Uh-oh

I didn't get started till 11:00, and have now done 5/18 (but the first few always go slower as I figure out the method and common problems).

I have to share the best line, ever: "Without words, the whole thing lacks everything."

Today

was a banner day: I got my first ever text message from a student! I think that banner is actually the one carried by the first horseman of the apocalypse. Or, as the student would say, the 1st hrsmn of the apclyps.

Today I graded a whole bunch of papers, and I have 18 more to go. I also have to plan my class, but I'm going to do that at the gym (running in place helps me think.)

My proudest accomplishment of the day, however, is not the grading but the fact that I cleaned out my school email account. It was such a mess I couldn't find anything! I always think cyber-housework is kind of funny.

Today my office mates (friends) and I scheduled our holiday party and concluded that my cat is part bear. It's raining and my feet are cold and when I finish typing this I have to go outside, and lo, I'm finding myself with lots to say.

Menu

Part of my problem is that I really like to cook but I have for some reason become shy about cooking for other people, so I end up making these elaborate multi-course meals for myself. Tonight I made tomato-lentil soup, which was good even though I added newly-opened wine before discovering it was corked; collard greens with mushrooms and sugar snap peas; and whole-wheat molasses bread. Before cooking I did my usual 5-mile run around Greenlake in the unusual cold, and watched the three twilights diminish and the stars come out.

It’s a good thing to rise and fall without volition,
and another to be infused with a pale white light and touch all equally.

Bicoastal

I'm back in Seattle and feeling very bicoastal. Coming back from the airport last night, I was thinking about how familiar the view as you enter the city has become to me. I remember the first time I saw Seattle, in March of 2002. My first view as the same one, driving north into the downtown, but then it was daytime and what's now everyday was then new and spectacular. (And that night we played pool at the College Inn, where I now go every single Thursday night and the bartenders know my name.)

Now I'm on the couch in my office reading interesting things about Ezra Pound, having decided not to leave my paper till the last minute (although many people would consider this the last minute) and the cat is sleeping on me. So this feels like home. But New York also feels like home. That's odd, since I've never lived there and don't even know my way around very well, but so many people I love are there that it just seems natural for me to be there too. It was a really good trip. More on that soon.

It's 9:00 am in Seattle, and if I were there I would be reading Ezra Pound in preparation for class in a couple of hours. Actually, I would probably still be in bed, recovering from my 7-midnight tutoring shift the night before, and the cat would be making the international sign for "breakfast" (tapping on face with paw).

So I have been sick, and am only queasily back on solid food since last night. And I have discovered that basically not leaving one's apartment for three days has strange effects on one. I've been slowly working through my first big stack of student papers and discovering that though I've always hated grading it's not the commenting that I mind so much, or even the reflection of my own poor teaching that I see staring back at me from each page, but the feeling of desperation and hurry. So I'm trying to plod my way through and not be faced at midnight with several hundred pages still to go.

Anyway, back to the strange effects: I looked up to see my cat on the windowsill, and then at my hands clutching the paper of the moment ("Ignorance in America") and my pink grading pen, and suddenly felt this incredible thankfulness about having opposable thumbs. The cat must be so jealous! To all the early hominids who took the initiative to find slightly handier-than-usual mates, and so on--thank you.

Also, I know it's ridiculous, but I feel personally outraged by the early darkness. How could anyone have decided it would be okay for the sun to set at 4:30. Huh? Huh, sun? I don't mind (much) the cold and bluster, but the dark I really hate. Night is fine when it comes at nighttime, but at this hour it seems, and I really mean this in the most literal way, it seems evil. Malicious, and promising the advent of very bad times. Also, I think the early dark, as well as the sickness-induced time for contemplation, has been bringing back memories of a year ago at this time. I got a flash of the feeling of that time earlier today as I was playing my guitar for the first time in a while, and it surprised me. A year ago I was unhappy, I was really miserable all fall, but it wasn't as depressive as the unhappiness that set in later in the year. This is a weird word but it's the one that came instantly to mind--I felt powerful. It was a kind of edgy, out-of-control manic energy, and when I think back, I was a little nuts in the fall. I was working out kind of obsessively and feeling everything super intensely but feeling things also, paradoxically, with a kind of fierce detachment. In retrospect, I think I must have been on a kind of adrenaline high for those few months. I think it was how I dealt with having to destroy the happy life I had before I moved, little by little, every day. I almost don't know the person I was then anymore, which is a weird thought and a sad one. Now I feel much more like myself again, which is good. I've always hated the winter dark.

This moment of introspection brought to you by procrastination and Proust and by the hope that anyone nice enough to bother reading a long post about nothing will also be inclined to forgive the solipsism (par for the course anyway) and the psychobabble.

Paws in the face

Photo of the day

Pitch dark at 5:00

Have I mentioned that daylight savings is my least favorite holiday? Though I have to say that dark, rainy norhern living has its pleasures, too--today I skipped my office hours and read Proust in bed (where it was written, after all!) for several hours while the cat napped on my legs. It was lovely.

I'm ready to be less busy. This is probably my easiest week all quarter, and still tomorrow I have a midterm and my class is being observed.

I have this feeling that I actually had something to say when I started writing this, but whatever it is has escaped me now. The cat and I miss Aunt Jane.

Information

I discovered last night that the UW has a School of Information. Great! We also have a Library of Books and a Fountain of Moving Water. As well as a Food Court of Food.

Apparently, the information dispensed at the School of Information does not include the correct names for grammatical concepts. I think it's funny when people are grammatical sticklers without having much grammatical knowledge themselves (I would have to sheepishly put myself in this category), but it's hard on students when, for instance, they get dinged for passive voice and are told to come into the writing center but there is actually no passive voice at all in the essay. I spent a good while puzzling over this last night, until the student explained to me that "passive voice" included constructions like "I was thinking" instead of "I thought."

And this is all well and good and no big deal, except that the student prefaced our whole conference by saying he was a terrible writer--which was not at all true--and I just felt bad. But we were able to clear everything up and he's gonna be fine.

Confidential to U.J.: check your email! And please refer any questions to the nearest niece.

Sisterkins and Catkins

The cat LOVES his Aunt Jane. He has never taken to anyone else like this.

Sisterkins also makes a killer apple pie, co-throws a great dinner party, and can do a full shopping trip through a very crowded Trader Joe's in under 10 minutes flat.

In other news, I now have a TG plane ticket! I'll be in New York from Tuesday 11/20 to Saturday 11/24.