December 5, 2007

Bright afternoon. I almost always get a little sick after the semester’s over, and today’s slump is probably that. I regret pulling myself off the sofa.

Poetry Night at MA’s. We listened to Donovan and conversed, and then free-wrote. Owen’s piece was very complicated and in places quite beautiful. Brian and MA usually write about ideas, which I cannot find much sympathy for, especially when I’m not sure what ideas they are, exactly. But their intelligence and dedication are roaring hearth-fires, and warm everything around them. I wrote about standing on the porch with TB, and discovering the tiny white star in the shadow of Antares. I’d been thinking of that night that whole time, as a happy obligato under the music of the present one. We had enough beer that they shared impressions of some of my colleagues. Had a vivid account of C’s Humanities class, where she plops herself down in front of everybody and says, “Let’s discuss the feminine qualities of The Iliad,” then faces an hour of silence, because there are none; then begins the next class the same way, as though to punish everyone for not pulling bananas from a turnip patch. Students recognize what we don’t, for the most part: that we can be absurdly doctrinaire, that we sometimes insist on foolish interpretations and fruitless perspectives in order to be thought politically correct, or in order to enforce a world view which, if questioned, would cast doubt upon long years of graduate school and an erudite, laborious dissertation. I fear for them sometimes, but it appears that they see through us when we are at our worst, and by us when we are at our best.

Ended the night by falling down MA’s fire escape stairs (the entrance to the apartment), and emerging, somewhat surprisingly, unscathed.

Took a white Christmas cactus from the departmental gift exchange, It brings me joy, hoisted up there on the bookcase, away from the cats.