I realize it's something of an imposition to dramatically start a new blog and then fall silent once everyone is here. However, the last week or so has been absolutely wretched, in ways that didn't lend themselves to even decent ranting.
I am, however, feeling slightly less wretched today, so perhaps I'll get around to throwing myself a blogwarming party this weekend that I will be spending with Tennyson.
2.29.2008
2.23.2008
They don't call me the other woman for nothing
I've gotten two incredibly obnoxious emails in the past 15 hours. Neither one, at least is from the ex, but good lord.
Seriously, though. When did I start becoming most attractive to married guys over 45? Really. This is not a sustainable pattern.
I may just have to stay off email for a few hours to think about Wordsworth and his illegitimate French daughter.
Seriously, though. When did I start becoming most attractive to married guys over 45? Really. This is not a sustainable pattern.
I may just have to stay off email for a few hours to think about Wordsworth and his illegitimate French daughter.
2.22.2008
Revisionist Friday
Today's erratum:
When I said, "I'd love to hear about your crisis, but I'm going to NYU," know that I meant to say, "I'd love to hear about your crisis, but I'm going to NYU and I don't really care that much anyway."
When I said, "I'd love to hear about your crisis, but I'm going to NYU," know that I meant to say, "I'd love to hear about your crisis, but I'm going to NYU and I don't really care that much anyway."
2.19.2008
Non-intellectual to-do list, inspired by my desire to never again be in the financial position in which Teaching College has put me
* Update academic CV to reflect recent events (Wilde lecture, invitation to contribute to an online jounrnal, expected date of M. Phil, pending my passing my orals)
* Contact guy at Not My School's writing program with new CV and gentle prodding about getting on their schedule
* Update non-academic resume (which I probably haven't done since 2004)
* Send non-academic resume to my friend D's husband and M's recruiter
* Hope that my own institution feels like reimbursing my MLA (!!!!, to use the technique of my students) expenses this week so I can at least start looking for flights to Toronto
* Print tax forms and do taxes. At least I made such little money last year that I should get at least a little bit of money back.
This is possibly my least favorite position to be in. I have tried to structure my life so that, even if I didn't have a lot of money, I at least didn't have to worry about it. That kind of got shot to hell last year with the breakup and moves, lost security deposits, and the like. I paid off my entire part of the rent I shared with the ex in our old place--it would be nice to think that he would follow through on a promise to pay some of that back, but I'm not holding my breath. And now I see that, no matter how much I love my students, I would be better off not teaching this semester, given all the stress it's caused, stress that takes away from the real business of reading. And it makes everything feel worse because it's just one more place where, no matter how much I try, I fail to even achieve a modicum of personal success.
Perversely, I'm sure this mood will translate into an excellent teaching day.
* Contact guy at Not My School's writing program with new CV and gentle prodding about getting on their schedule
* Update non-academic resume (which I probably haven't done since 2004)
* Send non-academic resume to my friend D's husband and M's recruiter
* Hope that my own institution feels like reimbursing my MLA (!!!!, to use the technique of my students) expenses this week so I can at least start looking for flights to Toronto
* Print tax forms and do taxes. At least I made such little money last year that I should get at least a little bit of money back.
This is possibly my least favorite position to be in. I have tried to structure my life so that, even if I didn't have a lot of money, I at least didn't have to worry about it. That kind of got shot to hell last year with the breakup and moves, lost security deposits, and the like. I paid off my entire part of the rent I shared with the ex in our old place--it would be nice to think that he would follow through on a promise to pay some of that back, but I'm not holding my breath. And now I see that, no matter how much I love my students, I would be better off not teaching this semester, given all the stress it's caused, stress that takes away from the real business of reading. And it makes everything feel worse because it's just one more place where, no matter how much I try, I fail to even achieve a modicum of personal success.
Perversely, I'm sure this mood will translate into an excellent teaching day.
2.18.2008
New mantra
I know that I'm living out a certain script right now and that my ability to change the plot entirely simply may not be in my control right now. But I'm going to try, to the best of my admittedly depleted strength, to fight it where I can. To follow the advice of the Lawyer and get rid of the timesucking people in my life--and, more so, to be honest with myself about who those people are. Starting with people like K.
In that spirit, I quote Bob Dylan: "The things you have the hardest time parting with are the things you need the least." I have taped this over my desk.
More on this later; I didn't sleep well after last night's incidents and could use a nap before dinner and the evening's work.
I was getting back into the Tennyson groove today and came across twenty-two pages of notes that I prepared when I was working on the abstract for this paper. To give you an index of how traumatic October and November were: I have absolutely no recollection of writing them out. None.
In that spirit, I quote Bob Dylan: "The things you have the hardest time parting with are the things you need the least." I have taped this over my desk.
More on this later; I didn't sleep well after last night's incidents and could use a nap before dinner and the evening's work.
I was getting back into the Tennyson groove today and came across twenty-two pages of notes that I prepared when I was working on the abstract for this paper. To give you an index of how traumatic October and November were: I have absolutely no recollection of writing them out. None.
Well, that's going to keep me up for awhile.
Someone just rang the buzzer for my apartment. It's 1:20 in the morning and I just about jumped out of my skin. I can't imagine anyone really needing to see me in my own home, unannounced, at 1:20 in the morning, so I'm staying put. It could just be a neighbor seeing the light and needing to get in, but I kind of don't even want to take that chance (you have to go downstairs to let someone in, and I only really know the names of the downstairs neighbors--who also have my phone number). I'll feel a bit bad if it does turn out to be someone living in the building, but really? I'm the single chick living alone and it's 1:20 in the morning.
I'm still shaking a bit, though.
Seriously, people. Dropping by is fine. But freaking call first.
I'm still shaking a bit, though.
Seriously, people. Dropping by is fine. But freaking call first.
2.17.2008
Sunday night confessional
(I can do this now that my ex isn't tracking my every textual move, you know.)
* I think Cashmere Mafia is a great show.
* I cried on the train home from the library, and now I know why I felt so awful last week and it makes me angry. But I've decided it no longer matters why I'm mad.
* It's hard to think about the sublime when all I feel is dejection. I hope that will change, or I'll at least forget about it.
* I've now gone longer without having sex than I have at any point since before I met my ex. I realize this sounds kind of obnoxious. I think what bothers me the most is the fear that the longer I go without having sex, the more meaningful it will be when I do have it again, or I will have lost my nerve. I think, obviously, we would all like to find ourselves having not-entirely-meaningless sex (okay, maybe not all of us), but going into it expecting meaning seems to me like courting disaster. I think my happiness depends a great deal on stringing out the casual-ness as long as possible: once things start to have meaning, once I tell you I like you, then it's all over. I'm beginning to think that what changes is less the other person's behavior, but more its weight--that is, what would just be a forgivable, dismissable, par-for-the-course-what-did-you-expect incident when you haven't given anything to the other person somehow becomes dealbreakingly inhuman after you admit to even liking them. I'm merely trying to identify the part over which I have some modicum of control.
* The obnoxious reversal on the foregoing is that I'm far too fragile and emotionally run down for one-night stands anyway. So I'm kind of stuck and I hate it. That's not why I cried tonight, but if anyone asks, it is.
* I think Cashmere Mafia is a great show.
* I cried on the train home from the library, and now I know why I felt so awful last week and it makes me angry. But I've decided it no longer matters why I'm mad.
* It's hard to think about the sublime when all I feel is dejection. I hope that will change, or I'll at least forget about it.
* I've now gone longer without having sex than I have at any point since before I met my ex. I realize this sounds kind of obnoxious. I think what bothers me the most is the fear that the longer I go without having sex, the more meaningful it will be when I do have it again, or I will have lost my nerve. I think, obviously, we would all like to find ourselves having not-entirely-meaningless sex (okay, maybe not all of us), but going into it expecting meaning seems to me like courting disaster. I think my happiness depends a great deal on stringing out the casual-ness as long as possible: once things start to have meaning, once I tell you I like you, then it's all over. I'm beginning to think that what changes is less the other person's behavior, but more its weight--that is, what would just be a forgivable, dismissable, par-for-the-course-what-did-you-expect incident when you haven't given anything to the other person somehow becomes dealbreakingly inhuman after you admit to even liking them. I'm merely trying to identify the part over which I have some modicum of control.
* The obnoxious reversal on the foregoing is that I'm far too fragile and emotionally run down for one-night stands anyway. So I'm kind of stuck and I hate it. That's not why I cried tonight, but if anyone asks, it is.
!!!!
It's possible that in every class, there emerges a certain widespread issue, usually involving punctuation, that is unique to that particular section and must be dealt with accordingly. The first class I ever taught used a terrifying number of semicolons; it's possible that I bear some of the blame for that, having mentioned early on that semicolons used properly were kind of hot. This past fall, it would have been the comma splice: a problem that crops up among many students, but one that seemed particularly prevalent in this class of fast talkers who, for the most part, were extremely invested in their own cleverness.
Having spent more time than I would have liked over the past twenty-four hours reading my students' first paper drafts (yes, I have the timer, but I'm never fast on the first round and I like these kids more), I can safely say that Spring 2008 is the Semester of the Exclamation Point.
Seriously, I have never *seen* so many of the things outside of MySpace. And I clearly need to make a shortcut for the comment that says, "Enthusiasm is great; 900 exclamation marks are not." Part of me wonders if this is a function of having a greater-than usual contingent of students who learned English in Europe and were also trained in German and other languages where the exclamation point is more acceptable. Others, I can only guess, are just really, really, really that excited. There's a certain gendering to this phenomenon, but the dudes are not immune either. So we may have to talk about this on Tuesday. At least I bribed them with cookies during Thursday's grammar lecture.
(Not that I should be thinking about this at all, since I'll be spending Tuesday morning trying to rectify the fact that Teaching College didn't bother to pay me last week. I'm sure it's connected to the fiasco that was getting this class in the first place. Needless to say, I am displeased, but these kids are so great that I can't help but care about them. Grr, though.)
Having spent more time than I would have liked over the past twenty-four hours reading my students' first paper drafts (yes, I have the timer, but I'm never fast on the first round and I like these kids more), I can safely say that Spring 2008 is the Semester of the Exclamation Point.
Seriously, I have never *seen* so many of the things outside of MySpace. And I clearly need to make a shortcut for the comment that says, "Enthusiasm is great; 900 exclamation marks are not." Part of me wonders if this is a function of having a greater-than usual contingent of students who learned English in Europe and were also trained in German and other languages where the exclamation point is more acceptable. Others, I can only guess, are just really, really, really that excited. There's a certain gendering to this phenomenon, but the dudes are not immune either. So we may have to talk about this on Tuesday. At least I bribed them with cookies during Thursday's grammar lecture.
(Not that I should be thinking about this at all, since I'll be spending Tuesday morning trying to rectify the fact that Teaching College didn't bother to pay me last week. I'm sure it's connected to the fiasco that was getting this class in the first place. Needless to say, I am displeased, but these kids are so great that I can't help but care about them. Grr, though.)
2.14.2008
Mood swings, anyone?
So after I had that little talk with my inner Victorian, things started to look up--or at least I started working and not ruminating (except for some dead patches on the train--I think I just have to face up to the fact that The Life of Charlotte Bronte is simply unsuitable for the subway) and I feel okay. Sure, I'm still working more slowly than I'd like, and I still haven't gotten my paycheck from Teaching College, which no doubt presages a morning of bitching on Tuesday because--seriously, this is what I was worried about the whole damn time, but I'm cool with it. And, for the record, I was totally cool with it before I started drinking wine.
I think a lot of this has to do with allowing myself to work at home. Generally, I do get more done here. There are days when I'd like to stop by West Village Coffeeshop or The Greatest Cafe In Brooklyn, but I'm daunted by the travel time and the uncertainty (more with WVCS than The Greatest Cafe In Brooklyn) and the knowledge that I will have to again travel to go somewhere else. And I'm always looking for ways to decrease the time I spend in transit. The flip side, of course, is that I start to miss the people I see at said coffeeshops and I begin to worry that my world is shrinking to a lopsided triangle that takes me from home to school to Teaching College and home again. But if I try to break out of that and it doesn't work, then I get all stressy. And I hate going out of my way to WVCS only to find it packed with people. On the third hand, every mode of working for me exhausts itself every now and then. Sometimes I cannot work at home under any circumstances. Right now I can't imagine getting certain things done elsewhere. I have a very fickle relationship with working in the school library--at the moment, this is tied more tightly to K than I would like it to be. WVCS I got annoyed with on Monday. I think I'm going to try to go back to Greatest Cafe next Monday--I haven't been there since the party the owner threw last month. When I lived across the street, I was there almost every day, and I think not being there has contributed most of all to the sense that my world is shrinking. That's the one loss I really feel in this neighborhood--to get to Greatest Cafe and back now involves a Byzantine combination of buses or a really long walk up Bedford Avenue. (Okay, about a half hour. But with my supersize Tennyson and laptop it starts to add up.)
On a totally different note (hey, I told you I'm mood swinging): do you ever have days when strangers just want to talk to you? (And no, not hot and/or potentially datable strangers; I will be making no friends on the Q train as long as I am riding it after the gym.) This was one of those days for me, at least in those times when I wasn't home. I had a student drop by my office hours just to kind of chat about Brooklyn (fine except I had to make roughly 9,000 handouts for class), and two other adjuncts wanted to have really long conversations with me at the copier and, less welcome-ly, in my cubicle. (I sit next to the printer shared by 50 people. Everyone always asks if I mind it. What I never sa is that it's the small talk that drives me nuts.) The second woman is also a bit troll-like, though saying that makes me feel guilty. Finally, on my way home I was stopped by a couple looking at the neighborhood, which under normal circumstances I would be able to talk up, but at that moment I was trying to get some souvlaki home. Strange things.
I'm not sure my grammar lesson was coherent. It didn't help that it took roughly seven years to get the video I wanted to show loaded. I sometimes miss teaching in the "Smart Classrooms"--but I don't miss teaching early enough to get them.
I love my students more than I have loved any group of students, which means I'm giving them a lot of work. But there may really only be 15 of them, which is a bit of a dream.
I am going out with people not from my own school tomorrow.
I am seeing Macbeth at BAM on Saturday.
Right now I feel okay.
I think a lot of this has to do with allowing myself to work at home. Generally, I do get more done here. There are days when I'd like to stop by West Village Coffeeshop or The Greatest Cafe In Brooklyn, but I'm daunted by the travel time and the uncertainty (more with WVCS than The Greatest Cafe In Brooklyn) and the knowledge that I will have to again travel to go somewhere else. And I'm always looking for ways to decrease the time I spend in transit. The flip side, of course, is that I start to miss the people I see at said coffeeshops and I begin to worry that my world is shrinking to a lopsided triangle that takes me from home to school to Teaching College and home again. But if I try to break out of that and it doesn't work, then I get all stressy. And I hate going out of my way to WVCS only to find it packed with people. On the third hand, every mode of working for me exhausts itself every now and then. Sometimes I cannot work at home under any circumstances. Right now I can't imagine getting certain things done elsewhere. I have a very fickle relationship with working in the school library--at the moment, this is tied more tightly to K than I would like it to be. WVCS I got annoyed with on Monday. I think I'm going to try to go back to Greatest Cafe next Monday--I haven't been there since the party the owner threw last month. When I lived across the street, I was there almost every day, and I think not being there has contributed most of all to the sense that my world is shrinking. That's the one loss I really feel in this neighborhood--to get to Greatest Cafe and back now involves a Byzantine combination of buses or a really long walk up Bedford Avenue. (Okay, about a half hour. But with my supersize Tennyson and laptop it starts to add up.)
On a totally different note (hey, I told you I'm mood swinging): do you ever have days when strangers just want to talk to you? (And no, not hot and/or potentially datable strangers; I will be making no friends on the Q train as long as I am riding it after the gym.) This was one of those days for me, at least in those times when I wasn't home. I had a student drop by my office hours just to kind of chat about Brooklyn (fine except I had to make roughly 9,000 handouts for class), and two other adjuncts wanted to have really long conversations with me at the copier and, less welcome-ly, in my cubicle. (I sit next to the printer shared by 50 people. Everyone always asks if I mind it. What I never sa is that it's the small talk that drives me nuts.) The second woman is also a bit troll-like, though saying that makes me feel guilty. Finally, on my way home I was stopped by a couple looking at the neighborhood, which under normal circumstances I would be able to talk up, but at that moment I was trying to get some souvlaki home. Strange things.
I'm not sure my grammar lesson was coherent. It didn't help that it took roughly seven years to get the video I wanted to show loaded. I sometimes miss teaching in the "Smart Classrooms"--but I don't miss teaching early enough to get them.
I love my students more than I have loved any group of students, which means I'm giving them a lot of work. But there may really only be 15 of them, which is a bit of a dream.
I am going out with people not from my own school tomorrow.
I am seeing Macbeth at BAM on Saturday.
Right now I feel okay.
Reversal
...and then all of the sudden my inner Victorian is all like, "dude, you have a shitload of stuff to do in the next couple of days, stop worrying about boys who abandoned you, you do not have time for this, etc." The inner Victorian is right. And sometimes it's that easy to snap out of it.
I have been getting better about going to the gym at Teaching College when I get too frustrated in the school library. I fantasize about having one campus where the library, my department, my teaching cubicle, and the gym are all kinda in the same place.
The initial panic was brought on by realizing that I'm already a bit behind on prep and that substantial portions of the next two weekends are going to be taken up with draft reading and grading. If I do 10 per day on Saturday / Sunday, that's three hours a day (I use a timer), which is doable, but I'd rather have one day to read drafts than five.
The sound of the radiator is bound to drive me crazy.
Also: Happy fucking Valentine's day. Well, maybe "fucking" is the wrong adjective here.
I have been getting better about going to the gym at Teaching College when I get too frustrated in the school library. I fantasize about having one campus where the library, my department, my teaching cubicle, and the gym are all kinda in the same place.
The initial panic was brought on by realizing that I'm already a bit behind on prep and that substantial portions of the next two weekends are going to be taken up with draft reading and grading. If I do 10 per day on Saturday / Sunday, that's three hours a day (I use a timer), which is doable, but I'd rather have one day to read drafts than five.
The sound of the radiator is bound to drive me crazy.
Also: Happy fucking Valentine's day. Well, maybe "fucking" is the wrong adjective here.
2.13.2008
Running to stand still
This week has been mostly an experience of mounting frustration and exhaustion, punctuated by the occasional moment of being-social but also by too many late-night meals and possibly too much wine. I can't quite identify the source of this being-out-of-sorts. I mean, yes, my mind has been running over the same track regardless of what I try to think about--I set out to read Wordsworth or bring The Life of Charlotte Bronte on the train, and what I do instead is try to turn my experiences with The Lawyer and K into Moth-style stories that I will never actually tell.
Lea, whom I have known since my back-in-the-day Moth internship, got the 30-second version of 2007 last night and commented that I could have done the entire "Love Hurts" story slam on my own, but she also said something more important, which is that I must have a lot to process and this, implicitly, is why I wouldn't have put my name in the hat even if I had shown up more than three minutes before they got started. None of my stories have particularly good endings right now--and this is one of the reasons why I'm committed to blogging as a form of digitally thinking out loud--but in a way that is open-ended, sometimes fluctuating, and sort of generally dispersed--this time around I'm giving up all pretense of creating something stable.
Nevertheless (and this is something that I've always been susceptible to in my experience with the Moth), listening to other people's stories always throws me back on myself. And so, the morning after the Slam, I think my way through the Lawyer story on the train and I think I'm almost there. I have my opening: "2007 was the worst year of my life, until I met E---. On our first date we went to the Astoria Beer Garden and I found out that I couldn't actually drink two pitchers of beer." And the ending will have me going over the Manhattan Bridge at 8:30 on a Friday morning in January and looking up and realizing that not only could I see his building from the train, it was really, really, really prominent. And I will talk about how I'd always worried that this was going to be the case after he dumped me, but I was okay with it that morning--I was just glad that I didn't know it was there before that day. This probably doesn't make sense and I don't really want to take the time to work it out here right now, but the overall idea is that this is someone who made me really happy and confident and then provoked something in my life that was kind of disastrous, but I'm okay with it now and trying to take the good things. Except that the last part isn't entirely true yet and I can't tell this story until it is.
The other story I keep running over in my head is the one with K, based on a conversation we had in the library on Sunday. There is part of me that's really not on board with considering him a friend, a part that still feels angry and wronged. But I wasn't going to talk about it in the library when I only had 45 minutes to finish and print my talk. And he thinks he's 95 percent sure why I'm mad, but I'm not sure he's right and even if he is, there's still 5 percent that needs to be said. So the other story could, provisionally, be called "Why I'm Still Mad at You." I don't have this one fully worked out--the shortish version is on my other blog, but the more I thikn about it, the more I feel like it was unfair of him to pull that whole "I'm not even sure you like me" move--he could have at least had the decency to let me keep my defenses up if he was going to abandon me that completely.
I found myself starting to get choked up about this yesterday and I simply had to tell myself that I have not ever cried because of K and I sure as hell am not going to start now.
Yet, while I realize the limits of taking a handful of interactions with a married guy 20 years older than me as representative of the rest of my emotional and sexual life (not that I'm having either one right now), I can't quite not think that the moment when I tell a guy I like him is not inherently the moment of disaster for me. This is a possible construction of what happened with The Professor, who I don't think about much anymore except when Our Mutual Friend shares his interactions under the well-meaning but misguided belief that I care. It didn't help anything with the Lawyer, either. And I'm not even going to go into what I suffered from my ex-boyfriend because I loved him. And this idea--the disasters that come from opening myself to someone even a little bit, and the related issue of my sort of startling inability to be attracted to people who like me first (the Mutual Friend being an excellent case in point here)...well, it gets your day off to a bad start even before you leave your sauna-like apartment (seriously, I woke up four times last night because it was so fucking hot) into the damp and disgusting weather.
But I'm not sure any of these things are more than symptoms. I am not taking certain forms of solitude well--I can work a couple of grueling days, but without the ability to really relax with anyone who cares, without really being able to share burdens--I'm just so tired. And most of the time I kind of want to cry but not for reasons I could articulate. Like today on my way out of the Planned Parenthood--it was particularly slow today, and Gaskell is really not thrilling enough to make the time pass quickly--I was there for two stupid hours for something that took less than ten minutes and I suppose I should be happy that the HIV test came back negative (this was not the main reason why I was there, nor was I actually worried, but still) and that I will probably only have to come back once more to finish taking care of the thing I was there for (seventh time's the charm, I hope, but I feel like they should give me a frequent flyer card at this point), but it was all I could do not to start crying in one of the offices and save it for Bleecker Street and the D train to midtown instead.
I only needed a couple minutes--I'm not going to walk into school discomposed, which is one reason I'm at the library now--I need to stay here and get work done. Going home would only mean a nap, probably some self-loathing when I saw how long the nap would take, and possibly passing out from heatstroke--my radiators are shooting this wall of heat across the whole place. Instead, I will stay here and try to work on some course prep so all I have to do for the kids this weekend is read their drafts. What I really want to do is stop the clock for a couple of days and just watch TV and sleep. But I can't do that. I am, however, planning a version of that for tomorrow night.
I think one thing that bothers me is that even while I'm not dating and am doing so at least partially by choice (having to do with my workload, time committments, emotional fragility, and that stupid medical problem), I can't let myself "go" in a way that would make me undatable forever. So I have to keep going to the gym even when I'm depressed because I know I gained weight over December / January that I haven't lost yet (I mean, let's face it, my main exercise came from sex), that I can't become a full blown alcoholic (in part because that makes you fat--my vanity is often in conflict with my malaise in this way), that I essentially can't become more scary than I apparently already am, that I can't become angry, that I can't lose social skills. And so on. One of the things I don't like about not having sex at the moment is that at some point it's going to be so long that the next time is going to become Important. And I really don't want that--that's too much of a recipe for getting crushed all over again.
I didn't really want to go over all this now. It's not an entirely good use of my library time. But, with no one at home to wait for me, I can stay here until 11 tonight if I want. (It just gets into that "eating dinner at midnight" pattern again--and I know that's bad, bad, bad.) None of this makes me want to prep a grammar lesson any more than I do. What I think is that I'll start with about an hour of Wordsworth, maybe think a bit more about Villette, then get to the prep. Villette, incidentally, may become somewhat important for the paper I'm giving in a couple of months. There's a lot of live burial in there towards the end. Which is essentially what I'm going to do starting....now.
Lea, whom I have known since my back-in-the-day Moth internship, got the 30-second version of 2007 last night and commented that I could have done the entire "Love Hurts" story slam on my own, but she also said something more important, which is that I must have a lot to process and this, implicitly, is why I wouldn't have put my name in the hat even if I had shown up more than three minutes before they got started. None of my stories have particularly good endings right now--and this is one of the reasons why I'm committed to blogging as a form of digitally thinking out loud--but in a way that is open-ended, sometimes fluctuating, and sort of generally dispersed--this time around I'm giving up all pretense of creating something stable.
Nevertheless (and this is something that I've always been susceptible to in my experience with the Moth), listening to other people's stories always throws me back on myself. And so, the morning after the Slam, I think my way through the Lawyer story on the train and I think I'm almost there. I have my opening: "2007 was the worst year of my life, until I met E---. On our first date we went to the Astoria Beer Garden and I found out that I couldn't actually drink two pitchers of beer." And the ending will have me going over the Manhattan Bridge at 8:30 on a Friday morning in January and looking up and realizing that not only could I see his building from the train, it was really, really, really prominent. And I will talk about how I'd always worried that this was going to be the case after he dumped me, but I was okay with it that morning--I was just glad that I didn't know it was there before that day. This probably doesn't make sense and I don't really want to take the time to work it out here right now, but the overall idea is that this is someone who made me really happy and confident and then provoked something in my life that was kind of disastrous, but I'm okay with it now and trying to take the good things. Except that the last part isn't entirely true yet and I can't tell this story until it is.
The other story I keep running over in my head is the one with K, based on a conversation we had in the library on Sunday. There is part of me that's really not on board with considering him a friend, a part that still feels angry and wronged. But I wasn't going to talk about it in the library when I only had 45 minutes to finish and print my talk. And he thinks he's 95 percent sure why I'm mad, but I'm not sure he's right and even if he is, there's still 5 percent that needs to be said. So the other story could, provisionally, be called "Why I'm Still Mad at You." I don't have this one fully worked out--the shortish version is on my other blog, but the more I thikn about it, the more I feel like it was unfair of him to pull that whole "I'm not even sure you like me" move--he could have at least had the decency to let me keep my defenses up if he was going to abandon me that completely.
I found myself starting to get choked up about this yesterday and I simply had to tell myself that I have not ever cried because of K and I sure as hell am not going to start now.
Yet, while I realize the limits of taking a handful of interactions with a married guy 20 years older than me as representative of the rest of my emotional and sexual life (not that I'm having either one right now), I can't quite not think that the moment when I tell a guy I like him is not inherently the moment of disaster for me. This is a possible construction of what happened with The Professor, who I don't think about much anymore except when Our Mutual Friend shares his interactions under the well-meaning but misguided belief that I care. It didn't help anything with the Lawyer, either. And I'm not even going to go into what I suffered from my ex-boyfriend because I loved him. And this idea--the disasters that come from opening myself to someone even a little bit, and the related issue of my sort of startling inability to be attracted to people who like me first (the Mutual Friend being an excellent case in point here)...well, it gets your day off to a bad start even before you leave your sauna-like apartment (seriously, I woke up four times last night because it was so fucking hot) into the damp and disgusting weather.
But I'm not sure any of these things are more than symptoms. I am not taking certain forms of solitude well--I can work a couple of grueling days, but without the ability to really relax with anyone who cares, without really being able to share burdens--I'm just so tired. And most of the time I kind of want to cry but not for reasons I could articulate. Like today on my way out of the Planned Parenthood--it was particularly slow today, and Gaskell is really not thrilling enough to make the time pass quickly--I was there for two stupid hours for something that took less than ten minutes and I suppose I should be happy that the HIV test came back negative (this was not the main reason why I was there, nor was I actually worried, but still) and that I will probably only have to come back once more to finish taking care of the thing I was there for (seventh time's the charm, I hope, but I feel like they should give me a frequent flyer card at this point), but it was all I could do not to start crying in one of the offices and save it for Bleecker Street and the D train to midtown instead.
I only needed a couple minutes--I'm not going to walk into school discomposed, which is one reason I'm at the library now--I need to stay here and get work done. Going home would only mean a nap, probably some self-loathing when I saw how long the nap would take, and possibly passing out from heatstroke--my radiators are shooting this wall of heat across the whole place. Instead, I will stay here and try to work on some course prep so all I have to do for the kids this weekend is read their drafts. What I really want to do is stop the clock for a couple of days and just watch TV and sleep. But I can't do that. I am, however, planning a version of that for tomorrow night.
I think one thing that bothers me is that even while I'm not dating and am doing so at least partially by choice (having to do with my workload, time committments, emotional fragility, and that stupid medical problem), I can't let myself "go" in a way that would make me undatable forever. So I have to keep going to the gym even when I'm depressed because I know I gained weight over December / January that I haven't lost yet (I mean, let's face it, my main exercise came from sex), that I can't become a full blown alcoholic (in part because that makes you fat--my vanity is often in conflict with my malaise in this way), that I essentially can't become more scary than I apparently already am, that I can't become angry, that I can't lose social skills. And so on. One of the things I don't like about not having sex at the moment is that at some point it's going to be so long that the next time is going to become Important. And I really don't want that--that's too much of a recipe for getting crushed all over again.
I didn't really want to go over all this now. It's not an entirely good use of my library time. But, with no one at home to wait for me, I can stay here until 11 tonight if I want. (It just gets into that "eating dinner at midnight" pattern again--and I know that's bad, bad, bad.) None of this makes me want to prep a grammar lesson any more than I do. What I think is that I'll start with about an hour of Wordsworth, maybe think a bit more about Villette, then get to the prep. Villette, incidentally, may become somewhat important for the paper I'm giving in a couple of months. There's a lot of live burial in there towards the end. Which is essentially what I'm going to do starting....now.
2.11.2008
Undedicated: Shelby Lynne's "Anyone Who Had A Heart"
Heard this song on the World Cafe this evening. The video annoys me a little bit, but I like the music a lot.
I'm really tired. The Wilde guest lecture was fun, but draining. The rest of the day felt a bit like swimming uphill, but I'm proud of myself for going to the gym when it was clear that the scanner in the library wasn't going to be free for awhile. I don't know if I can make it through the rest of the notes I have to type tonight--I may just try to go to bed and wake up early-ish. Like around 8 or a little before. I think I was just drained today.
I don't really know what I want, but I want something slightly other than this. I wonder how I can once again become someone who has anything at all to give.
I'm really tired. The Wilde guest lecture was fun, but draining. The rest of the day felt a bit like swimming uphill, but I'm proud of myself for going to the gym when it was clear that the scanner in the library wasn't going to be free for awhile. I don't know if I can make it through the rest of the notes I have to type tonight--I may just try to go to bed and wake up early-ish. Like around 8 or a little before. I think I was just drained today.
I don't really know what I want, but I want something slightly other than this. I wonder how I can once again become someone who has anything at all to give.
Independence Day
It was a year ago--February 11, 2007, that I walked out on D. and ended our relationship.
I know that I'm better off without him--there has been exactly one time in the past year--and that after another superlow point--that I thought otherwise, so don't get me wrong. But there are times in which I have to say, if this counts as better, than our relationship was pretty bad. Which, in many ways, it was.
I feel like I should mark the day in some way. Not, of course, by making the formal announcement at the other blog--that would be too easy, and besides, I already pulled that one when I shut down my LiveJournal on February 12.
I do have to say I don't feel the power that I usually do at this time of the year. (I broke up with R., my first college boyfriend, on February 12, 2000, for instance, and of course I met my ex on Feburary 10, 2002.) It could just be an off-year or, equally probable, I have nearly refined my personal life out of existence. Sad but true. There are two big dangers here. One is getting fat. The other is getting bored enough to do something stupid. The former I can be a bit proactive with, in terms of forcing myself to the gym at the college where I teach whenever I'm there and making a point of going at least one or two other times in the week. (Like tomorrow.) The second? Well, nothing can really happy until I get rid of my latest "more or less innocuous but still more or less kinda gross and embarrassing" problem that keeps me going back to Planned Parenthood (seriously, I see the people there more than I see most of my friends, but my friends are not quite as intimate with my cervix--whoops? TMI? And even before the blog-warming party I'm planning to throw myself. Um, anyway.), but once that's solved...well, as long as I keep on that beaten path between my home, teaching college, and school, I should be okay. Well, unless I get really bored and decide to do something with the dude in my program who's over 50 and bears more than a passing resemblance to Brad Leland, the actor who plays Buddy Garrity on Friday Night Lights (which I am totally obsessed with now, thanks to hulu.com--the girl who plays his daughter, Lyla, is pretty amazing in being able to pull off perfection and absolute soullessness and self-loathing), except that he's a poet and a socialist. But, um, yeah. I know I don't need to go there.
And yet. The Lawyer isn't particularly following through on his promise to find me a friend of his to meet. I see K (who merits his own blog post one of these days) in the library at least three times a week (I'm there more often; he isn't) and tonight I asked him if he knew any *single* guys (we note the emphasis, yes we do) and he said he would have to think about someone who would be both "worthy" of me and "not afraid of" me. I asked him if he was afraid of me, and he said yes. I think we're going to have to have the conversation soon about why I remain not totally his friend. I also miss The Lawyer because he wasn't afraid of me.
It's clear I am getting no more Wordsworth notes transcribed tonight. I should stop drinking wine and go to bed. I would like to get up early so I can have time to work and edit the talk on Wilde that I am giving at noon tomorrow and also think about the discussion I have to lead at 4. I have a feeling I may end up being the only person reading PMLA in the gym at teaching college tomorrow.
I want to believe that I will write more interestingly here than I did there. But bear with me. I'm repressing a lot right now--the shit in Kirkwood, knowing what day it is and all, starting to stress about certain professional commitments, and a general lonliness / solitude that makes me just enervated enough to not use my time wisely and blog stuff like this. So now I'm going to bed while the wind beats against my windows. Last night it was about 40 outside and 125 in here.
I know that I'm better off without him--there has been exactly one time in the past year--and that after another superlow point--that I thought otherwise, so don't get me wrong. But there are times in which I have to say, if this counts as better, than our relationship was pretty bad. Which, in many ways, it was.
I feel like I should mark the day in some way. Not, of course, by making the formal announcement at the other blog--that would be too easy, and besides, I already pulled that one when I shut down my LiveJournal on February 12.
I do have to say I don't feel the power that I usually do at this time of the year. (I broke up with R., my first college boyfriend, on February 12, 2000, for instance, and of course I met my ex on Feburary 10, 2002.) It could just be an off-year or, equally probable, I have nearly refined my personal life out of existence. Sad but true. There are two big dangers here. One is getting fat. The other is getting bored enough to do something stupid. The former I can be a bit proactive with, in terms of forcing myself to the gym at the college where I teach whenever I'm there and making a point of going at least one or two other times in the week. (Like tomorrow.) The second? Well, nothing can really happy until I get rid of my latest "more or less innocuous but still more or less kinda gross and embarrassing" problem that keeps me going back to Planned Parenthood (seriously, I see the people there more than I see most of my friends, but my friends are not quite as intimate with my cervix--whoops? TMI? And even before the blog-warming party I'm planning to throw myself. Um, anyway.), but once that's solved...well, as long as I keep on that beaten path between my home, teaching college, and school, I should be okay. Well, unless I get really bored and decide to do something with the dude in my program who's over 50 and bears more than a passing resemblance to Brad Leland, the actor who plays Buddy Garrity on Friday Night Lights (which I am totally obsessed with now, thanks to hulu.com--the girl who plays his daughter, Lyla, is pretty amazing in being able to pull off perfection and absolute soullessness and self-loathing), except that he's a poet and a socialist. But, um, yeah. I know I don't need to go there.
And yet. The Lawyer isn't particularly following through on his promise to find me a friend of his to meet. I see K (who merits his own blog post one of these days) in the library at least three times a week (I'm there more often; he isn't) and tonight I asked him if he knew any *single* guys (we note the emphasis, yes we do) and he said he would have to think about someone who would be both "worthy" of me and "not afraid of" me. I asked him if he was afraid of me, and he said yes. I think we're going to have to have the conversation soon about why I remain not totally his friend. I also miss The Lawyer because he wasn't afraid of me.
It's clear I am getting no more Wordsworth notes transcribed tonight. I should stop drinking wine and go to bed. I would like to get up early so I can have time to work and edit the talk on Wilde that I am giving at noon tomorrow and also think about the discussion I have to lead at 4. I have a feeling I may end up being the only person reading PMLA in the gym at teaching college tomorrow.
I want to believe that I will write more interestingly here than I did there. But bear with me. I'm repressing a lot right now--the shit in Kirkwood, knowing what day it is and all, starting to stress about certain professional commitments, and a general lonliness / solitude that makes me just enervated enough to not use my time wisely and blog stuff like this. So now I'm going to bed while the wind beats against my windows. Last night it was about 40 outside and 125 in here.
2.09.2008
What I just said, but in Wordsworth's language
I deem not profitless those fleeting moods
Of shadowy exultation;
...
the soul—
Remembering how she felt, but what she felt
Remembering not—retains an obscure sense
Of possible sublimity, to which
With growing faculties she doth aspire,
With faculties still growing, feeling still
That whatsoever point they gain they still
Have something to pursue. (Prelude [1805] 2.331-32, 334-41)
This is particularly nice because it resonates with a certain Hegelian formation of going-beyond. I also like that he links memory with "possible sublimity"--it's philosophically elegant.
Of shadowy exultation;
...
the soul—
Remembering how she felt, but what she felt
Remembering not—retains an obscure sense
Of possible sublimity, to which
With growing faculties she doth aspire,
With faculties still growing, feeling still
That whatsoever point they gain they still
Have something to pursue. (Prelude [1805] 2.331-32, 334-41)
This is particularly nice because it resonates with a certain Hegelian formation of going-beyond. I also like that he links memory with "possible sublimity"--it's philosophically elegant.
The temporality of the sublime: an idea suggested by some lines in the Prelude
Quick note: When I moved into my current apartment in November, I got the keys about a week early and was able to be here before my official move in date to clean the place and buy a few things. This is essentially what I'm doing in this online space at the moment. I do plan to "introduce" myself more officially and lay out some of my ideas for this blog. But I'm also being pulled ahead by other work and other thoughts that I'd like to put here. Also, I haven't formally wrapped things up at my previous blog, though I know that the next post I make there will be my last. Perhaps there's a value in dispensing with some of those formalities anyway, in not making so many promises, setting up too many identities, and simply letting the writing set something up. So, on with the show.
I wrote out the following in a .doc file that's supposed to be dedicated to my notes on Wordsworth's Prelude. But I quickly moved on to some more "meta" reflections and realized that I needed to save some of them elsewhere, both to preserve the focus (such as it is) of my notes and to establish a separate archive for broader reflections. Enjoy, but cite.
“Oh, when I have hung
Above the raven’s nest, by knots of grass
And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock
But ill-sustained, and almost, as it seemed,
Suspended by the blast that blew amain,
Shouldering the naked crag, oh, at that time,
While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,
With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind
Blow through my ears…” (Prelude 1.341-49).
What if the sublime is never accessible to a single consciousness at a single point in time, but is constituted through an act of recollection, in which two time bound consciousnesses come together? It’s memory, yes, but also not that simple—it requires that the adult look back on the child without attempting to lodge the sublime there. I’m not being clear. To go from a different direction. It seems that Wordsworth is able to get closer to the representation of the sublime than he’s really supposed to. The passage I’ve quoted above is a good example of how he can do that. The image is one of sublime peril—it doesn’t quite come out in the delivery, which is calm, but the more we think about the image, the more we can see that it’s a child quite literally putting his life in peril. That in itself is not sublime, since Kant tells us that nothing can be fully sublime if you fear for your life. The tone of the passage is controlled by the adult poet, reflecting on the situation. We know that the child survives because he has grown up to be able to reflect upon and write about this situation—so the fear for one’s life is not present in the consciousness and present of the writing of the scene. However, this site is not an occasion for the sublime either, since the other side of Kant—at least the way I read him—is that of overwhelming force—you have to take the danger as far as it can go, you have to project and in a sense give yourself up to overwhelming force. The paradox of Kant’s dynamical sublime is thus that the “safe place” necessary to the sublime is also what prevents the realization of the sublime. WW seems to attempt to resolve this conflict through a very specific mode of recollection: we take the peril and unknowingness from the child’s perspective and the safety from the adult writers—thus, the sublime (if it can be said to take place, and this question must always remain open in discussions of the sublime—this, to me is the point of Lyotard’s asking the “is it happening?” question in “The Sublime and the Avant-Garde”) takes place in this collision or collusion of the two consciousnesses, without ever being able to inhabit or decide them. Neither gets priority, and, for this reason, the sublime moment itself remains inaccessible and just beyond representation—it only “works” to the extent that words can be said to put these two moments into motion—the words on the page are a kind of gutter experience.
My structuring of this experience (and it doesn’t really have to be a child/adult divide either, though this is helpful as a preliminary discussion because it makes the differences more obvious) comes out of my attempt to explain the difference between Dickens’ representation of childhood experience in David Copperfield (1850) and de Quincey’s in Suspiria De Profundis. I’m still turning over the idea in the latter that “it is not the child who speaks”—for de Quincey, the child takes in experiences that he, as an adult, interprets later on. The structure in DC is much different—despite the fact that we know the conceit of the novel is an adult David Copperfield reflecting on his life, with the exception of only a handful of proleptic interventions, Dickens skillfully, but subtly, remains within the knowledge and perceptions of his narrator at whatever age he’s narrating. (This is a good example of a situation in which we need to rigorously distinguish the narrator and the focalizor.) the “Brooks of Sheffield” joke in the early chapters is a good example of how Dickens pulls this off; we also get this effect in Dickens’ judicious use of the present tense throughout the novel. Thus, in David Copperfield, it is always the child who speaks. So to speak. And this is why, though I do enjoy DC, it can never be a work of sublimity in the way that I think Suspiria (and the earlier and better-known Confessions of An English Opium-Eater) is. DC operates, more or less, on a continuous march of temporality, with anticipations that function as exceptions that prove the rule; de Quincey’s work—and, I think, WW’s Prelude—offers a ruptured and ultimately more flexible temporality that leaves room for the occasion of the sublime. (It is my intention to start speaking less and less of the sublime as such and more and more of the sublime occasion.) I should say, however, is that I don’t think this is the only way to work/write around/for the sublime—this is not, for instance, the methodology of Coleridge, which depends more on the troping of suspension. Of course, it's the image of suspension that first arrested me on these lines of Wordsworth's--a good example of the need to be attentive to slippages and overlaps.
I wrote out the following in a .doc file that's supposed to be dedicated to my notes on Wordsworth's Prelude. But I quickly moved on to some more "meta" reflections and realized that I needed to save some of them elsewhere, both to preserve the focus (such as it is) of my notes and to establish a separate archive for broader reflections. Enjoy, but cite.
“Oh, when I have hung
Above the raven’s nest, by knots of grass
And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock
But ill-sustained, and almost, as it seemed,
Suspended by the blast that blew amain,
Shouldering the naked crag, oh, at that time,
While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,
With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind
Blow through my ears…” (Prelude 1.341-49).
What if the sublime is never accessible to a single consciousness at a single point in time, but is constituted through an act of recollection, in which two time bound consciousnesses come together? It’s memory, yes, but also not that simple—it requires that the adult look back on the child without attempting to lodge the sublime there. I’m not being clear. To go from a different direction. It seems that Wordsworth is able to get closer to the representation of the sublime than he’s really supposed to. The passage I’ve quoted above is a good example of how he can do that. The image is one of sublime peril—it doesn’t quite come out in the delivery, which is calm, but the more we think about the image, the more we can see that it’s a child quite literally putting his life in peril. That in itself is not sublime, since Kant tells us that nothing can be fully sublime if you fear for your life. The tone of the passage is controlled by the adult poet, reflecting on the situation. We know that the child survives because he has grown up to be able to reflect upon and write about this situation—so the fear for one’s life is not present in the consciousness and present of the writing of the scene. However, this site is not an occasion for the sublime either, since the other side of Kant—at least the way I read him—is that of overwhelming force—you have to take the danger as far as it can go, you have to project and in a sense give yourself up to overwhelming force. The paradox of Kant’s dynamical sublime is thus that the “safe place” necessary to the sublime is also what prevents the realization of the sublime. WW seems to attempt to resolve this conflict through a very specific mode of recollection: we take the peril and unknowingness from the child’s perspective and the safety from the adult writers—thus, the sublime (if it can be said to take place, and this question must always remain open in discussions of the sublime—this, to me is the point of Lyotard’s asking the “is it happening?” question in “The Sublime and the Avant-Garde”) takes place in this collision or collusion of the two consciousnesses, without ever being able to inhabit or decide them. Neither gets priority, and, for this reason, the sublime moment itself remains inaccessible and just beyond representation—it only “works” to the extent that words can be said to put these two moments into motion—the words on the page are a kind of gutter experience.
My structuring of this experience (and it doesn’t really have to be a child/adult divide either, though this is helpful as a preliminary discussion because it makes the differences more obvious) comes out of my attempt to explain the difference between Dickens’ representation of childhood experience in David Copperfield (1850) and de Quincey’s in Suspiria De Profundis. I’m still turning over the idea in the latter that “it is not the child who speaks”—for de Quincey, the child takes in experiences that he, as an adult, interprets later on. The structure in DC is much different—despite the fact that we know the conceit of the novel is an adult David Copperfield reflecting on his life, with the exception of only a handful of proleptic interventions, Dickens skillfully, but subtly, remains within the knowledge and perceptions of his narrator at whatever age he’s narrating. (This is a good example of a situation in which we need to rigorously distinguish the narrator and the focalizor.) the “Brooks of Sheffield” joke in the early chapters is a good example of how Dickens pulls this off; we also get this effect in Dickens’ judicious use of the present tense throughout the novel. Thus, in David Copperfield, it is always the child who speaks. So to speak. And this is why, though I do enjoy DC, it can never be a work of sublimity in the way that I think Suspiria (and the earlier and better-known Confessions of An English Opium-Eater) is. DC operates, more or less, on a continuous march of temporality, with anticipations that function as exceptions that prove the rule; de Quincey’s work—and, I think, WW’s Prelude—offers a ruptured and ultimately more flexible temporality that leaves room for the occasion of the sublime. (It is my intention to start speaking less and less of the sublime as such and more and more of the sublime occasion.) I should say, however, is that I don’t think this is the only way to work/write around/for the sublime—this is not, for instance, the methodology of Coleridge, which depends more on the troping of suspension. Of course, it's the image of suspension that first arrested me on these lines of Wordsworth's--a good example of the need to be attentive to slippages and overlaps.
2.07.2008
Truly awful...
Last year, my hometown was in the news for the story of the two kidnapped kids.
Now, there's this.
My dad's friends with the mayor, and it's quite possible that several of my high school classmates may have lost parents this evening. Wow.
Now, there's this.
My dad's friends with the mayor, and it's quite possible that several of my high school classmates may have lost parents this evening. Wow.
Preliminaries
I used to be someone else. I can't be her anymore.
The short version is that I had a reader who would not go away, who claimed precedence on all interpretations, who insisted that, no matter what, I was required to remain transparent to him. And eventually I realized that I couldn't write like that, that I was no longer safe, and that I had to be the one to leave.
It feels a bit like going into hiding.
Who I was, there, needs to remain there. I will say more soon about who I am here, about the connotations and associations that have come together to make this new set of texts.
For now, I ask only that you attempt to take seriously Derrida's much-misunderstood assertion that there is nothing outside the text.
One more pseudonym. One more time.
The short version is that I had a reader who would not go away, who claimed precedence on all interpretations, who insisted that, no matter what, I was required to remain transparent to him. And eventually I realized that I couldn't write like that, that I was no longer safe, and that I had to be the one to leave.
It feels a bit like going into hiding.
Who I was, there, needs to remain there. I will say more soon about who I am here, about the connotations and associations that have come together to make this new set of texts.
For now, I ask only that you attempt to take seriously Derrida's much-misunderstood assertion that there is nothing outside the text.
One more pseudonym. One more time.
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