The good things

That last post from Congress was really whiny. In fact, it didn't really reflect the goodness that the conference represented for me. (I do have another whiny post brewing, unfortunately - but for now, the positive!)

It was good because though there seemed to be some incomprehensible stuff on the program, the few sessions M and I actually chose to go to were really top-quality. Really. They excited me about the state of the discipline in Canada. I left yesterday morning's session in particular feeling absolutely invigorated. It's not often that I feel that way at a conference - so entirely positive.

And I made some good connections with some lovely new people.

But perhaps the most positive aspect of my experience at Congress was that I felt myself taking my place at the table. I have spent the last two years at two different universities, on contractual Visiting Appointments. I didn't realize until Congress just what a difference it makes to my state of my mind and sense of myself, to be about to step into a tenure-track job. I feel as if I can take up some space in the profession, you know? I feel like I can contribute to it, shape it, claim it. It wasn't until I felt this way that I realized how lacking that feeling was before now. The stresses and uncertainty of contractual work meant that even though I'd passed the hurdle of a PhD and was called "Professor," I still felt suspended -- almost like a grad student...(I am remembering that Flavia had a post some months ago about this feeling of being recognized as a mature scholar...as is often the case, I am just confirming the brilliant Flavia!)

So, for instance, I was able to talk with a close friend of M's - the one who did the fab presentation yesterday morning, who is a fairly well-known and important person - about perhaps bringing her all the way out to my new Uni to give a talk. I will have the ability to make decisions like that (contigent on funding, of course), especially because of the shaping/admin role I will also have at my new job. And another scholar who blew me away is someone I can imagine hiring when another post comes open in a year or two...I will keep in touch with her and alert her to the post whenever it becomes available. I would never have thought like that before. And I realize how nice it is to do so.

And, notwithstanding the ex-friend who hates me, who could well be spreading nasty and, I can only imagine, unfounded rumours about me across the country and discipline, it is nice to be able to plant myself firmly in the Association as if I am someone who might matter within it.

Congressional whining

Hello, I'm at the Congress. You non-Canadians, this is an annual congress of the conferences of 70+ Canadian scholarly Associations. At a different university each time. So, like, imagine the meetings of MLA and AHA and APA all happening at once, plus assorted smaller associations. Apparently it is the largest scholarly gathering in North America. This time, it is taking place at the University of Saskatchewan, in Saskatoon. It is, as you can well imagine, a ridiculous academic circus. (Where, today, it poured buckets of rain and there was a high of nine degrees. Nice.)

Our panel yesterday went beautifully, M and C and I. I'm really pleased to have brought those two together. They adored each other. And the panel worked so well - even the arc of the three papers was perfect. And I even heard some positive feedback on my work, even thought it officially sucked, so that was nice. M and C's papers were tight, stellar pieces of work - I was proud of them. At night, the three of us went for dinner at some ridiculous tavern because all of the "good" restaurants in town were all full to the brim with visiting academics. We ate Tex-Mex food and drank neon green margaritas. It was a treat. We are already talking about a "sequel" at next year's Congress in Vancouver, so successful was the whole thing. I am especially happy to be seeing M. We're so close, and it's so amazing - we've only really been friends for about a year. But I talk to him more than almost anyone else in my life.

But my scholarly association is shite, people. Reading through the abstracts in the schedule, I was truly embarrassed by some of them. How can academics submit abstracts so riddled with grammatical errors that they are almost nonsensical? How are they academics? More pressingly, how is the association accepting these abstracts? It bugs me.

The other thing that really pissed me right off was the fact that they were supposed to award an undergraduate essay prize. And they just didn't. And I had one of my students apply for this prize, and wrote a letter in support of her. It's funny - when I saw the call for submissions for this prize, I remember thinking that it felt hastily put together and just a bit dubious. It was being released really late, considering the deadline - meaning professors would have to adjudicate the prize in the middle of every uinversity's exam period and marking stress - and there was important information missing from it, so that I had to write to the person and ask clarifying questions. But of course, I followed through because I took it on good faith that they would adjudicate the prize. You know what? They didn't, it seems. A prize presentation was on the schedule - and it just didn't happen. They just didn't do it. That really pisses me off - my student took the time to revise that essay and submit it, and I took the time to talk with her about it and to write and send off a letter in support of her. And these folks just couldn't get their shit together. That seems really grossly unprofessional, to me, and all the things that have happened with the association these couple of days have made me rethink my membership in it. I want a new association!!

Anyway. Partly because of the suckitude of my association, and partly because of the terrible weather, this was a somewhat depressing day (until the end, when M and I went to a reception and had wine and Deep Conversations). It wasn't just that, though - it was that there is just something freaking depressing about Congress. It's actually really alienating, really isolating. Even though there are 6000 people there, you feel alone, somehow...wandering around the vast spaces of the campus, running into almost nobody except other lonely, straggling souls. Where are all the people? you think. It just feels so fragmented. And even with all the talk about interdisciplinarity - and I'm nothing if not an interdisciplinary scholar, so that "talk" means much to me - you have no way of knowing what is going on in other scholarly associations, or even which building their meetings are in. So, for example, at the tavern last night I ran into a friend from last year's Uni City - someone I haven't seen for a year, whom I like very much - and we knew we wouldn't get a chance to see each other again because we are inhabiting these different spaces here. It feels so incredibly lonely and wrong as a way of organizing an academic life.

And on the other, completely opposite hand, today was depressing because I realized just how claustrophobically close we academics can be, here in Canada. Where the communities just are small, by virtue of our small populations. Where there's no anonymity. I was thinking about this because I saw someone who full-on loathes me, at my association's meeting. I had seen her on the schedule, and was nervous about running into her. The story there is that we used to be great friends, early in grad school. Great friends. Very close. Then, sometime about six years ago, very suddenly, she apparently decided I was the devil, for reasons completely unbeknownst to me. I kid you not - I have no idea what the problem is. Really, truly none. I do know that even when we were friends, I was put off by the intensity of her dislike for some people - she appeared to get really wrapped up in rage at people for no reason. So I guess I am one of those people. And it hurts my feelings, because I actually think I'm a pretty kind and ethical person who doesn't deserve that. Anyway, today I passed her in the tiny lounge on a break between sessions. I walked about 14 inches from her, sort of squeezing between her and another person to get by. Because I want to make this okay, and because I don't have anything against her, I looked directly at her and smiled - as I have done before, a few times when I've seen her over the last few years. As always, she ostentatiously sneered at and then ignored me - it was like "I despise you, you are dead to me."

And I just felt sick because of the smallness of this community. Who knows what she says about me, how far her noxious hatred of me has travelled? It's sickening to know that she could well be spreading quite nasty shit about me to who knows how many acadmics in this country, and that I don't even know what the source of the loathing is. And that I could conceivably spend the rest of my career dealing with this.

So yeah, that was today - simultaneously saddened by and longing for academic anonymity in a very small community in this country. But I bought fun books at the book fair - that always cheers one up, right?

Yay!

I am pleased. As much as I try not to be a running obsessive, and don't let myself fall over the edge into worrying much about numbers like heart rates and race times and kilometre paces, I did have a goal for my half-marathon this morning. And I realized as I ran how very badly I wanted to meet it. I did want to come in under 2 hours - that's all I really cared about. And I did - I came in at 1:57:12. In the top quarter in my age category, and the top fifth of women overall. So I am pleased.

Especially seeing as how I've been secretly battling a cold for the last three weeks - about which I haven't blogged because I haven't wanted to really admit it. But I've been stuffing myself with Cold FX, appearing to get rid of it and then having it come back, for weeks. And yesterday it really started to come back in a big way. So I ran this morning with a sore, swollen throat and on tylenol because I felt chilled and...just kind of bad...

It was very cool and there was a light-medium, steady rain for the second hour. It was really refreshing conditions. And now I am done. Hooray! And I have my eye on the half-marathon in Scary City in early October...

*

And tomorrow morning I have to get up at 4am to fly to the Congress in Saskatoon...yuck. I am flying from Ottawa to Toronto, where I am changing planes. My close friend M, who is one of my two co-panelists (the other is my colleague, C), is flying in from another city and meeting me at the Toronto airport - we will fly the leg to Saskatoon together. We have 3 1/2 hours from when our flight lands to when our panel begins. So, blogosphere friends...please send "no delay!!!" energy the way of M and I and our flight...let's not even talk about how bad a significant delay would be...

And once that damned panel is over, I will be so, so happy. I am so underwhelmed by my paper. I am hoping nobody comes to our panel, which is terrible of me. I see that the competing panels might be more interesting to the breed of conference participants who will be there. But then C is a pretty big name, and M's paper is provocative, so that is a draw to ours. Oh, fret, fret. Please to also send "the panel will be great" vibes our way!

Tomorrow night: dinner with M and C - I'm so excited for them to meet; they have some intirguing similarities and differences in their work - and much wine. And finally relaxing after this crazy race weekend and panel nonsense!

Finding housing in an imagined community

Ah yes, my housing search in Scary City. So, as I indicated in my last post, it's been hell.

First, there is the problem of the ads and their crazy exclusivity. It occurred to me yesterday, while I was looking at socially critical contemporary art in the National Gallery of Canada, that I could make a nice little exhibition from the rental ads I see in Scary City. They are unlike anything I've seen before - and I've looked at a lot of rental ads, being the chronic mover that I am, and in several cities. Some of the most common refrains are "Christian couples preferred," "families only," "35+" or "40+," "no parties."* It's not all about what they don't want - high on the list of positives are "right on the golf course!!" and "carport."

And, of course, 90% of the ads specify "no pets." The remainder say either "Cat OK" or "small pets negotiable." Needless to say, Mr. K is not coming with me - ex-GF and I decided that for good. (Which is really, really sad, but he'll ultimately be happier in dog-friendly Home City, and in his One True Home, ex-GF's place...he's really made it clear these last few months, living elsewhere with me, that he's more comfortable there...)

I feel as if these housing ads are a great window on the imagined community of Scary City. And you know, I try to feel positive about the whole move, I really do. But this imagined community of golf courses and family-values Christians? It freaks the shit out of me.

Anyway, I've of course been calling people about the ads for places that would deign to take me, as someone who is under 40 and not Christian, and might want, you know, to have the occasional cocktail party. I am getting nowhere. People say, "I'll send you pictures," and I never hear from them again. Or, as with yesterday, I'm just on the cusp of getting the place - I've been told that it's mine - and suddenly it falls through. The number of disappointments I've had has been pretty mind-boggling. I can't really figure it out - I've rented places in other cities sight unseen before, and people have been perfectly friendly and non-suspicious and amenable. Best I can figure, it's that the vacancy rate is almost 0%, and so if there are 40 people standing there in person, chequebook in hand, they're going to pick one of them. But I have to say, I feel as if a lot of this has been pretty disingenuous.

I have posted a "wanted" ad, and several people have contacted me, but their places have all been out of my price range. (I don't know what people think; they see "professor" and they think I must be a millionaire.) They tempt me with photos of these gorgeous apartments, but it's just not feasible - I've already had to up the rent I was willing to pay because the city is expensive, and I really can't exceed it.

After a recent tangle with some lying bastards who told me a place was mine, I decided to book a ticket out there from June 4-7 to look for a place in person. So I can be one of the people standing on the doorstep with chequebook in hand. Sigh - I had just been thinking, lately, about how I fly quite a lot, and that's not so good - I'd like to try and reduce that footprint a little. But off I shall go. Which means three return plane trips for me in just over two weeks. Not what I had in mind.

Anyway, that's where things are at and that's the source of my frustration. I know it will all be okay in the end, but goodness, it's been a pain!

*The "no parties" thing is not a response to a city that's trying to cope with some insanely huge and rowdy student population. The student population is not that big, and the overall demographic of the city is older. So this seems to me to be just another value judgment and bit of gatekeeping.

Greetings from Ottawa

Here I am in Ottawa, where my father lives. I travelled here yesterday morning; it is this city's race day I am participating in on Sunday.


I went for a run yesterday. It was awful. It was painful. Oh god, I'm so hoping that's not an indication of Sunday's race. At this point, I am chalking up the pain to a) the fact that I had had drinks and four hours of sleep the night before, and woken up at 5:15am to travel here, and b) the fact that it was extremely hot and humid yesterday, and there was a smog alert...Yes, this must be what it was...I am more than ready for this race, and I've never had my lungs hurt like that before...My body, besides being tired and probably a little hung over, hasn't yet adapted to this kind of sickening heat. I shall try again this afternoon. Thankfully, it's supposed to be cool and rainy on the day of the run. And I won't touch a drop of alcohol between now and then. And I will have long sleeps...

Anyway. Life here is nice, other than that. Ottawa is always a holiday city for me. I do lovely things, like go to the National Gallery, which I'm going to do this afternoon - there seem to be some great shows on at the moment - and take myself out for sunny patio lunches (also on today's agenda). I'm also going to make a visit to the cats on Parliament Hill. If you're ever in Ottawa, you have to check them out...there is a colony of once-stray cats on the grounds of the Canadian Parliament...they're fed and cared for by a local animal lover, with vets donating medical care (and, I presume, spaying and neutering) and people who stroll by filling the donation box. They are sweet, domesticated, complacent animals. There they are, just lounging on the grass or in their little cat houses, in the shadows of Parliament. This never ceases to amaze and delight me, this quiet phenomenon.


And I have fiddled with my conference paper for Monday, and it seems done, if pretty unsatisfying. Now I have to turn my attention to reading a book for review, which is due next Thursday. Ack. Given that I'm kind of mostly busy while I'm here in Ottawa and then I'll be in Saskatoon Congress-ing Monday through Wednesday (and reuniting and carousing with my friend M, who is on my panel - this'll be the last time we'll see each other before I move away), there's not much time for this. I suspect I'll be reading the bulk of it on my flight home from Saskatoon, and writing the review the day it is due. What can you do?

In other news, I await news of whether I have a place to live in Scary City. I've had the most hellish time finding a place ...Ugh...don't even get me started. (Though I am sure I will find time to rant about it soon!) Keep your fingers crossed for this place, which is a little wee tiny two-bedroom carriage house! They're just checking references now...let's hope!

Update: Well, of course, given that this housing search is godforsaken, this house has fallen through. I've lost count of how many times this has happened now. I can't tell you how frustrated I am. (This isn't about references, by the way - apparently the woman I was dealing with and her husband haven't been communicating well and he rented it out although she intended to give it to me. Whatever. But, truly, fuck.)

A blogiversary

Hey, today is my one-year blog annniversay.

I started this blog last year on the Monday of a fricking insanely freezing Victoria Day weekend, as I was coming down with a bad cold. I'd wandered into the blogosphere by chance - the first blog I stumbled across was Sfragett's - and loved what I read there every day. After about six weeks of reading, I decided to create my own. I sent fan letters to Maggie and Flavia informing them of my devotion and my new blog. And that was the beginning.

It's been fantastic. I've now met four of you in person. I've made a close friendship with one. I've even gotten new-to-me furniture out of it all! I've had so much support from all of you, and learned a hell of a lot, too. Your advice is always spot on. You are funny and wise.

When I started this endeavour, I was self-conscious - anonymity didn't prove freeing, necessarily. For the first few months, I fretted about what I was writing. I don't anymore - I consider that a victory.

Also, those first few months were characterized by a lot of long, weighty posts on "issues." I don't do that anymore, really. I am not sure why not - probably because the issue posts were my reaction to feeling self-conscious.

I still don't write much about my day-to-day life - my errands and administrivia and social life - because I think those kinds of blogs demand a humour my writing doesn't have. But I do get a lot from ruminating on my work life and occasionally on my personal life - and from hearing what you have to say.

Sigh. I had planned a longer, weightier post than this, but it's been a long day: up at 7, newspaper and tidying and breakfast, grading a leftover student paper, long dog walk, a phone chat with friend M about our conference panel next week (while I ate lunch - how rude of me), yard work, run, more yard work, another dog walk. At least it was almost all outside in the sunshine. And now shortly I'm off (with ex-GF, who else?) to have a bite to eat and see another screening at the queer film festival. So the more thoughtful post about what this means will have to wait, possibly for quite a while.

But I just wanted to say thanks to all of you folks and how happy I am that I found this little slice of the cyber-world.

Oh please...

Let me actually be on the edge of a breakthrough with this paper.


I have what is essentially a complete draft - and it is terrible. I came to the library, where I am now, between film screenings, to try and finish it up. And I realized just how deeply, deeply, it sucked. Like, truly deeply. It says nothing. It is pointless blather with no argument. I was sososososo despairing, and thoughts about my imminent and spectacular scholarly failure overcame me - predictable fraud-thoughts: "Why did a good, research uni like this hire me? Iam feeble-minded. I'll never be able to publish anything again, and I'll never get tenure. I am sunk!"


So despairing was I - I am really running out of time with this paper - that I decided just to go and try to calm myself with a cup of tea. I had exited the conference paper's file and was just about to shut down the computer when I was struck by some thoughts. I opened up Word again and quickly typed up notes, to remind myself when I open up the beast again tomorrow. Then I went to the bathroom, and in there I had a related chain of insights. I immediately scurried to one of those leather chairs to scribble them down in my paper notebook.


Oh, I so so so hope that this will lead somewhere, and that it won't involve rewriting the whole thing. Ack. I'm so nervous and worried, I could eat my own arm.

Running highs

This morning I had my last long run before my half-marathon next Sunday - though I am tapering now, so it wasn't really so long - just roughly half the distance, rather than the full 21+ kms that i've been running the last four weeks or so.

I have to say that I am really feeling strong and happy in running these days. It occurred to me in the winter, when I was beginning to train in earnest for this race, that I chose to do it because I needed to feel strong right then. As I still do, now. What with all the upheaval and angst of the winter, I needed something to focus on. Something that was about nothing but me, my capabilities.

And it's been that way. I've felt very strong and very healthy when I'm running. I get to meet this part of myself that I rarely see - it's kind of fierce and determined. And I've had lots of moments, over the last six or so weeks, of pure runner's high - aided by my trusty running soundtrack, which currently consists almost exclusively of the new Arcade Fire album and the frenetically paced Awoo, by The Hidden Cameras. There was one moment a few weeks ago in which, I must admit, I was blinded by ecstatic tears as I listened to No Cars Go, while I ran along a trail overhung by budding trees.

As much as I try not be a running obsessive, I can already feel my attention focus on next Sunday's race. I have a personal goal, time-wise. It's doable. What I hesitate to declare as a goal - though I so badly want to - is to beat or at least match my time from the last half-marathon I ran -- which was ten years ago. Hence my hesitation. Cause that's probably really just setting myself up for failure. But damn, it would be sweet...

Non-date follow-up

So this morning I had my dog walk with the sweet and lovely person I don't want to date!

Going into it, I was a little apprehensive. The email she sent yesterday afternoon to confirm was all "I need to relearn how to have fun", in a kind of "I hope to be relearning with you, my darling..." way. Eek.

We had a nice walk, though. She actually showed me a hidden gem of a little park that I'm so happy to know about - and shocked that I'd never seen before, considering that I once lived a mere three or so blocks from it! She is very interesting (though perhaps slightly too chatty-with-few-words-in-edgewise for me).

Anyway, as we approached the place where we were going to go our separate ways, I started to feel nervous about what plans she was going to want to make for getting together again. Sure enough, she said, "the lesbian and gay film festival is on right now." (Duh!! I know, that's bitchy - and don't worry, I didn't say anything like that - but that's a huge event. I don't live under a rock!) She started skirting around the "did I want to catch something together" question. I reeled off the three screenings I have tickets for, and then quickly said, "And then I'm going out of town for a week." Which is true - early Thursday morning I'm leaving for my dad's city for a few days, in part to run the half-marathon, and then going from there to Saskatoon for the Congress.

It was, perhaps, graceless, but I think I was able with that move to make her understand that I'm not up for dating. If I were, I'd surely have invited her to one of my films or volunteered the idea of getting together as soon as I get back. And this way, we got to avoid having any kind of awkward conversation about "monkishness", "I'm-a-messiness", or "I'm sleeping with my so-called ex". It was probably the wimpy way out, but I think it worked. She said that if I wanted to go for another dog walk sometime, I should get in touch.

It is interesting to me how uninterested I am in her, in any kind of romantic or sexual way. Like I said before, on paper, she's definitely "my type".

Anyhoo. It's a gorgeous day out. I shouldn't be in here writing this, I should be out in the sun doing my errands and eating a popsicle on a bench!

Unknowable outcomes

"But I have to admit that there is a demand in my writing...that a sort of opening, play, indetermination be left, signifying hospitality for what is to come [l'avenir]: 'One does not know what it means yet, one will have to start again, to return, to go on'..."
-J. Derrida

OK, I know it's gross of me to open a blog post with a quotation from Derrida, but it's just that this - which I read in the context of doing some research for the paper I am now writing - captures my writing anxiety perfectly. I know he was writing about a very different context - the notorious difficulty of his own work - but if I work on the terrain of the literal with this quotation (vile traitor that I am) it tells what is happening to me with this paper I'm writing. Which is just an intensification of my writing process in general.

Which is that I never know what's going to happen. And that stresses me out. Big time.

I have tried to be the kind of writer who plans. But every time I try to write an outline, I end up with approximately three point form notes. And they don't correspond to anything that actually unfolds in the work, in the end.

For this new conference paper, which I have to have finished a week from yesterday, I started with nothing. I didn't even have a three-point 'outline'. I had a couple of questions. They aren't going anywhere very fast, though yesterday I finally sat down to write and came up with a relatively paltry 750 words. It is like I watch what pours out of me and am estranged from it...I don't know what's going to happen. That indeterminacy, that very strong element of chance, seems somehow wrong and bad an unscholarly of me. When I make a choice to go in Direction X, and am leaving behind all the other possible directions, it is terrifying because I don't even know what all those other possibilities are...because they only become clear to me in the writing. So if I don't pursue them, I'll never know them -- and what if one was the "right" one, or at least a better one??

It's so random.

And it seemed that yesterday, maybe because this is the most opaque paper I've ever written (I mean, opaque to me, the writer) what came out was some kind of crazily over-confident tone. I had been reading all of these special issues of important journals on [Theme I'm Writing About] - unbeknownst to me, I seem to have picked something a bit trendy (with my interest stemming from the appearance of this theme in the stuff I am working with in my book project). So all these special issues are unfailingly robust and clever. The editors' introductions are all written with the ease and suaveness and confidence of people who know what the hell they're talking about - and they know it damn well. There are keynote addresses reproduced in these journals - wry, funny, learned. And exceedingly confident. They're senior academics, leaders in their fields. What do you expect? And I've seen that my writing in this paper is mimicking this kind of tone...it's still full of questions, but it's all clever and witty and obliquely jokey...and so very...not me. I don't know what's going on. But I'm going to bear it out and see, I guess. It could make me look like a complete idiot, though - like some insufferably poncey junior academic trying to be something she's not...And it doesn't match the uncertainty with which I am approaching this theme, not at all. Perhaps that's it - I'm borrowing this tone to cover up the fact that I'm just not sure. And that would be -- ugh.

Let's hope that some certainty comes by the end of the paper, otherwise there will have to be a major tonal revision.