This ain’t Turin and no one’s got a shroud, but if you look hard enough, you may see sacred apparitions in our bakery products. At least that’s what Genevieve suggested at Dunkin’ Doughnuts the other day, and I see no reason to doubt her.
I’m sorry for not having written but by the end of this you’ll wish for another stretch of postlessness.
I’m still broken in the aftermath of the incident with my professor(s). Everything I believed about why I’m here and who I’m becoming got shattered. But I’ve already told you that. An irony, which I may have mentioned, is that much of the homework here involves telling the truth about things: yourself, beliefs, experiences, thoughts about classes. As I’ve also told you, unless I’m in the mood for having my skin peeled away from my viscera, I don’t intend to tell the truth again at this place. A professor’s comment on a recent paper almost amused me. The assignment was to write about a “culture bump”: an incident in which I ran into an intercultural challenge. Instead of following my original plan to describe Reina, Queen of Pachuca, I explored a meaningless incident. Here is the professor’s apt response:
“The challenge, I think, with this culture bump, is that it is … more of an intellectual analysis … and it didn’t have any real consequences for you… In a way I wish you had explored the bump you shared with your small group about your homestay. I think your analysis would have fit better with the models and might have been more meaningful to you. Perhaps after a period of time, you would be willing to try this other bump?”
No, I would not. And I’m surprised they would even ask. ‘Tis a pity, though, that I’m now skimming the surface of my education. However, I have begun talking in class again. My silence had been profoundly noticed, as would be the case were all traffic to vanish from LA freeways.
I don’t even remember what I’ve been up to lately. I went to the big annual TESOL conference in Boston a few weeks ago. The place was packed with older-middle-aged women who looked ready to rap the knuckles of passing miscreants. Their knit pants matched their knit jackets. “These are not my people,” I thought with panic, having just spent $40,000 to become one of them. The most notable moment during my stay was the evening of my first (and doubtless my last) karaoke experience: a massive train wreck, made more painful by my sobriety.
After the conference I got to see my old friend Beverly, and then ride in the van with the riotously funny Jess and Lauren. We made nerdy grammar jokes all the way home.
It’s a challenge to be a full-time student while attempting to figure out where I’m going to live next, and catch up on four months of bills, and do taxes, and try to find a job, and stuff like that.
I’ve been working a lot with Joseph and Curtis on school projects. We have fun. Joseph is from Namibia and a native speaker of Rukwangali. As we tried to decode some obscure aspect of English verb tenses, he noted with exasperation, —”English is one of those not-real languages. Seriously!”
I’ve been fascinated by the daily changes in weather and environment here. It’s a treat to be able to experience a real spring after a real winter.
The mud season is over already, the ground fully thawed. There’s a lot of brown but the grass is brilliant green, and yellow flowers are abundant. The forsythia of my childhood is in full bloom: clouds of color nestled among dense dead branches. The daffodils are popping up all over, and the robins are the fattest I’ve ever seen. Yum yum. The owls are back (what kind was that again, Sydney?), tree frogs chorus relentlessly all day, and a lot of small things are tweeting. People are falling in love with people, but not me.
In pondering my summer plans, I remembered that Milt has offered several times to let me use his house in North Dakota for a retreat. I wrote to ask if that might be a possibility this summer — three months of isolation to enable me to finish writing my portfolio and other last things for my master’s — and he responded that it would be okay, as long as I don’t mind living far from any Walmart and Starbuck’s. The only surprising thing about that is that those lofty institutions haven’t infiltrated the area yet. However, his sister might be using the house then, so I don’t know yet if it’ll work. Also don’t know if my tenants will be renting my house through the summer or not.
Yesterday a guy named Doug — a friend of my neighbor Peter — came over to take me for a walk, since I’ve been living in my pj’s and doing nothing but homework for the past several days. He has MS so he couldn’t walk far. He’s one of these guys who’s chronically cheerful, a condition I don’t understand. He was tired by the time we got to the old cemetery at the bottom of the hill, so we sat among century-old headstones in the chilly New England twilight. People driving by on the dirt road slowed and stared, I guess because they thought a graveyard a strange place for a chat. Go figure.
In two weeks Gen and I plan to go to a one-day symposium in … Jersey City! Wheeee. It’s the Imagination and Language Acquisition International Conference, which could be fun. Afterward, I hope to drive to Delaware to see Maw (a.k.a. Small). —”You’re a rolling stone that gathers moss,” she told me recently, and it’s true. As a result I have to take a lot of stuff from here to her house, because I don’t think I can get it all back there in one trip.
It’s way past my bedtime. Tomorrow I must arise at 6:00 a.m. to launch into the beginning of my sixth-to-last week at SIT.
A post! A POST! I’m so ‘cited.
As often, I really have nothing important to say. But I like your pictures, and I am secretly gleeful that I got to see a few of them before you posted them. Post more now, please. And thank you. And wuv.
â€You’re a rolling stone that gathers moss.” Tolerably apt. Maybe you’re more like a rolling BUTT that gathers no moss, as it gallivants down a grassy hill.
“ginning Colonel” ohoho.
I can’t be your owl expert, ’cause I don’t remember….maybe Eastern screech owls–the ones with the quavery calls….(book says quavery whistle; monotone or descending…sounds familiar, eh?)
Love to see you post/hate that the ed setting is so disingenuous, as least from the prof’s vantage….Love to “hear” your amazing voice and see the eastern pics….gad, I wish I’d been there for your sober karaoke experience….a secret desire of mine, someday….maybe you’ll give it a try number 2?
recaptcha: “archaic countries”
Swim under the ice naked at night during full moon. It will be memorable experience and help make Vermont more meaningful experience. Later go to Dunkin Donuts and eat two large jelly ones with large regular coffee with three sugars. Then think about it. That’s what I would do. God will love you for it and smile. So will all wild animals ,of Battle,brough. They know.
Lulu: We don’t talk about our mother’s butts on the blog. I still remember my old grandmama telling me that in front of the old woodstove.
Sydney: Recall, if you will, the bard/barred debacle, in which I was soundly upbraided by my scientific friend. Okay, not upbraided: educated.
Bul: I ain’t swimming under no nighttime ice, thank you very much. O, that this too too wrinkled flesh would be seen in public, Lawd, and witnesses resolve themselves into a dew. I think you know what I’m talking about.
Some days I just want to sit around and reload the page and reload the page and reload the page so I can read new ReCaptchas.
Like “commitment feigning.”
ah, yes–how could I ferget the bard-barred debacle, indeed? Methinks me’s losing the grey matter. Your venn diagram post and the commitment feigning recaptcha gave me great mirth to the point of outloud laughing….and then I became amused at the passive verbs laying around in such languid postures–your wicked wit and twisted sensibilities are in ginna-trim, I’m so pleased to see….and now for the apropos recaptcha of the evening:
hysteria Inc