Maybe we can make a metaphor

This week for the first time I'll be introducing students to Nicole Piasecki's remarkable essay "Maybe We Can Make a Circle," constructed as a letter to a beloved high school English teacher but with a twist I don't want to spoil. (Go read it first--it's worth it.)

I love so much about this essay--the way Piasecki evokes the conventions of the gratitude-for-an-influential-teacher letter while blasting them to pieces, the way she arouses strong emotions without swamping readers in gloom, the way she metes out essential information little by little and then all at once. But most of all I admire the gaps, the things she doesn't say or can't say, the questions she can't answer or maybe no one can answer. The heart of the essay beats in those gaps, in the unspeakable, incomprehensible, ineffable absence around which the essay circles.

I have not suffered the kinds of losses Nicole Piasecki describes, but I feel the anguish involved in tip-toeing around gaps. So much I can't write about right now, so many feelings I'm tamping down into a wad in the pit of my stomach, where they sit there and fester and wait to kick me awake in the middle of the night. 

And of course the worst part is that I can't even write about what I can't write about. I want to stay employed for another three semesters and I want to remain on speaking terms with friends and family and I want to continue to encourage students and colleagues to fight the good fight, but opening the door to the dungeon might loose the ravening beasts and endanger everything I care about. 

Over the decades my mother developed the habit of silence, biting her tongue and nodding in agreement until she lost the ability to speak for herself. She lived out the dictum don't rock the boat until the boat became stranded in a becalmed sea with no hope of ever reaching land.

(Why am I always transforming pain into metaphors? It's impossible to say just what I mean! And yes, I'm teaching Prufrock today, a poem more relevant with each passing year.)

One thing I'm certain of: it's impossible to eat the peach while biting my tongue. And yet here I am, dancing delicately around the gaps and wondering why I'm so darned hungry. 

Can't quite believe in the coming thaw

My relaxing Sunday afternoon was interrupted repeatedly by what sounded like artillery shells exploding on our back deck. This is the longest and snowiest cold stretch we've experienced since we got our new roof in 2021, so we'd never before witnessed what happens when the sun finally warms up the metal roof enough to release all that accumulated ice. Big chunks fell all afternoon, THUNK THUNK THUNK, and every single THUNK made me want to take cover. 

There was no sound at all to herald our power outage early Saturday morning. In fact, it may have been the lack of sound that woke me at 3:30 a.m. to a very quiet, very dark house--a house getting colder by the minute. Thirteen degrees outside and the power stayed off until 8 a.m. but we never learned the reason, only lit a bunch of candles, tried to avoid flushing the toilets (because no power = no well pump = no water), and huddled under the covers to stay warm.

A day that starts with a power outage at 3:30 a.m. is not going to feel normal. All day I felt as if I was trying to catch up with myself, trying to understand something that my brain was too dull to absorb. I looked outside and saw the same snow I'd been seeing all week, snow that could have played a starring role in Robert Frost's poem "Desert Places": A blanker whiteness of benighted snow / With no expression, nothing to express.

The resident woodsman retrieved the data card from our trailcam and I looked through photo after photo of squirrels cavorting in the woods and not much else--a few juncos, a mess of raccoons, a possible rabbit, and finally a few deer, including the big buck we've seen only on the camera, never in person. How do the animals feel about this long, cold winter? I'm sure the birds appreciate the seeds, suet, and peanuts we put out for them, but the other animals seem to be in hiding.

Facebook tells me that at this time last year I posted photos of crocuses blooming on campus, but so far this winter the campus has been covered with nothing but snow and ice. Yesterday, though, the sun stayed out long enough to warm the roof and send ice exploding onto our deck, and today the forecast calls for highs in the 50s. I may just go out and look for crocuses, and if I can't find them today, there's always tomorrow. I feel the thaw in every bone in my body--so why do I still feel the need to huddle under the covers and keep my eyes tightly shut?

Students inspire me--but what happens when they stop?

My student put her blue book in the pile on the desk with a big smile. "I love this prompt," she said, and my first thought was I need to write about why this prompt is so great, but then I got distracted by an uncomfortable question: What will I write about after I retire, when I no longer have students to feed me clever lines and cool ideas?

Maybe I'll try to resurrect the past, wallowing in nostalgia for bygone years, or maybe I'll provide up-to-the-minute breaking news about the state of my kitchen, how many socks need darning, or how high the grass has grown (with updates at 11!).

Or maybe I won't write at all. It could happen. Retirement might transform me into a barely sentient lump on the sofa, perusing a never-ending supply of British murder mysteries and heartwarming episodes of All Creatures Great and Small. I'll go around the house humming peppy TV theme songs while wondering why I ever spent so much time playing with words and ideas. Maybe I'll slowly lose the ability to put words together in meaningful ways, or maybe one day I'll just decide that I've written enough.

Or maybe not. When my teaching days are over, maybe I'll find inspiration elsewhere instead of relying on my students to inspire me. But who will step up and slide me some great writing prompts?

Academic annihilation: hybrid sport or elaborate prank?

It's always a treat when my students teach me something new, but sometimes I wonder whether I'm being pranked. Chessboxing: hybrid sport or elaborate hoax? There it is in Wikipedia, big as life--grown men in silk shorts cavorting around a boxing ring to beat each other senseless with, alternately, boxing gloves and chess moves. What's next, Scrabble Bass-fishing? Jump-rope Jarts? Nuclear Fission Badminton?

Ridiculous juxtapositions were the name of the game in my Life Writing class last week when I asked students to bring together unlike elements to suggest a connection without naming it. According to my students, writing is like cooking or woodworking, anxiety is like lousy weather, and an elementary-school playground has a lot in common with the monkey house at the zoo. Every writing assignment they submit gives me something to smile about, a much-needed reminder that creativity continues to thrive despite the harsh winds swirling around all of academe.

One of the topics at yesterday's faculty meeting was the "Dear Colleague" letter released by the Department of Education last Friday, which gives colleges two weeks to comply with federal anti-DEI guidelines or risk losing federal student aid (read about it here). Principles in the letter are vague and ambiguous but the threat is real and terrifying. Tomorrow some of my students will be writing in-class essays addressing how certain literary works relate to the College's core values, one of which is Global Perspective and Diversity. How do we uphold those core values if we're not allowed to promote diversity--or perhaps even use the word?

I keep hoping to wake up from this horrible nightmare and find that someone was just having a laugh, but if Chessboxing can be real, anything is possible. If my job gets rudely yanked out from under my feet in the next couple of weeks, maybe I can take up a second career in Cross-stitch Archery, or Chainsaw-juggling Yahtzee, or Defenestration Yoga. I'm about as well suited for those pursuits as I am for the coming academic apocalypse. 

Raise a glass to sheer survival

I could count up all the things that made this an awful week, from the snow that slicked up my road again to the deer that ran in front of my car and caused me to slam on the brakes in a way that wrenched my back, not to mention the all-day rain and gray skies and the impossibility of sleeping through my husband's night-time coughing fits, plus an annoying allergic reaction that made my ankles feel like they were on fire all day long for two days straight, but it's Friday so let's think about happier things. 

Snow-covered trees along the icy river made for a beautiful drive the other morning. Despite my three (!) separate encounters with deer this week and my close encounter with a cliffside during a dangerous skid, I am still alive and kicking--which is easier now that my ankles are done burning and itching and swelling up until they feel as if they'll burst.

The skies may have been gray for a few days but in our house the Christmas cacti are blooming beautifully--again!--and my husband brought home a lovely bunch of tulips to brighten things up. The tulips echo some hues on our current jigsaw puzzle, a collection of colorful succulents challenging our puzzle-solving ability--and what a great feeling to insert a piece that transforms a chaotic blob into something beautiful.

This has been a cupcake-and-cake intensive week, with campus gatherings for a teaching workshop, the installation of our interim president, and the College's 190th birthday party, where I cheered on colleagues earning prizes for good work and took home a little bling myself. Most of these prizes were cancelled last year but the nominations were resubmitted this year, which is how I ended up walking home with a Research Prize for the Teaching Comedy book. Plus a cupcake!

And now all I have to do is get through two classes today and this complicated week will finally be over, so let's raise a glass to anti-lock brakes, anti-itch cream, tulips, cacti, and cupcakes.