purple for Halloween?

When did purple become a designated Halloween color? Suddenly, this year, it seems to be everywhere: in the halloween-themed dog toys we bought (yes, we celebrate any and all holidays by buying dog toys and having a little party out in the backyard), in the halloween lights (?!) and garlands (!?!) various neighbors have strung up, and in other decorations I've seen in stores and on houses. I guess the traditional orange-and -black combo was too garish, or orange lights look too much like construction trucks. (um, and when did we start stringing garlands for halloween, either?) Or it's just the wide spread prejudice against orange. People really don't appreciate the color. Purple, of course, has a long history of associations with royalty, with witches, and with gay folk. And I'm a big fan of purple, don't get me wrong. I just don't associate it with Halloween.

from my morning commute

I don't usually link to the little clips of media that are daily fads, since if you like that sort of thing you've undoubtedly already seen it. But this one, which I heard about on the radio and then looked up, is too good to miss.

Which is more disconcerting: to see the Lexus driver behind you reading the newspaper while driving (later on I was in the lane next to him and yes, he was actively reading it, spread all over his wheel and dash) -- or to notice that the guy in the Navigator next to you is text messaging with both thumbs on his Blackberry while driving. It's a pretty close call, any way you look at it.

Radio, people. So you can keep using your eyes to drive with.

The Prestige

GF and I went to see The Prestige today, which we'd been eagerly anticipating after seeing the preview. It was good, certainly watchable -- but not quite as good as we'd been hoping for. Conceptually it's smart -- the stages of an illusion, mapped onto the stages of the film -- with plenty of twists and turns along the way. But it's not getting a rave from me. The ending seemed kind of a cop-out (and I won't say more, since I loathe spoilers). The characters were stylishly portrayed, but not very deep -- certain phrases keep getting repeated throughout the film, in part to add to its "twisty" quality (this film is, after all, from the guys who did Memento) -- but "getting your hands dirty" or "secrets are my business" don't in themselves constitute psychology. An emotional loss is supposedly the trigger for an obsessive competition between two illusionists, which soon overshadows any possibility of the characters really showing emotion.

I am interested, however, in figuring out what cultural forces are at work to give us several films featuring magicians all within a few months -- I haven't yet seen The Illusionist, and I need to hurry up and do so before it disappears from our local theaters. In this film, illusion/magic are used as ways to demonstrate cultural anxieties about science -- about scientific ambition, about the costs of experimentation, about the boundaries of what seems possible, or allowable by common sense, the government, etc. It also reaches back to certain late-Gothic 19th-century tales (Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, for instance) which themselves were responding to cultural concerns about science. Even the choice of Jackman and Bale lends a postmodern gothicky comic-book feel to the film in its revisioning of late 1890s culture.

Much of the film depends on nested flashbacks and narrations, many of which are nestled within one or another character's diary -- each magician's journal gets read by his rival during the course of the movie -- which, because of the overt comparisons at the film's beginning to the stages of a magic trick, we are led to believe beforehand are nothing but distractions or tricks. So why care? The "puzzle" such as it is, can only be halfway figured out by the viewer who inhabits a rational-epistemology world (and it's not so difficult to do) -- the other half you couldn't guess, and in order to accept it, you must equally and simultaneously inhabit an irrational, fantastic universe. It is perhaps fitting for a film about doubles to require its viewer to take on a split mind -- but it isn't quite satisfying enough -- as an experience or as a narrative.

free in room wireless access

I'm at a conference this weekend, and so I've discovered that (yet again) in-room wireless access really means: if you perch on the edge of the armchair in the dark corner of the room, you might be able to get enough Low Signal to at least check email. Last night I could do that, but couldn't get enough signal to get into Blogger, though right now I can (maybe because it's dinner hour, rather than internet hour).

Though whatever i was going to write about last night has completely vanished from my over-caffeinated (and under-hydrated) conference brain. I'm just a spectator at this event, which is really more of a symposium (aka Gathering of Famous Names) and I'm feeling a little tired of sitting and listening and sponging up ideas. It's not my main field, though it's an area I'm interested in -- so this is adding to my feeling kind of marginal. It's been a strange, very long day.

One more session this evening, and then I can do some course prep. Or maybe I'll just come back and crash in front of the cable tv here in the hotel. It's hard for me to integrate conference mindset with the usual weekend work load, but somehow it all has to get done.

report from the couch

I know it's an egregious error of egoism to think that anything happens in the universe in order to benefit little ol' me (I've been teaching George Eliot lately so this error is at the front of my consciousness) -- but I have to say that I'm feeling very grateful to whatever forces were at work today to cancel the meeting that would have been the only reason I had to drive in to campus.



So I've spent the last several hours working (or mostly working), butt firmly planted on the couch, coffee in front of me, sleeping dogs all around. Marking papers, reading for the week's courses, and writing up a grant proposal. A most excellent way to spend the day, and a much-needed corrective to the last three weeks which have entailed super-long days at the office.

limb, member, appendage, shank

About a week ago, I changed up my yoga practice considerably: I wore shorts. Now, obviously, this was a premeditated act, not something that just randomly occurred in the universe. And for many people, it probably wouldn't be that big a deal. But for me it was, and the effects are still being felt in my little tiny corner of said universe.

Relevant pieces of information:

• Close-fitting shorts are actually recommended attire for hot, Bikram-style yoga. Bikram himself wears a speedo-style swimsuit, and most Bikram studios recommend that students wear as little clothing as possible to help acclimate to the heat. In addition, shorts help the teachers observe the student's knees, and make appropriate postural corrections.
  
• Because correct yoga form is so important, students are at the very least urged to wear close-fitting clothing so as to be able to observe their posture in the mirror. (In Bikram class, unlike some other styles, the instructor does not model the poses, but gives verbal instructions which students try to follow by examining their reflection in the mirror.)
• Before I took up yoga, I studied martial arts, for which we wore black baggy unisex cotton pants that were gathered with elastic at the ankles. During those years, I gradually forgot that I had ever revealed my legs (back in the days of step aerobics in the 80s I wore bike-style shorts and oversized t-shirts). I wasn't hiding my legs, per se, but it wasn't considered appropriate to reveal them in my martial arts school.
  
• I don't really consider shorts as clothing to be worn outside of my house. Mostly because when I wear shorts, I look like a 12 year old. Or possibly a camp counselor. I'll wear long baggy cargo shorts to the grocery store or whatever, but they're not a fashion statement I'm interested in exploring. And besides, what shoes do you wear with shorts? Sneakers, or sandals, which take me right back to being 12.
  

So it was really a big deal for me to even consider wearing shorts to yoga class. When I first started doing yoga, I felt very self-conscious about the requirement of wearing close-fitting clothing on my top half (being someone who always worked out in extra-large baggy t-shirts to minimize interactions at the gym and to camoflauge my pudgy parts). I understood the need for it (you can't do downward dog in a loose t-shirt without revealing far more than I'd wish) but it was a big adjustment. So I wore flared yoga pants (not leggings) and tank tops. Eventually, when I started doing Bikram, I got sweat-wicking flared pants that I thought were close-fitting, but really weren't.

That was a couple of years ago. Over tbe past few months, I'd realized a couple of things -- first, that my yoga pants were now getting kind of baggy. And second, I cared a lot less about what anyone thought about my clothes or my shape, since I now knew what I was doing in the class. During the 60-day marathon I even stood in the front row pretty consistently. So being observed bothered me less.

I had half-heartedly tried on some workout shorts last spring, but didn't find any that were longer than 2 inches (which I'm way too old to wear) or not super loose. Then the itch kind of hit me again a few weeks ago when I noticed a kind of big woman in my class wearing the perfect shorts. (The teeny tiny 20 year olds are not exactly my fashion models.) So I went out and found my own perfect yoga shorts -- low rise, flattering seams, exactly mid-thigh in length. I got two pairs, even.

And then I wore them. Day 1 I was a little self-conscious. And the yoga really feels different in shorts -- it was weird in Eagle to feel skin against skin, for instance. But it definitely let my skin breathe differently, and was cooler than wearing long leggings (I wasn't sure in 105 degrees that I'd really notice a difference, but I did.) I wouldn't want to wear the shorts in winter time, when the studio never seems quite as warm as it's supposed to be. But it was fine right now. By Day 2 of shorts I wasn't really thinking about them so much. Until someone (this ultra-competitive annoying woman) commented on it to me in the locker room. Clearly my wearing shorts and standing in the front row really shook her up. (She didn't actually say anything negative, just "what were you doing in the front row? and wearing shorts? so un-Mel-like.")

So maybe this new revised Fall 2006 me does wear shorts in yoga. And maybe I'm enjoying rediscovering my legs again after many years of covering them up. But it's clearly a slippery slope, because I've even caught myself wondering if I might try on a skirt-plus-leggings ensemble (my favorite look back in 1985). I haven't worn a skirt or dress since 1992 -- due to living in a series of rough neighborhoods, the creation of my teaching persona, and the end of a
bad relationship. All of that is way, way, way in the past now, but I'm pretty comfortable with how I dress these days. I'd probably feel like I was in drag if I put on a skirt. And I'm not sure I'm interested in dealing with the comments that would surely arise if I showed up at the university with visible legs. But for 90 minutes in a heated sweaty room I can be that girl who does actually have legs worth showing off, if only to myself.

wired (various)

wired (me): I'm teaching one night class this semester -- something we all have to do in my department, and which I don't usually mind. But it isn't aligning so easily with my attempts to be on a regular early-morning schedule. If I could come home and just go to sleep right away, that'd be one thing. But instead I'm caught in that wired-up tiredness that requires me to putz around on the computer or watch TV for hours until I can finally go to bed. Too tired to do anything really productive, not tired enough to sleep.

wired (informant): We saw two excellent high-testosterone films in the past few days in honor of GF's birthday (which means she gets to pick the films) -- both of them things I would have seen anyway (I drew the line at Jackass and the Chain Saw Massacre prequel which she'll have to see with one of her guy buddies). The Departed is primo Scorcese, with fantastic performances from top-notch actors -- I haven't seen the Chinese original but GF said it was pretty close, even down to the eery resemblance between Leo Dicaprio and Matt Damon. It's ultra violent, smart, self-aware, even funny in places. I also really liked the character of the psychologist girlfriend caught between the two shifty protagonists. Operatic, almost impressionistic, rather than plot-driven, it's stylish without the improbable slickness both these actors have covered before (Mr Ripley and Catch Me if you Can).

One word of advice: it's well over 2 hours, so if your theatre shows a bezillion previews and ads first, you really ought to restrict your fluid intake for 90 minutes beforehand. I didn't , and so I spent 20 long minutes suffering before I finally gave in and left the theatre to visit the facilities. I hate to leave a film even for just a couple of minutes, but it was desperate. (In such situations, I always wind up thinking of Tycho Brahe's awful death as told to me by one of my philosophy professors years ago-- a quick web search suggests that there are new theories about mercury poisoning, which is equally gruesome but not so colorful.)

wired (up!): And then there was Crank. Not a film I'd recommend to everyone. But if you like your pop culture served up hot and buzzing, this is for you. Jason Stratham (who I last saw in the eyepopping Transporter 2) wakes up and has been poisoned with "the Chinese shit" which is fatally slowing down his metabolism. Only thing he can do to hang on long enough to wreak some revenge is to keep jacking up his system with adrenaline, by any means possible: driving through a shopping mall, public sex, cop chasing, etc. Witty tweaks to the sound and visuals let you feel his out-of-syncness with his friends and surroundings, and there are hilarious musical jokes, but this film makes no pretensions to be anything other than a joyride. You'll never look at a Red Bull the same way again.

I'm grading (like everyone else)

I made a vow at the beginning of the semester that I would not complain about grading. Ever. (at least during this term). Because, quite frankly, as miserable as I might make myself by procrastinating, or by mis-timing certain assignments -- my teaching load is lighter than some other people I know and I feel guilty about ever possibly complaining in a venue (like this) where they might hear.

And, of course, it's spiritually better for one not to be complaining, or focusing on the negative. So I've been practising saying more affirming things to myself like
"I am discovering what my students are learning"
"I am a responsible teacher who provides feedback"

And it is actually sort of working to improve my attitude.

(Or if it isn't -- you won't hear it from me here.)

bumper reading

A couple of days ago, I saw a car with a bumper sticker that read "Vegans Just Don't Matter." Now, it's pretty rare that I feel directly targeted by bumper stickers -- especially since most of them tend to be for something rather than against. Or those that are hostile are so patently absurd (i.e., "No Fat Chicks" or the one that I see in the staff/faculty parking lot I use -- "Only Fools Believe the Biased Liberal Media" which always makes me shake my head trying to imagine what "liberal media" would actually look like).

So I tried to imagine what would motivate someone to put such a sticker on their car. Sure, I live in a big city -- there are a couple of vegetarian restaurants and several of the large-chain fresh/healthy/organic type stores. But it's not a particularly food-progressive city. There aren't Vegan Pride marches or regular PETA demonstrations. There are plenty of all-meat restaurants (and colon specialists) here as well. So what would make this person feel so threatened that he/she has to announce this opinion?

All I can come up with is that somehow, some way, we vegans matter enough to this individual that he/she has to deny that fact. If anything, this bumper sticker will mean that the word vegan will enter the consciousness of thousands of people on the freeway who might not otherwise hear or see the word. Every little bit of awareness contributes to the possibility of future dialogue or change. For every idiot who laughs at the "No Fat Chicks" sticker, there's someone else who thinks "my sister in law would feel hurt by that, and I feel irritated on her behalf." For every person who laughs and says "I'm going to McDonalds right now to prove vegans are stupid" there's someone else who thinks "I wonder what it means to be a vegan."

So, hey, vegan-dismisser. I'm actually glad you're out driving around.

turnitin

Sometime around mid-afternoon, my crappy bad attitude finally lifted. There are various external factors I might credit with this change, or it might be the ever-shifting sea of neurochemicals in my skull. Whatever, I'm happy to be feeling better.

And my afternoon class (the ones who were turning in a paper today) were great. This is my first year using turnitin.com -- my U has been a subscriber to it for several years, but I preferred to nab my plagiarists by hand. (And, of course, to design weirdly unique assignments that wouldn't be so amenable to plagiarism.) But this year I thought I'd give it a try -- if for no other reason than that an extra dose of Plagiarism Prevention couldn't hurt. Plus, I wanted to be able to mix in some more conventional types of essay topics, and those tend to cause even good students to get distracted by Spark Notes.

But what I didn't realise is that one of the other benefits is that my students weren't literally handing in their papers to me today. I had set the deadline as today, up until midnight. Which meant that there was none of that exhausted up-all-night, haven't-done-today's-reading behavior in class today. If anything, my students were kind of pumped up because they were mostly in the midst of writing their papers. With an online system like turnitin, there's actually no reason to make the due date a class day, even. Maybe next time I'll just have them due at 6 pm Friday or something.

fraying

Although I wouldn't wish it on anybody, there is some small consolation in the fact that other people are also having a cruddy time of it lately. It's not just my individual failings as a person and as a teacher, or the failings of my colleagues, university, or climate. It's just that time of semester. Blech.

One of the things I always have liked about my job here at Large Urban is that my department is quite astonishingly collegial, for an English dept. No hokey picnics or forced get-togethers (except for the holiday party) -- we're not all friends, after all -- but we manage to speak civilly and behave ourselves.

Or at least we did, until last spring. And thus far it seems as though this fall term is not going to be any better. Apparently the only thing bonding us all together was the terrible administration we used to have. Without that common enemy to fight, we are now attacking each other. I'm staying clear of the fray, as much as I can; luckily it's mostly about territory I'm not that interested in. (If you want to debate the finer points of department bylaws for six hours, go ahead. Just send me the memo afterwards.) But the atmosphere at work is pretty lousy, and it's starting to affect me.

Working at home today was a great relief, except for when I checked my email and had to shuttle 10 emails from the current pissing matches into my "Department Crap" folder. I'm not even reading all the stuff from the department listserv these days, but just seeing the names of certain Self-Righteous Old Farts appearing over and over in my box is disheartening.

So here's hoping that tomorrow's students will brighten my mood. Although, since they're turning in papers, the chances for lively discussion are probably kind of slim. Time to create a more structured exercise...

Bad Attitude Tuesday

It's week 6 of the semester. Around these here parts, it's also Bad Attitude Tuesday. How are you going to mark the occasion?

Based on the class I just finished teaching, my students are celebrating the day by not doing the reading. Some are taking their observation of the day to the next level and just not showing up at all.

Me, I'm not going to finish the grading I was supposed to hand back to my evening class. F* it. They should feel lucky I'm even here today.

what time is it

Clear and abundant proof that something is up with me: it's Sunday morning and I've been awake since 4:00. Now, I woke up because we were having some strange weather and the dogs were restless. I let them out, got some water, tried to go back to sleep. Was hungry, and awake, so then I got up again and ate a snack and tried to sleep. And then I decided I'd take advantage of being awake and get on the computer -- since I'm not supposed to be awake at this hour, it's ok if I read blogs for a while. (Of course I did actually have several student emails to answer, since there's a paper due next week and I hadn't checked email since 9 am yesterday.) I'm still feeling pretty lively, and I guess soon I'll have to decide whether I'm committing to being awake (and therefore can start drinking coffee) or if I am going to try to go back to sleep.

So that's the external-trigger version of events--all true, and relevant -- but not the whole story, I don't think.

The past 6 weeks or so have been kind of strange -- partly, because I've been having a tough time adjusting to the semester after such a relaxing and wonderful summer. (Previously, I'd had several not so good summers, after which the semester felt like a relief.) Having suddenly to respond to other people's demands after being mostly on my own schedule and having only myself to blame is an adjustment. Being around so many people has been an adjustment too -- by the end of the week I feel really tired mostly because my introvert batteries aren't getting enough recharge time. My classes are going well, but even though they are repeat courses, I've built in a number of new things --new material, and some new kinds of assignments and study guides -- all of it working out pretty well, and I'm pleased, but I'm also putting in a lot of prep time. I knew I was choosing to do that when I planned these courses -- I had been feeling a slight whiff of staleness with some of my teaching and I wanted to re-energize that area of my work. So all that is good, but it is taking up a lot of time.

And then, my gf's work schedule changed dramatically and we are now in week 4 of a household Sleeptime Reassignment Operation. We are now both getting up much, much earlier than we used to -- which I mostly like. At differnet times in my life I've been a late-night person (which I think I am by nature) and a get up early person (though note I'd never call myself a morning person-- I'm really not one, but I realise that it's beneficial for managing my depression if I can get up before sunrise.) So for now it's back to getting up early. Which is fine -- but it has also meant adjusting mealtimes, dogwalk times, and bedtimes. So everyone's been adjusting -- the dogs were none too happy the first day I offered them a walk at 6:30 am. The Boss didn't poop normally for three days, I think out of protest. By now they've adjusted pretty well. But it's been tougher for the humans in the household. Somehow by adjusting our schedule I seem to have lost 2 hours out of every day. I realise this must be an illusion -- but getting home in time to get dinner ready for a much earlier hour has been tough, especially combined with the start of semester.

And then, of course, there was the big conference I went to-- completely disrupting the nascent routine of the semester, and making me feel like I've been playing catch-up ever since. But at a deeper level, it was also disruptive, in a good way -- a reminder about some of the things I might prefer to be spending my time on, a set of different priorities that don't fit so well with my days of teaching and administration. My local environment isn't really supportive of research, so going to conferences is really energizing -- but there was a real sense of let-down as I came back and had to face the reality of the semester once again.

And I haven't been around the blogosphere much at all -- which adds to my feelings of isolation or out-of-syncness. I've been so busy dealing with the "urgent" rather than "important" things that I've gotten a bit offkilter. My yoga practice suffered for a while, though I've been doing more at home to make up for the classes I can't seem to get to with the new time shift. I didn't realize just how important blog time might actually be for me, until I just didn't have it any longer. (The feelings of not having anything to say are a separate issue, mostly also a factor of too much busyness.)

These are all, in different ways, timing issues. I feel as though I'm on the verge of making some changes and figuring out some things -- it's never time management, but self management that is the real area to focus on. My academic values are shifting a bit in a somewhat surprising direction, and I have to figure out how to integrate them into my daily life.

small comforts

Somewhat comforting truths about academic life, especially for those of us who have to complete annual reports of our activity:

• you don't have to list the number of persons in the audience during your panel at the conference;
• you don't have to specify whether the search committee you served on for 11 frickin months actually wound up hiring anybody.

Sigh. All those meetings during the summer for this university-wide administrative search? Down the drain. But hey, I got to know some old guys from over in the Sciences.

The Covenant

There's a restaurant in my neighborhood where we can go to get a vegan soy burger fixed up on a bun with all the trimmings, plus a big pile of french fries. Now, I love french fries (who doesn't?). But obviously, they're not something I can eat all the time, or even that frequently. And the indulgent delightfulness of eating french fries would be lessened, in fact, if I ate them all the time.

The Covenant is like that pile of salty, fried potatoes. You love it, partly because you know it's not healthy or righteous or defensible, and because it tastes so damn good.

Take the classic Lost Boys, add in one of those "decadent rich teenager" films like Cruel Intentions and stir well. Mix in a little bit of The Craft, a dash of Swimfan, lightly season with both straight and gay soft p*rn, and you get something like this movie. I mean, it's got everything: hot naked rich boy-athletes at prep school who drive fast cars and oh, yeah, happen to be witches; cute girls in the showers (maybe being stalked...); the classic have and have-nots school movie conflict, the creepy half-undead guy; drunken rich mom; sexy scenes of library research! in old moldering books; and oh-so-beautiful scenery. Ya gotta love it. (and there's plenty of teasers for a sequel. In fact, there was probably a whole plot thread that could/should have been amplified (maybe in the director's cut?) because I kept waiting for the smart-but-poor heroine to start, you know, kicking some bad-witch-boy ass. Maybe in Part II.)

noise pollution

In my department, there is an unwritten doorway semiotics: if your office door is open, you are friendly and open to students. You are available for interruptions, from colleagues or students. You are, in short, visibly present in the department, even if you sit behind your desk all day. I don't work at a small college, where the demands for faculty visibility are often more explicit and more strenuous. Some of my colleagues are only on campus for a few short hours each week, disregarding the administration's call for faculty to be more available. But most of the faculty use the open or shut door to signal when they are working intently, (or doing whatever else they might want to be doing without interruption) and when they are available.

As a part-time administrator, however, I'm expected to be available whenever I'm on campus. (And I'm also expected to be on campus more frequently, although it's not spelled out in detail.) I get the use of a windowed office during my time as an administrator, and it could actually be a pretty good work environment. Except for one thing. A very, very loud person inhabits the next door office. She also leaves her door wide open in order to signal her readiness to jump into other people's business. I can hear every. single. word. she says -- on the phone, in face to face meetings, whatever. Even with my door tightly shut (which then means people don't realize I'm inside) I can still hear her. I have been accused of "not being around" when in fact I am in here, desperately trying to think. Because of the open door ethos for the Chair and other administrators, it's important that I be seen, and be available, but it's hard to get much done when she's having a day of student conferences or long phone calls. I tried playing music on my computer, but I would have to blast it pretty loudly to drown her out -- thereby dragging my professional image down a few points, and irritating the person on the other side of me.

So now I wear headphones. (Which aren't so professional, either. My Chair gave me a quizzical look when he came in here recently for an impromptu chat.) But even so, I can hear her voice, around the edges of my music. A particularly grating, irritating voice.

It's partly her inherent loudness and partly the way these offices were constructed. But how are we supposed to get any work done? It's made me wonder about open door customs at other institutions. Can you/do you shut your door? Obviously, I assume and support everyone's need to have doors open while meeting with students -- it's protection for both students and faculty. But this then means a certain amount of inevitable noise pollution for everyone else within earshot. How do you handle this?

still a wee bit girlish underneath it all

One of the great things about getting older is that I'm less self-conscious about certain things. Changing in the tiny crowded dressing room at yoga doesn't faze me, and I know it would have made me uncomfortable when I was in my early twenties. I'm quite sure no one is looking at my almost-40 butt, and if they are, I don't really care what they think. That's a kind of self-acceptance that I didn't have 10 or 15, or possibly even 5 years ago.

Sure, I do care about how I dress, how my hair looks -- but I figured out my basic look many years ago, and it's just a question of maintaining it. A new black jacket to replace the old one, a slightly different variation on my hairstyle. I have some social anxiety, but that's about actually having to interact with people, not about what they might think about how I look. I watch my younger students posturing and posing for each other -- the carefully calibrated spectrum of fashionable-trendy-cool-alternative -- and I find it anthropologically kind of interesting, and kind of charming, but I'm also thankful that I'm now almost 40, and pretty much immune to such issues. I am who I am -- a bit more stylish than some of my colleagues (not hard to do on my campus), less stylish than some other people in my profession. Right in the middle somewhere, I'd guess.

Earlier this week, some photos were posted online from the infamous high school reunion (which I did not attend) -- I looked through a bunch of them, and was really surprised to see how old a lot of people looked. The men in particular had not fared so well. Big paunchy bellies and a lot of gray hair. It was sort of reassuring that I couldn't even recognize many people, unless their name tag was readable in the photo. There are a few faces who look basically they way they did in 7th grade, but everyone else is sliding pretty quickly into middle age. I have to confess to feeling a little tiny bit of schadenfreude while looking at the pics -- not because I want to look the way I did in high school, but I'm certainly glad I haven't gone completely gray.

But then the universe taught me a little humility, when I went to go see my piercer about something later the same day. Now, I love my piercer -- he's experienced, careful, and a truly gentle personality. He has a beautiful calming voice and creates a mellow atmosphere even in a place full of needles. He's also so much cooler than me that we might as well live on different planets. I go in there to see him, and I instantly feel incredibly boring and square. He never says or does anything that would make anyone feel uncomfortable (and after all, plenty of his business is piercing cheerleader girls' navels) -- but he has metal spikes sticking out from all over his face, elaborate tattoos, and extremely Gothic hair. I go in, and I'm suddenly teleported back to junior high, when my friends and I would hang out at the arcade playing video games and hoping that the punk high schoolers would notice us. I'm awkward and tongue-tied, and I don't think it's just the "doctor's office" nervousness elicited by the smell of the latex gloves. It's sort of oddly rejuvenating, though, to feel that wish to be cool, at least for a few minutes.

still here

Whew. This was a week of ridiculous levels of busyness, for this early in the term -- most of it caused by the long conference I went to last week, and my not having everything prepped for this week before I left for said conference (since I was busy writing the paper I had to deliver) -- so I got back on Monday night and instead of being able to just collapse, I had to prepare my courses. Which are shaping up pretty well, and my students don't seem to have felt as disrupted by my conference travel as I did, but I felt a bit rushed in my prep this week, and I'm not yet a week ahead of the syllabus as I'd like to be. Add to the mix a stressful faculty meeting, a one-on-one meeting with my chair, a regional group planning meeting at Nearby University, and a welcome back reception thing that involved politely ritualized public humiliation, and you get four really long days on campus.

On top of all that -- my partner's work schedule changed fairly dramatically on Tuesday, and so we're trying to rearrange a number of things in our domestic habits -- mealtimes, bedtimes, etc. I think the end result will be healthy and productive for our entire family, but this week was tough.

quotable

Once upon a time, when I was a graduate student, I wrote a chapter of my dissertation. Later, I turned it into a job talk. And then after that, I turned it into an article. It was an article I enjoyed working on, one that brought together some traditional texts and some nontraditional ideas. But it didn't fit any longer in my larger project, so I sent it off into the world as an article and let it go.

Many years later, it seems that this particular article has actually been read by a few people. Three years ago, an old teacher of mine emailed me to say he saw a citation to it in a book by a Famous Nonacademic Writer. Last spring, a colleague told me that he was at a conference panel about a related topic, and someone there recommended to one of the speakers that she read my article. These incidents made me feel kind of odd, since I don't really expect anyone to actually read the stuff I write. I work in a field that is both very specialized (sometimes) and potentially very broad, with a lot of people writing a lot of things -- no one can keep up with every journal.

And then today It happened. I was listening to a presenter on a conference panel, enjoying his talk, and I heard my name. It was a passing reference, "as Named Scholar and Mel LastName have argued," but it was enough to derail my brain. I tried really hard not to blush. I tried to not make eye contact with my conference buddy, who was looking at me to see what I would do. I tried really hard to focus on what he was saying, but with little success. I felt like someone had tickled the inside of my skull with a feather. And then it got worse. (Or better, from some angles, I guess.) He actually quoted me, in his paper. Of course, at this point, I was completely unable to process the words coming out of his mouth, and so I missed the last third of his talk, because it seemed suddenly to be spoken in some ancient Mesopotamian tongue.

It's exciting, but it's also a strange reminder of the persistence of one's old ideas -- if you asked me, I don't think I could give you a detailed account of that article, without re-reading it -- it was so long ago that I wrote it, and it's so distant from what I work on today. And yet one gets quoted in the present tense. I don't feel like I need to disavow the essay -- it's solid work, and I don't disagree with it. But it no longer feels like my big toe, the way that my current work sometimes does -- kind of ugly, likely to get bruised or stepped on, but capable enough to do the important work of holding me up. That article is more like the hot pink nehru jacket from 1985 that I still have saved for sentimental reasons, even though you couldn't pay me to actually wear it again.

travel day

Well, I survived my day of travel. It actually wasn't bad at all -- traveling midweek and midday meant that my flight was only 2/3 full. The extra security stuff wasn't an issue either -- it seems as though everyone's attitude was more serious, but my home city airport is always pretty efficient with these things.

I'm now at Conference City, happily ensconced in my hotel rooom -- which has both high-speed internet and cable tv! (The latter is something I don't get at home -- and this hotel actually runs channels I'd want to watch (the last conference hotel I was in didn't have much except sports, sports, and news). So I got to learn all about the evolution of whales on Animal Planet. Yay!)

Downside is that I'm still tinkering with my conference paper. The curse and the benefit of having the laptop. I've never been to a conference before as a laptop person, so this is all new to me -- I got a lot done in the airport etc today, but I suspect it might get tiresome to carry it around all over. And I don't really know how paranoid I need to be about leaving it in my hotel room. None of this is relevant right now, though -- right now I need to get back to work.