05.03.05 - 11:31 p.m.

send it off, hug a book, sing a showtune

riding roller coaster path of feelings, i never get around to writing here when i'm on top of the world, and then, when i'm swinging rather low i hestitate to add to post my gloom to the world.

i went to three conferences in two days on campus, one of which include a speaker foundational to the criticalracetheory movement. her talk was part history of CRT, and part homecoming, as she happens to be an alum of this place. she was just so vibrant, happy to be back, and recounting how very far she'd come since her days here... and for a few days after i practiced projecting how sweet my memories of this place will become ten years from now. i won't even worry if i'll also be a tenured professor world renowned, giving speeches and crafting policies across the u.s. and africa. i merely want to imagine the day that i'll reflect back on my time here with warmth and fondness, rather than bristle at shivering cold days extending even til may. or, worse getting stuck in a brief HAIL shower yesterday afternoon. UGGHGHGH!!!!

indeed, these three conferences each boosted my esteem, even while bringing on a headache my thoughts were racing that hard around my head - about my diss project, but also what how within each space i'm situated so differently. at the black studies conference, i absolutely let my body luxuriate a collective mass of af-am and african profs, students, and town residents. and i just love how even conference conduct reflects its attendees. it was totally okay to laugh out loud when speakers cracked jokes; or when one speaker gave thanks to her 70+ year old mother who was present, everyone stood up and gave her mother a standing ovation. or we collectively gasped aloud, clucked our tongues with anger and familiarity when the speaker mentioned a dean of an elite college once posed "would you rather have an excellent white teacher, or a mediocre black teacher" not even acknowledging that (a) very excellent black teachers DO exist and (b) the definitions of "excellence" may vary dependent on the needs of the student body.

must also haunted to remember that the *first* african american teacher i ever had was in my senior year of highschool. and that english teacher i swear was harder on me than her other students. in what's become a typical pattern, i recall turning a final research paper on virginia woolf a day late; this teacher wouldn't accept my late paper; gave me a 0, bringing my average to a D that quarter; and with that encounter, i promptly blew my validictorian chances out the window. ugh! no wonder i have such ambivalent relationships to black profs who desist the mentor mantle i've wished to crown them with in the past. lesson learned: i no longer lay my burdens down on their feet, no ma'am!

the "send off" refers to my re-channeling of my resentment at my best friend here, who's recently taken on another young girlfriend from seattle. so, while i attended part of a queer studies conference, my loneliness and irritation mounted as i'd realized i'd lost my defacto "friend to sit next to, and chat with" and i don't care if this new girlfriend's interested in "postcolonial and diaspora" stuff. sorry, doesn't make you any cooler and in fact, puts her in the "cultural tourist" category in my book, along with conveniently shacking up with my afro-asian friend. ugh. and my iraqi-american friends' now dating a boy from alabama... and well, i had another bout of resentment and dejection... must add, i'm making travel arrangements for two june weddings: my af-am friend is marrying a white boy from jersey, and then my korean-american friend's marrying a white boy from denver...

...and the point is? i'm not coming out here as a closet race hater. i am disclosing my puzzlement and sadness (and we're going way back to a WASPy connecticut hometown, and never an invitation to social dances or the prom), why oh why am i always left out of "the economy of desire"? i'm not going to answer that one, i'm just noting the pattern and clamping the pain of routine exclusion from interracial dating patterns in my current uncity... all the more reason to finish and be done, get the FUCK OUTTA here... because because because...

sent it off
...so, i enacted the best perenially single woman's revenge this weekend. while so many of my friends are indulging in their latest romances, i locked myself away for two days and poured energies into revising and printing two article-length essays that have collected dust for two years. hell ya, if i don't have a romance or a completed dissertation to show for the past year, at least i can up my publication prospects...

what's the best antidote for paranoid thinking that while i'm home alone, or watching the latest woody allen movie by myself, my friends are wining, dining, screwing, and having a jolly good old time?!?! romance my dissertation (shut up, i don't want to hear any pot shots about dry fucking here, because well, it's pathetically cruel however true about someone my age).

what joy to just send these essays off and not think about them. and truth be told, the only way i'll get a campus interview (the 2nd round) when i start job hunting is to have publications to my name.

hmmm, what else?

hugging a book
to give myself a more realistic sense of qualifies as suitable dissertation writing, i xeroxed a good 8 diss abstracts and introductions of alumni of my program. at one point, since these tomes are in the basement, i found the diss of a prof who's become famous in feminist/queer/americanist thinking and i just hugged her type-written bound diss, while no one was looking. a reminder that every great scholar has the humblest of beginnings.

streaming a showtune
i've been tuning into radio streams of soundtrack only stations, in the past. but on a crummy dark >45o F day (that felt like 35, i realized that the sunshiney optimism of musical theater's what my heart truly craves. somewhereovertherainbow, yes bring it on. someday my prince will come, possibility, potential, future, horizon, sing silly songs and believe that happily ever after awaits me too.

MUSIC: sondheim showtunes

READING: crosswords

FEELING:bedevilled by incessently cold wet weather

backpeddle
press on
bouyancy
encircle
the hub
d'land

blogging on up - 10.09.05
think not, hurt not. - 05.21.05
send it off, hug a book, stream a showtune - 05.03.05
"leave me alone" - 04.20.05
religiosity - 04.08.05

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