The Victorian Project
Sent the draft of the Victorian project to VIE yesterday afternoon--yes, a week after our original deadline. I haven't heard back from him, but I'm crossing my fingers that it will be okay since a) it wasn't a "real" deadline, just a suggestion to allow for another substantial revision before the real deadline and there's still time for that if necessary, b) he was on vacation until Friday, and c) I'm not sure that there was anything else I could have done to have made it go much faster. It's a 10,000-word piece right now, and between 7,500 and 8,000 of those words did not exist prior to this draft. And I think that it's probably one of the better things I've written, ever.
The Romantic Project
...is due at the end of the week. I'm still not as confident in this as in the Victorian project, but I'm feeling okay about it. Doing a read-through today, comparing notes, figuring out what to focus on. I want to tweak a few things, amplify some points, maybe ditch a couple of others as being more trouble than they're worth, but I'm actually starting to believe that Committee Member was right when she said that it was close, or at least fine to go out to the reviewers. Hopefully, this means that I'll be able to have a relatively normal sleep schedule this week, since last week really got out of control. As I am no longer 20 years old, I also no longer get the same kick out of seeing the sun come up at 4:45 on a Wednesday morning.
My feelings about the way The Professor read the Romantic Project
I made myself sit down after lunch today and actually read through The Professor's comments on the Romantic Project. It's possible that with the distance of a few weeks, and 10,000 decent words on my Victorian poet behind me, I was better able to handle it. Okay, so it wasn't a total hatchet job. Some of the comments were actually helpful, and a lot of what I'd been unhappy about was just him being him. And I get that. And I can take it. But it wasn't completely what I'd needed from him, and I'm still no longer sure that I should be writing everything to meet his approval. I'm not quite as angry as I was. We haven't communicated since he sent me the comments and I wrote a (somewhat passive-aggressively grateful) acknowledgment that I'd gotten them. He called me last week, but I didn't pick up the phone and since he didn't leave a message and I didn't call back. It's possible, of course, that he read my post here about that. But none of this is really at the top of my list of things I'm coping with this week.
Mornings
I've sat every morning (or whenever I get up, which has mostly been before noon, but sometimes just barely), except for Friday when I was with The Poet in DC. The second week has been harder than the first; I'm struggling a bit with the posture, trying to figure out how to make it work for me without slouching, and I'm finding that it takes me almost the whole time just to really get in the right position, and then my timer goes off. I do attribute a couple of insights about the Victorian Project to the sitting, though, and I think overall it's a good thing--helping me to, slowly, shift my understanding of what it means to do nothing. And maybe The Poet can help me work on some of this later in the week. In a more general sense, though, this is giving me the impetus to change the way I deal with mornings in general--instead of getting up and going right to the computer, which slows me down and stresses me out, I get up, have some coffee, sit, and get in the shower. Ideally, anyway. It's not getting me out of the house much faster yet, but I do feel a bit better.
Exercise plans
...have pretty much fallen off the table due to this latest round of intensive writing. I need to get them back in gear, since I only have the membership at Erstwhile Teaching College until the end of August and won't be able to renew it until later in September. I suddenly noticed yesterday that I've gained a bit of weight as of late. Probably time to drink a little bit less beer, make sure to eat all the beets I keep buying from the Greenmarket.
How I feel about Amtrak
The first thought I had upon arriving at Penn Station on Thursday morning, sweating and on about four hours' sleep was...clusterfuck. However, this was before I got on the train (not even an Acela) and discovered the joy that was the Quiet Car. This made for a lovely, lovely trip, except for the part between Philly and Baltimore, when it filled up with teenagers who I'm sure thought they were being quiet. The Poet and I took the Acela back up together and that was also fun, mostly because we had a lot of wine.
24 hours in DC
Had I not gone to the the college I actually attended, I would have gone to Georgetown's School of Foreign Service instead. That's what everyone who knew me at the time thought I was going to do. Coming back to DC for the first time in seven or eight years got me thinking about roads not taken, and about what I would be doing if I had moved to Washington instead of New York. And then, about a half hour after I got to the hotel, I started laughing, realizing that I'd probably be doing pretty much the same thing--having sex with a married politician in a hotel room on a Thursday afternoon. The Poet also thought this was hilarious, though I realize this is going to be one of those stories, like the "How I met K after German class" one, that not everyone finds funny.
In general, 24 hours in DC did for me what five days in Wisconsin didn't: namely, make me appreciate living in New York and want to go home. The restaurant where we had dinner was kind of a joke, and I got carded three times at two of the bars we went to--The Poet found that pretty funny. Our hotel bar was awesome, but closed at like 10. But, as 24 hour periods go, it was really nice, surprisingly relaxing--and it gave me a chance to spend time with The Poet in a way that I don't usually get to because of all the...well, all the extenuating circumstances. We had a really good talk on the train ride home, about all kinds of things. I also took a picture of us with my laptop camera. Now I just need to get another one where it doesn't look like I have roughly eight chins. Because I'm pretty sure I don't, at least not yet.
My idea for this blog post
This was a much more boring post than I was planning it to be, though I'm not sure what I expected, considering that I've spent most of the last week either writing or watching Grey's Anatomy. (I don't care what people say about it being realistic or not, but I find the Derek-Meredith dynamic completely realistic and very similar to K and me--though I've never met his wife and he was the one cheating.) Which means it's probably time to get back to work.
7.22.2008
Making adjustments, walking on water
Remember the thing I wrote about Hegel and the thousand ways of being unhappy and how a lot of the Phenomenology of Spirit seems to be about adjusting yourself to the way the world changes? Yeah, it was in the old blog which I'm still loath to link to--especially since I got an out-of-the-blue email from The Ex today which was conciliatory, but just so totally out of the realm of things I'm thinking about at the moment--but ANYway, the point is that I'm still trying to remind myself about that every day, and that it's Hegel as much as anything else that's pushing me towards the whole Zen thing, which if you know me at all in real life is very much not my preferred style, but maybe, just maybe....
Because I have to just keep telling myself over and over again that I will get done what needs to be done and that I will not go crazy and that it's okay to go out when I can (though probably not to bull-riding because I know I won't be able to keep control of myself) and take occasional breaks and that even when everything takes longer than it should it will still be okay. And there's a reason why, three weeks ago, right after my meeting with the committee member who should be my adviser but isn't totally in the right field, I came home and was moved almost to tears by this passage in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind:
I think I would be happier overall if I could learn how to experience being thwarted, straying from my own plans, falling short of my own to do list, struggling with my own writing, as an act of losing my balance instead. And I am hoping that this will allow me to continue to believe that this will all work somehow, that I am only behind because of the structures that I set up, that there is still time--even though I need to stay in this professional mode, which I think I am doing--and somehow I will be able to catch myself, with the nets I've been weaving for several years, trusting my own reading. And the rhythms of my own thinking--it's after 3:30; it will be stupid to keep my alarm at 7, but I can let it go off at 10 and still have time to sit zazen and eat a decent meal and get to school by around noon and work until 9 and so on and this will be okay and I will go to bed early tomorrow and then figure things out from there.
It all just might work.
Because I have to just keep telling myself over and over again that I will get done what needs to be done and that I will not go crazy and that it's okay to go out when I can (though probably not to bull-riding because I know I won't be able to keep control of myself) and take occasional breaks and that even when everything takes longer than it should it will still be okay. And there's a reason why, three weeks ago, right after my meeting with the committee member who should be my adviser but isn't totally in the right field, I came home and was moved almost to tears by this passage in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind:
To live in the realm of Buddha nature means to die as a small being, moment after moment. When we lose our balance, we die, but at the same time we also develop ourselves, we grow. Whatever we see is changing, losing its balance. The reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance, but its background is always in perfect harmony. This is how everything exists in the realm of Buddha nature, losing its balance against a background of perfect balance. So if you see things without realizing the background of Buddha nature, everything appears to be in the form of suffering. But if you understand the background of existence, you realize that suffering itself is how we live, and how we extend our life. So in Zen we sometimes emphasize the imbalance or disorder of life.
I think I would be happier overall if I could learn how to experience being thwarted, straying from my own plans, falling short of my own to do list, struggling with my own writing, as an act of losing my balance instead. And I am hoping that this will allow me to continue to believe that this will all work somehow, that I am only behind because of the structures that I set up, that there is still time--even though I need to stay in this professional mode, which I think I am doing--and somehow I will be able to catch myself, with the nets I've been weaving for several years, trusting my own reading. And the rhythms of my own thinking--it's after 3:30; it will be stupid to keep my alarm at 7, but I can let it go off at 10 and still have time to sit zazen and eat a decent meal and get to school by around noon and work until 9 and so on and this will be okay and I will go to bed early tomorrow and then figure things out from there.
It all just might work.
7.21.2008
Lunchtime conversation
My co-Victorianist friend M., to me: "You seem to be really good at getting guys to say mean things to you."
Me: "Actually, it's only single guys who say mean things to me. Married dudes say nice things to me all the time."
(Ironically, I ran into K. in the cafeteria on my way out.)
A case in point of the above: someone who is not The Poet got drunk on Saturday night and told me he loved me before I got on the D train. It was actually kind of sweet, in a certain way that has a lot to do with it not having to mean anything.
Otherwise: the best-laid plans of the last post have not come to fruition yet, but VIE is still on vacation until Friday, so there's no immediate pressure on that front, except that which comes from my own schedule. I'd still like to have something presentable on Wednesday.
It turns out that The Poet is a totally excellent working companion. For most of the afternoon, we didn't even talk to or look at each other, and I was more focused just from knowing he was there. At least until he started having a really fraught conversation with a reporter.
The Poet also taught me how to sit zazen, which I did for the first time on my own this morning. Had one false start, but the 15 minutes actually went kind of quickly. I think this could be a good thing--I am trying to figure out healthier and more productive models of doing nothing. If that makes any sense. I'm interested to see what happens, even though I feel like an enormous dork talking about this in real life. But all the "z" words are cool.
My department mailbox was full of joy today: both Grey's Anatomy season 2 and the latest Complete Peanuts were there. Of course, it's now going to be a bit before I can indulge.
Speaking of which: back to work.
Me: "Actually, it's only single guys who say mean things to me. Married dudes say nice things to me all the time."
(Ironically, I ran into K. in the cafeteria on my way out.)
A case in point of the above: someone who is not The Poet got drunk on Saturday night and told me he loved me before I got on the D train. It was actually kind of sweet, in a certain way that has a lot to do with it not having to mean anything.
Otherwise: the best-laid plans of the last post have not come to fruition yet, but VIE is still on vacation until Friday, so there's no immediate pressure on that front, except that which comes from my own schedule. I'd still like to have something presentable on Wednesday.
It turns out that The Poet is a totally excellent working companion. For most of the afternoon, we didn't even talk to or look at each other, and I was more focused just from knowing he was there. At least until he started having a really fraught conversation with a reporter.
The Poet also taught me how to sit zazen, which I did for the first time on my own this morning. Had one false start, but the 15 minutes actually went kind of quickly. I think this could be a good thing--I am trying to figure out healthier and more productive models of doing nothing. If that makes any sense. I'm interested to see what happens, even though I feel like an enormous dork talking about this in real life. But all the "z" words are cool.
My department mailbox was full of joy today: both Grey's Anatomy season 2 and the latest Complete Peanuts were there. Of course, it's now going to be a bit before I can indulge.
Speaking of which: back to work.
7.19.2008
In which I attempt to be my own adviser
This has been a frustrating day for work--I was at home all day (with the air on, alas) waiting for a UPS shipment and by the time it came it was too late to go into the city even if I wanted to. In reality, it's been a slow week all around--I had sort of an epic drunken trek through Brooklyn last Sunday after banging out a first draft of the Romanticism project; Sunday's insanity was followed by A's wedding drinks, which was destabilizing on its own and also in Williamsburg and thus requiring a 90-minute trek home; and the overall result is that my sleep schedule is still off, but with very little to show for it. Things looked up briefly on Tuesday afternoon as I spent a lot of time making notes on the latest hard copy of the Victorian project, but it was mainly downhill from there. Yesterday (Thursday) I was so tired at school that I just called it quits and ran errands until it was time to run my area meeting, and despite saying that I wasn't going to drink afterwards, I had four margaritas by about 8, came home and did who knows what but it certainly wasn't make dinner, crashed out early after talking to The Poet on the phone, and was up from about 1 to 4 a.m. anyway. I probably should have just made coffee and got to work. But of course I didn't do that. I have been trying to work on the Victorian project all afternoon, evening, and night, but it's not going anywhere--I'm feeling totally blocked, and nothing seems to be helping. I'm starting to panic a bit--it was one thing to throw myself on the mercy of my one committee member for the Romanticism project, but I can't do the same thing with the Very Important Editor of the Very Important Journal, who suggested last month that I send him something around the 20th. (To cover my own ass even then I qualified that with a "thereabouts"--I think that sending something by Wednesday, as long as it is decent, should be acceptable.) It has also been very hot in here--I tried to get through the day with just the fan on and not the A/C, but that was probably stupid. So I think I'll go to school and try to work tomorrow, even though I absolutely despise school on Saturdays.
I don't know what my problem is. It's not the same thing that was wrong with the Romanticism project. I know what I want to do, I know where I need to go. I am trying to stick to outlines and I have several sheets of paper with reminders to myself about what the main parts of the paper need to be and I have tried to be ruthless, in looking through the last working outline that spun wildly out of control, about cutting off lines of inquiry that really don't apply, sticking to the things that the Very Important Editor (hereafter VIE) responded to positively, but also being selective about that. I am not, for the moment, trying to connect the text I'm working on with a bunch of the author's other works. I don't feel the same need to do insane amounts of new research that I did on the Romantic project--though I probably should force myself to read that Gothic Convention book. But for some reason I can just not get started. I have ten disjointed and repetitive pages pasted in from other files, but I can't make them work into a coherent introduction--I think in part because the argument I'm making is somewhat complicated. Or, it's not so complicated, but it's one of those things where I really need to make all three parts come together because I'm not sure any one section really stands alone as interesting. If that makes sense. And I think it will work. But, it will work only if I get the introduction right and I can't seem to do that. I had this problem the last time around, too, so (since that was an outline) I just kind of shrugged and started with "This article makes the case..." Which was unsatisfying to both me and VIE, and we discussed the greater advisability of trying to steer clear of that kind of academese. Unfortunately, beyond that I've got nothing. I've tried out a couple of things but nothing's taking and I feel like I'm wasting a lot of energy spinning my wheels. And I'm mostly just damn frustrated with myself because, after all, a lot of this paper is about fucking premature burial--and if that doesn't lend itself to compelling beginnings, I don't know what does. But I worry about it getting out of control, and I worry that my outline and main points keep sliding out of my head. I've never been good at the whole "framing" thing, and no one seems able to help me.
Speaking of which. I know the other thing driving me right now is the hatchet job that The Professor did on the draft of my Romanticism project. I might be overreacting, and I probably shouldn't have read the email at all, let alone even skimmed his internal comments. But I did. And it's been eating at me since Tuesday, distracting me from the project I'm supposed to be working on, and undermining my confidence at the moment when I really need all the affirmation I can get. I don't mean that I think the draft is by any means perfect, and if I wanted a totally positive reading, I would have sent it elsewhere. I'm used to this with him. But. I'm not used to getting this critique when it's coming from a place outside of our friendship, when the next step isn't to talk more about it in person, when I don't sense any real...I don't know...interest? caring? Like some kind of investment in my success? I know that some of it is meant to be sparring, but...I haven't had the heart to do that with him for awhile--something kind of snapped for me around the night I went out with E. And even though I feel a lot better emotionally in general (and in the specific terms of my interactions with K. and The Poet), I can't muster up whatever it was that allowed me to be friends with The Professor, at least not on the terms that he was offering. And I guess maybe I was hoping that he'd notice, or care. But he didn't. And I knew he'd still be good for the reading and commenting, but what I didn't know was how different that was going to feel when it wasn't backed up by friendship.
(It sure as hell isn't backed up by mentorship. One of the things I always try to do, when reading his work or anyone else's, is offer suggestions where I can for improving things and not just ripping it apart. This is not something that is being reciprocated.)
So, basically, once again, The Professor succeeds in undermining my confidence. (This, as some of you may remember, was something of a theme of last summer as well.) I guess this particular undermining just comes as more of a surprise is all. But perhaps it shouldn't. I think one of the reasons why this is feeling slightly more oppressive this evening is that I needed to consult the hard copy of a seminar paper I wrote on this text about two years ago, and of course the copy I have is not the one where the professor of the class praised it but the one where The Professor wrote his comments. I refer to this as the paper that sucks ass; I totally understand all the ways it went wrong and all that. And I have a certain memory of having been a bit disappointed (but not destroyed) when it failed to impress The Professor as much as I wanted it to. But reading those comments now? Just...wow. It's clear that I was totally in love with him at the time; otherwise I don't think I would have forgiven some of it.
It's a hard line to walk. Because I want rigorous readers. Because a lot of time his readings tend to be spot on, because I don't entirely trust myself to reliably distinguish between his actual arrogance and my inertia or stupidity all of the time. Because I don't think I'm as good as my committee (or just random other people) seem to think I am, and so I'm more inclined to trust him because he's always ready to rip me apart. But I think maybe that's changing, that it's already changed w/r/t the nonacademic part of our relationship and all of the sudden this gets thrown into relief as well.
So I think that I'm better off taking my chances with my own committee members and with editors who have at least been impressed enough with me to think I'm not such a total idiot that I can't improve with a little mentoring and interaction. And this is what I know I need to hold on to. But it's hard, and the length of time I've spent writing this post and not writing my paper is a reflection of that. But, like so many other things this summer, I just have to work with what I've got. And I do feel somewhat better after writing this all out, even though it wasn't totally why I came over here.
To return to the article for a second. I'm probably going to have to do what I did the last time around (since this was the same place I got tripped up on back at the beginning of June with this project). Let the academese stand so I at least know what I'm talking about, then try to go back and put in something interesting. My main work for tomorrow and Sunday should be to articulate the body of the paper, not to cram an anecdote into the beginning. I should at least be able to get through the premature burial parts by some point on Sunday, since I practically know those by heart anyway. And I know my way around this poem, which is something. Beyond that, I let VIE tell me what to do, right?
And so. On top of all this, I've agreed to go to D.C. for about 24 hours later in the week. I'll be joining The Poet on a business trip, which seems rather ridiculously sketchy to me, but as it also involves the opportunity to spend the night in a hotel and thus to take the night off from trying to fight the bugs out of my kitchen and worrying about the effect of my air conditioner on my electric bill. So I'll cope. (I also think this week--he's also planning to come over on Sunday to do some studying--might be the last time he and I get to spend a lot of time together for a bit.) But it does kind of throw a wrench in a lot of other scheduling things and means that I have to be a lot more conscious of how I'm managing my time...like if I don't think I can meet up with people from school for Tuesday night bullriding and not have eight bourbons and get home at three in the morning, I may have to pass that up. Tomorrow (well, today, Saturday) night is the last performance of the last episode of "Hospital" and I will have to be similarly in control because I need Sunday.
And yet, I wrote all of this out and it seems doable. Since I'm already here, why not end on a list? Short of either magically writing the entire Victorian article in the next fifteen minutes or drinking a huge shot of scotch, retyping my list is probably the best way to get myself to sleep.
Saturday: Greenmarket in AM; school (dept lounge) in the afternoon / try to get something printed; Axis in the evening
Sunday: (The Poet, here)--edit what I wrote on Saturday, try to double the page count.
Monday: Completed / printable draft of Victorian project. Email VIE to tell him I have not forgotten our deadline. Get to the gym at some point.
Tuesday: Edits on Victorian draft. Input as many of the changes as possible, including the conversion to Chicago style (though at this point it may not be a top priority). Print stuff for Romanticist project. Print train ticket confirmation. Gym.
Wednesday: Work bee! Hooray! Get the Victorian project sent to VIE come hell or high water. Start working through the Romanticism project again.
Thursday: Gym in AM. Train at noon: work on Romanticism revisions.
...and so on. I do have until August 1 for the Romanticism thing--not a huge amount of time, but a week longer than I thought I had.
Last thing. The UPS shipment I got today was two sets of cushions so The Poet can give me some basic lessons in sitting zazen. This is the closest thing to a religious interest I've had in ten years.
I don't know what my problem is. It's not the same thing that was wrong with the Romanticism project. I know what I want to do, I know where I need to go. I am trying to stick to outlines and I have several sheets of paper with reminders to myself about what the main parts of the paper need to be and I have tried to be ruthless, in looking through the last working outline that spun wildly out of control, about cutting off lines of inquiry that really don't apply, sticking to the things that the Very Important Editor (hereafter VIE) responded to positively, but also being selective about that. I am not, for the moment, trying to connect the text I'm working on with a bunch of the author's other works. I don't feel the same need to do insane amounts of new research that I did on the Romantic project--though I probably should force myself to read that Gothic Convention book. But for some reason I can just not get started. I have ten disjointed and repetitive pages pasted in from other files, but I can't make them work into a coherent introduction--I think in part because the argument I'm making is somewhat complicated. Or, it's not so complicated, but it's one of those things where I really need to make all three parts come together because I'm not sure any one section really stands alone as interesting. If that makes sense. And I think it will work. But, it will work only if I get the introduction right and I can't seem to do that. I had this problem the last time around, too, so (since that was an outline) I just kind of shrugged and started with "This article makes the case..." Which was unsatisfying to both me and VIE, and we discussed the greater advisability of trying to steer clear of that kind of academese. Unfortunately, beyond that I've got nothing. I've tried out a couple of things but nothing's taking and I feel like I'm wasting a lot of energy spinning my wheels. And I'm mostly just damn frustrated with myself because, after all, a lot of this paper is about fucking premature burial--and if that doesn't lend itself to compelling beginnings, I don't know what does. But I worry about it getting out of control, and I worry that my outline and main points keep sliding out of my head. I've never been good at the whole "framing" thing, and no one seems able to help me.
Speaking of which. I know the other thing driving me right now is the hatchet job that The Professor did on the draft of my Romanticism project. I might be overreacting, and I probably shouldn't have read the email at all, let alone even skimmed his internal comments. But I did. And it's been eating at me since Tuesday, distracting me from the project I'm supposed to be working on, and undermining my confidence at the moment when I really need all the affirmation I can get. I don't mean that I think the draft is by any means perfect, and if I wanted a totally positive reading, I would have sent it elsewhere. I'm used to this with him. But. I'm not used to getting this critique when it's coming from a place outside of our friendship, when the next step isn't to talk more about it in person, when I don't sense any real...I don't know...interest? caring? Like some kind of investment in my success? I know that some of it is meant to be sparring, but...I haven't had the heart to do that with him for awhile--something kind of snapped for me around the night I went out with E. And even though I feel a lot better emotionally in general (and in the specific terms of my interactions with K. and The Poet), I can't muster up whatever it was that allowed me to be friends with The Professor, at least not on the terms that he was offering. And I guess maybe I was hoping that he'd notice, or care. But he didn't. And I knew he'd still be good for the reading and commenting, but what I didn't know was how different that was going to feel when it wasn't backed up by friendship.
(It sure as hell isn't backed up by mentorship. One of the things I always try to do, when reading his work or anyone else's, is offer suggestions where I can for improving things and not just ripping it apart. This is not something that is being reciprocated.)
So, basically, once again, The Professor succeeds in undermining my confidence. (This, as some of you may remember, was something of a theme of last summer as well.) I guess this particular undermining just comes as more of a surprise is all. But perhaps it shouldn't. I think one of the reasons why this is feeling slightly more oppressive this evening is that I needed to consult the hard copy of a seminar paper I wrote on this text about two years ago, and of course the copy I have is not the one where the professor of the class praised it but the one where The Professor wrote his comments. I refer to this as the paper that sucks ass; I totally understand all the ways it went wrong and all that. And I have a certain memory of having been a bit disappointed (but not destroyed) when it failed to impress The Professor as much as I wanted it to. But reading those comments now? Just...wow. It's clear that I was totally in love with him at the time; otherwise I don't think I would have forgiven some of it.
It's a hard line to walk. Because I want rigorous readers. Because a lot of time his readings tend to be spot on, because I don't entirely trust myself to reliably distinguish between his actual arrogance and my inertia or stupidity all of the time. Because I don't think I'm as good as my committee (or just random other people) seem to think I am, and so I'm more inclined to trust him because he's always ready to rip me apart. But I think maybe that's changing, that it's already changed w/r/t the nonacademic part of our relationship and all of the sudden this gets thrown into relief as well.
So I think that I'm better off taking my chances with my own committee members and with editors who have at least been impressed enough with me to think I'm not such a total idiot that I can't improve with a little mentoring and interaction. And this is what I know I need to hold on to. But it's hard, and the length of time I've spent writing this post and not writing my paper is a reflection of that. But, like so many other things this summer, I just have to work with what I've got. And I do feel somewhat better after writing this all out, even though it wasn't totally why I came over here.
To return to the article for a second. I'm probably going to have to do what I did the last time around (since this was the same place I got tripped up on back at the beginning of June with this project). Let the academese stand so I at least know what I'm talking about, then try to go back and put in something interesting. My main work for tomorrow and Sunday should be to articulate the body of the paper, not to cram an anecdote into the beginning. I should at least be able to get through the premature burial parts by some point on Sunday, since I practically know those by heart anyway. And I know my way around this poem, which is something. Beyond that, I let VIE tell me what to do, right?
And so. On top of all this, I've agreed to go to D.C. for about 24 hours later in the week. I'll be joining The Poet on a business trip, which seems rather ridiculously sketchy to me, but as it also involves the opportunity to spend the night in a hotel and thus to take the night off from trying to fight the bugs out of my kitchen and worrying about the effect of my air conditioner on my electric bill. So I'll cope. (I also think this week--he's also planning to come over on Sunday to do some studying--might be the last time he and I get to spend a lot of time together for a bit.) But it does kind of throw a wrench in a lot of other scheduling things and means that I have to be a lot more conscious of how I'm managing my time...like if I don't think I can meet up with people from school for Tuesday night bullriding and not have eight bourbons and get home at three in the morning, I may have to pass that up. Tomorrow (well, today, Saturday) night is the last performance of the last episode of "Hospital" and I will have to be similarly in control because I need Sunday.
And yet, I wrote all of this out and it seems doable. Since I'm already here, why not end on a list? Short of either magically writing the entire Victorian article in the next fifteen minutes or drinking a huge shot of scotch, retyping my list is probably the best way to get myself to sleep.
Saturday: Greenmarket in AM; school (dept lounge) in the afternoon / try to get something printed; Axis in the evening
Sunday: (The Poet, here)--edit what I wrote on Saturday, try to double the page count.
Monday: Completed / printable draft of Victorian project. Email VIE to tell him I have not forgotten our deadline. Get to the gym at some point.
Tuesday: Edits on Victorian draft. Input as many of the changes as possible, including the conversion to Chicago style (though at this point it may not be a top priority). Print stuff for Romanticist project. Print train ticket confirmation. Gym.
Wednesday: Work bee! Hooray! Get the Victorian project sent to VIE come hell or high water. Start working through the Romanticism project again.
Thursday: Gym in AM. Train at noon: work on Romanticism revisions.
...and so on. I do have until August 1 for the Romanticism thing--not a huge amount of time, but a week longer than I thought I had.
Last thing. The UPS shipment I got today was two sets of cushions so The Poet can give me some basic lessons in sitting zazen. This is the closest thing to a religious interest I've had in ten years.
7.13.2008
I don't think this counts as making a joyful noise unto the Lord
It's quarter to one in the morning. Currently, there are two tour buses double parked and idling outside of my apartment building, much as they were doing for over an hour earlier in the day. As a new refinement, however, there is a small car--triple parked, I suppose--with one of those bone-rattling stereo systems playing at (what I certainly hope is) full-blast. The riders of said tour buses are milling around on the sidewalk--at least *they* seem to be reasonably quiet, though it's hard to know.
From the best I can tell, these buses, etc. are related to a fair that one of the churches up my street was having, which makes it rather doubly ironic that they're not showing a lot of concern for either air or noise pollution in the neighborhood. And while I've more or less grown hardened to the depredations of car stereos on this street, this is actually physically stressful.
At least I'm not actually trying to sleep--the lack of blogging in the past ten days has been due largely to my desire to complete a draft of the Romanticism project that I can send to my committee member, The Professor, and possibly a few other people and then not think about for a week while I work on the Victorian project. The work has been progressing slowly, but more or less steadily, but I really want a break tomorrow and in order to do that I have to finish it tonight. And I didn't really want to swoop in like this, but the vibration is making it difficult for me to concentrate on the willing suspension of disbelief.
Fortunately, I think actually switching accounts to make this post has done the trick--the buses, loud people, and obnoxious car have all departed. I wonder what other annoyances I can write away. Hey, how about those nasty little bugs that keep crawling up my kitchen sink? I will expect them gone in the morning through the magic of blogging!
Since I'm here...well, not a whole lot to report. Schedule drama with teaching, but maybe it's not the worst thing in the world to only end up with one class. A good conversation with a high school friend. Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum, which is also a kind of sublime, but with more boobs. Study / writing dates that keep me sane even if they don't get a total lot of work done. Discovered the joys of the $4 pints in the afternoon at the bar near my apartment; was less thrilled by the place being filled on a Saturday afternoon with people with babies and funny looking college students. More tastiness from the greenmarket, especially in the form of beets, interesting-looking summer squash, and goat cheese rolled in cinnamon and dried cranberries. Tonight's dinner was a sauteed pork cutlet, ratatouille, and crusty bread.
I haven't been talking to The Professor lately because I still don't feel like sparring. And I've had a couple of emails with K, but I didn't see him in the library this week, and I feel like maybe that's okay.
I'm going to a bar in Williamsburg on Monday night to celebrate the City Hall wedding of my old friend A. I wrote about the last time I saw her here. We've exchanged a couple of more or less cordial emails since then, around the time of my exam, but there wasn't really an effort to get together. I plan to be perfectly nice and to not really talk about my personal life.
Except that...I finally changed my Facebook status from "single" to "it's complicated," admitting something that has been true for awhile now, which is that I'm in a relationship with The Poet. It's been about four months, actually, since I started seeing him regularly, and that makes it the longest actual relationship I've had since breaking up with the Ex in February of last year. Well, the longest romantic relationship I've had, anyway. My relationship to to the Romanticism project is almost at the two-year mark, which may explain some of my fatigue in trying to refine my interpretation of the sublime over and over again. But--to go back to the main point--this clearly means something, in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps that I'm just more willing to own it lately, to see it, as my often eminently reasonable fellow Victorianist M puts it, as simply "having sex with someone who makes me happy." And he does make me happy, regardless of how the relationship looks on paper or to other people. So I'm just going to go with that for now.
Okay, I should get back to work. What's frustrating is that none of what I'm trying to write is new, exactly--I have pieces of it scattered everywhere, and one of the weird things about this long term relationship with a text of my own making is that I keep finding places where I anticipated myself. (Oh, and I also found my notes to the Biographia Literaria, which I blogged about not being to find during my orals reading.) But the transitions! And the framing! But at least I have more or less followed my committee member's advice and just stopped reading for the time being....
From the best I can tell, these buses, etc. are related to a fair that one of the churches up my street was having, which makes it rather doubly ironic that they're not showing a lot of concern for either air or noise pollution in the neighborhood. And while I've more or less grown hardened to the depredations of car stereos on this street, this is actually physically stressful.
At least I'm not actually trying to sleep--the lack of blogging in the past ten days has been due largely to my desire to complete a draft of the Romanticism project that I can send to my committee member, The Professor, and possibly a few other people and then not think about for a week while I work on the Victorian project. The work has been progressing slowly, but more or less steadily, but I really want a break tomorrow and in order to do that I have to finish it tonight. And I didn't really want to swoop in like this, but the vibration is making it difficult for me to concentrate on the willing suspension of disbelief.
Fortunately, I think actually switching accounts to make this post has done the trick--the buses, loud people, and obnoxious car have all departed. I wonder what other annoyances I can write away. Hey, how about those nasty little bugs that keep crawling up my kitchen sink? I will expect them gone in the morning through the magic of blogging!
Since I'm here...well, not a whole lot to report. Schedule drama with teaching, but maybe it's not the worst thing in the world to only end up with one class. A good conversation with a high school friend. Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum, which is also a kind of sublime, but with more boobs. Study / writing dates that keep me sane even if they don't get a total lot of work done. Discovered the joys of the $4 pints in the afternoon at the bar near my apartment; was less thrilled by the place being filled on a Saturday afternoon with people with babies and funny looking college students. More tastiness from the greenmarket, especially in the form of beets, interesting-looking summer squash, and goat cheese rolled in cinnamon and dried cranberries. Tonight's dinner was a sauteed pork cutlet, ratatouille, and crusty bread.
I haven't been talking to The Professor lately because I still don't feel like sparring. And I've had a couple of emails with K, but I didn't see him in the library this week, and I feel like maybe that's okay.
I'm going to a bar in Williamsburg on Monday night to celebrate the City Hall wedding of my old friend A. I wrote about the last time I saw her here. We've exchanged a couple of more or less cordial emails since then, around the time of my exam, but there wasn't really an effort to get together. I plan to be perfectly nice and to not really talk about my personal life.
Except that...I finally changed my Facebook status from "single" to "it's complicated," admitting something that has been true for awhile now, which is that I'm in a relationship with The Poet. It's been about four months, actually, since I started seeing him regularly, and that makes it the longest actual relationship I've had since breaking up with the Ex in February of last year. Well, the longest romantic relationship I've had, anyway. My relationship to to the Romanticism project is almost at the two-year mark, which may explain some of my fatigue in trying to refine my interpretation of the sublime over and over again. But--to go back to the main point--this clearly means something, in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps that I'm just more willing to own it lately, to see it, as my often eminently reasonable fellow Victorianist M puts it, as simply "having sex with someone who makes me happy." And he does make me happy, regardless of how the relationship looks on paper or to other people. So I'm just going to go with that for now.
Okay, I should get back to work. What's frustrating is that none of what I'm trying to write is new, exactly--I have pieces of it scattered everywhere, and one of the weird things about this long term relationship with a text of my own making is that I keep finding places where I anticipated myself. (Oh, and I also found my notes to the Biographia Literaria, which I blogged about not being to find during my orals reading.) But the transitions! And the framing! But at least I have more or less followed my committee member's advice and just stopped reading for the time being....
7.02.2008
7.01.2008
Also...
I think it's really, really, really weird that my brother's fiancee is already using his / my last name on her email. I mean, maybe it's just for wedding related emails, but even so.
Cultural notes (and then some)
* So far I have to admit to being underwhelmed by the whole "Waterfalls" thing. I can see two of them from the trains going over the Manhattan Bridge, and at least from this angle it leaves me cold, even if it does give me something else to look at than E.'s apartment building. I was expecting something more...I don't know. More like The Gates, which a lot of people have said already. I read somewhere that the artist claims that you have to see them full on via some boat tour to really "get" the display--that's all well and good, but since this is a piece of public art (ostensibly), I think more attention should have been paid to, say, how it looks from the Q train (i.e., to people who actually live in New York and ride the subway) and not just how we can get a bunch of out of towners to spend money to see it from the Circle Line or whatever. So, until I see something that changes my mind, this is mostly just another case of Mike Bloomberg confusing this city with Disney World, without even decent special effects.
* I caught the first twenty minutes of Can't Hardly Wait while on the elliptical machine at Erstwhile Teaching College last night. With ten years in between me and my own high school graduation, I'm able to find the movie a lot funnier. I'm also, at this point, willing to admit that I, too, peeled out of the parking lot on the last day of school blasting Third Eye Blind's "Graduate" from my little red Ford Escort. (Actually, it's kind of fun to know every song in a movie.) On the other hand, the movie was a good reminder of why I don't plan on dating anyone under 35 anytime soon.
* Since the recent slowness of my home internet connection (thanks for nothing, Verizon!) means I still can't watch TV online, I have been indulging in the first season of Grey's Anatomy yet again. Given everything that's happened in the last seven or eight months, it's even harder to watch that last scene in the final episode. This might be contributing to the insomnia / slight heaviness I've been feeling over the last couple of days; nevertheless, my one indulgence in this indigent summer is probably going to be to purchase Season 2. Well, and get my hair cut for the first time since April.
* I have never had the slightest interest in seeing Mamma Mia on Broadway. Nevertheless, the ads for the movie version are oddly compelling. I can't imagine who I'd have to go see it with, though.
* Regina Spektor is doing a show in August at McCarren Pool. Despite the fact that I've already been to one concert by someone I'd never even heard of with The Professor because he didn't want to go alone, he's already rejected this idea. I'm getting close to giving up on this friendship (except for the reading each other's work part, and even that's not seeming particularly worth it lately). Again.
* Right now I'm listening to the set at the top of the Samurai.fm homepage. (Spectral presents Osborne.) Sometimes I miss electronic music, but that was such an Ex thing.
* I'm seeing The Poet tonight for the first time since early June. I'm hoping this will help me feel less like I'm falling apart and imploding with misdirected anger. That part wasn't cultural, of course.
* I caught the first twenty minutes of Can't Hardly Wait while on the elliptical machine at Erstwhile Teaching College last night. With ten years in between me and my own high school graduation, I'm able to find the movie a lot funnier. I'm also, at this point, willing to admit that I, too, peeled out of the parking lot on the last day of school blasting Third Eye Blind's "Graduate" from my little red Ford Escort. (Actually, it's kind of fun to know every song in a movie.) On the other hand, the movie was a good reminder of why I don't plan on dating anyone under 35 anytime soon.
* Since the recent slowness of my home internet connection (thanks for nothing, Verizon!) means I still can't watch TV online, I have been indulging in the first season of Grey's Anatomy yet again. Given everything that's happened in the last seven or eight months, it's even harder to watch that last scene in the final episode. This might be contributing to the insomnia / slight heaviness I've been feeling over the last couple of days; nevertheless, my one indulgence in this indigent summer is probably going to be to purchase Season 2. Well, and get my hair cut for the first time since April.
* I have never had the slightest interest in seeing Mamma Mia on Broadway. Nevertheless, the ads for the movie version are oddly compelling. I can't imagine who I'd have to go see it with, though.
* Regina Spektor is doing a show in August at McCarren Pool. Despite the fact that I've already been to one concert by someone I'd never even heard of with The Professor because he didn't want to go alone, he's already rejected this idea. I'm getting close to giving up on this friendship (except for the reading each other's work part, and even that's not seeming particularly worth it lately). Again.
* Right now I'm listening to the set at the top of the Samurai.fm homepage. (Spectral presents Osborne.) Sometimes I miss electronic music, but that was such an Ex thing.
* I'm seeing The Poet tonight for the first time since early June. I'm hoping this will help me feel less like I'm falling apart and imploding with misdirected anger. That part wasn't cultural, of course.
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