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09.11.04 - 10:17 p.m.
thumbing anniversaries, but still... by no means do i wish to imply that i'm thumbing my nose today at THE anniversary, september11th. appropriately, i spent much of today on campus, finishing the last touches on my coursepacket... since that tuesday morning, i had my grad class met 10:00-12:00PM ... and once chaos ensued, campus turned into a type of headquarters central for finding out information (when so many in this town can't afford to spend the $40 for cable to have a media connection with the outside world)
[yes, i know i'm 2weeks behind schedule. yet, i unexpectedly bucked the system in so far as i did not deluge my students with a syllabus, a five page punitive policy statement and manifesto, books, and a course packet. in fact, for the first time i've embraced the adage "less is more" and "keep things simple," and not surprisingly, my students appreciate my awareness that the first two weeks of college experience feels analogous to a hurricane of information, expectations, rules, regulations, social networks, and new living spaces]. anyway, i was saying i put the finishing touches on my coursepacket: i'm excited to announce that i booted james baldwin's strangerinthevillage - which i've taught 3 times now - in favor of excerpts from Thisbridgecalled my back, and excerpts from what might be called 4th wave feminism, notably, rebeccawalker's tobereal. in a nutshell, 4th wave feminism interrogates the differentials within differences - so i chose an essay, on "femmenism" - rather than a "coming out" story, to talk about a portrait of a queer identity - and i chose walker's autobiography of a shifting self, blackwhiteandjewish - to shake up notions of multiplicity from stangnant black white binaries to thinking of children who represent inter-faith, cross-continental, cross-class relationships. as fortune would have it, i've got THE most ethnically, nationally diverse class of students EVER - and i'm not just counting quotas of black, brown, yellow, etc... i'm excited to engage the class in thinking "other-wise", and suspect at least one student is biracial(black&jewish), and another is biracial (b&w), i've also got the most gentlemanly strawberryblond student from alabama - who calls me ma'am, which puts a doubletake in me everytime. two obviously prep/boarding school girls; one guy who might have been homeschooled and on and on. and no, given my storm of outrage last week's hurtful suggestions that my character flaws of ocassional indecision might make students weary, angry, feel oppressed, i don't want the above or below to come across as hyper-attempts to validate myself. i'm proud to announce, though, that for the FIRST time ever in my composition classes (this is my 3rd) - all 17 students who arrived on the first day, have stayed through the add/drop period. all 17 have arrived on time, for ALL four class periods! on thursday, i gave a major peptalk and congratulated them on being the most cooperative, flexible writingseminar i have EVER led, and rewarded them with canceling the class before fall break. the gesture also acknowledge that i'd arrived late on two occassions, and i told them that if they're paying $36K a year, each class must cost some $75 a session, so every minute i'm late robs them. i'm just so pleased not to deal with the resistances to trying new things, or endless objections that begin, "well, my a.p. english teacher told me that..." hell, if you'd learned all you needed to know from A.P. English, then why the hell did you bother to go to college, much less take my class?!?! so, i'm excited by many things, big and small. excited enough that today, i bought myself a thumbring - a gift and sign to try new things from this store 3DL_ght, from which i'd bought other rings in the past. i'm happy that this time, when looking through the case for a ring for myself, i saw those other heart rings and didn't flinch. they didn't matter. my thumbring etched with daisies circling round my uber-keyboard finger (space bar thumb, duh!) is all i need to get by... today marks so much more though, and i don't mean to displace all the grief i felt on sept.11th, when i was in friggin CLASS - when i entered my seminar at 10 AM chatting about this random NPR story i'd heard about a plane flying into a tower (and joked that it must be another JFK, jr. afflicted with invincibility superman pilot syndrome gone wrong)... and at 12:15 when i exited class, the world was a different place, and i missed it... i wasn't there for the city that had challenged, shuttled, and bucked me up taller for 4 years prior. no, i was stuck on a ny college campus, which refused to shut down for the day (that tired reasoning: "life must go on. we need to show the terrorists that we won't be cowarded and be afraid, business as usual." yet, business was FAR from usual, and had nyc not closed down its gates and tunnels and permitted greyhoundbusses and such to drive in, i would have quit teaching my class period - told the writing program to keep their money and SUE me - and gone to help out in anyway i could. in stead, yeah, i spun my wheels but went no where for those three months because i just did not want to move. i couldn't move. i couldn't find my friends. the phone lines were flooded, satellites were down, my friend at columbia said she didn't even know how to find her students and if they'd ever returned to class. no, stuck grieving on a campus that had no time for grief...yes there were vigils and public memorials - but DAMMIT i just wanted the university to stop and acknowledged how all our lives had stopped, broken into a "before" and an "after" units of dates, days, hours, minutes, even seconds. i did read thorugh the nytimes archive of pictures, and their curious article on the still as yet uncounted: those souls who jumped out of those towers rather than stand and fry alive. if those falling, tumbling figures index anything in my life, perhaps they remind me that in 2001 i wanted to jump with them - and i stared at those falling bodies in awe (all projected ideas, i know) that they had the "courage" to follow the urgent impulse to leap towards death and away-outside-out-of a living pained existence. i'd imagined in my mind leaping off bridges,gorges,tall buildings, waterfalls, trillions of times, but never had the nerve to leap as they'd done... in 2004, i don't feel that any more... these days, i can walk across suspensionbridges with my eyes open, i can look through the open spaces of grates bridging gorgos, and i don't imagine the rushing waters carrying me away, nor want them to... i'm trusting my own two feet to carry me just fine, AND i'm actually looking forward to arriving at wherever those feet carry me. and if that imagery isn't enough, i'll say in short. i met with my thesis advisor last night, with a mouthful of bravado and an empty hand. she listened, nodded and said, in sum: "you better move on outta here by the AY2005-2006 year. i don't want to see your ass here next year, you hear me!" and as become the custom after our avg. 3hr dinners, she gave me a warm hug goodbye. and so today, sept.11th, i decided to ride her swift kick outta this nest, rather than resist insisting that i'm not ready and it's not my time yet. nope. today, i paid my $40fee to attend the hugejobmarketconference, which i'll call ALMS. i'm going to ALMS, 12/27-29. and i'm going to write my own ticket there (a direct quote from the fabulous ms.s). thumbing anxiety, mourning anniversaries, and remaking each day calmly and decidedly inflated with confidence and certainty (yep, landmark birthyears like turning 30 will do that ) it's my time. and i'm gonna take this ticket, and herein am riding on out... for my prize, which has waited for me all along.
MUSIC: gardenstatesoundtrack
READING: blacknessandvalue
FEELING:complete
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