*IS* it almost the weekend? I think it's almost the weekend.

'You had a good day, didn't you?' the historian posited.

It was a fairly safe bet. Today, we printed some test prints of the broadside we're making for our visiting poet on our Xante printer, just to see how the design looked on the gorgeous Rives paper we are using. Oh my glory, the people. So lovely. I gave hugs to people who, I'm guessing, are not exactly huggers. But we all felt it was warranted.

see? so pretty!

Also, the interview I did earlier this week with WMSU for their program called The Weekly Reader was posted today. It will be aired tomorrow, February 4, at 9:30 a.m., but it's already on their website and will be part of the archives. When I did the interview, I felt it went quite well. And then, of course, I imagined that perhaps I sounded like an idiot, a pompous idiot. I listened to it today and thought, nope. Which was good.

Earlier this week, I also found out that my little talk about creativity--in four metaphors, hashtag fancy--has been posted on YouTube for a month and a half! Well! So it was good to check that out to discover that no, I didn't sound like a pompous idiot there, either. (The evidence is pointing toward a favorable outcome for the ongoing research project entitled 'Am I A Pompous Idiot, Yes or No?')



I got my two workouts in, one first thing in the morning, the second on my way home. Then I rushed home, ate some leftover Mexican food, and hightailed it downtown with the historian for a literary reading, poems by Joel Long and the estimable Lynn Kilpatrick, who arose from her bed of affliction to read a brilliant piece, a crown of prose sonnets related to her ongoing girl who went missing project. Altogether worth it, even though going downtown for a literary reading on a school night means you have to drive home from downtown, and deal with your wrecked, tired self thereafter.

Still:  'The week's nearly over, wouldn't you say?' said the historian.

Well, no, not really. Today when I was driving to work, I had a brief panic over the fact that it was Thursday and tomorrow is Friday, which is Publication Studies day, which is a freaking high wire act every freaking time. But it wasn't Thursday. No, it was Wednesday, all day long, which means that tomorrow--which will be Thursday in fact--is a day on which I can give the Xante print press another whirl, and hopefully hear back from Boxcar Press about the pdf I sent them for their expert eyeballs, and work out twice and get the job done, &c &c and then we all collapse.

THEN it will be Friday, which is the Publication Studies class (high wire act) plus one two three meetings, and THEN it will be the weekend. America! The work week!

Still working.

I think I maybe had a big breakthrough on my poem. Feels so good.

I got to hold Naomi today. She was awake and it was wonderful.

Don't bother telling me she's too young to be looking
up at me. She was totally looking up at me.

Bruiser was philosophical. Possibly filled with ennui.

'I'm lying on your sweater because life is meaningless
at 5 p.m. in the summertime.'

It was a great day. I still couldn't come up with a good blog post, though.

so, you know, play around with a photo booth app
and whatnot.

Not that I'm counting.

While we were watching, sort of, the Golden State-Houston game (game one of the NBA Western Conference Finals, for those of you not paying attention)(what a game! promises to be a great series.), I noted the historian counting silently.

'What are you counting?' I queried.

'How many weeks there are in the summer,' he replied.

He liked to keep track of things, and especially, he likes to keep track of how much time I will have to do what I like in the summer. He is zealous in his pursuit of my having a summer that is optimal, because he thinks that I do too many work-related things in the summer, and thus my summer will be less that fully restorative. (He is pretty amazing, and this is but one of the reasons why.)

He has a point. For one, I went to work both yesterday and today, to do work-related things. And point two, this is, effectively, week two of the summer. There are approximately sixteen, by my count, and while I don't want to get into the game of evaluating my summer while I'm having it (oh, how I don't want to do this! no better way to make summer feel anxious!), I am hoping to do less of going to work and more of not going to work.

Point three, this morning, I woke up to an email from a student (not mine) who is anxious to get into the Publication Center and get help on a publication project that has a deadline (also not mine)! Good grief.  Point four, I am also going into work tomorrow.

Well, enough of that. Today, I visited my salon genius to get my hair shaped up, and I also went to a movie with my beloved aunt Sal today, Hot Pursuit, which was about what you'd expect--a summer vehicle that wasn't quite as funny as it should have been, but still funny, at least intermittently, and we both enjoyed ourselves, and sat around talking afterward, getting a down payment on a let's-get-caught-up chat. She had an ice cream and let me take bites. Lots of fun.

Then I went and worked out, came home, got a shower, and went out for a reception thing downtown for a visiting Mexican film tour. That sounds kind of deluxe, doesn't it? except for the showering and going downtown for the second time today part. Even so. The reception was at a fancy Mexican restaurant, the hors d'oeuvres were swanky, I did my member-of-the-board duty, and it was fun.

In conclusion, I also had an outfit that made me feel swell for a rainy day in May:

taking pictures of yourself in a window? #narcissistic.
great outfit? #requiresaphoto.
that's all.

Expandable.

Don't you wish, sometimes, that there was a greater elasticity in the day? A capacity, a commensurability of the available hours with the things we want to do, beyond the things we must do?

I thought this as I trudged--there's no other word for it--from my car to the basement of the library. I was on the west of the building, but in the shadow of the walk way between two tallish buildings. The sun was still low in the east. It was cold.

I thought, I will be in that basement for six hours. Because it was the truth, and also because I was feeling the tiniest bit whiny about it, at the outset.

Although I enjoyed much about them, and although I accomplished a lot during those hours, I wished nonetheless that those six hours had had a little break in them. (a lunch-sized, or even a snack-sized break.)

I wished that, in the consultations which pushed up against each other, cheek, as they say, by jowl, there had been a small sane breath, one that allowed for thought.

I thought about slowing down, to see something, to open my eyes, to find a picture, an image. To capture it, or even just to see it.

On my way out to the car at the end of the day, I saw a boy who must have cut through campus on his way home from school. He had a big branch, probably broken from a tree. He was driving it into an icy snowbank created, no doubt, weeks ago from the plows clearing the lots after the last snowfall. He was standing on the snow, dislodging divots of snow and flicking them into the air. I wasn't close enough to see them hit the pavement, but I imagine they shattered, or broke, anyway.

As I neared my car, he looked up. He smiled at me. I smiled back. He turned back to his work/play. Like a farmer, cultivating the ground? Like someone digging to unearth something? Or just like a kid, inventing a game out of a stick and snow.

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing
and it was going to snow.

snow day, work on the side. lisab, on stripgenerator

I was of three minds, 

Like a tree 

In which there are three blackbirds.

Milestone.

The last few weeks of this particular semester hold a number of milestones for me. After this semester is over, I will no longer be a faculty leader. I will close up my Open Grievance Shop. (<< not a real thing, but it sure felt like it sometimes!). I will not have a giant lecture to prepare for, nor any presentations to give at conferences small or large. And soon, soon, the grading will be over.

the last meeting was like this, sort of.

Today, I attended my last meeting of the Discussion Team. At this meeting, which I've attended for the last four years--the first two years of the four, I co-chaired it--we discussed (none dare call it negotiated!) salary and working conditions issues for the faculty. The very last meeting, as in never again. 

In honor of this last meeting, I did the following:

(last night) Baked a cake and ate a slice at eleven p.m. 

(this morning) Met with a student | Identified another way that Canvas's sneaky ways have wrought havoc upon my carefully designed end-of-the-semester collaborative project | Ate an artisan (so they say) breakfast sandwich from Starbucks.

 
[THE LAST MEETING]

(after the meeting:) Sat with my colleague in the sun and debriefed | Went back to my office to think about this and that, related to my end-of-the-semester exit plan | Went home | On my way home, stopped at Target and bought a small, many-pocketed backpack for this summer's travels |  Ate some barbeque potato chips. Also a sliver of cake. As you do | And so forth.

Actually, it's sort of shocking how few ceremonies there are to mark the ending of stuff like this. But I am marking it, and how. (--by preparing to grade, at the moment, actually.) And I am feeling pretty good about it, both the having done it and the end of it. 

(balloons  |  parade  |  confetti  |  speeches  |  certificates/plaques | the very, very end.)

Dear getting back to it,

It was nice to go. I always feel that the most keenly when we're in the car, driving away from everything. Leaving the city, the county, the state, another state. Staying in a room that is not permanently ours--only ours for a night or a few nights.

But while we're there, seeing new regions and talking about things we don't usually talk about, seeing bears and other wildlife, &c., there are always moments that remind us of what we miss at home, like lots of vegetables, and Bruiser, and home comforts, such as our own full libraries and medicine cabinets and snacks and our own pillows and bed. It is churlish to long for home whilst on a longed-for trip, so we set those feelings aside, mostly. Except at 3 a.m. when the tiny refrigerator in the room is making funny noises and something very small seems to be knocking on the door. Or not. Maybe I was just making it up while I wasn't sleeping.

On our way home today, we stopped for breakfast at the bakery that was to close for the winter at 2 p.m. We admired for the last time the aspens and the red-twigged dogwood still blazing. We stopped in to see our friends at the little Island Park grocery, and visited our cabin closed up tight for the winter. We stopped to look into the river flowing past us, and drove down the mountain. I remembered my grandmother's big back yard when we drove past Idaho Falls, and we talked some more about things we wanted to do and see this winter, and thought about it when we weren't talking.

A few hours later when we drove up our street, the cosmos were blooming their best--the most beautiful and prolific they'd been all year. Bruiser came out to greet us in a whole-body wag. We unpacked and checked everything out, in great shape thanks to my son who had taken care. Looked through the mail and washed our faces.

And if there's still an election happening in the newspapers, and nine e-mails awaiting me in Canvas, and a full agenda for tomorrow, butter but no eggs, there was nonetheless time to make shortbread and take the dog for a walk, run over to have spaghetti with family, to brag about the bear sightings and do a puzzle with a grandson. Time to be home, in other words.

It really was a great trip,

htms

The meeting.

PowerPoint get thee hence.

Today was the first day back at school, even though students don't come till tomorrow.

Tomorrow!

I will pause so that you may reflect.

I have thought all summer long about how I would manage my time once I got back in school. How I would find time to exercise a little more. Write. How I would find it in myself to say no to things that aren't really my job and that I don't need to do.

I've let a bunch of things go. I'm not the president of anything. I am no longer the faculty advisor of Folio. I have a course reassigned time this semester, although it's for preparing the lecture I am going to give in the spring. And I am not a faculty senator anymore. There are so many things that I am not doing. I should be able to focus my energies, I really should.


This morning I woke up with this thought: I don't want that one slide in the presentation. That's the presentation a colleague and I made today in the Provost's meeting. The reason we were making a presentation is that she and I had planned a retreat, sponsored by the Provost, in the summer, for the faculty senators and academic administrators and student services administrators. We were telling the faculty et al what had happened at that retreat, what strategic plans we had made, and how they should get involved.

This is a perfect example of what I feel I should not do: get so excited about an idea that I talk non-stop about it to everyone who will listen, then end up planning a retreat about the exciting idea, then make a presentation about the retreat, and wake up the morning of with a dubious slide on my mind. Literally, the people: PowerPoint was my first thought upon waking.

Also, incidentally: two nights in a row, not enough sleep.

So off I go to sleep now. I have another video to make tomorrow, a bunch of discussion prompts to post, readings to post, all manner of LMSery to sort out. And a meeting with a student. But I am going to take the dog for a walk before I go to school, as God is my witness. I feel that this, cooking dinners most nights, and keeping the beginnings and ends of weeks mostly meeting-free, so that I can actually give my online teaching my sustained attention--somehow, I think I will do better if I can just hold on to these things. And also write.

The hammer.

Tomorrow, the vague thoughts I have been loosely entertaining since last May about how I'm going to do this and that and various and sundry whatnots--these thoughts are about to get specific.

I'm talking about how I'm going to figure out a time to go swimming, of course.

No, not really. I'm talking about syllabi-bye-bye (that's my little tribute to the Backstreet Boys, all right?). Tomorrow. Is when it starts.

I am pretty sure that a flood of amazing and transformative ideas will coalesce/reappear/appear for the first time once I start thinking in the concrete and not in the whenever. I'm pretty much counting on it. But first, I have to go to bed and sleep for a milllllion hours. It's a prerequisite.

In summation.

Me, to the historian, while the television is muted during a commercial break whilst watching The Good Wife: Guess how much work I got done today?

The historian: How much?

Me: Not any.

The historian: [expletive.]

Dear grading.

Dear Grading,

I am in the middle of you, and I am not speaking metaphorically.

As a bonus thought, I will be in the middle of you until December. And then it will be Christmas, and there will be Christmas stuff to be in the middle of. And then, January, and by January 20th, say, I will be in the middle of you again. Until May.

Grading, you have a large, all-encompassing morass of a middle.

Sincerely,

htms

The thick of it.

Hello, September 9, with your aggressive late night e-mails and pursuant troubles galore. Hello, days scheduled from dawn to dusk, already. Hello, the collision of this possible event with that fixed event, and hello, that sweaty feeling that I'm forgetting something. Hello! I hadn't exactly forgotten about you, the thick of it, but I certainly didn't remember how you sidled up, almost silently, and hung around my doorway like a doom.

*

Yet there is beautiful weather, although there are also gusty winds. Yet there are interesting classes to teach and a good crop of litmag students; still, more and more meetings. Yet there is Beatles Rock Band (aka the birthday pony) and leftover birthday cheesecake that I may or may not have eaten for breakfast. And many, many tomatoes, and weeks and weeks left of the farmer's market. And mostly not waking up in the middle of the night because of The Troubles incumbent upon me because of being a faculty leader (aka, FL, which means . . . anyone? anyone? F*** Lisa?). Mostly not, the thick of it, mostly just sleeping with the window still open.

*

It just got so busy so fast.

*

And still, the thick of it, I will be able to keep riding my bike for a little while after dinner for a few more weeks. As long as dinner is early, and before the late night e-mails commence.

A small discourse on the word "work."

It has instructive contrasts with play.

It reasserts itself come Monday.

It is good to have. But that doesn't mean that it always feels good. To have.

It reminds one that previously, there were restaurants and socializing and bookfairs and out-of-town. And Sunday.

It is synonymous with "employment."

It may be a kind of alienation. Or it may be a kind of fulfillment, or at least some people think so.

Fine. One is grateful for it. Fine. Grateful.

Fine.

Luckily, there is poetry to save us.

A few announcements, and an elegy.

A few announcements.

1. I am so. far. behind. I want to cry.

2. I am, in a perhaps not unrelated development, sick.

3. There are certain themes in my life:

• too many magazines accumulate beside my bed
• I need to reduce the amount of clothes, shoes, etc. by one-third
• I screen out the same callers on my caller ID (SLVFA, Stage Attractions, Banker's Life, Deluxe Carpet Cleaners, &c. & c.) pretty much every day

--but I am not sure if the magazines, extra 33 1/3 % clothes/shoes, recurrent callers are an enlightened boddhisatva, sent to me to teach me a lesson, or whether I am just a wreck of a human being.

4. Work is making me anxious.

5. My daughter and grandson are in Scotland. Not that daughter, the other one. Actually, both of them. But there's still one daughter here at home. Also, my son is in China.

6. Over spring break, come hell or high water, the historian and I are going to L.A. for The L.A. Project, Part 2. We will be near Joshua Tree for a couple of days, then back to the coast. I am hoping for some beach, some Griffith Park, some historic L.A. I am hoping not to think about work at all.

An Elegy to my Sabbatical

I know: an elegy is not to,

rather on, but I am not Keats,

nor was meant to be: yet once more,

o ye unfettered hours, I think

upon you and--hear my plaint,

o ye unfettered hours: you

have skedaddled and with you,

every last flouret of a thousand hues

&c &c, but O the heavy change,

now thou art gon,

damn straight, thou art gon

and never must return: seriously,

o ye unfettered hours, I

hella miss you, and now I am sick

and pining for you a full-on pine.

Sabbatical, you were worth it,

but coming back to work was

a bitch: thus sang the uncouth

swaine to her sabbatical,

which hath dissolved into a mist:

is that a sabbatical I see

behind me? Come, let me

grasp thee. I have thee not,

and yet I see thee still--

tags: elegy, pastiche

Writing, a consideration.

There may come a day when the following genres are no longer a part of my active written repertoire:

• the letter of recommendation;
• the agenda;
• the notes on a discussion topic for further discussion;
• the addenda and corrections to minutes;
• the proposed language for inclusion in the Academic Guide;
• the policy draft;
• the memorandum.

Perhaps on that day, I will be dead. Perhaps on that day, I will merely be old. Perhaps I will have written myself out at that point. I may have no more clicks of the keyboard in me.

Is this writing? This is writing. Or, perhaps, "writing."

On the other hand, I might have a new poem coming along, about dust and mice. Mice could write some of the things I'm writing these days. I think a mouse would be the exactly appropriate author of "Addenda & Corrections to Minutes." A mouse, writing in the medium of dust.

I, on the other hand, surely was meant to write loftier things. Such as blog posts and checks to Target. And the answers to the clues to the crossword puzzle, nestled snugly into their little boxes. And sassy agendas. And elegant policy drafts.

TAGS: genre, loftier

The year in pictures (part 2)

[In which we carry on with a scintillating retrospective of my life me me me me me in the months of May, June, July, and August. Attentive and regular readers of this blog will supply a counterpoint to these blithe narratives about the impending end of the sabbatical. WOE.]

MAY.

There were a lot of grandchild birthdays. A LOT.

Eden's, for instance.

And Deacon's.

And Alex's!

JUNE.

In June, we were in Idaho, first with my folks to refresh our memory about opening for the season; then with my oldest dear friend. Nothing like it.

JULY.

We were in Idaho. Wildflowers, rivers, birds. Sun moon rain. I wrote, slept, read. There were bats. The filth and the fury! It was Miriam's birthday, in Scotland, her fifth.

AUGUST.

We went to Seattle to visit the historian's daughter, and it was beautiful and amazing as ever in that excellent town.

I had a birthday. Jenna and Rachel had a birthday (where are these pictures? Inquiring minds want to know!)

I had to go to work again. No, let me try that again: in times like these, I was pleased to find that I had a job still waiting for me. With students! and grading! and, more to the point, commitments I

had made when blithely still overestimating my enthusiasm

and/or capacity for extra commitments. No, let me try that again:

Back to school! Pencils, notebooks, my colleagues. WORK, hence

paycheck.

TAGS: retrospective, photos, Seattle

Poem vs. me: round 1357.

Today was my writing group.  I have been thinking about this one piece of freewriting I had, one that I had had for several months now.  This morning I awoke with this piece of freewriting on my mind and a little shred of a thought about where I might begin--with this line from the lyric of George Jones's "Why Baby Why" which I recently heard in a cover by James Taylor.  So I was thinking, This is it.  Today is the day.  The time is now to wrest a poem from you, piece of freewriting, or know the reason why.  

(Note to self:  why are you having so many showdowns with inanimate objects, self?  What is this agon, this animus, this bellicosity, this pugnacity?  Must investigate.)

So I pulled up this piece of freewriting.  I reviewed its eddies and flows and I did a little homework (downloading George Jones's version of "Why Baby Why").  I began to pull bits of the freewrite together into lines, the lines into stanzas, the stanzas into something like an argument with a big leap in the middle, and it started to seem so . . . hopeless.  Fatuous and hopeless.  Fatuous, pointless, and hopeless.  (It's sometimes hard to fend this feeling off even if the writing is going well.)  I thought, ugh.  That hole in the argument? I don't know how to get around that, or fill it in, or make it disappear with magic, or write an invisibility shield to go over it. 

It got to the point where I either was going to take a shower or sweat over the poem some more, and I thought, why inflict an unshowered poem-less self on my writing group?  At least shower.  At least be clean.  So I did, and I thought about the recalcitrant poem while showering, and I thought some more and I got some ideas.  So I did my hair and got dressed and thought, Never mind, I always show up with a poem, if I don't have a poem, big deal.  Maybe this poem is bigger than the time I allotted it.  Poem 1, Lisa 0, so what?  

But that just made me mad.  

So I sat down and I decided to leave the argument-hole as it was and write the strongest second half of a poem I could.  And that's exactly what I did.  I am a little bit in love with the second half of the poem I wrote, and having done so, I think I know what to do to work with the first half and the hole I wrote myself into. 

So the score is now Poem 1, Lisa 1, and I think I will also out-strategize the poem's reluctance to be written when I do the next draft. In the words of Jerry Sloan, I've done what I need to do to give myself a chance to win.