...

Off to get wedded. See y'all on the flipside.

(Tuesday-ish, that is. Just one day before the faculty retreat! Do I know how to do honeymoons, or what?)

(Of course, I may need a therapeutic blog-sesh sometime before the "Big Day" (how I hate that phrase), so this is not set in stone.)

The Therapeutic Effects of a Blogging Community

Thank you, everyone, for your comments on the last post or two. I am heeding your advice and entirely ignoring the very semi-existence of that accursed article.

And hey! It's quite pleasant. I'm doing the housework and wedding prep that needs to be done, and the rest of the time, I'm doing...whatever I want.

What a funny sort of life this is.

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?

Owoo pity me.

You want to know about the best thing that I brought from France? Seven bottles of wine and calvados, neatly packed into a small, foam-lined suitcase. TM brought another seven or so himself. We are set for a while with the nice wine.

The worst thing I brought back? Two GIGANTIC RED EYEBALLS.

I am having a bout of conjunctivitis. I think that it started about two weeks ago; I stopped wearing contacts, and it seemed to be going away. Wore the contacts yesterday for a yoga class, and whooo--GIGANTIC RED EYEBALLS. Way worse than they were before. Obviously the contacts had become contaminated, and I re-infected myself.

I did go to the doctor this morning, and I do have medicine. But the medicine hurrrrts me. And my eyes hurrrt now, worse than before, what with all the Slaughter of the Bacteria that's going on on their surfaces. And I think my pupils are dilated or something because I'm not caring for bright lights, much.

Owoooooooooo ow. I know, a minor thing, really. And it should be all cleared up in a couple of days. But until then, I intend to exploit fully this excuse not to do anything too visually taxing. (And my glasses are driving me nuts because the screws really need to be tightened--they keep falling off my face. My problems are HUGE.)

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?

Je suis de retour

Once again, I find myself overwhelmed and paralyzed by the wealth of things that I ought to be blogging about. So, once again, I will simply jump in and write something, as disappointing as that something will doubtless be, and probably forego lengthy narratives about my trip (which would be uninteresting to all but a polite few, I'm sure).

I did, however, promise pictures. So here are three more:


That's me and TM (faces blurred) on a tandem bike near Villerville, in Normandy, atop a preposterously long hill. The bike riding was fun. However! I am a fairly established bikerider--or I was, having completed an AIDS ride in 1999, at which point centuries were a more or less weekend occurrence--and thus reasonably hardened to bicycle seat discomfort. The seat of this bike seemed pretty cushy: broad and modestly padded. But by the end of the day (we probably rode 25 miles, maximum; it was slow and heavy going), I felt that what a yoga teacher might call my sit-bones were being ground to a fine powder by means of rotation upon a granite slab. It hurt to sit down for the next two days. TM experienced discomfort, as well, but described his as more of an "impaling" sensation. We were delighted to return the bike at the end of the day.

But don't we look smart in our hats?

And here is the bizarre new branding that I discovered in Honfleur:


Hildegard has gone into business; apparently the abbess/visionary/renowned advisor thing just wasn't sufficiently lucrative. But hey, at least her remedies are organic.

This is TM admiring some curvaceous half-timbering in Honfleur:


Don't you like his hat? Unfortunately it was left behind in Paris. But since it was primarily suited to the resort-towns of Normandy--being all Proustian and all--perhaps that's for the best.

School starts soon, so substantive blogging may resume at some point. (Though there is that pesky wedding thing coming up in two weeks....)

Leeds vs. Kalamzoo: The Death Match

(That title really is too cheesy, I know. Apologies.)

Apologies, too, for the long gap--but seriously, France? Get some frakikn wifi already. What the hell? The like THREE places in all of France that claim to have wifi actually don't. In two of them, the owners (of the cafe or in one case a wine shop--why a wine shop advertizes free wifi is a cultural difference that I will not dare to explore) actually lent me their laptops. This was very nice of them, but certainly made me email in haste rather than blog at leisure.

So I'm at Leeds, and, as I don't have the proper outlet adaptor, will not be able to spend extensive time online for the next couple of days. Rather than regale you with hilarious pictures from the first week and a half of my trip (I promise the following: Me and TM on a tandem bicycle, wearing preposterous hats; a re-enactment of Marie de France's "Les Deuz Amans"; and Hildegard of Bingen's line of homeopathic remedies--they're organic!), I shall instead provide an itemized comparison of the most essential elements of the two major medieval congresses.

(Bear in mind that I have attended one Leeds panel so far--I arrived this afternoon.)

Dorms: Despite the shared bathrooms, Leeds wins. Vastly more comfortable beds (and it was made when I arrived! No monastic brown coverlet!); only one bed per room; non-cinder block walls; and a quaint little sink in the corner. I am also conveniently located near the hilariously titled "Female Toilet," so things are good.

Wine hours: Again, this goes to Leeds. Red and white wine! In glasses! Not swill! Generously poured! Hurrah!

Dining halls: Can't make an educated guess. I've only eaten in the Kalamazoo dining hall once or twice, and that was in 2003, so it wouldn't be fair to say. Leeds' food isn't bad so far, though.

Book exhibit: Here's where Kalamazoo scores some points--it's much bigger--although the more European orientation of the Leeds exhibit at least ensures that there's not too much overlap between the two. But as I'm saving suitcase space for wine and calvados, I won't be buying many books, anyway. (Still, it's fun to look.)

Conveniently, the two people whom I know at this conference also know each other. I had no idea. How nice! Just had a lovely dining hall dinner and a drink at the dorm bar (score another point for Leeds!) with both of them.

Paper is in the morning. I've convinced myself that it's better than I thought it was. We'll see--no one reads my main subject, so I anticipate roundabout questions.