Hemingway's A$$

Home.

Finally.

And yet, I'm kind of sorry to not still be in Boston. I told J over the phone, it's not that I wanted to be there on the prairie- I wanted them to move on out to me.

The truth is. I missed them both like crazy. Every time I walked through a park and some toddler crossed my path, my heart ached a bit for my own. I couldn't walk through the Public Gardens without picturing Little Man--a little smaller, perhaps, but chasing happily after ducklings.

The truth is, I loved being there. It really has underlined to me just how much I want to live in a city-- at least for a while. I never really took that chance. The first time I applied for MA programs, I applied only to big cities-- New York, DC, Philidelphia, Chicago. And I got accepted to schools in all of them, but the match at Mountain U was just a little too good. Their offer was too enticing. So I left behind cities to live in the middle of Appalachia--the only school I applied to that wasn't in a major metropolis. It was my choice, and I think now that it was a sound one. I think I'm probably better off because of it.

But I love cities. I love the musicians on the streetcorners. I love the families playing in the parks and the teenagers laying around on large, mismatched blankets. I love the subways and busses. I love the shopping and eating. I probably wouldn't love the rent, but I'd like to think I'd manage.

And I've decided that, even being completely alone and missing my boys terribly, I love Boston. Almost as much as I love DC. I love that everyone talks like a Kennedy and looks vaguely like Conan O'Brien. I love the history there--the cemetaries established in 1753. I love love love the North End--the little old men speaking Italian, their aloras ringing out through the streets, and the bakeries that make the italian bakeries of my childhood look like nothing in comparison.

And I love the people at the Kennedy Library. Never have I worked in so pleasant a library with such helpful people-- and that's saying a lot because, in general, rare books librarians are extraordinarily helpful. (Perhaps they're just lonley and are happy to see anyone) They took me down to the audiovisual area and let me look through Hemingway's actual family photos. Then they handed me a folder of photo-quality copies that people had requested but returned and said I could have any that I wanted. So I took a bunch- Hemingway as a 19 year old ambulance driver, the nurse he was in love with, Heminway in the Bull Ring, Hemingway in Paris with Hadley and Duff Twysden and HArold Loem--straight out of The Sun Also Rises--Hemingway skinnydipping off a boat in the Atlantic. yup- naked Hemingway. And how could I not take that one? Because who else has a picture of Hemingway's naked rear end, I ask you? Me. That's who.

Things I Want to Write About

I haven't posted much lately, because I feel like I can't keep my head on straight. I've started about five different posts--posts about the guilt of motherhood, the paralyzing anxiety of the job market, posts about the way that Little Man's laugh turns me to jelly just moments after I was ready to run away, posts about the profile pictures people choose on facebook, posts about what it's like to realize that I'm in a different place than I was when I was 23, that I'm no longer 23.

But I just can't seem to write them--not in any sort of coherent or interesting way. I start to write and what comes out seems trite at best, boring at worst.

I feel muddled and stuck, but I'm not sure why.

Today, I hacked away at a tree. It looks better and I feel better from the sunshine and the warm weather. Too many things are swirling right now for me to focus on any one.

I have a chapter than needs finished, but lately I've been reading books about teaching. I've been trying to figure out what kind of teacher I am and what kind of teacher I want to be. J is a wonderful teacher. He even has a reputation in the small program he's been teaching for the last three years. It's a good reputation, and his students seem to genuinely like him and his classes.

But I don't even really want to write about teaching. It's just at the surface.

I talked to my baby brother yesterday. It's been a while, so hearing from him was good. He's out on the edge of the world, trying to make a life that he can call his own. And I think he will.

Something is on the verge, I think. Something is either going to coalesce into a whole that I can identify and grab or it will burst into a thousand tiny pieces and I'll have to start all over.

But for now, the sun is warm and the sky is blue, and the baby is napping.

As NIU Mourns...

"She always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day."
-Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway


My heart ached for Columbine. I wondered with fear at the shootings at Virginia Tech. And now, in a small college town just a few miles from Chicago, more students have died and another campus is in turmoil, and my own little sleepy prairie town is the center of questions. It seems that the gunman was from here, was a student here, bought the guns here.

We always feel the terror from a distance. I know that I do. When a gunman killed so many at Virginia Tech, I saw my campus through a new set of lenses. I wondered if it could happen to me; what I would do if it did; if there was any chance for survival in the run-down rooms without locks or even, in some cases, working doors, in my ancient building. And now it has come as close to not happening as it could.

I ask myself, why Northern? Why not, god forbid, Follinger? Why did he feel the need to drive to another school when he was a student here? It was so close to happening, closer than I could have ever imagined...even as I did imagine. And as J and I watch the local (yes, our little hometown newscasters on location) news and as more information comes out, what becomes apparent is that these incidents seem totally, and utterly unstoppable.

There is no way to secure an area the size of a small town. There is not a fence large enough or strong enough. There is no way to screen each student and to find the one that might snap. They can just drive somewhere else. A campus is not like a high school-- we deal with mutliple buildings, larger areas, and adults.

I never thought of this profession as dangerous. I'm a library rat, after all. I live in and among books. J was just yesterday asking me if I ever thought about how funny our jobs were, in the larger scheme of things. And I do, because I teach people how to "read" books. It's not really a skill that people need in the most practical sense. I never thought of teaching as dangerous. I went to Kent State, walked by sculptures with bullet holes in them every day, and never thought of college campuses as dangerous. Surely, I thought, tragedy like that can never happen again. And yet they do. They keep happening with increasing frequency.

And there's nothing. Not a single thing. I can do about it.

And the truth is that no one's safe. No office building. No shopping mall. No school. No where. Unspeakable tragedy and grief can reach us here just as easily as it can happen anywhere else. And right now I find it very difficult to put my head around all of this. Every paper you grade, every student you upset, any stranger who picks a time and place can end the bubble of happiness and safety you've built around yourself.

And it can be paralyzing to think about it. And today I wonder every time a siren goes by (why three already this morning??). And ultimately I have no idea how to even think about this.

So I'll pull those I love closer, immerse myself in what I love to do, put everything into every day...because that bubble can pop so quickly. And all we have is now. This moment.

What Children Become

Lately the news has been somber. I've been following what is happening in Kenya--the killings and the terror that seems to have taken hold of that country--and I can't help but be speechless in the face of it. I've heard stories of children and their families barricaded into their homes and burned to death. It seems as though every day there is some new story--world-class athletes being targeted for death, children cut down by machetes, whole villages terrorized. It sickens me and leaves me numb with disbelief and sadness. And Wonder.

Because the thing that I fail to be able to understand--despite knowing that history is filled with stories of horror and violence--is how these things happen. How is it that children can grow into monsters. Sure, there are those cases where a child is abused or neglected or something traumatic happens and changes the life of a child. But I have to think that for the vast majority of these cases, these people who are capable of doing such unspeakable things to other humans were once children.

These were once infants held and rocked in the arms of their mothers. Their births were life changing moments for the people around them. Strangers looked at them and smiled at the preciousness of new life, coochie-cooing over their prams or bassinet's. These people, capable of killing innocent children in horrific ways were once children themselves. And I can't quite get my head around how that sort of transformation happens.

But the thing that I find incomprehensible is that, for the most part, these transformations happen all the time- in all places. The same day that I heard about Olympic runners from Kenyan being hunted down, the Chicago news had a story about a car-jacking where a 1 year old baby was killed. The car-jacker knew that the baby was there when he went after the car, but rather than abandon the child with the car, he killed it. A gunshot. In a tiny body.

These are things that keep me up at night, my mind racing. How do you protect your child from this sort of horror--horror and violence that can happen anywhere, at any time? How do you keep your sweet and wonderful little boy from changing into something unrecognizable? How do you reconcile a God that is supposed to be kind and merciful, loving and parental, with a world in which such unspoken horrors exist? How do you keep your children safe?

And how do you keep your mind from racing at night after hearing story after a story that you are unable to do anything about?

4 Days and Counting...and hoping...and planning...

The new semester starts in 4 days. That's only 4 days left to finish planning my first few weeks of class and get something done on my diss.

Instead, I've picked up a new book that has nothing to do with the diss-- The Observationist. It was one of my $5 deals at the MLA Convention. Such fun to read. Nothing like first person narrative told by a 16 year old mid-nineteenth century prostitute-turned-house servant to chase the cobwebs off good old Willy Faulkner.

But I feel like I've also got a lot of work done in the last few days. I have my syllabus all together, lecture notes and power point slides all set for the first two and a half weeks. Lit classes don't usually employ business technologies like power point, but I'm teaching a culture and lit class that's supposed to address the entire culture of Anglo-American modernism, so I need the audio and visuals to bring in as well. Because I'm in no position to teach Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx, I'm going with Picasso, Stravinsky, and pop culture. Sounds more fun anyhow.

But this week has just underlined what an expensive year it's going to be. J's conference--a big one, that will no doubt go far in the networking department--is in NYC after Easter. Talk about expensive. Whew. But we've finally sucked it up, given up finding a cheaper apartment rental, and decided to go with a Times Square hotel. I've gotta say, I'm kind of excited. We usually stay in the Upper West Side, which I love--but part of me has always wanted to stay right in the heart of Times Square. And with conference rates, it's just as cheap, err expensive, as anything else.

Then I found out that the Hemingway conference that my paper was accepted to is $200!! I applied for a travel grant from the Hem. Foundation, but if I actually get it, I'll need to be in Kansas City (that's right, exotic, exciting Kansas city) for a whole week. Blech. I was hoping to buzz in for a few days, but this conference is a week-long lovefest for old Hem.

Put all that together with the fact that I probably will still need to do some travel for archival research and that the year's going to end with a 10 California jaunt, and it all adds up to the fact that the credit cards companies are going to be loving us this year. I may just need to build a shrine or start doing daily devotions to Our Lady of "Dear-God-Please-Let-Me-Find-A-Job- (and-not-just-any-job-but-a-good-one-in-a-place-where-I'd-actually-like-to-live-and-raise- children).

On the upside, I get to go to the beach twice this year. And one of those times it's gonna cost next to nothing-- big family reunion shindig.

Until then, I've got some Faulkner to read.