Monday, February 18, 2008

submerged

Bouts of drenching rain the past few days – nice for the plants ("Florida, venereal soil" – Stevens) but nail-biting for us, as the roof's a sieve of yet-to-be-repaired holes. After a weekend of epic scribbling, I have a draft of this week's conference paper. Terrified to look at it & realize what a farrago of half-digested thises & thats it might be: a bit of Cratylus, leg of Saussure, dashes of Puttenham Dryden & Addison, smidgens of JH Prynne & RW Emerson – that sort of paper.

Now back to the "real" world, where quotidian responsibilities have piled up over my dizzy head: 31 chapters of 1 Samuel to read, stacks of student sonnets to address, mid-terms in a blue-book'd stack on the bar ("mark me, mark me!" they cry, like the marks in Blake's "London"), & off in the not-so-distant future, a half-dozen pieces I've committed to write over the next half-year. And I need to get a haircut in some interstice of time over the next three days, & buy some new clothes so that I don't slouch the corridors of conference-land in the same drab & awful uniform I've worn for the last decade.

(Unhelpful that we've been having the floor in the "spare" bedroom – formerly D.'s bedroom, now officially the playroom – redone, so that every corner of the upstairs is cramm'd with toys & furniture & stacks of children's reading material. My toes black with late night stubs.)

4 comments:

E. M. Selinger said...

New clothes? A haircut? Dude, I'm planning to slouch my way through L'ville like the Shaggy Man of Oz.

Finished my own draft this weekend--also rough, but there's time to polish it when the grading's done. And the NEH grant draft. And the class prep. Well, there's time in there somewhere. Yours sounds grand, and I'm looking forward to it!

As for rain--that would be, like, LIQUID water falling from the sky? I've heard of that, and vaguely remember some such event here in Chicago, once upon a time...

Mark Scroggins said...

The Shaggy Man of Oz was not -- shall we -- as follically challenged as yrs truly, whose unshorn state resembles more Krusty the Clown.

Rain on the plants is sublime. Rain on the floors, & carpets, and books, is less so.

Emily said...

I hear you on feeling submerged in work. The great thing about the Shakespeare Association of America is the seminar-style panels.

That's also the thing that generates the most work for me in the early spring. It's just that time of year (perhaps it's that time of the year all. I don't know any more).

Mark Scroggins said...

Emily, you mean in addition to the struggle to get one's own paper done & polished etc, the flood of emailed papers one needs to read & think about? Oh I know all about it from the nearest source possible!