Green, red, orange
You know what? Cheerfulness, contentment, and a work life that includes a lot of full and interesting days are all very good things. But these are not optimal conditions for blogging. If I were still back in the midwest, keeping irregular sleeping hours, stressing out about teaching, and fretting about my future, I’d probably be posting a lot more. If it weren’t for the fact that I still have the urge to write, I’d start to suspect that it’s true that there’s no writing without angst and neurosis. Not that I’d go back to that. It’s more that I’m still casting about for topics to write about now that I no longer feel compelled to bitch about academia, and "I’m just generally liking life right now" gets a little repetitive after a while, true though it is.*
In fact, speaking of academia, I’m kind of enjoying the attached-yet-detached feeling of being on a university campus but removed from the classroom as the fall madness starts up. Instead, I’m doing shifts at the reference desk, and when lost-looking first-year students come up and ask for help understanding the mysteries of Library of Congress call numbering, I think "awww, they’re so cute" instead of "why aren’t they better prepared?!" and then I help them figure out where to find what they’re looking for. I’m going to lead a few how-to-do-library-research training sessions for undergrads and others, and I’m rejoicing in the thought of doing the interesting parts of classroom teaching with no papers to grade. It’s also become clear to me that I still believe in intellectual inquiry; all I’ve done is to start looking for it along paths other than those that I used to think were the One and Only Road to Mt. Parnassus. And the trek has been uncommonly pleasant so far.
Fall is almost here; I can feel it. I caught the tail end of summer this weekend at the Charlottesville Farmers’ Market, where everyone was selling heirloom tomatoes in every possible weird shape and color. I bought some of a green-and-orange striped variety called "Zebra" and have been making the best tomato sandwiches I’ve made in some time. (Now if only I could get bread as good as I used to be able to get, they’d be the best tomato sandwiches ever.) At the market, a man selling shrubs pointed to a little Japanese maple in a pot: its topmost leaves were already starting to turn red. Later in the afternoon, walking home, I noticed how the sunlight was taking on that slightly faded look that means the earth is moving farther away from the sun summer is over. [edited to fix science error; thanks, Yami!] I spotted some bittersweet growing by the side of the road, a sign of fall that I still associate with Septembers in Baltimore and walking to school and being warned by my mother never to eat the bright orange berries, no matter how shiny and edible they looked.**
Last night it started to get noticeably cooler at the end of a dark lowering day, with leaves swirling dramatically. It occurred to me that last year, this kind of weather would have just made me depressed: oh no, summer’s over, winter’s coming. But something has happened. It’s like somewhere along the line, I forgot why I love this time of year, and suddenly it’s all come rushing back.
* Setting aside general angst about the state of the world, of course, and whether I should be looking for jobs in Canada just in case a certain current president gets re-elected, and all that. [On rereading, this sounds more flippant than I intended it to be. The worrisome thing is that four years ago when Bush won the election, or rather had the election handed to him, I said I’d move to Canada and I was being flippant. Now I’m not joking anymore. So, anyway, flippancy or no, there are still plenty of things that I fret about; they’re just not as immediately connected to my day-to-day life.]
** But was the bittersweet I remember American bittersweet (Celastrus scandens), or bittersweet nightshade (Solanum dulcamara)? I kind of think it was the second one, because I also remember its striking purple and yellow flowers. Any botanists out there care to assist?
Geez, I hate to nitpick poetry to tatters but I’m a scientist and that’s what we do, and actually I love being a pedant so never mind the false apology: The earth moves closer to the sun during northern hemisphere winter.
</PSA>
Blog! We demand of you that you blog!
This is lovely to read. Nothing wrong with contentment. And, strategically speaking you probably could have gotten 3 blogs out of it.(But, really, has blogging come to that?
And, I haven’t blogged in weeks. So, who am I to judge?)
I love the observation that students who aren’t one’s own are cute when they’re clueless!
I know the feeling – low on the angst in my life at the moment and finding blog inspiration few and far between!
Hey, I’m the poster child for aimless blogging. Come to the dark… no, light… no… um… side. See! There, I’ve written several sentences!
Glad to see you posting again. 🙂