Freedom

Life has the distinct flavour of the interstices right about now (Mmmm, Mom, is that Nutella mixed with pear?). While I wouldn’t venture to pull out my dusty Arendt buried beneath all my editions of Valley of the Dolls and claim grandiloquently it’s between past and future, it does seem larger than the usual end of term evacuation to one’s other lives elsewhere. And evacuation does seem to be the apropos metaphor: a life frozen while on the road for three months, a temporary emergency, like a Flo-Jo Zombie invasion. I might as well be a Rock Star, except with piss poor clothes and travelling in coach. It's become humid here, Mr. Gordo’s harried with work, Big Sis started her new job, La Vicky’s new beau debuted to the gay gaggle in Little City this weekend, proving once again that lesbians do not have the corner on cheap melodrama (although the image of seven gay men lapping at ice cream cones in the heart of Little City will be one the heterolocals won’t soon forget). I spent the day tying up loose ends via email and telephone, ventured out for a pre-cooked roasted chicken, negotiated storage for the car, and to have some more holes put in a couple of old belts. No worries, I’m still zaftig (the belts are old, alas). The week directly before three months away feels like waiting for Godot, although a party on the weekend and last minute appointments promise to fill the days with blather both sacred and profane.

News came through the wire earlier in the week that a faculty member is decamping from the Sarah Bernhardt Memorial Theoretikal Skool of Hard Knocks, much to the quivering of the engorged quills of a grad student cell of refuseniks and some alumni. This faculty member arrived during my time there, although I never worked with hir, much less took a random seminar on Trendy Theory: Methods and Approaches. There was something a little too Seventeen-ish about the sartorial gesture, and ze quickly assumed the distanced, aloof countenance of the tenured faculty, which I found, even then, somewhat disconcerting. It’s one thing to have clawed your way to the top of your game, but it’s a whole ‘nother to be a Nobody with a prestigious hire. "You only work in a shop you know, you can drop the attitude." Shameless is as shameless does, however. The email correspondence, which as far as I can tell has sunk like a stone on the alumni listserv, shakes with rage at “the loss,” with the usual suspects responsible for the latest outrage: the senior faculty, inattentive administrators, the Man. There is a mildly hysterical tone to the communications, like someone wringing their hands and screaming at the top of their lungs, “Someone DO something!” while you bleed to death right in front of them. It’s nice to see that some things don’t change, one being the righteous, misplaced rage of the grad school subaltern, although it’s all for naught. The faculty member in question has simply parlayed hir way up the ladder, and it seems, given where ze is going, that tears shed for “the loss” are wasted on the gluttonous. It’s not the burning of the Library at Alexandria, after all. Civilisation shall, undoubtedly, continue her (hir?) forward march into oblivion.

This electronic re-encounter with the resistant refusenik sentiment so prominent in my time at Sarah’s Skool has caused mixed emotions. After I received the emails in question, I called the one person who was on a relatively matched time clock (i.e. North American) and who would also get all the references: La Gamine. Much to my consternation, she had already received the news (within the same 60 minutes that I had). Damn, the transcontinental chisme echo is so loud you can barely hear yourself think. We laughed about the electronic rage, but were cautious about being too dismissive. We have had our own run-ins with the mechanisms of the meat grinder, and a bad placement can be hell on (w)heels, especially when you toss race and gender into the hot cauldron of the workplace.

But still (you knew there would be a but, right?), we were exasperated by the risible defense of someone who is not being consigned to the dust bin of the profession, but has used the dark arts of reputation and connections to actually move to a more prestigious institution. I mean, what’s there not to like? Sarah’s Skool loses a bad hire and Big Name U. gains a well-paid token, not to be too cynical about it. Sounds like the perfect formula for egghead bliss, to me! See, I know some of the ulterior details of this “sudden” departure that in point of fact has been in play since the hire, if not before. I briefly served on the committee charged with determining the job announcement, and it was my first experience with the the type of unintended consequences that play out in the profession like a lingering case of scabies. Not to be too specific, but Faction A wanted Specialist X, Faction B wanted Specialist Y, and thus their hideous love child was an almost incoherent job announcement, something along the lines of this:

The Sarah Bernhardt Memorial Theoretikal Skool of Hard Knocks seeks applications at the rank of Assistant Professor for someone with specialties in X, Y, and maybe Z, with preferred qualifications including A, B, and C, or maybe M, N, and O as well, along with a strong record of teaching and research promise. Please send the usual nonsense by (date) to:

Professor Big Whig
Chancellor’s Crusty Professor of This and That
Sarah Bernhardt Memorial Theoretikal Skool of Hard Knocks
Mediocre University
Dystopic Paradise
USA

An EEOC/Equal Opportunity Employer

The result? Need you ask!? We got Specialist G, satisfying no one (do you see G listed above?). Oh Mary, don’t ask! The dog and pony show of the job talks went as planned, with one rising star (now relatively famous), one medium cool up-and-comer (who has made quite the niche for hirself at Robber Baron U. and editor of Quelquechose Studies), and candidate Specialist G. The inner mechanisms of the hiring committee were, of course, quite confidential, and how we got from X or Y to G was just one of those little mysteries, like the number of licks it takes to get to the centre of a Tootsie Roll Pop.

There were problems literally from the beginning of course, which are less important here than a) the incoherent hiring practices of departments, which occasionally guarantee unhappiness for all parties, and b) institutional attitudes and conditions that led Specialist G, now Assistant Professor G, into the labyrinth of a department in slow motion crisis. I can’t see that it didn’t benefit hir, so I am less than open to expressions of outrage over hir departure. In fact, the positive reading is that ze read the writing on the wall, and was proactive about working the system. Hey, Skoal! Good work, Eve! But I think it is interesting that the grad student faction advocating for action of some sort cannot see the institutional logics here, much less hear the pretty public discussions over the ensuing problems, mismatches, and miscommunications over the last few years. Honey, even I know them, and I’m hardly what you would call a truly interested party. I’ve had bigger fish to fry, like the smell of my own career roasting over the open fire, but that, as they say, is another story.

All of this does make me wonder about the preparation of specialist graduate students, such as myself in the past and the earnest do-gooders of today, for the sharp fangs of the profession. This, of course, is on some essential level a failure of mentorship, but what else is new? It also speaks to an oft-quoted but rarely heeded rule: All Politics are Local. Thinking you are above such plebian concerns is a sure-fire recipe for disaster. So while it may be a shame that current Associate Professor G is moving on up (yes, ze were tenured, in spite of poor teaching and weak research record), it’s not like ze will be begging in the streets. Don't cry for me, eggheads! In fact, ze will be making a lot more money, for one, not to mention living in subsidized housing in one of the world’s most expensive cities and finally has landed a co-placement for hir erstwhile partner, wandering all these years in the wilderness of the shadow of the employed. Some perspective on these things is important, I think. The academy is full of truly tragic stories, of faculty dismissed without cause, or because of a topical vendetta or racism or sexism or heteronormativity or simple personal antipathy, relegated to the margins or in fact driven out of the profession in toto, career and reputation viciously destroyed, or those thousands upon thousands who never even get in the door of the tenure track. This little ditty, alas, is not one of them.


And this, as far as I can tell, is one crucial difference between graduate school and the profession on the ground: the ability to tell the difference between tragedy and farce. The fact that such knowledge is gleaned almost exclusively from the empty skulls and crushed bones of once and future colleagues is seemingly beside the point.

Bébé Requin

Summer’s hand has finally touched Cold City, which could now be called Green City, in my recent absence back east. I returned this week to the lush fullness of our brief northern summertime after a slow spring has barely left the trees aflutter on my departure. I have, admittedly, gotten shit all done since touching down two days ago, despite a rather extensive laundry list of things to do. My lethargy is partially related to exhaustion, partially to disinterest, and yet another part to distraction. The toggling of lives here and there has me feeling the typical schizophrenic contrasts between Oso Raro, Professor and Master Detective, and Oso R., lover and intimate of Mr. Gordo and friend to a cast of thousands.

I am in a sharky mood of late, which can veer between the comic and the cutting. Borrowing a little from Roland Barthes' Incidents maxed out with a dash of insouciant pop idol France Gall, both full of the meaningful and boringly banal, let’s have a brief news roundup of recent momenticos large and small—

Fellowship












Yes, I got it. Now, where is that book, Ms. Thing?! Like Neely O’Hara, I need to start getting up at 5 in the morning and “Sparkle, Neely, Sparkle!”

Drink the Kool-Aid













A Sadistic College ex-colleague, when informed by Mr. Gordo of my upcoming fellowship year at Prestigious Little College (PLC), cooed, “Oh, that’s as prestigious as Sadistic College!” Ahem! Someone has not been paying attention! The reality is that PLC has been first tier for some time, and also has an endowment, two things Sadistic College has never been nor had. I am not one to make too much of these things (and not to get too empirical, in an icky US News and World Reports sense), but the dimensions of self-delusion in which those who drink the institutional Kool-Aid cannot see beyond their private universes and institutional hyperbole remains striking here. The tendency to believe one's own publicity is compelling. Put down the four-colour brochure and look around! Oh Yea!

Don't Throw that Rock, Girl!













Mr. Gordo and I spent a day touring Philip Johnson’s remarkable Glass House, as part of a private event sponsored by his institution (the estate opens this summer to the public). The simplicity of detail and the sparse modernity of the structure, which is much smaller than it seems in photos, was the centre of the experience, although we also toured the property and the other various structures Johnson had designed as part of a total experience. Especially striking was the underground art vault with Rolodex-like vertical flap panels featuring incredibly valuable modern and contemporary art, the sculpture gallery designed to resemble a Greek hillside village, and the crazy windowless twin to the Glass House, the Guest House with a cocoon-like Jacqueline Susann-flavoured bedroom that apparently was the favourite of Andy Warhol. My mind was filled with images of sexual decadence, a whole lotta booze, and endless cigs in a WASP-y corner of Connecticut, very Ice Storm-ish, which is also so what is old is new again.

Fame (of a sorts)!













Remember my panel of friends? Apparently, we’ve gotten an offer to put together a collection based on the panel. Or as La Gamine put it in an email today: “We're superstars! Well, we're on someone's radar...” It’s a small fame, but you take it…

Falwell













Bub-bye! If one believes in reincarnation, he’ll come back as a toad, or perhaps a flea. Not to be too heartless about it, but good riddance to bad rubbish! (Greater eloquence here and here)

L’art des Geeks










Went to see a friend’s work at a year-end show for an information technology grad programme in Big Eastern City, which only reasserted the dominance of technology over content. Not only was it packed to the walls with people (it was hot, and not in a Paris Hilton sort of way), more than half the projects featured noise, movable parts, digital imaging, or a lurid combination of all three, which meant the demonstrations were as cacophonous and busy as the glistening crowd surging through the hallways. Boyish, masculine, gendered energy filled the spaces, aggressively asserting technology for technology’s sake, divorced from meaning or rationale: Boys and their toys. Damn, I coulda had a V-8! My friend’s work, on gender transformation, was in a quiet room full of thoughtful, perhaps overly esoteric, projects without moving parts. She related that because her project involved some thinking and content, it was labeled by her fellow students as “political.” What a statement on where we are today. The whole thing reminded me of an episode of Absolutely Fabulous, where Eddie goes to buy art at a notable gallery, and when the attendant begins to show her serious work, she claims gauchely, “No, I’m interested in work worth hundreds and thousands of pounds!” To which the attendant says, “Oh, why didn’t you tell me,” and leads her to a gallery full of the most ridiculous and stereotypical art that falls under the popular notion of contemporary art. There was a bit of that striving, pastiche-like quality here: spinning mannequin heads and neon tubing, computer images and post-irony irony.

Global Feminisms










Went to see the Global Feminisms show at the Brooklyn Museum with Mr. Gordo and Big Sis, a hot mess! This show has been generating a lot of controversy in the art world, but my feelings were ambivalent (I need to see it again). The galleries were horribly laid out, making the show overwhelming with little chance of reflection. Some of the pieces were compelling, but contextually the whole show seemed ongapatchka, trying as it was to include any and everything. There was, of course, Judy Chicago’s canonical The Dinner Party, which had a mausoleum-like second wave effect in terms of its very simplistic representational politics. The crowds seemed mostly there to see Chicago’s work, and perusing the various place settings in the silent and worshipful queue was like attending mandatory chapel. Global feminism(s) is a hot buzzword now, but without a stable definitive context. In this, it risks becoming another trendy catchphrase that is meaningless but marketable. Also, let’s face it, organizing anything around race, gender, or sexuality on such a public scale is a thankless task. There’ll always be naysayers and critics who are laying in wait to rip off your wig and kick your butt, like the tough chola girls at my high school, sneaking mota in the bleachers, teasing their hair even higher, and perfecting the art of thick applications of eyeliner and purple-black lipstick. The trick is to become the chola!

The Wolf and Caperucita













What a small, pathetic man!

La Donna’s Summer of Love













La Donna recently told me, in the context of planning a visit, that she plans to decamp from Montréal to Calgary to work as a waitress (or maybe a high-priced call girl, not sure on this point) over the summer. Not sure of the wisdom of this strategy, but maybe she’ll find a cowboy and live happily ever after. After all, she should get something for a hardship post in Calgary.

Beware the Wash-and-Wear Wedding Dress













One of the reasons I have gotten nothing done since returning to Cold City is that La Vicky has been in town, courting her new love objet, a haimische Lutheran boy-turned-Jew with frosted tips (Conservative: Oh Mary, don’t ask!). I’m happy for her and all, but I have always been a little more cautious in my approach to a new relationship, whereas La Vicks, in her enthusiasm, has already adopted, after two extended dates, the nomenclature of obsequious love, with little nicknames like honey bun, love bucket, and the like. Dinner with those two was like needing an insulin shot after a couple of gallons of Häagen-Dazs washed down with 2-litre mega-bottle of Coke. I would like to think that Mr. Gordo and I are more constrained, but perhaps this is a misapprehension. In any event, it was fabique having La Vicks at my fingertips, literally just around the corner, as we cavorted from IKEA to café to restaurant and back to IKEA, although I know if she lived here full time neither of us would get anything done, we’d lose our jobs, and would have to become high-priced call girls in satin mini-shorts and Lucite heels. Not pretty! Although La Vicks has more of a chance at becoming the Mayflower Madam, via the Niña, Pinta, or Santa Maria, to hear her tell it (I would venture to say there was one or more indigenous villages strewn in someplace between Seville and Texas). The Pinta Puta, anyone? Anyone?

Quiet Afternoons a la campagne













This afternoon I drove out to the distant outskirts of Cold City, in fact beyond the outskirts, for a leisurely lunch with a older colleague, afterwards retreating to her home for Diet Coke and gossip. Her house was exactly how I pictured it would be, much like her: well lived in and comfortable. Her teenaged daughter worked on Sudoku while we sat outside on her enclosed porch and smoked cigarettes, the pool under a leaf cover, her menagerie of cats and one dog moving around the tchotckes and bric-a-brac that reminded me intimately of my great aunt’s house, a favourite place of mine growing up: vases of dusty fabric flowers, the various detritus of suburban life. The front room was a wreck of things: books, mismatched furniture, magazines, throws, papers, remotes, frilly curtains. With all the working class aesthetics, it was a home full of love and comfort, and if not exactly Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe, was a wonderful reintroduction to social life in Cold City. Afterwards, I took the opportunity to wash the car and shop at the local Target, calling La Vicks on the phone to report, amazingly, that Kiehl’s had hit the heartland!



And how was your week?!

The Sweet Escape

I have left behind the meshugas of the year-end dramas of Cold City U., with crabby professor politics and exhausted passive-aggressive recriminations, for a mini-break in Big Eastern City with Mr. Gordo. This is the first time we have seen each other since Christmas, which we both agree is too long between visits. But one has work, responsibilities, meetings, other tensions and directions in one’s life that pull and demand attention, and which have prevented us, remarkably, from planning a visit through the winter and spring. In retrospect, this strikes me as a bit nuts, which is one of the reasons why I am here now, leaving school a few days before the official end of term (although after the conclusion of classes and submission of grades). I have to return to Cold City for a couple of weeks at the end of the month for (what else?) meetings, then back to Big Eastern City for a more prolonged visit, after that I’m off to California for a teaching gig (the long green, baby), back to the East Coast, then a return late summer to Cold City. A lot of traveling, which on one hand is exciting in a sort of Jackie Susann way, but on the other is exhausting just thinking about it.

I feel I never have time to read in Cold City, torn as I am between appointments, classes, and drive time, but in here in Mr. Gordo's EasyBake, high above the hullabaloo of the urban street, I finally have time to curl up with the books I have neglected for months. I have been re-reading Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking, which I initially read over Christmas, and have begun Ian Buruma’s Murder in Amsterdam, about the assassination of Theo Van Gogh and the tense cultural politics of Islam in Europe. I am not sure about the logic of toggling between the two, as on the surface they seem thematically disconnected, but they are both intriguing to me as parables of the personal and the social in a tense socio-historical moment.

I am a worrier. I worry about my health, little concerns that I wake with, but resolve over the course of a day. I worry about my career: where is that goddamned book already!? I worry about my job: how do I placate the forces around me that are not necessarily rational? How do I myself trigger reactions both positive and negative in who I am, who I must be? What are the depths of my own “magical thinking” regarding meritocracy and performance, in the power of the institution to protect me? Why do I seem to occasionally forget my own knowledges about the institution, including the viciousness of its defense of its own structures of power and influence (a point made by Mahku on the telephone the other night)?

Can the academy accommodate my particular thinking, or should I strike out for new frontiers? (Mr. Gordo is considering a job offer in Puerto Rico: Is there room for me in this cultural organization as well?) Will I be forced to do this (Baruma’s disquisition on the limits of thinking vis-à-vis differential paradigms seems crucial here, in an oblique way)? As always, one tries to do one’s best and respond astutely to the challenges of life and profession, but at the end of the semester, when it seems everything has gone to shit, it is hard to be so equivocal. The larger problem here, the equation that remains to be solved, is how to resist becoming a slave while offering enough verisimilitude to slip under the wire. I remain unsure of my talent in relation to this task.

When does “playing the game” slip into becoming a part of the game itself (in the worst sense possible)? When patterns repeat, do we really know how to respond using our knowledge base, or do the very dynamics of the game assure a repeat, an endless loop of unhappiness and disappointment? These gnomic questions are obviously related to some sort of materiality, but I remain somewhat confused as to their answers. Of course, perhaps I just have the bad luck of knowing more than my fair share of lunatics.

An unpleasant aspect of living in multiple cartographic worlds is that one feels restless and strange everywhere. My professional life, ostensibly contained within the bounds of the superhighway that circumscribes Cold City, has followed me here via email and telephone and worry. The emotional life with “Mr. Gordo and Friends” that resides in Big Eastern City and its hinterlands echoes in the loneliness of the solitary flat halfway across the country, with its technological simulacra of emotive connection: the car, the computer, the telephone, the office; in the social interruptions of another life elsewhere that prevent a full assimilation to Cold City. This diagram of lines and tensions doesn’t even include California and Québec, which also draw me out (string me along?). Prancilla characterises aspects of my life as a holding pattern that yet is moving along. Instead of interrogating this dynamic stasis, for now I am just going with it, or as Didion once described, I am currently living on “dice theory.”

From The White Album:

I did meet one of the principals in another Los Angeles County murder trial during those years: Linda Kasabian, star witness for the prosecution in what was commonly known as the Manson trial. I once asked Linda what she thought about the apparently chance sequence of events which had brought her first to the Spahn Movie Ranch and then to the Sybil Brand Institute for Women on charges, later dropped, of murdering Sharon Tate Polanski, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski, Steven Parent and Rosemary and Leno LaBianca. “Everything was to teach me something,” Linda said. Linda did not believe that chance was without pattern. Linda operated on what I later recognized as dice theory, and so, during the years I am talking about, did I.