A QUESTION CONCERNING TWO BRITISH INTERLUDES


My Favorite Colleague is in New York for the summer, where she lives with her partner. I miss her, consequently, as I am in Subtropical City.

She and I will both be in the UK this July for conferences in our respective fields (she is a Victorianist.) And we want to hang while were are there. Especially, I want to show her some serious Britain, as she has never really been (her subject area concerns postcolonial geographies. She's got the Middle East down pat.)

We have two options:

1.) visit some Wordsworthiana, including the Lakes, &c, with much vigorous English style walking and staying at hostels and reveling in sheeps and greenery. This is a trip I have done myself and would gladly do again.

2.) hie ourselves up to Scotland and the isles of Iona and Skye, whereupon we might also partake of some Speyside malts, ride bikes and eat oatcakes whilst listening to red-headed people speak Gaelic.

We are leaning towards the second option.

Thoughts?

BABY DREAMS


I woke up this morning with TF and said, "Oh my god! I dreamt we had a baby!"

He perked up, "what did it look like?" (It looked like a newborn: old-man-faced, red, squishy.)

I realized then that the central point of the dream was not what she (and somehow I knew the baby was female) looked like, but that I was totally unprepared for the caretaking of a helpless infant. In fact, the dream focused around my panic that I kept getting separated from her and had to get back to her and that I hadn't remotely planned on how to integrate her into my life. And of course that I had all this other stuff to do, and I kept forgetting to nurse her, and then freaking out about it. Oddly, she didn't seem to mind. There was something sad about that.

In the dream, all I could think was that I hadn't even gotten any of that necessary baby crap that people give you at showers and stuff, all the clothes and blankets and necessary hoo-haw, because I hadn't even known I was having a kid until she was upon me.

I was desperate for two essential things. I needed a breast pump so that I could pump in my office. And one of those baby-holsters so that I could carry her around with me all the time when I wasn't teaching.

TF laughed about the "baby holster." The baby as gun.


Freud of course would say that this dream is entirely about me--that I am the baby as well as the adult in this dream. The baby who can just roll with whatever is thrown at her. The unprepared adult, afraid of failure. The adult who resents that her own self-soothing had to happen without a net.

But I also think that the dream is indicative of one of my real fears. I am terrified of having to do everything, all at once, and thereby doing a bad job when it comes to caring for an infant who will most deserve my attention. I fear that I will have to haul ass at work, haul ass with my parents, and then also haul ass with a baby. And the baby should be number one, in that scenario, but I don't know if I'll be able to cordon off that kind of space in my life. I'm going to need a pump and a holster to keep on truckin', and I won't be able to give a baby my undivided attention all day, every day.

I am going to need help. And I don't think I'm going to get it, from my immediate family at least. And I am certainly not going to get it from my profession. I am impressed by TF's insistence that he is down with whatever needs doing, should we have a family together.*


*Word on the street is that my family thinks I am "so desperate to get married" that I'll take about anybody. Ha! The dating pool ain't exactly rife with men looking for an overeducated and underpaid professor of medieval literature who works 70 hours a week, frequently in solitude, and who'll expect a 50/50 split for child-rearing.

EN FAMILLE, AND APPALLINGLY SO


On paper, my natal unit looks so right on. My Quaker parents both have masters' degrees, and spent their lives in public service, working as social workers and community organizers. They moved to the city in which I grew up so that my brother and I might attend really good and legally integrated public schools.

My father joined the Peace Corps in 1962, and went to Ghana, which changed his life. I have a Ghanaian-American friend who routinely jokes that my family has more African shit up on the walls and all over the house than she ever did. My dad gave my mother antique kente cloth on the day of their wedding. I would like to think of him as his best self--kind, generous, witty, polite to everyone, the consummate professional philanthropist. But everyone is always already more complicated than appearances might imply.

The truth is that where I and my romantic life are concerned, my father is petty, status-hungry, snobbish, and more than a little racist. Some of this is his generation (he's 74), and some of it is just him.

My father called me last week to express his "concern" regarding my relationship with TF. We are apparently moving too quickly. And if TF is interested in marriage, well, my father thinks that TF needs to check with him, first, to ask my father for my "hand." I thought that my dad was joking. He was deadly serious. The misogyny there kind of took my breath away.

My father is suspicious of TF's motives, and wonders that TF might just want to be with me because I am "a good meal ticket" and because I am "high status." And, my father couched all of this in racial terms.

TF is African-American. TF's family history is in fact considerably more accomplished and typically "bougie" than my own (my father's father was a grave digger.) In the Jim Crow South, TF's people managed to become doctors and nurses and open hospitals, which is saying a great deal of their fortitude and determined intelligence. They are pretty fancy.

TF makes half again more money as I do, owns his own house, and has the most heroic civic job American society currently offers. Whatever "status" I might have as an English professor certainly pales in comparison to the kind of adoration he gets when he puts on his fire pants and whoops up the siren. TF certainly doesn't need anything from my degree or my occupation. His benefits and pension are gonna kick my benefits and pension's sorry little ass.

TF's title, by the way, is "captain."

My father scoffed, when I told him this, and asked whether I was going to be able "to talk Old English" with TF and his firehouse colleagues. (Never mind the fact that I work on MIDDLE English. Sigh.) The difference in our educational levels is apparently a real concern. For my dad.

And my father also wanted to know whether I was "up for the difficulties" of being in an interracial relationship. (This is now the fourth time I have dated someone who is not of my 'race.' And whatever social difficulties there might be, the bullshit I am getting from my own family kind of trumps all else.)

"If you were so concerned about that, then you shouldn't have raised me where and how you did," I told him.

"What if you have a child together?" my father asked. "I mean, is the child going to be black or white?"

To which I replied, "I think that depends on who is asking, don't you?"

ASS-HAULING



So Kalamazoo. For lo, it was good. Many cheap plastic cups of wine were consumed, many old friends caught up with and embraced, many old grad school friends pulled up in rental cars alongside me and demanded I go to dinner forthwith.

Like the Fretful Porpentine, I too wanted to go to the session on teaching medieval studies at HBCU's. And in retrospect, I am glad I didn't, as it would have likely made me annoyed, given Fret's report about the actual content of the session. I really do want to know: how do we, how do I, "get over" the bullshit assumption that medieval literature is the exclusive purview of white people? Indeed, I came to medieval studies because it WAS NOT actually all about whitey. I wanted and needed ... alterity, in all its guises; alterity as a way of thinking; alterity as a means of puncturing stupid binaries and privileging the messy middle space between. I needed a space to question the hell out of things, and to think about language, and to consider otherness and my place in it.

Now I'm as white as the next flat-assed white lady with weird glasses and a PhD. And I cannot deny the ways in which medieval studies does indeed reify all kinds of things that scream "white!"--not least of which is the sheer abundance of arcane nerd-knowledge one must acquire in order to be a medievalist. Latin? Anglo-Saxon? Paleography? Middle English dialects? Uh, yeah. White people kinda like that.

But STCU is predominantly brown and black, and very working-class. And that is, at the end of the day, the pedagogical context in which I feel most at ease. That's how I was educated, and that's where I feel at home. And yet I am constantly faced in my classes here with the assumption that studying old stuff is only for elite weirdo white people. Reading Chaucer and Aristotle is, in the words of one student, "totally bourgie." Aristotle IS bourgie, I know, and in so many ways. But the Great Books are the Great Books and they are for everyone, and you can damn well bet that our president and his wife have read the Poetics. Literature is a widening gyre that might include deeper understandings of history and language, that might place us within a context that is far more complicated than we presume. And it is for everyone. It does not discriminate.

I very much do want to know: how to make the medieval more ... attractive? I don't mean "relevant," or god forbid, "relatable." And I don't have difficulty, yet, in filling my seminars. But I want a medieval studies that my students don't feel they must so forcibly resist.

As for my own discursive participation, the panel I organized and presided over was bitchin', and smart, and replete with classy and tightly ordered papers, as I expected. Nice work, ladies! Afterwards, there was going out and lunch-acquisition. Whereupon some strange shit occurred, of the Ivy League universalizing variety.

There was much commentary about how hard it had been to tell one's advisers and grad school colleagues that one's job was a writing intensive 4/4. To admit the truth of this was somehow shameful.

And there was further commentary about how desperately one wished for better advising about teaching, and jobs, and placement. One woman complained that she had gone abroad and had a child, and had not published or taught for two years, whereupon she attempted re-entry. It was brutal. She wished someone had told her what to expect, had guided her in some way.

I realized that, as irritating as I find Beloved Advisor and Second Reader when they do their gay man anti-child prattle, they have had my professional back from the first day. Ain't no way BA would have allowed me to take two years off without a plan; he'd have sat me down and given me a list of things I had to do in order to stay employable. It was always clear to me that the point of the PhD was employment, and that he'd help me get a job.

Ain't no shame in ass-hauling! And damn, but I am happy that I ended up where I did. I'll take a 4/4 pressing Chaucer and Aristotle on the open-admissions skeptics than just about any other kind of teaching gig. Ask me again in 5 years, I know. But here, at the culmination of year one on the tenure-track, I feel like I landed in the right place, and I am certain that my advisers and grad school peeps are proud of me. For that I am grateful.

"HOME"


I am returned again unto Subtropical City, into the waiting paws of C., who goes all sweet and soft-faced when I say his name. It's surprisingly cool here--you know, like, the mid-80's! And so moving around outside is tolerable.

Commencement was held at the local baseball stadium, and we processed right over home plate. All the graduates who were the first in their families to graduate from college were asked to stand, and then loudly feted. (That part I always adore.) There were air horns, and screaming, and girls in the most pernicious looking heels, and flowers, and weird men slowing down to comment on my and my colleague's regalia. ("Those are Lakers colors!!")

I have flitted from here to my natal home to Michigan to Nueva Jork to my natal home and then back again. And none of it feels entirely like "home." There was not nearly enough time in NYC, and on one hand it was like slipping into a favorite dress again. On another, it was alien and strange and I felt a bit ... frumpy. (That tends to be my bellwether of comfort in the city. Do I feel like I am stepping out? If yes, then I am at ease.) I people-watched like my life depended on it, and felt mournful when I left. As TF and I were staying in a fabulous loft in Chelsea owned by one of his old friends, I was also reminded that were I to return to the city, ain't no way we would ever be living in digs like that. A studio deep in Queens would be about all we could afford, what with our civic employee salaries.

Here in Subtropical City, between us, we could indeed afford a real, live house. With a yard, and a fireplace, and some space for flowers out front, and in a good public school district. The disjunction between that reality and what life was like--and would be like--in NYC was more than a bit heartening.

Michigan was again replete with trillium by the roadside, and hobnobbing, and redwing blackbirds. And an old colleague has just had a beautiful son, who I got to hold and coo over, and she and I discussed the vagaries of being female and academic.

My natal home was abuzz with activity, and we were descended upon by huge numbers of friends and family and Friends and neighbors and jesus fucking christ but that was a whole lotta talking. My father takes immense pleasure in introducing my degree to his extended family: "you know, she has a PhD now." As these are extremely blue collar midwesterners, they at first praise me and then laugh. One cousin said, "I gotta PhD too! It stands for 'post hole digger!'"

The queers came. (The first wedding I ever attended was a lesbian wedding, and that couple came, now elderly.) The social workers. The political radicals. The hip young neighbors. The Quakers, the Jews, the devout Catholics. The working class and the effete librarians. The black and brown and yellow and white. I was reminded anew of where and how I was raised.

And at K'zoo I met with the editrix. I now owe her a complete draft by September first. My heart starts racing just writing those damn words.

ALL UP IN THE TAR BABY AND SHIT


Blogging light until I return to the natal home of Lettriste. There is much, much to say about Kalamazoo.

There is much to say about la famille.

But until that time, I am in my fair and filthy city, with TF, getting my urbanitas on. There will be much to say about my beloved Tar Baby of a place.

WORD!


I have sent my sample chapter to the editrix. We meet tomorrow afternoon.

In the meantime, I have tied up my classes with a lil bow. My Basic Writing students, they cry and hug me and awkwardly shake my hand because they pass their exit exam. My seminar students send me maudlin emails about how "really great" our class was. And now I rush to Kalamazoo. I am, as they say, psyched--to see blogfriends, to socialize awkwardly over cheap plastic cups of wine, to listen to new and bitchin' scholarship, and to generally be in the Midwest in May. O homeland of wild violets and crabapple trees afloat with coral blossoms! O emerald stretching horizon! O flatland and flat accents of my birth! I salute you!

But there is trouble a-brewing over at the natal home of Lettriste, lemme tell you. My K'zoo plans usually involve flying home, and then borrowing one of my parents' cars, and driving to Michigan. (This is much cheaper and less stressful than the whole flying-into-Detroit bullshit.) Although this had been earlier arranged, now it will not work out, and so I must rent a car.

Could my mother fetch me when I arrive at 10 this evening? Why yes, she could. But she won't. Because she is mad at me. (And my dad can no longer drive at night.)

Whither her anger and her rejection? As usual, it is all my fault. You see, she wanted to throw my brother a shower for his upcoming nuptials, a fete to occur next weekend. At her house. She invited 75 people, and wanted it catered, ideally by me. She did not ask for this. But it was strongly implied. (Delegating? Not her strong suit.) Originally, I said I could be around to help her for the entire week preceding this party. And because I am traditionally her bitch, I implicitly offered by my presence to console and comfort her anxieties. Parties bring out the insanity in her, and my role is to protect her from her worst self. And at my mother's parties, I am the slave.

But TF has invited me to New York for several days, because he is throwing a surprise party for his sister and his whole family is going to be there, with children in tow. And I said I wanted to come. So now I will only be able to "help" my mother for 3 days, instead of 7. She "just has to" employ a caterer, which is "far more than" she can afford. No caterer passes muster. She is working at her job like crazy, and can't spare the time to be in charge of the party. Her highly competent and well-educated employee is now "useless" and "no longer helpful." And of course, generally, nobody loves my mother, nobody wants to assist her, nobody cares for her, the shower is going to be a bitter mess, the house is an infernal shithole that simply cannot be cleaned enough, I am a bad daughter, and oh yeah, I am also a crazy slut of the highest order for even thinking about TF, much less going to NYC with him.

Indeed she and my father wanted to know, "who is going to PAY for that trip to New York?" (I held firm and told them it was none of their goddamn business.)

Good times out there on the prairie! Word to your mutha!

PERCHANCE TO DREAM


I dreamt the other night that it was the last day of class (which is today) and I was teaching my survey course (which I love, particularly this section, chock full of hardworking sweethearts). There was so much in the dream I'd forgotten to get to! I was filling up the board with all the odds and ends of literature that we'd neglected to discuss, and we were running out of time. The next class was coming in the ask why we were still there. And anxiously I pointed to the last empty stretch, about 2 square inches, on the board, and said, "hold on! We still have some left!"

This made me laugh.

There is "still some left!" I still have a gazillion papers to grade, and a group-grading exam norming session, and meeting with students. This afternoon I sat through an irritating meeting on teaching the survey, in which I was excoriated by a colleague for including historical context in my survey courses. (She is an Americanist, who teaches the 1865-Modernism survey. I teach Beowulf to fucking Milton.) Colleague accused me of teaching my "PERSONAL view of history." I was a little amazed, as I hadn't said anything other than that I stress context and that my students all assume they "know" the medieval and are shocked to find out they don't.

Why must we perform this way in public, sparring with one another in a display of ego?

And really, WTF? I am one of the only people in my department who actually UTILIZES history, historicism, and languages other than Modern American English in my research. That's not my "personal" view. That's called being a medievalist.

Providing my students with facts, dates, and context for what we are reading is kind of imperative, as we are reading things that are NOT in Modern English. And yo, I teach them how to read in Middle English, so that they can actually produce legitimate close readings of our texts.

Also, pointing out to my students that no, they cannot use a 500-year-old poem as "proof" or as "historical evidence" of "the way people really lived back then" seems to me less about my personal view and more about ethically demarcating the real boundaries areound what literary scholars are supposed to do. Because poetry is NOT history.



In other news, I have a meeting with a publisher at Kalamazoo. Is my sample chapter yet done? Why no. So much left to do...