I'm beginning to think there's a common reason for some of the difficulties that I'm encountering with my two projects. (I think maybe I'll just start calling them the Victorian and the Romantic, though I've mentioned the specific authors / texts here frequently enough that it probably doesn't matter.) On the surface, they don't have a lot in common: the Victorian project has me reading books on live burial and playing around with what I can see of popular periodicals of the nineteenth century, while for the Romantic project I am mostly still treading water with philosophy--lots of Kant, some Hegel, and a smattering of more recent people like Nancy and Lyotard. (Derrida, as I was discussing with some faculty from my department last week, is oddly absent from both of my bibliographies right now, though I think that "No Apocalypse, Not Now" may end up having some relevance to the Victorian project.)
In both of these projects, however, I keep running up against The Gothic. And it's making things hard. The Gothic has always sort of skirted the edges of the work I do--last summer at this time I was working on an earlier version of the Romantic paper and it was centered around the theme of humiliation. I did a fair bit of coursework around early Romantic / late eighteenth century texts (particularly those by Godwin and Wollstonecraft) from the perspective of the discourse of sensibility, and the best thing I ever read in the last American lit class I took (more than three years ago now--it was my first year in grad school) was Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly, which I still plan to teach and publish on someday. Dealing with these kinds of texts and just generally being someone who works on long nineteenth century literature means that I have to have a decent working knowledge / awareness of the Gothic and how it works.
But that doesn't mean, on the other hand, that I'm particularly interested in it. Okay, that sounds more horrible than I meant it to. I mean, I do like a good Gothic potboiler every now and then, and I feel like I can certainly appreciate what it is and how it does what it does, why it was important at the time, and so on. I guess it's more that my own critical investments are elsewhere right now and have been for a long time. What seems to be happening right now, though, is that the texts, concepts, and passages that I'm working on, have all largely been labeled as Gothic, and I'm finding that this makes reading them against that particular grain to be something of an uphill battle. And it's not even that I find myself wanting to argue that these texts are not Gothic (I mean, premature burial, yo), but rather that calling a poem "Gothic" or identifying its sites of sexual guilt or whatever doesn't actually constitute an interpretation these days. While the work of people like Eve Segdwick and Judith Halberstam (both of whom I've been skimming madly since last week) is aimed at showing the Gothic to be worthy of study and complex in itself, I wonder if the term as used by others is falling back into a critical shorthand. Not one used to dismiss entire passages--about 22 years ago, my adviser dismissed the passage at the center of my Victorian project as being "luridly gothic"--but certainly as a way to imply that there is a certain group of texts whose readability (and even whose unreadability) is assured according to this set of codes. And so the question for what I'm doing largely becomes one of the supplement, the so what, and the why bother. And I find myself wanting to say, "because it's just more interesting," but I do feel like I'm fighting against the weight of a historicist juggernaut here. But I soldier on.
The other common thread between these two projects, by the way, if the feeling that I'm completely behindhand on my de Man.
---
Mostly unrelated, before I go scavenge myself some lunch: a "Dickensian" toilet policy? Really?
6.30.2008
6.25.2008
Bookmarked for later lesson planning
Janet Zweig, "Her Recursive Apology" (sculpture)
From the website description:
From the website description:
The residue of a procedure. 4,386,375 apologies were randomly generated on over 8,000 sheets of continuous paper in tiny type. No two sheets are alike. The spiralling stacks grow progressively larger. A suspended work in progress.
The black box
I wrote this into my notebook shortly before I left to go meet him:
I always have a good time with him, even now. For one thing, he remains one of the nicest people I've ever been with, completely supportive in so many ways, supportive and successful in a way that makes me almost automatically my best self when I'm around him, my best self in a way that I am for almost no one else, certainly not K., not The Professor, not The Poet. And it was kind of fun, in a way, to find out that he thought of me as an ex, to have retroactive confirmation that what we had last summer wasn't just important to me. What happened to me on the train home, I don't know. But it wasn't like some of the other crying I've done lately--it didn't actually feel like a breakdown until I was on the phone later--and so I wonder if it had simply been mourning. Like I've never really just sat down and let myself cry specifically about what happened last summer and early fall, to mourn the loss of those two months or so when I really was enjoying my life, when I was more confident than I had ever been (or have been since). And maybe in a certain sense this was okay. I never really cried about the abortion at the time; I kept working on my German homework and teaching my class and I went out and found a new apartment and spent the night with K.--yesterday The Professor and I were talking about getting over things and I realize now that it's not a matter of my getting over things faster, it's a matter of my not standing still. And while I have cried over certain losses with E., maybe...I don't know. It could all just be a rationalization for too many vodka tonics and some drunk phone calls. But I'm trying to figure this out because it wasn't like he got to the bar and I wanted to jump him immediately. I don't really want him back, I'm happy for him to be in love with the woman he is in love with (even though I do sometimes panic about always being the person that you're with right before you meet the person you love--or whatever the married-guy equivalent is); I told him last night that I would have liked it to have been possible for us to have been together for a few more months than we were, but probably not forever. And that he had to find me someone just like him, but not him. It's not--or no longer--that drop-everything attraction that I periodically feel for K. So I'm trying to figure out what it is, and also how I can be friends with him and not have the crushing train ride home every time.
The writing is almost nonexistent, though I do have a two-week reprieve on the sublime thing. I think maybe today I'll work a bit at West Village Coffeeshop--maybe even splurge on lunch there--before going to school, where I'll be until at least 8:00 anyway. I'm beginning to think that sitting in front of a computer so much may be doing more harm than good.
I had a dream where my mother was helping me decorate my apartment for Christmas and I thought it was this apartment except that my bedroom was in a different place and there was a window and we watched the lightning with our neighbors and the outside was different. And the dream was set in mid-November, so it was early to be decorating for Christmas but there was some reason why we were doing it that way. We had a lot of red and white lights and my mother was really big on my placing festive objects around the room.
The other dream I remember was a sort of old-time outdoor market--the kind of thing where people are selling handicrafts and jams and things--there's something like this at the big festival that my town holds every September--they call it the Folklife Festival, I think, and they have a bunch of 19th century reenactors. But anyway. I was looking at some rugs but not with the desire to buy them--I don't have any money for that kind of thing right now--but the guy selling them kept following me around and trying to sell them to me--I don't remember it being creepy, more that I was feeling bad about not buying anything. There was also a team dance contest. With the non-Lindsay Lohans.
What I really want for myself this summer is to fall madly, stomachdroppingly, headoverheels in love with someone--someone who has the same effect on me that E. does of making me want to be my best self and actually end up believing it. Because if I don't get swept off my feet, I think there's going to be quite a fair bit of inertia left behind.
If Psyche remains alone, it is first because she is alone in knowing nothing of this. There again the meaning of the sentence bursts. Into bits, I mean. Psyche is the only one who knows nothing (nothing of herself, of her extension, of her recumbent being-extended); but further, by being alone in knowing nothing of this, she is also alone for not knowing anything of this. She finds herself alone without knowing it; her solitude is radical because she knows nothing, nothing of herself, of her extension, of that which others know; she doesn't know what they know and that they know, that is, the content and fact of their knowledge. On the subject of herself. Indeed, she is the submissive subject (extended object), the support or subjectile of their knowledge but not of hers because on her own she knows nothing of herself--on the subject of herself.
--Jacques Derrida, On Touching--Jean-Luc Nancy, trans. Christine Irizarry, p. 15
I always have a good time with him, even now. For one thing, he remains one of the nicest people I've ever been with, completely supportive in so many ways, supportive and successful in a way that makes me almost automatically my best self when I'm around him, my best self in a way that I am for almost no one else, certainly not K., not The Professor, not The Poet. And it was kind of fun, in a way, to find out that he thought of me as an ex, to have retroactive confirmation that what we had last summer wasn't just important to me. What happened to me on the train home, I don't know. But it wasn't like some of the other crying I've done lately--it didn't actually feel like a breakdown until I was on the phone later--and so I wonder if it had simply been mourning. Like I've never really just sat down and let myself cry specifically about what happened last summer and early fall, to mourn the loss of those two months or so when I really was enjoying my life, when I was more confident than I had ever been (or have been since). And maybe in a certain sense this was okay. I never really cried about the abortion at the time; I kept working on my German homework and teaching my class and I went out and found a new apartment and spent the night with K.--yesterday The Professor and I were talking about getting over things and I realize now that it's not a matter of my getting over things faster, it's a matter of my not standing still. And while I have cried over certain losses with E., maybe...I don't know. It could all just be a rationalization for too many vodka tonics and some drunk phone calls. But I'm trying to figure this out because it wasn't like he got to the bar and I wanted to jump him immediately. I don't really want him back, I'm happy for him to be in love with the woman he is in love with (even though I do sometimes panic about always being the person that you're with right before you meet the person you love--or whatever the married-guy equivalent is); I told him last night that I would have liked it to have been possible for us to have been together for a few more months than we were, but probably not forever. And that he had to find me someone just like him, but not him. It's not--or no longer--that drop-everything attraction that I periodically feel for K. So I'm trying to figure out what it is, and also how I can be friends with him and not have the crushing train ride home every time.
The writing is almost nonexistent, though I do have a two-week reprieve on the sublime thing. I think maybe today I'll work a bit at West Village Coffeeshop--maybe even splurge on lunch there--before going to school, where I'll be until at least 8:00 anyway. I'm beginning to think that sitting in front of a computer so much may be doing more harm than good.
I had a dream where my mother was helping me decorate my apartment for Christmas and I thought it was this apartment except that my bedroom was in a different place and there was a window and we watched the lightning with our neighbors and the outside was different. And the dream was set in mid-November, so it was early to be decorating for Christmas but there was some reason why we were doing it that way. We had a lot of red and white lights and my mother was really big on my placing festive objects around the room.
The other dream I remember was a sort of old-time outdoor market--the kind of thing where people are selling handicrafts and jams and things--there's something like this at the big festival that my town holds every September--they call it the Folklife Festival, I think, and they have a bunch of 19th century reenactors. But anyway. I was looking at some rugs but not with the desire to buy them--I don't have any money for that kind of thing right now--but the guy selling them kept following me around and trying to sell them to me--I don't remember it being creepy, more that I was feeling bad about not buying anything. There was also a team dance contest. With the non-Lindsay Lohans.
What I really want for myself this summer is to fall madly, stomachdroppingly, headoverheels in love with someone--someone who has the same effect on me that E. does of making me want to be my best self and actually end up believing it. Because if I don't get swept off my feet, I think there's going to be quite a fair bit of inertia left behind.
6.24.2008
I'm never a clean break
...If I could, I would simply wish to not have to live out the rest of 2008, to wake up in 2009 and just deal with whatever's there.
I sort of wish there was some reason I could hate E. as much as I can / should hate K., or even The Professor.
I sort of wish there was some reason I could hate E. as much as I can / should hate K., or even The Professor.
6.23.2008
Resolution and possibly some stab at independence
Summer Mondays dawning with possibility, though it's a possibility with a couple of asterisks--okay, so I futzed around last night doing the crossword online and whatever, but I still slept for almost eight hours and I didn't drink last night, so why am I so tired? The only thing I can think of is the humidity, so I may have to run the air conditioner tonight. Greyskies again, which I don't mind so much now that I'm inside, but, again, humidity and the like. My one heavy framed picture (an animation cell from an old Sunbeam commercial with Linus and Snoopy, signed by Bill Melendez) fell down again this morning. This is completely my mother's fault--she claimed I was hanging my pictures too high on the wall and moved this one down--it fell once while she was still on that visit, and now this. Argh. At least I've been there both times this has happened. (In other domestic news, the soapdish is back on the wall, but now my tub isn't draining all that well--a problem that I have never had in this apartment. I think that the guy who repaired the soapdish must have just washed all the excess plaster down the drain. Brilliant.)
But I'm back here for another week, a new set of goals I haven't failed at yet. I've passed through another period of wretchedness, sloughed off another set of distracting desires. That's what a lot of this is about, after all, and I don't need to be a Buddhist to know that, just a midwesterner. Because it's Monday and still the morning, I can say things like I will not be distracted, I will not spend 2:30-4:00 obsessing about whether K. will show up, I will not spend 4:00-6:30 obsessing that he is here. I will make it to the gym, as this is the one day I know I can go in the evening. I will make do with what I have. I will write five pages today and hope that two and a half of them will be good. I will simply write to write and edit later. I will not obsess about whether I'm actually going to see E. tomorrow. I will bracket all the other conflictedness that might have been raised over the weekend. I will use the online timer I found last week. I will not get bogged down by reading things of minimal relevance and maximum frustration. I will stick to the plan I had for this piece of writing, the one that impressed the guest editor--if there was something horribly off base, I will assume she would have told me in February. I will concentrate, I will be in the moment, I will take on one thing at a time.
In all of this, of course, I feel very close to Coleridge. Because I often forget things that I blog about (something that has always added a kind of frisson of risk to all of this), I can't remember off the top of my head whether I mentioned here or not the fact that I was so tired / hung over / stressed out by K that all I ended up doing on Friday afternoon was writing out stanza VI of Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode." The resolutions I am making here, the ones I have been making for the last several days, are all indebted to this example--for better or worse.
But I'm back here for another week, a new set of goals I haven't failed at yet. I've passed through another period of wretchedness, sloughed off another set of distracting desires. That's what a lot of this is about, after all, and I don't need to be a Buddhist to know that, just a midwesterner. Because it's Monday and still the morning, I can say things like I will not be distracted, I will not spend 2:30-4:00 obsessing about whether K. will show up, I will not spend 4:00-6:30 obsessing that he is here. I will make it to the gym, as this is the one day I know I can go in the evening. I will make do with what I have. I will write five pages today and hope that two and a half of them will be good. I will simply write to write and edit later. I will not obsess about whether I'm actually going to see E. tomorrow. I will bracket all the other conflictedness that might have been raised over the weekend. I will use the online timer I found last week. I will not get bogged down by reading things of minimal relevance and maximum frustration. I will stick to the plan I had for this piece of writing, the one that impressed the guest editor--if there was something horribly off base, I will assume she would have told me in February. I will concentrate, I will be in the moment, I will take on one thing at a time.
In all of this, of course, I feel very close to Coleridge. Because I often forget things that I blog about (something that has always added a kind of frisson of risk to all of this), I can't remember off the top of my head whether I mentioned here or not the fact that I was so tired / hung over / stressed out by K that all I ended up doing on Friday afternoon was writing out stanza VI of Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode." The resolutions I am making here, the ones I have been making for the last several days, are all indebted to this example--for better or worse.
6.22.2008
Dinner Blogging, Weekend Miscellany
So I ran out of time last night to do anything more than heat up a bit more turkey sausage with kale and onions. Tonight, however, I took a more leisurely approach, and this was the final result:
We have a rib steak (or a third of one--it's rich enough that what I had there was the perfect size), seasoned with worcheshire sauce, salt, and red pepper flakes and pan seared, served over blanched garlic scapes (tasty!). The salad is kale, snap peas, blueberries, and cherries in a basic vinaigrette. The reheated sourdough bread was mighty tasty. So, nothing too fancy, but certainly a nice change of pace for me. If I'm feeling ambitious tomorrow night, I may try the other pork chop with the cherries in some combination. Other than that, though, I won't be having dinner home again until Friday--if, that is, my plans hold up better than they did last week. (I have reason to be hopeful about this.) My other project of the night, relatedly, is going to be to make enough spaghetti (with more of the turkey sausage, kale, etc., in a sauce) to eat for lunch throughout the week, hopefully reducing my need to a.) think about this when I have so much else going on; and, b.) eat in the cafeteria at school, which is quite often a dismal crapshoot. (For some reason, they're really all about inappropriately heavy meals throughout the summer--think, like, pot roast when it's 95 degrees outside.) I really need to get a draft of the sublime thing done by Thursday (my personal deadline, since it's when The Poet's coming back--when I'm actually going to see him again, I don't know).
So much for food. Now for the miscellany.
I feel like I had a couple of small epiphanies yesterday. I received two phone calls in rapid succession late in the afternoon. After the first phone call, which was pleasant and relaxed, I hung up the phone with a smile on my face, feeling a little bit lighter all around. The second phone call was much more frustrating, seemingly at cross purposes, leaving much unresolved, and when it ended abruptly, my stomach hurt a little bit. One of these phone calls was from The Poet. The other was from K. And it did in fact occur to me that, if these are the two men I feel myself torn between at the moment, then I'm with the better one. What I said about The Poet when I first met him was that he didn't seem to have many issues, he was divided but not conflicted. K. is all conflict and contradiction, and it's been pulling me in. I need to figure out what to do about that. I had a later moment last night when I suddenly felt very protective of my life, thinking maybe this certain freedom isn't so bad all the time and maybe I only talk about exit strategies with The Poet for other people's benefit. The other side of this is just not having seen him for two weeks and not seeing him again for at least another week. I try not to make judgements about people when they're away.
The second epiphany had to do with "Hospital" and realizing how this crazy, weirdly repetitive play has an enormous amount to do with sort of grounding me each summer--it's comforting in its mix of strangeness and familiarity, and the end of the doctor sequence in last night's episode really brought that home to me.
After the play, I got drunk and....talked about my blog. Possibly a bad strategic move.
My internet continues to suck. Not only is it not fun to watch tv in 2-minute segments (about all I can get to buffer), everything is slow, and I've lost access completely a couple of times today. Stupid Verizon, but I don't really have the time to deal with that this week, either.
I'm a bit at loose ends for the writing I need to be doing. I'm not sure that reading De Man is making me less nervous, either.
We have a rib steak (or a third of one--it's rich enough that what I had there was the perfect size), seasoned with worcheshire sauce, salt, and red pepper flakes and pan seared, served over blanched garlic scapes (tasty!). The salad is kale, snap peas, blueberries, and cherries in a basic vinaigrette. The reheated sourdough bread was mighty tasty. So, nothing too fancy, but certainly a nice change of pace for me. If I'm feeling ambitious tomorrow night, I may try the other pork chop with the cherries in some combination. Other than that, though, I won't be having dinner home again until Friday--if, that is, my plans hold up better than they did last week. (I have reason to be hopeful about this.) My other project of the night, relatedly, is going to be to make enough spaghetti (with more of the turkey sausage, kale, etc., in a sauce) to eat for lunch throughout the week, hopefully reducing my need to a.) think about this when I have so much else going on; and, b.) eat in the cafeteria at school, which is quite often a dismal crapshoot. (For some reason, they're really all about inappropriately heavy meals throughout the summer--think, like, pot roast when it's 95 degrees outside.) I really need to get a draft of the sublime thing done by Thursday (my personal deadline, since it's when The Poet's coming back--when I'm actually going to see him again, I don't know).
So much for food. Now for the miscellany.
I feel like I had a couple of small epiphanies yesterday. I received two phone calls in rapid succession late in the afternoon. After the first phone call, which was pleasant and relaxed, I hung up the phone with a smile on my face, feeling a little bit lighter all around. The second phone call was much more frustrating, seemingly at cross purposes, leaving much unresolved, and when it ended abruptly, my stomach hurt a little bit. One of these phone calls was from The Poet. The other was from K. And it did in fact occur to me that, if these are the two men I feel myself torn between at the moment, then I'm with the better one. What I said about The Poet when I first met him was that he didn't seem to have many issues, he was divided but not conflicted. K. is all conflict and contradiction, and it's been pulling me in. I need to figure out what to do about that. I had a later moment last night when I suddenly felt very protective of my life, thinking maybe this certain freedom isn't so bad all the time and maybe I only talk about exit strategies with The Poet for other people's benefit. The other side of this is just not having seen him for two weeks and not seeing him again for at least another week. I try not to make judgements about people when they're away.
The second epiphany had to do with "Hospital" and realizing how this crazy, weirdly repetitive play has an enormous amount to do with sort of grounding me each summer--it's comforting in its mix of strangeness and familiarity, and the end of the doctor sequence in last night's episode really brought that home to me.
After the play, I got drunk and....talked about my blog. Possibly a bad strategic move.
My internet continues to suck. Not only is it not fun to watch tv in 2-minute segments (about all I can get to buffer), everything is slow, and I've lost access completely a couple of times today. Stupid Verizon, but I don't really have the time to deal with that this week, either.
I'm a bit at loose ends for the writing I need to be doing. I'm not sure that reading De Man is making me less nervous, either.
6.21.2008
Food and possibility
For the record, there was a bit more drama about the subjects raised in the last post that lasted throughout much of last night and which (coupled with a marked slowdown of my internet speed which makes it difficult to watch tv online) made me even more wretched--and not insignificantly, more angry--than I was in the afternoon. But this post isn't about that. This post is about food.
The one thing that has given me consistent and reliable pleasure in this already-tumultuous summer is going to the Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza on Saturdays. In fact, the one Saturday this month where I've been the most wretched is the one when I didn't go to the Greenmarket. I don't think those things are entirely unrelated. I mean, granted, it isn't really about the shopping experience per se. I do tend to hurry a little bit, being one of the only people there alone, not really interested in dodging bikes, strollers, and couples. But there are moments of joy even here--seeing what fruits and vegetables are in season, daring myself to take new things home and see what I can do with them, and getting different "treats" to take back. It's of course a little bit on the expensive side, but I've been doing a better job of actually cooking balanced meals for myself, and it means I can skip some of the more cringe-worthy sections of my Key Food. I'm not disciplined enough to eat entirely at the Greenmarket--as a single person, that would be especially hard, and I admit to liking to have certain vegetables (peppers, brussels sprouts, spinach) around even when they are not in season. I also can't really afford to buy everything local / organic, as I'm living on basically "nothing a year" (as they say in Vanity Fair) at the moment. But I do think it's worth it, especially for things like meat and bread, and as one result I've ended up eating slightly less meat but more interesting kinds of meat when I do, cutting out chicken breasts (not intentionally, but there are more interesting things to spend money on and I've never liked the ones at my grocery store), and only really eating processed food when it comes from Target. Of course, this also sometimes means that I run out of food that can be easily prepared by the end of the week. Last night for dinner I basically had a granola bar and a handful of dried fruit. Granted, I had a big lunch, but still...
Anyway. The real Greenmarket happiness comes when I get home and can survey the week's takings. And, of course, the cooking. The high point of this week was the night I made a pork chop from the Flying Pigs Farm, following the simple instructions they provided. It was the.most.amazing.pork.chop I have ever eaten. Incredibly flavorful and juicy, nothing akin to the dried out kind of cardboardy chops I remember from my childhood. I have a second one in my freezer for when I want a treat again. As sides for this meal, I made some oven-roasted asparagus, sauteed spinach with red pepper, and potato pancakes but with shredded zucchini instead of potatoes. The rest of the week was downhill from there. I wish I'd thought to take a picture of it. Actually, maybe I should start doing that--but it would require having actual batteries for my digital camera.
I do think I like the sense of possibility that going to the Greenmarket provides. I've never really liked Fridays, and I've had a vexed relationship to the weekends. Given the state of my life right now, Friday afternoon brings not relief but a sense of all the work that I didn't get done during the week, a kind of lethargy that isn't relaxation, the sense of falling back into invisibility. Sometimes it's not always this bad, but that feeling is always there around the edges.
And I think this is why, even before I broke up with the Ex, even before I discovered the joys of the greenmarket, I would often find myself cooking semi-complicated meals and listening to the radio on Saturday nights.
This week's possibilities from the Greenmarket are as follows:
cherries
blueberries (some of which I plan to freeze)
peaches
kale
young onions (one of my earliest and most favorite greenmarket discoveries)
garlic scapes
a loaf of sourdough (usually I'm much better about getting something in the multigrain family, but every now and then....)
a grass-fed eye steak
turkey sausage
a garlic, goat cheese, and rosemary foccacia
Plus, I still have snap peas left over from last week. Lunch was a bit of turkey sausage, about half the foccacia, and a peach. Dinner (before I, most likely, go into Manhattan to see the second episode of "Hospital" at the Axis Company), I think, is going to be a bit of the steak, some kale, and some of the garlic scapes. So, yay.
Other good things: someone came to fix my soap dish, it's not so hot that I have to have the air conditioner on, and the slowness of my internet connection makes it more likely that I will do work than watch television. I'm trying to be grateful for small things.
The one thing that has given me consistent and reliable pleasure in this already-tumultuous summer is going to the Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza on Saturdays. In fact, the one Saturday this month where I've been the most wretched is the one when I didn't go to the Greenmarket. I don't think those things are entirely unrelated. I mean, granted, it isn't really about the shopping experience per se. I do tend to hurry a little bit, being one of the only people there alone, not really interested in dodging bikes, strollers, and couples. But there are moments of joy even here--seeing what fruits and vegetables are in season, daring myself to take new things home and see what I can do with them, and getting different "treats" to take back. It's of course a little bit on the expensive side, but I've been doing a better job of actually cooking balanced meals for myself, and it means I can skip some of the more cringe-worthy sections of my Key Food. I'm not disciplined enough to eat entirely at the Greenmarket--as a single person, that would be especially hard, and I admit to liking to have certain vegetables (peppers, brussels sprouts, spinach) around even when they are not in season. I also can't really afford to buy everything local / organic, as I'm living on basically "nothing a year" (as they say in Vanity Fair) at the moment. But I do think it's worth it, especially for things like meat and bread, and as one result I've ended up eating slightly less meat but more interesting kinds of meat when I do, cutting out chicken breasts (not intentionally, but there are more interesting things to spend money on and I've never liked the ones at my grocery store), and only really eating processed food when it comes from Target. Of course, this also sometimes means that I run out of food that can be easily prepared by the end of the week. Last night for dinner I basically had a granola bar and a handful of dried fruit. Granted, I had a big lunch, but still...
Anyway. The real Greenmarket happiness comes when I get home and can survey the week's takings. And, of course, the cooking. The high point of this week was the night I made a pork chop from the Flying Pigs Farm, following the simple instructions they provided. It was the.most.amazing.pork.chop I have ever eaten. Incredibly flavorful and juicy, nothing akin to the dried out kind of cardboardy chops I remember from my childhood. I have a second one in my freezer for when I want a treat again. As sides for this meal, I made some oven-roasted asparagus, sauteed spinach with red pepper, and potato pancakes but with shredded zucchini instead of potatoes. The rest of the week was downhill from there. I wish I'd thought to take a picture of it. Actually, maybe I should start doing that--but it would require having actual batteries for my digital camera.
I do think I like the sense of possibility that going to the Greenmarket provides. I've never really liked Fridays, and I've had a vexed relationship to the weekends. Given the state of my life right now, Friday afternoon brings not relief but a sense of all the work that I didn't get done during the week, a kind of lethargy that isn't relaxation, the sense of falling back into invisibility. Sometimes it's not always this bad, but that feeling is always there around the edges.
And I think this is why, even before I broke up with the Ex, even before I discovered the joys of the greenmarket, I would often find myself cooking semi-complicated meals and listening to the radio on Saturday nights.
This week's possibilities from the Greenmarket are as follows:
cherries
blueberries (some of which I plan to freeze)
peaches
kale
young onions (one of my earliest and most favorite greenmarket discoveries)
garlic scapes
a loaf of sourdough (usually I'm much better about getting something in the multigrain family, but every now and then....)
a grass-fed eye steak
turkey sausage
a garlic, goat cheese, and rosemary foccacia
Plus, I still have snap peas left over from last week. Lunch was a bit of turkey sausage, about half the foccacia, and a peach. Dinner (before I, most likely, go into Manhattan to see the second episode of "Hospital" at the Axis Company), I think, is going to be a bit of the steak, some kale, and some of the garlic scapes. So, yay.
Other good things: someone came to fix my soap dish, it's not so hot that I have to have the air conditioner on, and the slowness of my internet connection makes it more likely that I will do work than watch television. I'm trying to be grateful for small things.
6.20.2008
What I don't understand: Friday afternoon
Back in May, it seems that we left things--at, I might add, your instigation--somewhere around the intersection of "we're still friends" and "but I can't really talk to you." And that hurt, a lot.
I knew, of course, that eventually I was going to start seeing you in the library again, that it was going to come as a bodily shock to me whether I wanted it to or not--and it did, even on that Monday before my exam, when I was so tired I could barely see and I didn't even talk to you, but that's the physical sensation (and if that's not a kind of syncope, then all of this is for nothing) that broke through even that.
So the next time I see you is Friday the 13th. It is a strange day overall, the kind of day that I could write an entire novel about and while this isn't the most fucked up thing that could happen at the library it's also not completely the least either. Three sets of computers away and I spend the entire afternoon acting like I'm in highschool trying to make eye contact but also trying not to look like I am, "He must know I'm here," I think to myself but because of the way we left things, I don't feel like I can deliberately go over there and talk to you--I get close once (because you are sitting near a certain group of shelves that I do have occasion to use periodically) but I can't tell if you are concentrating really hard or concentrating really hard on not seeing me, so I go back to peering out from behind my computer while reading The Discourse of the Syncope and generally trying to look busy. I decide that if I leave first I will at least walk by and say hello. And then you look like you're leaving without acknowledging my presence and that hurts--a lot. But then you come back and you do come to talk to me and you're the one who's all like, "We should get a drink next week"--which you have pretty much never suggested ever and which I don't feel like I could suggest on my own, but because it's your idea, I say okay, even look at my calendar to see what would work. You say you'll call me but you don't. On Monday afternoon you are sitting six feet away from me on the other side of the line of computers with a girl from your department and I learn a lot in a very short time about the syncope, and we make only brief eye contact as I leave. I finally email on Tuesday night (largely against my better judgment, but my Wednesday plans with E. had been deferred until next week at this point and I needed more to look forward to this week) and you get back to me the next day saying you totally do want to get a drink, asking me about my schedule, but then listing all the deadlines you have. And I'm kind of thinking already--way to go, dude, why are you even trying to make plans with anyone if you knew you had that coming up--but when we fail to cross paths on Wednesday night and end up emailing instead you say something that at least suggests to me why you asked about my plans in the next 72 hours and it does piss me off ever so slightly. But I say that maybe I'll text after a social obligation on Thursday night. Which I do, following up with a voicemail--one of three to different people, all of which go unanswered until the next day. You send me a text at 1:00 this afternoon apologizing for not answering sooner.
I had a horrible and slow morning, but I did finally drag myself to school, thinking that even if I only write and work for two hours that's two more hours of work than I would do at home. You are here. You are talking with other chicks from your department. I don't interrupt, but you must have known I was here. I try to glance up less than I did last week. I still don't think it's in my power to go up to you--I already feel like I've done enough chasing you this week. I'm not sure why my presence couldn't have been acknowledged in some way, even if it was a text message. And now it looks like you left again and this time you didn't stop over to say hi.
And I don't understand any of this.
In related news, this is officially the Summer of the Fake Boyfriend.
I knew, of course, that eventually I was going to start seeing you in the library again, that it was going to come as a bodily shock to me whether I wanted it to or not--and it did, even on that Monday before my exam, when I was so tired I could barely see and I didn't even talk to you, but that's the physical sensation (and if that's not a kind of syncope, then all of this is for nothing) that broke through even that.
So the next time I see you is Friday the 13th. It is a strange day overall, the kind of day that I could write an entire novel about and while this isn't the most fucked up thing that could happen at the library it's also not completely the least either. Three sets of computers away and I spend the entire afternoon acting like I'm in highschool trying to make eye contact but also trying not to look like I am, "He must know I'm here," I think to myself but because of the way we left things, I don't feel like I can deliberately go over there and talk to you--I get close once (because you are sitting near a certain group of shelves that I do have occasion to use periodically) but I can't tell if you are concentrating really hard or concentrating really hard on not seeing me, so I go back to peering out from behind my computer while reading The Discourse of the Syncope and generally trying to look busy. I decide that if I leave first I will at least walk by and say hello. And then you look like you're leaving without acknowledging my presence and that hurts--a lot. But then you come back and you do come to talk to me and you're the one who's all like, "We should get a drink next week"--which you have pretty much never suggested ever and which I don't feel like I could suggest on my own, but because it's your idea, I say okay, even look at my calendar to see what would work. You say you'll call me but you don't. On Monday afternoon you are sitting six feet away from me on the other side of the line of computers with a girl from your department and I learn a lot in a very short time about the syncope, and we make only brief eye contact as I leave. I finally email on Tuesday night (largely against my better judgment, but my Wednesday plans with E. had been deferred until next week at this point and I needed more to look forward to this week) and you get back to me the next day saying you totally do want to get a drink, asking me about my schedule, but then listing all the deadlines you have. And I'm kind of thinking already--way to go, dude, why are you even trying to make plans with anyone if you knew you had that coming up--but when we fail to cross paths on Wednesday night and end up emailing instead you say something that at least suggests to me why you asked about my plans in the next 72 hours and it does piss me off ever so slightly. But I say that maybe I'll text after a social obligation on Thursday night. Which I do, following up with a voicemail--one of three to different people, all of which go unanswered until the next day. You send me a text at 1:00 this afternoon apologizing for not answering sooner.
I had a horrible and slow morning, but I did finally drag myself to school, thinking that even if I only write and work for two hours that's two more hours of work than I would do at home. You are here. You are talking with other chicks from your department. I don't interrupt, but you must have known I was here. I try to glance up less than I did last week. I still don't think it's in my power to go up to you--I already feel like I've done enough chasing you this week. I'm not sure why my presence couldn't have been acknowledged in some way, even if it was a text message. And now it looks like you left again and this time you didn't stop over to say hi.
And I don't understand any of this.
In related news, this is officially the Summer of the Fake Boyfriend.
6.17.2008
Undedicated (barely): Martha Wainwright, "Bleeding All Over You"
...well, I guess I have a new theme song. It's a bit eerie, actually, to find so much of a reflection like this, but in a way it's why I like to listen to World Cafe when I'm working at home at night. (Yes! Working! As opposed to watching tv!)
The album title, by the way, is "I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too." Yeah, I don't know *anyone* in these parts who that would apply to. Geez.
...and then on other days, you're just kind of stuck.
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.(Tennyson)
At least once a day--and often more--I find myself becoming Mariana in the moated grange. Which is simply to say that nothing happening is sometimes as bad as the things that happen, and often even more distracting.
6.16.2008
Bloomsday Edgestories
I learned today from reading Jean-Luc Nancy's The Discourse of the Syncope that the feminine form of Kant--die Kante--means "the pointed, the thin and sharp edge, the angle, of a ridge or divide" (91). I am thinking of this as a razoredge or a tightrope or--to think less laceratingly for the moment--the silvering of the mirror (and I'm thinking here of Derrida's reading of Ponge's "Fable," mostly in "Psyche: Invention of the Other") and watersurfaces of the kind that lend themselves to a confusion of shadow and substance, as in the scene in Book 4 of the Prelude--a kind of multiple vision--the sky and trees reflected there, but also the reeds and fish underneath the surface, a dual visibility that in some sense makes the surface "itself" in-visible. (This all seems, at times, like a hopelessly old-fashioned exercise in deconstruction deployed to cover over my own personal stupidities. If I could set the scene for you I would, but I'm not sure I could do it unless I could make it into the third person first and even then I'm not sure I would despise myself any less.)
And I am thinking, on this Bloomsday (inevitably a legacy of my ex-boyfriend; there are certain textual transmissions that occasionally make it hard for me to do what I do) of tightrope acts and walking on water and I have been trying for the last couple of hours to recover from a certain multiday stupefaction (something like this always seems to happen when I should be writing--I end up reading, and badly) and to think in paragraphs, to make another try at staking out a position within the Critique of Judgment and I am turning around on what seems to me to be the dual question of the essential spontaneity of aesthetic judgment and the suspension that secures the instance (I hear this with a French accent today) of freedom. (Simply being here is to risk a complete collapse; I come here, I say, so that I will be more productive and more disciplined than I would be at home; coming here, though, is always a risk, and there is so much that can go wrong, so many ways to force myself into a kind of disappointment. Why can't that be me? Suspension is exhausting; I didn't know what I would be getting into; in some ways the forced lightheartedness is almost worse; having him know what he knows about my life is worse than him not knowing anything at all; this is not conductive to writing about the sublime except when it is and I wouldn't have written this if I had stayed home today.) I find myself wondering as I contemplate this spontaneity--and I'm not sure Kant ever uses the word, only implies it--this instability--I find myself recurring again and again to the question of the razor edge and the water surface, specifically: Do you ever get used to walking on water?
The story goes that Peter was okay until he looked down. What's the opposite of looking down? What did it mean for him to look down? Is it simply a matter of knowing or not knowing what you're doing? This seems to make faith a matter of ignorance--no, it's more than this, to walk on water you almost have to know what you're doing at every moment. (I see you past the shoulder of the person I'm talking to don't you realize that all I wanted was to be able to do this with you, to work side by side? This is all I've ever really wanted of the people I've loved, and perhaps this is why it would be difficult, as things stand now, to fall in love with The Poet, who seems very far from here as it is.) To know but not to look--some sort of action, some kind of energy--nervous energy, tension, a suspension that is almost a churning, lifting you just far enough above the water not to fall. You can't get used to walking on water--that's when you fall, that's when you go slack, you let your guard down and you become ever so slightly too heavy--there was never much of a margin for error to begin with and now it's over and you might never be able to regain that first lightness, you will have to learn some other trick. (It's only now that I come face to face with how much I have been depending on some illusion of a singularity that went both ways--not in an absolute sense, but at least in terms of the immediate context--and by a bad accident of positioning, a choice that I made before anyone else was here this morning--I get to watch this get chipped away moment by moment--)
And I am trying to write about Kant and get myself back to Christabel and I am still turning over the same set of ideas, more or less. I call it something different now, moving beyond humiliation and its overdeterminations, thinking now more broadly in terms that I am preparing to live with for years--funny, how one's longest relationships are revealed to be with texts, with certain words, as people themselves come and go.
Late on Friday night I told The Professor what I have been thinking for several weeks now--that I would be happier if I could write something like poetry, if I could regain the kind of relation I used to have to theory, philosophy, and literature, that graphomania that had me writing in several locations and in several discourses all at once. No doubt this was dangerous when I was 20 and 21; no doubt there would be risks this time around, too, not the least of which being a kind of absolute self-indulgence or just trying too hard. I might be happier, too, if I could slip into the third person sometimes, like I did one afternoon sitting in the St Mark's Churchyard in the summer of 2000. I used to write to survive; when I stopped writing, I stopped surviving. I am still working alone; I have been looking outside to see if we're getting the storm they promised us (we're not); I need to decide what I have the heart to do the rest of today; maybe I will let myself get beer if I go to the gym first.
And I am thinking, on this Bloomsday (inevitably a legacy of my ex-boyfriend; there are certain textual transmissions that occasionally make it hard for me to do what I do) of tightrope acts and walking on water and I have been trying for the last couple of hours to recover from a certain multiday stupefaction (something like this always seems to happen when I should be writing--I end up reading, and badly) and to think in paragraphs, to make another try at staking out a position within the Critique of Judgment and I am turning around on what seems to me to be the dual question of the essential spontaneity of aesthetic judgment and the suspension that secures the instance (I hear this with a French accent today) of freedom. (Simply being here is to risk a complete collapse; I come here, I say, so that I will be more productive and more disciplined than I would be at home; coming here, though, is always a risk, and there is so much that can go wrong, so many ways to force myself into a kind of disappointment. Why can't that be me? Suspension is exhausting; I didn't know what I would be getting into; in some ways the forced lightheartedness is almost worse; having him know what he knows about my life is worse than him not knowing anything at all; this is not conductive to writing about the sublime except when it is and I wouldn't have written this if I had stayed home today.) I find myself wondering as I contemplate this spontaneity--and I'm not sure Kant ever uses the word, only implies it--this instability--I find myself recurring again and again to the question of the razor edge and the water surface, specifically: Do you ever get used to walking on water?
The story goes that Peter was okay until he looked down. What's the opposite of looking down? What did it mean for him to look down? Is it simply a matter of knowing or not knowing what you're doing? This seems to make faith a matter of ignorance--no, it's more than this, to walk on water you almost have to know what you're doing at every moment. (I see you past the shoulder of the person I'm talking to don't you realize that all I wanted was to be able to do this with you, to work side by side? This is all I've ever really wanted of the people I've loved, and perhaps this is why it would be difficult, as things stand now, to fall in love with The Poet, who seems very far from here as it is.) To know but not to look--some sort of action, some kind of energy--nervous energy, tension, a suspension that is almost a churning, lifting you just far enough above the water not to fall. You can't get used to walking on water--that's when you fall, that's when you go slack, you let your guard down and you become ever so slightly too heavy--there was never much of a margin for error to begin with and now it's over and you might never be able to regain that first lightness, you will have to learn some other trick. (It's only now that I come face to face with how much I have been depending on some illusion of a singularity that went both ways--not in an absolute sense, but at least in terms of the immediate context--and by a bad accident of positioning, a choice that I made before anyone else was here this morning--I get to watch this get chipped away moment by moment--)
And I am trying to write about Kant and get myself back to Christabel and I am still turning over the same set of ideas, more or less. I call it something different now, moving beyond humiliation and its overdeterminations, thinking now more broadly in terms that I am preparing to live with for years--funny, how one's longest relationships are revealed to be with texts, with certain words, as people themselves come and go.
Late on Friday night I told The Professor what I have been thinking for several weeks now--that I would be happier if I could write something like poetry, if I could regain the kind of relation I used to have to theory, philosophy, and literature, that graphomania that had me writing in several locations and in several discourses all at once. No doubt this was dangerous when I was 20 and 21; no doubt there would be risks this time around, too, not the least of which being a kind of absolute self-indulgence or just trying too hard. I might be happier, too, if I could slip into the third person sometimes, like I did one afternoon sitting in the St Mark's Churchyard in the summer of 2000. I used to write to survive; when I stopped writing, I stopped surviving. I am still working alone; I have been looking outside to see if we're getting the storm they promised us (we're not); I need to decide what I have the heart to do the rest of today; maybe I will let myself get beer if I go to the gym first.
6.11.2008
Bullets, mostly domestic and pedagogical
* I did laundry tonight, since it's no longer so hot that I can justify buying new underwear to avoid the laundromat. The washer that had all of my dark / warm water stuff in had fabric softener in it--something I don't usually use myself. Now my dark / warm water clothes and my towels smell like Downy--not a bad smell, but they don't smell like my clothes and towels.
* Speaking of clothes, my bridesmaid's dress has been chosen for me. It's not actually that bad, right? I don't think I've ever worn a strapless gown in my life, though. As I observed to my mother this morning, that's a good incentive to keep going to the gym through the summer and fall, especially because I will be the token old maid in the wedding party.
* I feel like I've been working really hard today without getting anything done. I will be switching to full on work with Coleridge tomorrow. Well, that and getting my paperwork together at New Teaching School which Needs a Pseudonym, having lunch with an aunt and uncle who are in town, and going to hear some friends read / perform in Brooklyn. So tomorrow, alas, may not be a gym day.
* Speaking of NTSwNaP (see what I mean?). I got a whole bunch of info on the fall semester from the Writing Director there. I'm already in a different world--there's just more here in terms of sheer documentation than I got from Erstwhile Teaching College in two years. And it's a whole new ballgame, one that's played without course readers and where you actually write course descriptions based on topics from which the students then choose. In a general sense, I realize that the centers of adjunct autonomy are almost completely reversed in these two situations--ETC has a reader that they want you to teach from, and they require more essays, but beyond that they aren't at the moment pushing their adjuncts to do much more that's intellectually coherent, as long as the kids learn some grammar along the way. My class tended to be organized around some broad units, but they weren't necessarily connected to each other--and, especially in this last semester, they were all in a certain sense tailored to the institution, which basically meant that I could be very self-referential in terms of things like linguistic diversity, what it means to write in English, and so on--and be reasonably certain that 90% of the people in the room had personal experience with that kind of thing. This new teaching gig will be the first time I will be standing in front of a classroom of majority English-speakers (as a first language, that is)--not to mention students who will probably all be living in dorms close to campus rather than with their parents in Ozone Park and Bensonhurst. And all of this makes me a bit nostalgic (read: terrified of change) for ETC and makes me wonder if I shouldn't give up that class--but the places are so different that it doesn't make sense for me--at least not in what will be a prospectusing and fellowship applying semester--to be teaching at both. Also, in a very practical sense--the New Gig is probably closer to the kinds of writing programs that are going on at places where I would like to teach. Not that I want to teach exclusively in a writing program, but I think it'll be good to have both things.
* The Poet has been getting himself into political controversy in his hometown, and it's the kind of thing where if it backfires in a certain way it's going to hit me too. Okay, so that's a little bit unlikely at this point, but if I'm still with him when the next step in his political career comes, then--yeah, he thinks he's going to be able to keep me out of it, but it's clear even from the tone of what I read online today that it won't be up to him. (Of course, if I'm still even with him, then that will...ack. Anyway.) Which is all a long way of setting up the fact that I about had a heart attack tonight when I got a call from an unknown New Jersey number on my cell. Especially since we'd been flirting a bit over email in the afternoon. As it turns out, though, it was just my aunt--calling, I suppose, from a hotel rather than her cell--but I only found that out when I listened to the message. I have a pretty strict policy of not answering numbers I don't recognize.
* I feel sticky and I swear it's from the fabric softener on this t-shirt. Was that gross?
* I'm beginning to miss creative writing a lot. But I've been pretty good about forcing myself to think in paragraphs and not just mindlessly take notes on things. But the emphasis is on "pretty good."
* When my mother was here, the soap dish fell out of the wall in the shower. She managed to at least provisionally caulk it back in. That lasted until Sunday, probably because it got so damn hot in here. So now I'm back to having a plastic bag taped over a gaping hole in my shower. I'm waiting a few days before calling the landlord because I don't want to be stuck here until I'm ready. Also, this feels stupider than the toilet situation--not that this one is my fault any more than that one, but still.
* My life has been vastly improved by my cultivating the habit of making coffee before I go to bed and then putting it in the refrigerator--hence, iced coffee in the morning, and something more securely portable. This will be essential when I start teaching that 8:00 class.
* Finally, I may be starting to heal from K, since I was able to watch an episode of the Daily Show without thinking about him and getting depressed. Technically, I stopped watching during the writers' strike, but K first entered my consciousness as "dude in my German class who looks like Jon Stewart," and that's been sort of making me reluctant to go back. Oddly, though, now I find the whole thing less funny than I did--am I an enormous killjoy because I got kind of queasy about the Gitmo jokes? I don't know. I suppose I have other things I'm supposed to think about. Tomorrow--Coleridge and the syncope!
* Speaking of clothes, my bridesmaid's dress has been chosen for me. It's not actually that bad, right? I don't think I've ever worn a strapless gown in my life, though. As I observed to my mother this morning, that's a good incentive to keep going to the gym through the summer and fall, especially because I will be the token old maid in the wedding party.
* I feel like I've been working really hard today without getting anything done. I will be switching to full on work with Coleridge tomorrow. Well, that and getting my paperwork together at New Teaching School which Needs a Pseudonym, having lunch with an aunt and uncle who are in town, and going to hear some friends read / perform in Brooklyn. So tomorrow, alas, may not be a gym day.
* Speaking of NTSwNaP (see what I mean?). I got a whole bunch of info on the fall semester from the Writing Director there. I'm already in a different world--there's just more here in terms of sheer documentation than I got from Erstwhile Teaching College in two years. And it's a whole new ballgame, one that's played without course readers and where you actually write course descriptions based on topics from which the students then choose. In a general sense, I realize that the centers of adjunct autonomy are almost completely reversed in these two situations--ETC has a reader that they want you to teach from, and they require more essays, but beyond that they aren't at the moment pushing their adjuncts to do much more that's intellectually coherent, as long as the kids learn some grammar along the way. My class tended to be organized around some broad units, but they weren't necessarily connected to each other--and, especially in this last semester, they were all in a certain sense tailored to the institution, which basically meant that I could be very self-referential in terms of things like linguistic diversity, what it means to write in English, and so on--and be reasonably certain that 90% of the people in the room had personal experience with that kind of thing. This new teaching gig will be the first time I will be standing in front of a classroom of majority English-speakers (as a first language, that is)--not to mention students who will probably all be living in dorms close to campus rather than with their parents in Ozone Park and Bensonhurst. And all of this makes me a bit nostalgic (read: terrified of change) for ETC and makes me wonder if I shouldn't give up that class--but the places are so different that it doesn't make sense for me--at least not in what will be a prospectusing and fellowship applying semester--to be teaching at both. Also, in a very practical sense--the New Gig is probably closer to the kinds of writing programs that are going on at places where I would like to teach. Not that I want to teach exclusively in a writing program, but I think it'll be good to have both things.
* The Poet has been getting himself into political controversy in his hometown, and it's the kind of thing where if it backfires in a certain way it's going to hit me too. Okay, so that's a little bit unlikely at this point, but if I'm still with him when the next step in his political career comes, then--yeah, he thinks he's going to be able to keep me out of it, but it's clear even from the tone of what I read online today that it won't be up to him. (Of course, if I'm still even with him, then that will...ack. Anyway.) Which is all a long way of setting up the fact that I about had a heart attack tonight when I got a call from an unknown New Jersey number on my cell. Especially since we'd been flirting a bit over email in the afternoon. As it turns out, though, it was just my aunt--calling, I suppose, from a hotel rather than her cell--but I only found that out when I listened to the message. I have a pretty strict policy of not answering numbers I don't recognize.
* I feel sticky and I swear it's from the fabric softener on this t-shirt. Was that gross?
* I'm beginning to miss creative writing a lot. But I've been pretty good about forcing myself to think in paragraphs and not just mindlessly take notes on things. But the emphasis is on "pretty good."
* When my mother was here, the soap dish fell out of the wall in the shower. She managed to at least provisionally caulk it back in. That lasted until Sunday, probably because it got so damn hot in here. So now I'm back to having a plastic bag taped over a gaping hole in my shower. I'm waiting a few days before calling the landlord because I don't want to be stuck here until I'm ready. Also, this feels stupider than the toilet situation--not that this one is my fault any more than that one, but still.
* My life has been vastly improved by my cultivating the habit of making coffee before I go to bed and then putting it in the refrigerator--hence, iced coffee in the morning, and something more securely portable. This will be essential when I start teaching that 8:00 class.
* Finally, I may be starting to heal from K, since I was able to watch an episode of the Daily Show without thinking about him and getting depressed. Technically, I stopped watching during the writers' strike, but K first entered my consciousness as "dude in my German class who looks like Jon Stewart," and that's been sort of making me reluctant to go back. Oddly, though, now I find the whole thing less funny than I did--am I an enormous killjoy because I got kind of queasy about the Gitmo jokes? I don't know. I suppose I have other things I'm supposed to think about. Tomorrow--Coleridge and the syncope!
Loosely related
Cities on the Hill
In a certain sense I dream a lot--I'm the kind of person who can get a decent REM sleep going in an hour's nap. But a lot of my dreams barely scratch the surface of my unconscious. Seriously, I had a dream the other night about updating the dates on my syllabus at Erstwhile Teaching College, then had to wake up at 4 a.m. to remind myself that it's only June and I'm not even teaching that class in the fall. Fun stuff, but not exactly the kind of thing where one needs to call in the Freudians. When I have actual dreams (this strikes me as a stupid construction, but go with me), they are frequently about travel--I have entire genres of recurring dreams about airplanes (usually, though, with weird routes like going from JFK to LaGuardia), about subway/train travel (possibly one of the reasons I find the real-life MTA so godawfully depressing by comparison), and so on. Mostly, though, I dream about the margin areas we never get to--almost Brigadoon-like places always on the outskirts of the possible, where apartment buildings give way to single family homes and where the landscaping gets better. And often I find myself on hillsides, where the streets are kind of terraced into cliffs. The real-life place that comes to mind as a source for some of this is where my college boyfriend grew up in Palos Verdes, California, but I don't dream about California so much. There are several New Yorks that function this way, but also other places, ones that are less easily placeable. Sometimes these are small hill-dwelling communities where you can't even get cars there. Often there are forests. Last week I felt like I was one the outskirts of some German town. And last night it was Sydney--where I've never been, though Australia figures in my dreams a lot too (incidentally, that's the one element in all this that does have at least a rough correlative that I can trace)--and we could look down and see the Opera House. It was all very green--so many of my cityscapes, my cities on the hills, are heavy on the foliage.
I don't know why I'm relating this right now; possibly it's a placeholder for something I haven't figured out yet; it's been sort of existing in my head all morning.
The Black Box
I've been feeling like I need to start abstracting myself from the descriptions of my own psychotic / depressive episodes. Suffice it to say it was a difficult weekend--in some ways darker than anything I've experienced in years, for not-entirely discernable reasons, which only makes things worse. Also making things worse was the fact that I didn't get an air conditioner until Monday (a story in itself that I won't relate here, in part because I'm not sure it makes me look all that good) and that my not-getting an air conditioner until Monday was part of a longer chain of events that started off the general panic that led to the breakdown. Perhaps the less said about that, the better. I'm trying to remain functional and non-alienating, also trying to keep up the being-disciplined thing--especially while The Poet is out of town. (For about two weeks, but given the way it intersects with our schedule of seeing each other, it's effectively three for me.) I have been to the gym twice this week, which is as many times as I went to the gym last week and today is only Wednesday.
When I'm too depressed or tired to work lately, I've been watching St Elsewhere and Hill Street Blues. They're actually kind of fascinating--if I didn't have to think about things like Tennyson and live burial and the sublime and all that, it would be fun to write up some of my longer meditations, especially comparing the first season of St Elsewhere to that of Grey's Anatomy, and so on. But I have to think about all those other things, so I'll just make the incredibly shallow comment that, at least as far as the first season of Hill Street Blues goes, Daniel Travanti is incredibly hot. (He's about 40 in these episodes--perfect for me, actually.) I mean, damn. He actually reminds me a bit of E., who I'm allegedly meeting for drinks next week.
This isn't, of course, what the black box would tell us if we played it back after the crash. I can't bring myself to listen to it--better, perhaps, to find the rest of this in the rubble.
Didn't I read this in a New Yorker fiction piece?
"I'm loyal to the people I sleep with, baby, I'm so loyal, I'll always be loyal to you, you have to know that, okay?"
On Monday morning, he didn't remember calling me for the second time on Sunday night. I had predicted that it would be so, in the course of the conversation he doesn't remember, around the point in the conversation when his slurring changed from, "I could really love you, you know that?" to "I love you, baby, do you love me?" And somewhere along the line when I was telling him that I didn't, he fell asleep and I could hear him snoring until he dropped the phone. And I decided that at least I couldn't stay mad about his having forgotten he'd had plans with the people he was with until after he'd made plans with me that he had to cancel.
But still, all this caring, suddenly. "You're having sex with someone who makes you happy," said my occasionally quite clearheaded friend yesterday, over happy hour frozen margaritas, and yes, but...no, this is what I should try to keep in my head.
But I told him I needed to know why he does what he does. He manages to be so many different things--some of them, clearly, more publicly than others. I told him (knowing he wouldn't remember) that I can't love him until I know why he takes on so much. Sometimes it's hard not to see the abyss every time I blink.
"I've been staying out drinking in late night establishments telling strangers personal things..." (Undedicated: Regina Spektor's "Summer in the City")
As she says somewhere in here: "Don't get me wrong dear, in general I'm doing quite fine."
In a certain sense I dream a lot--I'm the kind of person who can get a decent REM sleep going in an hour's nap. But a lot of my dreams barely scratch the surface of my unconscious. Seriously, I had a dream the other night about updating the dates on my syllabus at Erstwhile Teaching College, then had to wake up at 4 a.m. to remind myself that it's only June and I'm not even teaching that class in the fall. Fun stuff, but not exactly the kind of thing where one needs to call in the Freudians. When I have actual dreams (this strikes me as a stupid construction, but go with me), they are frequently about travel--I have entire genres of recurring dreams about airplanes (usually, though, with weird routes like going from JFK to LaGuardia), about subway/train travel (possibly one of the reasons I find the real-life MTA so godawfully depressing by comparison), and so on. Mostly, though, I dream about the margin areas we never get to--almost Brigadoon-like places always on the outskirts of the possible, where apartment buildings give way to single family homes and where the landscaping gets better. And often I find myself on hillsides, where the streets are kind of terraced into cliffs. The real-life place that comes to mind as a source for some of this is where my college boyfriend grew up in Palos Verdes, California, but I don't dream about California so much. There are several New Yorks that function this way, but also other places, ones that are less easily placeable. Sometimes these are small hill-dwelling communities where you can't even get cars there. Often there are forests. Last week I felt like I was one the outskirts of some German town. And last night it was Sydney--where I've never been, though Australia figures in my dreams a lot too (incidentally, that's the one element in all this that does have at least a rough correlative that I can trace)--and we could look down and see the Opera House. It was all very green--so many of my cityscapes, my cities on the hills, are heavy on the foliage.
I don't know why I'm relating this right now; possibly it's a placeholder for something I haven't figured out yet; it's been sort of existing in my head all morning.
The Black Box
I've been feeling like I need to start abstracting myself from the descriptions of my own psychotic / depressive episodes. Suffice it to say it was a difficult weekend--in some ways darker than anything I've experienced in years, for not-entirely discernable reasons, which only makes things worse. Also making things worse was the fact that I didn't get an air conditioner until Monday (a story in itself that I won't relate here, in part because I'm not sure it makes me look all that good) and that my not-getting an air conditioner until Monday was part of a longer chain of events that started off the general panic that led to the breakdown. Perhaps the less said about that, the better. I'm trying to remain functional and non-alienating, also trying to keep up the being-disciplined thing--especially while The Poet is out of town. (For about two weeks, but given the way it intersects with our schedule of seeing each other, it's effectively three for me.) I have been to the gym twice this week, which is as many times as I went to the gym last week and today is only Wednesday.
When I'm too depressed or tired to work lately, I've been watching St Elsewhere and Hill Street Blues. They're actually kind of fascinating--if I didn't have to think about things like Tennyson and live burial and the sublime and all that, it would be fun to write up some of my longer meditations, especially comparing the first season of St Elsewhere to that of Grey's Anatomy, and so on. But I have to think about all those other things, so I'll just make the incredibly shallow comment that, at least as far as the first season of Hill Street Blues goes, Daniel Travanti is incredibly hot. (He's about 40 in these episodes--perfect for me, actually.) I mean, damn. He actually reminds me a bit of E., who I'm allegedly meeting for drinks next week.
This isn't, of course, what the black box would tell us if we played it back after the crash. I can't bring myself to listen to it--better, perhaps, to find the rest of this in the rubble.
Didn't I read this in a New Yorker fiction piece?
"I'm loyal to the people I sleep with, baby, I'm so loyal, I'll always be loyal to you, you have to know that, okay?"
On Monday morning, he didn't remember calling me for the second time on Sunday night. I had predicted that it would be so, in the course of the conversation he doesn't remember, around the point in the conversation when his slurring changed from, "I could really love you, you know that?" to "I love you, baby, do you love me?" And somewhere along the line when I was telling him that I didn't, he fell asleep and I could hear him snoring until he dropped the phone. And I decided that at least I couldn't stay mad about his having forgotten he'd had plans with the people he was with until after he'd made plans with me that he had to cancel.
But still, all this caring, suddenly. "You're having sex with someone who makes you happy," said my occasionally quite clearheaded friend yesterday, over happy hour frozen margaritas, and yes, but...no, this is what I should try to keep in my head.
But I told him I needed to know why he does what he does. He manages to be so many different things--some of them, clearly, more publicly than others. I told him (knowing he wouldn't remember) that I can't love him until I know why he takes on so much. Sometimes it's hard not to see the abyss every time I blink.
"I've been staying out drinking in late night establishments telling strangers personal things..." (Undedicated: Regina Spektor's "Summer in the City")
As she says somewhere in here: "Don't get me wrong dear, in general I'm doing quite fine."
6.05.2008
Unwarranted disaffections
Nobody's who I want them to be today. If that makes any sense. I feel like that sounds horrible that way, but I can't figure out a way to explain it.
I'm really trying to finish the first round of Tennyson stuff today. I wish I had been at this point on Monday. I'm trying not to get paralyzed, and I did write for a bit yesterday.
The crisis that The Poet and his wife were having on Monday turned out to be a false alarm, but not so much of one that I've been able to see him since. This bothers me. The fact that it bothers me also means that I care and that in turn bothers me, and that for some reason makes me want to look up in the library and see K, even though I know he's teaching this month and it would be a bad idea anyway.
So I feel like I'm a bit knotted up, I want to see my damn boyfriend, and it's going to be in the 90s this weekend and I still don't have an air conditioner.
I'm really trying to finish the first round of Tennyson stuff today. I wish I had been at this point on Monday. I'm trying not to get paralyzed, and I did write for a bit yesterday.
The crisis that The Poet and his wife were having on Monday turned out to be a false alarm, but not so much of one that I've been able to see him since. This bothers me. The fact that it bothers me also means that I care and that in turn bothers me, and that for some reason makes me want to look up in the library and see K, even though I know he's teaching this month and it would be a bad idea anyway.
So I feel like I'm a bit knotted up, I want to see my damn boyfriend, and it's going to be in the 90s this weekend and I still don't have an air conditioner.
6.03.2008
In which my best laid plans set a new record for evanescence
Today kicked my ass, plain and simple.
This is a hard way to start the summer.
At least, however, I had only gotten as far as the Manhattan Bridge on the B train before I realized, with a groan, that I didn't have my keys.
And at least when I finally made it back to Teaching College after another 45 minutes on several trains, the building was still open and my keys still where I left them in the bag I take to the gym and keep in my desk. But so much for being rewarded for making healthy choices, huh?
The Poet called me at 9:15 this morning about a library book. Except, as I realized later, it wasn't really about that. It was sort of a crazy conversation, and sometime in the midafternoon, I began to understand that he was trying not to come apart. And now I have a new unlikely phrase to add to my collection of sentences that I never thought would be necessary to use to describe my life, namely: my boyfriend's wife is dying. There, I said it, and it looks awful and, like so many of these things, I find myself wanting to protest, "it isn't as bad as it sounds." But this one does change the stakes in some ways. He had been at a work thing near school this evening--before the latest news, we'd planned to spend the night together. We met for a drink instead--it seemed schizophrenic, like so much of the rest of this day (did I mention that the stated project was to work on Maud?), and I could see his compartmentalizing skills start to fray, one minute talking about surfing or the contract he just landed at work or the department exam but then nearly breaking down at the bar. He says she is the woman who broke him, who made him understand what it meant to be a human being. And I hold his hand because there is nothing else I can do and I try not to be scared by how much I find myself caring about him.
None of this is, of course, conductive to a drama-free summer. I mean, there was going to be drama. But on day one?
On the other hand:
It's not that I didn't try to be healthy and productive, or even that I didn't succeed in some ways. My shoulders are still tight and kind of painfully so, but I went to the gym at Erstwhile Teaching College anyway, ate reasonably healthy food, and drank lots of water.
And it's not like I didn't get some good news along the way--mainly, that my adjuncting offer was formalized for the fall at the school that is near my undergrad alma mater. The idea of teaching two classes and doing so in Manhattan at 8 in the morning is a bit daunting--and I will actually miss my students at Erstwhile Teaching College--but I think this is the right move for a number of reasons.
And yet:
Writing doesn't feel easier like I thought it would post-orals. I still feel like an idiot when it comes to framing and I still don't think I can answer the "so what" question. Also, my shoulders really hurt, my kitchen is a mess, and the guy's coming in the morning to look at my toilet. So maybe it's about time for bed.
Ack.
This is a hard way to start the summer.
At least, however, I had only gotten as far as the Manhattan Bridge on the B train before I realized, with a groan, that I didn't have my keys.
And at least when I finally made it back to Teaching College after another 45 minutes on several trains, the building was still open and my keys still where I left them in the bag I take to the gym and keep in my desk. But so much for being rewarded for making healthy choices, huh?
The Poet called me at 9:15 this morning about a library book. Except, as I realized later, it wasn't really about that. It was sort of a crazy conversation, and sometime in the midafternoon, I began to understand that he was trying not to come apart. And now I have a new unlikely phrase to add to my collection of sentences that I never thought would be necessary to use to describe my life, namely: my boyfriend's wife is dying. There, I said it, and it looks awful and, like so many of these things, I find myself wanting to protest, "it isn't as bad as it sounds." But this one does change the stakes in some ways. He had been at a work thing near school this evening--before the latest news, we'd planned to spend the night together. We met for a drink instead--it seemed schizophrenic, like so much of the rest of this day (did I mention that the stated project was to work on Maud?), and I could see his compartmentalizing skills start to fray, one minute talking about surfing or the contract he just landed at work or the department exam but then nearly breaking down at the bar. He says she is the woman who broke him, who made him understand what it meant to be a human being. And I hold his hand because there is nothing else I can do and I try not to be scared by how much I find myself caring about him.
None of this is, of course, conductive to a drama-free summer. I mean, there was going to be drama. But on day one?
On the other hand:
It's not that I didn't try to be healthy and productive, or even that I didn't succeed in some ways. My shoulders are still tight and kind of painfully so, but I went to the gym at Erstwhile Teaching College anyway, ate reasonably healthy food, and drank lots of water.
And it's not like I didn't get some good news along the way--mainly, that my adjuncting offer was formalized for the fall at the school that is near my undergrad alma mater. The idea of teaching two classes and doing so in Manhattan at 8 in the morning is a bit daunting--and I will actually miss my students at Erstwhile Teaching College--but I think this is the right move for a number of reasons.
And yet:
Writing doesn't feel easier like I thought it would post-orals. I still feel like an idiot when it comes to framing and I still don't think I can answer the "so what" question. Also, my shoulders really hurt, my kitchen is a mess, and the guy's coming in the morning to look at my toilet. So maybe it's about time for bed.
Ack.
6.01.2008
What my apartment has in common with the International Space Station
Yes, they are both suffering from a broken toilet. Mine isn't quite as catastrophic (by the way, who builds a space station with just one bathroom?), but it does involve having to turn off the water supply so the tank doesn't just keep running and running.
And with that, I announce my return from Wisconsin and mark the beginning of the summer. Which will no doubt be a classy one, if this first post is any indication.
(The image is from Sue Rowe's website. My parents have both her books in the bathroom at the lake, and reading them through is a ritual for me every time I go up there. Sorry that this post is all about toilets, basically.)
Wisconsin itself was actually quite wonderful, for the simple reason that I didn't think about anything, not about my life, not about my work--hence, no enormous heartpourings to my parents, no inappropriate allusions to my sex life, no political baiting. It was lovely. I should try this more often. Seriously, though--it could have been hard. The cabin was where, over Columbus weekend last year, I started to first realize that I was pregnant, and in my whole story with K, it has the virtue of being that eerie calm before the storm, when I at least I was still doing my German homework having not begun to sleep with a married guy...and so on. But I managed to keep the vast majority of those feelings at bay. I played roughly 7,000 games of Scrabble with my mother, and won about 3,450 of them. My dad started to give my boat driving lessons, and he took the blame for my hitting a sandbar and taking a chunk out of the propeller. I read most of Trollope's The Prime Minister--a somewhat perverse choice, but really--the Palliser novels are like Victorian candy to me right now. I didn't even bring any de Man.
One of the highlights of the trip was hiking with my mother on the Three Eagle Trail that runs between Three Lakes and Eagle River. We had just intended to kill time while my dad worked in the library (the library in Three Lakes has free wi-fi--a big draw), so we set out to see where it would take us and assumed my dad would pick us up easily when he was done. Except around mile 4, the trail veers off from the highway, and there's no easy way out except to walk for another 4.4 miles. Which we did, and it was totally worth the sore legs and not eating lunch until 3:00. And we agreed that we wouldn't have done it if we knew how long it would have been.
I also saw a loon (several, actually) in the water for the first time. Nearly 20 years of hanging out in the Northwoods and--finally. Also, there were multiple eagles and an impressive blue heron on the dock. So a good time, even if it did get down to below freezing one night. I should do a post on the airports when I get the chance--both the Foucauldian efficiency of the TSA at the Rhinelander airport and the white-people fest that is Terminal A at the Minneapolis-St Paul airport. The latter makes me think that I should maybe pass on applying to jobs in, say, South Dakota.
And now I'm back, easing into the summer where I should be hitting the ground running. Coming back was hard, for reasons I don't totally feel like going into at midnight when I still have dishes to do. Suffice it to say that I went a little soft towards the end of my orals reading (okay, a lot soft and it was almost a month). It's time to pull myself back together and be more protective of my time. I was mad at the Poet for a little while, but I'm not any more, as long as he keeps his whole political thing under control and in New Jersey, where it won't be trying to figure out who I am and if I have a MySpace page. I'm having some issues with my shoulder...got a massage from a grad school colleague who's also trained in that kind of thing, and it helped quite a bit in general, but I'm still sore. Made it hard to do much yesterday, but since it woke me up at the crack of dawn, I was able to go to the Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza (awesome!! Except that people should really leave their bikes at the edges. And I have a feeling that maybe it isn't so much the place to meet straight guys who are single.) and be back home (with strawberries and spinach and grass fed beef, etc.) before 10. So I went and wandered around the Brooklyn Museum--of which I am a new member--for a few hours. I thought "The Dinner Party" was oddly moving. I'll also be going back to hang with the Ghada Amer exhibit some more. It was pouring rain when I planned to leave, so I joined a tour on "The History of the Modern Chair" instead.
And now...summer. Tomorrow I hit the ground running for real. I've thought about how I'd like my days to be, and I will be doing a test run this week. First order of business is to be smart about Tennyson, in abbreviated form, just enough to convince the Important Journal Editor that I can do the project as soon as the other one is done. I'm also trying to address a few admin-y things this week--the address change that refuses to take, rectifying my inadvertent disenfranchisement. I'm sure you're on the edge of your seat.
And with that, I announce my return from Wisconsin and mark the beginning of the summer. Which will no doubt be a classy one, if this first post is any indication.
(The image is from Sue Rowe's website. My parents have both her books in the bathroom at the lake, and reading them through is a ritual for me every time I go up there. Sorry that this post is all about toilets, basically.)
Wisconsin itself was actually quite wonderful, for the simple reason that I didn't think about anything, not about my life, not about my work--hence, no enormous heartpourings to my parents, no inappropriate allusions to my sex life, no political baiting. It was lovely. I should try this more often. Seriously, though--it could have been hard. The cabin was where, over Columbus weekend last year, I started to first realize that I was pregnant, and in my whole story with K, it has the virtue of being that eerie calm before the storm, when I at least I was still doing my German homework having not begun to sleep with a married guy...and so on. But I managed to keep the vast majority of those feelings at bay. I played roughly 7,000 games of Scrabble with my mother, and won about 3,450 of them. My dad started to give my boat driving lessons, and he took the blame for my hitting a sandbar and taking a chunk out of the propeller. I read most of Trollope's The Prime Minister--a somewhat perverse choice, but really--the Palliser novels are like Victorian candy to me right now. I didn't even bring any de Man.
One of the highlights of the trip was hiking with my mother on the Three Eagle Trail that runs between Three Lakes and Eagle River. We had just intended to kill time while my dad worked in the library (the library in Three Lakes has free wi-fi--a big draw), so we set out to see where it would take us and assumed my dad would pick us up easily when he was done. Except around mile 4, the trail veers off from the highway, and there's no easy way out except to walk for another 4.4 miles. Which we did, and it was totally worth the sore legs and not eating lunch until 3:00. And we agreed that we wouldn't have done it if we knew how long it would have been.
I also saw a loon (several, actually) in the water for the first time. Nearly 20 years of hanging out in the Northwoods and--finally. Also, there were multiple eagles and an impressive blue heron on the dock. So a good time, even if it did get down to below freezing one night. I should do a post on the airports when I get the chance--both the Foucauldian efficiency of the TSA at the Rhinelander airport and the white-people fest that is Terminal A at the Minneapolis-St Paul airport. The latter makes me think that I should maybe pass on applying to jobs in, say, South Dakota.
And now I'm back, easing into the summer where I should be hitting the ground running. Coming back was hard, for reasons I don't totally feel like going into at midnight when I still have dishes to do. Suffice it to say that I went a little soft towards the end of my orals reading (okay, a lot soft and it was almost a month). It's time to pull myself back together and be more protective of my time. I was mad at the Poet for a little while, but I'm not any more, as long as he keeps his whole political thing under control and in New Jersey, where it won't be trying to figure out who I am and if I have a MySpace page. I'm having some issues with my shoulder...got a massage from a grad school colleague who's also trained in that kind of thing, and it helped quite a bit in general, but I'm still sore. Made it hard to do much yesterday, but since it woke me up at the crack of dawn, I was able to go to the Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza (awesome!! Except that people should really leave their bikes at the edges. And I have a feeling that maybe it isn't so much the place to meet straight guys who are single.) and be back home (with strawberries and spinach and grass fed beef, etc.) before 10. So I went and wandered around the Brooklyn Museum--of which I am a new member--for a few hours. I thought "The Dinner Party" was oddly moving. I'll also be going back to hang with the Ghada Amer exhibit some more. It was pouring rain when I planned to leave, so I joined a tour on "The History of the Modern Chair" instead.
And now...summer. Tomorrow I hit the ground running for real. I've thought about how I'd like my days to be, and I will be doing a test run this week. First order of business is to be smart about Tennyson, in abbreviated form, just enough to convince the Important Journal Editor that I can do the project as soon as the other one is done. I'm also trying to address a few admin-y things this week--the address change that refuses to take, rectifying my inadvertent disenfranchisement. I'm sure you're on the edge of your seat.
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