events and memories

I went to the career counselor yesterday...
... and I'd rather talk about something else right now. To sum up: I don't think I learned anything I didn't already know except that my institution of some sort of learning has a database of companies to play with. Also that there's a "career library" which I'm going to raid tomorrow. Books along the lines of "what do I do with my BA in English," to borrow a line from Avenue Q.

Anyway. I could write more about it, but there's no point and my brain is being eaten alive by Baudrillard, which I'd much rather talk about.

This scenario occurred in two parts:
1) I decided that, for writing purposes, it would be an intelligent idea to have a little mini notebook with me to scribble ideas down.
2) I spent my lunchtime before the career counseling appointment reading Baudrillard, flipping through the The Illusion of the End after having taught an excerpt of it recently.

The essential thing here is that I tripped over a few lines that made me pause, ponder, rip out the notebook, scribble illegibly for a while, relate everything back to the novel-in-progress (the general setting and characters of which have formed the backbone of most of my daydreams for months now - i.e., how would MC deal with these thoughts? what about main romantic interest? friends? etc.), and then just mulled everything over in my brain for a while. At this point it's probably far too late, and I too tired, to get through everything I'm thinking; I may very well revisit this all later. However, I thought I'd get the quotes out there anyway. These are from Jean Baudrillard's The Illusion of the End, trans. Christopher Butler (Stanford UP) 1994.

"If there is something distinctive about an event - about what constitutes an event and thus has historical value - it is the fact that it is irreversible, that there is always something in it which exceeds meaning and interpretation." (13)

Baudrillard here is talking about events in the sense of global history (in the midst of a discussion wherein he asserts that we've lost history altogether). I find the quote to have tremendous meaning on an individual level, however, and have been dealing with it on that plane. I suppose that when it comes to memories, there are narratives and then there are events. Narratives would be the bits and pieces that are understood, readily placed within a larger overall arc of our lives, bits and pieces that accumulate like so much flotsam but which can be generally comprehended as continuous or flowing in some sort of storyline. Events, then, would rare, and probably often (I'd like to think not always) traumatic: those moments that defy interpretation, that can't be fit into an overall life narrative, that are just too BIG. I haven't figured out exactly what I think would qualify as an event in a person's life - I suppose that would be left to the individual (though I may have more thoughts when I'm more conscious).

"We have reached the point of seeking in water a memory without traces, of hoping... that something still remains when even molecular traces have disappeared." (31)

I'm not entirely sure why I latched onto this so strongly. Molecules in the body entirely replaced every seven years, so that on a molecular level we are entirely renewed, replaced, changed. I'm struck by the idea that I'm filled with memories of which my body has no molecular memory, that people who touched me, situations that affected me and that still live with me in my mind are, to the molecules of my body, utterly foreign. Seven years and the molecular traces vanish.

The seven year molecular replacement is an interesting way to conceive of time, to mark the distance from an event. If most memories are bits of narrative which flow through our minds, would the impact of an event be worn down over time as tiny, insignificant pieces shifted themselves bit by bit outside of our consciousness, or would an event stay true despite that shifting? Would an event be the one memory that time couldn't affect, that no amount of living could erase?

In which I ramble for a time

Got back home from being home tonight, if that makes any degree of sense. I'm sitting now in my office in my apartment with Nunkin curled up against my leg and purring and Piggy bathing herself six inches away. It's a warm and cuddly feeling to know my kitties missed me.

We haven't put away the Christmas tree yet - I kinda meant to do that before we left, but ran out of time, so it's still up on its little table and will have to be taken down tomorrow in between bouts of syllabus finishing.

Otherwise, being home means two things:
- I have to get prepared for my FINAL (YAY) semester of grad school (done or not)
- I really do have to email Good Advisor so we can talk about me finishing my stupid dissertation, the thought of which (the dissertation moreso than the email) makes me nauseous, so I'm going to stop thinking about it.

While still back in KC, Brownie and I went out with my brother, his best friend (whom I'll nickname Romeo for the moment because it's terribly inappropriate both in general and specifically in relation to this person, who is as snarky and solipsistic as they come - he's hysterical) and best friend's sister, who is awesome. Awesome enough that I'll just nickname her Awesome for the time being. Anyway, Awesome will be graduating from college this year with an English major and spent most of the fall semester angsting over grad school. So she was telling me this last night and then told me about a conversation she had with her advisor, who pointed out to her that if grad school was already stressing her out, she didn't have to go (italics hers, in speech, I swear. They were audible.). And apparently that idea hadn't actually occurred to her before. So she's decided not to apply, even if that means spending two years working at a Panera before she comes up with something better. Brownie and I both traded fist bumps with her and congratulated her on her decision to keep her body and soul united together. In return, she announced that she was going to come crash on our sofa for a year while figuring out the rest of her life. I've been told to make sure we have cider on hand for her, as she's not much into beer. I am absolutely all for a visit from Awesome, but not sure I'd be able to help her on the non-grad school-career front. I'm about to the point of asking little kids what they want to do when they grow up just so I can steal their ideas. Except that I don't think I want to be an astronaut. Or a fireman. Hrm.

And at this point, it's 1am, and I'm tired. Purring kitties or not, I think it's bedtime. I'll deal with the "thoughts on the last semester's commencement" or whatnot as soon as I have some.

the (*&^%!#@ing academic job search and life in general

So after much durm and strang and gnashing of teeth and application after application after application sent out, Brownie finally has an interview for a nine-month renewable assistant professorship at Small College in nearby, state next door. In a town he'd never heard of, no less, despite having grown up roughly 20 minutes from the apartment I'm currently sitting in. The only thing we know about the town other than that Small College is located there is that Favorite Bartender apparently grew up one town over and was fully ready to recommend the town as a fantastic place to live because it meant we'd still be close enough to come visit during our drinking times. Beyond that, I'm refusing steadfastly to bother doing any research about the town unless he gets a campus visit because I'm tired of looking at towns and going "ooo, that'd be neat, and that'd be awesomesauce" only to see the rejection letter come floating in via carrier pigeon a few days later. I'm tired of feeling hopeful only to be crushed again.

The worst version of the hope/crush feeling happened today, when I woke up to an email from my MOTHER of all people with a job listing for the community college out by them. I would kill to move back there - not to live even all that close to my parents, per se, but to live around the Kansas City area again and to enjoy the insanity that the Midwest refers to as "weather." (Nothing says "Fantastic Drinking Entertainment" like watching helicopters swarm around tornado-producing thunderstorms!) Anyway, so I got way too excited about the job posting and sent it to Brownie, who promised to apply and who then went straight back to prepping for the job interview tomorrow (which, well, obviously that would be the priority). I come to find out later (as I'm dreaming of starting a KC-centric beer blog) that while he's still planning on applying, it's without much of a hope of actually landing the job since they're asking for someone with different specialties than he has. He's still applying, but it's probably going to end up being a waste of time. And so my first (and thus far only) chance of living in any of the cities I'd actually want to move to has 95% poofed away into thin air yet again. The only reason I like the idea of Brownie getting the job at Small College is because it provides a paycheck and a place from which to launch yet another grueling awful job search. I don't understand anymore why anyone wants to go into academics, because the way the field treats its workers is beyond appalling.

Meanwhile, his landing of an interview has made me sit back and try and figure out what the hell I want to do with my life since I'll be telling academics to suck it once the dissertation is done (which I should, uh, probably do something about but whatever). I've come to a few realizations:
- I haven't the foggiest fucking clue what I want to be when I grow up
- I do know that I don't want to be an overacheiver anymore, since that hasn't exactly panned out so well for me
- I'm not sure I've done anything of note this entire year except continue on in my existence and be the good, calming, caring wife for my stressed-out, job-seeking husband
- I don't particularly want to be a productive member of society, but I also don't see that as optional
- I hate that general upsetness/disillusionment/disappointment with my career choices thus far radically outweigh everything in my life that's good when I go about taking inventory of my life, but I've yet to figure out how to stop that line of thinking
- I wonder if I'll ever come up with something to do with myself that doesn't make me feel like the last five years of grad school were a complete and total waste (I don't feel that the MA was just for sheer critical thinking/research skills, but I do feel like the Ph.D. has been)

And so all this shit just circles around in my head and I get stuck and spend a lot of time on the forum or crocheting or playing MarioKart or cooking or whatever because I'm lost on trying to find answers. In accordance with the wide world of astrology, I'm mid-Saturn Return right now, which I bring up only because that does feel roughly like my life right now - everything I've held onto as a way to define myself up until now (read: overachiever, student) has disintegrated around me and I'm left standing here thinking "so that's nice and all, but the fuck do I do now?" I typically tell myself that this is in some way good because this opens up new ways for me to define myself or time to focus on areas of my life that I'd generally left unexamined before and all that rot and all of that is good but I still spend far too much time thinking "well, shit" and then finding a beer. Some sense of rebuilding would be nice - even just a glimmer of an idea of a way to begin figuring out how to rebuild would be nice at this point.

Mostly I really hate that every time someone asks me about my life, I'm prone to telling them about Brownie's life rather than my own because there's so much more going on in his. I won't tell more than a handful of people IRL (and the entire fucking internet, apparently) how I'm actually feeling - the last time I told Brownie how I was actually feeling he said "damn, that was a lot to dump on me" before realizing that he sounded like an ass, apologizing, and then admitting he didn't have a clue what to say and giving me a hug. I'm sure the reaction from anyone else would be at least as charming. DNW.

I sort of suspect I'm probably drinking a bit too much lately, but that's neither here nor there and anyway it's the holidaze. Seriously, though, Sunday's been the only alcohol-free night in a week. The holidays have been really lovely. (Er, one huge screaming fit at my father-in-law aside wherein he had no clue the rage he'd produce in me by saying that it was Rihanna's fault that Chris Brown beat her, but everything else really has been great.) I think I've put on five pounds from all the eating - it's way too cold to go outside and run so I'm at the mercy of my brother's WiiFit once we get to KC on Thursday. Here's to going home for a couple of weeks to attempt to decompress...

Yes I AM going to write in this thing

Ideally, I think I'd spend 15 minutes a day scribbling in this thing. I can't for the life of me figure out why this isn't happening, as it's not exactly like I don't have 15 spare minutes to scribble here. I'd probably have less time for this if I were, say, working on my dissertation, but as I'm not I can't figure out why I'm not doing more of this. So I will type while I'm trying to figure out dinner and while I have a cat smashing my arm down and not wanting me to get up and being very sweet and purry.

Let's see. I finally got out on the first run I've been on in two weeks because of the non-hamthrax that kept me benched for a while. A+ for getting out, C for the actual run. I only made it about two miles and had to walk a few times. My calves are killing me right now.

I had a giant alcohol-fueled meltdown on Brownie last night because I feel like everything in my life is on hold until he gets a job and I can start trying to find one, because that feeling is intensely frustrating, and because he's so busy with his dissertation and so anxious about it that I feel like I never get to spend any real time with him. And because the whole idea that he'd calm down once the job applications were in fell immediately by the wayside in that it's now "I'll calm down once I get another revision of my introduction turned in" which holds off him "calming down" for another week or so. So I flipped out last night from several months of holding all the frustration in and then informed him that if we move somewhere for his job and I hate it there, then it's my turn to decide where to move and we're doing it. He was actually okay with this. For all the ridiculous stress he's putting on himself over this job thing, he seemed remarkably okay with moving on to something else if I'm miserable wherever we go. I'm alternately like "well, good," or "really? You think you could give up a tenure-track job that easily?" and being remarkably unsure about that. I'm also feeling bad for dumping so much of my stress and frustration on him since I think he's stressed out enough without my emotions running rampant, but I think all in all it's good I told him.

Also, I've been thinking about it and I don't think that everything in my life really is on hold, even if I'm frustrated career-wise right now. I might actually start up dissertation work at some point, and I have an almost-plotless novel to write in November which I'm really kind of excited for. And I'm laughing at myself that I'm excited to write creatively for once but far too chickenshit to tell anyone IRL except for Brownie that I'm attempting to write at all, and too chickenshit to tell even Brownie exactly what it is I'm going to attempt to write. I have a hard time calling myself a writer even as an amateur-for fun type thing.

Dinner, I *think*, is going to be a bag of mussels steamed in a garlic-tomato-wine broth with bread and a thing of spicy tomato-covered goat cheese. And maybe some spicy sauteed spinach or something.