I officially turned 40 in June, but my birthday party (combined with Amy’s 50th birthday party) was last weekend, so I managed to not publicly turn 40 until August 29. Good trick, I’d say. If I can pull this off for another few years I may manage to get younger after a while.

I used to have a very solid tradition of writing a reflection on the past year on my birthday. I skipped last year’s reflection because I was in the middle of a divorce and while I was doing a lot of reflecting, I didn’t want to put it in writing. But here I am, no longer in the middle of a divorce, and past due for a reflection on turning 40.

So here are some thoughts on officially (and belatedly) starting my 40s.

My mom died when she was 47 and for no rational reason I’ve always figured I’ll die in my 40s. It’s completely irrational, but it’s a thought that has guided my adult life in many ways. When I was in my late teens, I made a list of things I wanted to get done before I died and “before I died” meant “before I turn 47.” The list included finishing college, earning a PhD, writing a book, and fixing what was then my fucked up relationship with my dad. It’s all done (the book is written, is now in revision, and should be in production by the end of the year). Since I never took seriously the idea that I’d live beyond 47, I hadn’t thought seriously about what would happen after I finished all those things, assuming those things would take about 40-47 years to do and then I’d die.

I’m sure it could sound morbid or pessimistic that I’ve figured I would die in my 40s, but it hasn’t felt that way to me. After my brain hemorrhage when I was 27, the idea that I could live another 20 years felt very optimistic, actually. And as both a high school friend and a former colleague reminded me recently, no one expected me to live to see 40.

Now I’m thinking less about what I want to get done in my life and more about how I want to live my life. I’ve always been an “it’s the journey not the destination” kind of person, to some extent, so this isn’t a profound shift, but certainly I don’t feel the deadline pressure I’ve felt in the past. (Ugh, organizations I’m involved with are so into branding right now that the smart ass in me wants to say something about having a theme or slogan for this phase of my life—“I’m a lifelong learner” or “I focus on quality not quantity.”) I am more interested in just seeing how things unfold in my life without trying to push them in a particular direction.

Will I live to see 50? Who knows. Right now I’m shooting for 41.

Me: What’s in that glass in the fridge?

Lily: Don't worry, it's not a butonic bomb*. It's a glue experiment.

Me: Oh?

Lily: Yeah, I’m seeing if the stuff in the glass will turn into glue.

Me: What’s in the glass?

Lily: Water, soap suds, chalk dust, molding clay, and moon sand.

Me: I don’t think that’s going to make glue, Sweetie.

Lily: Yeah, I know . . . it really needs concentrated orange juice, but we don’t have any.

 

*I have no idea what a butonic bomb is, but I believe it might involve Bubonic Plague, atomic physics, and perhaps (this might be my wishful thinking) gin and tonic.

Victoria's Secret

by Billy Collins

The one in the upper-left-hand corner
is giving me a look
that says I know you are here
and I have nothing better to do
for the remainder of human time
than return your persistent but engaging stare.
She is wearing a deeply scalloped
flame-stitch halter top
with padded push-up styling
and easy side-zip tap pants.

The one on the facing page, however,
who looks at me over her bare shoulder,
cannot hide the shadow of annoyance in her brow.
You have interrupted me,
she seems to be saying,
with your coughing and your loud music.
Now please leave me alone;
let me finish whatever it was I was doing
in my organza-trimmed
whisperweight camisole with
keyhole closure and point d'esprit mesh back.

I wet my thumb and flip the page.
Here, the one who happens to be reclining
in a satin and lace merry widow
with an inset lace-up front,
decorated underwire cups and bodice
with lace ruffles along the bottom
and hook-and-eye closure in the back,
is wearing a slightly contorted expression,
her head thrust back, mouth partially open,
a confusing mixture of pain and surprise
as if she had stepped on a tack
just as I was breaking down
her bedroom door with my shoulder.

Nor does the one directly beneath her
look particularly happy to see me.
She is arching one eyebrow slightly
as if to say, so what if I am wearing nothing
but this stretch panne velvet bodysuit
with a low sweetheart neckline
featuring molded cups and adjustable straps.
Do you have a problem with that?!

The one on the far right is easier to take,
her eyes half-closed
as if she were listening to a medley
of lullabies playing faintly on a music box.
Soon she will drop off to sleep,
her head nestled in the soft crook of her arm,
and later she will wake up in her
Spandex slip dress with the high side slit,
deep scoop neckline, elastic shirring,
and concealed back zip and vent.

But opposite her,
stretched out catlike on a couch
in the warm glow of a paneled library,
is one who wears a distinctly challenging expression,
her face tipped up, exposing
her long neck, her perfectly flared nostrils.
Go ahead, her expression tells me,
take off my satin charmeuse gown
with a sheer, jacquard bodice
decorated with a touch of shimmering Lurex.
Go ahead, fling it into the fireplace.
What do I care, her eyes say, we're all going to hell anyway.

I have other mail to open,
but I cannot help noticing her neighbor
whose eyes are downcast,
her head ever so demurely bowed to the side
as if she were the model who sat for Correggio
when he painted "The Madonna of St. Jerome,"
only, it became so ungodly hot in Parma
that afternoon, she had to remove
the traditional blue robe
and pose there in his studio
in a beautifully shaped satin teddy
with an embossed V-front,
princess seaming to mold the bodice,
and puckered knit detail.

And occupying the whole facing page
is one who displays that expression
we have come to associate with photographic beauty.
Yes, she is pouting about something,
all lower lip and cheekbone.
Perhaps her ice cream has tumbled
out of its cone onto the parquet floor.
Perhaps she has been waiting all day
for a new sofa to be delivered,
waiting all day in stretch lace hipster
with lattice edging, satin frog closures,
velvet scrollwork, cuffed ankles,
flare silhouette, and knotted shoulder straps
available in black, champagne, almond,
cinnabar, plum, bronze, mocha,
peach, ivory, caramel, blush, butter, rose, and periwinkle.
It is, of course, impossible to say,
impossible to know what she is thinking,
why her mouth is the shape of petulance.

But this is already too much.
Who has the time to linger on these delicate
lures, these once unmentionable things?
Life is rushing by like a mad, swollen river.
One minute roses are opening in the garden
and the next, snow is flying past my window.
Plus the phone is ringing.
The dog is whining at the door.
Rain is beating on the roof.
And as always there is a list of things I have to do
before the night descends, black and silky,
and the dark hours begin to hurtle by,
before the little doors of the body swing shut
and I ride to sleep, my closed eyes
still burning from all the glossy lights of day.

From an msnbc.com story on a lawsuit involving Paris Hilton:

She also acknowledges she’d never seen her own cell phone bills until attorneys showed her one in an attempt to figure out who she was calling. Asked who gets her bills, she replied, “I don’t know. I’m assuming, like, whoever pays my bills. I never ask about that stuff.”

and

Hilton was one of eight executive producers for the movie, though she acknowledged she was a bit shaky on what that meant. “I’m not sure what a producer does, but — I don’t know, help get cool people in the cast,” she said.

This is an adult? She doesn’t knew who gets and pays her bills? She’s an executive producer and doesn’t know what that means? (Hmmm, kind of like running for VP and not knowing what a VP does, but I digress.)

Hi, I haven’t been able to make it to class the last couple of weeks. Can you just tell me what I missed?

I know you said we should do research and all for our projects, but mine is mostly opinion. Is that ok?

I’m really not good at proofreading. Can I just get you to proofread my paper for me?

Ummm, no, no, and no.

I love how the word “just” functions in the first and third questions as a kind of minimizer, like the student isn’t really asking for something outrageous.

• I spent a ridiculous amount of time tonight listening to a few songs over and over instead of writing up a classroom observation after I made a series of fatal errors. I went to St. Mark’s, saw that there were no available tables and decided to work at home (mistake #1). I got home and looked in the fridge (mistake #2) and saw that my ex-husband/roommate (how enlightened are we?!) had stocked my favorite beer. I decided to have a beer—I mean, it’s Sunday night and I ran so many errands today and how much damage to my motivation could one little beer do (mistake #3). Well, the official answer is a whole lot.
• The songs: “Dirtbag” (Brad Sucks), “Microphone” (Coconut Records), “Time to Pretend” (MGMT), “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” (Cage the Elephant).
• Inspired by a more motivated academic friend, I’ve started formulating my summer reading list. On the personal reading list: Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Khaled Hosseini’s The Kiterunner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen, and Stephen Dobyns’s Velocity. On the academic list: Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms, Margaret Rose’s Parody: Ancient, Modern and Post-modern, Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, and Anne Wysocki’s Writing New Media: Theory and Applications.

One of my favorite ways to get caught up is to simply not do things. I’m not footloose-and-fancy-free enough to not do the things that really must be done, but a lot of what must be done really doesn’t have to be done. Case in point: reading blogs.

According to my Bloglines, I am 2263 blog entries behind in reading the blogs I subscribe to. This bothers me. I hate seeing that number—2263—at the top, an indictment. Really, I hate to see any number at the top. If I have 3 unread blog entries, I feel like, damn, I better get with it and read those!

But, by simply clicking on Mark All Read, I’m instantly caught up on my blog reading. There. 0 unread entries. Caught up.

When I get tired, the most common typing mistake I make is to write “not” when I mean “now.” I’m sure I only catch it every now and then because I have a bad habit of not proofreading emails when I’m tired. I was just thinking about all the funny and weird emails I’ve probably sent out the last few weeks . . . things like

I have time not, so send me the file and I’ll work on it.

Can you meet not? I’m free until my 10:00 class.

Oh, not you tell me!

I’m about to work on that not, so you should have it by tomorrow.

I am at Metro not.

Lily is with me not, so don’t worry.

Makes me sound kind of Yoda-like, only more idiotic, as if Yoda had an idiot little sister.

• My NPR name is Elizabaeth Santa Elena. You can create your own NPR name.
• As has been the tradition the last few years, March Madness continues into April. Why does spring semester feel crazier than fall? Is it actually crazier or am I just more tired and less organized?
• I’m at the eLCC (formerly Telecoop) Conference, which is in Vail this year. This is the first year since Lily was born that I don’t have her (and T) with me. One consequence: I’ve been able to almost empty out one of my email inboxes. Cool.
• Exactly two weeks ago, my blog turned five and I didn’t even notice. Happy belated birthday, revisionspiral.

In the name of work (I’m prepping a class on parody and satire), I’ve been watching mash ups on youtube for an hour or so. Some of my favorites:

• Christian Bale vs. Bill O'Reilly
• Toy Story Requiem
• SuperFriends
• Bert & Ernie Tries Gangsta Rap (sic)
• 10 things I Hate About Commandments
• Batman Dark Knight Trailer - David Usher "Kill The Lights"
• Star Trek Holy Grail Mashup - Death of Spock Mashup
• Matrix - Fight Club - trailer mashup
• Public Enemy AC/DC Mashup Black is Back! (unbelievably, it works)

Inspired by the DePaul Writing Center twitter account, I just started a Metro State Writing Center twitter account. I plan to use the twitter account to keep followers (theoretical at this point) up to date on hours, new tutors, workshops, and appointment availability and policies.

The new Facebook is not working for me. Yes, I’m always resistant when Facebook makes changes, but this one is bothering me so much I’m not even going to Facebook every five minutes like I used to. Which is a good thing, so maybe I should be happy about the new layout. I hate the wordiness of the newsfeed and I can’t quite figure out the difference between the newsfeed and the highlights gutter on the right. They seem to carry the same items, but the highlights are headlines only and the newsfeed has more description.

4Cs did not piss me off this year! This is a milestone. The last couple times I went, I left bitter, angry, pissed off, disgruntled . . . Maybe I’m getting better at picking sessions to go to. The last time I went, I saw bad reading of bad papers everywhere, but this year, while reading papers is still SOP, at least the people who read their papers seemed familiar with their papers, which, sadly, was not the case last time.

There are six weeks left in the semester. As much as I love my classes and students, I am so ready for summer. Not the weather—I still feel like we got screwed out of a winter this year (yes, even given Thursday’s blizzard)—but the relaxed schedule, the sleep, the mojitos . . .

I love this argument for having a standardized curse symbolism system.

Mark Doty read at Metro last week. Amy had been talking about him for a couple of years, having first heard him read at AWP a few years ago, so I knew I would probably like him. The week before his visit to Metro, I was at City Lights in San Francisco (for 4Cs) and was wondering around the Poetry Room and happened to look down at one point and there was Doty’s collection, Fire to Fire. I bought it of course and read some of the poems before Doty’s reading on campus, but reading poems to yourself and hearing the author read them are so different many times, and Doty is a very animated reader of his own work, so I found much more in the poems I had read after I heard Doty read them. “Heaven for Paul” stands out as one that I have a much greater appreciation for after hearing Doty read it.

Here is one I loved when I read it myself and loved even more after hearing Doty read it. The monk story in the poem is one I first heard at a Buddhist retreat; I was happy to see it in poem that involves the word “asshole.” I like the way Doty weaves together the chaos of NYC, the quiet conflict between the two monks, and the not-so-quiet conflict of his own conscience.

Citizens

The light turns and I’m stepping
onto the wide and empty crosswalk on Eighth Avenue,
nothing between the white lines but a blowing riffle

of paper when this truck -
all unnecessary red gleam - roars on the avenue from 20th,
the driver turns his wheels inches from my knees

even though I jump back
out of the way, and before I’ve even thought I’m yelling
what are you doing, act like a citizen

though it’s clear from the face
already blurred past me he’s enjoying this, and I shout Asshole
and kick at the place where his tire was with my boot.

If I carried a sharp instrument
I could scrape a long howl on his flaming paint job
(just under the gold and looming logo: DEMOLITION)

and what kind of citizen
does this thought make me, quivering and flummoxed
by contradictory impulses: to give a speech on empathy

or fling my double latte
across his back windshield, though who knows what
he might do then. He’s stuck in traffic and pretends

I’m not watching him looking
in my direction, and people passing doubtless think who is
this idiot fulminating to himself,

or probably they don’t;
they’ve got trouble of their own. Here’s a story:
two pilgrim monks arrive at a riverbank

where an old lady’s weeping,
no way to cross, and though they’ve renounced
all traffic with women, one man hoists her on his shoulders

and ferries her over the water.
Later his friend is troubled: How could you touch her
when you vowed not to? And the first monk says, I put her down

on the other side of the river,
why are you still carrying her? Midday’s so raw and dirty
I can’t imagine anyone here’s pleased with something just now,

and I’m carrying the devil
in his carbon chariot all the way to 23rd, down into the subway,
rolling against the impersonal malice of the truck that armors him

so he doesn’t have to know anyone.
Under the Port Authority I understand I’m raging
because that’s easier than weeping, not because I’m so afraid

of scraping my skull
on the pavement but because he’s made me erasable,
a slip of a self, subject to. How’d I get emptied

till I can be hostaged
by a dope in a flaming climate-wrecker? I try to think
who made him so powerless he craves dominion over strangers,

but you know what?
I don’t care. If he’s one of those people miserable for lack
of what is found in poetry, fine.

It’s not him I’m sorry for.
It’s every person on this train burrowing deeper uptown
as if it were screwing further down into the bedrock.

Heavy hands on the knees,
weary heads nodding toward the floor or settling
against the glass. When did I ever set anything down?

As I was trying to catch up on my blog reading, I came across Aerobil’s post on teaching Cheryl Strayed’s “The Love of My Life." I taught the piece (Aerobil calls it an essay, I call it a memoir) for the first time last week in a multigenre writing class hot on the heels of a discussion of DFW’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.”

The discussion of both pieces was rich. With the DFW piece, students were fascinated by the “grammar B” flavor of the footnotes. I think because of that, they were looking for grammar b elements in Strayed’s piece and were initially disappointed to not find any, although a few students considered Strayed’s liberal use of four letter words (“cunt” appears on the first page and “fuck” is ubiquitous in the piece)to be grammar b. What really got the discussion of Strayed’s piece going were the concepts of truthiness and narrativization. Because I approach Strayed’s piece as memoir, these concepts were important to the class; I wonder whether other concepts would have emerged as important if I had framed the piece as an essay.

I can’t stop looking at these photos of abandoned ships off the cost of Mauritania.

From Harry G. Frankfurt’s On Bullshit:

. . . . The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.

This is the crux of the distinction between him and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves faslsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth not to conceal it. This does not mean that his speech is anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are. (54-55)

It’s been a busy two weeks since I last posted.

• Amy and I completely reworked the student introduction and a chapter of our book, which involved about 10 days of banging our heads against all available hard surfaces, a moment of inspiration, and two days of good writing. We talked with our editors by phone this week; they are happy with the changes. If I weren’t so damn exhausted, I’d jump for joy.
• I’ve been revising a chapter for a forthcoming edited collection on writing and the Digital Generation. The chapter wasn’t in bad shape overall, but the title and conclusion needed work. I finally came up with a title that satisfied both the editor’s desires and mine. The conclusion is coming along, but not quickly. Conclusions are often the most challenging part of any writing project for me. Summing things up concisely—not my strong suit. Give me lots of words to work with and I can do anything, but tell me to be concise? Yikes.
• 4Cs is less than two weeks away, which is too bad, considering I am presenting and my presentation is still in the form of copious notes. I guess I haven’t technically been busy with this, since all I’ve done is carry the notes around for a week imagining that I’d get some work done on the presentation, but still . . .
• I’m spending many hours on a 1-credit Honors seminar I’m co-teaching with Amy. The topic of the seminar—reading Denver as a text—is rich, the students are (for the most part) engaged, but the workload, for a 1-credit class that I am getting paid for only a half credit (because, according to the administration, co-teaching means each instructor does only half the work, right? Don’t get me started), is astonishing. And adding insult to injury, I got my paystub yesterday showing the whopping $34 take home I made for teaching the class in February.

I’ll take a break from badmouthing Valentine’s Day to tell this story.

I was helping Lily make valentines for her classmates tonight and Lily said, “Mom, how about if I tell you about the best things about each person as I write their valentine?” I thought this was a great idea. Here are some of the “best things” she mentioned about the kids in her class:

• “He’s a really good breakdancer.”
• “She always cheers me up when I’m sad, like the other day when I lost my favorite headband on the playground.”
• “He reminds me of Martin Luther King, and that’s cool.”
• “He always gets my name wrong, but he always tries to get it right. That’s a good thing.”
• “He’s as crazy about Star Wars as I am.”
• “She always looks out for her little sister.”