February 19, 2014

Victoria before dawn, kyrie eleison

Excellent poetry class last night. I feel we made progress, and the students are fertile soil upon which such progress may be made. I needed to end with an excellent class, for the day otherwise had been very dark.

The new Humanities chairman responded to my critique of the sudden new plan by saying, in so many words, that the observations were invalid because I was making them. There followed an ad hominem attack the foundation of which was that I was the “most disengaged” faculty member in the program, and that I had no right to an opinion about anything because I had never contributed very much or seemed to care about anything but my own designs, whatever they might be. Part of this is dismissible as defensiveness. But even as I was inhaling the attack–by far the most disrespectful I have ever experienced in professional life– I realized that part of it was not thus dismissible. I understood his perception, and could see why he had it, and could make no real defense other than “No, that is not what I meant at all.”  In my early academic days I’d seen enough time-wasting careerism that when I came to UNCA I made a series of vows. I vowed that I would never speak in a meeting if what I said was not an improvement on or correction of what had already been said. I vowed that I would not seek an office or dignity that was already filled by, or could be filled by, someone who was better at it than I. I would not argue an academic or procedural point if I could get around it in my own classes without raising a fuss. My students, I resolved, were, together with my own work as an artist, my chief concern. They were my chief concern because there I was confident I was anyone’s peer. I was sent to this particular world as a teacher, and I knew how to do that. I resolved to absent myself from situations in which I could not be particularly helpful. I did this because of the weary time-wasting I observed in those who were not helpful but, nevertheless, relentlessly present. I never ran for senate or anything like that because I assumed I wouldn’t be any good at it, and why gum up the works when there were plenty who were good at it and wanted it on their resumes. On the other hand, contrary to my reputation, I never once refused a job that was offered to me, and served faithfully in whatever capacity to which I was appointed. I have in fact stood in the way of responsibility, with my arms open, as it were, thinking that if the task were meant for me, it could come to me. I have also fought–sometimes bitterly– for jobs that I knew I was going to be better at than others, that I would somehow dignify with my labors. When I read the attack I realized that all of this had been read as haughty withdrawal, and I actually could not fault that interpretation, other than to say, as I do now. “no, that was not what I meant at all.”

The 60's are, apparently, that decade in which you realize all the choices you made were wrong, but also to wonder how the hell you could have known.