I knew Lawrence Weschler’s piece would have to be short to count as a “dispatch” and to fit on my mobile infomusical device, so I tried to pace myself, and not go too fast. Even without the pictures, which wouldn’t load, and are instrumental to the argument, I’m sure, his brief mental meander delighted & surprised. Reading, I remembered why I want to maintain a critical writing practice (i.e., why that’s a good way to spend some time and energy, even/especially in those moments when I’m not looking to publish anything). It’s such a good way to be on the lookout for connections and patterns; the only way to push myself to find the right words, to play around with ideas, to have something worthwhile to say about the images and ideas that are so much a part of everyday life.
This morning, yesterday, and the two days before: taking the early & late trains, marking up printouts with red pen (some copyedits, some notes for class, some questions) on the train or reading Trevor Paglen’s Blank Spots on the Map on the T (& likely looking like a conspiracy theorist in the process).
So, in other words, not very exciting, and not the best week for work/life balance.
But in the coffeeshop between train & work, I ran into a coworker & her husband. And we quickly got to talking about wood type & printing, and established that we (he and I and my favorite Milwaukeeans) were all at Hamilton Wood Type Museum’s anniversary celebration last May, in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, on the same day. And remembering that day, and finding this new point of connection between my life here and the life I get to live there (in four- or five- or seven-day chunks a few times a year) was a perfect excuse to call M. We agreed ze should skip work and come help me teach my 11 a.m. class. And even though we were pretending, it still felt thrilling to say the words: “Okay! See you then!”
Last night was so exhilarating: after a trio of sick days, of not leaving the house except to visit The Biscuit for a latte & a scone, and making a late-Saturday-afternoon expedition to Market Basket* for beans & green vegetables, I went to work. And then I came home and in a matter of hours, was out on the streets again, biking to Central Square with K., the night so warm we only needed sweaters and hoodies, and I got away with a skirt, tights & knee socks below. And we rocked and swooned to J. Tillman & co., and on the ride home, we talked girl troubles and boy troubles and the joys of epistolary flirtations and I was so happy. As I put my bike away, I imagined myself getting it out again this morning, making quick work of my trip to the T., and the easy ride home from Harvard. But this morning, feeling stuffed up and dull and bundled-up once more, I didn’t have the heart. So I walked at a steady pace and thought about how good that all felt, last night.
* Have never shopped in a grocery store so traffic-jammed with carts, but somehow, no one ever seems to be mean or in a rush, there’s no aggressive cart-wielding or pushiness. And every time I go I feel like I have an even better sense of who really lives in my neighborhood; I may walk through the richy-rich Harvard-adjacent streets of Cambridge every day, but I merely pass through that hood. I’m not a part of it, really.
A good thing about spending childhood summers with a grandfather who drove us around in a jeep on mountain roads: the smell of landscaping machines on campus, off all those motors, registers as happy not toxic, and reminds me of the mornings we’d come out to find raccoon prints all over the hood and the seats.
* We have Wojnarowicz to thank for this one
I think it was the discovery of Nerd Boyfriend this weekend that led me to pay attention to what the man across the aisle from me was carrying: a tan-and-red plaid backpack from L. L. Bean. Total nerd style. He wears a wedding ring, so will not be my nerd boyfriend, but I’m not sad about that. Sometimes it’s nice to enjoy looking at a good-looking someone without any expectation that Something Might Happen.
At first I thought I wanted to be on that train to Greenbush to see the Patriots’ game. But then, while waiting to purchase a fountain drink, one of the customers suddenly stormed away from the counter, then turned and started pointing and yelling at the teenage youth who was working the cash register. He was enraged because the thing he wanted from the menu was no longer available (maybe because of the breakfast-lunch switch, or a lack of ingredients). He blamed the youth for his slowness, which (theoretically) caused enough time to elapse to make the item unavailable (gee, it took a whole minute for the youth to complete the previous order!). The customer & his pal started walking toward the Greenbush train, I was walking behind them, and saw two tickets fall out of the yelling-customer’s pocket. I wanted to leave them, or take them, or otherwise exact passive-aggressive revenge on behalf of the youth. But of course I didn’t do that. I picked them up and said my own loud “Sir!-Sir!-Sir!” and when he stopped & turned around, I offered them up for the taking.
What I thought about: S. & I had a new-friend dinner-date last night. Over our respective shepherd’s pies (hers the meat/carrot/onion variety, mine the eggplant/tomato/onion variety) we discussed the emotional dimensions of activist & community-building work, specifically the emotions that accompany project- and event-oriented efforts, for which temporary collectives form and make something happen, then disband after the event is over. I’d been thinking about this in the wake of the Femme Show, specifically, about the period of a couple of months where preparation for the show took over my life. As soon as the performances were over, we all moved on to our next projects. Since then, I haven’t seen any of my fellow performers (we live in different, distant parts of the city), and I miss the feeling of being in community with that particular bunch of smart, funny, fierce performers. I’ve also been thinking about this (feelings-after-projects thing) in terms of my Ph.D. program; it’s still sinking in that I’m not really part of Comparative Studies anymore, that I don’t need to read the email announcements about the grad student org’s meetings or events, that I know fewer and fewer students in the program, and so on. Anyway. The conversation S. & I had was great because we were thinking along similar lines but brought different experiences to the (dinner) table, and this morning, I was still thinking about how her thoughts pushed me to revisit these experiences — Femme Show, graduation — that I could still stand to do some thinking/feeling about.
What I did: Ate the surprisingly, disappointingly watery oatmeal I’d picked up before getting on the train; decided that if watery oatmeal was my biggest complaint of the day, I really have nothing to complain about. Listened to the new weird (lady-robot-voiced) itinerary announcement recording that was broadcast in our train cars as we pulled out of South Station, wished that, given time of day & our shared purpose of commuting to work, lady-robot could’ve been followed with “Fitter, Happier” & made that happen with my ipod. Left Commonwealth at work yesterday, so I listened to Yo La Tengo’s I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One & thought my thoughts & observed, on my walk across campus, that the upside of the trees losing all those leaves is that you can see some great, big nests.
Last night T. loaded the mp3 of the Casiotone + Dear Nora cover of Missy Elliott’s “Hot Boyz” on my ipod before we parted ways, and as soon as I listened to it, I knew it would be the perfect soundtrack for an act. I’ve been wanting to do something funny & awkward for a little while, and I believe I’ve found my song. As I embarked this morning, I listened to the song a few more times, and had no trouble imagining what might transpire (imagine Liz Lemon doing a lapdance). So now I have something to do in addition to stage managing the next TraniWreck. Hurrah!
I can’t tell you exactly how excited I am about Hardt & Negri’s new book, Commonwealth. It’s a perfect guide & complement to one of my ongoing intellectual projects: figuring out ways to interrogate the ideologies that inform archival principles and practices — specifically, how & why we think of records as property & what the implications are with this approach; the alignment of logics of kinship & provenance; how legal protocols for records transfer create collections that may exclude contributions from donors who do not have legally-recognized relationships to creators. I’m very happy to have found a book that rigorously questions privatization & property-logics, and imagines modes of resistance…and it’s helping me remember certain turns of phrase & vocabularies that I don’t encounter when I’m not reading work in cultural studies.
But there are some clear, commute-related indicators of my excitement: I look forward to reading this on the train, even at 7 or 7:30 in the morning; I’m willing to lug the heavy library-copy hardcover to & from work; I send inappropriately-early-in-the-morning text messages to T. to ask small questions related to the text because I want someone else in on the secret.
This American Life’s episode on marital infidelity didn’t seem all that illuminating. There were funny moments, though, and I appreciated those. But mostly I just felt bad about the statistics being cited — the one about 50% of married people “cheating” especially — because it doesn’t have to be that way. But I know that the idea of nonmonogamous fidelity can seem contradictory, and that signs of being committed in nonmonogamous relationships aren’t as easily legible as the signs of commitment that come with marriage & monogamy. And on the heels of a week that involved some stressful & exhausting emotional & logistical work around holiday travel arrangements to visit two people who don’t get recognized as my family, who are both important to me in different ways, and who both need recognition of this from me (in the form of number of hours & nights spent per person), I wished I was hearing the kinds of stories that could help us negotiate these different ways of living.
We sat on the train in the station for quite some time past our scheduled departure (maybe 20 minutes or so), but I had sequins to sew on a sweater for my Halloween costume, and excerpts from past interviews with Maurice Sendak from Fresh Air to listen to. I was wholly absorbed in the sewing & the listening & wished I had an excuse to stay on the train even longer.
