bathrooms: threat to moral society?

I love watching people navigate new spaces.Case in point - eclectic restaurant in Boulder, group of 4 (assumedly) upper-middle class, middle-aged, heteronormative whites walk in (this is Boulder, after all). One woman breaks from the herd to venture on her own insearch of the bathroom. I see her confusion, her pacing, craning her neck at all the wrong crannies. So I, charitable citizen that I am, announce "It's in the corner." "Thanks," she says, and disappears through the curtain. Only to reappear a moment later. "Uh...are they both unisex?" I have no idea, and tell her so, following up with "If they both have locks, it doesn't really matter." Because, to me, it doesn't. The restaurant is almost empty; no one's going to be banging down the door. But even if they weren't unisex, who's going to call her out for it? Does this mean she can't leave the house without wearing pink? That she is afraid of seeing a urinal? Was it really such a quandry that she had to reappear from behind the curtain to ask a stranger the correct place for her to pee? Reminds me of being in a dingy little bathroom in an restaurant in Italy when a woman walked in with her pre-teen daughter, saw there was no bathroom seat, and walked out to check the other bathroom. Only to find the same situation, at which she returned expressly for the purpose of observing that there was no bathroom seat, and asking what she should do about it. Again, my response was basically "deal with it." What other advice can you give in such a situation? Her response was to leave without using the facilities, assumedly to find one more befitting her sensibiltiies and those she was trying to pass on to her daughter. Ah, theymake me laugh; mainly because if Ithink about it too much, I'll cry from frustration. What narrow borders people must live in if such as a thing as a bathroom causes them to throw up their hands in alarm and defense of their sensibilities.

Slective amnesia would be nice sometimes...

I want to kick myself sometimes. Or just find a way to delete certain sections of my brian, a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, only successfully. I want to forget that certain people affect me in certain ways - more accurately, I want to forget about them, and how to contac them. I want them out of my life, without the small hole that appears when they go. Too much to ask? Yes. Damn. What now? Oh yeah - there's that whole handling things like an adult and moving on, and up, and out, whatever direction gets you farther. And yet, there continues to be this small tether, rooting you to a particular point in time and space. Makes me think of a fly tied by a thread for a pet. Poor fly! Poor "owner"! My present self raelly wishes my past self had avoided certain times, places, people... Ah, so it goes!

Academics-R-Us

The further I walk along the hallowed halls, the more I become aware that Academe is a world unto itself. We joke that the more degrees one accrues, the longer one's an academic, the more socially inept we become until finally the only people who can bear to spend time with you are other academics (and those people who remember what you were like before and keep hoping you'll come back to the "real world"). We have entirely different sets of vocabulary from many of those around us, which are of course dependent on which disciplines we identify with. I have seriously forgotten basic words I used to use in conversation, instead substituting words with far more syllables and loaded meanings. I would give an example, but I really don't remember what those missing words are until I find myself tongue-tied over them. It's bad enough that we can no longer think of the simple words to use, but there are those who forgo that whole process of drawing on existing words and instead make up their own: obscurantist, demythologization, grammaticalized, complexification, disambiguate... really? c'mon here, people - the least we can do is try to fit in!
Friends and I were talking the other night about the difference between conversations with friends in and outside of academia. The topics we discuss and the ways we discuss them are entirely different. I'm still learning how to navigate this minefield - forgetting the everyday words for things doesn't help. I dropped the term "discourse" on some unsuspecting soul the other day because I couldn't think of "talk" soon enough, only to spend the next 10 minutes trying to explain the term and subsequently correct their misinterpretation. (Perhaps I'm not such a good teacher after all!) I've found the word that sends people running or their hackles rising fastedr than any other is "feminist." It gives a whole new meaning to the term "f-bomb"; talk about a conversation stopper! My family figured out I am one, and now it apparently means I devalue everything the women in my family have done since the dawn of time because many of them did not work full time outside of the home. They often bear with me and feign excitement on my behalf as I try to explain the latest obscure and critically-themed research project I've started. I really must give them credit, because I know many academics who couldn't care less, even when they already know and use the theories and references I'm throwing out left and right.
"Academe" often seems a nameless faceless mass into which I gradually become more and more embedded as the diplomas on the wall multiply and my CV lengthens. Other times, the human element of it becomes starkly obvious. That there are larger social, economic, political, and physical structures supporting The Academy is a given, but within these frameworks scurry the literal flesh and blood and minds that make it what it is. We scamper down the halls with keys, full mugs of tea, books, notes, computers, sanity, lives and workloads precariously balanced. And sometimes a tipping point comes and we have a moment of clarity. From it comes the next great idea, the realization that the last one really wasn't so great, the reassurance that I CAN do this, the constant fear that you can't... whatever it is, it is the most human part of academia, the vital part. Some times this human element makes itself known in the profoundly supportive relationships among cohorts and friends, but at others it is the ugly green viper of jealousy, often unacknowledged. How does one admit to being frustrated by and jealous of what a friend has accomplished, when you know you should happy for them? It takes a big person to recognize this for what it is, accept it, and move on, all while trying to deal with the monumental pile of small stresses that we accumulate through everyday. Those things on our to-do lists often sound so inconsequential, but they add up quickly - read, write, research, check references, check email, write identity statement, teach, grade, attend meeting, attend meeting, attend meeting, class, class, more class, call family, make travel plans for conference, check email, prepare presentation, go to conference, make up work for missed classes while at conference, exercise, read outside sources for extra research project, go to dentist, take car in, do laundry, eat, grocery shopping, plan conference, reading, reading, reading, writing, research, find committee members, check email, office hours, sleep(?)...
I am a firm advocate for mental health days. I've found that when I get too much on my plate I just stop doing anything that I am supposed to. I may be found at a movie (or several!), parking along the side of the road and walking off, or leaving town just because. Whatever it is, I won't be doing the things I know I am "supposed" to be doing. I skip half my reading for a week or two, I pull a last-minute all-nighter to get that (first-draft!) paper in on time, I don't take the notes I'm supposed to be, all knowing it will bite me in the arse later, but that to preserve my sanity I wouldn't have it any other way right now. My present-self is not very nice to my future-self sometimes, but I think it's often because I want to remember that my past-self had a life once upon a time. I work very hard to maintain a semblance of life outside of the halls - now if only I could remember how the people there speak.






A note for you grammar nit-pickers out there: I recognize that I am switching tenses willy-nilly and hither and thither, but it's all in the name of trying to use gender neutral pronouns, so YES I am considering "they" appropriate to use in the singular. I can even provide references to support my claim if you need them... ;)

fallen behind

It would appear I'm not so hot on keeping up with this whole blog thing. The idea was to write just for the sake of it, but I find I don't know what to write about much of the time. All of the fleeting ephemeral thoughts aren't willing to settle long enough to congeal into a paragraph or two. My larger concern is whether said congealed mass would be in the slightest bit interesting, even to myself, once recorded.
I find myself in one of those phases in which I'm convinced there is something more worthwhile I could be doing with my life, but with no idea what that is. I found a fulbright scholarship for a 5 or 10 month teaching and reserach stint in Oman, which would be an amazing opportunity. Unfortunately, my degrees have no bearing on skills others find useful or are seeking. So without some very liberal and creative CV writing, there's not much of a chance of getting it. Not sure how I'll finangle the reference letters supporting such a creative CV either.... won't stop me from trying, though!
I really want a day at home for myself. I'm such a geek - I really want to play in the garden and reorganize my book cases. Yup, I said it - ridiculous, eh? I had forgotten how tiring and stressful two jobs is, even when neither is full time. The restaurant is so draining, probably because I've known it's not where I want to be for so many years at this point. Granted, there are a good number of positive aspects to it, the greatest being that it's the place I actually get exposure to non-academic friends. It's such a different world. Which is a problem sometimes, because I feel like a different person there - one who is a hypocrite compared to my academic self. I don't have the confidence at climbing to go out and seek new people to know down that avenue, and it's much harder (at least for me) to trust someone off the bat to climb with them. So it goes.

time out

I literally took the time today to pull off to the side and just bask in the world. You know, smell the grasss, watch the clouds, listen to the birds. They're all stil lout there. I highly recommend taking a few minutes to rediscover them. Just sit, and breathe, and be. I found my mind wandering back to the paper I need to write, the teaching appointment I was just assigned and am disappointed in, the dinner I was going to make when I got home... all of those things that keep us going and going and going but never getting anywhere. But at least this time, all of those not-so-fun-to-think -about things were not at the forefront, clamouring for attention. Instead, they floated about in my brain, first one coming to the fore, and then another. All were softened, mellowed, brought back into perspective by the soft glow descending upon the world around me, and interrupted by the redwinged blackbird in the rushes, and diminished by the fresh, sweet, cool air that was so much more important than considering exactly how to word that introduction, no matter how pressing the deadline may be. I love rediscovering life.

Only in your dreams

I love afternoon naps - especially those with the rain dripping out the window. My bed puts out an extra oomph of effort to make itself inviting enough to tempt me from everything else I should be doing during the day. I heard just the other day that the time of day you are most craving a nap corresponds to the time twleve hours later during the night that you get your best sleep. How would one even go about checking this?

One of the best things about naps are the dreams - they feel so real! Your lover really is there next to you, that elephant really is in your backyard, and none of the neighbors seem to mind, and the fact that you're running around without your pants is inevitable, yet natural.
They feel so real because you're never quite sure when you crossed from waking to sleep. I'm convinced most naps start with an element of denial--I'm not sleeping, I'm : resting my eyes, checking my eyelids for cracks, thinking really hard and need to focus, writing the next great novel in my head, just blinking for a long time... No matter what it is I'm doing, however, you should probably not be asking me such an inane question, because can't you see I'm busy? I'll create a character that resembles you in that novel of mine, and they'll be the really annoying, nosy type of character that nobody is sad dies half way through.

Nap dreams are also more intensely strange. Part of this is because they feel so much more real, being half awake and all. But perhaps the strange storylines that come out of nap dreams are due to your brain still being up and at 'em, instead of curling into a corner for rest for the enveing. Every thought you tried to put on hold in order to enjoy the sweet abyss of sleep and rest really just hid behind the corner like an errant three year old, so you couldn't see that it intended to spend the next 20 minutes to an hour playing in its room with all the toys you try to hide because they're too loud, age inappropriate, or you have no idea to work them yourself. It is this pile that comes out of the toybox to run screeching and colorful through your nap dreams, like a small child who has discovered that you have no idea what to do when she takes all her clothes off and runs laughing through the house in front of those neighbors you just met. How exactly do you explain to another what it is that just happened, and why? Well, that's also the glory of it - you don't. Just learn to laugh along and close your eyes for the good part of the ride.

standing at the ready

With a few seemingly innocuous sentences, I am once again enveloped in a whirlwind of guilt, frustration, sadness, and anger. The sensations battle one another for dominance, generating a dusty veil of confusion over the lot. As the dust swirls, parts, reforms, I catch glimpses of the reds and blues that colour the warring emotions. My heart beats in my ears, I can't see straight, I can't sit still - I have to move, to pace the lines, to plan the next move. Is there a next move? Has there ever been a move but to sit and wait and occasionally extend a white flag, only to have it crushed underfoot not long after? The stretches of peace vary, and I spend every moment of them walking on eggshells. The tentative, relative sense of calm is simply the break between storms - I can always feel the clouds forming on the horizon, today a whiskey amber, tomorrow a rich burgundy. The hair on my arms stands up as I straighten my back to prepare for a battle I don't want to fight, have never wanted to. How can the cycle end when one side doesn't even realize there is something amiss?
I look beyond my own borders to see the sun shining upon lands of peace and plenty, where the people are happy, the place is healthy, and time is not spent strategizing how to make it through unscathed. My happiness for them manifests in tears of joy on their behalf, highlighting and mingling with my own tears of frustration. I never see the storm clouds cross the border, and I sense a tinge of green within the already swirling blues and reds. My only hope is to weave and wave a still larger white flag, and to slowly build up the neutral zone again, hoping my attempts to push back the incursions upon it go unnoticed. If I can go unnoticed, unremarked upon, indefinitely forgotten, the calmer waiting is infinitely better than tumultuous storm that signals the need to once again dive for the trenches.