Take a Breather

I briefly deleted that existential panic post from before but then I was like, screw it, it’s right that they should know what a whiner I am.

I feel better now because I got my course assignments, and even though they are terrifying, it’s better to have specific knowns you can start grappling with.

My year is going to be very interesting. It’s going to be incredibly intense in the Fall. I’m teaching a 3/2, and one of them is this enormous interdisciplinary gen-ed class involving guest lecturers and live performances and six TAs. I am slowly getting my questions answered but I also think that class is going to be one of those things where I am just wall-eyed with panic for like 6 weeks and trying to disguise it and pretend like I know what I’m doing. Oh wait that’s what I do almost every day of my life. Practice makes perfect!

But then in the spring I have that same exact class–which one presumes one will have gotten a handle on by then, for the love of christ–and one very small grad seminar. I think in spring I will take a breath and look around and assess how things are going. And maybe start taking piano lessons.

There are rats living in our walls. We hear them scurrying at night, it’s like a David Lynch movie. I saw one the other day. He looked fat and sleek. He is carrying the bubonic plague. We have to get out of here.

Preparing myself to go back into a land of brutal seasons. On the one hand I do like massive seasonal change. On the other hand I am a real baby about heat and humidity and dying in a blizzard. On the other hand this is a place with SWIMMING HOLES and woodsy trails. And on the other hand, for somebody who fetishizes autumn as I do, I think you may look no further than New England. Also the founding fathers and all that stuff. If they could live there in huts with no heating and no waterproof parkas I can do it. Remember how Shackleton spent 3 years living on the Arctic ice and all they had was sleeping bags made of rotting reindeer skin? That is good for playing the Glad Game I think. In more ways than one. I would rather be almost anyone else than one of these maniac explorer dudes. They symbolize everything that is wrong with western culture, there I said it. To conquer and dominate and subdue in the name of King and country and your own egomania. And now Everest is covered with garbage and we’re drilling for oil in the Arctic. Dudes of the 19th century: STAY HOME WITH YOUR WIVES.

Some of what I know about living in New England comes from reading 18th century memoirs of French aristocrats who fled the Reign of Terror and came as emigrées to the New World. They write with horror of the hordes of swarming, stinging insects battering against the windows in great clouds. So I remembered that and now we know we definitely need to put the snoopy on heartworm pills again.

What I Will Do In My New Life:
– have a nicer house
– take yoga classes at some kind small town yoga place
– go to more events and nerdy readings/screenings/performances (we are excited to live in a small academic town again. As shitty as Iowa was, there was something really fun about the energy of thousands of academics filling up a tiny space. Everything is right there, everyone’s got projects going on, there are a million amazing lectures and events, and you end up getting involved in weird stuff you just don’t do when you live in a normal city, like join a sacred harp singing group with a bunch of strangers)
– swim in a river
– get snoopy to go in a river
– take piano lessons
– buy a piano
– consciously cultivate a more professional mien. I am a professional now. Enough hanky panky
– grow tomatoes
– take the train and go to new music concerts in New York
– maybe take up cross-country skiing??? No idea
– are there gyms there; I will join one (steam room)
– buy a horse (joke)