flaneuse.org

I have been in Colorado over the past week, first for the holiday and then to meet with the head of educational technology in the largest district in Colorado Springs about teachers in the district who are using technology (it’s for the book). Next week I will be at the National Reading Conference in Austin, TX. It used to be my favorite conference, but this year there is little work at the nexus of technologies and literacies, so I will have some time to wander around Austin and even more time to get back to students on their outlines for their final papers.

It’s just me at home this year for Thanksgiving — my brother and his wife will come for Christmas but I will be packing and moving, on New Year’s Eve no less. And no worries — it’s a good holiday for amateurs as my brother says, meaning those people who one time a year (or daily) get their drunk on and act like fools. I had the best New Year’s Eve ever a couple of years ago (a story for another post) and now I am content with the quiet things.

Actually, that’s what this post is about. Winter weather prevented a weekend in Taos I was planning with my best friend, so I have had more days at home than I anticipated, but that’s mostly been OK. If I get out of the house once each day, that’s pretty good — I am so absorbed in work and then, when not working, in reading or watching old movies on TV. It’s as though I have entered some sort of hermit mode where all of my conversational energy is saved for my classes and my colleagues and then I go home, put on my fleece pjs, and curl up with Willa and my laptop to get more work done. It’s serene and once it would have driven me nuts with inactivity. Lately I really seem to like it.

Other good thing about this week, besides spending time with mom and dad and grandpa was shooting trap with dad yesterday. I only shoot once every few years but toward the end, I was kinda getting the rhythm. I wish I could shoot more — not at any living thing, but there’s a great challenge in yelling “Pull!” and then following the clay pigeon for a moment before pulling the trigger. You can feel when it’s right, and you know when it isn’t. Not surprisingly, I shot behind, waited too long, when I needed to be able to swing and anticipate. There’s a lesson there, about anticipation and being on top of things that I am actively ignoring. < grin >

Things I hate….

• Not getting the lid on your coffee on just right, so when you drink from it, it dribbles all the way down your chest
• Spending money on expensive skin care soap, creams, and makeup only to have my face break out worse
• Then figuring out that, at least for me, nothing works better than Dove soap and moisturizer, and inexpensive mineral foundation I find at the drugstore
• That the new meds make me even more clumsy — my hands and feet are slow to get the right message or something so typing is hell — esp on the iPhone. Where’s a stylus when you need one?
• That there are over 900 email messages in my inbox and God knows when I will find the time to sort through them all
• The fact that I have four meetings this week — almost more time than I will spend teaching
• Mondays.

In a bad play off a terrible 70s cartoon (if you’re over a certain age, you know exactly what I am talking about):

life is …

• a pink collar with daisies on a large, overactive black Lab
• October trees against a blue sky
• perhaps, finally, getting the meds right
• a stack of to be read (TBR) books, none of which is academic
• the first, piping hot cup of coffee in the morning
• playing pool against Chris and being able to hold my own
• losing a little bit of weight
• trying a new recipe but knowing you can order out for pizza if you completely screw it up
• walking around town late at night, in the quiet, with a piping hot cup of tea
• finding pants almost tailored to fit me, J Crew no less, at the thrift store (and a new pair of nine west heels, never been worn)
• whatever it turns out to be, not just the moment you wake up, but over and over again, each moment of the day.

Again from Thoreau:

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.

I am breaking out like I am 15 again. And if I told you the amount of coffee it takes to wake me up in the morning, you might be amazed. Then again, academia + caffeine = tenure. Or something like that.

The trees are turning and the crisp weather is just right. The birds have finally begun to migrate and hopefully Willa will stop shedding the winter coat she has begun growing.

All things are possible in these blue sky days with crimson leaves making lacy patterns. All things.

Last week, I asked my 053 students to think and blog about where they would go if they were to walk away from their lives for a year. I told them I was going to blog about that too, but then this week got complicated and the idea of walking away was just too compelling. When things get tough, I think we often think of taking to the road — of moving away from the complex. Kerouac did it, so did Thoreau. Dickinson, on the other hand, moved father and farther inside herself in order to get away from the buffeting this world can give a soul.

So where would I go? The mountains outside Taos, NM — which is to me a sacred place. The light is different there, the stories stretch back longer through the people of the pueblo and on through to the Big Reservation. In my dream, I live in a one-room cabin and work for the Park Service — watching the animals and landscape change, gathering data on the ways in which Nature is reacting to our overbearing presence. There would be time upon time for writing and reading, and only a two-way radio — to let the Park Service know when I need more rations : ). There would be fishing nearby and I could go out to the river and work out the knots in my neck, casting out over the still water in the warm light. There would be quiet — no electricity, just a wood stove and gas burner for coffee. All I would ask is a year, and I would happily take down any and all information on the ecosystem around me — but short of a monthly check on me, no human contact. Nothing but my own heart held in the large sky, as people since the Anasazi have lived. My only companion for that year would be Willa, who would have to learn to live in a world much wilder than suburban NJ, but who could keep me warm at night, and bark when needed.

A year is all I would ask. Chris (Into the Wild) made his year happen. I have so many ties here with a job I love, students who continue to impress and challenge me, and the many relationships that sustain me. I love my life even when it is difficult, and I don’t want to leave it behind. So my cabin on Taos Mountain is a daydream that comes from the back of my mind whenever I read Thoreau, Emerson, Cather, and Krakauer. Maybe the big idea here is that we all need an escape planned, even if it never comes to fruition (why in the world would the Park Service hire an education professor to be a field biologist???).

The dream makes me feel better, though, like a secret I have in my back pocket. I live the life I choose to live and if I want to, I can choose another.