I realized that I hadn't been working on the book for several months. Under the guise of giving myself a break. These breaks are necessary, perhaps, but they also entail a separation from the work that can be depressing.
I have remedied that today...
At my bird feeder today:
house finch (5 or 6)
downy woodpeker (2)
starling (1); wasn't at feeder per se, but stopped by
black-capped chickadee (2-3)
cardinal (2); male and female
tufted titmouse (1-2)
My sister Debbie has a form of early onset dementia. I won't go into details, but this is not Alzheimers and is a malady that typically has its onset at a younger age. At this point she cannot use language or feed herself, can barely walk. The prognosis is usually that someone will die 5-10 years after diagnosis, and she was diagnosed 10 years ago. She receives exceptionally good care, in a home setting, living with her own mother, and her daughter now too, so she has lasted longer than anyone could have hoped for.
In this dream, I was texting B. about Debbie's funeral, but suddenly realized that I had not told her about the death itself. There are very few other details I can retain, though this was a long dream that began in another way and went through several stages of development before ending with this. There was one part where I was discovering a running path near an ocean, that then became a suburban street. Another part, a series of painful arguments with X.
***
I was thinking, the other day, that I used to think of the euphemism of "passed away" or "passed' as appropriate for peaceful deaths, like "he passed away last night in his sleep." It came as a shock to me to realize one day that many people use it for violent or sudden deaths, like "She passed away in an automobile accident." At first, I just thought the person using this expression, who was talking about a war casualty in Iraq, was just wrong, mistaken in how this is supposed to be used. But then I kept hearing it in these "inappropriate" ways and realized that I did not appreciate how widespread it is. For some people, this is simply the normal way of speaking about any kind of death. I still do not use it myself, even for quiet, peaceful acts of buying the farm. I would never, ever use it in cases where its euphemistic character clashes overtly with the nature of the death: *"Lorca passed away in 1936." In other words, I experience a little shudder when I perceive the utter futility of the euphemism. Someone I knew once wrote that nobody is afraid of "passing away," only of "dying."
Throughout the talk: "I argue that..." Or "I see blank as blank." Not just in the initial signposting phase of the introduction, but all the way through. This takes away a bit from the proper function of metadiscursive markers like this.
After every question: "Thank you for that question." / "That is a very good question." It is fine to do spontaneously once in a while, but I get the idea that the job candidate was taught that you always had to do this, with every. single. question. You feel that the person would say "that is a very good question" for even a ridiculously bad question.
I had a student once who would put a tag in front of every source, like "cultural critic Fulano de Tal," or "Lorca specialist Jonathan Mayhew."
These are not major transgressions, but minor tics. I'm sure I have my own I'm not even aware of.
[UPDATE]
A few more:
What would you teach for a graduate course? [DISSERTATION TOPIC]. How about an undergraduate course? [DISSERTATION TOPIC].
List of "research interests" on the CV includes 15, mostly overlapping and currently popular things. It would be easier to list what you aren't interested in.
How fast can I go from "I don't know if I'm qualified to write this book" to "Nobody else is qualified to write this book."
My grammatical peeve:
"I had went... "
"I had came..."
etc...
Nobody makes this mistake in reverse.
"I gone...."
I was teaching my class, on Bodas de sangre. I had a power point up, but just then a student took over the screen with his power point; apparently I had forgotten that he was going to give a presentation that. My girlfriend was visiting the class this day too. The student's presentation began with a cartoon or claymation version of Cortázar's "Axolotl," I guess cribbed from youtube, then went on to another similar version of Cronopios y famas. Then he finally went to Bodas de sangre, via a connection he made with the concept of karma as it is associated with both Cortázar and Lorca. My friend asked the class "how do you like Professor Mayhew?" I kept waking up, looking at my clock to see what time it was, and then going back to sleep to resume my dreaming. Since I had been awake for several hours in the night, I let myself sleep on, and arose rather late.
