The Letter

From the very first coming down
Into a new valley with a frown
Because of the sun and a lost way,
You certainly remain: to-day
I, crouching behind a sheep-pen, heard
Travel across a sudden bird,
Cry out against the storm, and found
The year's arc a completed round
And love's worn circuit re-begun,
Endless with no dissenting turn.
Shall see, shall pass, as we have seen
The swallow on the tile, spring's green
Preliminary shiver, passed
A solitary truck, the last
Of shunting in the Autumn. But now,
To interrupt the homely brow,
Thought warmed to evening through and through,
Your letter comes, speaking as you,
Speaking of much but not to come.

Nor speech is close nor fingers numb,
If love not seldom has received
An unjust answer, was deceived.
I, decent with the seasons, move
Different or with a different love,
Nor question overmuch the nod,
The stone smile of this country god
That never was more reticent,
Always afraid to say more than it meant.

(Auden, 1927)

white knuckled

News today:

Revised figures indicate that the state budget shortfall may necessitate 20% budget cuts from all state agencies. I'm not overly exercised about that, but frankly speaking, that's a catastrophic number.

The lights went out yesterday for a few minutes, and one of my colleagues (who, incidentally, reminds me a lot of the Buzzard) quipped, well, looks like they found a way to cut costs!

Swell.

Today I answered some primal call.
Found myself looking at the sea.
I can never get enough of this big ocean loud and rough
With the sighing sifting melody.

(J. Harrod, "Waiting for my day")

If I could live anywhere, it would be where I could hear & see & smell the ocean.

To feel the breeze off the water as the sun goes down--to watch the birds and the ghost crabs skitter down where the water has made the sand like glass--to stand on a rocky, thorny shoreline between dives, feeling the sun shimmer off the water and my skin--the sound of the waves slapping against the boat hull--the sense of distance and danger--even the taste of salt water on my tongue--the sun going down over the water, how surprisingly quickly it moves--finding a cool piece of driftwood or, even better, sea glass--the gritty salty sandy stiffness in my skin on the boat ride back to the inn--watching the phosphorescent constellations coming off my partners on night dives--wearing as little clothing as is necessary--knowing I'm standing at the edge of something wild and unbelievably powerful--

Gradebook.

Words and numbers jotted on scraps of paper--it's that time of the semester. Students are mostly gone, the suite is quiet. I learned something about myself this week. Well, admitted it, rather--I'm terribly anxious to be liked, for people to tell me I'm doing a good job. I bring this up because this tendency of mine makes the end of the term kinda fraught with anxiety. I calculate grades, put them in the computer, and all the while worry about the reactions I'm going to get from my students.

Absurd, isn't it? I was anxious about grades as a student, and now that I'm a professor, I'm anxious about grades. One might have thought that I would have gotten over it by now.

Don't get me wrong: I love it when my students succeed; I like giving high grades either way. But the low ones make me worry. I tend to fear 'disappointing' them.

A room of one's own

I always imagined the professorial life as featuring a respectable home study . . . lined with books, with a comfortable reading chair, maybe even a fireplace, a writing table.

Reality: I love many things about the 1970 ranch-style house we inhabit. It's got big windows looking North and South, a capacious garage & attic, a large master bedroom. It is well within our budget mortgage-wise. The yard is broad and wide. But there is no study, and there will be no study. Most of the year, it doesn't really matter, I guess--but late in the term, when the work gets brought home, it sure would be nice.

I get the kitchen table, or my ugly blue chair. They work well enough.

It is most true

...from an answer on today's exam:

I have to say that my favorite was the star-crossed love of Astrophil and Stella.

Me too, L.

Mein Hemd

I wore jeans and a sweater today. Casual, certainly, but not overly casual. Yet when I walked in and set the exams down at the front of the room, the first two comments I heard:

whoooaaah! Change of costume!

Hey, waitaminute . . . aren't you supposed to be in khaki pants and a blue shirt?

so sue me for being colorblind. Plus, have you ever tried to find a men's dress shirt that's not white or blue? This comes after an almost identical evaluation of my attire in my 8:00 class last Thursday, in which one student said, well, at least you're not wearing red. You'd look terrible in red.

sigh.

(photo from the "Dorcus Collection" at Lileks.com)

Nine Months

But do you recall...

According to The Little Boy, here's a list of the names of the reindeer:

Cupit
Donder
Blitzit
Hancer
Dancer
Comet
Fixit
Rudolph

Little Red adds: baaabababababababa!

CORRECTION:
Little Red adds: daaaadadadaaahhhdaa

fallen leaves

The term is over. Exams left to give, and some grading to do, but the bulk of the work is over. I'm frankly pretty discouraged about how things turned out . . . I don't think I did a good job with any of my classes. One student yesterday cracked that she had made some kind of critical comment--and while cracking a joke in return, I thought, "if you only knew."

That said, given what else was going on in my mind, it could be considered a major achievement that there didn't come one day in October or November when I just failed to appear.

***
Unbidden it came to my mind yesterday: I really want to go live in Japan. Sleep on a futon (a real one, not the bastardized version that people use in this country), eat with hashi, buy canned coffee out of a vending machine (hot or cold, your choice). And so on.

***
Greg Maddux retired yesterday. He & Tom Glavine & John Smoltz were the best reason to watch the Braves in the 90's. I admire them so much.

***
I'm looking forward to getting on the bike again; there hasn't been much time or energy for that recently.

***
Someone asked yesterday whether I wasn't upset about the deep budget cuts and upheaval at the university. I said, "nope." What would be the good of getting upset, especially since there's not a thing in the world I can do about it? Sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof, or something like that.

***
Gonna get Christmased up today. Which will take plenty of time. Which means I should draw this to a close.

Shifting Deck Chairs

Budget crisis!
Reorganization!
New department names!

...angry professors!...

Rasselas II

Student responses:

The parable tries to teach us not to spend our lives looking for happiness, but learning contentment with what we have. Touching, though unsatisfying.

Our virtues cannot spare us pain.

Marriage brings hard times but it will bring you happiness by making a person. Children are hard to deal with but I know they will make me happy.

There is no perfect choice.

Is circumstance or mindset more important?

Sometimes it clicks.

I said goodbye to my 8:00 composition class today. Truly, they were a delightful bunch. Sometimes the mix of personalities is just right, and the result is fun for everyone. We were a bit scattered at times (big surprise there), but they really helped me more than they know. It was nice to laugh first thing on Tuesdays & Thursdays. I was sorry to walk out of the classroom.

Rasselas

"All that virtue can afford is quietness of conscience, a steady prospect of a happier state; this may enable us to endure calamity with patience; but remember that patience must suppose pain."

I once had confidence that the future would eventually both be better and provide the answers to why things are they way they are now. "We'll understand it better by and by," goes the refrain. I'm not sure of that anymore.

I once had confidence that making the "right" choices, the ones that were most virtuous, most self-denying, most acceptable in the eyes of my authorities, would yield the rewards of peace and happiness. Experience has shown otherwise.

I once believed that hard work can conquer any obstacle. No one has worked harder, but I have simply run out of strength. And I've met obstacles that no amount of effort will remove.

I once feared the pain of unmet desires. Having confronted them, I found that life did not end.

Does this mean that I'm despairing? No. It just means that I've lived with mistaken assumptions, mistaken expectations. I am learning to embrace the imperfection in life, and learning that a weathered face isn't necessarily ugly.

sonnet

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.

(Billy Collins, 2001)

Lines

Draw a line. Write a line. There.
Stay in line, hold the line, a glance
between the lines is fine but don't
turn corners, cross, cut in, go over
or out, between two points of no
return's a line of flight, between
two points of view's a line of vision.
But a line of thought is rarely
straight, an open line's no party
line, however fine your point.
A line of fire communicates, but drop
your weapons and drop your line,
consider the shortest distance from x
to y, let x be me, let y be you.

(Martha Collins, 1998)

Teef

I present ACH.














vampire?

perhaps.

Battery pills

it's up to 1500!

loose threads

We went to Sesame Street Live yesterday. It was fun to watch The Little Boy adopt the pose that my mother has described me taking when rapt: eyes wide open, one hand on each leg, ramrod straight back. He didn't miss a thing. I thought Grover looked all wrong--his head was too big. Big Bird, on the other hand, looked just right.

***
To go to Starbucks and not be able to order coffee: makes one feel very much like a loser. The hot chocolate was alright, I suppose. I'd like to know, though, what the difference is between "Hot Chocolate" and "Signature Hot Chocolate." other than 60 cents, I mean.

***
I got crowded out of the bed last night. Apparently, The Little Boy was not satisfied with his trundle bed. Good thing there have been naps these past few days, because nights have certainly not been restful.

It was a wild scene around here with three little boys. Got a little loud at moments, as one might guess.

***
From the department of unfortunate gifts--seen in a sales circular--"The Mangroomer," a do-it-yourself electric back hair shaver. It had a picture of a man using it--a man who clearly never had a bit of back hair in his life.

I suppose there are things it would be nice to receive for Christmas--no actual wants come to mind, however, other than that book on Martin Marprelate. I've got several things I want to give, though.

***
Last week, during my visit with the doctor, I was telling him about how I have always tried to take the surest and most "correct" course of action. He looked at me with a wry grin, and said, "so, you didn't really have to learn many things the hard way." That should be a good thing, shouldn't it? Why does that seem so sad to me?

What I have noticed, in addition to being quite distracted the past ten days or so, is that I am withdrawn, abstracted from myself and from the things going on around me. I observe, note, act as I need to--but I feel like it's all taking place through the wrong end of a telescope.

The last week of classes coming up; it'll be hard for everyone.

***
Tonight's movie, at the request of The Little Boy: Lady & the Tramp. Probably a better show than the Notre Dame - USC game, anyway.

Vade Mecum

I want the scissors to be sharp
and the table to be perfectly level
when you cut me out of my life
and paste me in that book you always carry.

(Billy Collins, 1991)