let me tell you, friends: writing a dissertation proposal is not the most exciting thing i have ever done. i know, i know, you are all terribly surprised—who knew she did anything exciting whatsoever? far be it from me to complain too strenuously, however; at least i am no longer reading for my field exam. had a moment yesterday in which i realized, finally, that i am ABD & felt suddenly old. today i printed off the most recent incarnation of the dissertation proposal, which has ballooned to an overly aggressive thirty pages, but instead of weeping i opted to write to you instead.
noteworthy things do not happen to me with any great frequency, but when you only write to the internet twice a year, you can at least pretend.
last autumn, while reading for the dreaded field exam, i was also (probably unwisely) put in charge of my first group of slightly needy, very energetic undergraduates. the subject was, unsurprisingly, drama, & our friday sections largely consisted of my continual efforts to irritate them by focusing on such trivialities as the off-stage pirate-fight in hamlet & that play’s apparently needlessly complicated political context, or gleefully demanding that they read aloud in middle english, or trying to get them to fight about whether or not prospero is an imperialist asshole.
i have since duly printed out—though resolutely refused to regard with any attention—my course evaluations; i believe the word “chill” figured in one of them. longtime friends & acquaintances will be baffled by this descriptor & assume that it was intended to apply to someone or something else, perhaps the temperature of the room whenever i was present. but no, i assure you that i regarded my little flock with a sort of exasperated affection.
after which i was given a year’s furlough to allow the undergraduate population to recover.
in the autumn i am slated to assist for a course in chaucer, with a magnificently gruff professor from whom i myself as a first-term graduate student took a similar course. he & i are, naturally, of one mind as to the matter of reading chaucer in middle english; the stated position, i believe, is “figure it out.” i do love the language (despite its resulting from the much-lamented victory of our french oppressors), as it is wonderfully demented & expressively vulgar, though i was initially alarmed to think that i will have to teach texts from a period which, even for me (working as i do in the dim & distant past which no one recalls, viz., the seventeenth & eighteenth centuries), is a bit historically vague. protestants fighting about various heresies? burnings? i do remember the Famous Flying Penises of the Book of Margery Kempe; perhaps i will be able to work that into section somehow. everyone likes a rapturous (i mean, really, raptus, let’s not forget) vision of wingéd cocks, yes? BUT I DIGRESS.
in the spring they are having me teach shakespeare. i am a little disappointed but entirely unsurprised. in the establishment, the only people who work on drama work either on shakespeare or the twentieth century; should you be so impudent as to attempt anything else, they will simply pick whichever is closest. hence, shakespeare. in any event the situation is better than having to teach beckett or, heaven forfend, the novel. if i’m lucky we’ll do the henry plays. if we have to do a tragedy (we will) i really hope it will be macbeth or, oh, i don’t know, julius caesar, but probably it will be something banal, like othello, which as a good seventeenth-centuryist i follow the thomas rymer party line on to declare it Not Actually Tragic, though nonetheless Deeply Fucked. i see that i am digressing, again. someday i should teach a course on tristram shandy.
i have neither cut nor dyed my hair since, what, october? perversely, i generally cut my hair very short just as winter commences & suffer through the summer with it long. this time i have vowed, however, to keep it, though we shall see how this resolution fares when i am faced, as i am every august, with the prospect of at least two weeks in a desert environment not famed for its kindliness to living beings in general & feminine hairstyles in particular. i have also resolved to grow out my bangs, which in the past three days has prompted my hair to develop its own notions about what it wants to be now that it is an adult, resulting in an aggressive side part on, bewilderingly, the non-usual side of my face. for now i am allowing it its folly. additionally i had become obsessed with learning the actual color of my hair, which no one had seen in approximately eight years. my beau was temporarily horrified at this prospect but allowed himself to be calmed by the assurance that no, i am not anywhere close to ginger. i have, however, discovered that what i had remembered to be a distressingly boring state of brunette is, somewhat confusingly, heavily laced with copper, gold, &—woe betide—silver. yes, well, that’s very nice, isn’t it.
i briefly considered moving out of my current domicile but have since realized that i am far too lazy, in addition to being magnificently spoiled by the extreme proximity of convenient public transit, groceries, bars i like, &, not least, my beau; concomitant with these is the extreme proximity of garbage bins, an industriously loud furniture store, halfhearted but noisy gang activity, & absurdly large weekend tourist crowds, but never mind.
summer has more or less arrived & for the first time i have an air conditioner (installed, natürlich, by my competent & masculine companion), for which i have already had cause to be grateful & which shall surely prevent despair-&-sweaty-palm-induced self-injury as the season progresses.
we are watching every episode of the x-files, a thing that i have already done but do not mind doing again. we are now in season eight & i am gleefully watching mulder be tortured & shouting “JOHN DOGGETT” every time said character appears, but my companion is not convinced. he is suspicious, he says, of john doggett’s accent. i realize that i am well in the minority on this, so i shall endeavor not to be too disappointed if suspicion transforms only into hostility.
in the past two weeks i have shirked my professional duties to read china miéville’s embassytown, christopher priest’s inverted world, &, finally, the new iain m banks. they were all great, of course; completely ruinous of productivity. i reread pynchon’s against the day, which was somehow even better the second time, & before that hilary mantel’s wolf hall, which is truly magnificent.
since rewatching all of torchwood in preparation for the new season, i have been rewatching every episode of the new doctor who, because i can. in the middle of the dreaded “specials ‘season’” now. as for the new new doctor, i have not yet watched beyond the xmas special, so DO NOT RUIN IT FOR ME, i will get to them soon.
i am always interested in whatever people are reading, looking at, listening to, &c., especially if it is science fiction. except for charlie stross, do not bother recommending him to me, i refuse, it was bad enough before but it is utterly impossible to take seriously anyone who titles a novel rule 34 &, worse, invents something called, hideously, the “rule 34 squad.”
