Tag: deadlines

Categories
Readings/Writings

Finished Grading

(just some adjunct professor thoughts…)

Ahead of schedule for once.  Ahead of my deadline of 3:50PM.  Time now 3:46 and I have time to me.  This feels odd, I won’t dodge.  Why, ‘cause you know me, I’m that teacher that finishes grading only hours or less before class.  but, here I am, in the adjunct office, with time to myself.  More or less ready for next class, and celebrating this quiet, quiet, quiet time.  Hear some doors out there, in the hall, as usual.  Think I should do something different.  Like go for a walk, or something.  What I’d really like is a nap.  Yeah, if only.  I know so many teachers, college or high school or grammar know what this is like.  This holding pattern.  So far ahead of schedule that you need some kind of schedule, some more scheduling, thinking “Oh, well, okay, now what do I do?” “Well,” I say to myself, “you’re a teacher… assign yourself something.” Fine.  Go outside, go for a short walk to your car, drop something off in the car, then walk back to this adjunct cell.  Take pictures with phone.  It may have nothing in the way of a dominant message or theme, but it will be something.  Something to do, something to write about, something to share with the next class.  Trying to teach myself something, that “something” being what to do with a surplus of time.  Don’t think, don’t over-measure, in fact don’t measure at all!  Just get out there, go for a walk, record then write.  If this is my last semester teaching in an institution, as an adjunct, I need to pocket every minute of it.  Have all those minutes and seconds on page, on the blog, for everyone (especially other teachers, and even more especially other adjuncts) to consider.  So I’m off, out the door, to bring materials from first class to car.  And, away…

After the walk, I learn that such walks cure nearly everything.  Angst, anxiety, overthinking about what I’m to lecture in less than 50 minutes, what I have to do when I get home with giving the babies their baths, readying them for bed, dinner for wife and I… everything.  I took pictures of the trees, a narrow path from the C Lot to the center of campus.  I realize this is where I belong, this is where we teachers belong.  On campus.  Nothing fantastic or superficial about this stage, it’s a place of definition and understanding, both of which are established by the individual.  Our own timetable, or “schedule” if you prefer that connotation.  Being a teacher of English, at least as I’ve come to know it, is the more inviting of disciplines.  Again, just how I’ve come to see it.  Through the stories, how we interpret the stories, how we relate them to our own life and share those connections with our fellow students.  I’m on a bit of a tangent, maybe.  Now there’s no way I could take a nap.  Too much synaptic snaps a-fire.  Glad all the grades are on this printed spreadsheet.  Wow, “I’m finally ahead,” I think.  What could I get done if I stay ahead?

(9/7/16)

Categories
Health/Wellness

coffee VENTING

img_3623A ten mile run, visit to the runner’s store later, I’m at the desk, ready for Composition.  Brewed coffee.  Already understand I won’t get to many items on the list, and I have to be okay with that.  The adjunct with all his papers to grade, grades being due by tonight.  How is that enough time to evaluate work thoroughly.. note to myself about educational qualms, what I don’t want in my story, and what not, what be.  Overthinking again, I can feel it, hear my inner-assembly chant and raise their hands trying to get my attention but I’m set on my daily thousand, meditating here in the office, organizing maybe a bit.  But now I need some coffee.  So this is what a day off feels like, I say to my self, before getting up, getting the coffee.  How much longer am I to continue with this semester-to-semester balderdash.  I set a dat by which it must end.  9/1.  Not sure where I came up with that square on the calendar, it just flashed and flurried, fury’d to my forum.  Coffee abetting my jazz, jazz from Hutcherson’s crew assisting me in shaking this exhaustion post-10..  What I want from day.. writing, the same directedness and drive I materialized on run I so do with this sitting, and those coming after it.  Need to look for a new writing spot today, somewhere, have one in mind but it jostles, jumps, I’m not convinced the Story intends it.  I’ll see.

The exhaustion won’t leave me alone, and I don’t intend on sipping the coffee too quick as I don’t want the tiredness to dictate anything in this day.  Yes, I expected this after such a testing and trying run, but still I wage a push against.  Everything today is music, everything with beat and syncopation of some sort, urging me to be musical more and ready self for readings.  Instructing, yes, but more so sharing ideas, offering thoughts, asking readers to consider something new.  I’m wandering, I know.  I cite the enervation, the run, but I can’t blame it, or me for anything, just write onward, prepare for Summer, sell these offerings, bind them, have something to sell.  But that takes money to print them, no?  Going to blend the ideas of ‘Alloy’ and ‘Mon Petit Mise’, to form one large collection of memoir’d prose.  My life as an adjunct, which now isn’t getting to me as it used to.  Why did I let it slither under my skin and lay its bitterness eggs all about my inner surface and circuitry?  No value in dwelling on that now, not at all.  But I recognize where I was, with attitude and perspective, and it did me no good, not at all, not one small microscopic drop of benefit to complaining and grieving, citing the adjunct plight, the adjunct plight.  It’s a war I’ll never win, trying to fight the system which holds adjuncts in place, allows to do nothing but run in circles— or not even any shape, but more like a treadmill, boring, no increase in elevation, just the same. thing. over. over…..

Only 11:20 in the day, and I wonder what I should next do, on list or elseways.  Want to get everything off this desk, which IS on the list…  Done.  Now all the clutter’s on the floor.  I’ll deal with it later, over a beer I’m guessing.  Now.. what.  I should be writing and only writing not worrying about cleanliness of this office, and how the day is just running faster than I did on my 10, even though I averaged 8:44 per mile.  Time’s quicker than me, motivated by its own cruelty.  Stop complaining!  I know, I know…  Shower, bookstore, get Jackie’s allergy medicine (also on list), stop at that writing cove for a little composition over a cold Coke.  Why not.  Maybe a snack, as well.  Again, why not.  My day off.  An adjunct with time to himself, imagine that.

Noisy garbage truck bloody drives by with its squeaky wheels and noisy airy pump sounds, picking up the plastic trash bins, garbage and recycle, one of them (don’t know, too agitated by its music to look), then he drives away.  No apology for cutting my concentration and sitting’s serenity as he did.  I refocus on Hutcherson, the coffee.  Think I need another cup.  The 9/1 deadline, going to take it more than “seriously”.  I’ll reshape into a worshiper of that date, the date I don’t have these fucking stacks of paper on my office floor, the date where I’m no longer considered a ‘non-essential part’ of the college.  Referring back to the definition of ‘adjunct’, of course.  We’re considered an ‘other’.  Really.  You know what, enough on that.  Not a battle I can win, nor that I want to win.  My Happiness lies in Autonomy, Travel, telling stories of what I see, like Andy taking pictures in Turkey, and all the other places he visits for his material.  My material for day, what set me in a new mode of ‘me’, the run.  Have to register for a—  And that truck returns again.  Or a different one.  GODDAMNIT.  Ignoring it, focusing on the jazz, want another cup of this espresso blend Mom and Dad gifted me for my birthday, couple nights ago.  Wow, and there again I’m reminded— the running writer/adjunct/father’s 37.  Sulk—

Brewing.  Thinking of business ideas, pulling up revised plan I started typing the other day—  These caffeinated vents could very much be a prime facet of my character as a writer, my “brand” or whatever, even though I never want to be seen as, talked about, or mentioned in brand-speak.  I’m tired of the reduction, frankly.  And that’s another impetus if you would behind the 9/1 date.  I’m going to write my way out of that state, adjunctdom, and any other simple humdrum task someone even has the thinnest inclination of assigning me.  I know what I’m deserving of, and I know what I need for my happy summit, and it’s not found in adjuncting, nor other simple entry-level acts.

Oscar Peterson & Milt Jackson’s “Work Song” plays, just over 30 seconds into track and I’m fearless in a way that will surely produce fruit, more than the vineyard blocks, more than what these other writers and bloggers do.  I have to laugh at the “content” of some, and the writing.. don’t even get me started, with its 5th grade consistencies and arrangements.  And me, I’m passed over for bloggers or “writers” like this?  Yeah, that stops today.

Feel like I could take another 10 miles.

Easy.

(5/31/16)

Categories
Readings/Writings

Villainous Types:  a study of the me

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50-some seconds over hour marker.  Beginning to tire of this seat but I’m going to follow my own teachings to my students and not bloody move.  One hour from now will put me at about 10:40-something.  Home, run, back home for shower then up to SCOE.  My educating urge and purpose has been re-punctuated this morning.  Writings in one location:  Something I’ll for sure stress over the summer, and again the emphasis of the Composition Book.  I need to follow my own counsel more, and continuously, I know.  It’s a work, it’s a process, it’s a lecture to Self as well as the students.

The piece of paper at my left, the biz plan, scribbling something on it now— SINGULARITY.  In the margin, and vertically, as this one student had so often in her journal.  She arrived late but showed me one of the more impressive and intense journaling practices of any student, even more inspiring for me as the educator than some of the ‘heavyweights’, as I call them.  The journal is where everything leaps from.  Where it starts.  It has to start with ink.. and always.  Another word:  MUSIC.  Everything must have a music to it, if it’s to engage a reader.. a meter and tone, chordal consistency, all, always.

My run—  I want 8 miles on that treadmill counter.  If the pain in the knee right doesn’t fade, or universe forbid it worsens, then I’ll stop, do something weigh-oriented, or pushups, something to keep with my health and fitness hankerings and sweeping inclination.  This is like a run, this sitting, I want to stop but won’t let myself.  I keep typing and reflecting on the semester, what certain students have done to my view of the profession, and the act of teaching, how the act of teaching is in no way an act.  And much more than a simple “profession”.  Running…

May need a walk outside, or just a break.  NO, you don’t do that when you run, do you?  Stuck with thought but motivated all the same.. wish it weren’t so scorching outside.  Too hot to run so I have to trot on that goddamn treadmill.  Wonder if there’s a book I could listen to through the phones rather than the regular “Cardio” station on Pandora.  But would that help?  Who knows.  I know nothing at the moment, or that’s how the adjunct feels, just killing time, or is it killing me?  These two hours of ME/writing time are growling and roaring past the writer/adjunct/runner/overthinking overthinker.

Have to wake up.. was too tired to run on Monday and I won’t let that bloody happen today.  This is an adjunct symptom, being stuck with these early-ass classes then being tired the whole day and even more useless if we go home and nap for a couple hours. It dooms us, our situation, oftentimes.  But now, I fight back by pursuing education in a precision that better me suits.  I run, I run… across the page and soon on that belt— in one place.  Is that a metaphor?  Maybe.  I’d like to think ‘no’, but it depends on what I do.

Poetry, everywhere and everything.  And again, MUSIC.  Want to read, want to read now!  So write something to read!  I DID!  The other day while at the winery, that spoken-word verse, and the extension during the freewrite in class, Monday with the 5-erz.  Full-timers again talk loudly in the mailroom (and yes, it’s full-timers this time, one of them being the always-anesthetized-looking chair).  I put in the other earphone, so I’m deaf.  Only hear what I want to.  Music.  No full-timers.  OR adjuncts.  Coffee getting cold.  I should stop sipping anyway, seeing’s how I’ll be soon on that rotating belt.  77 degrees outside.  Should I try?

36 minutes, just under 37.  And I’m bored of this room, all the old books and computers, and VHS’s on the shelves above my head and around me.  This room’s like a time capsule, or coffin, but I have to operate in it, fight it, resist its pushing me down into some mood. It discourages then encourages, it can’t make up its mind.  The color consistency, horrible.. lots of dull faded browns and grays, off-white made even more ‘off’ by pencil, pen, and coffee stains.  More than tired of this seat, I’m sick of it.  But maybe that’s what the room wants. Maybe the full-timers had this all planned…  So I more assume the insurgent’s urgency and stricture and intendedness.

With the coffee somewhat more boreal than I expected to be (haven’t sipped in a while), I can’t decide if it’s on my side or the room’s, the full-timers’.  The teacher in me says “Slow down, further interpret the room, the shelves and chairs and your coffee, don’t get exhausted, have exhaust the same way an engine does, a train, some growling race car or truck—  “STEAM AHEAD!” I say to myself, just under the Hutcherson track.  Furthering the singularity of my moment.  Not sure I’m more focused or contained, but I’m something…  Maybe I’m mad.  to continue, to read, to write, to teach, to BE.  And be ME.

Contingency on what I do— okay, so what am I doing?  Writing, meditating, reading as I write, eavesdropping on these boring instructors both adjunct and full-timer?  I have no idea what I’m doing— such love, such furtherment, encouragement and lesson, a lecture with Bobby’s mallets—  Now I see myself typing like I’m standing beside a seated Self, the writer’s not writing but playing an instrument.  Words are notes, they constitute chords— jam session, one participant, participating in his own participle— going, running, teaching, writing, learning…

26:28 left.  Now less of course.  Done with the coffee.  Forcing self into runner mode.  Now the room’s neutral, I don’t notice it as much.  Another word on “business plan”:  RUNNING.  And at the top of the page.  Starting to believe that running is writing and writing is me running toward what I want— to write while traveling, observing the world, its thesis to us which is to delight in it.  Man has ruined the world, but there’s still morsels for our felicity.  Just something I’ve been thinking about lately.  I don’t want to get to my travels at a point where we’ve definitively ruined our planet.

Past where I want to be in sitting, word-wise.  Time for run.. leave, meditate, peace, dictate an oder of Wellness in this writer’s life that he;s never before touched, sipped and sensed.  30-some seconds left in minute 18 in the countdown.. then 17, 16, past and past.  My past provides more for my manuscript’d present.  “Run toward that!” I say to myself and nearly scream to be heard.  I should.  I should terrify these full-timer wagtails, see what they’d do.  Such fantasies are very much as well part of the author’s process.  If it’s a process at this point.  Thinking more just a crazy crEATive practice.

 

(5/18/16)

Categories
autre

Project A

Over 1,300 words.  Lecturing notes and pieces for my book, the MS due in March.. to be sent away, for sakes of teaching and student empowerment, making literature your own and being more of an active participatory reader and.. don’t wan’t to bore you, just note I’m very much alive this morning.  Cup two, Jackie awake, Alice and Emma upstairs feeding, and me ready for the day and this new singularized path I’ve decided.  Again revisiting the PhD idea, and BELIEVING I can do it.  But what’s my doctorate to be in?  Lit?  Education?  Philosophy?  How ‘bout a coalescing of all?  Loving this feeling this morning and the motivation I’m greeted by in my own home, this Autumn Walk Studio..

 

1/24/16

Categories
autre

novel excerpt.. this morning’s session

“Deadlines,” I say to myself, “Deadlines, Mikey.” I watch the people walk into the tasting room, thoughtless, careless and eager. I welcome them, the whole time thinking about how I’m going to use one line ‘Moveable Feast’ for a lecture on Tuesday, one of the last of the semester. “…belongs to me…” But I couldn’t think too much about it, I had to focus on these people waking in and how they looked around, excited and curious, some seemingly intimidated. They, group of 8, approach the bar. I put out four menus, then glasses, ask them if they’ve ever been here before and what we pour.. “Oh, I LOVE Pinot,” one lady says. I tell her she’ll love our bottles, start them with the Chardonnay, watch them sip, and right off the bat one of them asks me how long I’ve worked at the winery. “Not long, actually, just over a month,” I say. Then one of them, an older man asks why so many in the wine industry move around from TR to TR. I tell him I don’t know and I’m “only doing this part-time”, so he doesn’t think I’m caught up in that herd, their indecisive migration. So obviously, I notice, I’m insecure. But I’ll use this to build, build what I want with everything, then the next pour, a Pinot, blend of RRV and Santa Barbara-ish fruit.
“Yeah, that’s what a Pinot should be, definitely,” a young girls says, swirling, looking, sipping, smelling again.
“Yeah, it’s nice,” an older man to her right, more than likely her father says. I can tell he’s not thinking about it too much. And why should he, or anyone, it’s only a couple minutes after 11.
Larry walks around the bar, up to my right side, lean, “I’m gonna go check the back bar, you okay?” he says. I nod, he leaves.
“You guys expecting a busy day?” another man in the group poses. I shrug before being accosted with another question about my work history, as if what did I do wrong in life to be stuck behind a bar, that’s what the question intoned, or how I interpreted… ‘belongs to me, belongs to me…this moment belongs to me and these people belong to the building, the vision, the Newness of this idea I’m Crafting, construction.. I’ll tell people form now on I’m in construction, that’d be funny, and accurate and honest, ‘cause I am. Now.
“We’re gonna go outside and hang by the fountain for a little bit, we’ll be right back,” the calm man says. They follow, and I’m alone. So I build on the word ‘belong’.. “Ownership,” I write, then “control” and “possession”. “The writing that shows this ownership and control exudes an admirable power on page, and ads to its transcendence, the immunity to Time, and an irresistible sense of locale and character….” I watch the group outside, must be a family trip, and yes all are related, I then imagine that the tasting room is mine, or my characters, and how she’d react if she were in here by herself.. she’d love to see her bottles tasted and sold, but people walking through the door alone would gratify her, give her promise and that sense of ‘belonging’.. then I play with the word again, “Belonging,” I write, “as in a sense of calling, purpose, kinship and intimacy.” This empty room belonging to me, I give myself a new deadline, have a beaming thought for Tuesday before they come back in. They look comfortable sitting on that ledge by the water, just watching the upspurt, so I scribble more, I tell myself ‘I will take this thought to class and then on the Road’. I’ll devour this moment, consume it as if it were an appetizer at ‘Billie’s Oeno Go’, the favored wine bar downtown, I think Fourth Street. The glasses, just in front of me, empty, under the counter, who will sip from that one, and that one, I stop scribbling and just look around, like one of them. And I pretend I’m one of them, like I’ve never been to Livermore wine country and like I know nothing about wine, that I don’t think of making my own wine and like–
“That’s beautiful out there,” the man says.
“Yeah, it’s pretty relaxing,” I say, putting my notebook in my back pocket.
“Wine notes?” he says, looking outside noticing that the family’s very much stationed by the water. “They love it out there, oh well, they’ll be in in a minute.”
“You ready for the other Pinot?” I say.
“Yeah.. that one you just poured was great.. I love Pinot.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.. that’s all I order when I go out to dinner.”
I pour the next one, from Monterey, and I think how he has a sense of belonging with Pinot– and yes I know I’m over-thinking this, ‘reaching’, but I want to, and like I tell my students, especially the 1B’s, “that’s when you discover something.”
“This one seems a little richer, is that right?”
“Yeah, it’s kind of rich, definitely more oak,” I offer, hoping I don’t influence his sip.
“Yeah.. yeah.. there’s more oak, definitely,” he says. I write down his words, and think he’s trying to communicate something with me, I don’t know what, but he’s sharing his love of wine and the winery and this moment speaking with me, and he doesn’t care if the others come into the room, in fact he’d probably rather they all stay out there; his wife, the others his age and the 20-somethings. He looks at the glass, and I write something down, “Observation.. can we just observe and not think too hard?” Which many wine people love to do, especially those who want to be seen as experts. “Can you pour me a little more, I think I tasted some cinnamon.”
“Yeah.. I get cinnamon from this one, too,” I say, feeling a belonging to this moment and this dialogue with the man. I pour, benevolently. He smiles, smells, sips.. “Yeah, definitely, cinnamon. I’m gonna go out there and make sure they haven’t drowned, be right back..”
As he walks outside to his family, I rush to the back, ignite the espresso machine, “café au lait,” I think, just like Hem.. I heat the milk, make two shots of espresso– push the door open, they’re still out there, back to my mix.. done.. behind the counter, writing again, noting what I can for Tuesday.