I am trying to read Gide in French, and it is all right except that I don’t understand the function of all the farms and horses in the middle. J. is at work on her winter quarter papers, and it is a slow haul up a rocky slope but it is getting done: go J. I am in my department building on the weekend because I am lightly rooted and go with the prevailing winds; and when I climb up the unswept stairs I ask myself, “Is this a home? In what sense has this been a home?” Dumb question to ask a building. I never like the talks that are advertised on the bulletin boards, and right here next to the computer is a copy of the 1603 quarto edition of Hamlet, and damned if I know what to do with it, if I could make a life of doing things to it, or of encouraging others to do the same.
I have been here nearly four years, because I am very good at staying on the racetrack as long as there are clearly marked hurdles, so I hear that I need to start professionalizing. Now I just forgot to send in any conference abstacts before the MLA deadline, because fuck the MLA. Oh dear. If labor is alienating always and everywhere, why pick this? I drank coffee until my head unscrewed and spat out steam, then followed the ravens over the grass. That is the self of youth, I guess, and the ravens will still be around when youth is gone.
