I think the worst part is over, though it hasn't been an entirely easy--or productive--day. The Dobell I read ("The Nature of Poetry"--not his actual poems) was pretty fascination, especially in terms of Kant. The Mill is going more slowly, and the coffeeshop was a bit too crowded for comfort. Have been struggling to find a place to calm down at school, ran into a friend who was able to save me a bit, and The Poet called me a couple of times just to check in.
Hopefully this means I'll be able to go out tonight after all and not worry anyone else.
I have to remind myself that this is all basically like hitting the reset button. It might have been easier this time if I hadn't been so convinced, oh, about a week and a half ago that my life was fine. Good, even. I said to The Poet on the phone this morning, I don't know what happened, I just kept repeating that--I don't know why I got so scared or why the things that were okay last Wednesday weren't okay yesterday. I have partial explanations but they don't add up.
4.25.2008
I was okay for a bit, but then I blinked
The week after the conference was great. And then, the slide again. Today has been a full-on nervous breakdown, the reactivation of every possible abandonment issue, the occasional and necessary collapse that happens when, like me, you find yourself cobbling together the scraps of relationships to try to approximate something like what you used to believe you could get from one person--isn't that the way these things are supposed to go? And it's why you can't go sit in the park anymore all the daddies and nannies and couples and the old Pakistani man who walks up to you and starts asking you personal questions because you obviously deserve it, being there by yourself, and they always say that I shouldn't put up with the things I put up with, but most of the time I am on guard against asking too much of people--the Ex and the Professor (who may be returning to ex-best friend status and he will no doubt blame me for it) always have a way of making me feel like I'm asking too much and I'm hoping to get a job at this law firm for a couple of days a week this summer not because I entirely have to (the money will be nice, but my parents would have tided me over) but because I am scared of being in this apartment every day this summer and I also think I need to be in Wisconsin on my birthday because it's a Saturday and The Poet spends weekends in New Jersey because he has to and I don't want to run the risk of planning something that sucks or of being alone because I'm too beaten down to plan anything so hopefully I'll just leave town so it won't be an issue and goddamm it what was I thinking even for a minute that I could care so much about someone who can't see me on the weekends and that's where it all began because I realized I cared and then instead of making things less miserable its making things worse and I'm not going to have any friends to introduce to my mom next week and I'll just be hanging around by myself at my brother's wedding because apparently I ask too much and never, never enough and I need to stop this because I have a lot of reading to do and then grading tomorrow and I have to keep running, running, running...
(The Poet called me just now--I'd sent him an email that was basically just like, "I'm having a nervous breakdown, tell me something that will make me feel better"--and I'm feeling a bit calmer. At least he's steady, kind of unshockable in certain ways. But i'll still be ten days or so before I see him again.)
Anyway. Time to pull myself together once again--this is part of what it means to be the other woman, that you are always dressing better than you feel--time to throw myself out into the world, maybe stop by the coffeeshop, go to school to pick up my check, mainly just stay in the world away from myself, read Dobell, Mill, and Swinburne, maybe also some Shelley(s).
You know, I do realize I don't lack friends and that there are many people who would be perefectly happy to go out for a drink with me tonight or grab dinner. But I don't have the energy to find out who.
(The Poet called me just now--I'd sent him an email that was basically just like, "I'm having a nervous breakdown, tell me something that will make me feel better"--and I'm feeling a bit calmer. At least he's steady, kind of unshockable in certain ways. But i'll still be ten days or so before I see him again.)
Anyway. Time to pull myself together once again--this is part of what it means to be the other woman, that you are always dressing better than you feel--time to throw myself out into the world, maybe stop by the coffeeshop, go to school to pick up my check, mainly just stay in the world away from myself, read Dobell, Mill, and Swinburne, maybe also some Shelley(s).
You know, I do realize I don't lack friends and that there are many people who would be perefectly happy to go out for a drink with me tonight or grab dinner. But I don't have the energy to find out who.
4.16.2008
Quick update
* I may have my best friend back. Which is awesome.
* The conference was a huge success.
* I may also possibly be in love.
* I also love that hulu.com has the first season of Picket Fences online.
* Spring break is soon and then I'll post.
* The conference was a huge success.
* I may also possibly be in love.
* I also love that hulu.com has the first season of Picket Fences online.
* Spring break is soon and then I'll post.
4.03.2008
Minor (or not) notes
* There are days when I actually kind of like teaching composition. Maybe it's just teaching in general. But for some reason, there is a satisfaction in doing some of these things.
* My students remain awesome. Sadly, they made the teaching schedule for the fall without anyone actually asking us what our preferences were, so I don't think I get to have any of them in the next part of the course. Also, the thought of teaching a third straight semester of this section is kind of meh. Still haven't heard from Other College if they're going to hire me or not.
* Petty blog-related drama aside, I am significantly happier than I was a year ago.
* My students remain awesome. Sadly, they made the teaching schedule for the fall without anyone actually asking us what our preferences were, so I don't think I get to have any of them in the next part of the course. Also, the thought of teaching a third straight semester of this section is kind of meh. Still haven't heard from Other College if they're going to hire me or not.
* Petty blog-related drama aside, I am significantly happier than I was a year ago.
4.02.2008
Finally, an accomplishment. And other miscellaneous notes
So I finally managed to push all the way through a draft of my conference paper, and not a moment too soon. It may not be that bad. It's certainly much more of a self-consciously oral text than any of my previous papers. This may mean that I am growing as a scholar in terms of confident self-presentation; on the other hand, I have to consider the possibility that I feel like I have something to hide in this paper. But I'm actually pretty confident in my thinking about this passage, even if I still do occasionally have these moments when I feel like [famous scholar who will be in the audience for this paper in less than ten days] has had every thought I could possibly ever have on Tennyson. But, given my experience as an audience member at this conference a couple of years ago, I am pretty sure that performance and being able to answer questions without looking like a jerk will count for a lot. Also, it's the first paper on the first panel on the last day.
I have been especially aware of my writing process with this project, in part because I had the bright idea at the beginning of the semester that I should use myself as an example for my composition students. I think to a certain extent this worked really well with this group of students. (Last semester, it would have contributed to the disaster area mentality.) In certain cases, I think it allowed some of them to trust me as an instructor more--not so much that I know what I'm doing (though I obviously hope they think I know what I'm doing), but more that what I am having them do is not completely arbitrary, nor is it something that I am unwilling to go through myself. While I've been pretty specific about how what I'm working on is different from what they're working on (in terms of the oral presentation and, of course, the stakes), it's helpful I think to be seen writing essentially an eight-page research paper when they are also writing five-to-eight-page research papers. It's also, incidentally, given me the opportunity to talk to them a little bit about what academics do. I kind of wish I'd had a better sense of that when I was an undergraduate, and these students by and large are even less versed in the institutional stuff than I am. My students are genuinely surprised that this kind of writing (let alone getting up and talking about it in front of a bunch of strangers with power over my future employment) is part of what I--and many of their other professors--do.
The extent to which this worked less well is only that, because of the way my work on this paper developed--which is to say, a lot of notes and a month to a "first draft" that has nonetheless been rewritten roughly eight hundred times--has rather limited me in what I have been able to share on a material level. I had this dream that I was going to scan copies of my own edits and post them to Blackboard, but that doesn't totally work with the way I wrote the paper. I also have completely dispensed with internal citations (which I don't tend to do even when I'm writing conference papers) and feel like this sets a bad example without wanting to go back and track down the line numbers of sections I know by heart just at this very minute.
From a non-pedagogical perspective, I do think I'm getting slightly better at churning these things out, even if it doesn't look like it. I'm improving in my abilities to work on many things at once. This is, for example, the first conference paper that I've written basically from scratch while teaching. And without smoking. I know that's not the biggest achievement ever, but it's something. (The second one may be bigger than the first.)
Of course, in order to achieve this final push, I drank a bunch of tea. Though I made a pot that was half PG Tips, half caffeine free blueberry, I'm still feeling a bit awake. Possibly not awake enough to read Coleridge, though. This would be less of a problem if I didn't absolutely have to do laundry tomorrow morning. Would also like to take care of the prep before I start rocking out 19th century style tomorrow, since my observation is Thursday.
I also somehow managed to run out of toilet paper without noticing. Thank god for takeout napkins. I should address that before The Poet comes over on Thursday night.
Finally, A White Bear, who always blogs more excellently than I, has a particularly excellent post about blending one's online and real life identities. This is a perpetual concern of mine (and, yes, this is part of the "other woman" identity that isn't sexual), and while I think I experience my identities differently, I like the way she's thinking. This reminds me, of course, that there's an email I need to answer, but I kind of don't feel like it at the moment. I am becoming quite thankful that The Poet has fewer issues than almost any other man in my life, period.
I have been especially aware of my writing process with this project, in part because I had the bright idea at the beginning of the semester that I should use myself as an example for my composition students. I think to a certain extent this worked really well with this group of students. (Last semester, it would have contributed to the disaster area mentality.) In certain cases, I think it allowed some of them to trust me as an instructor more--not so much that I know what I'm doing (though I obviously hope they think I know what I'm doing), but more that what I am having them do is not completely arbitrary, nor is it something that I am unwilling to go through myself. While I've been pretty specific about how what I'm working on is different from what they're working on (in terms of the oral presentation and, of course, the stakes), it's helpful I think to be seen writing essentially an eight-page research paper when they are also writing five-to-eight-page research papers. It's also, incidentally, given me the opportunity to talk to them a little bit about what academics do. I kind of wish I'd had a better sense of that when I was an undergraduate, and these students by and large are even less versed in the institutional stuff than I am. My students are genuinely surprised that this kind of writing (let alone getting up and talking about it in front of a bunch of strangers with power over my future employment) is part of what I--and many of their other professors--do.
The extent to which this worked less well is only that, because of the way my work on this paper developed--which is to say, a lot of notes and a month to a "first draft" that has nonetheless been rewritten roughly eight hundred times--has rather limited me in what I have been able to share on a material level. I had this dream that I was going to scan copies of my own edits and post them to Blackboard, but that doesn't totally work with the way I wrote the paper. I also have completely dispensed with internal citations (which I don't tend to do even when I'm writing conference papers) and feel like this sets a bad example without wanting to go back and track down the line numbers of sections I know by heart just at this very minute.
From a non-pedagogical perspective, I do think I'm getting slightly better at churning these things out, even if it doesn't look like it. I'm improving in my abilities to work on many things at once. This is, for example, the first conference paper that I've written basically from scratch while teaching. And without smoking. I know that's not the biggest achievement ever, but it's something. (The second one may be bigger than the first.)
Of course, in order to achieve this final push, I drank a bunch of tea. Though I made a pot that was half PG Tips, half caffeine free blueberry, I'm still feeling a bit awake. Possibly not awake enough to read Coleridge, though. This would be less of a problem if I didn't absolutely have to do laundry tomorrow morning. Would also like to take care of the prep before I start rocking out 19th century style tomorrow, since my observation is Thursday.
I also somehow managed to run out of toilet paper without noticing. Thank god for takeout napkins. I should address that before The Poet comes over on Thursday night.
Finally, A White Bear, who always blogs more excellently than I, has a particularly excellent post about blending one's online and real life identities. This is a perpetual concern of mine (and, yes, this is part of the "other woman" identity that isn't sexual), and while I think I experience my identities differently, I like the way she's thinking. This reminds me, of course, that there's an email I need to answer, but I kind of don't feel like it at the moment. I am becoming quite thankful that The Poet has fewer issues than almost any other man in my life, period.
4.01.2008
In which I begin to think I should pay more attention to my dreams
My paranoia was not unfounded, but suffice it to say I redacted the wrong information.
The irony is, of course, that the more time one spends interacting with me in real life, the easier it is for them to find this blog and--the less likely it is that they *should* actually be reading it.
It's not as bad as it could be, but it's going to make for renewed field-related awkwardness in the near future, just when I was looking forward to seeing an end to that.
In other news: five more teaching days until Spring Break.
The irony is, of course, that the more time one spends interacting with me in real life, the easier it is for them to find this blog and--the less likely it is that they *should* actually be reading it.
It's not as bad as it could be, but it's going to make for renewed field-related awkwardness in the near future, just when I was looking forward to seeing an end to that.
In other news: five more teaching days until Spring Break.
An open letter to my unconscious
...an anxiety-producing dream about having to re-take the comps? Really? Good grief, 2005 called. It wants its fears back.
(The dream I was having from before was pretty interesting, but I don't know how I'd explain it. Now I have to get moving to West Village Coffeeshop.)
(The dream I was having from before was pretty interesting, but I don't know how I'd explain it. Now I have to get moving to West Village Coffeeshop.)
What Claudia Wore
My lovely friend M has turned me on to what might be the best blog ever.
I did actually get a decent amount of work done today on prep, Coleridge, the conference paper, and Gaskell. Also went to Target and finally bought some decent curtains. They improve the look of the place immensely. And I made a special trip to Teaching College to use the gym. This would be more virtuous if I wasn't trying to make up for eating a bunch of processed crap, as it is easy to do when working from home.
Hopefully, I will be able to keep up this pace through Thursday. I would definitely like to be able to send out versions of that damn paper to a few people by tomorrow night.
I redacted a few things around here in a fit of what is hopefully unfounded paranoia. I think I'm more than a little bit nervous because of the home invasion / sharing dreams I've been having lately.
Also, I think it would be fun to revive the word "coxcomb" as a synonym for "douchebag," which is a word I've never liked (even if there are occasionally times when it seems apropos). Perhaps I will simply start to make the switch on this blog, and my five readers can spread the meme.
I did actually get a decent amount of work done today on prep, Coleridge, the conference paper, and Gaskell. Also went to Target and finally bought some decent curtains. They improve the look of the place immensely. And I made a special trip to Teaching College to use the gym. This would be more virtuous if I wasn't trying to make up for eating a bunch of processed crap, as it is easy to do when working from home.
Hopefully, I will be able to keep up this pace through Thursday. I would definitely like to be able to send out versions of that damn paper to a few people by tomorrow night.
I redacted a few things around here in a fit of what is hopefully unfounded paranoia. I think I'm more than a little bit nervous because of the home invasion / sharing dreams I've been having lately.
Also, I think it would be fun to revive the word "coxcomb" as a synonym for "douchebag," which is a word I've never liked (even if there are occasionally times when it seems apropos). Perhaps I will simply start to make the switch on this blog, and my five readers can spread the meme.
3.31.2008
Learning from the sublime? A Coleridgean footnote
This is from the end of a long footnote in chapter 4 of the Biographia where he's discussing the hostile reaction to Lyrical Ballads. I record it here so I can come back to it when I'm working on my important summer project:
“the connection between two conceptions, without that sensation of such connection which is supplied by habit. The man feels, as if he were standing on his head, though he cannot but see that he is truly standing on his feet. This, as a painful sensation, will of course have a tendency to associate itself with the person who occasions it; even as persons, who have been by painful means restored from derangement, are known to feel an involuntary dislike towards their physician” (BL 1.73n).
“the connection between two conceptions, without that sensation of such connection which is supplied by habit. The man feels, as if he were standing on his head, though he cannot but see that he is truly standing on his feet. This, as a painful sensation, will of course have a tendency to associate itself with the person who occasions it; even as persons, who have been by painful means restored from derangement, are known to feel an involuntary dislike towards their physician” (BL 1.73n).
Monday Morning Dream Analysis
I have dreams probably twice a week in which random people are in my apartment or tring to get in, whether for benign or more evil purposes. Sometimes the door gets broken down. Other times they are just here. Occasionally I know the people. More than often I don't. I'm pretty sure my old landlady from Astoria made an appearance in last night's dreams. I can't tell if I'm lonely or just still can't believe that I live by myself after so long with others.
The dream that woke me up at 4:28 this morning involved another favorite theme: Wisconsin. (Although this "Wisconsin" house could have been in suburban Chicago--I do dream weird Chicago-and-suburbs-scapes every now and then as well.) I was in a guest bedroom with a bunch of framed family pictures on a side table. Somehow the door hit the table and a couple of the pictures fell off, breaking the glass. They were both pictures of me (one that looked a bit like my Facebook profile). I went into the kitchen to ask my parents whether it was bad luck to break frames with your own picture in them and woke up before they could give me an answer.
The dream that woke me up at 4:28 this morning involved another favorite theme: Wisconsin. (Although this "Wisconsin" house could have been in suburban Chicago--I do dream weird Chicago-and-suburbs-scapes every now and then as well.) I was in a guest bedroom with a bunch of framed family pictures on a side table. Somehow the door hit the table and a couple of the pictures fell off, breaking the glass. They were both pictures of me (one that looked a bit like my Facebook profile). I went into the kitchen to ask my parents whether it was bad luck to break frames with your own picture in them and woke up before they could give me an answer.
3.30.2008
Text and the single-ish girl grad student
See, now, I know this New York Times essay about making decisions about romantic partners based on the contents of their libraries is supposed to be aimed at people like me. And, given that it's the most emailed article at the moment, it's clearly working on some level. And I won't say that I didn't put a bit of thought into how my bookshelves are arranged in my apartment, and I won't say that when I was in college I never slept with a dude because of his books, and I won't pretend that books didn't figure rather heavily into my relationships with The Ex and The Professor. And, okay, there was that one moment with K where he was over here and said in this kind of plaintive what-if voice, "we even have the same books"--and I'd be lying if that wasn't one of those things that made me think (wrongly, as it appears) that we could be friends after the whole kind of sketchy affair thing was over.
However. I still affirm that some of the best sex I've ever had in my life was with The Lawyer, a man who owns almost no books. Like, I think I saw maybe three in his apartment in all the times I was over there, and I'm pretty sure at least one of them was one that I brought and took with when I left. A younger version of myself would have found this to be anathema to everything I stood for, and I have to say that I had at least a moment of pause when I realized that. (It's not like he didn't read things ever--he is a pretty big-deal lawyer and reads a lot for a living. He also told me once that he has some books in storage.) But I got over it and at some point realized it was kind of hot, especially coming off things with my Ex. (Those of you who know him know what I'm talking about.) And I don't think it's just me, either. As far as I know, most of the women that The Lawyer (you know what, let's just call him E) dated from Nerve were academics in one way or another; if I'm remembering correctly, he ended up dumping me for an art history professor. And we had a conversation once where I told him my theory about how all these academic women were attracted to him because having sex in a room without books in it was probably dirty-hot for a lot of us.
It is more than that, though. The one comment in the Times article that totally makes sense is the one about how shared books can generate a false sense of shared ideas:
I mean, there's something to be said for someone who gets a lot of your references and all. The Professor and I started hanging out together because we could talk Derrida together and shared an appreciation for a certain Victorian novelist who isn't Dickens. In general, though, and especially with men who are not themselves academics, books can be more trouble than they're worth. Obviously, I would like to end up with a dude who does more than watch Rock of Love all day. (On the other hand, I completely prefer the elliptical machine near the TV playing Rock of Love to the elliptical machine where I'm left to the company of my New Yorker when I'm at the gym.) And obviously, I don't want to have to continually defend my reading at all to someone. But that's not the experience I had, at least not on the internet. What I got from Nerve were all these guys who weren't academics but kind of wanted to be and to some extent were crazier autodidacts than I was, and with me this translated into an alternation of fetishizing what I do for a living (is what I do for a living kind of cool and awesome all the time? Yeah. Is it also just another profession among many, and one with perhaps more of its share of demands and ridiculous hoops? Yeah.) and giving off the impression that I am somehow falling short of their expectations because I don't want to be cool and literary all the time. People who mostly know me in academic and other mostly non-sexual contexts are always surprised when I tell them that there's a group of dudes in the world who find me shallow--these are often the same dudes who buy me a drink and expect me to validate them for reading Moby-Dick. Have I read Moby-Dick? Yes, I have. Do I need to troll the internet for strangers with whom to discuss it? No.
I do know a lot of my personal reaction to this has to do with the specific terms of my relationship with my ex-boyfriend and especially the pressures he put on me because I was doing something that he, through an unfortunate convergence of circumstances and bad planning, couldn't pull off himself. In a broader sense, though, I think I spent so much time in high school and college pushing people off because I wasn't sure that they only liked me for my mind that I ended up making my life then much harder than it needed to be. I'm more comfortable with being liked for other reasons now, and I'm trying at least in a halfhearted way to keep those other reasons in play. (Ironically, I only really shop when I'm depressed, so I haven't bought anything in awhile. I should be able to justify something for the Toronto trip, though.) I joke that the longer I spend in grad school, the more vain that I get. It's not totally a joke, it's more a combination of trying to control the few things I can control and of still finding it wonderful not to have my Ex putting pressure on me all the time.
With that being said, I should finish making my presentation assignment handout and contemplate a trip to the gym tomorrow. I didn't go at all last week, and I'm sure that's partly why I got so damn manic.
However. I still affirm that some of the best sex I've ever had in my life was with The Lawyer, a man who owns almost no books. Like, I think I saw maybe three in his apartment in all the times I was over there, and I'm pretty sure at least one of them was one that I brought and took with when I left. A younger version of myself would have found this to be anathema to everything I stood for, and I have to say that I had at least a moment of pause when I realized that. (It's not like he didn't read things ever--he is a pretty big-deal lawyer and reads a lot for a living. He also told me once that he has some books in storage.) But I got over it and at some point realized it was kind of hot, especially coming off things with my Ex. (Those of you who know him know what I'm talking about.) And I don't think it's just me, either. As far as I know, most of the women that The Lawyer (you know what, let's just call him E) dated from Nerve were academics in one way or another; if I'm remembering correctly, he ended up dumping me for an art history professor. And we had a conversation once where I told him my theory about how all these academic women were attracted to him because having sex in a room without books in it was probably dirty-hot for a lot of us.
It is more than that, though. The one comment in the Times article that totally makes sense is the one about how shared books can generate a false sense of shared ideas:
Marco Roth, an editor at the magazine n+1, said: “I think sometimes it’s better if books are just books. It’s part of the romantic tragedy of our age that our partners must be seen as compatible on every level.” Besides, he added, “sometimes people can end up liking the same things for vastly different reasons, and they build up these whole private fantasy lives around the meaning of these supposedly shared books, only to discover, too late, that the other person had a different fantasy completely.” After all, a couple may love “The Portrait of a Lady,” but if one half identifies with Gilbert Osmond and the other with Isabel Archer, they may have radically different ideas about the relationship.
I mean, there's something to be said for someone who gets a lot of your references and all. The Professor and I started hanging out together because we could talk Derrida together and shared an appreciation for a certain Victorian novelist who isn't Dickens. In general, though, and especially with men who are not themselves academics, books can be more trouble than they're worth. Obviously, I would like to end up with a dude who does more than watch Rock of Love all day. (On the other hand, I completely prefer the elliptical machine near the TV playing Rock of Love to the elliptical machine where I'm left to the company of my New Yorker when I'm at the gym.) And obviously, I don't want to have to continually defend my reading at all to someone. But that's not the experience I had, at least not on the internet. What I got from Nerve were all these guys who weren't academics but kind of wanted to be and to some extent were crazier autodidacts than I was, and with me this translated into an alternation of fetishizing what I do for a living (is what I do for a living kind of cool and awesome all the time? Yeah. Is it also just another profession among many, and one with perhaps more of its share of demands and ridiculous hoops? Yeah.) and giving off the impression that I am somehow falling short of their expectations because I don't want to be cool and literary all the time. People who mostly know me in academic and other mostly non-sexual contexts are always surprised when I tell them that there's a group of dudes in the world who find me shallow--these are often the same dudes who buy me a drink and expect me to validate them for reading Moby-Dick. Have I read Moby-Dick? Yes, I have. Do I need to troll the internet for strangers with whom to discuss it? No.
I do know a lot of my personal reaction to this has to do with the specific terms of my relationship with my ex-boyfriend and especially the pressures he put on me because I was doing something that he, through an unfortunate convergence of circumstances and bad planning, couldn't pull off himself. In a broader sense, though, I think I spent so much time in high school and college pushing people off because I wasn't sure that they only liked me for my mind that I ended up making my life then much harder than it needed to be. I'm more comfortable with being liked for other reasons now, and I'm trying at least in a halfhearted way to keep those other reasons in play. (Ironically, I only really shop when I'm depressed, so I haven't bought anything in awhile. I should be able to justify something for the Toronto trip, though.) I joke that the longer I spend in grad school, the more vain that I get. It's not totally a joke, it's more a combination of trying to control the few things I can control and of still finding it wonderful not to have my Ex putting pressure on me all the time.
With that being said, I should finish making my presentation assignment handout and contemplate a trip to the gym tomorrow. I didn't go at all last week, and I'm sure that's partly why I got so damn manic.
Not exactly archive fever
Why is it that I can find the journals that record all of my personal traumas and triumphs, as well as a good deal of everything I've read or worked on over the past two years except for the journal that would contain all the notes I made while reading the Biographia Literaria last summer?
Also, how could I have not typed up more than a couple lines of notes from the Biographia? Irritatingly, I'm sure that decision had something to do with taking notes in my journal.
Relatedly: I sometimes wish my life writing and work writing could be more separate because there's really no way for me not to be reminded of what I was doing and feeling as I search to figure out what I was reading. This is sometimes inconvenient. But I don't know how to do otherwise in the moment, and I think that if I were to be able to separate them more effectively, I would start to be a very different (and possibly lesser) scholar.
It's really noisy in the building today, for some reason. Probably time to decamp to school soon and try to finish that damn conference paper.
Also, how could I have not typed up more than a couple lines of notes from the Biographia? Irritatingly, I'm sure that decision had something to do with taking notes in my journal.
Relatedly: I sometimes wish my life writing and work writing could be more separate because there's really no way for me not to be reminded of what I was doing and feeling as I search to figure out what I was reading. This is sometimes inconvenient. But I don't know how to do otherwise in the moment, and I think that if I were to be able to separate them more effectively, I would start to be a very different (and possibly lesser) scholar.
It's really noisy in the building today, for some reason. Probably time to decamp to school soon and try to finish that damn conference paper.
3.28.2008
On Mary Wollstonecraft and running to stand still
What a long time it requires for us to know ourselves; and yet almost everyone of has more of this knowledge than he is willing to own, even to himself. I cannot immediately determine whether I ought to rejoice at having turned over in this solitude a new page in the history of my own heart, though I may venture to assure you that a further acquaintance with mankind only tends to increase my respect for your judgment, and esteem for your character. --Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796)
My committee member and I met to talk through Godwin and Wollstonecraft this afternoon. When I got to the coffeeshop (the same one where I once saw Paul Bettany), I told her that I'd figured out what Godwin meant about the Letters... being a book calculated to make a reader fall in love with its author.
Unfortunately, it came out sounding a little bit lame. But it still had the feeling of a profound revelation for me when it first crossed my mind this morning in the frenzy of preparation for the discussion now over (this has been the general motion of the week). This is how I wrote it in my notes this morning:
Does G find the letters to be calculated to make the reader fall in love with the author in part because the author is still in love with the person she’s addressing? Actually, it just occurred to me that there’s another thing here…there’s something hot for a certain kind of man about an obviously intelligent woman who feels—-and feeling here is almost entirely inseparable from suffering and from doing so with a kind of frankness—-allowing oneself to be seen at one’s lowest point: as W herself says at one point: “I felt like a bird fluttering on the ground unable to mount; yet unwilling to crawl tranquilly like a reptile, whilst still conscious it had wings.”
I should have just blogged this thought when I had it because it looks lame here, too. It felt more profound in the context of rereading my notes on the Letters and also, I think, in light of the fact that this week I have begun to articulate to some of my committee members and friends and really anyone who will listen the emotional effects of my orals reading. Namely, that I have been much happier since I got Charlotte Bronte out of my system. Because that was also about suffering and the reification of it by others. Yet, it's also connected to well, shallower things, more personal ones, some just ridiculous. The emotional equivalents of the ligers and tigons that distracted me from Tennyson earlier in the week.
But perhaps I should go back further. I started working on Wollstonecraft about two years ago. And I realized today, in going back and rereading certain texts and my notes on others, that I am much better positioned to understand Wollstonecraft than I was in the spring of 2006. If nothing else, I am profoundly grateful that a woman like her existed and that she left an archive. And I am grateful that Godwin wrote the Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, even with all its misreadings (and they are legion), imprudences, and, indeed, reifications of her as a suffering subject. (There's a particularly unforgettable image early on where the young Mary throws her body on top of her mother to shield her from her father's blows.)
In part, the fact that I can read around Godwin's impositions on Wollstonecraft is due to my internalization of the latter and also to the experience of the last two years, to my own reflections on why I once told The Poet that I don't believe in narrative (like many other people in my life, he thinks I should write a novel, which is laughable to anyone who reads this blog, I'm sure).
This post is also about feeling like I've spent this whole week doing work that gets consumed almost right after I produce it. Like I've been waking up at 7:00 in the morning to prepare for things that are over by 3. This is a weird way to live sometimes, especially because I don't feel actively stressed out. (Looks like there may be an advantage to dating a Zen master after all.)
---
Related but tangential: Is there a bad version out there of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"? This may be one of the most beautiful songs in the world.
----
I hope that the effort it just took me to type all of this out is worth it in terms of clearing my mind so that I can work this weekend without obsessing. I really must get ahead on prep and finish the conference paper. And apply to the next conferences, of course. And read Coleridge, Gaskell, and perhaps some early Tennyson.
Now off to Williamsburg for drinks and dinner.
3.27.2008
Speaking of static on the radio...
Tuning in to 1860: Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison. Via NYT.
Just, wow. I think it's good sometimes to be reminded of the hauntingness (and haunted-ness) of recorded sound.
Just, wow. I think it's good sometimes to be reminded of the hauntingness (and haunted-ness) of recorded sound.
3.26.2008
Undedicated: Jim White, "Static on the Radio"
In another life, this is the kind of song that would have me stop whatever I was doing and smoke a cigarette for its duration. In my current life, it's still pretty cool and haunting and I still stop everything I'm doing to listen to it and it makes me want to go driving in Wisconsin at dusk.
The important parts
He's nice to me. We enjoy each other's company. He makes me happy. I may like him back.
That's enough for now. The rest will work itself out, one way or another.
Back to writing.
That's enough for now. The rest will work itself out, one way or another.
Back to writing.
3.24.2008
Your loyalty is not to me, but to the stars above
(No reason, really, for the subject, just a line I kind of like from the Bob Dylan song currently playing on Radio Paradise.)
In one of the numerous ironies that characterize my life at any given time, I--who still maintain that I really shouldn't be in anything approaching a full-fledged relationship--seem to have spent the larger part of this weekend engaged in "where is this relationship going" conversations with not one but two other people. One is actually (I think) pretty simple and straightforward, something that I accept my complicity in and so on. The other involves The Poet and is still eating at me in a certain way because it so vastly changes certain calculations that I had made to allow this to be okay. It's hard to explain without getting into wildly unbloggable specifics, but, suffice it to say that I had to puncture a couple of illusions once and for all in the "I have nothing to give" conversation--he took that as being all about the sex, I told him that was the easy part--and I'm still unhappy about being placed even momentarily in a situation where I was risking more than I thought I was. But, on the other hand, I also find that I really like him, even given all the reasons I shouldn't, that he makes me happy, and that I don't have to listen to him complain or worry about things--while that last one is partially what contributed to the situation that pissed me off, these are all really huge things for me that I don't often find in people. The problem is that I don't want to be his girlfriend and I don't completely trust him not to accidentally fuck up my life. Stupid paradoxes. We're planning to meet up tomorrow night. I'll see what happens.
But I probably should revise what I said about Hegel on my other blog--it's not so much, perhaps, that there are a thousand ways to be unhappy, it's more that there are a thousand ways that your life can get fucked up.
Speaking of which (ah! transitions!), the Professor and I returned to West Village Coffeeshop today to work in tandem. It's possible that certain things are coming full circle (this is mostly true work wise), and that most of the bitterness and hurt has finally been bled out of our interactions. It's not just like it was, but I don't miss the differences. And it's nice to have my working buddy and best reader back. Between him and my friend S., I talked out how I need my conference paper to end, and I can see an end in sight and--more importantly--a non-sucking presentation in my future.
I went up to school to make some photocopies (why, why, why, have I never read The Madwoman in the Attic?? Who knew there was a chapter on "The Buried Life of Lucy Snowe??") and get a few other things done. No trip to the school library, of course, would be complete without seeing The K. He made eye contact with me this afternoon, which was a new thing. I alluded to his part in the weirdness that was new student recruitment Friday--a combination of weird tension in the basement computer lab, then his kind of swooping down on me from the second floor for a weird fasttalking conversation as I was on my way out. Every time I see him I feel a bit less, but I'd be lying to say I don't feel anything. I don't know if this is so much a question of being "over" him (I came into the situation more or less being already over him, knowing his position) as it is a kind of lingering sense of--well, something suspended, that keeps getting shaken up when we make eye contact or pretend not to see each other. And it's all very high school and I certainly don't want to continue the affair, such as it was, but I...I don't know, I guess I sort of feel like there should have been more, somehow, somewhere. And that's sort of silly, I know. And it has a hell of a lot to do with why I'm trying to keep The Poet at a certain distance. And I may well be kidding myself if I think I could really be a decent friend to him. Because we really were very kind to each other for a short time--and I guess that's what still...I don't know. Perhaps this is all to say that, even though I sent him that well-deserved "are you fucking kidding me" response to his notorious "douchebag" email, I don't have the heart to be that person all the time.
Believe it or not, I've also had a pretty decently productive weekend, in spite of all this. Friday was something of a lost day, but I made up for it on Saturday, and I get to read Godwin and Wollstonecraft for my committee member this week, which can't fail to make me happy. And my students are going to the library tomorrow, which gives me a reprieve on any formal preps.
At the moment, though, I have to turn my attentions to where I can find a loaf of decent bread on my way home. I have been dreaming of a bruschetta-like combination of avocado, corn, and Parmesan with some roasted asparagus all day....
In one of the numerous ironies that characterize my life at any given time, I--who still maintain that I really shouldn't be in anything approaching a full-fledged relationship--seem to have spent the larger part of this weekend engaged in "where is this relationship going" conversations with not one but two other people. One is actually (I think) pretty simple and straightforward, something that I accept my complicity in and so on. The other involves The Poet and is still eating at me in a certain way because it so vastly changes certain calculations that I had made to allow this to be okay. It's hard to explain without getting into wildly unbloggable specifics, but, suffice it to say that I had to puncture a couple of illusions once and for all in the "I have nothing to give" conversation--he took that as being all about the sex, I told him that was the easy part--and I'm still unhappy about being placed even momentarily in a situation where I was risking more than I thought I was. But, on the other hand, I also find that I really like him, even given all the reasons I shouldn't, that he makes me happy, and that I don't have to listen to him complain or worry about things--while that last one is partially what contributed to the situation that pissed me off, these are all really huge things for me that I don't often find in people. The problem is that I don't want to be his girlfriend and I don't completely trust him not to accidentally fuck up my life. Stupid paradoxes. We're planning to meet up tomorrow night. I'll see what happens.
But I probably should revise what I said about Hegel on my other blog--it's not so much, perhaps, that there are a thousand ways to be unhappy, it's more that there are a thousand ways that your life can get fucked up.
Speaking of which (ah! transitions!), the Professor and I returned to West Village Coffeeshop today to work in tandem. It's possible that certain things are coming full circle (this is mostly true work wise), and that most of the bitterness and hurt has finally been bled out of our interactions. It's not just like it was, but I don't miss the differences. And it's nice to have my working buddy and best reader back. Between him and my friend S., I talked out how I need my conference paper to end, and I can see an end in sight and--more importantly--a non-sucking presentation in my future.
I went up to school to make some photocopies (why, why, why, have I never read The Madwoman in the Attic?? Who knew there was a chapter on "The Buried Life of Lucy Snowe??") and get a few other things done. No trip to the school library, of course, would be complete without seeing The K. He made eye contact with me this afternoon, which was a new thing. I alluded to his part in the weirdness that was new student recruitment Friday--a combination of weird tension in the basement computer lab, then his kind of swooping down on me from the second floor for a weird fasttalking conversation as I was on my way out. Every time I see him I feel a bit less, but I'd be lying to say I don't feel anything. I don't know if this is so much a question of being "over" him (I came into the situation more or less being already over him, knowing his position) as it is a kind of lingering sense of--well, something suspended, that keeps getting shaken up when we make eye contact or pretend not to see each other. And it's all very high school and I certainly don't want to continue the affair, such as it was, but I...I don't know, I guess I sort of feel like there should have been more, somehow, somewhere. And that's sort of silly, I know. And it has a hell of a lot to do with why I'm trying to keep The Poet at a certain distance. And I may well be kidding myself if I think I could really be a decent friend to him. Because we really were very kind to each other for a short time--and I guess that's what still...I don't know. Perhaps this is all to say that, even though I sent him that well-deserved "are you fucking kidding me" response to his notorious "douchebag" email, I don't have the heart to be that person all the time.
Believe it or not, I've also had a pretty decently productive weekend, in spite of all this. Friday was something of a lost day, but I made up for it on Saturday, and I get to read Godwin and Wollstonecraft for my committee member this week, which can't fail to make me happy. And my students are going to the library tomorrow, which gives me a reprieve on any formal preps.
At the moment, though, I have to turn my attentions to where I can find a loaf of decent bread on my way home. I have been dreaming of a bruschetta-like combination of avocado, corn, and Parmesan with some roasted asparagus all day....
3.20.2008
Groggy.
You know, I had a decently productive day yesterday, after all. Sure, I had my period of enervation / distraction / tiredness in the afternoon, but once I put myself back on the timer, I was able to get a few things done. Finding out that the teaching observation that was supposed to take place today is getting moved didn't do much for my mood (it only required shifting around, oh, two weeks of my course planning, right at the beginning of the research unit, and getting the library involved to set the initial date), but, on the plus side, I didn't feel obligated to do much thinking about my class yesterday at all--which is exactly how Wednesdays are supposed to be when one teaches a class they've taught before on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.
I wish all of my Wednesdays could be that way--if they had been since January I would not be so terrified that my orals are two months from tomorrow. (However, I'm sure I'll be able to get more done once the conference is over, and spring break is still almost a month in my future.) The problem is, though, that I can't work like that day after day. I woke up this morning (as I often do after a good day of work) much later than I wanted to, and I can tell already it's not going to be much of a morning. I'm sluggish and groggy, not really wanting to focus on anything (including this blog post), and all the ideas that I had while I was falling asleep--the ideas that, most probably, were the reasons why I couldn't fall asleep for ages--have all gone away and I'm sort of spinning my wheels until it's time to go to teach. (Since I do my Thursday office hours before class and have an errand I have to run first, I'm looking at leaving around noon for my 2:30 class.) I will do about 20 minutes of prep and plan to look at their homework and freewriting on the train, in my office, and during the beginning of class. And I'll maybe try to read some Genette or something. I also need to clean a bit. But I certainly had a different vision of what my teaching mornings were going to be, and I sort of hope that no matter where I teach in the fall, I can get something at least before noon.
Anyway. I'll figure out something. Better things are ahead. I'm going out with The Poet this evening. It's funny, in a way, because each time I get a little bit more...okay? with the whole scenario. I may devote a longer post to this later (and, yes, by now you may have realized that the "this deserves a longer post" is a classic blogo-rhetorical move with me), but all I'm going to say right now is this--it's nice to have someone in my life who thinks I'm great, who clearly thinks about me when we're not together. (This, I think, is the one limit that I always knew The Lawyer had--he could make you feel like you were the only person in the world while he was with you, but I don't think he thinks that much about people when they aren't there. Sometimes I wish I could be more like that.) While it would obviously be nice (and far more conductive to my not being the fucked up single older sister at my brother's wedding) if said person was neither married nor nearly 30 years odler than me, that's clearly just not in the cards right now. But we all know that I still don't have the energy for a "real" relationship right now--and I guess I just don't see why it has to be all or nothing.
I wish all of my Wednesdays could be that way--if they had been since January I would not be so terrified that my orals are two months from tomorrow. (However, I'm sure I'll be able to get more done once the conference is over, and spring break is still almost a month in my future.) The problem is, though, that I can't work like that day after day. I woke up this morning (as I often do after a good day of work) much later than I wanted to, and I can tell already it's not going to be much of a morning. I'm sluggish and groggy, not really wanting to focus on anything (including this blog post), and all the ideas that I had while I was falling asleep--the ideas that, most probably, were the reasons why I couldn't fall asleep for ages--have all gone away and I'm sort of spinning my wheels until it's time to go to teach. (Since I do my Thursday office hours before class and have an errand I have to run first, I'm looking at leaving around noon for my 2:30 class.) I will do about 20 minutes of prep and plan to look at their homework and freewriting on the train, in my office, and during the beginning of class. And I'll maybe try to read some Genette or something. I also need to clean a bit. But I certainly had a different vision of what my teaching mornings were going to be, and I sort of hope that no matter where I teach in the fall, I can get something at least before noon.
Anyway. I'll figure out something. Better things are ahead. I'm going out with The Poet this evening. It's funny, in a way, because each time I get a little bit more...okay? with the whole scenario. I may devote a longer post to this later (and, yes, by now you may have realized that the "this deserves a longer post" is a classic blogo-rhetorical move with me), but all I'm going to say right now is this--it's nice to have someone in my life who thinks I'm great, who clearly thinks about me when we're not together. (This, I think, is the one limit that I always knew The Lawyer had--he could make you feel like you were the only person in the world while he was with you, but I don't think he thinks that much about people when they aren't there. Sometimes I wish I could be more like that.) While it would obviously be nice (and far more conductive to my not being the fucked up single older sister at my brother's wedding) if said person was neither married nor nearly 30 years odler than me, that's clearly just not in the cards right now. But we all know that I still don't have the energy for a "real" relationship right now--and I guess I just don't see why it has to be all or nothing.
3.19.2008
In which I am the weird one in my family, part #835
My little brother just called to tell me he's about to get engaged to his longtime girlfriend this week. I thanked him for telling me himself rather than simply updating his relationship status on Facebook.
He's planning to get married sometime in the fall. Even as a woman with no real prospect of getting married anytime soon, this seems rather quick. (Then again, A's getting married in July...but that's going to be at City Hall and there are other issues.)
Is it self-centered of me to hope that I will have someone in my life who could make for an even remotely plausible *date* to this event, which I will no doubt have to be in in some bridesmaidenly (ha) capacity? Because bringing someone like The Poet would be...well, let's just say that it would be way more obnoxious than when I showed up for my brother's high school graduation with greyish hair.
I might as well start my summer '08 to-do list now:
* Write article for Important Online Journal
* Work on dissertation prospectus with the hope of getting it approved in September
* Finally finagle something publishable on Tennyson
* Find someone to bring to central Indiana as a date for my brother's wedding.
Oh, ack.
I wonder if M's free for the Fort Greene farmer's market this Saturday....
This has derailed me a bit from slogging through my conference paper in a way that even working on a timer can't fully solve.
He's planning to get married sometime in the fall. Even as a woman with no real prospect of getting married anytime soon, this seems rather quick. (Then again, A's getting married in July...but that's going to be at City Hall and there are other issues.)
Is it self-centered of me to hope that I will have someone in my life who could make for an even remotely plausible *date* to this event, which I will no doubt have to be in in some bridesmaidenly (ha) capacity? Because bringing someone like The Poet would be...well, let's just say that it would be way more obnoxious than when I showed up for my brother's high school graduation with greyish hair.
I might as well start my summer '08 to-do list now:
* Write article for Important Online Journal
* Work on dissertation prospectus with the hope of getting it approved in September
* Finally finagle something publishable on Tennyson
* Find someone to bring to central Indiana as a date for my brother's wedding.
Oh, ack.
I wonder if M's free for the Fort Greene farmer's market this Saturday....
This has derailed me a bit from slogging through my conference paper in a way that even working on a timer can't fully solve.
Tangential
So, I'm typing my notes from reading Rousseau's Discourse on the Origins of Inequality and I find myself wondering whether The Matrix isn't, at bottom, an inherently Rousseauistic text. I mean, okay, it's a little bit too communitarian in the end, since Rousseau is all about the solitary individual, but what these works seem to share is the sense that man (against anything that Hobbes et al. would say) is essentially good (think Morpheus's defense against the Agent Smiths in the first movie, a scene that has always bothered me precisely because I am something of a misanthrope [yes! Shocking! I know.] and am also still shaped by a certain kind of Calvinist upbringing and would thus never suffer for those kinds of ideals) and a suspicion of "progress" in general as increasing our interdependece in a way that is ultimately detrimental to ourselves. And the Matrix movies also seem to share a belief that transparency in our language and interactions should be a goal--even if it can't be fully achieved--I mean, isn't that what the point of getting unplugged is?
I could be completely off base here, and it's been awhile since I've seen The Matrix while I was sober. And perhaps I'm being too reductive in limiting this just to Rousseau--perhaps there's a more general "Romantic" element of The Matrix to be explored? Surely someone's done that...(n.b. Google seems to say no to this, but Google also doesn't believe that I meant to search just for "romanticism" and so also pulls up hits for "the matrix" and "romantic," which is not particularly what I am interested in.)
I could be completely off base here, and it's been awhile since I've seen The Matrix while I was sober. And perhaps I'm being too reductive in limiting this just to Rousseau--perhaps there's a more general "Romantic" element of The Matrix to be explored? Surely someone's done that...(n.b. Google seems to say no to this, but Google also doesn't believe that I meant to search just for "romanticism" and so also pulls up hits for "the matrix" and "romantic," which is not particularly what I am interested in.)
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