Carigueya

Carigueya, Seu Marsupiale Americanum Masculum. Or, The Anatomy of a Male Opossum: In a Letter to Dr Edward Tyson, from Mr William Cowper, Chirurgeon, and Fellow of the Royal Society, London. To Which are Premised Some Further Observations on the Opossum; And a New Division of Terrestrial Brute Animals, Particularly of Those That Have Their Feet Formed Like Hands. Where an Account is Given of Some Animals Not Yet Described by Edward Tyson, M. D. Fellow of the College of Physicians and of the Royal Society. London: 1698.


As seen on the Mulberry from my study window this evening. And yes, it has feet formed remarkably like hands. And a strange, joker-ish smile. It was rather small, though not a baby, and surprisingly cute (I learned later that the fur is remarkably soft, they never stay in one place for more than three days, and they eat mice and cockroaches and are generally good for the environment).

Fantasy Desk

I've just finished installing a shiny white desk, faded red kilim and knock-off Jielde desk lamp in my milk-colored study. The desk is a simple white parson's table, 5 feet long. I bought it unfinished and disassembled, painted it and nearly destroyed my shoulders and knuckles putting it together (you try screwing sixteen three-inch screws into two thick pieces of solid birch).

But sometimes I like to dream. And on Friday afternoons, after I have packed up my laptop, the three or four books I'll need over the weekend, and filled my bag with file folders crammed with student papers and various articles and drafts of things-in-progress, shut off the light and driven home, I like to pour myself a cup of tea and lick the ebay window. I don't really know what else to call it- "browsing" is too noncommittal. So I've chosen to anglicize the French idiom for window shopping- leche vitrine, or "window licking."

During a recent mid-century modern furniture foray, I came upon this graceful, utterly useful 6 foot desk. It is smooth and polished and slopes, like a piano. It has storage and lots of table space and it is Very Long. It is a desk to dream about. It is also $7500. Sometimes Ebay is like a decorative arts museum.

Edward Wormley Desk on Ebay

Book Envy

I've been buying up new books. Not just any new books, mind you, but new books written by old grad school classmates of mine. It is kind of scary to know that friends from grad school already have their books out. The one I am thinking of, which came out in June, is spectacular. It has a gorgeous (color) cover, a beautiful, catchy two-part title (I thought we weren't allowed to do that anymore!), and six elegant chapters.

This is the first time I am actually able to see the progress from dissertation to book, and it's still kind of magical, despite me constantly prodding and pricking myself with reminders about how difficult it was for this scholar to get the dissertation written, to get a job, to get fellowships, to finish the book, and to get a great second job. I saw this person struggle from the first: I remember when she presented a version of a chapter at our bi-weekly reading group, and how tough everyone was on her. I remember her telling me about the first time our adviser made her cry, and I remember thinking of her words the first time our adviser made me cry (a rite of passage).

I remember watching her wrestle with finishing her dissertation and looking for a job, and I remember when she returned to our reading group several years later, in the middle of a tenure track job, already moving on to the next one. At that meeting, she shared a draft of her book's introduction, which was freshly written, experimental and very messy. I believe our adviser told her to scrap the whole thing and she laughingly agreed. All of this is to say that I saw her struggle. I saw how difficult this project was, and I saw how hard she worked. I saw her skip lunch for an entire year on fellowship just to get more time to write and revise. And now ironically there is this beautiful, transparent book glittering away all on its own, which makes us forget all about the struggle. Sprezzatura indeed, and book author (if you are reading this or if someone points you to this) I congratulate you.

{Coincidentally, but not related at all to this particular book, what does it take to get mentioned in the acknowledgments section of a book by a friend, adviser, colleague or former graduate student peer? I'm not disappointed that I haven't been acknowledged yet, but some of my friends have, and they haven't contributed any more to the discussion, or commented on any more drafts than I have. We've all run the discussion seminar at one point in our time as graduate students. So what do I have to do to get mentioned? Be nicer? Be meaner? Be further along in my career and more published? I'm just saying.}

I began this post planning to write about how much I envy this scholar her beautiful book and beautiful job, but in writing it I've realized that I don't. I'm proud of her and I'm glad I got to see how hard and painful and stressful and long the whole process is. Lunch, adieu.

Yes, I'm Still Here

Yes I'm still here, and I've been posting quite a bit lately.

Are there more than five people reading my blog? Because I really can't tell and I'm feeling neglected. I'd like some comments, please.

Thank you.

Being Under Something

I am "under review" this year at my job. According to ancient departmental documents, this means going through all the same motions one does when one is "up for tenure." The only differences as far as I can tell, are that there are no external reviewers and I'm not expected to have a book contract and a glut of publications. I do have to assemble two dossiers, one of written work (published, polished, and in progress; book proposal), and one of teaching materials including syllabi, assignments, handouts, course descriptions and exams. I also need to compile a list of all my departmental and university-wide activities and committees, which is actually quite short because my department has a "no service" policy for the first year. And finally, I have to be observed teaching.

Anyway, all this is a large introduction to my "whew" news which is that I've finally turned in my dossiers. Yay! Knowing that they are in and out of my hands is a source of huge relief, whenever I pause to remember it (which is not that often during the week, what with teaching and manuscript surgery). Yes, I fretted and rushed to revise everything but putting it all together was in the end a nice reminder that even though it seemed like I got very little writing and research done last year, I was wrong. This time, I was able to revise my book proposal to match my manuscript, and not the other way around. Revising my chapter on Lucrece for the review committee was intricate and painful, not unlike how I might imagine arthroscopic surgery might feel. But it was also necessary and useful- I now have a new, better, stronger argument that doesn't force itself upon the text yet moves in new directions. I'm not exactly "happier" with the piece, but I am less unhappy, and ready to send it out to a journal again. I am, though, tremendously happy about my argument. I just hope it shows!

So I have finally crawled on top of this review process, if only for the time being. Why is it always "under" review and "up" for tenure? The preposition "under" does seem fitting: it feels a bit like being buried under a pile of folders, or maybe held under the proverbial "thumb" of the department while it decides whether to smoosh me like a bug or lift me up like an equal. I exaggerate of course- I'm not going to lose my job over this. But I am going to be critiqued by my colleagues, some of whom relish the opportunity beyond its purpose. Being "up" for tenure is scarier- more precarious -because the fall seems that much further. Given the choice, I'll side with Hamlet's worthy pioneer: I'd rather be "under" than "up."

Book Autopsies

A colleague pointed me to the work of the artist Brian Dettmer, who takes old books- many illustrated with woodcuts and engravings -and carves them up into sculptures and dioramas. It's beautiful and fascinating and a little bit scary because some of these are valuable old texts (see the comments section below on Webster's 2nd).

http://centripetalnotion.com/2007/09/13/13:26:26/

(Peek!)

So at the moment I'm putting off editing my article/chapter on Lucrece (that old windmill tilter) even though it is due to my committee tomorrow afternoon. This committee is a group of three senior colleagues who will be conducting my second-year review later this semester. Yes, that is right, I'm being reviewed in my second year. I will also be reviewed in my fourth, and the 6th year is the tenure review. Quite a lot of reviewing, no?

Anyway, whilst playing hooky from my fucked up footnotes, I decided to steal a glance at the MLA Job Information List, just a tiny look.

So I did. I peeked. I'm not ashamed.

And I can finally let out a sigh of relief. Maybe I'm too much of a snob for my own good, but I saw very few enviously scrumptious jobs in my field. Sure, there were some jobs that looked like nice first jobs, but only one or two that looked remotely second job worthy. Of course I'm pretty happy here at my first job, so maybe I don't know what second job worthy looks like. What I mean is, maybe "second job worthy" is utopian at this point.

There were lots of early modern jobs and it is fairly early in the listings game, all of which makes me glad for my friends on the market. But of those 5 pages of advertisements only two jumped out at me as highly desirable. And I'm not counting the famous place that rarely tenures its junior faculty (what the hell is a "tenure-track associate professor"?).

I peeked into the big spooky room of missed chances and I feel fine.

Blissed out

I'm sort of following in the vein of Flavia on her post about signs that the semester is off to a good start. I have to rave about the students in my upper level Shakespeare class.

First off, there are 27 of them. And it's a seminar because is upper level and a requirement for the major. So it seems like it might be difficult to give everyone a chance to contribute to the discussion. Secondly, last year I had to teach it in a lecture room with raked seating and me in the pit at the bottom. This made discussion even more difficult, partly because the students couldn't see one another very well. And for some reason it made me lose my confidence which is really strange because I LOVE being on stage and performing and I love lecturing. But this course wasn't really supposed to be a lecture course. Anyway, half of my evaluations said I lectured too much and the other half said not enough.

So this semester I made sure the class was put in a smaller classroom. Colleagues and secretaries looked aghast at me, but they allowed it. Yes, we are all crammed into the room, but we managed to make a staggered circle with the desks. Being literally on the same level with the students makes so much of a difference. Plus, everyone can see everyone else.

Yesterday was our first day with a play, and the discussion of speech and language in Richard II was so stimulating, so exciting, that some of the students followed me into my office after class to continue the line of thought. At least 20 out of 27 students spoke, and everyone had something interesting to say. They also began to piggy-back on one another's observations. In the middle of the discussion when we started talking about flattery as a speech act, I read them some quotes from early modern anti-flattery tracts and when I was finished, about 10 hands went up in the air- they assimilated the historical information very quickly.

I was wrong- even though I'm a poetry person, I do like teaching Shakespeare's drama. Maybe I should write an article on Shakespeare and become a semi-Shakespearean.

The best thing about this group of students is that on the first day a number of them mentioned that they were fascinated by language and Shakespeare's use of puns. I've actually got some budding philologists in my class: Whee!

The Advisor

[Boethius, La Consolation de la Philosophie, 1477, British Library]

I'm a freshman advisor this year. That means helping 10 new first year students plan their schedules and edumacating them about core and divisional requirements.

It's all very foggy to me, especially because my own undergraduate experience had no such requirements. We were free to take whatever we chose.

But I did have a great freshman advisor, a very distinguished scholar and public intellectual who nonetheless made sure her seven advisees were in her Friday 3pm discussion section, a time when most distinguished senior scholars are nowhere near campus. This advisor didn't even live in the college town, but 60 miles away in a larger city, if I recall. Her lecture met MWF at 11am, and I vaguely remember that every day after class she would leave for lunch (and lots of intense philosophical arguing, I imagined) with a dashing political science professor who waited worshipfully for her on a bench outside on the main green.

I'm racking my brains trying to remember what excellent advice she was able to impart to me and trying to figure out how she made me feel at ease. But all I can remember is being impressed by the vast number of books in her office, many in stacks on the desk, by the fact that she offered me a cup of coffee, and by the seriousness and focus with which she listened to me and approached my schedule. I hadn't been able to get in to the "Intro to Brit Lit" course that is a requirement for the English major and didn't know what to do. Without that course, I couldn't take any more advanced courses. So she steered me towards a comparative literature course, one that ultimately set me on the path to Renaissance studies.

Aside: I only learned later that there was a mutual dislike between my advisor and the professor of the Renaissance course. The fact that she said such fine things about him as a teacher and scholar and somehow knew the course was ideal for me is a wonderful thing.

I should add that much of what I remember of this advisor has been filtered through my mother's interpretive lens. She is a professional undergraduate advisor at a Big Ten school, so naturally she heard all about my experiences as a freshman and how this advisor saved me from transferring to a smaller school by engaging me academically.

I was miserable during Orientation. Really miserable. I was stuck in the basement (the "0- zone") of a giant hotel complex or army bunker dorm full of artsy, pretentious kids from New York who did drugs and slept around and were so cool and I felt really lost. But once I sat down in her class on the first day, all that changed. I was found. And some of the artsy kids were lost and confused and complaining about all the reading. And some of the artsy kids asked really smart questions and left class deep in conversation with me. And some of them played in a quartet. Ha, I thought! I belong here after all. Incidentally, my mother liked what my advisor did for me so much that she wrote her a letter and the famous advisor wrote back, citing her own experience as a mother with an academically inclined daughter. How cool is that???

Sometimes I wonder if she was so helpful only because I was so eager. I think she had appointments in three departments, so this course might have been designed to get me interested in one of her areas. I was probably also simply dazzled by her star power. If she hadn't left in my sophomore year, maybe I wouldn't be in English at all . . .

So what can I do tomorrow through Sunday when I meet with my advisees? Listen, maybe? And perhaps the best thing I can do is to suggest something they haven't thought of before.

My Daemon is a Tiger

Not that I'm in the least surprised. Excuse me a moment while I preen and reach for my favorite Angela Carter story.

Find your demon here: http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/

(That's Northern Lights for you Brits).

And if you haven't read His Dark Materials yet but promised me you would, you have exactly four months.

More Petticoat than Freudian

This blog is getting really frilly. All I'm blogging about these days are cats and home decor. I won't even mention the perfect loaf of bread I baked today (thanks, Minimalist!). But here's the latest on my settling in: my dining room with the vintage table and chairs (no they are not a set, they just go well together- thanks, Craigslist!) and the infernal pain-in-the-arse chandelier from London, which cost $60 to be rewired and took nearly three hours to install and a great deal of improvising on the part of the electrician. But now it works and it looks beautiful. And I will never, NEVER buy a chandelier in London again unless I already live there.

Here's a picture of my new beautiful living room rug, a kilim that my parents bought for me in Istanbul, helped by our wonderful, tasteful and wise Turkish friend. Look closely and you'll glimpse a guilty pleasure:

FCB

I know, I know, two weeks in a row of cat blogging. I promise I'll stop. But it's really difficult to photograph a black tortoiseshell cat with a digital camera, and in this photo Saffron looks like a Miyazaki character ("My neighbor Saffron"). When I write at home in the kitchen, this is her spot. She's kind of a spirit guardian of the laptop. More likely, it's because her food is located under the table.

Belated Friday Cat and House blogging

I'm in the midwest visiting my parents for a long weekend and I miss my cat. I almost never cat-blog but I have a cute photo of her in my new apartment and I miss her fuzziness and her little face appearing around the side of my laptop screen when I'm trying to write. The house is also gradually taking shape, so here's a double feature: cat photo and living room at night.

Little People

I've just discovered a new thoroughly addictive street art blog, which is feeding my procrastinastion. But I wanted to share it with you because it's so funny and because it's a great way of remembering London. It's called "Little People" and describes itself in a subtitle as "Little handpainted people, left in london to fend for themselves" and it's here.

See if I'm not right.

Still a Freak after all these years

The first time I took the Myers-Briggs personality type test I was 18 and heading off to New England for college. It told me I was an INFJ- Introverted-Intuitivite-Feeling-Judging. I thought I'd take the shorter online version just for fun. I felt I had truly become much more extroverted and rational and would probably become an ENTJ, fitting in more easily with the general population.

But I was WRONG! Thirteen years later and I'm still an INFJ, still part of the tiny .5%. I don't know whether to be happy or sad (that's the "Feeling" part kicking in), but I will say this: the test never lies.

Here's what it told me:

Your Score: Freak- INFJ

33% Extraversion, 60% Intuition, 20% Thinking, 66% Judging

"Well, well, well. How did someone like you end up with the least common personality type of them all? In a group of 100 Americans, only 0.5 others would be just like you. You really are one of a kind... In fact, I do believe that that's one of the definitions for the word "FREAK."

Freak's not such a bad word to describe you actually.

You are deep, complex, secretive and extremely difficult to understand. If that doesn't scream "Freak!" I don't know what does. No-one actually knows the REAL you, do they?

You probably have deep interests in creative expression as well as issues of spirituality and human development.

You've probably even been called a "psychic" before, because of your uncanny knack to understand and "read" people without quite knowing how you do it. Don't fret. You're not actually psychic. That would make you special and you'll never accomplish that.

You're also quite possibly the most emotional of them all, so don't take this all too hard. Nevertheless you most definitely have the strangest personality type and that's not necessarily a good thing. "

This mini-analysis is just there for acerbic silliness. I don't know about any hidden secrets or being hard to read- usually I'm told I'm gullible and guileless and that my thoughts and emotions write themselves all over my face whether I want them to or not (I usually don't want them to!). I'm not psychic, but I do tend to respond more to people's emotional states than to what they may be saying. I do sometimes have dreams that seem to reveal that my unconscious has been picking up on others' unspoken emotional states.

And I always thought I was easy to understand! Maybe only by other INFJs and by myself, though. Of course the part that may not fit with INFJ is that, no longer a pianist or actor, I still have a desire to perform. I'm not sure whether this falls under the category of extroverted or not, since performing for me involves intense focus and reaching a state I call "the zone" where time stands still and one is both communicating and retreating inside oneself. But everyone who knows me even a little bit would surely agree that I am not a "quiet leader" as INFJs are frequently described. I'm pretty outspoken, both a blurter and (on good days) a firebrand. Perhaps it's best not to give too much credence to Mmes Myers and Briggs, though it's fun like figuring out one's astrological signs. Speaking of which, I'm both a Piscean and a Fire Dragon, which seems contradictory to me. Hmpf. Go figure.

Take the test yourself: http://www.okcupid.com/tests/3076838567116464195/Brutally-Honest-Personality

Phew!

Can't . . . move . . . arms . . . anymore. And this even after hiring "Two Men and a Truck" (that's the moving company's name) to cart the heavy furniture on Monday. All that remains are books to unpack and pictures to hang.

Saffron has adapted quite well to the new place, lounging around on the floor, testing the stability of the dresser by jumping on top of it from the bed, sitting in the living room window at twilight and making tiny cackling noises at fireflies.

Here's a sneak peak at the interior as it stands now. Vintage dining table on its way.

I discovered a fig tree in the front garden with at least nine green nubby figs on it, hopefully more by the end of the summer. Yum and yay! There is also a little stream and water-fall fountain fed by a pump that meanders under the stone path leading up to the front, constructed by previous landscape designer tenants. My landlord has promised to set up the pump for me. In the picture to the left you can see a dark crevace near the center of the photo. That's where the stream runs under the flagstones. It then curves around to the left, behind the japanese maple, and continues down to a little stone pond. The pump sends it back up through the garden to the top.

One Day Left!

I'm sorry if I've been out of touch for the past week- I've been gradually moving into my new house. It's so wonderful having a car and moving somewhere so close to home. It's much easier than the last four moves I made over the past four years, changing countries each time. I've made five trips with the hatchback packed full of material goods. I did manage to weed out some things I do not need and will be donating to Habitat for Humanity, but I still have so much "stuff" I think Marx would cringe. Still, it's quite nice to have carted and unpacked the entire contents of my kitchen, bathroom, closets, wall and window hangings. I feel mostly moved in- the only things left are books and furniture and kitty things.

So now please permit me to wax rhapsodic about my new house. And to gush about spending money on beautiful things I don't really need that nonetheless make me very happy. It is beautiful- I had the dining room and the sun room painted and both turned out really well. The dining room is a deep slate blue (Benjamin Moore's "Evening Dove") which looks charcoal grey at night and twilight blue during the day. The sunroom is a velvety cocoa brown with purple undertones (Benjamin Moore's "Desert Shadows"). Both rooms are matte which I think makes the rooms seem bigger and the color deeper. I'm sort of focusing on the dining room first because it is the focal point of the house. It's in the center, between the living room and the kitchen. The bedroom, study and bathroom are down a little hallway off to the right of the dining room. But when you walk through the front door, you're in the living room and your eyes are drawn to the dining room, though you can see all the way back to the kitchen. I'm not going to post pictures until after the furniture arrives (tomorrow), but here's a photo of the funky chandelier I bought for the dining room. Try to imagine it hanging in a slate blue room, the poppy colored kitchen just visible behind it.


I have also gone on a vintage furniture hunt. Last year I found four bentwood chairs by Thonet. I just purchased the perfect Heywood Wakefield table to go with them (hooray for Craigslist).

So imagine, if you will, a slate blue dining room, the poppy kitchen behind, the chandelier to the right hanging from the ceiling, and blond wood dining table and chairs (with a darker patina) in a lovely simple mid-century modern style. Decorating obsessed? Who me? I tend to work best surrounded by beautiful surroundings. So I'm only doing this to enhance my overall creativity, of course.

Muse of Muse

Yes, the muse has to have her own muse. Er, mews. A regular florilegium is Saffron: She never fails to fully digest the flowers I bring home. Currently she has one cabriole paw curled over the top of the laptop screen and is winking down at me as I type.

PLD

Today I have PLD (Post London Depression). I don't know if it is brought on by the jet lag, or by the stifling heat of the Southern summer, or perhaps by the sheer emptiness of this place this time of year but it feels dead dead DEAD everywhere and I want to go back.

Thankfully I ought to have my hands full with packing and schlepping and moving. And writing. But for some reason I haven't schlepped or packed a single thing, and I've only written a few hundred words.

Maybe I'm experiencing urban withdrawal and need another week to adjust. Maybe I just miss my friends and don't know when I'll see them again. In any case, I'm sad and lonely and bored here, and I'm not due for another visit to Montreal until August.

Time to write the book. Because there's really nothing else to do.

Anglophilia

I've been in the UK for over a week now and have gotten completely assimilated. Life here would be lovely, temperate and blissful- If I only had twice as much money, or more. And didn't have to work. I'm currently in Oxford with my friends Dearest B and the evil twin, enjoying a much needed visit to planet academia with people I haven't seen in a year and a half. Soon I'll have tea and catch up with faustus. Apparently everyone is on facebook but me, where they throw sheep and soup at one another contentedly.

In London I've seen two Mozart operas, two shakespeare plays, and two early modern manuscripts at the British Library. I've also eaten the best curry in my life and some very good Turkish food, and encountered people who have actually heard of the university where I teach, which, in London and Oxford is a miracle in and of itself.

More proper blogging later, I just wanted to post a quick update and let everyone know all was well. Please send money.