I am here

I have arrived!! --in Brussels. (Since there is virtually no chance that revealing my mysterious researching whereabouts will expose my identity, given that I haven't actually published on anything in this region, I might as well tell you where I am, right?)

I got here this morning. I thought that I was doing pretty well with the jetlag--I checked into my hotel at around 11, unpacked, walked around a bit, had lunch at the lovely vegetarian restaurant Den Teepot, then wandered through the City Museum in its entirety--but when I got back to my room it was only 2, and my legs ached so badly that I decided to nap. Then, magically, it was 4. I had some chocolate (I had wisely, but without actually thinking about it, bought a chocolate bar) and overcame my desire to just stay in bed until morning. I emerged into the beautiful (like 70-degree!) afternoon, wandered, checked out the cathedral and a park, called TM, and found an outdoor restaurant where I ate quiche and drank two high-alcohol beers.


It's about time for bed (8:30). But, because I am marvelling at it, I will share with you some pictures of my hotel. If you need a Brussels hotel recommendation (it's cheap and centrally located! And will blind you with its bling!), please do let me know.

Love the Obama poster in this one, especially since it looks like it dates from about 1967. -- Below is my room. Yes, the painting is STRANGE.


Oh! And I must mention Thursday's visit with The Rebel Lettriste & Babies. It was lovely to see Rebel L, who is funny and smart and awesome as always. And the babies, my friends, are, first of all, real (I was charged by The RL with verifying their authenticity, though I wasn't aware that there were any doubts). Second, they are little sweetikins, and I love them. If you're ever in the Lettriste's territory, I highly recommend taking one out for a walk; while they're heavy as hell, they're also utter sweethearts, and everyone who sees you will smile. It was a lovely afternoon.

(I must add that I thoroughly enjoyed watching TM, who joined us a little later, cuddle and charm the contemplative Bede. Meanwhile, active Caedmon attempted to paint my face with spit. But lord, the dazzling smiles on those guys! Even the spit--copious as it was, and goodness was it copious--couldn't detract from their charm.)

So we looked at the house.

It's gorgeous, actually. But too small; the kitchen is cramped and would be hard to expand, and the upstairs bedrooms are all tiny and put together in such a way that it would be difficult to make any of them bigger. But that's okay. We're still kind of toying with this whole property-buying idea, anyway.

And then today we went to an open house at a good-sized place quite close to campus. The pictures online suggested that it was not exactly decorated in our style, but you know, we like the idea of painting and whatnot...so we swung by.

And GOOD LORD. This house is officially The Ugliest House in the World. Each room worse than the last! Heavy, awful curtains over every window; thick pink carpeting and pink walls; drop ceilings in places where they have no reason existing; shiny white linoleum; heavy awful curtains AROUND THE BATHTUBS; wall-length slat-doored closets; insane "Western"-themed fake-stenciled wallpaper bordering the kitchen ceiling; shiny silvery patterned wall covers (what is that stuff?); CARPETED WALLS in the stairwell--I could go on. The mind boggled. And it wasn't just the ugliness; additions had been tacked on willy-nilly so that, for example, the master bedroom was only accessible through the kitchen and the dining room was nowhere near the kitchen. To make it worse, the realtor was a relative of the owner's, so we had to hold in all of our incredulity until we were back in the car.

Oddly enough, it turned out that the owner also recently married the (elderly) father of a co-worker and friend with whom we were getting together immediately after our viewing. She confirmed the unbelievable ugliness.

So we're still thinking about what exactly we're doing here, and until we figure it out, we have a nice place with a month-to-month lease.

Fretting, Uselessly

(Is there any other way to fret?)

There's a house for sale. A nice-looking house, right next to campus (which would be great--not a problem at all; it's not too close to the dorms, but it is across the street from our office and close to the gym!). Three bedrooms, two baths, new roof kitchen heating AC etc. It costs...$129,000.

We haven't looked at it yet. I picked up the flier with the specs this afternoon. Seems good, in general. The rooms are quite small (I'm guessing that's why the price is so low?), and it has one weirdly enormous bathroom (twice the size of the bedrooms!!), but it has a big enclosed front porch, a screened-in back porch, and a patio. The porches would be perfect for prepping seedlings, and the yard is the right size for a garden, reasonable lawn, and minimal mowing.

The bedrooms are really small, though--8.5 x 11 (plus walk-in closets). The dining room and kitchen seem smallish, too.

OK, but here's the source of the fret (because, again, we have not looked at this house, and whatever, there will be other houses). At what point should one buy a house? I don't mean in terms of affording it (because at that price, I expect we could easily be paying less in a mortgage than our current rent, if we wanted to, and I have some savings that could make a small down payment), but rather in terms of life-planning. Especially in academia, because, let's face it, if we (both) got some kind of nice deal elsewhere, we'd take it. (The "both" makes that more difficult, of course.) But I don't want to keep wafting around noncommittally because I might one day get a job somewhere else. On the other hand, what's with this sudden urgency? We've been talking about looking for a house next spring, but neither one of us wants to move RIGHT NOW. And obviously we shouldn't just look at one house; so, if we look at this house (which we've agreed we ought to do, if only for kicks), shouldn't we look at others, too? And what if it's too small? In principle I'm okay with small rooms, but I don't want to buy a place that we'll "outgrow" in a few years (although I guess that's not the end of the world.... I just like the idea of stepping outside of the whole buy-buy-buy thing that seems to be our national home-owning culture). So, ugh, maybe I just need talking-down?

I'm sure that this enthusiasm, or whatever it is, will blow over in a day or two. In the meantime, I need to go measure my bed.

Little and Much

Not very much has been going on over here, in the grand scheme of things. I'm busy, naturlich, but not with anything worth noting--going to the gym, eating, sleeping, reading, writing this or that little thing that (I hope) will one day join up with other little things and produce something bigger. On the other hand, there is The Garden.

The Garden is truly three gardens (East, South, and West), and it is truly the province of The Minister, though I contribute here and there. (I made a triple batch of pesto today, for example. We now have more than 50 tablespoons of pesto in the freezer.) It is a lovely and densely packed garden, or gardens, chiefly because of some vines (melons and a mystery squash) that have filled in every empty inch and would willingly tear down the other vegetables if allowed. Tonight, inspired by the beauty of our lettuce going to seed, I took some pictures. For your pleasure:

First, the lettuce. It's almost in flower! We're hoping it'll reseed the patch.


Our chard is frankly out of control. This is one of like five rows (albeit the healthiest one). Chard, chard, chard. It'll produce until November, too.


Plenty o' poblanos.



You get two pictures of the eggplants viewed through the jalapeno leaves, because I think they're pretty.



And now for the jalapenos.


The ever-bearing strawberries are trucking along; we've got about three gallon-bags worth in our freezer already, and they'll keep rolling in into the fall.


Raspberries! The bushes are still pretty tiny, though.


A single blackberry flower.


The mystery squash! It grew out of our compost. It's huge. It wants to conquer the world.


Oh--and of course, there will be tomatoes.


I love summer.

Hey Fatty Boom-Boom

I only wish that I were so happy to be at my computer.

A Literary Dream, Loosely Speaking

The other night I dreamt that I had come up with an idea for a brilliant, best-selling-novel. Here it is--aspiring writers, take note!

It was to be called Various Ways of Describing a Prince's Title.

(The title was an awkward nod to Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," which was in fact the inspiration for the title within the dream.)

It would be a collection of monologues. I was really inspired. I started writing one right away (still in the dream), then had to stop at one point to make some notes about the second one.

In the dream (just to be clear), I wrote the better part of one monologue. It was supposed to come from a churlish perspective, possibly that of a laborer ("churlish" and "laborer" were the words used within the dream). And it was in Middle English.

So yes, I was composing in Middle English in my sleep (likely much better than I could when awake!).

But on the other hand, so what?

I've been thinking on and off this summer about goals and ambition. I'm a pretty ambitious person, and I'm good at setting and reaching goals. So, for example, I have this big pompous pre-tenure goal--and now that achieving it is actually a real possibility, I'll share it here: I aim to have published an R1's tenure-worth of stuff before getting tenure. I've decided, somewhat arbitrarily, that this means a book and six peer-reviewed articles--of which I currently have four accepted (not all at equally fancy places, but some lack of fanciness is all right. After all, I teach 4/4; this is one concession I can make). So that gives me three years to get two more PR articles out. Doable. And it makes me feel all fabulous and important.

The downside to all of this ambition and achievement, though--well, there are several downsides. The most obvious one is that it's painfully ego-centric. Everything is about MY achievement, MY accomplishments, etc. Focusing so much on the self and the self's own importance is, first of all, selfish and not particularly conducive to a more compassionate, charitable, humble, or service-oriented state of mind. The second (and more selfish) problem with ego-centric ambition is that it's very fragile. What if my book gets a bad review? My ego, my sense of self, suffers. Identifying heavily with one's accomplishments only works when one's accomplishments are clicking along very well, and that can't happen for ever. It's ultimately a stressful and unsustainable way to live.

I've been thinking about these things because it's summer--and despite what various people are saying, it's STILL JUNE and summer IS NOT almost over--and I have a long list of Things To Do Before School Starts. These include:

• writing a conference paper for September
• planning my classes (two new preps each semester next year, plus comp needs its annual retooling)
• drafting up a research plan for the Next Big Thing
• reading a mess o' books
• brushing up on my Latin in preparation for my July research trip
• reading a pack of Chaucer, whom I know remarkably ill for someone in my field.

I'm making pretty good headway on all of these, and I've finished up my index and page proofs--the other big To Do item for early summer. But, at the start of the summer especially, this list was stressing me out. Contemplating it, I was haunted by the feeling that summer was over already, and I had had no time to actually rest.

So what I decided to do about a month ago was to recalibrate my goals. Of course I'll work on the above--for one thing, I have to, and for another, I'd be really bored if I didn't have some work to do; I do actually enjoy most of the above, as long as the pressure's off. But the actual goals for the summer--the priorities--changed. They are now the following:

• meditate daily (except while traveling)
• exercise regularly, because it makes me feel good in my body and makes me more attentive to the physical world
  
• enjoy myself, and not fret when doing so means that I haven't completed a daily To Do list.

What's remarkable is that, once I made that switch, I started enjoying my summer a whole lot more. And I'm still getting my work done (even if it's not always at a lightning pace).

A few weeks ago I read an article in a Buddhist magazine that I used to subscribe to (the subscription ran out in May, but I have a stack of back issues that I'm reading through whenever I'm on the elliptical). In it, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche talks about accessing the goodness in ourselves and in the world--and how our ego-centrism can get in the way of that. He describes a scenario in which someone has achieved something and wants praise. Of course, he says, such praise would be nice; you want recognition and congratulation, and it hurts not to have it. "But on the other hand," he goes on, "so what?"

That stopped me right there. What a beautiful way to put it--yes, of course, you want these things, but you don't have them, and so what? So what if I don't achieve my arbitrary and self-important publication goals? So what if I'm not The Very Best Professor Ever (or whatever my small-minded ego tries to convince me that I have to become)? So what if I don't finish my checklist? Maybe, in the time that I'm not completing all my personal little goals, I might do something nice for TM, or make the cats purr, or call my brother. The work goals are nice, but they don't matter.* So what?

So here's to a happy and equanimous summer!

*Of course, I have the questionable luxury of teaching at an institution where extensive publication is not required or expected (or really supported). Ultimately, I guess, the "so what?" would also apply to not getting tenure--so what?--but I admit that that would be a hard pill to swallow. I acknowledge here, therefore, that the choices I'm making are less about external requirements and more about my own pride and ego--along with love of the field etc., they're what drive a lot of my desire to accomplish--and are not identically applicable to everyone. But if we were all truly enlightened, then we would be able to greet every situation with the same equanimity: So what, after all?