Monthly Archives: October 2009

Neither here nor there

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Some updates, rather than the interpretive dance I had planned. What can I say? Cold day, no leg warmers. Somehow I successfully purged all Flashdance clothing from my wardrobe. Sigh.

Hazelnut update: nausea has abated and I haven’t yakked in 5 days. I can now, maybe, enjoy Week 18 in digestive peace, wailed upon only from without for a change.

Novel update: another agent sent a “no thanks.” Must send out the next round, but it might be a while with my other deadlines. Rough count: two dozen submissions, maybe half a dozen read the first few pages, four requested more pages, none is going to reap the outrageous profits from the book’s eventual sale. The next agent wants an exclusive, so it’ll just be her and the manuscript for the next two months.

Geography update: we’re gonna be here for a while. But if houses still keep getting 8 and 9 bids, going for 8% over asking for much longer, we’re gonna reconsider the greatest place on earth and think about moving to number 4 or 5.

Peanut update: hardcore into flashlights. We often have to go “into the deep dark woods” in the garage to look for spiders and tigers. Thanks so much, Kipper.
Also popular: filling baskets and bags with household and toy detritus and carrying them around until just the perfect resting place is found.
Word of the day, uttered at least once per sentence: dammit!

Lit update: trying Delillo. Trying hard, but it shouldn’t be this much work to like books. Gonna keep at it for a day or two and if he doesn’t hook me, I’m off to something new.

Conference update: my paper is in critical care, with a thready pulse, threatening to code. But we’re giving it our best and we’ll see if it pulls through. We’re only scholars here; not wizards.

Ode to early 90s lit crit and football

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Cup of hot tea, four piles of journal articles fanned around me, pocket full of tape flags, and this on a foggy October’s Sunday morning:

“A grunting, crunching ballet of repressed homoeroticism, football, Ms. Steeply, on my view. The exaggerated breadth of the shoulders, the masked eradication of facial personality, the emphasis on contact-vs.-avoidance-of-contact. The gains in terms of penetration and resistance. The tight pants that accentuate the gluteals and hamstrings and what look for all the world like codpieces. The gradual slow shift of venue to ‘artificial surface,’ ‘artificial turf.’ Don’t the pants; fronts look fitted with codpieces? And have a look at these men whacking each other’s asses after a play. It is like Swinburne sat down on his soul’s darkest night and designed an organized sport. And pay no attention to Orin’s defense of football as a ritualized substitute for armed conflict. Armed conflict is plenty ritualized on its own, and since we have real armed conflict (take a spin through Boston’s Roxbury and Mattapan districts some evening) there is no need or purpose for a substitute. Football is pure homophobically repressed nancy-ism, and do not let O. tell you different.”
–Infinite Jest p.1047

It’s like straight out of a pop culture and critical theory class in 1992, except they tended to deconstruct wrestling more often. Good, good times.
Happy American homoeroticism day, football fans.

Just one day.

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I want one day.
ONE day in which I don’t need tricks and techniques and reverse psychology to get my job done. I want ONE day in which I’m in charge of only my own actions, in which I get stuff done without taking six times as long as should be necessary because it will be just me and the voices in my head.
I want ONE day in which things are easy; where I ask and things happen. Calmly. Happily. Without whining or crying or throwing or hitting or questions or bullshit. I want ONE g-dd-mned day where I don’t have to explain safety and society and polite and dangerous and inappropriate and unacceptable. ONE day where I don’t need to consciously reinforce all the good behavior of someone else in a DESPERATE attempt to stave off the batshit insane bad behavior that I can’t even label “bad” because it’s not the way I want to do things.
I want ONE f—ing day where I can just operate on my own list, focusing when I want to, spacing when I want to, and taking freaking breaths when I want to. One day with clear goals and outcomes, milestones and markers, measurement and metrics, respect and a f—ing paycheck.
I want ONE day where nobody tells me about their bowels or their bladder or makes me help them evacuate either. I want ONE day where I actually feel like I’m doing a good job. Where I don’t need a g-dd-mned book to give me suggestions for making things smoother and can operate without needing freaking experts telling me how to get through the day without homicide and suicide and infanticide and freaking increasing the shockingly low child abuse rate.
ONE day where I don’t have to explain or cajole or bargain or compromise or invent games to convince everyone but myself that life is fun and washing hands is wonderful and eating is jolly. One day where the growth, development, life, or death of people around me is really none of my concern and certainly not my responsibility. I just want to do my day.
I want ONE day. ONE. One. 1. Just one.
Or I want a 60 hour a week job so someone else does this b-llsh-t for me.
Never mind. I want an 80 hour a week job. The weeks I handled a 120 hour work week, all billable hours, I barely had enough energy to shower. I want that again. Someone else handle this. Someone who’s good at it. For just one day. Or maybe forever.

Ugh. I don’t wanna.

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I don’t wanna schedule appointments and go to them. I don’t wanna get ready and be on time for stuff.
I don’t really want to leave the house.
I don’t wanna do that project I promised.
I don’t wanna read that book I’m supposed to.
I don’t wanna make any more meals or clean up after any more meals or clean up after any more creatures.
I don’t wanna play games or blocks or cars or squirt stuff.
I don’t wanna smile at strangers even if they deserve it.
I don’t even wanna clean up after myself.
I don’t wanna put that away or get that other thing back out. I don’t wanna look for the thing I can’t find.
I don’t wanna hear about the sick and the starving and the abused.
I don’t wanna fight any more about being polite or sharing or eating or cleaning up or getting dressed or putting on clothes.
I don’t wanna answer the phone. I don’t wanna pay bills.
I don’t wanna puke any more.
I don’t wanna prepare for all the holidays and the craziness and the expectations and the visits.
I don’t wanna hear about what other people wanna talk about.
I don’t wanna hear any more sounds for, like, three days.
I don’t wanna be so drained after fun visits with friends.
I don’t wanna be such an introvert or so sensitive or so easily swayed off my precarious center.
I don’t wanna do any of this today. Or tomorrow.
I just don’t wanna.

That stings…

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Every once in a while I check DeadAtYourAge.com
It’s an amusing (usually) look at the people who died at about your age and whom you have now outlived. Yeehaw, I guess. Except that they list rather accomplished people, who did more in their limited years than I have yet to even try. But I’m letting that slide for now.

Today, deadatyouraage.com told me this:

You’ve outlived Judith Resnik by almost a month. She was a second U.S. female astronaut and victim of shuttle Challenger explosion. She died on January 28, 1986, when you were 13 years old.

Oh, wow, that made me cry. Then and now. Like most of the nation, I watched that on T.V. And was confused by what I saw because I had never for a moment considered their deaths possible. That day ranks right up there with some of the major national traumas—Iran hostages, Sept. 11, the heat shield astronaut deaths…

I don’t really want to think about that today. I don’t.

So I updated my “most popular posts” links. Go read something I wrote a while ago, when I had something to say. Right now I have nothing.

No, seriously.

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You read how my day went down yesterday. I’m not kidding, at all, when I narrate for you now the way the evening after that rather trying day proceeded:

After Peanut’s in bed and Spouse is settled, I head to the main library on campus to pick up a book on hold and to (hopefully) nab another book someone returned before anyone else notices it’s back.  I arrive at the main door and walk through the glorious and stately halls  to get to the circulation desk. Time: 8:45.  I watch as the metal gate descends, too far away to holler or run or be otherwise indecorous. I get to the entrance and read that closing time is 8:45. Well, I guess I should have checked that online. Book on hold will have to wait. (Phlebotomist rants replay in my head…)

So I walk down the hill to the lowly undergrad library, through the catacombs of which I can still access the main stacks even after closing. I search for the book purportedly returned. Not on the shelf. Nowhere to be seen. To whom does one report that? The circulation desk at the main library. But they are at home with their phlebotomy and philately and whatnot.

So I research underground or a while, collecting articles that I’m not allowed to access from home, due to the vast conspiracy between the online critical journals and the babysitting lobby. I subvert them all with my free sitter, the father of my freaking child.

I recheck the shelf, just in case. No luck. But good thinking on rechecking, eh? Wouldn’t want it checked out this morning before I can peel the lad from my leg or anything like that.

And on a whim last night, after an hour or so of journal trolling, I search for a free reading book I’ve been coveting. In luck: it’s housed in the aforementioned lowly undergrad library. I navigate catacombs, climb stairs, survive glares that remind me a nigh-on 40 year old pregnant alumnae is not a quote-unquote normal site on campus after hours. If ever. I find the book. I descent the stairs and head to undergrad circulation. Time: 10:07. Sign on the desk informs me that circ. closes at 10:00. Guess I should have checked that before I leisurely used the stairs instead of the elevator. I’m really tempted to issue forth with a SCREW YOU, AL GORE here, but I hold back. Bottle it up. It’s of more use to me there. I contemplate, I grouse, and I drop the book into the return slot. Hope that confuses them for weeks, those loser philatelists.

And, I swear to all things chocolate and marshmallowy, I showed up on campus this morning to get both books and to report the missing text: marquis sporting event of the year ongoing; library apparently closes for such nonsense. There were lawns full of food vendors and grand entrances full of dancers and drummers. On the marble steps of the oldest University in California. Drummers. Dancers. Where are the books? It’s unseemly but true: the library closes for football. This ain’t one of those Big Ten schools where they go to college as an excuse to have an alma mater to support all football season. Our football prowess is not exactly our calling card. Nobel Laureates, sure. number of periodic elements named by and for our graduates, yup. Holdings of original Mark Twain manuscripts. Yes. History of protest and disorderly conduct? You betcha. Football? No. But you’re gonna close the library. I see. I guess I should have checked that online. Wherever library closures due to gridiron conflict are listed, I suppose.

I smell a new dotcom.

I have now slogged to campus, up and down the north hill twice, carrying 40 lbs. of briefcase during precious writing/childcare hours yet left with none of the three books I desire.  Not one.

And I can’t even rant about it. They’ve beaten me down, fair readers. Librarians and phlebotomists and veterinarians and quarterbacks. Seriously, I’m waiting for the cosmic payback. Better be one cute f—ing baby, one Lazarus-like cat, and one awesome journal that publishes my paper for all this b.s.

Look! It’s rant time!

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To whomever wrote: “You’re probably feeling a whole lot better as you settle into your second trimester. Less nausea, fewer mood swings, and “glowing” skin contribute to an overall sense of well-being.” SCREW YOU, LIAR!

To the cat whose illness has led to feces on my bed, urine all over my house, and a $400 vet bill with a shrug and an “I’m not sure what’s wrong with him,” SCREW YOU! Next time you get sick I’m spending the money on an iPod and you get a brick in a pillow case.

To the vet clinic who told me to collect feces and urine for my cat then forgot to give me the kit and locked the doors before I had even gotten to the car: Screw you, too. I’m not coming back for the kit then going home then coming back with samples. Screw you a lot. Now YOU get to come over and collect feces and urine. For all the family members. I do it every other day; now it’s your turn.

To the phlebotomist who closed the lab ten minutes before we got there: Screw you. No, I didn’t check your hours by calling or anything. But who the hell runs a lab open 9am to 4:30pm, closed for lunch 12-1? Seriously? Do you do any work? I collected a toddler and a sick cat, both of whom needed more than the usual amount of fecal clean up today, got the noisier of the two into the car and drove half an hour for your stupid one vial of blood intended to scare me about all the things that could, hypothetically, but we can’t tell you with any certainty, what might be wrong with my poor, maligned, nauseating Hazelnut. Screw you, lab tech. You give phlebotomy a bad name. and sphignomenometers. And sternocleidomastoids. And stuff like that.

To the librarian who accused us of returning a DVD case with no DVD: SCREW YOU! I always double check because I don’t want to walk all the way down here and have to go back for a stupid disc. AND, I don’t rent baby Einstein crap. No, I didn’t. No, I didn’t. Stop telling me I need to go home to get it. I’ve never IN MY LIFE checked that crap out of your library. I’ve never seen that DVD in my existence. No, I didn’t. Oh, and how do you propose I do that? Buy a new one and give it to you? Screw you. I may have mentioned that, but it bears repeating. SCREW YOU. Oh, you’ll double check? That’s so thoughtful. Oh, it wasn’t me? Oh, you’re paging a different library patron without apologizing to me? You’re ignoring me now? SCREW YOU! I’ve never liked you. You’re greasy, icky, and rather creepy and give my kid a bad image of the few male librarians on this planet. You know what? I’ve taken bibliographic methods. I’ve aced out of all the methodological and theory-based library sciences courses. I could OWN you if I felt like it. Don’t ever accuse me of Baby Einstein Forgetting again.

You know what, world? Screw you. Screw all the nasty people and the yucky people and the rude people. Screw all y’all. Cuz I don’t have the patience for your asinine driving, ugly looks, rude cell phone talking, and general in-my-way-getting. Get off this planet, you jerks. Especially the dude who took the last jar of m—-f—ing olives today. Screw you. You’d think I’d have something new or clever to say, wouldn’t you? Nope. Screw you. You people are killing me. And you don’t need those olives like I do.
I hope global warming takes out, like, 85% of you by next year.

(And to the little emotional sponge who lives in my house, who is way intense and way sensitive and way perceptive and way neophobic, I’m sorry dude. I know when I’m way off my rocker it’s even harder for you. I watched as each of these little wrongs in our day sent me further and further from reacting well, you absolutely melted down. Sorry, friend. We’ll both get some sleep and one of us will have a really, really dreamy can of caramel colored sugar water and tomorrow will be better. That said, if you ask “why” one more time I’m ripping your arms off and shoving them down your throat.)

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Words to ponder; William Faulkner’s Nobel prize acceptance speech:

“I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work–a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed–love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. “

I had never read this until Inktopia pointed Acadammit to this link.

Discuss.