this is not a metaphor. i'm at work, and i think they are doing a rush type thing - i really don't speak the language of sorority - but there are many, many girls and they are singing in unison and they were here all day yesterday and they're back today. yesterday they were all wearing purple and today they're all wearing maroon. it's pretty scary.

but that's not very interesting. things that are hopefully more so:

1. i watched jersey shore yesterday, per a recommendation. for those of you as out of the loop as i am, it's a show on MTV, their new format of reality show based on a group of friends in a beach location, like laguna beach or the hills. for those of you who missed those shows too, they were a group of super rich, super entitled white kids who were high drama and surprisingly autonomous. this new show, jersey show, features self-proclaimed guidos and guidettes with thick jersey accents. now, i've only seen one show. but in the show this dude punches a girl in the face, and is immediately arrested. because they're at a bar that has police in it. while watching this show, i realized how different my reaction was to this show than it's predecessors. i never worried that the rich kids would be taken out of context, or had their class background used against them. but this show, to me, comes off as a reality show version of the super effed up website http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/, where the joke is that poor people dress funny. and maybe i don't get it - maybe the viewers of MTV feel more of a kinship with the jersey shore characters because its more familiar to them. after all, kids born in the late eighties and early nineties have never known a time before real world was on tv. and i assume that getting on the real world, or on MTV is a goal for segments of the population. so the people on this show might seem cool to them. but, to me, it seems like it's exhibited as a freak show - and therefore it's downright insulting. am i just an uppity feminist?

2. i've finished my syllabus for this semester. turns out one of my biggest issues is picking movies for my queer theory class. there are a handful of great, queer movies - my favorite being shortbus. but i just can't show that in class, not just because it's so blatantly sexual, but because i don't want queer to just be about sex. so i'm showing but i'm a cheerleader and Pick up The Mic, which is about homo hip hop, and hedwig. but if anyone has any suggestions of great queer movies, i'd love them. (other rejected ideas - xxxy, which is excellent, but i can't show a movie in class that features a rape - the aggressives, which is an excellent documentary about the women involved in the ball scene in ny, but has no queer consciousness, which is particularly hard in the middle of the movie when one of the butch women is admitted to a hospital and to have a hysterectomy and doesn't understand why she had it and the moment is dripping with the effed up things the medical system does to gender atypical women, particularly those that are African American and poor.) if anyone wants to see the syllabus, let me know.

3. we went to see eddie izzard the other night, and he was funny. hysterical. but somehow not as funny as i had been expecting. it's called the intimacy tour, but he didn't do anything about intimacy. he did a bunch of computer jokes - which i though lukkas would appreciate. but most of his show was on creationism - or rather, poking fun at that, and that seemed pretty obvious. compared to his 'covered in bees' bit. also, he was wearing a goatee and men's clothes. and really, i wanted him to look more pretty than that.  but that part is neither here nor there.

4. finally, i want to highly recommend bear's new book, the nearest exit may be behind you. it's excellent and personable, and super smart, and like nothing i've ever seen before. if you follow that link you can read an excerpt.

ok, time to meet with a student!

over and over and over and out.

look everyone, i made bread!



it was gorgeous, and delicious, but it takes forever. so the next time i do it, it'll be for a party or something where it can all be eaten that day.

here's the "money shot".

thanks to Samantha, i thought I'd spend a little time of this sweet snow day catching my four (4!) or so readers up on the events in my life. it's a snow day, which just means I'm not at my office and I'm wearing sweat pants. To set the scene, I'm sitting right under a long expanse of stain glass windows in my red painted dining room. My laptop is under a bouquet of star gazer lilies, which i got to celebrate Marjorie's first day of work on Monday, and right next to me is an amazing collection of plants. There are four or so inches of snow right outside the window. I just love the beauty of snow. It makes me want to be a poet. this morning we refilled the bird feeder, and the birds are happily gulping away at their new found bounty.

i say this all as longhand to say that life is good. great, even. while it is a new year, it's actually the third most important moment in my year for self-reflection. My number one new years moment is festival, which provides for me such a renewal that I've come to consider it the start of a new year. my second new years time is rosh hashanah and yom kippur, the one two punch of forgiveness and renewal. so new years eve typically doesn't mean that much to me. i normally don't do anything, or anything worth talking about, for new years. I don't care for public drinking or crowded public transportation. this year, shannon, nick, eric, sarah and i went to see an amanda palmer concert with the Boston pops which was amazing. as i've already mentioned on face book, the best part (of many, many excellent parts) was when she stopped the show to deconstruct lady gaga, performance of femininity as artifice, etc. it was amazing. i was grinning like an eight year old who just meet mickey mouse and realized that mickey mouse also loves grilled cheese and stuffed rabbits, except my grilled cheese and stuffed rabbits is gender theory.

here is the rant. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wTyMiD3aew
and since my gf wasn't there, eric and sarah kindly provided me with my new years kiss.


also i ran into someone i knew from california at the show and that always makes me happy, reminds me that the world is much tinier than i assume when i'm spending all my time at tj maxx with people who mean nothing to me.

i decided this year to set some resolutions for the first time ever. so i'm going to try to avoid sugar for the rest of janauary and go to yoga every day of January. so far, so good. we'll see how it all works out.

the rest of my trip to boston was also great, except for the brief stomach flu or something that i got. family time was good, though i went to xmas dinner at my step brothers house and ate the most waspy food ever. i've had some amazing green bean casseroles, but when the green beans and mushroom soup are both from a can, it leaves some joy out of the equation. and they served canned corn, cold. made up for it the next night with fist pumpingly good ashkenosh, brisket and latkes and deliciousness. and two birthday cakes, one for my mom and my uncle. we went to see my grandmother in the nursing home, and she is holding strong in her own way - healthy enough to want to be on a diet and to have nothing wrong with her, unhealthy enough that she has forgotten how to walk. since i've had four other grandparents die, all before I was 15, (2,10,12,15) i have no idea how to handle this prolonged period of waiting for her to die.(which sarah just did in a much more abbreviated and painful way.) i don't want her to die - far from it. i totally love her, except for her blatant homophobia. but, it feels like she is just waiting it out, until she does get sick with something that will kill her. it's weird. in some ways it's a blessing that my dad died so quickly - i don't know how to handle this waiting period. (then again, it still totally sucks that he died so young, when both of us were young.)

work stuff is good - finishing up my syllabi and trying to focus to get some journal articles submitted. since i've never sent in journal articles before, i'm not sure how to start. but one thing i learned at the AAA is send it before it's perfect because it'll never be perfect.

i applied for one job just before break - lgbt studies position at yale. i realized that i'm kinda of two minds about jobs - both that i need to apply for the lowest common denominator jobs - like the georgia state lecturer gig - and the reach high in the sky dream jobs kind of job. like me, at yale? but now that i'm teaching at wash u - a school i NEVER would have gotten into as a student, I feel like I just thoroughly have no idea of how i'm read. this comes to me in a flash sometimes in other ways. like, i'm convinced i'm adorable. but what if i'm not, and it's just my ego that is attractive? or (Gasp!) what if i'm not?

I started knitting again, i made three scarves all from the same skein. it feels good to create something out of nothing again. and i might try to make a loaf of bread tomorrow. marjorie has been baking, but everything she makes is whole grain and super dense. so i might try to make a deliciously not whole grain bread. specifically, http://www.americastestkitchentv.com/recipe.asp?recipeids=4748&iSeason=9

what else? we're going to see eddie izzard this weekend, which i'm very excited about. i'm going to wear my brand new blue patent leather shoes. and marjorie's circus show is next week. i dropped out - i'm a circus school drop out. turns out my performance anxiety is made worse by being the worst student in class. (the short version is that the rest of the class folks except for marjorie have been doing circus for a long time, and none of them are going to be performing things they learned in class, they're going to be doing circus things they came into class knowing how to do.) i'll video marjorie's performance and post it. she's going to impress you.

we're not any closer to babies or weddings, but my mother has increased her pressure about both. i'm not getting any younger, she reminds me.

I've gotta say, i still *feel* pretty young.

so, when the adoption debacle happened two weeks ago, the social worker said she'd put evan and karyn on the top of her list. this meant nothing to them, since they were grieving and it didn't really make much sense, since "lists" aren't how babies get adopted. but then, on friday, they got a call. there was a new birth mom in oaklahoma that was 42 and was debating adoption with their same social worker. and she (the birth mom) had gotten burned by a set of parents that had adopted her child and then promised to keep in touch but never did. and so she didn't want to chose a new set of parents (which is a pretty difficult process of scouring baby books to find a good home for this not yet born baby - it's pretty intense.) so the social worker told her about what had happened to evan and karyn and she decided that they should adopt her baby. She was pretty far along, scheduled to give birth next week. and then yesterday she was induced because she was diagnosed as having preeclampsia. 20 hours later, a baby was born. evan and karyn flew to oaklahoma last night, and marjorie and i are flying there in the morning. She is healthy and tiny and her face is crazy swollen from the hard work of being born. She'll stay in the hospital until saturday, and then evan and karyn can bring her to the hotel. and then go to court on monday to get the ability to take her to massachusetts. and then wait nine days to get on a plane with her and fly her to massachusetts.

copious pictures will follow, don't worry.


Born 1011am
6lbs 15oz
19 in and change.

I think her name is lia haley, but i'm not sure. hell, evan and karyn don't know either. the birth mom named her. it's all happening very, very fast.

it does serve as a place where 6 or so people who care about me can all get information at the same time.

so, i think everyone knows that my brother and his wife were adopting, a little girl they were going to name leah isabelle. they matched 8 months ago, and they met the birth mother and signed papers with her about 5 months ago. she was scheduled to give birth next week, but was hoping to be induced this week, so we were all flying to tulsa in a few days.

about noon today we found out that the birth mother decided to go to a different hospital and give birth under a pseudonym. she gave birth yesterday, and gave the baby up for adoption so that state now has custody. She did not call - her landlord called the lawyer. she is totally mia.

from what i understand, my brother has no recourse to get the baby or the 50k they spent on this woman's living expenses for the last 8 months.

i'm heartbroken for them, i'm heartbroken for myself, and i'm irate that people will treat one another this way. the birth mother has been taking advantage of my brother and his wife's sincere desire to have a family, and i can't see any logical reason why. this just hurts.

i'm in my office at wash u. the brevity of this sentence does not convey the enormity of what i'm feeling. i got a totally nervous stomach walking up to the university. i'm not sure what the nerves indicate - the voices in my head are oddly reticent. but walking up to the building, what will be my building for the next two years, to start this new chapter of my life, and cleaving myself from my last few chapters - woah.

the office itself is big - there is a window and a giant brushed aluminum macintosh computer. (and an oddly tiny keyboard, which has carpal tunnel written all over it.) and two giant bookshelves i'm excited to fill with books. after i signed some paperwork i sat and talked with one of the profs - an anthro bigwig, at that - as a peer. mostly she cajoled me about not reading fiction - but it was staggering how different it felt than a student / faculty conversation. i'm glad i decided to wear a collared shirt instead of a tank top! there is a unisex bathroom down the hall which makes me happy.

things are getting there. i still feel unready for this chapter of my life, but sarah reminded me that i'll live into being ready. i arrived in st. louis yesterday and had dinner with my landlord, a effervescent gay man that was really into announcing the sexuality of everyone who he mentioned. he also told me that he considers himself and his partner lesbians because they are monogamous, and girls just don't do poly. since i was 24 hours out of festival, i set him straight on that one. we walked to grand, where the international restaurants are, and ate thai, which was quite good. i then unpacked my car, with bits of leaves falling off everything, and watched sunshine cleaning on my air mattress, the closest i had to furniture. (pretty good movie, i didn't cry so it doesn't get a strong thumbs up, and also i don't really understand the point of the lesbian subtext.) the air mattress deflated during the night, so i woke up with my back and butt on the ground, which would be funny if i wasn't so surly. i walked two blocks to get my morning coffee, which was pretty rad. the coffee was mediocre, but mediocre things are better when they are close. the movers came at nine and that was all pretty easy. now my living room is filled with boxes - the movers were impressed by how much came out of the pod. i take no credit, it was all my faithful and steady pod masters (eric and shannon) who made my furnishings into a puzzle to solve. yay for smart friends!

this weekend i'm excited to walk a block to the tower grove park and have a free yoga class and then buy veg at the farmers market. and then dove arrives, after a crazy super long flight. hopefully by the end of the weekend we'll have internet at the house and a sense of calm with our furnishings. (note: in the future, when i pack a take out first box, i need to remember to take it out first, and not let it get put on the bottom of all the other things.) my sheets and pots and pans are in that box. ah well. who needs those things? there is always takeout and sleeping bags.

for those of you i didn't see at festival, my time there was ... well, i'm unable to sum it up in a word. the first few days - maybe even week - was hard in that i had trouble leaving my consternation at the door. i worried too much, and to no avail. i was grumps about having to move, again, and make new friends, again, and buy new olive oil, again. but at some point it clicked in to me that by not letting myself enjoy festival i was only making it harder to enjoy what came after festival. either that or people started flirting with me and i got to steep in that. so the last week was great and amazing and i got to learn things about myself and other people and my muscles got bigger and the ladies ate amazing food partially because of me and i got to throw my head back and laugh several times a day.

so for now i'm in st. louis, alone, surrounded by amazingly lush parks and people walking their dogs and floor to ceiling boxes and a feeling of accomplishment that percolates up every now and then and makes me so, so excited for this life i get to live.

solipsism, over and out.

this is what i've been up to.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40170661@N04/sets/72157621051270874/

as it turns out, it takes me a while to deal with change. when i got the email about the job, i  didn't believe it. Then I got overwhelmed by all the details to plan the move (as you all probably could tell). So this weekend we decided to have an actual celebration.

coincidentally, one of my favorite artists here in london, rob ryan, posted a new print for sale on friday. So I decided I wanted it, instead of congratulation shoes, and marjorie and I biked over to buy it. The print is royal blue on pale yellow, and is a screen print of a paper cutting.
I love it. it's number five out of 111.


then we ate at this amazing Italian place - the kind of restaurant that has 12 different types of pig products hanging from the ceiling, and everything looks amazing. i had mushroom risotto and this prosciutto salad thing and it was really, really good. marjorie had the wine that came with my meal and was super happy just to be eating outside.

That night i had booked us tickets to a variety show that was inside a giant purple cow. It's called UdderBelly, and it's a pop up stage. two of the acts were hysterical, including a very meta ventriloquist  named Nina Conti and a man with a guitar whose entire performance consisted of him riffing on the audience, like singing to a couple in their matching knit wear. the final act was called record graveyard. the first few minutes the guy was on stage he kept shouting to himself and throwing rice around. literally, rice, by the handful. he'd put rice on a broom and then rub it on his face. we thought he was loony. then he explained that everyone likes to fuck about for a few minutes when they get to work. i'm still laughing about it. then he got to work, which was playing records and then smashing them. oh, art. such a celebration!

sunday we went out for lunch (again, eating outside) and i had an amazing salmon dill fishcake. then we went to a fair, and saw motorcyclists driving up walls and giant robots and a circus.  quite a weekend! 

Of course, I could only have the celebration because I've mostly figured things out. I'll be coming back from London a week early (July 5th instead of the 13th), skipping long crew but going for short crew, flying to st louis to find an apartment in the south tower grove area from July 9th to the 12th, then going back to boston, painting my house, packing up a storage container (either pods brand or door to door moving), then driving to festival and driving to st. louis from festival.

tada!

i think i somehow got off the pattern of sleeping enough and so i was walking up after 6 or 7 hours with nothing to do. this morning i decided to force myself to go back to sleep, which didn't end well. i managed to go back to sleep, but then i had this really vivid sensation of someone sitting next to me playing nintendo, and he didn't talk to me, but then he got up and told marjorie his name (matty) and that it was time for her to get up. she did (in real life, too) and when the door shut i felt, not dreamed, that i was having a seizure. i felt it in my body, my body thrashed around, and then it stopped and i couldn't move, and i was trying to get the blanket off my face so i wouldn't suffocate, but i couldn't, and i freaked out. according to wikipedia it was sleep paralysis. according to me it sucked.

ok, let's see. there's been a lot. i got my final offer letter, which feels so grownup. (also notable - grownup is what i was in my early twenties.)
I went to the museum i had mentioned, and didn't much care for it. then i went to another museum, the hunterian museum, and it was amazing. it was all these labeled glass jars with body parts of animals and people in them. and freaky ones, like giant tumors and two headed calfs and chicken heads with human teeth transplanted into them. it was totally my kind of place, i was freaked out and amazed at the same time.  you can see most of their archives here: http://surgicat.rcseng.ac.uk/(cv54ghub32es4p45i25qhw45)/Default.aspx
but seeing so many so beautifully displayed was awesome. really - it inspired awe in me. i now totally see the appeal of the old time cabinet of curiousities.

on that day i used my bike and got lost a lot. turns out, the worst way to find where you are going when you are lost in london is to ask a londoner.

last weekend we went to to the women's pond in hampstead heath. it was gorgeous there - but an uphill bike ride for the last two miles, which hurt. when we got there, we found these signs:
men literally stand around the outside, hoping to get a glimpse. one pair of middle aged heterosexual couples sent the women in to check on the situation, and when they came back, the men joked if the women now wanted to start shouting for their rights. apparently this happens a lot, since most visitors to the heath don't know about the ponds, and so they don't know there is a men only pond just a little way down. personally, i love the second sign - the illustration of the man walking is hysterical. normally, i've long been fascinated with signage - most notably how i never, ever, look like the lady on the women's bathroom door, even when i'm wearing a dress. but the man in this sign is exactly what a man who was attempting to enter the woman's pond would look like - jaunty, overconfident.

we stayed at the pond for a few hours. it was topless, which felt so european. but i took this picture of marjorie's knees because dirty knees is what summer is about.
after a few hours i had had enough of sitting and so we biked home and then took the bus downtown, to the art car boot fair. car boot sales are yard sales, and this one involved art, drinking, dancing and writing on cars, and consumerism. there was a terrible band playing, and at the end of one of the songs he said "did you like that" and the audience was less than appreciative. so he said,"well, your children are going to love it." hysterical.

i saw this on the walk to the fair, we wandered through a student art show, and it's a detail of a larger work. i love this squirell. he looks like you just caught him and so he dropped the magnifying glass. i can't look at this picture and not laugh. it was a full on installation piece, and i have no idea what it's about. but i love this creature.


since i don't have a garden, i just take picture of purchased flowers in their slow descent into death. die, flowers, die!

ok, now we're all caught up!

hi.

so i think everyone who reads this knows that I was offered the post doc. if not, well, i just spoiled it.

as was to be expected, i skipped right over celebrating and went into details.

and there are many to plan. Not only do i need to do normal school stuff, like finish my syllabi and order books i need to figure out how to get articles online. and then i need to decide what people should call me. I somehow never switched to Lexi during the interview, so I'm still Alexis. Should i switch back? Should my students call me prof matza? that seems CRAZY. but also the fact that i finished still seems like one day it will get taken away from me.

but. the real issue right now is that of scheduling.

so right now my ticket has me here until july 13th, and then i was going to fly home, see people for a few days, then go to festival for long crew, 7.19 - 8.18.  But this job starts on august 26th, and the chair suggested i come a week or two before to unpack and settle in.

and so in those 6 days i'd need to:

• rent my house for the year
• fly to st louis and find a place to live that is pleasing to both me and marjorie
• pack my house
• packing a moving truck
• plan when the moving truck will arrive in st louis

then i'll need to get myself to st louis to unpack the truck etc.

there is more, but it is boring to even me.
so, right now i'm thinking i can only get it all done if i a) leave here early and b) don't go to festival. both of these options get a serious check minus from me. i could do short crew- possibly - but i did short crew only last year and didn't like it nearly as much. but maybe compared to no festival it's worth it? it's been eight years of going to fest, i can't imagine what life would be like without it. though i might have to learn soon.

also, anyone have any experience with moving companies?

(way deep down, i'm super excited. I got a job! and it's a great job! and they chose me and it wasn't a mistake! and they're excited to have me! and they know that i'm new, they'll expect me to make mistakes! and wash u is the 12th best school in the US! and it's two years not one! and they value me as a scholar, not just hired help (a la the other interview I had). )

ok.

so it's noon. my plan for today was to go to a few museums, bike there and get lost but have it be ok, and take pictures. they are both dead people's house museums, so i think it'll be great. then i was going to go to a trans male version of the vagina monologues but it's sold out, unfortunately. so instead i'm going to go to marjorie's friends performance thing, which doesnt start until ten. on a wednesday! wackadoodle.

so then (about ten minutes later) the admin wrote me back and said that the committee hasn't made their decision yet! which is way, way better than all of the other scenarios I had in my head. They should be meeting "within the week or the beginning of next week."

ok. so, i'm still in the game.

sigh. this getting a job thing is hard!

So, the admin from wash u. wrote me that i had made a mistake on my travel report. i wrote her back, thanked her, and asked when the committee would be meeting. i then got this email from the chair:

Hi, Alexis,

Thank you for this nice note.  I expected to get back to you on the position by now, but things are moving a bit more slowly than I thought.  I hope to be in touch early next week.

Thanks for your patience.

no word yet on the job front.

but an adorable picture of me with a little person!
It's from my graduation party. the baby is elanor, moune's daughter, who was four months old. so cute! she had learned how to laugh with sound earlier that week. major landmark, i'd say.

i have yet to organize and post pictures from the last several weeks- it seems like a daunting task since there are several hundred pictures. hopefully i'll take some more today, i'm heading out in an hour or so to go to the sir john soane museum which looks quirky and came highly recommended. Marjorie's friend is in town, so we're heading to the museum and then hopefully out to vietnamese food at this place that has banana flower salad which is AMAZING.

no word on the job. my nervousness has subsided a bit, oddly enough, because now that it's not going to be monday, who knows when i'll find out. fingers are still heavily crossed, and i still worry full time as if it is my job.

they've been tingling for about 18 hours now (tho i was asleep for 8 hours of that). you see, i'm supposed to find out today, or tomorrow (what does "early next week" mean?) about the job, and i'm a bit of a nervous stress case. in my head i keep going over tiny details of my interview, and deducing that i think it went well, and then weighing pros and cons of getting the job or not getting the job. it's every other thought at this point. sip of coffee and then i think i wonder what the weather is like in st louis and then i have some yogurt and i think it's better if i don't get it because then i get to go to festival and take nate (my nephew) on a plane (to meet his sister who will be adopted in oaklahoma in sept). but then i remember i really want to have a CAREER, and then i want it, and then i get stressed about finding a home and renting my place from afar so then i think i'd rather stay in boston. uch. this patience thing is killing me. and i'm afraid to be more than a few feet from my laptop. (also - thanks to the internet, i'm newly intrigued by the idea of a hackintosh (great name and concept) where you remake a netbook (one of those light cheap laptops) to boot osx and it costs about 500 dollars.) oh jeez when will they meet and then tell me? is it good if i don't hear right away or bad? i watched 'he's just not that into you' on the plane here and i feel kinda like those girls who go on a date and then wait by the phone except i'm not waiting for a second date but to find out if i get to start my career yet or i should move back to boston and get some lackluster job and try to write and publish and get a different job that might be better because it's in my discipline but will definetly not be for the next year. uch. the reality is that i'll take it if it is offered, so i'm really just trying to protect myself from getting rejected.

other things: i was let into the country. for those of you who've never had border crossing troubles, it can be troubling. the border guy i had was nice, and it was fairly easy, but it did involve getting a slip of paper telling me that i'm being detained and then i sat on a bench  for an hour or so watching hundreds of tourists get let into the country easily. also i was told in no uncertain terms that this will be my last time in the country for a while, (until 2010, i assume) so i can't go to amsterdam or to italy or any trips like that that dove and i wanted to take. it'll be fine, though, since i'm here and it's ok, and i can be a tourist in the uk for 5 weeks which is great. though today (and possibly tomorrow) i'm not leaving the internet. there was another woman who was on my bench, she had a baby that wasn't hers, she was a paid babysitter trying to enter the uk with a child that wasn't hers and didn't have a passport. the authorities didn't like that, and whisked her away to a family room, which sounds nice in title but probably sucks. 

oh, and i decided to cut sugar out again, like i did last summer, which my body really enjoyed last year, as i lost a bunch of weight and had much more stable moods. this time i'm trying to cut out artificial sweeteners, too, so goodbye splenda!  i decided to have a non-monogamy agreement with sugar, in that i can have one sweet thing a week, so that i can know that i can have that and i can not think about it. also my step-father was just diagnosed with diabetes (type two) and my (what kind of modifier to i use? he's more than my biological father - but actual father seems mean to say) my dad had type one diabetes so i'm always worried that i'll have to stop eating sweets at some point. coffee without sweetener is just not as good. 

this weekend we went and saw marjorie's friend do performance art, and her piece was good about gender and dancing and dirty dancing and baby and patrick swazye.  however, other stuff was just nonsense. like the girl in a white dress who cut holes in her dress and then put flags in the holes and then stepped on birthday cake, very slowly and then wrapped her arms up in flags hanging from the ceileng and then poured red paint down her dress while playing seagull noises from a tapedeck. what? it made me glad i hadn't chosen performance art as a way of life because reading my students papers is one thing but having to wade through terrible performance art seems so painful. also there was a panda in a panda costume who did installations in the bathroom, you were supposed to use the toilet while she was in there scribbing on the walls while creepy doll baby toys sang to you. huh? and this guy - not as a performance - was hitting on marjorie as i was in the bathroom getting hip checked by the panda and then i came out and he made some comment about us like "well, that would only make sense if you were together" so we said we were and he got totally flustered. then we went out for amazing curry and the restaurant gave us t-shirts so i now have  a t-shirt that is monogramed with the word "LaHore" which is funny everytime.

ok.
i'll post when i know more.

sigh.

to patience.

l.

or at least changing. samantha's challenge did not actually convince me to post everyday, which confused me more than anyone else. where is my unflagging sense of competition that guides me through the day? apparently it flagged. but i've been super into reading everyone's daily updates, and that sense of community, as weird as it is, inspired me to write again. twice in one week! pretty good odds for me.  so, thanks samantha, and thanks carrie, sarah, brandy and jason, as i've really enjoyed reading your updates.

now back to me and this odd little solipsistic excercise. i'm back in boston for 30 hours, and i need to spend today writing thank you notes and going to the bank and getting prescriptions filled and packing and getting new toothpaste and generally getting ready to leave the country for five days.

my trip to st. louis was great, the campus is beautiful, the people were really nice, my talk went off without a hitch. i left the six hours of interview feeling like they really liked me, but i have no idea if they'll hire me. I think i did the best job I could do, and that's all i can ask of myself. They'll let me know next week sometime.

this week started off with a bang - on monday i finished two syllabi (queer theory and male masculinities) and an application for the queer dissertation competition and then went to try on my suit, bought for me last fall by my mother so i could interview at AAAs. long story short, it didn't fit, even though i had worn it to my defense mid april. the last few months of iowa time and dissertating led to me sitting on my tuchas too much and eating too much sugar and driving instead of walking and so i gained weight. my mom (who was a real champ) and i got in the car, and as marjorie likes to say, we threw money at it. we went to department stores, and their suits looked kind of crappy but cost many dollars, and then i went to ann taylor, one of my new favorite stores, oddly enough, and bought a suit that i loved. the pants are petite, and the jacket is long (because that's what they had in my size) but the overall effect was good, actually much better than my original suit. also - its a wrinkle free polyester material so it's perfect to travel with, which is good because about the only time i need a suit these days is when i'm no where near home.

so - information aside - my feelings about this event were in two different categories. first of all, i was mad at myself for gaining weight. fatphobia strikes again! but there was also really intersting gender stuff here too. like i like wearing boys clothes in my day to day life, but when i get dressed up, i like wearing girl clothes. and they can be girl clothes inspired by boys clothes, like my suit isn't a skirt and my kitten heels are wingtips, but they are girls clothes. made to fit a woman's body, which i indisputably have. and i really don't like wearing girl shirts with boy pants, as it doesn't match somehow. this issue is larger than the suit, of course. i went to a friend's wedding this past weekend and she and her wife both wore dresses, different from each other, both a single color (one purple, one blue) and they looked really nice because each one was wearing a dress that fit their body. neither one was in white, and so it wasn't like one was the bride, and the other not, or the groom, or something. neither person is someone who wears a dress in everyday life, either - and it made me think of my eventual wedding. (which is nowhere near now, not engaged, still just a fantasy). what do i wear at my own wedding? i had settled on a lady tux before this wedding - but now i'm less sure. maybe i want to be a wedding princess with a gorgeous dress, too. maybe this is my day where that part of me gets to come out and shine. and i don't know how this is tempered by my own homophobia - do i want to wear a tux because i assume someone at a wedding is wearing a tux and the likelier candidate is me? do i want to wear a dress because girls are supposed to wear dresses and i can't allow myself to be comfortable that day?

so, i'm terrible at this blogging thing.

things are good overall and i have a million pictures to prove it. two graduation parties (one mine) two weddings (none mine) and a lot of running around. note: it sucks going to a wedding when you don't exactly have a place to live. people kept asking me, so where do you live?

the answer - since i've been a terrible writer on this thing - is quite complicated. i leave tomorrow for an interview in st louis, and then on friday go to london for five weeks (if they'll let me in the country!).  then i come back and a week later go to festival for a month and then move back to medford ma and unpack my house and then start looking for a job. unless i get offered the job, which means i'll still go to london but i'lll most likely have to skip festival because i'll need to fly to st louis to find a place to live for marjorie and i (who will still be in london, mind you) and then go back to boston and pack up our house and rent moving trucks and move our things back to the midwest so that i can be ready to teach in late august.  sheesh.

but. the point of this post.

at yesterday's wedding  they did a reading of the velveteen rabbit and i was glad to hear it so i'm posting it.

For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his rigging in technical terms. The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn't know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles. Even Timothy, the jointed wooden lion, who was made by the disabled soldiers, and should have had broader views, put on airs and pretended he was connected with Government. Between them all the poor little Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse.

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."
 

text of the entire book is here.

from: Administrator of University of Iowa Graduate College

in other words. as of 2:57 pm, on monday may 11th, I'm a doctor.

(ps- yes, mom, that is a typo in the email they sent)

 

got a new bike.

a complete draft was finished and sent off a full week ago. today is friday. i just woke up, a little before noon, and put on my vacation pants, and now i'm sitting and staring out my living room window for the last time. marjorie is moving apartments, so when and if i return, it won't be to this apt, or this window, or this quiet. i'm staring at a flowering - plant - cabbage thing that has changed shape many times since marjorie gave it to me for valentines day. it looked like a purple cabbage on a stalk,with a couple of long stringy hairs sticking out of it. since then it has transformed in shape, growing 8 or 9 times in size from it's original compacted cabbage shape. the purple leaves opened up to allow a green shoot to grow up and out, bending and twisting toward any available light. its the story of the ugly ducking compounded with the unebelievable wonder of nature. i spend so much time deconstructing what is nature that it's sometimes good to sit back and marvel at it.

we went to bath to celebrate the completion of my draft and marjorie's term paper, and it was good, sweet little town with a pool for grownups. i ate my first ever bannana split, and i can really see the appeal. oh no. i didn't mean that as a pun. it's terrible. now i can't change it. uch.  what else - we walked around and fell ever deeper in love and had amazing breakfasts. the bacon here is different, its  "back bacon," which means it's like a piece of bacon with a piece of canadian bacon attached. is "canadian bacon" a real concept? it's what i'd get at mcdonalds as a kid, an egg mcmuffin hold the egg and the muffin. anyway, this back bacon thing is good. damn good.

i fly back to boston next tuesday, and i'm not quite sure what my next few weeks will look like. i need to do my first deposit, but i need to get comments back from my advisor before i can make the changes. for now, i'm in a holding pattern.

speaking of holding pattern, i got a great rejection letter the other day. it was for the job i interviewed for and didn't really want. the chair of the committee told me that the entire committee was  "extremeley impressed" by my interview.  i'm sure it's because fae took me shoe shopping right before the interview.

i'm very much in heavy like with three bands right now - beirut, antony and the johnsons, and thao. it feels good to have new music, like it makes it spring. 

i found a place to live in iowa city for two and a half months. it's unfurnished, so more things to cobble together. after this year i don't want to move again for a long time. i miss the stable life, i miss buying a large size of olive oil. i don't miss my car, which is good to note. but i desperately miss my bikes.  and then after that i'm not sure where i'm moving or when.

i still don't know what i'm doing this summer - whether i'm going to festival or living in london or living in my house which i miss so much and trying to get a job. i'm not drawn to festival, which i'm trying to decide is something to listen to or proof that i need it ever more so.

oh! i'm reading two books i like - the biography of alfred kinsey and in cold blood by truman capote. that capote had a way with words. still nonfiction, both of them, but not theory or stuff about gender or culture. crime and biographies are not something i've even been drawn to. but the weightyness of both tomes has kept me interested for quite a while so far.