Such Strange Beauty

okay, so, i know that stress exacerbates my latent state of hypochondria...but i don't know what to do about it?!?!?!

this is how it is - i know that i'm more scared of dying some horrible premature death when i'm worried about other things - that is, i transfer school stress, exhaustion, fear of failure etc. into the pretty far-out-there belief that i'm harboring a brain tumor. but...knowing this does not make the fear go away. add to that the fact that stress does make my body start working worse, and each day starts to feel like an uphill slog against the doomsday machine that is myself.

latest discovery - i have, i believe, cherry angiomas on my skin. that is, i suddenly discovered i have about seven neon red spots on my bosom, and it would appear that they are, to quote all the interwebs i scoured, "the most common type of skin lesion" and almost always not malignant - unless "a large number appear suddenly, which could signal an inner malignancy." THANKS. helpful. is seven a lot? do i have some "inner malignancy" now? aha! i've been dizzy and headachey for a week because i have a BRAIN TUMOR which is now manifesting itself through BRIGHT RED SKIN LESIONS - okay, the word lesion is never unscary, regardless of mortality rate - and you want me to continue calmly typing up review notes about Leo Marx's 1964 The Machine in the Garden and his theories of pastoral ideals and pastoral modes AS THOUGH I AM NOT AT DEATH'S DOOR?

this is kind of like a live feed of my head right now.

this is the old game i'm playing in so many arenas of my life right now, part and parcel of my ongoing belief that i am definitely crazy. how do you talk yourself out of bad mentalities? it's like mentality on top of mentality? how do you install a new mental filter that sifts through good presentiments ("i feel bad. i should go to the doctor. oh, i have diabetes.") from the bad ones ("this is a bump. on my body. it is probably a tumor. wait. it's a bone? okay.") i mean...silly as that dialogue was, that's the clincher - i have had something severely wrong with me before that i put off for months and months and months. so...how do i know if neon red polka dots are the new sign of the apocalypse? how many days straight of dizziness and headache do you put up with before going into the doctor?

my last three trips to the doctor have resulted in me feeling bashful. no, the lump on the back of my head and the dizziness were nothing. no, that large mole on my chest was not cancerous (the doctor said after a swift glance). but...but...

oh yeah. and being chronically ill, i really am sick a lot of the time. on top of bad blood sugar control that is deriving from my high stress level and low sleep level, now i seem to be chronically anemic as well. great! lovely!

and why is the internet here, so ready to convince me that i am dying? i don't know why i ever go online to try and figure things out, make myself feel better. as bekki, the nurse sister, says, "what, webmd? that's the best way to figure out that you have every disease ever and are going to die tomorrow."

this is not just me bitching about my physical conditions or my foibles. this has Serious Spiritual Considerations.

today, at church, advent was rung in with lots of blue (i guess episcopalians do lent purple and advent blue) and we thought and talked and prayed about patience and waiting. one familiar christian message: we cannot live when we're constantly under the thumb of fear. i have been chewing on this truth for years, but it's been on the forefront of my mind again for the past few weeks as i face morning after morning of achey head and unbearable work load. i don't want to live in fear. but it has such a real presence in my life - it's almost tangible.

i think it has something to do with being 26 and still embroiled in school. for a few years now, i didn't really give a shit - in case that tone didn't come through on this blog. i drank too much and worked too hard and figured a PhD program just meant putting my head down, my nose to the grindstone, forging ahead, do or die, break if you must. this past summer, while i worked as hard and punished my body as much as ever, i also found a life that i would love to live for. now that life seems to be on hold. the people i want most to be with are not here. the work that i want most to do is not yet. i feel like i'm having to wait, wait, wait so much...and waiting creates so much fear! i am not quietly waiting for jesus to come. i'm waiting, terrified, that my time might run out before the miracles that have glimmered on the horizon are realized. this summer slapped me out of my year-long mope about how there's nothing meaningful in life to live for - this summer gave me purpose and connection and joy, as well as exhaustion and plenty of lingering injuries. but...why am i back here, then? am i just finishing out of stubbornness? will this work pay off, and will i get a meaningful job akin to camp counseling - that is, teaching college - or will this just be a waste of my life? should i pack up ship and look for some job where i won't sit at my desk and stare at my chest for so long that i know it intimately, can freak out at the first sign of red spots?

i know 26 isn't that old for our generation. but think. it might be older if you have a chronic disease.

i want to live fully and deeply. and i am sitting at a desk. i love writing. i love thinking. i love challenges. but...is it worth it? i have spent the past 72 hours either sleeping or reading. there have been brief breaks to bike to or from my office, to grab microwaved thanksgiving food...but is that enough? what else can i do? in this economy, i'm grateful to have a job that gives me health insurance and enough to live on and only demands of me that i read things i love, think big ideas, work with teachers and students. but i'm not sure i buy it. i'm not sure academia will solve any of our daunting problems - in the economy, the environment, our relationships to each other - and i'm not sure i can settle down easily with my middle-class position and accept comfort that doesn't do good work.

see all the anxieties that are getting filtered through some bright red spots, a headache, a pressure against my eye?


how do you grasp the present? how do you live fully? do we best live fully by embracing whatever circumstances we're in, finding what joy we can, doing what good we can? or is that a cop-out? is unhappiness like mine a call to action that i shouldn't anesthetize with good intentions? should i instead be changing my life to find one that would more easily fit my vision of what it is to live fully? how do we know without trying?

all this three days before i am supposed to try my darnedest to advance to candidacy. what is this crap? the promised land is in sight and suddenly i want to run away, try something else. i know i need to wait and see the view from the other side. but...i guess i'm just stuck in my head so much, so often talking myself down, so often comforting myself from the very real fear that seems to dog me. and if other people feel this way, they ain't talkin'...

got the house to myself today. today's mission = write a working draft of my orals paper. it's weird; i'm starting to feel quite expert at some things, but after a few months of solid reading, getting myself to write is hard. also, it is sunny and nice, and i wish i were hiking spencer's butte with my friends today, not relegated to my living room to put together a draft. but this is my job; this is my life; i have to write sometimes.

that's all.

so i've choked down my morning airbourne - seriously, that stuff tastes like drinking ground up rocks and baby vitamin pills - and hopefully that means i won't catch one of these dreaded flus that seems to be taking over the co-op.  i went over last night to cook dinner, cover for paul while he's in michigan at the nasco conference.  i show up only to be told at least two house members may have the swine flu.  uhhhh, thanks for the heads-up, guys?!?!?!  i got my vaccine finally last week, which is awesome because my doctor was saying that diabetics have seen their sugars shoot up the 500/600 range.  no good.  but you normally don't have the full immunity benefits of the vaccine until two weeks after.  i just got a little cranky. i mean, i function most of the time, but i'm really sick, guys.  i can't just be around that crud casually.  if people are still sick, i might have to skip out on cooking this tuesday.

i intended to be up by nine working my ass off since i accidentally got pretty drunk last night at phoebe's farewell dinner.  she'd been in town visiting for ten days.  i rode my bike from the co-op down to the steelhead brewery.  since i'd already had dinner, i just started drinking wine.  i drank a lot of it. and drank wine at the co-op.  but it was a fantastic night - one of those days where it's a small group of people and nobody is crazy drunk but everyone is a little loose and laughing.  the bike ride home felt really long and i forgot to call mike and felt really bad (when i'm drunk, i either seem to a) get really angry, pick fights, and hit things or b) feel deeply remorseful and apologetic about everything).  last night, my blood sugar proceeded to crash repeatedly, so i was up and down all night.  9 am didn't happen.  i wouldn't be up now, except jeni called, needing a ride home for the airport.  thank god that got my ass out of bed.  that gives me two hours to work before i have to cruise over there, swinging by the grocery store for some OJ on the way.  and something to make for dinner....but what?

sooooo much work this week.  just work, work, work.  since i dropped 20 bucks on wine last night, i think it's safe to say that i will ground myself at home and require myself to not go out this weekend.  it is getting to be crunch time and i need to stay focused.  i have to start writing, not just reading, soon.  plus order some books.  lordy.

Yet again, I have discovered that writing on LJ is actually a great way to get my writing-brain going for work.  It's non-threatening - something about that little entry-box is just way less scary than the undivided blankness of a Word document.  Yet it's more productive than simply staring at the same 50 photos over and over again on Facebook, my other favorite way of passing an early morning coffee sipping stupor.  It gets me thinking - gives me some momentum - helps me grapple with the paralyzing "big thoughts" of my life and moving forward.

There are 24 days before my oral exam.  This is not very many, considering I still have at least 40 things to read and an essay to revise/write.  It's hella triage time - that is, time to figure out what we're just not going to read or review, that we'll have to remember on its merits from a previous reading.  And it means that tomorrow I seriously have to order some books off Amazon so that I'll have time to read them prior to said exam.  Gargh.

There are 30-odd days until I fly back to Michigan - 30-odd days  until I get to hang out with most of my sisters, party with my camp friends, talk with my parents, hang out with my boyfriend.  If all goes well, I will be a PhD candidate when I do these things.  If all does not go well...well, I don't know what...move home and go to work in a paper factory? (she said melodramatically).

I think winter term will be better.  I will get to teach again - which I'm fully ready to do.  I'll be TAing for the intro to the major sequence, which means I'll have two discussion sections of my own to quiz and grade and help along.  I'm pretty stoked.  I substitute taught for one of the director's Scientific and Technical Writing class the other day and had a blast.  Pretty much, I'm a ham - and I like being in front of people and interacting with them.  Having a bunch of seniors laughing at my stupid, stupid jokes made me light up like a cheesy Christmas display at JC Penneys.  I sparkled like tinsel, and I liked it.  Furthermore, in winter term, I will not be making up for my frivolous yet oh-so-necessary summer away by reading at a frenzied pace, reading against doom; since I began in September, there was no way I could catch up and get it all done.  That foreknowledge has frosted a layer of stress across every day.  I'm pretty sure I'll be able to wrangle the exam.  But it feels more stressful knowing that I'll be doing it without having read many things I've promised to read...

Finally, my financial stress will abate slightly next term.  I won't have to buy any plane tickets until spring break; I won't have any outstanding medical bills from the summer to pay; I won't be paying back summer rent from when I didn't have a job; and hell, I'm not flying to Michigan four times next year; I refuse.  (Let this be a warning, those of you who plan to suddenly get married or some such - you must coordinate!  I'm not budging!)  (Okay, that might be a lie; but I'm putting my foot down - you hear me? - foot! down!)  Anyway, maybe then my life will stop being a bunch of broken things held together by string and pleading.  I can let my computer slide away to its well-deserved long rest and replace it.  I could get new running shoes.  I could put fenders on my bike.  I could get new boots that aren't splitting zippers.  

So today - gotta heave into some serious critical reading about REALISM.  Then, onto a quick survey of American classics - gotta just skim some of those I've already read and call it good enough.  Cooking at the co-op.  Maybe a quick drink with Phoebe.  More reading.  The new schema, as Sarah and I were joking, is: reading and coffee until noon.  Reading and wine after 8.  In-between...well, just read?

rain, and i need to figure out how to get to work today.

my house in the hills - a bright white room that i cannot keep clean - a pile of books that lure me under covers, that batter me with so much thinking about poverty - trees outside the window that sag green under the rain that has finally, finally come - cold air and a bone-thick weariness, a pain that settles at the nape of my neck, around the socket of my eye.

reading.  reading, reading, reading.

my body is constantly bent over a keyboard, a paper, a book.  my body is hunched on a bicycle, curled in the corner of a bus, leaning on a couch and watching a television.  i do not feel here, except for when i'm walking the trail littered yellow with maple leaves and watching smoke come up through the pines.  then i feel "here," except here is not a definable location, like "eugene," but just a concentrated physicality that feels more real than the half-embodied state of thinking that dictates my days.

i have not settled back into life here since camp.  camp had a fierce, indissoluble reality to it that pushed itself on you, that forced you to feel your body pushing against the day.  here, it is quite easy to half-exist - to let the environment swath you without touching you.  it is easy to postpone your life and think about what you would like to do, never creating anything more real than a sandwich, a drink, a pile of laundry. 

this is typical for november.

my heart is elsewhere.  what i want in life is elsewhere.  for now i have a pretty house up in the pretty trees, but the whiteness of the kitchen is a kind of elegant, arch sterility.  the silhouette of the trees floats on my vision but does not punch my heart.  nothing breaks through the gauze of dreaming.  i am moving slowly, half-stretched muscles, the hover of a bird of prey half seen through cloud vapor.

do you want to know what is real?  not creased bookbindings and sweetened coffee at a polished cherry table.  not soft green couches and curving glasses of red wine.  what is real is the hot, rough-grained heft of a torch in your hand, caught in the dark, threatening death and thus pointing to focus, concentration, presence of mind and body together.  what is real is a deer running from the forest in morning, plunging into the lake with one backwards flick of ears.  what is real is G-chord, C-chord, D-chord repeating under oak trees, accompanied by singing ragged with cold and last night's screaming.  what is real is the feel of sweat and dirt against a sleeping bag and the ache of muscles after too little sleep.  what is real is the ground that you land on from a galloping horse's back, the branches you swat from your face with an upraised punch as you run the edges of a cornfield. 

i am studying realism.  what i want is reality.  just like all these writers, i want something so real i cannot deny it, so present that its concreteness fights through words and visions and my introverted, self-reflective, constant thinking.  i think that must be part of why i love camp.  i am a thinker, a writer, a reader.  it is too easy for me to slide into shadows and get lost in words, images, memories, thinking, sitting, sipping, passing wind, mist.  at camp, even the stillest moments saturated my senses and kept me alive to my world - red sunset on lake kimball, stars above the climbing tower, the vast sweep of the ropes course on a quiet morning, the bright green of the hill up at frontier village.  i want to lay in bed with my friends and laugh until my sides ache, so alive and present.  i want to zoom down the highways singing.  i want fire.  i want singing.  i want water.

having not

we do not sing possessions.
we sing passing - quick flashes
bracket our knowing - we sing flesh,
your hand on the door
frame, the greenness of light
under water.  yes, night - and to know
the lines of you, at a distance,
with the eye: contour, glimpse,
shadow. we do not sing a having,
having not.  we sing around
owning, the knots of its soundings,
a doe racing real down a road
to collision.  we stack a chord thick:
gesture, conjecture, a lightness,
a loss, a descending.  love, we spend
too much breath on intention.  i love
without hands, without arms,
breathing out.

these are the days when, weary and achy and tense as i often am, i just love what i do.

it's quiet.  it's night.  everyone else in the house is done with their papers, and they've tucked themselves in early.  it's just me in the guest room, second diet soda of the evening buzzing through my veins.  i'm surrounded by books...notes in several different colors of pen, typed, cut apart, stuck together with masking tape...plates and abandoned mugs.  there's one glass of wine left in the $4 bottle; i'll dip in if the going gets really rough.  i have my creased and battered paperbacks - books that have gone from strange, unheard of 1930s documentary texts to newly adored friends, hopeful participants in my dissertation.    and now, i get to just write.  the students have handed in all their papers, and those are locked up in a stack in my office, lurking in PLC until friday when i become a teacher again.  not now.  right now, i'm just a writer, and i cradle that moment jealously.  i get so little times these days to just write and think and work hard.  between being EGO president and being a third year student and being a composition mentor and being a teacher...i run from meeting to meeting and very rarely get to give my work the attention it needs...

but i'm getting closer and closer!  this paper has been excruciating, because i'm hoping to tie it into my dissertation somehow.  the big diss is shaping up to be an examination of nonfiction writing in 1850s-1950s America.  That sounds so huge.  But I have a narrower theoretical framework.  i'm looking at theoretical questions about representation - aka, (post)structuralism 101 version, how is the word "tree" related to an actual tree and to a concept of tree?  these questions seem trivial until you start looking at texts that put these kinds of problems into play and start showing how political and moral problems of representation (how do you represent other people? animals? parts of the earth? how do you represent that which cannot speak for itself in the language/medium/style you are using?) can be traced back to these gaps between words and the world.  there will definitely be a big theoretical introduction that wrestles with timothy morton (environmental aesthetics guru) and bruno latour (my sweet, sweet favorite writer in science studies).  there will definitely be a chapter on representational language, thoreau, and science.  this new paper is about 1930s documentary - i'm focusing now on james agee, (his book with Walker Evans called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men) but it would be tight to throw steinbeck in the mix too and do a little crossgenre fiction/nonfiction mashup.  after all, thoreau is a science/philosophy/poetry genre bender, and i want this paper to be about smashing disciplinary/genre boundaries as much as it's about representation.  and of course, everything gets a neat environmental framework, since most of these questions boil down to how do we talk about the world and everything in it when we're part of the world but not the same as it...hahaha, i say "definitely" but of course this is all assuming that a) my project description/orals list gets by my committee this spring b) i pass my orals in the fall and c) my prospectus next year is also approved by advisor and company.  but this is my big dream...my time to feel glutted with the ideas that keep springing to life and feeding me.  this is why i'm doing this, right?

so many big ideas!  they're all so exciting and shiny!  and i am now turning them over and over in the rock polisher of my mind.  seriously, i've written like 45 pages this term just for this one 12-15 page paper.  it's hard when you have this massive theoretical framework mapped out and you're trying to cram that into 2-3 pages.  i guess it's good practice for conferences, especially the one this spring where i'm basically giving 1/2 of my theoretical framework and 1/3 of my thoreau material.

i love these calm all nighters.  the ones where i have a full draft and everything i'm doing at this point is just to make it even better - to push it to that next level.  the writing is as excruciating as ever, but i think what i'm finally producing is publish-able.  not quite there yet - but ideas that are theoretical and well-researched enough, as well as original enough and sufficiently at issue - that given some going over by the profs, they could be on their way to worth other thinkres' time.  and i mean, that's what you should be doing in your dissertation right?

okay...enough avoiding that actual writing bit.  time to wrap up this hellish winter quarter with a good night of typing and then launch into the madness of the coming months...

i'm stressed out and exhausted...and i'm totally burnt out on my work...and now my dog is dying...and i'm pissed about it.

spring break?  please....

poetry readings!  papers that are about awesome environmental justice literature!  pizza with friends!  wine with friends!  hip-hop dance showings! running in cold sunny weather!  golden flax cereal for breakfast!  giant chocolate chip cookies in the microwave!  tabbi coming to eugene in a week!  orals lists!  conference papers! 

(could this be a new poetry form?  OMGanette?)

i am the official assistant director for camp henry, summer 09.  michigan summer, here i come!

melissa

dear body,

i'm sorry for the horrible things i've done to you during our whole time together.  but please stay.  i literally can't go on without you.

i know that i've been bad to you.  i bullied you through competitive running for four years.  i made you carry on with mile repeats during bronchitis and hill intervals with a torn calf muscle.  i know i neglected my physical therapy for my hip and popped advil in sets of four so i could finish conference meets.  i'm so very sorry.

i know that i had that eating disorder for a while and convinced you that we could easily do four miles on no calories, that food was directly proportionate to exercise accomplished.  again, i'm sorry.

and i know that this year, as in the two years past, i've dealt you the ultimate blow with grad school: too much alcohol, too much stress, not enough exercise, not enough sleep.  i know, i know, i know - it's been bad for both of us, dear body.

but lately you've been so hard on me!  you take everything so personally.  the slightest thing has you sore and weeping.  cheese grater cut?  that took three weeks to heal, got infected, and left me with an eraser sized scar on my thumb knuckle.  allergic reaction to laundry detergent?  i had that crazy rash on my knee for five days.  and now this.  i fell on the pavement, with running tights on, and ripped up my knee; it's more infected than anything i've ever seen, including the big rip in my ankle that i got in the wetland pond and that was filled with mud on and off for three days despite the best i could do to save myself from wetland ecology class.  hello?  i cleaned you out!  i gave you antibiotic ointment.  what do you want?

i guess what i'm saying is - we need each other.  and right now, you're hurting yourself in an attempt to hurt me.  and it's working, body, it's working.  but if you'll just give me another chance...i'll stop making unreasonable demands of you if you can just try to be there for me.

love,
mind

dear lent (and my non-christian-but-still-influenced-by-the-puritanic-culture-of-america housemates):

ahem ahem ahem.
i haven't done this in a while.
[hunts around; finds chair; climbs up on it].

I AM NOT DEFINED BY MY NUMBERS!  [waves pointed finger in the air].
oh yes, and GOD EXISTS, SO I'M HAVING DESSERT!.

since when could you purchase your own redemption by self-denial that is actually secretly veiled selfish self-betterment?  since when did jesus care if you lost ten pounds by denying yourself dessert for 40 days?  since when was self-restraint supposed to be arbitrary and categorical?  do you think god cares if you have a six pack?

i'm not saying that i think fasting or self-restraint or sacrifice or denial are unhelpful spiritual practices.  i think they are very important.  but i think in modern american culture, it is very easy to start doing these things for all the wrong reasons.  self-sacrifice during lent is supposed to be about making space for the divine and for the community.  it's about giving things up that distract from your ability to be spiritually present, loving, and willing.  okay.  so sometimes, in some cultures, that may very well have meant giving up certain kinds of food for whatever reason - to help those in need; to make you more aware of your blessings; to remind you to rely on god's power and not on your own physical strength.  maybe people still do that now.  but most people i meet don't fast for those reasons; they do what i once did, which is why i'm perhaps so sensitive to it - they use lent as an excuse to facilitate their own insecurities about themselves.  so, lent becomes a trial period for self-restraint and self-control; instead of focusing on god's power to sustain us in the face of physical deprivation and weakness, people focus on their own ability to hold back.  and then they parade around, reminding others that they have now gone so many hours without food, so many days without meant, so many weeks without sugar.  

meanwhile, my non-spiritual friends seem to be engaged in an ongoing ante-up, one-up escalation to see who can create the most restrictive diet and exercise regime for themselves.  they say it's so they will feel better, yet they spend all their time talking out loud about how great they feel and how wonderful it is to give up these things.  it's like i live with a bunch of evangelical food freaks.  "repent of your donuts while ye may; the end times are near; your ass is growing to be a pit of all-consuming fire."  i just bit several housemates' heads off for making someone else feel guilty for eating a couple of donut holes.  hello?  i don't care if you're insecure or if you're not.  but if you're need to feel morally superior from self-restraint is going to insinuate into someone else's equally complicated quest to be okay with their life and their body, then back off.  

i want to find you, kathryn, and drag our wobbly desk chairs together and climb up and shout.  I'M NOT DEFINED BY MY NUMBERS.  god doesn't love me because of how many miles i ran or how many donuts i did not eat or how many pounds i weigh.  i am not a valuable person because of the size of my bank account, the number of papers i've published, or the gpa i've received in grad school.  who i am is not a function of my test scores or the size of my jeans or the number of activities i participate in or how many crunches i do in the morning or how many days i've gone without wheat. 

in christianese, these things become idols when we worship the activities themselves and aren't careful to use self-restraint and sacrifice and discipline as ways of getting closer to the divine and others rather than as ways to simply better ourselves in our own eyes.

so, dear american lent, this season is not another new year's - not another chance for 40 day trials of resolutions.  lent is not a 40 day self-help book.  if anything, lent should be a time when we remember our weakness - we remember our very desire to rely on self-improvement and selfish betterment - so that maybe, just maybe, if we're lucky, we can learn to live with joy in the midst of our imperfections and save time for that joy and love instead of devoting all our time and energy to a self-perfection that cannot and need not ever be attained.

woe

1)  after turning in two of the best papers i've churned out recently (9 page paper on the john donne, the trinity and masochism; and a 4 page paper on steinbeck's grapes of wrath, money, and capitalist mechanisms of work) i had to write a shit-ass piece of crap paper last night from 1 -3 am and turn it in today.  blarg.  why give assignments during week 8?

2) my writing class is cursed.  this term has seen the death of a grandmother; hospital worthy tonsilitis; a concussion; a massively sick grandmother; a girl dealing with sexual harassment; a mother having a new baby; and a mother with skin cancer.  this means i'm getting lots of work late from students and having an impossible time keeping track of it all.  naturally, my students think i'm a flake.  le sigh.

3) i haven't even started the paper that is due in 1.5 weeks.  graggggggggggh.  and i've barely started the creative theatrical performance script i need to write for john donne class.

4) i got 4 hours of sleep last night.

5) i need to stop eating ice cream but i can't.  gragh.

6) tango was awful on tuesday.  they may close the tango center, and on what might be my last night there, i stepped on 3 peoples' feet.


win

1) i had the best conversation in the world tonight with the LOST crew.  we ended up discussing our dreams for 10-20 years from now; the (ir)relevance of the humanities/poetry; how to be happy; social justice and art; and many other things.  it was like a cosmo lobby night all over again, except we all crapped out at 11:30 and i have to get up at 8:00 to grade papers before class.

2) i think i'm joining the UO gospel choir spring term.  they were singing in the student union the other day and i realized how much i miss miss miss singing those wonderful 4 part harmonies.  scoff at them if you want, predominantly white choral music.  there's something so raw and gritty and soul-seering true about those songs.  i don't care if they're as hard to perform.  they send me rocking with joy like nothing else.

3) tango was awesome on saturday and i felt amazing.  i was on and nothing could stop the dance magic.

4) wine and cheese reception on friday!!!!

we'll keep it balanced.  but the best thing is now i get to go to bed.

carol's post reminded me that i pretty much don't exist in internet world right now.  well, lj world.  facebook status updates take 30 seconds.  and since there was an article in the ny times about them, well, clearly they count as a recognized art form.  gawd.

pretty much, i have nothing to say.  life is very dull, and i'm headdown sprinting to the end of this year when, thank god, i get a brief caesura.  right now, i teach.  i read books.  i write papers.  i plan events.  i sleep.  i mop floors.  i make dinner.  when i'm not doing one of these many things, i drink a little more than is probably good for me but not as much as i have in times past.  i don't dance much, but i do occasionally run and rock climb.  i play the guitar.  today i learned about 7 chords for the mandolin, and anything in g i can twiddle away solidly.  also, poetry group is finally meeting this week, so we're putting the paddles to my dead creative energies. 

basically, i'm a work drone!  i have three and a half weeks of winter term left, in which time i must plan two more english grad events; grade 100 more papers; calculate grades; write one paper; write a creative performance; and sign up for classes.  then, over spring break, i need to put together a 125-150 book reading list for my orals project and write a prospectus/proposal outlining this project to turn in early on in spring term.  spring term is for CRAZY PEOPLE.  i'm teaching 121; i  have to plan a book sale, an orals conference, and two brown bag seminars; i have to run department elections; I have to write a paper for a conference; I have to take my last two seminars and churn out my two last seminar papers.

this is what the end of my term will look like:
May 29 - teach at 3:00, fly out on some insane red eye flight for michigan.
May 30 - be in Kathryn's wedding.
June 1 - teach at 3:00 and then head to Victoria
June 2 -6 - give a paper at the Association for the Study of Lit and Environment Conference.  Apparently, this conference will also involve much drinking and bluegrass.
June 7 - get back to Eugene and finish conference papers and grading
June 13 - get to Camp Henry to work as Assistant Director for the summer.

See why I never update?

AGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Next year I get to defend my orals project, advance to candidacy, and begin working on my dissertation.  I also get to teach literature instead of writing.  I'm just DYING to be done with classes and have time to do the work that I want to do!

Luckily, life still includes LOST, cabernet, Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream ice cream, runs on muddy trails in Hendrick's Park, a sweet cap mated with a new jacket and boots, a still functional bike, a steady income, sporadic doses of sunshine, great Depression era prose, guitar calluses, raucous dance parties, grilled cheese sandwiches, ceaseless streams of coffee, green rollerball pens, neko case and fleet foxes and iron and wine and daisy may, spaghetti night, gratuitous amounts of eyeliner, the crux, and the occasional bluegrass night. 

i am a stress junkie.

there is nothing as horrible as realizing that you cannot possibly get everything you need to accomplished.

and there is nothing as amazing as the rush of fresh air and freedom that comes in when you make it through the crisis.

it's like being drunk in reverse.  work is like a hangover and after that comes giddy elation.

i tried to set down roots.  but what if you only grow feathers and spiny, spindle legs?  what if you try to be a tree and all along you're secretly a bird?  what if you press down at the earth at every rainfall, and instead of sinking down and settling, instead of reaching up towards the sky with sturdiness and agile permanence, you find yourself shaking your wings, anticipating flight.

don't you see, y'all?  this is the problem.  you've thought all along i was a tree.  you've anchored on me too.  we've been pruning and playing, waiting for harvest and shade.  but that singing to the wind that i do - that singing's not the leaves but my own sky-green throat.  now i've caught the pulse, and uncurling each claw, i am haunted with the passing of air, intoxicated by the span held in one arc of downthrown flight.

i am tired of putting and reputting the books, cups, clothes back onto shelves.  i am tired of folding and creasing.  i am tired of hanging starry papers on the walls.  i am ready for the throttle and the thrust, the pulse of leaving, the dark night spotted by distant lights and the roaring span that holds land, lake, sunset, thunder, fear.  i am ready to be driven by nor'westers and buffeted by hail, rent and plucked by the rolling in of fog and put to bed by the collapse of thunderheads.  this is not nesting season.  this is not growing time.  this is the season that the winds own.

so, last year we said 25 was the last big landmark for a while - the age at which you can rent a car for cheap or whatever.

but today i have discovered that 26 is the age at which i officially have begun to hate having a birthday.  why?  because (or so it seems from the flood of messages i've gotten in the last few days), your birthday is yet another day when you're supposed to be coordinating social activities or risk looking the fool.  and honestly, there's nothing special or exciting about coordinating massive drinking - that's my frickin' JOB this year.

i never got why people could say they hated their birthday (or any holiday, really).  but i kind of get it now.  it's the pressure.  it's the thousandth time of saying, no i don't have any plans tonight and getting the response of, really?  not even late? and saying, god, i have class until nine and i have a chest cold  - i want to celebrate by rubbing vick's vap-o-rub all over my chest and sucking down a good bottle of cough syrup.

grumble grumble.  i must officially be old and crotchety!

a little too bright and fast, like a waxed up sports car.  i came back full throttle, skidded around the corners a little, keep trying to take a gulp and breathe.  my classes look fabulous but are exploding with reading, and if i had a small nook and a lamp and some coffee and scones, i could sit with my new pile of books for ages and feel wiser and richer and fuller.  but no, no, no, there are a million events to plan, activities to coordinate, committees to orchestrate and support.  i clutch my planner, calendar, notebook - i write email after email, frantic with the juggling.  and all the while, in the background, matters of the head and heart colliding like cable cars off the wires, like one caboose rammed up into the long freight line, shuddering echoes all the way to omaha.  so much to balance - courage with patience, humility with confidence, recklessness with uncertainty, acceptance with daring. 

i went running in gray sun and saw birds fall from a tree like rain, downpour of feathers, the harvest of motion and light bones.  i said yes and please.  i ached and then sang.  it's that way - that work - knowing when to pause for quick bounty, when to move on, turn your back, keep pace to your own running away.  more birds in the motion.  forget that shaken shock of starlings.  now i move in a cloud - first ravens, then crows - changing before my eyes as their beaks seem to shrink and grow.  they glow - glossy black.  they are orbiting, leaping from level to level, braiding a basket of croaks and caws around me, pacing me down the road, wary eyed and never quite alighting.  they know and don't advise.  

yesterday, our neighborhood streets were one solid block of ice.  driving back from shopping, my mom feared we were going to not make the curve and end up in the lamp post instead.  the dog fell on the sidewalk.  i had to slide like an ice skater down to the mailbox.

today, the temperature rocketed to over 60 degrees.  all the ice had melted before i got up.  the snow was gone before sunset.  all day, huge clouds of mist were boiling of f of the melting snow.  it was crazy - surreal.  i went for a run in a long-sleeve tee-shirt and shorts.  by the two mile mark i had stripped down to a sports bra.  but every time i passed a litlle microclime, some small vale filled with snow, a cold gust would come off - like walking by the freezers in the grocery store.  i walked the dog right before sunset.  clouds were low and heavy and racing - so much vapor, it was simply unbelievable, and all racing away from michigan before the big refreeze coming this morning.

what a strange, strange land we live in.

just killing time around home while i wait to see if the posse is rolling out again tonight.

first/(and sometimes last) lines meme.
( lines meme )