Resolutions

A few years ago, my dad's new year's resolution was to quit grunting every time he straightened up (or stood up--I can't remember which). He kept it.

In that spirit, my resolution this year was to stop standing around in the shower after I'd turned off the water, kicking puddles towards the drain. I assume that I developed this habit as a way of postponing the chilliness attending my lunge out of the shower and towards the towels.

Anyway, here we are in July and I've successfully changed my post-shower behavior. I don't know why it mattered to me so much--it just really irritated me, how I'd dawdle in there.

I like this approach to resolutions. No huge, vague "Must get in shape!!!!! Will be more productive!!!!!"-type things, just identifying some little habit that irritates you and putting an end to it. Now I need to find another one for next year--shouldn't be too difficult!

Bored, Bored

I am sort of trying to work on my conference paper and am feeling...unmotivated. Here's the thing. The conference is in November, so I don't feel the enormous fear/urgency that usually prompts me to get my act together and fix the weird sentences, read secondary stuff, etc. All I feel right now is the obligation to get some kind of rough argument and analysis down on paper. Well, the "rough argument and analysis" currently fills 9 pages, which means I only have one more page to write. (Yeah, okay, I'm going to have to delete all of that vague waffling that I always do for two pages at the start of any writing project, as well as at least one utterly pointless section on page 4, but I'm not doing that yet. Allow me my illusions!)

So the point is that, while I'm not thrilled with my superlative academic achievement in this paper just yet (witness the following sentence: "A textual aside by [Some Guy] reinforces this view of his role as seeking to control his reader by arguing against a more cynical interpretation of the events of [This Person]'s life"), I'm still very proud of myself for having produced nine pages of prose four months ahead of time. And therefore I'm spending a lot of time screwing around on the internet.

For one thing, I just ordered the last book in that series that everyone's talking about. I was going to wait; I felt no urgency at all earlier in the summer, when I still hadn't read the penultimate book--which I didn't think much of, to be honest--and was going to hold out until it came out in paperback. But I'm too afraid of having the ending ruined for me if I wait that long! So I've ordered it, and I should get it right before I move, which ought to give me enough time to read it before classes start.

But, well, so my bloglines are empty right now, and writing this little post constitutes the next phase of Internet-Time-Wasting. I really ought to go undine's route and cut myself off from the 'nets for a certain number of hours per day; the fact that I'm widely publicizing such content-less ramblings is all the evidence I should need.

My Biggest Accomplishment of the Week

In yoga class this morning, I got both feet behind my head.

Whooo!

Enlightenment, here I come!!

Okay, I have this friend...

...this very, very unhappy friend.

[Note: I've edited this a bit since I posted it 24 hours ago (so most of you probably got the general idea). It was good to vent and get it all out there, but I'm a very paranoid blogger, so I've removed or changed all potentially identifying information--even the stuff that was already veiled.]

Let's call him Nate.

So, I don't really know Nate very well. We met at a conference a few years ago and have only met in person a handful of times. But we've had a sporadic email correspondence and meet up when he's in town, and he's a pretty fun guy, if given to the occasional melodramatics.

But in the last few months his life has basically become terrible--at least, as he tells it to me. (For I have long suspected that Nate is in the habit of exaggerating things for dramatic effect. He's a good storyteller, and good storytellers, in my experience, seldom hold fast to the truth. Not that I think he's outright lying or anything.) Anyway, here's where my problem comes in:

I don't know what to tell him.

We've been emailing more regularly this summer after being out of touch for most of last year. And he writes these long miserable posts infused with this kind of bitter, self-deprecating humor, and I don't know what to say. I know, it's hard for me, isn't it? But when I write back trying to be supportive and encouraging, he basically tells me that the supportive encouraging things I say aren't true. News about my life only seems to spark more bitterness on his end, and I honestly don't know him well enough to know how to respond. It's starting to feel as though no subject is safe. It's grim. And combined with the fact that he answers my replies almost immediately--well, I've always got a message from him in my inbox, waiting to be answered. (It takes me a while to answer them. But when I wait too long, I feel guilty, because he's so miserable, apparently, and I don't want to add to his unhappiness.)

As I write this, I realize that I'm painting a pretty wretched picture. Of co-dependence, among other things. Am I enabling him? Well, maybe, but an email or two a week hardly seems morally objectionable. Also, in all fairness, he's not as bad as I've made him out to be. He's actually a very funny, bright person, even if his humor (in the best of times) is generally at his own expense. But I dunno...I'm feeling a bit sketched out by the whole thing, and I sort of dread answering his emails. At the same time, it costs me so little to maintain this tiny shred of support that I'm offering him. So I'm torn between wondering what I can do to cheer him up (or at least not make things worse) and wishing that his problems would go away for my own sake, which isn't a very pleasant feeling.

He's going to be in town right before I move, so I've promised to see him at least once then. Which will be fine, because I'm moving away right after that, so it's not like we can start up some kind of pattern. Also I think that I'm pretty good at keeping people at arm's length (whether I want to or not, unfortunately), so I'm not terribly worried about getting too sucked in (witness my 5-day response email response time!). I just feel kind of crummy about the whole situation, and that ain't good.

Rainy Day Poetry

by Edith Sodergran, 1892-1923. Translated from the Swedish by Stina Katchadourian.

Love

My soul was a light blue dress the color of the sky;
I left it on a rock by the sea
and naked I came to you, looking like a woman.
And like a woman I sat at your table
and drank a toast in wine, inhaling the scent of some roses.
You found me beautiful, like something you saw in a dream,
I forgot everything, I forgot my childhood and my homeland,
I only knew that your caresses held me captive.
And smiling you held up a mirror and asked me to look.
I saw that my shoulders were made of dust and crumbled away,
I saw that my beauty was sick and wished only to--disappear.
Oh, hold me tight in your arms so close that I need nothing.

I saw a tree...

I saw a tree that was taller than all the rest
and laden with pine cones out of reach;
I saw a great church with open doors
and all who came out were pale and strong
and ready to die;
I saw a woman, smiling and painted,
throw dice for her fortune,
and I saw that she lost.

A circle was drawn around these things,
which no one can cross.

La La La

I haven't been in the most bloggerific mood lately. I'm reading other people's blogs, and all (of course! How else would I avoid work?), but don't have a whole lot to say here.

Which is not to say that I haven't been busy, or getting things done; I have been. They just aren't terribly interesting things, and I'm not having interesting thoughts about them. (That's arguably always true. I guess a more accurate statement would be that I haven't been believing myself to be having interesting thoughts about the probably uninteresting things I'm doing.)

So:

-H and I had a yard sale on Sunday and got rid of a lot of crap. Then we went to the beach, and had soft serve and got covered in seaweed, and that night we saw the new Harry Potter movie. And then I had to take yesterday off to recover from all the fun.

-I actually made some headway on my book proposal today. I am apparently in one of my modes where I can only get work done at the library. Sometimes I can only get work done away from the library. The game is figuring out which mode I'm in.

-I have not started packing. I will not start today.

-My blog's very nice wallpaper has disappeared! I'm disappointed. [Addendum: I have found some new wallpaper. All is well again.]

That's all! La la la!

The New Town: Pre-Impressions

I've been gathering some more pre-impressions of my new town. Everyone I've had any contact with at all out there--my new landlady, the car rental agency guy, some random faculty member I don't remember meeting--has been insanely welcoming and sweet. For example, when I called the car rental agency to find out how much a three-day in-state rental would cost, I ended up mentioning (because AgencyGuy asked me when I would need the car, and I had to explain why I was calling) that I was going to start work at the college in the fall. "Oh!" he said. "What will you be doing there?"

"Teaching in the English department," I said.

"Well, congratulations! That's wonderful!" he said. He then promised me a special, slightly discounted rate and gave me his name, so that I would know whom to talk to when I do reserve a car.

And then there's my landlady, whom I had to call last night with a question about the lease. She sounds exactly like my father's 87-year-old cousin, by the way, which predisposes me to find her benevolent. Once I'd straightened out what I needed to know, I said something conversation-ending like, "Okay, well, great! I look forward to meeting you," or whatever. But she wasn't ready for me to get off the phone. She asked me a few questions about how I was moving, etc., and then at the end of the conversation said, "Well, I think you're going to like Field Town. And I think they're going to like you. So I'll bet you'll be staying here more than a year."

Which was very sweet, if a little awkward.

All of this, on top of my department chair's exceptional generosity (and the fact that one of the other English profs was actively recruiting me for his indoor soccer team on my campus visit--fun!), is giving me the sense that the upcoming year will not be terrible, at all. It looks like there will be plenty to compensate for the heavy course load and the distance from the boyfriend--at least, in part.