Party Time

I love my husband, and I love our evenings together. But it is kind of fun to have a night alone now and again, isn't it?

He's got a dinner thing tonight and I do not. So! Here's what's on the agenda:

Cook up a pot of spaghetti and my favorite sauce-from-a-jar (Newman's Own Sockarooni).
Eat too much spaghetti, drink wine, and watch back episodes of "30 Rock."
Throughout, cuddle kitties.
Put on pajamas and read some stuff until he gets home.

It's funny how sauce-from-a-jar seems like a special secret treat. It's so declasse: a guilty indulgence. And that just tells you something about the fantastic-fancy cooking guy I married.

How the Cats Spent The Weekend

I didn't do much better.

*And yes, these are the only cats: Kittenfoot went to live with her lovely new owner--a cat-needing colleague of ours--on Thursday. She is missed, but not by these guys, who never even detected her presence. Lazy so-and-sos.

The Laziest Scholar Struggles with an Article

Maude has asked for tales from France, but I'll put those off for a bit, because I feel that I should at least gesture towards some sort of scholarly content on this here blog. I know. Blog as source of guilt? Wacky, huh?

Anyway, here's the problem with this article. Or the two problems, more precisely.

1) I quite simply do not feel motivated to work right now, and frankly I think that, despite my extreme non-workiness over the last week, that this laziness is somewhat justified. I do have a book contract, after all. Have I mentioned recently that I'm the first person at Field to have such a contract in, oh, forty years or more? No? Well, here I go, mentioning it!

1b) Oh, and I am GETTING MARRIED in nine days. Shouldn't I be doing something about that?

2) While I think that I do have some interesting ideas that I'd like to develop in this article, I started it a really long time ago. Thirteen months ago, in fact. So I have this draft, which I think sort of sucks, and some interesting ideas, and I am not the sort of scholar who decides to rewrite things, so I'm stuck with attempting to revise in my new, interesting ideas. During the course of "revising in" I typically wind up rewriting, but I don't like to think of it in those terms. So I have this 33-page lump of text into which I occasionally inject a couple of sentences before shutting my laptop in despair.

Allow me to walk you through the genesis of this "article."

• In working on my dissertation, I read a bunch of visionary texts and lives of medieval visionary women. I come across this one, about whom not too much has been written, and, while the narrative in itself didn't captivate me, there was an interesting paragraph in the prologue where the biographer essentially tells his readers that they'd be crazy not to trust him. This paragraph winds up in my last chapter as an example of a phenomenon. It is not discussed at length.
• This chapter, because it's about Chaucer, becomes the basis for a conference paper and a couple of job talks. Interesting Paragraph is mentioned in all of these later incarnations.
• I see an interesting conference CFP (Hi, MW!) and think, Hey, I could write a paper for that, and use IP as an example there, too! In the course of writing the paper, I re-read the Vita in question, and ultimately it becomes the focus of Conference Paper 1: the phenomenon occurring in Interesting Paragraph occurs elsewhere in the text, too, and I'm interested in that.
• Months and months go by. Last summer I decide to write an article based on CP1. I read the Vita for the third time. Phenomenon might be part of a larger technique for structuring how the audience reads the text. An article (which I actually think is okay at the time) gets drafted.
  
• Then I get readers' reports on my book MS (in September), and the article languishes. In the meantime, however, I submit a proposal for a Leeds paper on the Vita and a much more famous quasi-saint's life.
• Months and months go by.
• In June, I finally write the Leeds paper. I am ashamed to admit that I do not read the Vita for a fourth time. The paper is largely drawn from the slovenly article draft (I no longer find it to be quite so okay), although I manage to refine and develop a few ideas somewhat in the process of writing it up.
• On the plane from Paris to Leeds, I decide that I really ought to reread the Vita in case I get any questions or anything. (I don't. Get questions, that is. Or at least, no questions that require an in-depth knowledge of the text.)
  
• Obviously I do not finish the Vita before my paper. I wind up reading it (fourth time!) in France and when I get back. I finished it over the weekend.
  
• This time, I see LOADS of interesting things. All kinds of stuff about reason and unreason, inner and outer experience, harmony and conflict between body and soul. Fascinating asides. I start thinking that I could, like, theorize something here about subjectivity and the divine. Fantastic!
• I start revising. I write about two sentences. I read blogs.
• I start revising the next day. Work well for about an hour. Am confronted with hideous block of text.
• Open document the next day. Hideous block of text remains intact.
  
• Repeat yesterday.
• And today.
• Yuck.
• Can I just work on syllabi, or something?

And, you know, I really don't want to read this Vita again. I mean, it has interesting stuff in it. But, like all Vitae--and these seem to be my main focus of scholarly interest from now until forever--it is frankly rather dull. At least, I think so. I find them simultaneously fascinating (conceptually) and deadly (in the details of the reading). Does this make me a bad medievalist? Or is it a sign of Scholarly Character that I only work on books that I don't actually enjoy reading? (I do enjoy thinking about them, however. I'm not so dreary as all that.)

I did fall in love with a visionary Vita-type text, once. Book 2 of Gertrude of Helfta's Legatus Memorialis Abundantiae Divinae Pietatis. But I was a green young prospectus-writer back then.

On the plus side, I took really good notes this time around (insofar as I ever take "really good notes")--so maybe I won't have to slog through the whole thing again anytime soon. Maybe?

Whither Incentive?

School starts three weeks from tomorrow. A week from today, I fly back East for my wedding. So time is, as they say, of the essence.

And yet it is unspeakably hard to finish this damn article that I drafted last summer (and which remains an ungodly mess), or to polish up the details of my syllabi, or to finalize readings for my classes, or really to do any damn thing at all. Uck. How're y'all doing?

Some weekends are just like that, I guess

Really, not productive. So not. At all.

I've read for Survey this week, which means that I've technically finished my class reading for the semester. I do have some optional/recommended stuff to get through (i.e. finishing a novel of which I've only assigned a part, in case the students read all the way to the end, as I know some already have--not a problem, really, since I love this novel), but that's it. And after this week, the teaching itself is minimal: We're watching "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" for my Arthurian seminar next week; there will be exam review and exam in Survey; and "wrapping up" and/or conferences in Comp. So yeah, it's just about done.

Grading, clearly, Is Not Happening this weekend. Feh.

But I have this accursed Presentation. It's for a weekend event at the college, so it's not for students or faculty, and it's on sustainability--a subject in which I am interested enough to agree to do the talk, but on which I am not at all an expert. I'm not sure why my name was suggested to the organizer, but whatever. So I have to give a 45-minute talk, and I'm putting together My First Powerpoint, and I can't wait for this sucker to be behind me. I currently have a fairly long and irritating outline (I don't know why it's so irritating to me, but it is); a couple of books are stacked up on my desk waiting to be incorporated--honestly, I am probably close to finished with this thing, but I am actively avoiding it.

Part of the problem, I think, is that it feels intellectually dishonest, somehow. I'm not putting much work into learning about the subject--I have a general knowledge and I've read some books, so I'm not totally faking it, but neither am I being particularly scholarly. Yesterday I flipped through a book I've read before just looking for interesting facts to drop in. Yeah, I know--it's like the worst undergrad research paper techniques all arising from me at once. I do a Google search and don't even go beyond the first page of results. That kind of thing. Yech. I feel icky.

So, yeah, it'll be adequate, but weak. It's not supposed to be High Scholarly, or anything; this is not an academic audience. (And to be honest I have yet to see anything that is High Scholarly at Field. We do not have specialized lectures hereabouts. Sometimes this makes me sad. And when I actually do some scholarly work of my own--real work, not this lackadaisical halfassery--I realize that I miss using my brain in that particular way, and wonder how long it'll be before I've lost my research chops altogether.)

This post wasn't supposed to turn maudlin or self-pitying. Mostly I wanted to say that I've been a lazy so-and-so for two days, and this week'll consequently be a little stressful, but since it's the last really stressful week for a while (I'm deliberately blinding myself to the busy-ness of the grading-+-Kzoo-preparation period), I'm finding it difficult to alarm myself into activity.

With 8 teaching days left to go

It's a warm and rainy day; the birds sound tropical. If the trees were actually green, it would feel like proper spring--but there is green on the grass and in the bushes, and that's a start.

Instead of grading, or working on my preposterous non-relevant presentation or my conference paper, or even reading for class, I would like to scratch the belly of a slow loris. The Minister thinks that she looks like Studs Terkel:

Such cuteness being out of reach, however, I shall pull up an easy chair by the open front door, wrap myself more securely in my bathrobe, and start reading.

Bad blogger

My cold is gone, but I am inexplicably weary--yet I do feel that I should post something, if only so as not to grade/prep/think about conference papers. So I'll ramble about here for a minute and then go take out my contacts, or something.

Today launches us into Week 5. Spring break is in less than a month. And, although my conference papers have yet to manifest (where the hell are they?), it's been a productive 4+ weeks. I shall regale you with a list of my accomplishments:

• assisted (albeit somewhat minimally) in the revamping of our comp sequence, which, as I mentioned, passed at the last faculty meeting;
• entirely rewrote Field's academic dishonesty statement. My version has passed my peeps in the Humanities, but won't come up before faculty until next month, and I anticipate contention. Why this should be a controversial issue is beyond me. All I'm trying to do (with the endorsement of the dean) is to articulate the guidelines that we're supposed to follow when we catch plagiarism and suggest--not require!--that strong measures (i.e. failing) be taken. I'm already anticipating the opposition. Sigh;
• finished the Incomprehensible Chart of Alien Timesuckage;
• met with all (7) juniors in the Honors program to discuss theses and substantially helped a thesis advisee with her latest chapter;
• taught a bunch of stuff--some new, some old, mostly new;
• practiced yoga nearly every day (accursed cold!); and
  
• written not a damn thing that wasn't a) in my diary b) online c) work-related.

Other than the last point, I'd say I'm doing all right.

That last point, though--oy. I am feeling radically unmotivated when it comes to my work, and I keep putting it off. The current plan is to read ahead all week so that I can take the weekend to outline the Kalamazoo paper and revisit the texts it's on. I am stupid, though, in that I proposed a paper on two really fucking long books [medievalists: think of 2 of the longest canonical texts out there, other than the Divine Comedy--one's in French, one's in English--I'll leave you to sort it out and gloat over my stupidity], neither of which I've actually read in a long time. I can rip the framework for the paper out of my dissertation, but I won't feel intellectually honest unless I look back over said long books. Damn me and my intellectual honesty! Why can't I just slap some rambles together and get on with my life? I'm sure I wouldn't be the first.

Praise me!

--for today, I read one whole article! Like, a 30-page one! From start to finish! In a single sitting, no less!

Celestial trumpets sound....

Not Working

Since my interview is over, and I've relapsed into my policy of slack, I decided to take the day off.

(Never mind that I worked for approximately 25 minutes yesterday. See, the problem is, I'm trying to prepare my dissertation defense [8 days until it's over!], and I just don't really know what to do. I have made up a Handout, and prepared an Elaborate Outline, but basically I could run through my argument in my sleep. And I fear that, frankly, it's just going to be boring. I know that that shouldn't be a worry [and it obviously isn't much of one, since I'm taking no steps whatsoever to prevent it], but I've given versions of this spiel SO MANY TIMES that I can HARDLY BEAR to go over it anymore.)

So, today, I went to a museum and saw a neat exhibit of fiber arts (e.g. unwearable knit and crocheted things). One artist had knit dozens of biologically correct snake skins (out of yarn); they were beautiful and surprisingly lifelike. Then I got a falafel and went to the park, where I saw daffodils, crocuses, ducks, swans, a heron (or a crane? I don't know), a guy playing a flute, and a turtle.

A Google image search reveals that what I probably saw was a heron. It looked like this:


In a little while, I'll go to yoga. And then I'll likely be exhausted and lounge around for a bit.

I used to be so industrious.... I do not, however, feel particularly bad about this prolonged slump. I mean, who cares, really.

The Body Stronger, but the Mind a Fog

Okay, I'm basically healthy now. Still have the unpleasant residual cold effects (the peeling nose is the worst), but I'm okay. And I've been taking cold medicine before bed, which means that I've been having FABULOUS dreams;* at some point I suppose I'll have to give that up.

But I can't get anything done. It's not a matter of the will. Well, maybe it is. I don't know. I'm reading a hugely entertaining novel these days, and I have two more episodes of Father Ted to watch, but I'm starting to get a little bit frustrated with myself.

In the last couple of weeks, I've started a rather large number of books. If you were to read all my posts carefully,** you might think that I'm a prodigious reader of extracurricular medieval lit, but in fact I'm just not finishing anything. I have bookmarks bristling all over the place. It's annoying. I want to finish these things, damn it, so I can stick them back onto my shelves or into the big stack on my subwoofer or wherever.

But, instead, I pick something up, I read three paragraphs, I think of something I desperately need to check online, I go to my computer, I forget what I was going to check....

Oh well. It happens, right? Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day I start to seriously get myself together. Tomorrow is the day I drink extra coffee, if need be. Yep. Right-o.

*One thing I notice with the cold medicine is that when I wake up in the middle of the night--which I do, often--I can just sort of lie there and it's as if I'm still sleeping. I'm not, and I know it, but I'm still having these wild and vivid dreams. And then sometimes I think I'm just lying there awake but in fact I am asleep, as I discover when I look at the clock and two hours have gone by. It's a disturbingly pleasant state to linger in, this in-betweenness.

**A practice that I do not recommend.

I have taken to my bed

That was pretty much implied in my last post, I guess. But I wanted to write it anyway.

After six hours, I'm kind of staving off boredom. I finished the back issues of Bust magazine my friend gave me, and just purchased an album by El Perro del Mar with an itunes gift certificate. (The album is fabulous and strange--the ethereal vocals and sock-hop melodies remind me a little bit of the soundtracks to various David Lynch movies.) I'm listening to it off my laptop with my big-ass nerd headphones while I read the Letters of Direction section of Abelard & Heloise. (Maybe that's accountable for some of the boredom?) I've also rented a Jane Austen movie and the first season of Father Ted. Father Ted is heralded, on the back of the box, as "the best program about three Catholic priests stuck on a very small island." Good times ahead.

Luckily I have enough food to get me through lunch tomorrow. The wind is screaming and shaking my house and DAMN but it's cold out there. There's something pleasant about being holed up--for the first day, anyway.... Actually, it's probably a good thing that it's so cold; otherwise I might be tempted to go out and spread my germs.

Sick Sicky Sick Sick

Yes, I'm SICK. A strange stomach-ache has morphed into a head cold. I've never heard of that happening, but there you go.

It's quite awfully cold out, and windy as a bitch, but soon I'll need leave the house for tissues and videos. Other than that, though, I think I'll spend the better part of the day in bed. In fact, I'm writing this from bed. Vive la laptop!

In other news, I had an interview yesterday and I think it went pretty well. (The cold was just in the stomach-ache phase at that point, thank goodness.) They asked me harder questions about my dissertation than my committee ever has, but I was able to answer them to my satisfaction, at least. The job is non-tenure-track, but renewable, and somewhat prestigious if low-paying. It also has the advantage of being a commutable distance away--meaning that I could keep my apartment and not buy a car. So I'd be pretty excited if it panned out. I won't hear for another month, though.

Hm...am I ready to brave the cold and the wind? I'm not sure that I am. But I can't stand to go on blowing my nose with my scratchy old recycled-content toilet paper. It's brutal, it is. Maybe I'll go in 15 minutes. Yeah, 15 minutes seems about right.

And then what will I do? I don't know! There are worky-type things I could tinker around with, but I'm not sure that I want to. (Uh, okay. What I mean is, I'm sure that I don't want to.) I've been re-reading the novel that I wrote in the darkest days of my job search anxiety, and am actually enjoying it, which is pleasant. Maybe I'll do some more of that. Or maybe I'll, I dunno, look through some of my old papers and books and things. Relics of bygone selves. For some good old self-indulgent fun.

If it weren't for the kleenex situation--which will soon be remedied, I swear--being sick isn't half bad, sometimes.

Chinese New Year Extravaganza

Had a very fun, very LATE night yesterday at a Chinese New Year's party. Saw some people I hadn't seen in a long time. Drank a lot of kumquat martinis and played an exciting dice-rolling game that involved a great deal of shouting. Won enough cash to pay most of the cab fare home. It was a good night.

--Followed, however, by an exceptionally slow day. It's, what, 3:30? I have done nothing. And I'm looking forward to its being nighttime so that I can go back to bed. Late nights just destroy me, kumquat martinis or no.

Oh well; these weekends don't come along very often. Besides, aren't there people out there who actually take the weekends off? I'll make some kind of half-hearted effort at revising a chapter, and call it a day, I think.