One Tough vonCookie

Posted By voncookie on August 31, 2010

What do you do when, in the first seminar you’re teaching on a semester schedule, a class that is a requirement for the undergraduate major in your discipline, and your enrollment is capped at 15… and there are 14 students enrolled in the class, and 6 on the waiting list… all majors nearing their last year, with the exception of one sophomore who is still undeclared… and in order to continue with the major, all of them must take your class *or else*.

Or else what?

Well, or else they’ll have to leave being a major, and take up a minor instead, and essentially deprive your department of much-needed support, not to mention $$.

What do you do, when the course requires, for each student, over the course of the semester 20-25 pp. of written work?  What do you do when you’re teaching that particular class that meets twice a week, plus another class that meets 5 days a week at 8 a.m., and at the same time doing all this admin and service stuff that complicates your schedule?

What do you do, when you’re supposed to do all this, and publish as well, because you’ll be on the market again in approximately two weeks when job listings come out (ah, incipient depression!) and you’ll be dedicating a significant chunk of time to that endeavor every single free moment that you have, not because you want out of the job you love, but because the department expects you to want to move upward and onward towards the elusive tenure-track position in your sub-specialty.  Or even sub-sub-specialty?

What do you do, when you receive panicked emails late at night from students who flatter you with pleasantries and compliment your teaching style based on hearsay from other students, blatantly sucking up to you… and you know for a *fact* that they’re trying to court you, convince you that they really, sincerely want to learn from you, whatever it is that you’re teaching?

What do you do when you’ve had a limit of 20 students before and managed just fine, but never had such a heavy writing requirement, and have never had to teach more than one class at once.

What is the ethical choice here?  To admit all the students and encourage them to go on in the major, knowing that you won’t be able to provide the same amount of detailed feedback that you usually would, simply because the stack of papers is five higher?  Do you keep the strict 15-student limit and explain that they won’t get the same amount of individualized attention if you were to let them in?

What. Does. One. Do?

Public education is suffering from classes that are overcrowded on one hand, or from class limits that keep students out of the courses they want and/or need in order to graduate successfully and on time.  What do you do when you know that these same students who are currently barred from the class may have to delay their graduation because they didn’t meet the requirements for the major and then have to become “Super Seniors” and bear *more* student loans and terrible financial hardship in order to do so?

In other words, when do you step up and try to make public education viable again?  When does quantity matter more than quality?  What can you do, ethically, to encourage students to continue their study, when you know that the toll on you personally is going to be inescapably damaging?

… and all this while suffering from a persistent workaholic tendency that is destroying both sleep-schedule and peace of mind…

Where does the personal become the political and vice versa?

After many years at Big U, watching it suffer thanks to the Governator and such, I want to know, at last what *I* can do to make public education viable again, not just for a few, but for many?

What do *I* do?

Answer: Very simple.

I remembered this morning that I am a bit of an altruist, an idealist, a believer in a fair, affordable education for people of every code, creed, and class.  I remembered that I came from privilege, and that I got my Ph.D. so that I could pass on what I’ve learned over the years.  I remembered that I need the experience, and the opportunity to learn efficiency– how to streamline my grading and such, how to, in essence, be a professional academic that has a commitment to Higher Ed.  Not just the Ivory Tower, but to the students themselves.

What did I do?

Need you ask?

I let them in.  I let them all in.

But, come what may — and I truly fear the workload — I will be able to write someday, on my tombstone, my Great-Grandmother’s motto:

“She did what she could.”

And that’s what matters right now.

Category: Teach It, The Profession | No Comments »
Tags: academia, education, gainful employment, work

Posted By voncookie on August 30, 2010

Tomorrow I have to march into the classroom and give a class on the late 19th-century short story in Spain.  A story by Leopoldo Alas (aka Clarín) titled “¡Adios, Cordera!”

Here’s my problem: while I’ve studied both 19th and 20th century Spanish literature extensively, I feel a little ragged with Clarín, mostly because the last monograph course that I took on him was in 2003 (!) and because my QEs when I was last tested on his work was in 2005.  That’s a lot of elapsed time.

Still, I’m sure I can find something to say, and hopefully, I’ll say it well enough.  But this is my first class with this group, who are all majors, 80% native or heritage speakers… not that that really intimidates me much anymore… this time it’s the fact that they’re all majors that has my nerves all wrangled.

I’m staying up late to write my lesson plan, somewhat ignoring the fact that I have an 8am class that I have to teach 5 days a week as well.

… So this is my first year, huh?  For a non-tenure-track position, they sure are testing my mettle.  I’m very proud of that.  And a little overwhelmed at the moment.

I would launch into a diatribe about the merits and lessons to be learned in “¡Adios, Cordera!” but I’m sure that’s of minimal interest to most everyone, except those who tend to land on my blog when they Google obscure titles in Spanish Literature.  Suffice it to say that “¡Adios, Cordera!” is about the contrast between technology and campo and that Spain was really struggling between the poles of modernity and traditionalism even at the end of the 19th century.  It could be argued that part of the reason the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936 was due to this continuing tension between traditional values and the desire for modernization.

… but I digress…

…actually, I don’t digress.  I think I’ll write a little outline for a lecture that highlights that tension.

See?  That’s why I blog.  To figure out what I’m actually thinking.

For some reason, lately, that’s been very hard to do.

Wish me luck!

vC

Category: First-Year Academic, Literature, Teach It, The Profession | 1 Comment »
Tags: insomnia, Literature, spanish literature, teaching, work

Posted By voncookie on August 28, 2010

This is my first year as a minted Ph.D. and I thought it might be fun, years and years from now, to reflect on this process that is the transition from graduate student to professional.  And let me start by saying, quite simply, that it’s much harder that I thought.  Than *anybody* thought.  And yet… it is the most amazing thing I have experienced in quite some time.

I have been working (perhaps unduly) hard since July 1, which was my hire date at Big U.  Since then, over the course of the 8 weeks since that particular date a few things have happened.  A list of random bullets, so that it’s easier to digest:

• I have ceased to wear jeans except in my own home, when no one else is around.
• I have learned to (at least once a week) function on four hours of sleep.
• My apartment has become a place of confusion, not just in terms of the random crap strewn about, taking up the space where the dissertation library books used to be, but in the sense that I no longer know what to *do* with myself when I’m rattling about in my cramped studio.  I feel lost in my squalor, and unable to fix it, mostly because I’m so. damn. tired. when I get home.  Result? I feel more comfortable in my office than I do in my own space.  ::sigh::  That’s not right.
• My personal relationships (some more than others) have suffered tremendously in the wake of my recent marriage to my career.  Apparently at this juncture I have no room for anything that transcends my Job Description.  I honestly don’t know how I feel about this, because at the same time that it feels horrible to watch relationships wither on the vine, it feels refreshing and cleansing to be so dedicated to my work.  How to reconcile these? I ask myself every day.  Answer: As the immortal poet Scarlett O’Hara once said — “I can’t think about that yet… I’ll think about it tomorrow.”  She knew her limits, her boundaries.  No wonder she was my hero as a child.  (I tended to overlook the fact that she was 100% Unadulterated Evil Bitch.)  I know I’m being an ostrich, but sometimes, sand around one’s head has its benefits.
• I have fallen in love.  Head over heels in love.  Loopy in love — with my work.  After 8 years of complete ambivalence, someone flipped the switch, and turned me on to the fact that I actually want to be an academic.  I think the word “overjoyed” might be understating the situation.
• I now have the following things, which have been spotty assets at best for many years:  boundaries, tact, discipline, joy, a smile, satisfaction, confidence.  What more can a girl ask for?  I also have some less attractive qualities that only seem to come out when I leave work: short temper, terseness, sleeplessness, impatience… but I’m sure these will diminish in time.
• Reno has become an even holier location for me.  When I get overworked, I YEARN for Reno.  Pure escapism. Weirdness. Indulgence. Everything that I don’t permit myself here, I permit myself in Reno.  And yet… my car (blessed be he) probably cannot make it over the Sierra again.  And Reno continues to shimmer in the distance, in the desert heat, a little oasis of vice that I can no longer have.
• I am grateful: Thank you, Big U, for everything.  I’m sorry you’re suffering.  I’ll do my best to help, in whatever way I can.  Which, in this case, may mean admitting 5 extra students to my Writing Intensive seminar and just accepting the extra workload as a First-Year Academic penance, or as practice in streamlining.  Either way: I’m obsessed with what is FAIR and JUST in the mission of Public Education, considering how jacked the situation is at the moment.  And considering that my personal life has been recently hacked to bits, I’m thinking I might have the extra time to deal with 5 extra papers per assignment.  It’s a small price to pay if it helps some senior graduate on time.

And so, in essence, this first year in academia is … edifying.  I’m learning, I think, more than I’m teaching.  I’m as energized as I am exhausted.  And for once, I feel — I know — I made the right choices somewhere along the line, if it all added up to landing me HERE.

There’s a sense of completion in my professional existence right now, the end of a quest that began in the early ’90s when I was shopping for colleges to attend.  All my friends and I were on the same mission: to find “The Click.”  We visited college after college, looking for “The Click” — That feeling of *this* is where I’m supposed to be, *this* is what I’m supposed to do, *this* will bring me Teh Happy.  I went from place to place, unsatisfied with everything, with this sinking feeling of “That’s not it” at every college I visited.  I settled eventually for HNEU.  And then that blew up in my face and I settled (a little bit better this time) for SELLAC.  But I never had/heard The Click… until about 2 weeks ago.   It all snapped into place, clicked, and wow, what a sensation of FULFILLMENT.  Worth the 17-year wait.

And that’s how it is, dear Readers.  Difficult, yes.  Filled with stress and turmoil, yes.  But I’ll take it.

I’ll take it every day at 8 a.m. and twice on Sundays.

Love, love, everyday.

Category: A Cookie's Life, The Past is a Foreign Country, The Profession | 2 Comments »
Tags: academia, gainful employment, happiness, life, work

Posted By voncookie on August 25, 2010

It’s about 80 degrees in my apartment and it’s almost 1 a.m. — So not cool (literally and figuratively).  And tomorrow, it will be *over* 80 degrees in my apartment for the bulk of the day, and so, one must strategize a bit, especially when one has a crunch syllabus to write.  One syllabus, one day, one heatwave making the likelihood of finishing the syllabus without suffering heatstroke not unlikely.  (Sidebar: Good Witch Exbf has been teasing me about my use of double negatives lately.  I find them so much more expressive, even if Samuel Johnson would disapprove heartily…)

I had every intention of going to bed early.  In fact, I passed out while watching Black Adder the Third — somewhere about the time when Bolderick starts talking about the highwayman “The Shadow” and how his life is so “dark and shadowy and full of fear and trepidation”: a line that my friends from Hometown High used to fling about in the same way that Bolderick flings about a chicken carcass while saying that line.  Very funny stuff, even after 20 years of watching it over and over again.

But when it came time to *officially* place my head on the pillow, and I was lying there, body ablaze because NO ONE in Liberal Paradise has A/C, all I could think about was the syllabus that I have to write tomorrow — OR ELSE.

Classes start on Thursday, and I’ve been so busy with my new role at Big U, coordinating language classes, that I have not had the time (or the brain power) to focus on the seminar I’ll be teaching this fall.  Fall semester will be decidedly bipolar (and I don’t use that term lightly or in a pejorative way) — it will be bipolar in the literal as opposed to the psychological sense of the word.  I am teaching Elementary Spanish on one pole, and a writing-intensive seminar at the other end of the spectrum.  Thus, bipolar: at 8 am I’ll be meeting with novices who are still learning the present tense and how to say “pencil” and “where is the Prado” in Spanish, and at 12:30, I’ll be having elaborate discussions of the ins-and-outs of early-20th-century Spanish prose.

From “Hola” to “Unamuno” in 60 seconds.  Oh boy.  Gonna be a rough ride.  Better buckle up.

*****

So I’m back to syllabus design, which I love, but the fact that I’m working on such a tight schedule, and in the middle of the first heatwave of the year, is making me a little uncomfortable, for many reasons.  Did I mention it took me 6 weeks to write my summer syllabus?  Well worth it, but, ach, I do not even remotely have that luxury this time.

As of the moment, I have about 15 books here on my desk, which is my bed, and my computer is nearly overheating with overuse.  The overhead fan is not enough to quit me of the heat, and it crunches with every rotation, providing a certain percussion to all these organizational and intellectual contortions that I must perform to get the syllabus into shape.

And, to confess: I did this on purpose.  I know for a fact that tomorrow it will reach into the 90s, and with only that lame and squeaky ceiling fan to cool me off, I will have the lamest syllabus ever, just because my the heat will turn my brain into a fried egg… as fried as that egg in those “Brain on drugs” commercials from the late ’80s.  This is my brain.  This is my brain frittata by freak-a$$ weather.  (Barely above 65 degrees all summer long and the day that I desperately need to work, we get *this*.  Grumble, grumble, grumble.)

I got out of bed, threw on shorts and a t-shirt and headed to the Sev, looking like hot hell.  Hella hot hell.  But the Sev Angel Man told me that I “am looking very beautiful” and reminded me, when I said I was going to be up working all night, “no work, more problems: work good.”

The wisdom of Sev Angel Man.  And of course I got the greeting that I love: “Hello, lady, long time no see you!”

Sev to the rescue, with coffee — coffee in this heat?  Stupid move.  Should have gotten a Mountain Dew or a Dr. Pepper or an overrated Red Bull.

I drove home listening to She Wants Revenge and it put me in good headspace.   Good associations with that (somewhat dark) album.

(Does anyone call it an “album” anymore, I wonder?  And here I go with the dating-myself again…)

And now back to the Syllabus Jigsaw Game.  I keep wondering how this is all going to turn out.  Writing intensive courses require drafts, outlines, abstracts, and a total of 25 pages of writing over the course of the semester.

That means hella grading.

That means my 8 a.m. class is going to suffer.

And that also means that I will be continuing to abuse the word “hella” regularly over the course of this semester.  Read: “hella tired,” “hella spent,” and, hopefully “hella impressed with my awesome students…”

…which I’m sure I will be, if I can get this syllabus done when it’s not just hot, but…

HELLA HOT-T-T-T!

(Paris Hilton and Eric Cartman be damned for ruining both those words!)

Hella hella hella.

Category: Language, Mother Nature, Teach It | 1 Comment »
Tags: gainful employment, teaching, weather

Posted By voncookie on August 11, 2010

When I moved away from Hometown, NJ back in 199X for college at SELLAC, a phenomenon that I had been blatantly ignoring while still at HNEU (a college chock-full of NJ ex-pats) became particularly clear to me: I had an accent.  What’s worse: I had a South Jersey accent, the worst of the Mid-Atlantic accents.  Part Philadelphia, part Southern, it is a horrible way to abuse vowels and crush consonants in a way that makes one sound [insert pejorative adjective here that has to do with class and education].

Just to be clear, it is not a North Jersey accent.  People in South Jersey NEVER say “Joisey” (even if they still do tend to have big hair).

A few examples of South Jersey patois:

Water = Wooder (and you go Down the Shore to have Wooder Ice in the summer…)
Towel = Tal  (Down the Shore, after swimming, you dry yourself with a Tal…)
Crayon = Crown  (While lying on the beach, Down the Shore, lying on a Tal, while your passel of kids color in their coloring books with Crowns.)
South = Sath (As in I live in Sath Jersey)

But the most perplexing thing that struck me upon moving to SELLAC (situated in the Midwest) was the pronunciation of the very very round “o”… Not as round as Minnesooooota, of course, but still, when pronouncing a place name — say, “Ohio” — it came out sounding like it is spelled.

Me, new to the Midwest, pronounced the word “Ohio” (where I was now living) like a good girl from Sath Jersey… Ew-HI-ew.

And thus the rub.  Sath Jersey people consistently F*** up their “o”s.  Before an “r” they become and “ah” sound, and in every other location, they become “ew” and you have to smile when you say an “o” because it’s practically an “e”.   A few examples:

Horrible = Harrible
Orange = Arange
Forest = Farest
Home = Heeeewm

I forgot to mention the fact that there’s a bit of a drawl, too, that elongates the vowels, thus my Dad’s favorite example of Christmas in Sath Jersey, singing “Silent Night”:  The congregation stands and sings “Siiiiiilent night…. Heewwwwwwwly night.”  HA!  (And they had no idea…)

So, anyway, I get to Ew-HI-Ew and I’m instantaneously mocked for my strange accent.  Not that this hadn’t happened before.  A friend of mine from Oregon (ARegon in Sath Jersey) had already established the phrase “The Harrible Arange Fares at Heewwwm” to describe how I used to speak, and that’s still sort of LOL in my book.

I decided after about 3 days in Ew-HI-Ew, that it needed to become OH-HI-OH and that I needed to quit smiling all the time when I said the word.  I focused on shaping my “o”s and so, by the time I moved to Liberal Paradise in the early ’00s, I was geographically indistinguishable.  I had CNN-ized my accent.

… And so it’s been for nigh on a decade now.

But recently, I have no idea why, the Sath Jersey accent has resurfaced intermittently, and I cannot figure out why.  It makes me feels like I’m regressing.  Even when I focus on my “o”s lately, they’re coming out with a smile and an “eeewww” sound.

WTH???

Any explanations for this are most welcome.  ‘Cause I need to quit it.

…Maybe it’s something in the Wooder….

Category: A Cookie's Life, Language, The Past is a Foreign Country | 5 Comments »
Tags:

Posted By voncookie on August 8, 2010

Alright Earworm, it’s really time for you to go.  I’ve just about had it.  No, not “just about” — I’ve actually had it with you.  You must leave.  And I don’t care if the doorknob hits you on the a$$ on your way out.

I was actively trying to make peace with the Earworm, just accept its presence and hope it would leave on its own.  Instead, last night, the Earworm actively ruined my evening.  It distracted me so much that I couldn’t concentrate on enjoying my dinner with TooBeaut.  That’s beyond not-cool.  That’s just malicious.

In my family, we have this theory that if you sing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” a few times, it will make any Earworm die, and quickly.  My experience has been entirely different.  I just end up getting “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” stuck in my head instead.

::sigh::

Well, I’ll give it a try, even though there must be a ring of hell reserved for people who play Christmas music in August.

Anything, anything! to get rid of the Earworm, who still wants to be the girl with the most cake.

Damn.

Category: Music and the Mirror, State of the Noggin | No Comments »
Tags: music

Posted By voncookie on August 6, 2010

It’s not as gross as you think.  It’s just when a song gets into your head and won’t leave.  Personally, I’ve had “Doll Parts” (by Courtney Love’s ’90s band Hole) stuck in my head for two weeks now, thus the coda to my last blog entry.  My persistent Earworm is starting to fragment now, though, and it can’t seem to decide whether it wants to sing Lady GaGa’s “Bad Romance”, She Wants Revenge “These Things” or Hole’s “Doll Parts” to me.  So I end up with something like this:

“I want to be the girl with the most cake / I want your love and I want your revenge, you and me could write a bad romance / I hear it’s cold out but her popsicle melts, she’s in the bathroom, she pleasures herself / and someday you will ache like I ache.”

Really annoying.  Pick a lane, Earworm, or give me something new to work with!  For a minute yesterday I finally got a different song on repeat, but it only lasted about an hour, and then the Earworm started up with his normal antics, so much so that now I can’t even remember what song was sent to relieve me of this two-week melodic torture.

Hole.  She Wants Revenge. Lady GaGa.  WTF, Earworm.  At the very least you could have picked three songs that were at least remotely of the same subgenre.  But no, I get late grunge, nouveau-new-wave-post-punk-gothic-rock, and dance-dance-revolution trashy awesomeness.  Not even in the slightest musically compatible.

Oh well. At least I like Earworm’s selections.

Rock on, Earworm, rock on.

(And I’m sure he will.  He’s not a Bad Man, he’s just overwhelmed…)

Category: Music and the Mirror | No Comments »
Tags: music

Posted By voncookie on July 27, 2010

Not that I’m particularly good at fidelity overall… That’s another story… But in my moral code there are certain rules that can never be broken, one of which is: Never music-cheat on your significant other.

What is music-cheating?

It’s when, for example, you and your high school sweetheart used to listen to a certain album together all the time, so much so that it became the soundtrack to your relationship.

In my case, that would be Blind by the Sundays, with Good Witch Exbf.

Every relationship has its music, things you would never dream of listening to with another person, not ever.  Sacred stuff.  Holy. That belongs to you, your sometime-sweetie, and the times in which you lived.

Music-cheating occurs when you break the unspoken arrangement and play that special album when you are with someone else.  And the spell is broken, and all is tainted.

For all my issues with faithfulness, I have never once music-cheated on anyone.  There are some things that are just too special to share with anyone other than the person that found them with you for the first time.

(Interesting note: When I went to tag this post with the words “music” and “love”, I realized that I had never tagged a post with “love” before.  A little sad.  And now to quote the great poet Courtney Love: … someday you will ache like I ache.)

Category: Amour Amour and Other Idiocies, Music and the Mirror | 1 Comment »
Tags: love, music

Posted By voncookie on July 13, 2010

There’s nothing like insomnia the day before the first day of class, even when it’s not really the first day.  It’s actually the third day of class.  But because of the July Hiccup (my strep throat, see previous entry), my third class feels quite like my first, mostly because the classroom bonding that is supposed to happen during these initial sessions was cut short by my illness.  An illness that in spite of it all, I’m feeling very guilty about.

Guilty about strep throat?  You didn’t know it was possible, dear Readers?  Welcome to vC-Neurosis-Land.

But back to the classroom:

I was told last week that even Seasoned Professors (the Associate or even Full kind) still get jitters before their first day of class.  That I found hard to believe, really I did.  But the person who told me that has been around for a while herself, so I am inclined to trust her.

And so it’s déjà-vu class for me, in the sense that the emotional hang-ups are re-presenting themselves, as if it were actually the first day of class.

…BUT!…

The first day of this class actually went well, so what the hell am I worried about.

I think it’s just an excuse to stay up late.  I’ve missed my insomnia.

Missed my insomnia?  WTF?

As you will see, there is much to discover in vC-Neurosis-Land…

Category: Sleep of the Damned, Teach It | 1 Comment »
Tags: insomnia, teaching

Posted By voncookie on July 13, 2010

Every July, it seems, I experience some sort of hiccup during the first week or two, be it an episode of Batshit Insane, as it was in the late ’90s, or some sort of trauma (see the entries from July ’09 for more on that), or blatant physical illness, as it was this year.

I am currently recovering from a wretched duel with Strep Throat, one that forced me to not only cancel class for two days, but cancel an entire trip to Mexico that resulted in me having to wipe out yet another line on my CV.  (This has been a bad year for my CV.  Accepted to five conferences, had to cancel for four of them.  Not good, vonCookie.  NOT GOOD.)

So, no Mexico, just me, in bed, with a throat more painful than an NCIS murder, and lots of Kozy Shack pudding, that being the only thing I was willing to eat.  That and some vegetable soup.

TooBeaut came over and dropped by about 10 gallons of fluids for me to drink, as did Cee (Dee’s friend, who has become very dear to me in the past year).  Why?  Because the day I was diagnosed with the strep, I was also pronounced severely dehydrated and had to have an I.V.  Damn.  TooBeaut, foreseeing another Dehydration Debacle in my future told me to store a few of the bottles, just in case I start to get sick again.  If you haven’t guessed, I dehydrate at the drop of a hat.

So, the July Hiccup has come and gone, and may that be the end of that.  Hopefully there will be no August Angst as there has been before — the twisted ankle, Teh Mono from last year.

Man, summer and I do NOT play nicely with each other.

Category: A Cookie's Life, Circle of Friends, Health Matters | No Comments »
Tags: health, life

Posted By voncookie on June 27, 2010

11:00am

Syllabi are puzzles.  Gigantic puzzles for which there is no easy solution.

(Dammit, A Prairie Home Companion is about to come on.  I need to turn off my radio before the hellaciousness begins.  Hold on…  OK, two notes of the intro leaked into my ears… Barely tolerable.)

I am currently trying to balance my syllabus as if I were titrating something, and detail it as if it were an old car in need of much cosmetic repair.  It is painstaking work, and, I have to admit, somewhat boring, what with all the specificity and whatnot.  Lots of reading involved.

So, this morning has been a little wretched.  Add to my syllabus woes the fact that I put rancid butter in my mac ‘n cheese and took more than one bite before I realized something was a tad “off”, I’m already having a day.  And I woke up at 6:30am, so my day feels like it’s already half-done.

WOE!

Category: Teach It | No Comments »
Tags:

Posted By voncookie on June 26, 2010

I can’t remember when I bought it.  Maybe in high school? Perhaps in Oxford?  At HNEU or SELLAC?  I’ve completely forgotten.

A t-shirt, a terrific t-shirt that read the following:

Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, there was a moo-cow coming down along the road and this moo-cow that was coming down along the road met a nicens boy named baby tuckoo…

***** A KNITTED ITEM TO THE FIRST PERSON WHO CAN NAME THAT LITERARY REFERENCE *****

(Of course, the knitted item was not included with the t-shirt, that’s just for you, o dear readers.)

The book that this was from — don’t go Googling it, now — we had read in high school, and while it had perplexed a few people in the class, most of us thought it was fan-TAS-tic.  Our first brush with High Modernist prose. (First clue!)

I wore that t-shirt with much pride until, alas, it became too small for me, and until I started to prefer v-necks.  In a spate of frustration one day with all my t-shirts, I cut off all the tight necks that were choking me, and I turned them into ersatz v-necks.  Or maybe boat necks.  I used to know these things.  But when it came time to cut the neck of baby tuckoo (doesn’t that sound odd!), I couldn’t do it.  Baby tuckoo had to be preserved intact, as did my George Orwell t-shirt that I had bought at the same time.  (A cartoon of G.O. with a huge pair of eyes behind it.  Nice.)

In my peregrinations since the ’90s, certain things have followed me that are surprising.  (Case in point: while cleaning my apartment a little while ago, I found a ticket stub from the AMTRAK Northeast Corridor train that I took from Wilmington, DE to NYC in — wait for it — June of 1998.  How the *HELL* did that make it to California???)  I thought the t-shirt was one of that random assortment of Things I Carried.

Apparently not.  I cannot find the t-shirt.  I have the book it came from, it is sitting on my shelf collecting dust, as I have never bothered to re-read it.  But the t-shirt, THE T-SHIRT, the t-shirt is the Thing.  Where did it go?

It has disappeared along with the John Lennon poster that I bought in Oxford in 1992, a terrific poster with a picture of John in a bathrobe, wearing a jaunty towel on his head which is tilted back arrogantly, as he gazes down his nose at the camera with an air of comic superiority.  The caption said “Working Class Hero | John Lennon 1940-1980″ and man, did I love that poster.  Testify, @swestbrook.

I’ve had fits of “just-throw-it-away” recently, but I cannot for the life of me imagine that either of these two items would be on the Must-Go List.

Dammit.

Two actually happy recollections of my early adulthood cast to the four winds.

Now if only I could get rid of the stuff that doesn’t matter.

Would that I could discern the difference.

Category: A Cookie's Life, The Past is a Foreign Country | 5 Comments »
Tags: anecdote, life

Posted By voncookie on June 11, 2010

On the recent flight to Hometown, NJ from Liberal Paradise, I discovered a few very interesting things:

1. It can take me upwards of a half an hour to read ONE POEM, even if it’s a poem I’ve read dozens of times before.  A HALF HOUR!!! WTF?!?!
2. Those same poems, again, even if I’ve read them dozens of times before, still quite frequently make me cry.  And I never know whether I’m crying because of their beauty, the way one would cry upon seeing the splendor of the creations of either man or nature (Sistine Chapel vs. Grand Canyon)… Or if they are tears that spring from the recognition of a kindred soul across the page through space and time.
3. Reading poetry is one of the best ways to kill time on a flight… as long as you have a PENCIL with you, and a copy of the book of poetry that you’re not reluctant to mark up.

I had to hide my tears on the flight.  I didn’t want anyone asking me questions about why I was crying.  Not that anyone would, since people on flights anymore simply stare straight ahead and avoid most interaction with their neighbors (unless they’re salesmen/women that can’t shut up the whole damn time, like the guy in front of me).

Which poet was I reading?

Need you ask?

I was reading Lorca, of course, in a bilingual edition of Poeta en Nueva York that was released in 2008 and is just astounding.  The line that made me want to openly sob on the flight was the penultimate verse from the very first poem of the book, “Vuelta de paseo” — It ends:

Tropezando con mi rostro distinto de cada día. / ¡Asesinado por el cielo!

My translation of that would be: “Bumping into my own face, different day by day. / Murdered by the sky!”

Not very elegant.  But that’s what I hear when I read the original Spanish.

The 2008 edition (trans. Medina/Statman) of Poet in New York (click here for more info) relates the original collection of poetry (written in 1929-1930), written during the hard days after the stock market crash of 1929, to the crisis that engulfed New York in the days and months following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  At first I thought that the relationship was gratuitous.  But reading just three poems from the first section of the book, “Poems of Solitude at Columbia University,” I could see why a book that begins with the cry of “Murdered by the sky!” would be so entirely apt in its relation to the events of 9/11.  I’ll leave you to ponder as to why.

Who wouldn’t cry, making that connection?

But I’ve cried over those lines before, because I’ve been alone, many times, on college campuses.  I’ve watched my face change, changed by sadness; I’ve lived dwarfed among the towers of New York, if only briefly.  I’ve stumbled over myself, I’ve watched the world taint me… as did Lorca.  I wrote copious journals about it.  He wrote two lines.

He wins.

Lorca, mi amor, how will I ever teach this poem to my class this summer without dissolving into tears?

What a gift.  What a frightening, wonderful, enthralling and terrifying gift.

Poetry.

Read some today.

Category: A Cookie's Life, Authors of Interest, Literature, Teach It | 2 Comments »
Tags: life, Lorca, poetry

Posted By voncookie on June 10, 2010

I decided a few weeks ago to pay a visit to Hometown, NJ.  Before I left, I had coffee with Ex-Overlord #1, and told him about my upcoming cross-country trip back to where I grew up.  I described the bucolic countryside, the fields of corn and asparagus, the tomatoes the size of a boxer’s fist, the fresh strawberries — bursting with real, red flavor.

He was surprised that you could find any of that in NJ.  I told him it was a secret we like to keep hidden.

As we were parting ways, he told me to enjoy my stay in Hometown, NJ, and to “take some pictures of cows for me.”

I startled.

What Ex-Overlord #1 didn’t know was that whenever I go back to Hometown, I always talk about how I’m going to drive around the county and take a ton of pictures of cows grazing.  I never do, though.

But now I have an order from one of the Overlords.  And so I must go in search of cows.  Lots of happy cows.  I’ll post some pix once I’ve gone on my bovine mission!

vC

Category: World Traveller | No Comments »
Tags: travel

Posted By voncookie on June 6, 2010

This morning, walking around the block in the early sleepy Sunday hours, I saw the fog rolling in over the hill behind my house.  Long sheets of fog, drifting as the white linens on my Grandma’s clothes line in Baltimore used to do when I was a child.  I wanted to run through the fog, as if it were one of those bedsheets, letting it wash over my head and uplifted arms, feeling five years old and joyous… And my reaction to all this was, God, how I love this city, this area, this little corner of Liberal Paradise in which I have ensconced myself for over eight years now.  The love I have for this region astounds me.  I hope I never have to leave, honestly, but it’s possible that The Leaving is on its way, who knows.

At the very least, I have one last year here.  A precious year.  One of which I intend to make the very most.

Unlike Winnipeg in the song by the Weakerthans, this indeed is One Great City.  My wish (if I believed in wishes) would be to throw down roots here and never leave.  Not that I haven’t thrown down a few tentative root-shoots already.

As Maria Kalman says in her book Max Makes a Million, the thing we must give our children are roots and wings, roots and wings.  My roots are in Hometown, NJ still, but my wings brought me here.  And now I’m growing roots here, and sprouting new wings, and they are in conflict.

I wonder which will win — the roots or the wings?

Personally, I’m hoping for (and betting on) the roots.

Category: A Cookie's Life | No Comments »
Tags: liberal paradise, life