Late Spring
At the end of the semester, grading my students' work, I realize I have no time or desire left for my own. It's enough to want to sabotage the whole ordeal: give them all A minuses, strap on my shoes, and go running until I get rid of words altogether. That's the problem, isn't it? Not that I don't think or write enough, but that I do all of it with words that are too big for the life I live. What does post-structuralism or feminism have to do with buying seltzer water and wondering about the people in the car next to me? If I lived a lonelier life, maybe-- say, in a big city where everyone walks around under overcast skies, like Portland or Seattle, then maybe these larger terms would buffer my solitude. But here? In this heat? With chlorine, pollen, dog slobber, high-speed internet, and all the convenience I can shake a stick at? There's no real struggle.
I guess it's a luxury I have, then, to invent my own struggles. Join a gym and pay someone to deprive me of food, and fight me in a ring (well-padded, waivers signed, all teeth intact) to learn a good lesson. Is this why people struggle against their middle-class lives? It feels that way when you're not affecting change, or chaos, or growth anywhere around you. It makes me miss teaching in public schools. Teaching college is so easy, so lovely. The students are sparkling beacons of hope-- and while this in itself is problematic (like, say, fostering a future society of people from middle- to upper-middle class back grounds who may not have any scope of the world around them) it's ... well, fun. I make them laugh more easily than I can with other people. They're my own captive audience, aren't they?
I should take this teaching-thing abroad. Work in an institution overseas. Battle with a brand new language. Have to almost kill someone to ensure my own survival. Then I'd finally have something to write about, rather than spinning blankly upon the gym's elliptical machine while some mousy guy on the exercise bike sings off-key to his iPod. Every channel shows the same baseball game.
At the end of the semester, grading my students' work, I realize I have no time or desire left for my own. It's enough to want to sabotage the whole ordeal: give them all A minuses, strap on my shoes, and go running until I get rid of words altogether. That's the problem, isn't it? Not that I don't think or write enough, but that I do all of it with words that are too big for the life I live. What does post-structuralism or feminism have to do with buying seltzer water and wondering about the people in the car next to me? If I lived a lonelier life, maybe-- say, in a big city where everyone walks around under overcast skies, like Portland or Seattle, then maybe these larger terms would buffer my solitude. But here? In this heat? With chlorine, pollen, dog slobber, high-speed internet, and all the convenience I can shake a stick at? There's no real struggle.
I guess it's a luxury I have, then, to invent my own struggles. Join a gym and pay someone to deprive me of food, and fight me in a ring (well-padded, waivers signed, all teeth intact) to learn a good lesson. Is this why people struggle against their middle-class lives? It feels that way when you're not affecting change, or chaos, or growth anywhere around you. It makes me miss teaching in public schools. Teaching college is so easy, so lovely. The students are sparkling beacons of hope-- and while this in itself is problematic (like, say, fostering a future society of people from middle- to upper-middle class back grounds who may not have any scope of the world around them) it's ... well, fun. I make them laugh more easily than I can with other people. They're my own captive audience, aren't they?
I should take this teaching-thing abroad. Work in an institution overseas. Battle with a brand new language. Have to almost kill someone to ensure my own survival. Then I'd finally have something to write about, rather than spinning blankly upon the gym's elliptical machine while some mousy guy on the exercise bike sings off-key to his iPod. Every channel shows the same baseball game.
