a page from the training diary

while meg's on comps hiatus (remember sweetcheeks, it's all about that last "250m" -- you are so gonna kick some comprehensive exam ass!) i feel the need to fill the void with some kind of official training update. i'm well aware that there are far more accomplished athletes out there doing far more frightening things than my current rowing schedule. however, how many of those athletes are also doing their phds in victorian literature? meg and i form a very interesting community of two (if there are other vic lit scholars/competitive athletes out there, give us a shout!), and in support of that community, i feel the need to keep the sport part of the scholar/athlete dichotomy kickin'.

monday: ko'd by an old it band injury. spent the day limping around, popping advil, and rolling around on a tennis ball ... yes, that last part is as icky as it sounds.

tuesday: 6k piece, 30 mins of cross training (running), another 6k piece. average split 2:15/500m -- to quote my coach, "you're being too conservative ... you've got more bitch in you than that".

wednesday: 6k piece x2 (apparently still not "bitchy" enough @ 2:12/500m); 10 mins of interval training (1 min @ sub 1:58/500m, 2 mins @ 2:25/500m)

thursday: 45 min run

friday: rest

saturday: 75 min erg test (the big question here is not "will i finish?" but "can i erg for that long with out a pee break?")

sunday: rest or perhaps cross training (spinning?)

i guess wizards experience grad school angst too ...

oh harry, i feel your pain.

don't you ever just wanna ask ...

thank goodness for late 90s dance/pop!

will(fully) in the world

i know there are some of you out there that are thinking that my infatuation with stephen greenblatt is getting to be just this side of ridiculous ... perhaps even just the other side of scary. it seems trite and even cliché to wail once more about just how transformative that "resonance and wonder" moment was the afternoon i heard him speak -- but it was and i just can't get away from that.

it seems, however, that i've done a right good job lately of getting away from myself. tonight, i had a solid heart to heart with confessing mermaid about an overwhelming situation i'm dealing with and for the first time since this situation bubbled to the surface, i was able to articulate exactly how it makes me feel.

i'm going to be frank, and perhaps this may get me in some trouble, but i honestly don't care. there is a person who was at one time in my life, and who remains on the periphery, who has made me feel as though i have somehow lost (dropped? misplaced? discarded?) that kernel of me-ness that i trick myself into believing defines who i am. the good little post-structuralist in me is having a difficult time with this whole kernel idea, but i'm telling her to be quiet, because it works.

sara hall, in her rowing memoir drawn to the rhythm, discusses how she faced a similar circumstance and was able to locate in the sport i love a way out of a situation where a person left her "hurt and confused". Her description of that situation, prior to her entry into the rowing world, has a resonance and wonder all its own: "It was as if my own experience of [any] situation, my reality, was suddenly slippery and elusive [. . . .] With each little remark I felt smaller and less solid, and [the other person] seemed to get bigger -- somehow harder and immovable [. . . .] I learned to walk on eggs, to phrase and time my comments and requests to avoid the accusations, the little stabbing blade of sarcasm; learned to avoid the requests I knew were hopeless anyway" (174-75). i remember the first time i read that passage -- i was sitting all solitary in the campus library, working on an article (for which i was reading hall's memoir) and i had to put the book down and walk away for awhile. what i had just read hit too close to home.

the past couple of weeks, in dealing with this situation, i've allowed the memories and the ripples of this person's existence on the periphery of my life to absorb the energy and passion i normally devote to other things: my writing, my reading, my friendships/relationships, my sport, my music -- all of the things that nurture me as an individual and give me a sense of self that i believe is worth protecting and standing up for in the face of challenges such as those this person brings into my life. as i said to confessing mermaid tonight, i know that the best way for me to deal right now is to take the energy i've been devoting to nurturing this problem and invest it in those things that give me a sense of self. what i realized tonight, however, as i finally articulated that thought, was that i was feeling emotionally bankrupt. to put it in the language of rowing (because really, when is the jargon of that crazy subculture more appropriate than in moments such as this!) i'd completely drained the tank. in the last 250 m of this race, i had pulled two 7-ups and i had nothing left to give.

okay, i know you're wondering when i'm going to break out the g-man. here it comes.

kismet has a strange way of delivering what i need when i most need it. today, as i was making my way from the coffee bar in the bookstore i frequent to the exit, i passed table of biographies that some sales clerk had selected that represented folks most prominent in our cultural imagination at this moment. sitting on the corner of the table, as though it had been set down by an indecisive shopper, was the store's only copy of the g-man's will in the world. since i'm currently waiting impatiently for my recall of the g-man's practicing new historicism to come in at stauffer, i saw this book as something to tide me over. i snatched it up, along with julia cameron's the right to write, and dashed for the register.

pop culture critic james twitchell is probably the only person alive that would joyously and un-judgmentally celebrate the way in which i deploy practices of consumerism to construct my identity (okay, jimmy t and cm!). to all those who might not at this very moment agree with jim and me (and cm): fuck off. in the thick of my conversation with cm, i glanced down at my desktop and saw the two covers starring back at me, as if to say "duh, you know what you need to do!" i need to reach somewhere inside of me, down into that place where i store that nameless thing i pull out in moments of great difficulty both in rowing and in life, and begin to go about being, pardon the horrible pun, "will(fully) in the world". the one way i know how to do that is through writing, both about literature and my life. i consider this post my first step away from this troubling situation and toward that sense of self that, for the past few weeks, i was so afraid might be lost for good.

musical thursdays and the masculine logic of the sentence

this morning in my lecture i went off on a tangent about the masculine logic of the sentence and the way in which our grammar is gendered male. as i waved my arms around and ranted about the way in which the politics of the sentence are weighted in favour of the subject -- that infamous component that determines the form of everything that follows it -- and function with an inherently masculine, even penetratory logic (is "penetratory" a word?), my students, i think, found me a little ridiculous. the whole performance was motivated by a comment virginia woolf makes in her essay "women and fiction". women, according to woolf, need to find a new way of writing, because the sentence is a thing made by men.

it's fitting that i should tackle such a topic on a thursday, for thursdays are both days of performance, and also days of my escape from the world of logos. thursday afternoons i play duets with a colleague in my department, and thursday nights, i get together with some good friends, play some music and eat wonderful, fresh pasta from a local italian specialty shop (pasta genova, i salute you!). i find that slipping into a world, the primary language of which is so different (and yet, so similar) from that which i wrestle with every day, is a wonderful way to mark the end of my teaching week. now please don't think i would be silly enough not to recognize that the language of music has its own gendered logic and structure -- of that i am fully aware -- but there is something about the experience of making music that i truly find transformative. there is also a quality of the pieces that i most enjoy playing that subverts this logic, often parodying it, and turning it on its head (claude bolling's suite for flute and jazz piano trio anyone?). it is for this reason that i have become completely fascinated with this man, greg pattillo, a busker in NYC who mixes beatboxing and flute riffs of tunes from pop culture. as i said to a friend in an e-mail this afternoon: "i want to be this guy when i (musically) grow up!"

confession

i just had a giant bowl of ice cream for lunch.

dear annoying person ...

who keeps recalling books i need for my dissertation,

would you please stop it?

no one cared about these books when i first took them out, and since i've been the only one who has cared for them in the intervening years, your "come late to the party, aren't i a star" attitude is really starting to piss me off.

this has been going on for almost three months, and this last recall is the last straw.

consider yourself lucky in that the library refuses to disclose your identity to me -- i think the librarians are picking up on my latent rage.

just write your fucking term paper (it's probably going to suck anyway) and give me my books back and no one gets hurt.

sincerely,

me

output, gossip, the greenblott and other disreputable fun

i'm reading something for my dissertation right now that discusses the different discourses of production that surround capital-L "Literature" and the less-revered realm of popular literature (think: john grisham). "Literature", this scholar argues, still privileges discourses of creativity, spontaneity and originality (even if a few theory folk have gone out of their way to declare the author dead!). popular literature, on the other hand, values industry, production, output and the meeting of deadlines. the irony, for me personally, is overwhelming. i work in a field concerned with the study of "Literature", and yet my position is defined by the discourse of production that is antithetical in many ways to what it is i've chosen to devote my life to writing about. all of those books that one is bound to receive from one's supervisor, given in an attempt to spur befuddled grad students on to new heights of production (my supervisor's most recent gift was william zinsser's on writing well), are books that discuss the practice of writing as a craft, not an art -- something that you devote endless hours of hard work to, not something that springs forth from your forehead naturally in moments of "powerful feeling". i don't know why this irony is so frustrating for me ... i can't quite make out why it angers me so.


******

today i was in a coffee bar, downing yet another chai latte, when i was distracted by the conversation of a man and a woman seated at a table beside me. the woman's voice sounded familiar and i couldn't place it. i'd heard it somewhere before. after a few moments of concentration during which i tried my darndest not to look like i was eavesdropping, i was finally able to place it. it was the voice of one of the news anchors on our local TV station. she was sitting there, dishing the dirt with her co-anchor about the poor sod who reports on local sports for the station. it was a surreal experience to hear the voice i've so come to associate with mundane local news using rather colourful language to describe the man who gets way too excited about local hockey games. yes, i thought to myself ... all workplaces have their politics.

******

the beginning of this week was marked by a transformative experience. i had the opportunity to attend a seminar headlined by the daddy of new historicism himself, stephen jay greenblatt. move over walter benjamin, i've got a new academic crush.as i sat there, listening to the g-man wax poetic about the experience of literature he wants students to derive from reading the norton anthology of english literature, for which he serves as the general editor, he began talking about "resonance and wonder", and i must admit it moved me almost to tears. existing as i do in a culture of critique that can too often devolve into a culture of complaint, to hear a scholar of his stature speak of what i love so dearly with such genuine, sincere affection was life-altering. i was buoyant for days afterward and am eagerly looking forward to discussing greenblatt's raison d'être with my students next week. blogland props to G (yet again) for her brilliant eventing -- and also for the "greenblott", a stunning foray into the world of academic event fashion.

******

i've really got to watch what i say. over the past two weeks, i've given people the mistaken impression that not only am i gambling away my graduate funding at the race track, but i am also nurturing a rather destructive drug habit. i recently needed to have the world of horse racing demystified for me due to material i'm working on for my current dissertation chapter (there's a sherlock holmes story that takes place at a race track, and i'm out of the loop when it comes to making sense of odds -- on, off or even -- the role of bookies, etc.). eager to understand, i raced around to see a couple of colleagues -- both of whom i was sure were privy to the workings of the horse world -- and didn't take the moment necessary to phrase my inquiry in academic terms. rather than preface my statement with something along the lines of "i'm working on this chapter about X and i need to know Y", i simply blurted out "i need to know everything about betting at the track". after a few stern and concerned glances, i was able to clarify, but those 10-15 seconds of disreputable-ness were quite jarring.

the same thing happened when i answered an inquiry by a colleague regarding what i had been up to lately. having just returned from the boathouse, where i'd spent a gruelling hour on the erg, slogging through a workout designed to bump up my lactate threshold, i responded with a sigh and a confession: i'd been mainlining. rowers refer to this hour-long workout as both "the hour of power" and "mainlining". having courted an image of squeaky clean athleticism in the years that i've been in this department, you can only imagine the look on my colleague's face during those few seconds when he mistakenly thought i was tying off and shooting up in the confines of my fifth-floor office.

******

yesterday, i spent an hour exploring the world of sherlock holmes parody and made the startling discovery that none other than john lennon (yes, that john lennon) wrote a short pastiche, titled "the singularge experience of miss anne duffield", that chronicles the investigation of one "shamrock womlbs" and his sidekick dr. whopper. below is my favourite passage, and if you find yourself clutching your tummy and laughing so hard you're crying, you might want to read the whole thing here.

'The thing the: puddles me Womlbs,' I said when we were alone, 'is what happened to Oxo Whitney,' Womlbs logged at me intently, I could see that great mind was thinking as his tufed eyepencil knit toboggen, his strong jew jutted out, his nosepack flared, and the limes on his fourheads wrinkled.

nothing more than feelings? not quite.

(un)timely, awkward declaration:

being a good person does not mean denying one's feelings.

i think aretha says it best.

flights of fancy

i just found out that i will be undertaking a little journey this summer, both literally and intellectually.

my first stop,cambridge university.

my second stop,the bodleian, oxford.

my third stop,henley-on-the-thames, for the river and rowing museum, as well as the regatta.

there will also be a weekend jaunt,during which i will *finally get to indulge my parisian fantasies.

i'm very excited.

dissertation, she wrote

throughout the writing of my dissertation i've been able to rationalize many very ridiculous purchases. when i had an inkling that a chapter of my dissertation might discuss representations of mountaineering in victorian fiction, i ran out an bought a climbing harness. how was i to write about mountaineering with any authority if i hadn't at least scaled the walls at my local climbing gym? when i was writing a piece about the place of roger bannister in the british popular imagination, i bought a pair of track spikes, thinking that i might one day become the first graduate student to run a mile in under four minutes (between you and me, i would have settled for any time under eight minutes, but my good friend rahul, a former indian distance running legend, and one time "track coach" wasn't having any of it!). as i'm getting to know myself as a writer, i'm realizing more and more the necessity for total immersion in whatever it is i'm writing, and it seems that practice of immersion has become strangely and inextricably linked to consumerism. perhaps one day when i'm not hounded by draconian deadlines i'll find a less, uhm, materialist way to go about investing my voice with the needed authority, but at the moment, i'm not going to question what's working, even if the whole process might make some of my more virtuous friends shudder and avert their eyes in disgust.

knee-deep as i am in my current chapter on sport in victorian detective fiction, i was surprised that up until recently, i hadn't gone in search of any kind of talisman. i attributed my security to my long-lasting love affair with mysteries that started when i picked up my first yellow-covered copy of a nancy drew novel at the age of six and has lasted through various threads of fascination including, but not limited to, sherlock holmes, agatha christie, murder, she wrote, dashiell hammett, columbo, inspector morse, the midsomer murders, the inspector linley mysteries, and last but not least, helen mirren's turn as jane tennison in the long-running prime suspect series. this is dissertation writing, however, and one is bound to feel a complete dunderhead at some point, even if the conventions of the genre about which one is writing are pretty much woven into the threads of one's psyche. last weekend, i hit upon exactly what it was i needed to bolster my confidence, pull up my socks, keep up my chin and keep me swinging (thanks, uncle ted!): a trench coat.

really, when you take into account the similarities between the practice of scholarship and the practice of detection, it's quite brilliant. in choosing to adorn myself in such garb, i'd be following in the footprints -- yes, footprints; we're talking mysteries, here -- of not only one of LAPD's finest, lieutenant columbo, but also in those of the (in)famous deconstructionist, jacques derrida. visions of myself as a titian-haired girl sleuth were too irresistible. i found myself jumping into, alas, not my blue convertible, but a car that bears more of a resemblance to columbo's sketchy 1959 peugot, and zipping off, hot on the trail of my latest identity salve. confessing mermaid tagged along, playing the george/bess to my trench coat-less nancy.

after a short period of sleuthing, i had discovered the perfect coat. as cm and i made our way back to the car, i had visions of ingrid bergman, lauren bacall, veronica lake, and of course, bonita granville (who played nancy drew in a series of 30s films) dancing through my head. audrey hepburn, in charade also came to mind. imagine my surprise when i was confronted by my newly-minted detecting self in cm's bathroom mirror. i suppose it could have been worse; i could have looked like peter falk. the reality of my appearance, complete with vintage silk scarf, loaned to me by an excited confessing mermaid, was still difficult to stomach. lauren bacall? no.

more like jessica fletcher.



at least i get some bitchin' theme music.