Perfect Day

I have often said that the perfect day is one where you wake up and work hard and productively at your intellectual work all day, and then exercise in the late afternoon, and then get together with friends in the evening for food and conviviality. I think I would like it if my life were a series of these days, broken up occasionally by all-day hikes, travel, and the occasional orchestra rehearsal. In reality, though, I don't know why, but it hardly ever happens. But today I've been at a coffee shop since this morning working the whole time not on teaching or other short-term projects but on actual reading and writing for my exams. In a few minutes, I'm going to go to the gym, and then to dinner at the Ogre's house.

And lo, the miraculous has happened: I have finally had a thought about what I've been reading. More than one thought, even. I am very relieved. And interested! I wish I could stop reading for coverage and start writing about the poems I happen to have read today.

Happy Gimme

I'm off for Portland.

Trust Falls Off the Broken Obelisk

I just received an email with that phrase as its entire content. Pretty deep stuff.

Seattle

It seems like every other week the New York Times has a travel article about Seattle. This is nice, though infelicitous at this time of year, when Seattle is wet, gloomy, perpetually dark, and conducive not to fun and travel but only to hibernation.

But I like it as a way to measure my increasing connection with the city. This time, there are lots of places I've been featured in the article, and there's even a place I work, the Center for Wooden Boats! Which is one of the best places in Seattle. (Though, like everything, even better in other seasons.)

It's 4:24. It's dark. Have I mentioned how I feel about daylight savings and, for that matter, winter? I'm supposed to be covering Derrida today but all I have done is to make a peer review activity for my deadbeat students. Maybe it's time to break out the sad light.

Also

I forgot to add yesterday that one of the highlights of my day was a discussion with my mom about the possibility that she might write an opera based on the Berenstain Bears. I think this is a brilliant idea--just imagine the dramatic trio as Brother, Sister, and Papa squabble over their junk food, and Mama's aria as she worries about their bad behavior. I am also into the idea of a Bearathon, where people would get sponsored to read as many of the books as they can at one sitting.

In the library

Someone in the belltower is way overenthused, so that I am trying to read this: "If there exists a "discourse" which is not a mere depository of thin linguistic layers, an archive of structures, or the testimony of a withdrawn body, and is, instead, the essential element of a practice involving the sum of unconscious, subjective, and social relations in gestures of confrontation and appropriation, destruction and construction--productive violence, in short--it is "literature" or, more specifically, the text"*

and hearing this:

Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells
Of the bells, bells, bells
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells
Of the bells, bells, bells:
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells
Bells, bells, bells
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.**

It's been going on for at least half an hour. "Bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells" indeed. If it continues I'm going to have no problem achieving the "schizophrenic flow" of which I have been reading.

*Julia Kristeva
**Edgar Allen Poe

Just a typical day in the ivory tower

Just a minute ago, as I was sitting here in the UW student center looking at a Michelle Obama fashion slide show, a guy came up to me with that look of someone who wants something, and said, "Have I read you a quote yet?" He told me that "in honor of Gandhi" he was reading people Gandhi quotes, and then took out a folded, crumpled piece of paper and read, "Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."

(Explanation)

In the waiting room at my vet's office, there's a bird and a guinea pig, and on their cages are signs that say, in a child's handwriting:

The bird's name is Tweety. Say: Hi Tweety! I love you Tweety! Yeahhh, Tweety!
The guinea pig's name is Mr. Pickles. Say: Hi Mr. Pickles! I love you Mr. Pickles! Yeahhh, Mr. Pickles!

Ever since I first saw the signs I have loved the idea that this is the form proper greetings should take, and have often applied it in various life situations. And I kept thinking it last night.

The president's name is Barack Obama. Say:

Hi, Barack Obama.
I love you, Barack Obama.
Yeaaaah, Barack Obama!

I've been in this coffee shop for about five hours. In that time, I made an insane schedule of reading that I will have to complete to be ready for my PhD exams in late winter (Week 5: Barthes, Wittgenstein, Bakhtin, Lowell, Bishop, Berryman, Jarrell). I also reserved about 100 books from the library. I'm going to have to bring a wheelbarrow to school every day this week.

Look at how dark it is! Despite the extra hour of sleep (or five, in my case), daylight savings might be my least favorite holiday of the whole year.