Never mind, I found it.

Tonight, right before we went out to take Bruiser for a walk, I received two nearly identical pairs of messages from students. The first went a little something like this:

"Dear Professor Megastore, I cannot find my assigned peer reviews! Where did you hide them from me, at the eleventh hour and three quarters? Why are you the kind of teacher that would hide something at the eleventh hour and fifty minutes from her students? Why are you so terrible? Also, can you help me?" 

And the second went like this:

"Uh, never mind, I found it."

It's actually kind of amusing--it's like the kind of teacher-story that the Universal Ministry of Educational Flack (UMEF) hands out every so often, so that teachers can regale one another (not to say one-up one another) over sandwiches or tea:

Professor one: (sipping tea and nibbling a biscuit) I had a student the other day who called me a wanker! In the class! Where everyone could hear! And I was being observed! For tenure!

Professor two: (taking a savage bite of his cookie) LUXURY! I had a student who threw sandwiches at me while insulting my teaching because he couldn't find his peer reviews, and then followed by a sheepish never mind!

--rinse, repeat, etcetera &c &c then there was no more tea and we all cried.

This pedagogical episode puts me in mind of every other different-yet-similar episode, wherein one person puts another person into a panic because the first person (are you with me? there are only two characters in the story, but neither of them has a name, because it's a generic story etc. &c you will simply have to pay closer attention!): one person (my son, say) puts another person (me, myself, moi) into a panic because the first person (son) can't find his, say, immunization records. And he's in China! and he wants to register for school! or something. So I turn up the entire house in its chaos, trying to remember where it was and then it always ends up with a never mind from person one, and that is, somehow, deeply amusing to me.

Here are some things, however, that I have not yet turned up, that I am really not amused about, and thus the universe stands, holding its breath, waiting for the sigh of a never mind to release us all from our panic:

1. this one poem draft that I remember as somehow having something brilliant in it but who really knows, because: poof. It is no more, and this was before the advent of the personal computer and files, etcetera &c the poem she is lost. (this happened a really really really long time ago. I think I better just get over it already.)
2. plenty of books, oh yeah. I just remembered a couple and I'm still kind of mad about them.
3. plenty of DVDs that people borrowed, I think, and then never returned, I'm pretty sure, although who can say, really. Maybe they're here in the "shelving system" that is really nothing but the Screwy Chaosimal System (say it aloud, you'll hear it) with no rhyme nor reason nor Findability Index that will work for a person with a working, data-organizing, normal-functioning brain. (also, I'm suddenly, and with exquisite embarrassment, remembering that I have in my possession certain DVDs that belong to other people that I had better return, pronto!)
4. two beautiful and inky pens that were (a) expensive and (b) given to me as cherished gifts from cherished people. Alas I believe I left them in a motel room in West Yellowstone, Montana, and lo they are no longer to be found.

But! it's 11:32 on a Sunday night and I have graded like a champ, done some subtle yet somehow critical reordering of my new manuscript, and it is almost bedtime, there is a lunch packed already, waiting for me in the refrigerator. Earlier, I helped my son make two casseroles that he intends to eat in limited installments until they are gone, and also I made corn salad! So all is well, order reigns, etcetera &c except for the fact that the DVR stopped recording before the last two minutes of tonight's The Good Wife episode--so we know only part of what happened to Cary Agos and we do not know which of the lawyers duking it out in the bond hearing prevailed in those last two minutes.

As my son says, tomorrow the episode will be on the internet ("I think if it's on the internet, it's legal"), and then we'll say (wait for it)...

Things that are the worst: a short list.

Idiosyncratic, of course. Don't even bother arguing with me.

1. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court. And while we're at it,
2. the Citizen's United decision. And also,
3. the Hobby Lobby decision.

That's probably enough for the Supreme Court section of the The Worst list. Although I totally could go on. But I shall not. Instead, I shall move to the restaurant section.

4. the fact that my favorite Mexican food restaurant for several years running made a shrimp enchilada that was soggy, and now I must give that restaurant a rest while it gets its act together, I hope.
5. the fact that the good restaurants in my neck of the woods are thin on the ground, which means that sometimes we eat at chains, and mostly we just eat a lot of whatever's there. Also,
6. the fact that we ate so much Thai food for awhile that I've kind of had it with Thai food. Alas.
7. Applebee's.

Movie critic section:

8. the way certain movie critics just cannot stop being grouchy about Seth Rogen and Jason Segel and Judd Apatow. I mean, I get it, but for crying out loud, David Denby and A.O. Scott and David Edelstein: maybe just watch a massive personal film festival of your favorite heyday films and shut up about it?

Personal lifestyle:

9. the condition of my study.
10. the disorganization of my books.
11. there is tooooooo much food in my refrigerator, and, incongruously, it is hard to figure out something to make for dinner.

That is all for now. For now, that is all.

I'm back, and I have movie regrets.

Are you sitting in a big fat meeting? Where there are, I'm sure, massively important things being discussed, but still it kind of sounds like big fat meeting drone (BFMD, which is a catchy acronym for what is happening, which is, sorry to say, not catchy, not even a little.).

Sigh.

Well, not that anyone's counting, but it has been a long time since I wrote anything whatsoever in this space. Reasons? Oh, I've got reasons:

• big fat family visit (BFFV)
• attendant whirl of activities
• attendant whirl of melancholy
• etc.

Paradoxically, now that the visiting/summer are over, and the droning has commenced, I kind of feel optimistic. I have lots of reasons that this is so, but let's leave that for now. For now, what I want to talk about is this:

I have not seen as many movies as I think I should have. Not in order, and as near as I can figure out, here are the movies I've seen in 2014 thus far:

• Wish I Was Here
• The Lego Movie
• The Monuments Men
• Cesar Chavez
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• Chef
• Noah
• Veronica Mars
• Rio 2
• Draft Day
• Million Dollar Arm
• X-Men: Days of Future Past
• How To Train Your Dragon 2
• The Fault in Our Stars
• The Rover
• Edge of Tomorrow
• Maleficent
• Ida
• Locke
• Obvious Child
• Snowpiercer
• A Most Wanted Man
• Calvary
• Belle
• Gloria
• The Lunchbox
• What If

I have missed a bunch, and a bunch of good ones (The Immigrant, Night Moves, Only Lovers Left Alive, and also Step Up All In, which I can totally catch, and maybe later today, after the droning either ceases or I quit the droning, whichever happens first.). Also Boyhood, which I am determined not to miss.

Maybe I've seen more, and I just haven't kept track? Let me just say that I never intend not to catch the movies--I am a movie completist. But this year--this year kind of kicked my ass. Reasons? Oh, there are reasons. But I am going to do better. I am going to catch the movies this weekend hardcore. Boyhood at least and probably more. And Step Up All In. Because I am definitely all in for the dance movies, or I don't know what.

Perspectival magic.

Today, I read this in the New York Times and it resonated hardcore:

Failure is big right now — a subject of commencement speeches and business conferences like FailCon, at which triumphant entrepreneurs detail all their ideas that went bust. But businessmen are only amateurs at failure, just getting used to the notion. Writers are the real professionals.

Just last night over an enchilada I was telling the historian how tired reading my manuscript makes me.

"But the poems aren't worse than they were. They haven't changed," I said. (Insert adverb, like plaintively.)

No, I'm just sick of them. Or right now I am. So that must mean that it's the downhill slope of summer.

I have had time to become sick afresh of my poems because my Scottish visitors are away--indeed, none of my children are here at the moment. They have been attending a family reunion in Logan and having a good time. Meanwhile, I have been recovering from a sinus cold and feeling a tad bereft. That's how I roll. Good times, sinus colds, limeade, bereftitude. It's a big fat aria of doldrums.

Did you start blogging again just to whine? I hear the people saying. Yes! yes I did, thanks for asking.

Let me start again. 

Here's what's been happening for the past few weeks:

Chalk art and breakfast and cookouts on the patio. Swimming with the cousins. Planting little pot-gardens. Bead necklaces. Stories at bedtime. Malcolm in the Middle watch parties. Doughnut tastings. A visit to the Museum of Natural Curiosity. Gardening in the evening. Laughing, quarreling, tears, and more laughter. Snacks galore. A full glory of summer childhood. 

Their brief absence over the last few days has meant I could take a nap. We went to the farmer's market and bought cherries and peaches and tomatoes. Of course, in the time they've been gone, I've also found the time to become weary of my poems, and to let melancholy bloom into view (as opposed to playing its usual gloomy bass note in the background). It's not like letting melancholy bloom is a great idea, I get that. But I have never been particularly decisive at marshaling my inner resources. My strategy is more to let the clouds cloud the sky--no one controls the weather--and know that they'll pass.

Soon they'll be back. I plan to bake this with them, and, I hope, see more movies, have more cool mornings on the patio, water the plants and discuss the habitat with the girls, make more Lego creations. We may need to eat more doughnuts. We have a handful to people still to see, and we need to finish one storybook and start and finish another. (I also need to unweary myself enough to make decisions about my manuscript...fresh courage take! Fail better!) An ending looms, but we'll all be trying to do that perspectival magic that keeps it at a distant hover until it is actually at the doorstep, with a bouquet of melancholy, a bevy of plane tickets, and an echo.

Written upon stone.

From the Lonely Planet Guidebook for Shaanxi:

To see a library made of stone: yes.

We wandered through the galleries. Some of the tablets were under shelter but otherwise open to the air and elements. It was warm but not sweltering.

There was a time when people had touched the tablets so much that they were black. There was a time when there was a big earthquake, in the 1500s, and many of the largest and most important stones were broken into pieces. A scholar made smaller stones to fill in where the text was broken. In those galleries, it is as if the tablets are pages of a book. There were times when the center of power shifted, and the texts were lost to the "wild suburbs"; there were times when they were gathered together. The Nestorian stele was buried for centuries before it was found again.

It is a miracle, is it not, that any library survives, no matter what its texts are made of?

I suppose that a scholar would be able to look at the tablets and know things like the era, and the calligrapher, and the carver, and the nature of the text. The interpretive material was intermittent, so we could discern some of this. Not all. We could see, by the sweep of a cursive calligraphy for instance, that here we had entered a different period; by the minuscule, exacting characters, that perhaps this was a legal text. Each of the galleries presented its interests and its longeurs. We moved quickly sometimes, and lingered at others.

At the end, my son and I talked about faith on the steps of a gallery while we waited for the historian to finish his more deliberate examination. There were birds, and their song. A thicket of pillars with carved finials stood in orderly rows to our left. Stone is not eternal--it is susceptible to human touch and the earth shifting and burial and weather--but it feels eternal. Its breath is cool and unhurried. It speaks and it keeps its counsel.





 

Miscellaneous notes from China.

On museums.

I picture the end of the Roman occupation of Britain like this: somewhere around the late fourth century A.D., people looked around themselves, said, Hey, when was the last time you saw a Roman tax collector? and proceeded to take stones and bricks from Hadrian's Wall to use in their houses, barns, and stiles. They didn't even bother to raise a glass. They just raided, and why not?

Much, much later on the timeline, we went to visit. What is the Roman Wall? we asked ourselves. We bought maps and studied websites and visited sites and discussed things amongst ourselves. There are ruined garrison towns and forts and all sorts. People are digging them up, and providing explanatory placards, and suggesting pathways through the dig. In a word, out of the ruins of history they are making museums: exhibits that narrate a lost past, a past that would be all but invisible but for these efforts.

°

When we got to Sichuan, we had toured the following:

1. The Forbidden City (aka The Palace Museum)
2. The Lama Temple
3. The Summer Palace
4. The Mutianyu section of The Great Wall
5. The City Wall in Xi'An
6. The Terra Cotta Warriors
7. The Forest of Stelae (more about this in a subsequent post)

In other words, eastern China's Greatest Hits. 

[Digression: on a first visit to China, would it really be possible not to have gone to see these monuments? Would it really? If I were going back to China, I would still want to see the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace again, because I know that I did not exhaust the interest nor the elements of either place. In fact, when I looked at a map of the Forbidden City, I realized that we had only seen maybe a third of what there was to see. And we spent hours there. Hours.]

[Digression 2: periodically, when we ventured down some dark alleyway or gritty, unpicturesque location, my son would turn back to us and say, This is real China, as if to say: what you've been seeing heretofore has been prepared for your consumption as a tourist. Not this. This is unprocessed, unfiltered, this is not arranged for your comfort or your pleasure, this is how they do it here. Examples: shopping not in the fancy Euro-style mall but down the narrow halls with a thousand booths selling a mad efflorescence of goods. Taking the sleeper train from Beijing to Xi'An. Eating porridge for breakfast on some completely un-touristy street in Beijing. Real China. Whatever that may be. You can feel it when you're in it. Not fancy, not Western-fetish-style clean.]

Resuming the narrative: when we got to Sichuan, we had done a lot of the Major Attractions. (They were awesome.) We had arrived very very late the night before, so we slept in while my son went to class. For lunch, we ate Yan Jian Rou and had some green tea with his friends. We walked around the campus, just to see it, had a smoothie where he often has a smoothie, went to the People's Park. 

What do you guys want to do in Sichuan? This was the big question. We had four days left before we would get on a plane and fly back to our lives.

There are temples to see in Chengdu. Museums. One thing I had imagined doing when we first started planning the trip was visiting an ancient irrigation system near Chengdu. It was right beside a sacred mountain. Also, it happened to be not too far from a panda conservation center. Sights to see: restored and preserved ancient technologies. Shrines. 

We mulled our options over, and my son said, with deliberation: The more I think about it...I think we should go to Four Girls Mountain. 

I was surprised. He'd been somewhat resistant to this idea when I mentioned it--I've already been there, Mom. Let's find a place I haven't gone yet. Which made sense, and was a point of view to which I had come around, if a little reluctantly. He was there with his friend. They posted pictures. I wanted to go there too, to take my own pictures.

[Digression 3: Is picture-taking a motive in itself? Or just another way of seeing?]

He continued: If we go to Four Girls Mountain, we could stay two nights or three nights. You'll see these beautiful valleys. 

I was in. We talked over the details, and the historian decided, yes, he too was in. It would be a completely different experience than anything else we had done. We wanted to see a different part of China, and here was our chance.

My son: To be honest, I'm just so tired of museums.

I think it might have been the Forest of Stelae that did him in. He said, I liked it for about forty minutes. And it's true: it was practically an infinity of stone tablets, engraved with all manner of ancient and historical texts. It was mesmerizing, it was overwhelming. It was, in a word, a museum. A shrine, a temple. Exhibit. Monument.

[Digression 4: I love museums. If there had been, in easy proximity, a straight up art museum anywhere we had been staying, it would have been hard for me to stay away. I love the way an exhibit is a narrative and an argument. I love the way an exhibit, its specific articulation of a collection, its specific gesture of preservation, is a form of cultural love and attention. I love parsing exhibits, and I love falling in love with the museum space. I just love them.] 

As we walked through the first valley at Siguniangshan National Park, my son said, Now what is your favorite thing you've done on this trip? And what he was implying--that this, this setting, the high, high mountains, the shifting mist and the snow, the Tibetan stupas everywhere, was surely the best--seemed inarguable.

Better than any museum, he said. Arguing, but only lightly.

Les étrangers.

It is inevitable, is it not, when one is in another country, the way we remark upon our differences, large and small?

Huh, noodles for breakfast again! we say. Or why does that man have his shirt rolled up so that we can all look at his belly? Am I supposed to look at his belly? But there it is, right there, right there where his shirt is rolled up.

Like that.

Or the time we were in an elevator in Xi'An, and the guy in there with us glanced at us, then looked back in a series of lengthening looks. He turned to his friend and they started chatting animatedly.

He probably thinks you look like Karl Marx, I said to my husband the historian, who is (a) bearded, and (b) a socialist, not that they would know that, except that maybe the beard implied it?

My son said, That's exactly what he just said. He said, He looks like Karl Marx. 

And that's when he leaned in for a selfie with us. In the elevator.

In China, we were the odd ones. We were strange and exotic. My tall, curly-headed bearded son was, of course, used to it, having lived in China, at different times, for more than a year. I loved seeing how people responded to him, once he spoke, and how he was able to negotiate so capably in this place so far from home, in a language so different than his home language. None of this grace was an option for us.

If you want to say 'thank you,' it's 'xie xie,' he instructed us. We were in a grocery store in Beijing, our very first morning. We wandered past the vegetables, past the dried fruit, the practically infinite varieties of dried mushrooms, past the nuts, practicing this tiny phrase in a spectrum of pronunciation manglements. A lady sitting by one of the stalls smiled. Hilarious. I smiled back, because it really was.

The historian said 'xie xie' the whole trip long, like a champ. I did too, but more hesitantly and less frequently. No amount of phrase-mongering would obliterate our strangeness, our otherness. It was right there, written on our faces.

In Rilong, in western Sichuan, I admired the canvas shoes of one of the young women working at the guest house.  They had hefty tread, black, a black toecap, army green canvas uppers, laced up.

My son translated: my mom likes your shoes. Where can you get them?

She said we could find them anywhere, and when we did find them in a little shop on the main road, a small group clustered around, watching while I tried them on. A local man laughed, although not in a mean way: her feet are bigger than my feet! he said. Back at the guest house, when I came down to dinner, the woman with the admirable shoes took a look at what I was wearing: cotton trousers, a light shirt and light cardigan, canvas shoes. She entered some text into her smart phone, then showed me the English translation, which read something like this: I am worried about the thinness. Please put on more thickness so you are not becoming cold. 

So much the clumsy-footed stranger, and, in a corollary, evidently unable to dress myself appropriately. It's possible that I had to rescue myself from feeling almost existentially incapable a little bit every day. I found this to be one of the recurrent threads in the whole narrative of the trip. It was unsettling, but then, I think I knew that it would unsettle me. I had a talk with myself about it long before we departed.

At the moment, I think this kind of experience is useful. It's useful to be reminded that you're are not the prince of everything, or the princess. That the world is not yours to command, that you are every bit as strange to some people as some people are to you. Part of the grace of this kind of experience--the experience where one feels lost and graceless and incapable--is to be reminded that you live in the world and the world is not made in your image. The world is enormous. The big world contains you and you might as well keep your eyes open, to see every last strange, unfamiliar bit of it you can.

I think you can see why these nice people wanted
a picture with me. Because I am a celebrity, obvs.
(Xi'An City Wall)

In which we went to China (part 1).

You guys need to decide what you want to do when you come, said my son. He sent us the link to the Lonely Planet guide, which we perused and out of which we made lists. We had basically decided on the architecture of the trip--meet in Beijing, train to Xi'An, fly to Chengdu--but what would fill our days? What places, what things, what experiences?

Proposition one: China is bigger than you think. Even when you think: China is big. It's still bigger.

Proposition two: You can never imagine, not really, what you're in for when you go to China. Where you're the foreigner--really, really the foreigner, the true Other.

China just isn't China without the Great Wall, said my son. To which I wholeheartedly agreed. In a conversation I had this morning, a man I work with said, It's like when you've seen pictures of things your whole life, and then you go see them in reality. It's like when I saw the Eiffel Tower. I was pretty much, Yeah, that's what I thought the Eiffel Tower would be like.

The Great Wall is not like that, not really. I don't care what you think it will be like. I don't care what you've read, what homework you've done, what history you've assembled, what pictures you've seen, how many times you've viewed Mulan. I don't care. If you are on that wall, you are in another place entirely than the place you imagined. It is much grander and much, much more difficult. 

Proposition three, corollary to Proposition One: You will not see everything. Not remotely.

Proposition four, corollary to Proposition Two: You will hunger for home and home comforts--the internet, ice in your drink, a sandwich--and you might feel a little bit ashamed of this longing, but that won't change the fact of it. And you will confront your limits, also a non-negotiable element of being in China.

I looked up at the steps, the stone steps ahead of me. They seemed almost vertical. I had not imagined them. Even though my son had told me about this--had said, it's pretty strenuous, mom, words meant to warn me and encourage me to prepare--I nonetheless found myself looking up those steps and thinking, I don't want to have a heart attack on the steps of the Great Wall and also I don't want to fall down the steps of the Great Wall, and sometimes I thought those thoughts simultaneously.

I said, I don't want to... and my son finished my sentence: ...have a heart attack? 

Exactly, I said. And also I don't want to fall. 

He said, but think about being able to say that: I had a heart attack on the Great Wall! 

Funny, definitely. I found myself thinking, plenty of times during this trip, that despite the great anticipation I had had for this trip--despite the planning and the itineraries and everything we had done to get ready to go--I found myself thinking that China might kick my ass. If that's what adventures are supposed to do: dominate you and make you, basically, submit to them.

Well, the people, I did. I submitted, at least sort of, to China. I climbed the steps and rested when I had to so I wouldn't have a heart attack and/or fall. When we got to the towers, we rested and drank water and leaned up against the cool stone. And then climbed some more. To be clear, I was the main person who needed the resting. The historian and my son were, comparatively speaking, nimble mountain goats. But it was so worth it to be there. To look and see the wall snake away from us, over the next mountain ridge, and the next and the next after that. To be humbled by my limits and still press on.

List.

1. Finish book review.
2. Write e-mails to x, y, z, and also a, b, and c
3. What should I read en route? Do I want an actual, you know, book?
4. Charge up all the devices. ALL THE DEVICES.
5. Every little thing that makes life in my own skin (and, let's face it, head) must come.
6. Back up SD card, because there will be pictures OH YES there will be pictures!
7. Fruit snacks, for a fruit snack deprived son.
8. Call all the people I love to tell them I love them.
9. Take care of this forgotten/neglected item of business.
10. What about this or that appointment when I come back?
11. Shoes, back up shoes, slightly cute but still comfortable shoes.
12. All the socks.
13. Twelve days = fourteen tee shirts WHY.
14. ANTICIPATE.
15. Crossword, back up crossword, back up back up crossword.
16. Magazines?
17. Gum for the air/ear pressure.
18. Pens. Notebooks.
19. All manner of wipes.
20. Everything ready? Check? Let's go.

Dear post-semester mood,

You are flighty, aren't you? For days, you're gray and rainy, chilly, austere. And yet your light--the light lasting longer is a temperature of its own, tending toward gusty but sunny, or scattered sunny, or tiny hits of sunny in an ambiance of mercurial.

The tulips have spent their glory, all but a handful--a dark purple Queen of the Night, a streaky pale yellow and red. The flax and the centaurea are bluing up the joint. And columbine are making their first spiky statements. These are your flowers, are they not, Post-semester mood? I believe that, at one time or another, you planted them.

Post-semester mood, your obsessive checking for student retorts online has just about ended. But your letter of recommendation writing is still turned up to a million. That's on the "Things I Said I Would Do" meter. Which is still hitting the red zone regularly. The needle is twitchy.

Still, though I am in the throes of you, Post-semester mood, I am nonetheless hanging out in a quiet place. I am in a straightened and tidied room, whichever room I'm in. I'm wearing lighter colors and I'm holding a finger to the winds to see if it's time to have breakfast on the patio.

Post-semester mood, you are transient, changeable. You're a sudden directional shift. You're accommodating and, it must be said, a little languorous. You're my capricious--a bit--companion, and yet you're my steadfast. I wake up, there you are. I tire of a task, you're ready for a little reading, a small irresponsible excursion, a nap. I do the dishes and you are there, making it feel like a tiny stolen joy.

Post-semester mood, I hope you stick around. You're my unreliable, constant consort, perfect for this green, warming, restless, liminal state of being. Provisional, that's what you are, and I need you for now, until the new jurisdictional mood settles in, God only knows when.

fitfully yours,

htms

Dinner: a discourse.

Who shops for dinner, and how is that shopping done? That is the question. I still have in my possession a small red clothbound book from two decades or more ago, in which I wrote my shopping lists on the left-hand page, and my menus on the right. I was a veritable wizard of using stuff up. I shopped once every two weeks, and that meant--as you have probably surmised--that by the end there was damned little out of which to conjure comestibles. As I am sure I have wheezed on about in the past, I was a scholar of my cookbooks, and knew what kind of cookie or cake I could make, if we needed cookies or cake, when I had but one egg, or when I had oil but no butter (often), and so forth. I knew how to substitute this for that. I could make homemade yogurt and I stretched fresh milk with powdered.

I knew that we were heading out of the woods once I started to work, when we could afford cold cereal on a regular basis. I am not defending cold cereal, but it made life easier by far when I did not have to arise from my slumber in the gray of the morning to cook a hot breakfast each and every day, as I did for quite some time. With the development of slightly more money clinking around in our pockets and coin purses, my shopping became less straitened. I still planned, I still listed, but I could go to the store if I needed another gallon of milk or a lemon or, you know, popsicles or a watermelon. It got better.

These days, when I consider dinner at my house and I draw from my vast stores of cooking experience a fresh and unspoiled blank, I make a list of things that I could cook, things that I almost always have the ingredients or. Risotto, I might write on the list. Plate of vegetables. One of the things I can almost always rustle up is a bowl of pasta, with something saucy to go on it or something vegetable-y. Or both. Pasta, in my book, makes a satisfying supper. You don't have to eat a lot of it--i.e., you don't have to go into a carbohydrate coma--but it is filling and warm and can be quite elegant. That's if you don't look in your refrigerator and think, ugh. Or what the hell. Which, to be honest, is how I feel sometimes when I look into the drawers and find some sad looking carrots and half a sheaf of now decidedly unfresh celery. When, exactly, were those depressing vegetables purchased? What is there to be done?

Luckily, the people, there is in these modern times a thing called The Internet, where people who write there occasionally surprise you with a recipe. And even luckier, sometimes the recipe kind of matches what you have in your refrigerator, in which case: WIN.

I ran across a pasta recipe today (it was an adaptation of this recipe from Mario Batali) that called for sundry vegetables and blistered tomatoes--charred in a hot pan so that the skin blistered. I read the list of ingredients: orecchiette, asparagus, spinach, tomatoes, burrata (that fancy fresh mozz with cream in it, whoa). I thought: Me, me, me, me also... I'm really close on this one. As in: I had the right pasta. I had some gorgeous fat purple asparagus. I also had broccoli that I could cut into very skinny stems, and I had some cherry tomatoes that needed a purpose in life. Also: baby kale, which would stand in for spinach. And a ball of mozz. Not burrata, but close enough.

Thus inspired-stroke-guided, I did the following:

1. I heated the oven to 400 degrees. I filmed a roasting pan with olive oil. 
2. I used a peeler to peel the bottom half of those asparagus stems. Then I cut them in uneven diagonally angled pieces of about 3/4". 
3. I peeled the stems of the broccoli and cut it into skinny long pieces.
4. I cut half a purple onion into thin half moons.
5. I took some coarse salt from Slovenia (thanks, Natasha!) and crushed, along with some crushed red pepper, with the flat of my big knife and strewed it all over the vegetables. 
6. I tossed the pan around until things were a little bit oiled up and put it in the oven.
7. I began to heat my heavy skillet. Concurrently, I began to heat a pan of water for the pasta.
8. When the pan was hot, I put in a little oil and the baby kale. I let it wilt, then tossed it around till it was still green but very docile. I put that on a plate. 
9. Into the still hot pan, I threw my slightly-the-worse-for-wear cherry tomatoes. Grape tomatoes, really. I let them hang out there and char. I tossed them around a little so they could char on other spots. Then I turned off the heat and just let them blister away.
10. When the water boiled, I put my third of a pound, approximately, of pasta in and let 'er cook. Orecchiette is a hefty pasta, so it takes twelve minutes or more.
11. While that was happening, I tore apart my mozzarella into shreds. Nothing too fine.
12. As the pasta was getting close, I checked my roasting vegetables--they were perfect. I took them out. I checked the pasta every couple of minutes. 
13. When it was done, I drained it, put it back in the pan, and threw in a couple of tablespoonsful of butter, then all the vegetables, and then the mozz. I tossed it and tossed it until the butter was melted and the cheese was melting and everything looked fantastic.

And then we ate it. And let me tell you: it was so good.

Ten things to do when you have finished the grading.

1. Lie down. You really should. You deserve it. Lie down and finish your novel, or if you are not reading a novel, start one.

2. Review your agenda. In my case, the agenda is entitled, The Get the House in Order Project, and it was wildly ambitious. Some of the stuff on that agenda--that stuff can be done later. Maybe in a few weeks. Resume your lie-down.

3. Okay, fine, get up. Think about dinner. Make soup and make blueberry scones because there are (a) blueberries in the refrigerator and (b) no reasons necessary to make scones if they are delicious and you want to. (check out the butter technique in that recipe--it is legit.)

4. Read some more. Take a short nap.

5. Watch tons and tons and tons of basketball. Revel in both the sloppy and the elegant play of the post-season, especially when you have no horse in the race, no dog in that fight, no team that you particularly care to root for. Learn other teams' players' names. Root for a team that is almost certain to lose to either (a) the Spurs or (b) Miami, depending on which part of the tournament you're prognosticating.

6. Read the nice comments students sent you. Remind yourself that you only had to wrangle with just one student, and even there, the wrangle was civil and is now resolved. Forget about the time when you woke up thinking about said student. Just let that go.

7. Sort through your winter clothes and put them away. Remind yourself how many freaking sweaters you have, not to mention skirts. Make vows about shopping, vows that will no doubt be fruitless but which feel salutary whilst putting the sweaters, not to mention skirts, away for the season.

8. Catch up on the last few episodes of The Mindy Project. This can be done concurrently with nearly any item above, but is worth enjoying on its own. However, eating a scone while watching television will never go amiss.

9. Think about China. China China China!

10. Put off decisions about meetings and commitments. They are out there, calling to you in faint, distant voices. But they can wait. They can wait while you open the windows (figuratively--it's still a little chilly) of your summer life and let the wind chimes make a beautiful, apt music, a music that is spring and the end of grading and the taking in of a deep, expansive breath. Breathe it. Just--breathe.

The new rhythm.

This morning I woke up at the same time as usual, 6:48 a.m., twelve minutes in advance of my alarm. I lay there and let all the indicators do their test runs, then I opened my eyes, put on my glasses, looked at my e-mail.

I needed to be at work by 8:30, and my day would be full. But it would be a different kind of day from now on.

Last night, the Publication Studies class debuted their chapbook, and the winning author read his work. This is the second year that I have not been the teacher of the class, and thus I've been an interested but sort of distant spectator of this process. This, and the publication of the the spring edition of Folio, are two of the big markers of the academic year, that the year has been, as it were, achieved.

It's a celebration and a valediction, wrapped in a small alienation, suffused in an infusion of joy and relief, with a tiny tincture of sadness. Just tiny, but still.

Next week, the work will come in, and I will read the writing of these students for the last time. I'll have things to say to them, again for the last time. Most of us, students and teacher, will have said what there is to say to one another, at least for now. A few of them, I may be having conversations with them for a long time, but mostly one-sided, mostly in my own mind. Because that's the nature of teaching, and semesters. And of being with students, and then not.

Well, I started this post this morning and now it's almost five. My poor husband has caught the sick I had last week, which is so unfair it's not even really comprehensible. So we'll be staying in. I'll be refreshing my course sites from time to time to make sure that no student concern goes unanswered, and getting used to letting go of all that, because hey: the semester is over. And it's time for something new to happen.

You guys.

Okay, first of all: first of all, this is the last day of classes, the last day of classes of the semester that almost nigh unto killed me, as in I am almost dead, but I have survived, I have prevailed, I have a new header!

Today, I read the last of the poems and the last of the essays. Today, I met with my independent study students and advised them for the last time. Today, it is the last day. Did I respond to many an e-mail, many a panicky, pleading e-mail? and did I respond with a firm and gentle, not to say severe, not to say way harsh tone? and did I say unto the panicky student, "Panicky student, you must chill. YOU MUST CHILL."?

The answer to all of these questions is yes. Yes, I did. I wore black and I wore shiny shoes, and I was in charge of the last day of school, lo! the last day of school recognized me and surrendered.

Good lord.

Well, the final work doesn't come in till next week, so it's not like I'm done done, but I am done with the meeting with students, and that feels like, the people, a blessed, blessed relief.

Cheers to blessed, blessed relief.

National Poetry Month is eating my brains.

I just thought you'd all like to know--you, the reading public--that my lack of posting, or postage, or whatever nominalization you prefer for "where on earth is The Megastore?"--it's all the fault of the cruelest month, April, which is (coincidentally? I think not.) National Poetry Month. So, you know, you can go read some poems over here. I am behind, but just one poem, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. Dr. Write is also posting poems. In conclusion, it is super poetish over there.

In the meanwhile, I do have some recommendations, however.

The Megastore Recommends.

1. Getting your visa application mailed off finally. You guys, do you realize that when you go to China, your passport is like chopped liver? And by "chopped liver," I don't mean "something gross, whoever THOUGHT of that?," I mean "something that is pretty much useless without a visa." AND, the people, getting a visa means a lot of steps that make your head hurt. As in, do you need to have all your hotel reservations and your plane reservations set? or is that a little waffly, and will your basic itinerary do, as long as you have an invitation letter from someone in China, aka your son? How much does it cost? HOW MUCH? omg. And you need pictures. And you need a FedEx office. And so many steps that you think, whoops, too bad I already bought my plane tickets, because I am never going to get this done.

But then you do get it done, step by step, and all your brains are still, mostly, in your head, except the poetry-writing portions. And then you wait.

2. The amazing food you will eat when you are in China. Everyone I read says that the food in China is beyond. My son says so. My friend says, "Make sure you eat Uighur noodles!" I tell my son about the Uighur noodles. He says, via Google Hangout, "They're all right. Tell your friend (shrugs with palms up) 'They're all right.'" With or without the noodles, though, I am going to try as many things as possible. I am looking forward to what China will taste like.

3. Don't think about the crazy toilet situation over there. Just don't.

4. Also, while you're not thinking about things, don't think about that fourteen hour flight. It sounds horrible.

5. Do think about the fact that there are beautiful mountains near and around Chengdu. 
Like these:

The people, I recommend Chinese mountains like these.

Hey ho, let's go!

It's Monday!

Here's something I treasure: a day with no big plans, or no big plans that require me to be somewhere on time, or disappoint someone. A day when I can wake up and say, what shall I do today? Even if the question is just a little bit rhetorical--as in, I've got a hella lotta grading to finish, so what I shall do today includes a hella lotta grading. Even so: I can lounge and be insouciant and wear slouchy clothes and eat what I want when I want and take a nap. And do a hella lotta grading.

I just planned my week, and it's not so bad, if I do say so myself. It includes open-er afternoons than those to which I have lately been accustomed (p.s., Google, stop correcting my spelling! open-er (more open) is not the same as open-air (Google's correction). Although an open-air afternoon is also a nice idea, come to think of it...

Carry on, Google.)

                                                          --yes, open-er afternoons than those to which I have lately become accustomed, a shocking lack of meetings, and (fingers crossed) the grading is actually diminishing. We are entering, almost, the small bloom of open time before the last-of-the-semester onslaught. Onslaught: what a word:

onslaught (n.) 

1620s, anslaight, somehow from or on analogy of Dutch aanslag "attack," from Middle Dutch aenslach, from aen "on" (see on) + slach "blow," related to slaen "slay." Spelling influenced by obsolete (since c.1400) English slaught (n.) "slaughter," from Old English sleaht (see slaughter (n.)). No record of its use in 18c.; apparently revived by Scott.

(Also, is it just me, or does it kind of rhyme with Anschluss?)

I call this small bloom of open time the lull before the onslaught. We are not there yet. But we are almost there. I can feel it. I can see it. It's a full-on synaesthetic experience, this almost thereness. Are you with me?

The State of the English Language: an update.

Abstract: The English language is still going to hell in a hand basket. Evidence: people are still using the lovely noun "gift" as a verb.

Background: Readers of this blog may recall that I have, upon occasion, pointed to this abomination--using "gift," the noun, in place of the perfectly serviceable verb, "to give." E.g., and to wit: "This scarf? My best friend gifted it to me for my birthday." ( < abomination. Appropriate: my friend gave it to me for my birthday." See? Perfect!)

It's a scientific report. Like my blog post.

Data: I'm no linguist, scientist, social scientist, or shaman. But I keep hearing people use this infernal locution: "She gifted me this fantastic yak hair sofa." "He gifted me my own heart served up on a platter!" "The cat gifted me with this dead mouse." Etc., etc., on the radio, in magazines. On blogs and social media. It hurts my ears and my brain. Also, I was thinking about it while I was walking from my car to my office. So, clearly, and to sum up, the data points to a continuing trend of a thing that is abominable!

Discussion: While it is the height of foolhardiness to attempt to change usage, one cannot stand idly by whilst people say things that hurt one's ears, and brain. Even if not standing idly by means sounding kind of persnickety, grouchy, and middle-aged. And rant-y. One must take up one's voice, one's pen, and one's blog in defense of what is right: the right of a verb to be a verb and a noun to be a noun, and never the twain shall meet, just in this one case, since of course it is the God-given right of words to transmogrify into whatsoever part of speech is necessary at the moment. Just not gift (noun) to gift (verb):  that is right out.

Conclusions/Recommendations: If you are one of those who has upon occasion, or frequently, given this gift-as-verb shenanigan a trial spin, do the right thing, and quit it. Cut it right out. Take a vow and never do it again. And if you're tempted, remind yourself of the pretentious, ultra-fancy wannabes to use it. Do you want to be a pretentious, ultra-fancy wannabe? I didn't think so.

If you have never and will never, good for you. Be stalwart. Giving is a beautiful thing. So is to give, with its deep and honorable roots as a verb:

what a splendid, splendid verb.

Gift, too, has deep and honorable roots--as a noun:

what a lovely, lovely noun.

Say it with me now: and never the twain shall meet.*

*except in the case of gifted, which is the past participle of (yikes!) to gift (verb), meaning "talented." This is the only exception we shall grant.

Ritz crackers: a review.

Recently on the Facebooks, a friend posted the following:

to which I replied:

This weekend, I found myself at Target. (I know.) I got some cleaning supplies and bobby pins and a box of Ritz Crackers. Because it had been a long time (been a long time been a long time been a long lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely time), and I needed to see what they were like. You know, science.

I am here to tell you that between me and the historian and Bruiser, who polished off half a sleeve of them, they are gone gone gone. All of the Ritz Crackers are gone.

I suppose this means that

(a) they are delicious.

It can't be denied. They are crunchy (the effect of some horrible, who knows how horrible? fat), yet they are soft. Their flour is probably some weird hybrid between soft wheat and, like, marshmallows. They are salty yet they are sweet. You can put a slice of cheese on them, or you can eat them in a stack. One at a time, but still: a stack.

I think from the above analysis, we can also say that

so golden & delicious. like salty-sweet-crunchy-soft crack cocaine.

(b) they are dangerous.

Dogs will leap up onto a table to get them. Well, not leap up, but put their front paws up. People (some people) will eat them directly from the sleeve in the car on the way home from Target. And surreptitiously sneak a short stack (less than five) from the cupboard, if you can get them into the cupboard, and then return for another short stack, or even a tall stack! Until they are gone gone gone.

(c) addictive? like crunchy yet soft, salty yet sweet things are prone to be.

Last night before I went to sleep I had to give myself a talking to about things, like taking better care of myself, eating food that makes me feel good, this and that and whatnot. I was alternately compassionate and stern with myself, and I'm pretty sure that the Ritz Consumption Orgy of Late March 2014 factored in somehow. The people, I ask you: why is it that all day long one can think salad and vegetables with great happiness and equanimity, but by the end of the day, one is all CHEESECAKE?  Why?

Things I will never: a short and probably intermittent series.

with heels? be serious.
(via La Mimi)

1. Wear overalls as a fashion statement. 

I had a pair of overalls when I was in college. I bought them at Sears, in the men's work clothes section. They were cute. I was cute in them.

Then I had another pair later. They were short overalls that I bought at the Gap. They were cute, and I was, again, cute in them. You'll have to trust me. But it might have been the kind of cute that was right at the verge of its shelf life. Maybe. Even though I don't believe people have shelf lives. Whatever: cute.

But now? I was with my niece in Nordstrom and we stood near a rack where grown women buy their clothes and there were overalls on that rack. And I said, No. And by no, I meant not even.

2. Purchase, order, cook or eat offal.

I came, I saw, I said no freaking way.

There's a whole "tip to tail" movement afoot amongst farm-to-table restaurateurs and food people: if you're going to eat animals, you've got to commit to eating the whole animal. I concede to this point. The notion of all that this implies sends me fleeing in the other direction, however. I saw "Today's Offal" on the menu at an otherwise lovely restaurant in Boston. I saw it, and considered it and said No. And by no, I meant HELL no.

NEVER. (via The Big Bake Theory)

3. Grate beets into baked goods.

The people, why? Why? when there is perfectly good organic, vegan sugar right there?

Adventures in late night baking.

"I'm going to make chocolate banana bread when we get back," I announced at 10:15 p.m. That's right: P to the Mizzo, as in right after we got back from our dog walk.

The reason for all the late nightery was that (a) I read a recipe several days ago for double chocolate banana bread. I confess to you that regular old banana bread moves me not in the least. For one thing, it tastes like overripe bananas, which is the state you generally want your bananas in for banana breadery. So no: I will never look at old bananas and think: why don't I make you into banana bread? I will straight up throw those bananas out, true story. Not that I'm proud of it or anything. But chocolate banana bread? That had some possibilities.

Also, (b), I happened to have some bananas. Which had been (c) sitting around all weekend, looking like potential chocolate banana bread material. Did I want them to get brown and bespeckled? No I did not. But they were fully yellow, which by 10:15 p.m. last night seemed ripe enough for the baking.

We got back from the dog walk (beautiful sky full of brilliant stars) and I threw off my jacket and got out the bowl. The double of the double chocolate was first, cocoa powder and second, chocolate chunks. I happened to have a sad, past-its-expiration-date bar of semisweet baking chocolate in my refrigerator that was just the ticket for the chunks--I bashed it up with my chef knife until the pieces broke, then stirred them into the batter. The bananas tasted fresh and not gushy, so: perfect.

While it was in the oven, we did this and that. I graded a discussion and read some more material about last night's epic episode of The Good Wife (spoiler alert: I'm not going to say one damn thing about it). The house filled with the most divine smell ever, dark and cacao-saturated and fresh fresh fresh bananas. Beautiful.

I went to check it at the appointed hour. Found my toothpicks for checking doneness. Done.

I grabbed the hot pad that was directly at hand. Stiff, this hot pad was. Stiff, not to say unyielding. Okay, to say: unyielding.

The people, that pan fell straight out of my useless hot-padded hand and onto the floor.

Did I utter an oath? Of course I did. And then fetched a spatula and scooped it, as if it were pancakes on a griddle, back into the pan. And ate a little bit of the hot ruin whilst doing so. OMG.

It is the best banana bread I have ever baked. I cooled it on a baking sheet and put it in a Tupperware, and right now I am eating a bowl of it, broken into pieces and topped with vanilla ice cream.

Let's play a short round of "should" and "am."

I should be grading.

This is perhaps the existential fact of my existence. 

There is no time at which 

I should not be grading.  

If I am sleeping, it's possible 

that I should be grading. 

Eating dinner, taking a shower, reading a book: 

should be grading, 

and why am I not?

I am, instead, blogging. And contemplating 

why my hand hurts a little bit. 

Thinking about cleaning the screen 

of my phone. Possible shopping online. 

Considering what I might make for dinner, 

and whether tonight will be the night 

that I do a little cleaning  and straightening

before I collapse like a heap of sad, 

devoid-of-willpower sack of laundry onto the bed, 

where I will watch more episodes of Veronica Mars. 

Also, come to think of it, 

thinking about Veronica Mars.

I should also take a brisk walk around the campus.

I have a full slate of appointments with students in the Learning Commons-stroke-Dungeon, which has suddenly become porous with last minute cancellations. I have, as it turns out, forty unscheduled minutes to take this brisk walk (once I have finished blogging).

I am, instead, blogging. And thinking about where I will stash 

my techno-stuff, and about whether, maybe, I should be grading?

Also, how does eating the orange I have in my bag

fit into this plan of walking?

But how can I even think about walking when I should be grading?