Recently I had to change my UC email password. My first attempt was declined with a note
that read Not original enough, Loser.
Come back with a genuine idea of your own. And let it be sophisticated! I
swear that was at least the subtext if not verbatim. After four attempts, I had a new password and
I lost all desire to write another word.
Suddenly every day is like a drive through Pennsylvania,
endless and miserably contemplative.
Next January, a few months before even, I should be asking people for a
job, to be someone’s teacher, someone else's colleague, some college’s
employee. How strange. It takes me a
month to write a 20min talk and week to write a thoughtful and elegant page of
the dissertation. The weather is better
here and the days are slowly becoming longer; there is more sunlight. I’m not
cold all the time anymore. And trips to the market or to ARCS don’t tire me the
way they did before, so I should be more productive. I can’t use the term
emporium. The fight to explain it and to use it as a descriptive of any place
other than Piraeus or Naukratis is too great. Losing the alliteration of
Emporia and Euxine in the dissertation title is tough but it seems best.
Yet another good friend of mine died some weeks ago. I knew
him when I lived and worked in the Bronx, after I finished undergrad. I think
about how different things will be when I return to the States. It took so long to acclimate to this city and
now I love it. Of course staying wouldn’t help anything. And obviously everyone
continues to live or die, events still happen in the States while I am here. It
still affects me. But it felt good to run away. It might feel better to stay
away.
No. It makes sense to work and go home. These kinds of thoughts always make me think
of Seinfeld. I’m not too mature. In the Pony Remark episode, Jerry kills his
great aunt by going off on people who had a pony as a child- actually he and
Elaine are rather mean. Then later when discussing the
funeral, George, Jerry, and Elaine wonder what they should do to make every moment count in their lives. It really is a difficult question: Secluded in
some apartment, wrestling with word choice for a degree that might not matter
or having coffee at some bar with friends?
