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I felt decidedly sub-par yesterday, and so spent much of the day snuggled up on
the couch, hiding from the rigors of daily existence. I did put myself on a rigorous
television-watching schedule. I believe it rather addled me. I seem to remember
something about waiting for Janeane Garofalo to come on Conan, but I fell asleep
on the couch before that happened.
I made myself get up in the morning to go lift weights, because I hate missing weights days, and because after figuring out that I had woken up on the couch, not in my (much more comfortable) bed, I was up, anyway. And then, it was off to campus for the first time in months. I had to pick up some materials for the writers' workshop I'll be teaching starting next month, and my former boss and I wanted to have lunch and spend some time catching up. It is strange to return to a place where you used to spend a great deal of time and realize you've turned into a visitor. I knew, of course, that things were moving along there as they always do. I even guessed that most of the basics would be the same, but a few details would have changed. There would be at least one new dilemma someone had, quite inexplicably, decided to foist off on the Writing Center. Actually, it probably wouldn't be totally inexplicable; I often thought the school threw things at us just because our offices were located in a basement, and they were content to leave problems unsolved as long as they didn't have to walk past them every day. I knew at least one department was probably embroiled in some sort of scandal, and that at least one graduate student would have done something bizarre: perhaps move into the computer lab to save on rent, or follow Peter Drucker around with a crockpot full of food, or burn an unfinished dissertation on the lawn in front of the library and then join the army. Such things were indeed still happening, and I did get myself filled in on some of the details, and I did find them sad, or amusing, or sadly amusing. But while I listened, I realized that the disgust that led to my gradual disengagement with the school had softened, not because there's less fodder for it, but because I no longer truly feel like part of that community. The first- and second-year students buzz around nervously as they worry about proving themselves and about how they're ever going to write four eight-page papers and two twenty-page papers for Professor X's class when they are also taking two other classes, you know! Some will talk about how they just can't believe what Professor Y was arguing in class, and didn't everyone think they should really bring it up again after break, because how could such a thing go unchallenged? I hear this, and I have to pretend I'm coughing so the students can't see that I'm laughing, because their outrage seems so charming when you know Professor Y believes nothing of the sort and is clearly just trying to liven things up. It would be like me telling my students that I don't believe historical context is relevant to the analysis of art, because true art is timeless, and to contextualize is therefore to deface the well-wrought urn with critical gang tags. So, the students plug away, and some finish their coursework, and some burn out early. It's easy to see why they would. Those who make it past coursework find themselves cursing the sadists who would put 300 primary sources on a reading list and then say examinees should also have a thorough grasp of "the important secondary literature." What does that really mean? they cry in frustration. The only thing that saves some of them from despair is catching sight of a name like Norman Mailer or John Updike on the list, because then, they stage private protests by refusing to even consider reading past page eight of Advertisements for Myself, or by muttering that rabbit had better run, because if they catch him, they'll kick his ass. Yes, this is the stage at which hordes of formerly semi-balanced people start thinking a nineteenth century-style rest cure wouldn't be so bad if you thought of it as "siesta grande" and had plenty of microwave popcorn. There is anger, too. Anger when financial aid cuts your work study award in half, seemingly on a whim. Anger at the petty interpersonal wars that keep the registrar too busy to process your registration form on time. Again. Anger at the most overzealous of the students, who do things like join the Graduate Student Council and then send you emails that include lines about how you're a terrible person who is destroying the future of the university if you don't attend a "very important meeting." My dear arm twister, I thought the Graduate Student Council was a good thing when you awarded travel stipends to students. Then, you cut the amount of the awards in half, poured your energy into weekend socials, and got the administration to give your officers partial tuition remission to compensate you for your work. Tuition was $16,800 a year for students in full-time coursework when I started school here. Now, it's $23,000 a year. Do something about that, and I might decide you have the best interests of the descamisados in your hearts. Until then, you should probably forgive them for lacking school spirit, and for not taking time off one of their four part-time jobs to come eat nachos and make flyers with you. I got pissed off one too many times, so I decided to stop going back. I had everything I needed: an advisor who has always been supportive and communicative, committee members I both like and respect, and a library card. So I stopped going back, and the anger softened, except perhaps for the anger I feel at myself. I'm done with that place, profoundly done. I have to churn out another couple hundred pages to seal the deal, but you see, my ability to work has never been my problem. I wouldn't have gotten to this point if I couldn't work. My problem has been myself, and this problem has manifested itself in part as a tremendous preoccupation with not not working. Do you see the difference? Perhaps not. Well, then. Do you know when you break up with a lover, and you feel sick or sad or angry or ugly or tired or cosmically wronged? Maybe you've felt all of them at once, even. It gets easier, because it has to, but weeks or months can pass without crisis, and then—quite suddenly—you might find yourself emotionally hamstrung by a photo or an old letter. One day, you come across a set list from that time you went to see Yo La Tengo in Santa Monica on a weeknight, and Ira joked that they would see everyone in Arizona, where they were playing that weekend, and maybe you couldn't pay your library fines, but you found a way to get to Arizona. You look at the set list, and you smile, because it was unreal and lovely and impractical and better than you could have hoped, and holy shit, you are fine! You still might shake your head a bit or indulge some nostalgia, but something that used to have a hold on you doesn't squeeze like it once did. That's when you take a deep breath or two, just because you can. I went to my former boss's house to talk with her and play with her three dogs. Rosie barks and growls when people come into the house, but she remembers me, so she sat patiently as the puppies tried to climb to the top of my head, and she was rewarded with a thorough ear-scratching when they failed. I tossed the ball occasionally, and I listened to my friend tell me how she was. In the past couple of years, she has dealt with the death of her mother, and then of two of her dogs. She was in a major, spit-broken-glass-out-of-your-mouth, miracle-nobody-died, get-cut-out-of-the car accident last spring; not long afterwards, she was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. In the process of undergoing a round of tests that would ultimately lead to that diagnosis, her doctors discovered that she had an aneurysm and would probably require brain surgery. She is still consulting with specialists on this matter. "I'm writing a novel," this amazing woman told me today. "I started it this summer, and I'm about 120 pages into a draft. It's rough, but it feels good to be writing." "What's it about?" I wanted to know. "Academia," she responded. "Are you sure you have enough material to draw on?" I asked. We both
laughed—not so much at the joke, really—more at the shared understanding that
this afternoon, each of us was convinced that the other would be just fine.
She and I can both be persuasive when we put our minds to it.
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We had an end-of-semester luncheon for the Writing Center staff at C's house today. Earlier in the semester, I gave notice that this would be my last semester working there. I love the work, but I decided to spend the whole summer working full-time on my dissertation, and if we can swing it financially, I'd like to continue being a full-time degree finisher next fall. The fact that budgets are tight across campus—and that we had to dramatically reduce our hours over the last few months—helped cement my decision to move on. Still, I worked at the Writing Center for five years, and it felt quite strange to leave the luncheon knowing that I wouldn't be back. I couldn't help but wonder if I had made a huge mistake. There aren't many part-time student positions that offer the pay level and flexibility I had there, and I had to chase off the fear that I'd end up broke and stuck in an adjunct position at a community college, teaching comp classes with forty students each, and for pathetic wages. (Community college adjunct faculty, in case you didn't know, are terribly exploited. It's not unusual for colleges to pay instructors $1800 to teach a class for an entire semester, and that class is usually overloaded. That's $120 per week for prep time, grading time, teaching time, and office hours. If you spend more than about five minutes grading papers, the pay comes out to something around five dollars per hour. It's pathetic, really. I'd be better off answering phones again. Or lifeguarding again, for that matter. Adjunct faculty at four-year colleges are also terribly exploited, though I've never heard of a four-year college offering less than $2000 for a semester.) As I wondered whether or not I had done something incredibly stupid, it also occurred to me that I wouldn't see any of my coworkers again for quite some time, and I started to miss them before I even left. There are big things—some exciting, some frightening—happening in some of their lives right now, and I couldn't help but feel that I was no longer going to be a part of it all. Finally, I realized that I now have absolutely no practical obstacles standing between me and my dissertation. This is a good thing, of course, but it doesn't feel like one right now. Right now, it's terrifying: if I don't make progress, it will be entirely my fault. It's just me and this white whale of a project. I worry that the discipline I need to get this done just isn't in me, that I'm destined to be someone who gives up in despair and feels embittered every time I write a student loan check to pay retroactively for a Ph.D. I don't have. I'm intimidated by my own temperament and frightened by the fact that I'm totally out of excuses. I'm not out of cheesecake, though. Come on over. We'll have a slice—and a cup of coffee, too.
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One of the people who came to hear our panel presentation in Chicago had some interesting things to say to a couple of us after the regular question & answer session. "You hear people talking about writing and ritual," she said, "about how approaching the task of sitting down to work can be comprised of several distinct steps, done over and over again, in the same order, at the same time. And I think approaching writing as a kind of ritual really does help people to produce more, to develop that rhythm that keeps the fingers on the keyboard limber." She went on to say that she's had a terrible time discussing the concept of ritual with her students. She was from somewhere in the South—Tennessee, it might have been?—and her students, most of them from heavily Christian backgrounds, had a difficult time separating the notion of ritual from religious ritual. Frustrated and wanting to avoid the implication that her students should be blessing their computers or listening to hymns while they wrote, she decided to stop using the word, though she continued to teach the same principles. "What do you call it instead?" I asked. "I call it 'routine.' Or sometimes 'habit.' " Later, I wondered why both those options sounded so wholly unsatisfactory to me. I understood why this woman chose to stop using the word "ritual," given the student population she was working with. At the same time, I think the kind of solemnity the term implies is quite intentional: it imbues the secular act of writing with a sacred feel. To use a word like "ritual" is to say that the writing process deserves reverence and devotion. It adds a certain gravitas implied by neither "routine" nor "habit." And I wonder just what about that appeals to me. Perhaps it's the last thing I've held onto from my former religious beliefs—not the ideology, but the notion of ceremony. I believe in rites of passage. I believe that sometimes, it's important to light a candle and just focus emotionally, either on myself or on someone else. I believe that there is real value in gathering people around ourselves to celebrate important joys or terrible losses. That the feeling some of us get when we hike up a trail, hit a peak, and then catch a first glimpse of what lies below is evidence of something higher. I don't mean a deity; I don't mean anything specific. What I mean is that I see a number of good reasons to think of some things as bigger than we are, to cultivate that kind of profound respect. I think writing benefits from such a devotional approach. And I think this in part because I've realized lately how the writing process changed for me in the months when I wasn't doing any real academic writing. I was reading, I was making notes, but I wasn't really writing. The fact that I've had several deadlines to meet in the last month has forced me to start again. It's been miserable. The words come more slowly, the ideas seem more fuzzy, nothing seems as clear or as sharp. It's felt like wringing out a sponge without bothering to dampen it first, and I've hated everything I've come up with. Perhaps "hate" is the wrong word. I think it's more that I get exasperated with my own slowness, with my struggle to articulate ideas I know would have not seemed so difficult to express in past years, and then, I project that onto the work itself. In a sense, it doesn't matter what I have come up with. I dislike it because the process of creating it felt not unlike giving blood. And I suspect that for me, the only real way to get over that feeling is to get back to that space in which writing is paying homage to writing itself—to think of it as something I'm doing in part for myself and in part because it's not all about me. I sound like a traditionalist, perhaps. Rather conservative? And that's not at all what I mean to convey. I see other people searching for the right word, too. "Develop a writing addiction," says Joan Bolker, and I know what she means; she means something more urgent than habit but less loaded than ritual. Still, it surprises me sometimes to see the language of devotion and the language of addiction look so much alike—maybe because I don't like to think of it as being taken over, but rather taken up, if that makes sense. I left behind dogma, and I'm glad I did, but I still believe in certain forms of secular faith. There are, I think, many different ways to pray.
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You know, I decided quite some time ago to stay out of LiveJournal crapfests, because I really don't need extra crap in my life. However, when people hit hard at one of the few things I truly believe in, maintaining that policy is more difficult. I'm finding myself grossly offended by some of the people over at Maybe I should agree with those who are vehemently defending their "right" to display their students' intellectual property on the Internet without permission. And hey, why don't therapists and lawyers post notes and extended quotes from their meetings with their clients, because what it's all about is freedom of speech. I have a LiveJournal account, so I can post whatever the fuck I want, no matter whose privacy it violates. Anyone who tells me otherwise is a humorless asshole. In fact, I think instructors should regularly make fun of their students publicly, because if teachers think it's crap, then their job is to ridicule it to an audience of hundreds—maybe even thousands! They're not going to be able to help those students with their writing because, as we know, all students who turn in work we don't like are lazy, unmotivated, stupid, and totally incapable of improvement. Given the fact that there's no real teaching opportunity in such situations, let's destroy them. It's OK, because we won't say their names. There's no chance that one of the 450,000 people with LiveJournal accounts will be my one of my students. Even if people decide to insist that there's no ethical problem with posting student essays, you'd think they might have some practical concerns. Do these people really want potential employers to have access to posts that contradict any claim the job applicant might make about believing in a student-centered approach to pedagogy? As part of one of my jobs, I interview graduate students who want to work in our writing center. If I knew that one of the applicants had posted a student's essay on the Internet so that others could tear it apart, never in a million fucking years would I hire that applicant. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
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Lately, I've found myself increasingly occupied by thoughts of sanctuary: a physical
space where I could go to feel right, to feel surrounded by beauty and
calm, a place where it would be nearly impossible to feel anything other than
creative and inspired. This haven assumes many different forms in my imagination,
but lately, it is most often an isolated log cabin, rustic and comfortable. There
would be a sleeping loft where I would snuggle under an enormous down comforter,
and the walls would be hung with the kind of art that makes you want to tell stories.
There would be an old-fashioned writing desk in the same room as the fireplace,
which you would be looking straight at if sat on the large, remarkably soft sofa.
On a warm day, I could step outside, walk a few paces to the lake—of course there
is a lake—and swim with my dogs. I would then come back and let myself dry in
the sun while reading a book on the deck.
Sometimes, I scale down. Perhaps it would just be a room, but it would have to be the most perfect sort of room, a converted New England attic sort of room. Perhaps all I need is a clawfoot tub, I think in my soaky moments. And then, I scale back up. What's really in order for me is a lighthouse, where I'll write and watch ships and waves and the play of the sun on the water. Or a tower, imposing and austere. Montaigne had a tower, and in his tower was a library:
Montaigne had inscriptions carved into the the beams of his library's roof. There were nearly 50 of them, in Latin and in Greek, and they often focused on human weakness. I'm not nearly so particular. My inscriptions can be in any language, so long as I can find out what they mean, and only a few of them need focus on human weaknesses, for in my haven, I will remember that sixteenth-century philosophers really shouldn't have the last word on self esteem. But I'm not Montaigne. I'm not even vaguely Montaigne-y. In the "Which Dead French Guy Are You?" test that will undoubtedly circulate widely in these online parts sooner or later, I am quite certain that eight multiple-choice questions about my thoughts on humanism, the Reformation, and Marguerite de Navarre would not lead me to an animated GIF picturing our esteemed courtier. I might be able to hope for Voltaire. All of this, of course, has very little to do with the desire for an actual cabin or lighthouse or tower, though I certainly wouldn't turn these things down if they were offered to me. I do believe that there is a connection between the mind and one's physical environment; this connection is why I loved the graduate reading room at Suzzallo library, it's why I loved my dead grandmother's house in Marblehead—"Where'dja get tickets to that museum?", my brother's friend O'Leary once said of it upon leaving—and it's why I need my desk to be in perfect order before I can be expected to do any real writing. Yet that's not the point. The point is that I don't read anymore—not like I used to, anyway. "She eats books," people used to say of me when I was little. I remember reading a book about two children who ran away from home and lived in a museum for a while. They hid at night, and they lived on food they bought with coins they scooped out of the fountains while the security guards weren't looking. "That would be perfect," I thought, "if it were a library instead of a museum." On summer vacations, beginning when I was 11 or 12, I remember staying up until 4, 5, 6 in the morning to finish a book because I couldn't sleep without getting through the last couple of hundred pages. This all seemed to me a very good reason to become an English major, which I did. And when that went well, it made perfect sense that I would return to graduate school to be a semi-professional English major. That went well for many years, too. But something funny happened on my way to a doctoral degree, and I hit a wall. I internalized the "List Syndrome": that phenomenon whereby reading anything that isn't on the already-overwhelming list of books to read for qualifying examinations, conference papers, or the dissertation starts to seem transgressive. When you succumb to the Syndrome, you stop reading for pleasure. You might still get pleasure out of the texts on your lists, particularly if you have chosen a field that you love and have lists full of books you would like to get to sooner or later, anyway. The shift is important nonetheless: reading becomes a way to get work done, not a way to relax. And this becomes most obvious when, for whatever reason, you stop working. My own work habits have grown truly atrocious in the last year or so. I passed my qualifying exams and decided I deserved a break, and that became a longer break, and then, there was a series of legitimately stressful situations that also served as convenient excuses, and then... well, I can always come up with another "and then." Depression is a funny thing. It can make overcoming inertia seem utterly impossible. If you're like me, it can sap away not so much the pleasure of doing something you've always adored, but the anticipation of pleasure, which is almost as important. It can trick you into thinking you like staying up all night by yourself drinking gin & tonics more than you like staying up all night by yourself reading Salman Rushdie. This is what I was thinking about last night after closing a book I had just finished at 3 am, a book that wasn't on any sort of list and has absolutely nothing to do with my dissertation. I thought about the ways we withhold kindnesses to ourselves and the damage it can cause. I thought about how calm my night had been, and how quiet. And I thought about how the work will happen when I remember how much I enjoy it. I'm coming close to that point. But for just a little while longer, I need to spend time in my sanctuary, because
it's important that we take time to be kind to ourselves. And I love it here
in this tower that isn't a tower.
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I'm short on patience today. The semester is winding down, winter break officially begins on Friday, and people are walking around campus in with one of three expressions on their faces: 1) "My Other Job is at the Post Office" - These ones are dangerous. Some of them are normally pleasant enough; others are the people who regularly do things like miss appointments and then come into the office to rant at me about Daylight Savings Time. 2) "Goldie Hawn in 'Overboard'" - You remember the scene? Sure you do. Goldie is catatonic, and the kids start throwing grapes at her face. Mmm, grapes. 3) "I Can't Be Bothered to Care. I Finished Coursework in 1992 and May or May Not Ever Get Out of Here. Where Are the Forms to Extend My Time to Complete This Degree? I'd Like to Spend More Time in Purgatory, Please" - That's been pretty much the expression on my face, though it's not all that bad. Yet. I did run into my advisor again today, and she reminded me that I promised her a proposal by the beginning of next semester. Curses! I mean, yaay! What? This afternoon, I actually used the word "cockamamie" in the course of regular conversation. I was denouncing the school's new registration policy. Instead of mailing out registration packets and course lists—which was normal procedure for years—registering now requires that students follow a link, open a PDF document and print it, open another PDF document to look at the course list, write the appropriate numbers and names on the form, and then mail it to or drop it off in their departments. Predictably, this new procedure has resulted in a sharp decrease in the number of students who have actually registered on time. Out of approximately 2000 students, only 600 or so have actually gone along with this harebrained scheme, which means that 1400 students are about to be slapped with a $100 fine for registering late. Now that I think about it, perhaps it isn't cockamamie at all. Maybe it's a diabolically clever plan to squeeze an extra $140,000 out of a bunch of already cash-strapped grad students. Bust out the ramen, kids! It's dinner time.
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I went to see the oracle this weekend. I had heard that she lived in a cave
up in the mountains, and since I had nothing to do but work or get further in
touch with my ennui, I dug my hiking boots out of the closet and filled a Ziplock
bag with gorp.
The drive to the spot where I would begin my hike was uneventful, but for a close call with a deer and a fallen branch or two. After a few hours, I parked, strapped on my backpack, and set out. It was, by this time, about nine o'clock in the morning. The trek was more difficult than I had anticipated. The ascent was steep, and though the scenery was breathtaking—tall, towering trees, an occasional rabbit disappearing through the brush when it heard me coming—the ground grew rockier as I climbed higher. Off the faint and narrow trail, the drop-offs grew dizzying. After peeking over the edge and seeing the scattered skeletons of pilgrims who had come before me, I stopped looking down. I had been walking for hours, and I was feeling fatigued, and I had a blister on my pinky toe, and the sun was disappearing, and I should have packed more trail mix, and I wondered if there was a little mountain stream somewhere, anywhere, because my canteen was already half empty. No, not half full, you optimistic fuck. But then, I found myself on a landing. I saw an aperture, big enough to step through if I ducked my head a little. It could have been for bears, but I knew it wasn't. I stepped inside, made my way through an impossibly long, dark passage, wondering if I hadn't been mistaken after all, and then I arrived. The natural cave had been enlarged to create a room that was curiously well lit. The first thing I noticed—the first thing anyone would have noticed—was that there were stones everywhere. Round ones, jagged ones, smooth little skipping ones. Boulders, pebbles, fist-sized chunks. And then the glittery stones: diamonds and mosaics and jade inlays on the walls. But I also saw a figure, a person hunched at an enormous marble desk, head bent over a manuscript, hair cascading so thickly over the desktop that I wondered how she could see what she was writing. I stood there for a while, watching. I stood some more. Finally, I coughed conspicuously—not one of those "I'm-an-ignored-customer-at-a-New-York-deli" coughs, but a "perhaps-you-didn't-see-me-here" cough. "I'll be with you in a second," said the hair, and I jumped a little, because the voice was decidedly male. Then, there was a tilt. I saw a face emerge from behind the locks, and it was a face I knew. The recognition made me groan. "Christ," I muttered, not fully realizing I was speaking aloud. "I'm in Rockland with Allen Ginsberg." "Don't forget about me!" piped a voice from one of the darker recesses. I craned my neck to see who had spoken. "Hi, Carl," I said, staving off despair. "So, Mr. Ginsberg, you're in the prophesizing business now?" I asked, not knowing how else to begin. "Baby, you can call me Al," he returned, deadpan. "You're not serious?" "Of course not. And yes, I'm in the prophesizing business. It's been a writer's vocation for centuries, but few people realize it. And anyway, the agency was a little short-handed today." "Whitman was sick?" "Singing the body apoplectic," he admitted. Well, it could have been worse, I thought to myself. It could have been Camus: "Keep rolling the rock up the hill, and imagine yourself happy." Some good that advice would have done me. Or Plath; she would have made a miserable oracle, grumbling about daddy and asking what did I know about pilot lights. Or someone closer to Ginsberg, even. Like Burroughs. Oh god, I would have had to turn right around and leave. I imagined Burroughs in the cave, a bushel full of apples beside him... "Just stick one of these on your head, little lady, and hold right still—" "What can I do for you?" Ginsberg asked, interrupting my terrifying William Tell fantasy. "Well," I fumbled, not sure how much I trusted a prophet who had taken so many bennies, "I want to know if I have a soul." "That's easy," he replied, snapping his fingers to demonstrate his acuity. "Of course you do. It was nice meeting you. Have a good trip down the mountain." Disarmed but determined, I wasn't going to let him off the hook. "Are you sure, Mr. Ginsberg?" I asked. "Because, the thing is, I'm considering forging a career in either university administration or some sort of corporate hoo-dee-da because I don't know if I'm as well suited as I thought for a life of research, contemplation, and overloaded composition classes. I'm wondering if that means that I somehow killed my soul." He gazed at me for a while, and it seemed like he was thinking, but he gazed too long for that. When I saw his head droop down, hair curtain beginning to close over his eyes, I gave in to my frustration. "Hey!" I half-shouted. His head snapped up, the curtain re-opening. "I don't mean to be rude, but are you going to answer my question?" "How can I prophesize in your silly mood?" he queried, grinning mischievously. The man was an imp, I tell you. An imp. I sighed heavily. "All right, all right." He acquiesced, walking back over to the marble desk, sitting down and dipping a quill into an inkwell. He wrote for a little while, and then handed me a slip of paper. On the piece of paper, he had written:
"Mr. Ginsberg!" I exclaimed, reprovingly. "I know you made a few changes, but aren't you, well, plagiarizing yourself? And even if you weren't, what kind of answer is that, anyway? These are desperate times, and obscure metaphors have no place in a moment of crisis." "You know that's not the case," he said. "Otherwise, you wouldn't have come here. And you also know that one should never expect a straight answer from an oracle." True enough. It was morning. Ginsberg gave me more gorp and water, I waved goodbye to him and to Carl, and I set down the mountain, musing about sea journeys, thinking about what the cottage would be like, and no longer seeing the skeletons of pilgrims littering the slopes below me.
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Inspired by Kevin, I
dug out some of my very first report cards. For the most part, they are unremarkable.
The analyses of my academic progress are fairly predictable, except I didn't realize
that I consistently did better in math than in social studies. But then, there
are the categories, variously named—some call it "citizenship," some call it
"work habits"—and there's a disturbing trend.
Kindergarten, School #1 Comments: "Shasta demands lots of attention. She has the ability to do nice work but will not do her best unless we demand it. Hurries." Kindergarten, School #2 It would seem that my "ball handling skills" also needed work. First Grade: You get the idea. There would appear to be a long history behind my current state of dissertation despair. But I'll finish the damn thing. You just watch me, Mrs. Sonnamaker from Robert E. Lee Elementary School. You made me sit in a room by myself and alphabetize for hours because I had read all the books in your reading groups. Your pedagogical kung-fu was weak, but I shall overcome your curse. And I'll do it breathily.
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I don't always feel much like posting. Sometimes it's easier just to read for a while, and maybe to chime in with a comment here and there. It's sort of like when I get on the freeway on a route I've driven dozens of times before; I know it well enough to just get myself into the correct lanes, and I just drive without actually thinking about it. An hour can go by, and I realize that I've made it almost all the way home without really knowing what I did with such a big chunk of my time other than go. It's nice at times, really. Almost meditative. But still, I always feel slightly uncomfortable when I come out of it. And I kind of think that I might keep a journal because of a similar kind of discomfort: I sometimes feel like I need to force myself to pay closer attention and keep myself from slipping into a type of holistic autopilot. I think that's part of it, at least. Anyway, I've spending tons of time thinking about house stuff and flowers and furniture and whether or not we want to pair the blinds with sheers, and while it certainly wouldn't hurt to cultivate a greener thumb and a slightly more consistent approach to domestic upkeep, I really need to start being a student again. At one point, I had five different jobs at the same time, and working them took up most of my days (and evenings as well). I had a very easy, legitimate excuse for my slow progress—there just wasn't enough time. The move provided a legitimate excuse for a while, too. Still, I'm quickly running out of fingers to point at things that are keeping me from my dissertation. I just need to get my ass in gear, pound out a proposal, and get some work done. I cut down on my job hours dramatically, and there's plenty of time now. But that's part of what's frightening about the whole process. When you're out of excuses, you have to confront some things about yourself that might be more basic problems. Discipline, motivation, a loss of the conviction that "I'm going to be a professor no matter what, even if I have to move to rural Alabama because that's where I get a job, if I'm lucky enough to get a job at all." The realization that this project is just big and difficult and that the longer I spend away from it, the more rusty my memory of what I've already done gets. (If you're me, this only takes a few months to start in.) The knowledge that if I'm going to finish, I'm going to have to get to work not only on the project, but on some basic behaviors that need to be modified if I'm going to get the work done. I love being in a new home, working on how it looks and how it feels. But I haven't spent every year since 1994 in grad school so I could be better at interior decorating; I came to do this thing, even if I'm no longer exactly sure where I want it to take me. Somewhere in this process, I'm bound to remember that I actually love the work, too. Some of the professors I know have managed to stay in a kind of honeymoon phase with their scholarly activities for decades. They speak about them fondly (or wistfully when their studies are delayed by administrative duties or overloaded classes). They miss them as they would miss a loved one during an absence, and their eyes gleam when they talk about an article or book idea they're working on. I don't think I have it in me to stay in that kind of honeymoon phase my entire life. Indeed, I think it's already over, unless these things are renewable. I know I can still gleam, though—even if I occasionally have to sit in front of an empty Word document for three days in order to get there. And it's time for me to start working myself back to that place in my head where it happens.
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Packing my books is always an emotional experience for me. For one thing, it always brings to light exactly how anal I can be ("Good god! I can't possibly mix the cookbooks with the British literature." "It's going to take forever to re-alphabetize all this." "Should I cushion the Compact OED with bubble wrap?" That sort of thing.) Then there are the legitimate, practical concerns. Like the fact that I'm positive someone will finally decide to recall one of the books I've been renewing from the library every semester for the last several years. There's something else, though. The feeling I get when I put nicely-labeled lids on box after box is not unlike the feeling I get when I run out of cigarettes and know I won't be able to get to the store for a while. A strong attachment to the access, I suppose. What if Right Now is the time I decide that I will finally get to Sentimental Education? Isn't it possible that I will find it Absolutely Necessary to look up something out of Petrarch? Packing, I think, can be an exercise in loosening the attachment temporarily, but it also makes obvious the level of intimacy with which I regard the volumes on my shelves. Even the ones I haven't yet read. Along with these thoughts, there is a sense of anticipation. As I packed Walter Benjamin's Illuminations, I already found myself thinking how delightful it will be to reread his exquisite essay "Unpacking My Library," now a habitual post-move indulgence. And there is excitement about taking a new space and making it ours. But for now, I'm out of boxes, so a few things remain easily within my reach.
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I've decided that I need to surround myself with more beautiful things. I need a place to read and write that feels more cozy—to arrange my physical environment in a way that reflects what I'm trying to do intellectually. When I think of peaceful and inspiring places to work, I often imagine my grandmother's attic in Marblehead. She had a wonderful old house with paintings and books absolutely everywhere. She and my grandfather (who died before I was old enough to know him) both painted, and they had some individual talents as well. My grandfather, for example, made beautiful duck carvings, and Bama was a writer who actually managed to support herself for a while by selling poems to magazines. The attic, which had been converted into a bedroom, was constructed with a beautiful wood and then filled with the products of my grandparents' creativity. Books spilled out of all the shelves. There was a large window at one end of the room, but I can't seem to remember what exactly I could see when I looked out of it—the backyard, I know, but there was more—possibly just the houses in the neighborhood, though I associate the room with a view of the sea. That might just be because my grandfather did several paintings of boats, many of which hung there. I visited Bama one summer and made plans to spend the next summer living with her and studying in her attic. She was proper and rather snobbish, with a dry but appealing sense of humor and a fondness for cognac. We got along well. But soon after I returned from my visit, I got a call saying she was sick, and she died about six months later. She was 80. I think I need to bring a little of her attic into my study, somehow. She left me some beautiful books (including a few signed first editions) and some paintings that I can have my aunt send to me. Perhaps I'll send away for them and begin placing them strategically around the room. I would try plants, but I've managed to kill every plant I ever owned, and I find it a little depressing. I'm a much better pet-mama than plant-mama.
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As an undergraduate, I had a Chaucer professor who told wonderful stories about falling in love. He had a wry sense of humor and a talent for describing his euphoria, his heartache, his amorous adventures. He got particularly animated when we talked about Troilus and Criseyde, and the end of every class had a "to be continued" feel to it. I think he knew how Troilus felt. He talked about himself much more than he talked about Chaucer, though. How to convey a deep connection to and excitement about a text without giving the personal a little too much rein? It is rather hard, I think. There was a self-indulgent quality to his teaching, and while I did not mind at the time, I have no desire to emulate it. Yet I do want to convey the kind of energy he projected. After all, I do love Chaucer. My professor had at least a little to do with that.
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This is a draft in progress, and I'm very interested in hearing any reactions or possible additions to the list. Point things out to me, challenge me, disagree with me... OK? It's a list of assumptions I have encountered about art—some of them have been my own assumptions at various times in my life, but most of them have been attitudes I've encountered while teaching or while following debates on the web. Art should be beautiful and enjoyable. There are any number of problems with this assumption. Many people are attracted to art they find beautiful, but there is absolutely no getting around the subjectivity of personal taste. Representations of on "ugliness"—again a subjective term—can be every bit as thought-provoking as those on "beauty," as can meditations on the quotidian. Art should have political or cultural significance. This one really seems to divide people. At one end of the spectrum are those who argue that art should avoid didacticism, that it should be considered apart from the political sphere. (Who was it who refused to include Diego Rivera in an art book because they considered him a "propagandist"?) At the other end of the spectrum are those who believe that art is inextricably linked to the cultural and political context out of which it was produced. In twentieth-century literary studies, this divide has been most obvious in the supplantation of the New Criticism by the New Historicism and in the continuing debates over methodology and theory. I have more to say on this if anyone is interested. Then there is the problem of determining what is politically or culturally "significant," which always seems to come down to a perceived conflict between "high art" and popular culture. Is art that which can be apprehended by a small group of people highly trained in the medium? Of course not, I say. But we run into all sorts of conflicts when we apply the term "art" to popular culture. The current debates over webcams are a good example. A great number people repeatedly pronounce webcams (or Mapplethorpe photos, or Karen Finley's performance pieces, or whatever) as Not Art. In that sense, their reactions to art are like the well-known conservative definition of pornography: I can't tell you exactly what it is, but I'll know it when I see it. This position doesn't allow for diversity in forms of expression, it doesn't allow for the fact that forms of expression—and reactions to them—are subjective, and, most disturbingly, it ultimately amounts to a kind of territorial pissing war. I know what art is, and that's Not It! (Can't you see how smart and practical I am?) What I find bemusing is that the naysayers seem to want to protect territory that isn't theirs to begin with. Since they can look at a webcam and get something, they assume they have gotten all there is to "get"—and why bother trying to understand someone else's project, the motivations behind it, and the training that went into it when you already know all there is to know about it? Pfft. Art should have some sort of higher meaning. This has perhaps been the most difficult issue I have dealt with in my teaching. A student of mine once complained in a course evaluation that I never discussed texts with an eye to helping students "draw universal conclusions" from the material studied. Well, that's just not what I'm about as an instructor. Why even hold class discussion if I have a predetermined idea of what the text means and I consider it my job to impart that knowledge? If that were the case, wouldn't I just lecture and dispense with the pretext of conversation? I do think I can provide help where it is needed—I feel good about helping provide students with more interpretive tools. However, the ultimate responsibility for interpretation rests with them. If they want to take a "higher meaning" away from it, so be it—but I tend to mistrust universals and get off on plurality and ambiguity. Some students appreciate the fact that I am "allowing" them to express their own opinions, and others resent the fact that I won't give them all the answers. Some abuse their responsibility by using "freedom of interpretation" to mean "freedom to write it off." I had some interesting reactions from students when we were discussing Brazil. While most students found it interesting, several seemed unable to say anything more interesting that "that sucked." Now, while I tend to like the works I put on my syllabi, I really don't give a shit whether or not my students come away from my class liking Terry Gilliam's work. However, I do give a shit about how they decide whether or not to like it. I don't mind "that sucked" as a starting point, but I refuse to give students permission to monopolize class time with kneejerk reactions and poorly thought-out pronouncements on the quality of a work they haven't attempted to engage critically. I don't like to see it from random people on the Internet, either. I suppose that means that ultimately, I value the act of interpretation over the ultimate interpretations themselves. I'll have to think about that more, though. Art should be difficult to understand, but I should get it. This is, of course, a catch-22: interpretation should require intelligence, but not more than I have. God forbid anyone should know more than I do about something and express it in a complex way. Art is there to make me feel smarter. Hmm... sarcasm creeping into tone, here. Is it obvious that I have very little tolerance for this kind of attitude? I suppose what I believe is that if you feel you are intelligent and you want to understand something, then you should be willing to do some work.
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I read Joan Bolker's Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day today... I think much of her advice will prove helpful. It's so easy to get lost in such a huge task. I finally cut down on my teaching this semester so that I could get more of my own work done. After a while, I got some perspective on the fact that I was losing entire semesters at a time to work—and at part-time jobs, no less. Last fall, I ended up working over 50 hours a week and driving another 10 the entire semester. I finally just decided that if I was going to work full-time, I might as well do it for full-time pay instead of the pathetic income part-timers eke out (at least I got a big Earned Income Credit on my taxes each year there for a while). Instead, I've decided to keep work in the 15-20 hours per week range and to be an actual dissertator. There's another dilemma, though, in the realization that I am running out of excuses to avoid delving into the project. I at once look forward to it and fear it. The best thing about Bolker's book was her recommendation that dissertation-writers commit to writing every day, even if it's only for a short period of time. I know so many people who completely lose touch with their projects somewhere along the way... 3 years later, they're looking back at a bunch of old notes and realizing they don't remember much about their project. I refuse to lose my connection with my project, both because I actually want to know more about it and because I do actually want to get a real job one of these days. Actually, I don't really want a job. I want to sit around, play with my dogs, hang out with Jeff, and read books all day. Too bad I have student loans to pay back.
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