17-2 against

Hey, two people on Dean’s P & T voted FOR me!

I need to concentrate

But I am totally flabbergasted. The chief Dementor came into my office this evening and totally reversed course. My work is astoundingly good, I just need to finish it, is there any way I can send it off THIS WEEK, if he can help me by reading stuff, he will.

Where is this coming from?

A REAL rarity: a poem by Goethe that I like

Das Sonett

Sich in erneutem Kunstgebrauch zu üben,
Ist heil’ge Pflicht, die wir dir auferlegen:
Du kannst dich auch, wie wir, bestimmt bewegen
Nach Tritt und Schritt, wie es dir vorgeschrieben.

Denn eben die Beschränkung läßt sich lieben,
Wenn sich die Geister gar gewaltig regen;
Und wie sie sich denn auch gebärden mögen,
Das Werk zuletzt ist doch vollendet blieben.

So möcht’ ich selbst in künstlichen Sonetten,
In sprachgewandter Maße kühnem Stolze,
Das Beste, was Gefühl mir gäbe, reimen;

Nur weiß ich hier mich nicht bequem zu betten:
Ich schneide sonst so gern aus ganzem Holze,
Und müßte nun doch auch mitunter leimen.

A hate poem on my favorite verse form

Robert Gernhardt: Materialien zu einer Kritik der bekanntesten Gedichtform
italienischen Ursprungs

Sonette find ich sowas von beschissen,
so eng, rigide, irgendwie nicht gut;
es macht mich ehrlich richtig krank zu wissen,
da wer Sonette schreibt. Da wer den Mut

hat, heute noch so’n dumpfen Schei zu bauen;
allein der Fakt, da so ein Typ das tut,
kann mir in echt den ganzen Tag versauen.
Ich hab da eine Sperre. Und die Wut

darüber, da so’n abgefuckter Kacker
mich mittels seiner Wichserein blockiert,
schafft in mir Aggressionen auf den Macker.

Ich tick nicht, was das Arschloch motiviert.
Ich tick es echt nicht. Und wills echt nicht wissen:
Ich find Sonette unheimlich beschissen.

What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?

Meeting today, finally, with the senior person on the P & T committee most likely to give me reliable information. The information he gave me is not the point, though it conflicts strongly with other information I’d been given, but rather the person.

Conversation: what should I do? Discussion ensues. Then he says, “so what else are you doing?” (i.e., besides weighing the possibility of petitioning for reconsideration). I am honest with him and tell him that I am often not sure I want to be a professor.

A full on press ensues, a sales job sondergleichen, almost a confession of faith to the professorial profession. Only here, only we, live intellectual lives, have the leisure to pursue our interests.

The question is why he can’t say “I want you to stay” or even “you should be a professor” but only “being a professor is wonderful.”

Friday Quick Takes

1. I have swine flu (I am pretty sure) and have been home since Tuesday evening. What did people do when they were sick, before internet and general literacy/cheap print?

2. Announcement of first death due to flu on our campus accompanied by a reminder that we should all take precautions not to spread infection or become infected, thus creating the inevitable conclusion that victim died because the rest of us weren’t washing our hands enough.

3. A student in my big fall lecture last term was killed while jogging near campus last Friday. They have not identified the driver of the vehicle but are not calling it a hit and run, either. I just heard today, and had I not been sick I’d have gone to the funeral, although this was a student whom I didn’t like much. I’m tempted to conclude in line with the previous reasoning that jogging killed her. Yes, I know that is offensive.

4. People continue to react with surprise to me when I accomplish my usual tasks. Like they maybe thought I’d quit working once I got turned down? Actually, I almost have, but because of calendar issues and being sick. I’ll get back on the wagon next week.

5. I really am enjoying the latest album of Regina Spektor. “Blue lips, blue veins, blue, the color of our planet from far, far away.”

6. Loving A.S. Byatt’s new novel.

7. Looking forward to getting my sense of taste back, and to venturing out into the world tomorrow.

Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we’re asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.

-Wendell Berry

Apple pie transitions

When I was a kid, apple pie usually had either a crust top, either with cutouts or in lattice style, and big chunks of apples inside. Children got it served either with a big glass of milk (on a weekday) or a big scoop of vanilla icecream (on a holiday, preferably homemade). Grownups ate it with a thick slice of sharp cheddar on laid on top and a cup of good strong coffee. Everyone liked it and we had it a lot. It was appropriate for dessert on any day, including holidays.

My college boyfriend liked it with a crumble top and whipped cream; he learned to eat it that way in our college cafeteria, so that was how I made it when he visited home with me.

My grad school boyfriend did not like to eat desserts. I made a blackberry pie for him one summer and he sneered at it.

XBf’s mother made excellent apple pie (although in central European parlance it was called “covered cake”). It had raisins in it. Whipped cream was considered adiaphora. It was served at 3:30 p.m. on normal Sunday afternoons on Rosenthal china, or after she and her husband got back from a trip to Russia, on Lomonosov, with Darjeeling tea, first flush, SFTGFOP, which was steeped in heavily boiling water for exactly three minutes. Apple cake was not appropriate for holidays, and on holidays the cake of choice was usually served on Meißen. At Christmas time “tea-punch” could be added to the tea, but actually this was sacrilege.

Today in a cafe and I saw a slice of applie pie with a big stack of thinly sliced apples and a crumb top. I wondered what to drink with it and chose a large cup of Twinings Green Tea (Sencha) in a tea bag.

Expecto patronum

I saw the biggest Dementor today in the building, finally–I think he has been using the back staircase–and it was awkward. I looked him directly in the eye and said, “How are you, NAME?” and he said, “fine” and he rode up four floors in the elevator without saying a word, and then got out and said “bye.”

For once, I was not the one squirming. Perhaps now that he no longer has to fear that I might manage to be tenured, he also no longer has to speak to me? I was amused by his discomfort, as I’ve been in a good mood the last two weeks.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

And say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott