lymphoma's some pretty serious stuff.... and yet he finished out the semester (showing up just occasionally) the best he could. I have no idea how or where or if he is now.

Tumors.

And I thought I'd been having a hard time.

midsemester blues

Thirty. That's the number of paper I have to grade so far, more or less. I'll get between 16 and 20 more this afternoon. I could be grading now. I should start, but somehow I just can't do it. I've been craving a nap since I got up this morning, even more so since I got done teaching my first class at 11. I have two more to get through today. My prep is finished, but I'm still sooo sleepy the last thing I can do is concentrate on grading. I should bring an alarm clock to work. And a mat. And a pillow. I could sleep right here if I weren't afraid I wouldn't wake up for class.

I don't know if it has something to do with the weather, or the recent death in my family, or my students, or what, but I've been so down these past few days. The smallest items on my to-do list feel overwhelming. I'm obsessively writing the same reminders in ink on my hands day after day. I see them several times, daily, but t the end of the day and after a number of handwashings they've started to fade away and I still haven't gotten them done. How hard can it possibly be to address an envelope and mail my completed and bound dissertation to my director? It's ridiculous. I'm in a rut.

I woke up this morning already stressed about my morning class and what to do in it. Days like this make me question whether I'm cut out for this kind of work. I'm sure (I hope!) that as I get some more experience under my belt, and especially as I can start re-using lesson plans from classes I've taught before, that anxiety will lessen. Right now, I'm almost constantly abuzz. I came home last Friday after classes were over and it was hours before I could calm down again. I am feeling stressed and fight-or-flight-y even when the stressful stimuli (teaching) have been removed.... and that's exhausting.

dear reader(s), please forgive the self-indulgent whininess of this post. I've really got to work on this.
Off to teach two more classes.

One more reason I heart P.

P. has been listening to books on tape on his daily commute to and from Big State U. an hour or so away. He'd heard Anna Karenina, Slaughterhouse Five, The Canturbury Tales, The Blind Assassin, A Tale of Two Cities, Ragtime, Dr. Norville and Mr. Strange (or is it Dr. Strange and Mr. N?), and Life of Pi so far. I'm jealous. Tonight he arrived home with tears in his eyes. I said, "What's wrong?" and it turns out it's this: Don Quixote died during the ride home.