This City of Ghosts

[So, I know I said I was leaving you for bigger and better things--and I still am, I wasn't lying--but life's been moving so fast that I haven't had time yet to find a suitable replacement, so here I am. But only for a little bit, I promise.]

It's last fall whenever I think about you. Walking to class with the leaves crunching under our feet and laughing at spilled coffee and words that spilled out effortlessly. You were always so positive and so much more prepared than I ever was, always late and frazzled, but you never once made me feel guilty for any of it. And today, I can't help but find myself replaying last fall over again in my head, because right now all I want is to hear real words and to be hugged at the end of it all. You left us too soon.

And that's probably why today, as I rode the bus to the grocery store, ready to fill my backpack with orange juice and cans of condensed chicken soup, all I could think about was what would happen if I didn't get off at that stop I'm supposed to get off at and instead stayed seated, riding the bus in giant circles around the city. And then I started thinking about jumping in a car, or even on a plane if I could manage it, and going so far away that everything would be new and nobody would be familiar. And all the while I was trying to figure out if this was possible or not, I sat there with walls up and everything securely tucked away and almost missed my stop.

Au Revoir!

"...these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it" --Herman Melville, 'Moby Dick'

This blog initially blossomed out of a bunch of new beginnings--grad school, leaving my boyfriend of three years, moving away from tiny williamsburg to a new city. It then gained even more speed during the passing of my two grandparents, and the surprising end of that three year relationship which followed soon after. Luckily, that He has moved on to become a distant memory. And the few Hes that followed Him never really mattered much in the end.

But after a little more than a year of writing, I have found a new He, and I've found him unexpectedly at that. But in full disclosure, friends, this He is not new. In fact, he's been around for a little over five months now. Yet whenever I sat down to write about him here, I just couldn't--I tried once and it felt funny and forced and not good enough. My words sounded too real and normal and uncomplicated--but more than anything, they came nowhere near capturing how full my heart was or how much fun I was having. There was nothing to lament or yearn for or romanticize because what I have been feeling these last few months is tangible and real and strong and what I had been searching for in all those posts but just hadn't realized I wanted.

And so instead I wanted to tell you about things we'd done, or the guacamole and pancakes we'd made, or the places we'd gone to, or my rekindled affection for all things Badger (!), but the words and the stories didn't seem to fit here in a blog so unintentionally devoted to lost love and all sorts of other pasts. And so, with all this in mind, I've decided to bid adieu to Dreamy Quietude. New stories are beginning, and I need somewhere else to spill them all.

My new blog is going to be much more about the here and now. I want to tell you stories in words that are less cryptic, but just as pretty, this time around. Oh, and I want to share lots of photos, too.

So goodbye bloggie. Thanks for being such a good friend.

The Right Words

Today, it was difficult to get out of bed, so I didn't. I stayed home and slept most of the day. I know tomorrow will be better, but today it doesn't feel that way.

I want so badly to be done with it, but it always seems to be there. I could go three months without even giving any of it a second thought and then all of a sudden every day seems like a struggle again and little things trigger me and I'm back to those old insecurities. And talking about it, to anyone, is hard, mostly because I wish I didn't have to talk about it in the first place, but also because talking about it always seems so dramatic and intense and those are the last things I want to be. So, I end up keeping people I care about at a distance, putting on a super happy face or going off the grid for a day or an evening until I've regained my composure. Because the one thing I know for certain is that I have the terrific ability to 'bounce back' after a day like today-- I know that even after an evening of tears, tomorrow morning I'll wake up, get dressed, and it will be like today never happened. And I know that's wrong and what's worse is that I always secretly hope that someone will call me out on that sadness, see through the guise. But mind-reading, I'm fairly certain, doesn't exist, and I know that help's rarely given unsolicited I guess my biggest fear is that talking about my on-going struggles with my ED will make me seem insecure, needy, self-doubting, unhappy, lost--words that I don't feel accurately describe me, because overall I am happy and I am OK. I'm just not entirely free.

A Forward Glimpse

Rainy, gray weather's had a hold on this city for far too long and I just can't seem to shake the January-February blues. I can't wait for 70 degrees and hiking and walks around Roosevelt Island and sundresses and raspberry lemonade and taking pictures of spring's first blossoms.

this morning i was walking along M Street and saw a homeless man about 15 feet in front of me. he was standing on the sidewalk, holding a baseball cap out for money, but didn't seem to be talking to passers-by or doing anything to solicit donations. to my surprise, however, as i passed him, he lunged forward slightly and shouted "BOO!" as if to scare me into giving him money. though the strategy didn't work (i kept walking), i nearly burst out laughing, and later thought that maybe i should've given him some change to reward one of the most original and bizarre homeless-guy tactics i'd ever seen.

Well, at least it's not 5AM...this time.

So, how does a discussion of drama relate to my investigation into Plato’s Chora? To understand the direction in which this project will proceed and the subject matter that this project seeks to investigate, I think it is helpful to first think about drama, for several reasons. The first being that this project will be a performance. Using key terms that occur repeatedly within traditional scholarship on the Chora as my script, and the classroom as the space for Chora’s theoretical performance, this project seeks to (en)act the possibilities for a protagonistic application of the Chora in rhetorical scholarship. Moreover, the very format with which my project will take will be as much an explicit argument as it will be an implicit performance of that argument. While other literary forms, too, are open for interpretation, performance of drama requires different terminology, namely that focused on embodiment and (en)actment; a discussion of the choratic classroom, as I will show, requires such terms, since the Chora is always moving. Just as drama is the process of (an always changing) (en)actment of reactions to a set of words—putting forth an argument of who and what a character is—and just as that embodiment is open to various interpretations by the actor, the Chora also allows for that style of engagement in the classroom. This project, then, seeks to rhetorically open up the very physical, designated space of the composition classroom. Thus, the question that this project seeks to answer is not one of meaning-making or productiveness, but rather one of embodiment and enactment: How might we embody and enact the Chora in the writing classroom? Finally, this project will argue that like protagonists in drama, the fields of rhetoric and composition too must give up their will toward mastery—the desire to find the precise ”key” to a/effective writing. We might instead seek to open up the fields to the possibilities that come out of impreciseness, out of failure, out of not knowing. And by seeing our students, too, as protagonists, we might better be able to help them give up their insistence that what they bring to the classroom—a set of values, experiences, ideas of what writing is and is not—need be what they will leave with. If the Chora is a site of transformation, flux, as Plato’s dialogue intimates, then my project argues that the Chora allows us to, like the protagonist of a drama, occupy a space predicated on contingencies, refusals, blockings. And most importantly, we must take away all expectations of what we as instructors will bring to the classroom, and like Hamlet resign ourselves to the idea that in the composition classroom, the readiness really is all.

I wish I was here

To Begin (Again)

Three hours later, and I've got an introduction to a thesis on the Chora which doesn't even make mention of the Chora. . Looks like I've got a long road ahead.


“…learning is much closer to invention than to verification…The modes of academic writing now taught in school tend to be positioned on the side of the already known rather than on the side of wanting to find out […] and hence discourage learning how to learn.” -Gregory Ulmer (Heuretics)

“The theater is so endlessly fascinating because it's so accidental. It's so much like life.” --Arthur Miller

Drama, as a form, is strange. Time and space limit drama in ways that are different than other literary forms; unlike the novel or film, its structure is determined by (1) a requisite physical space, namely the apparatus of the theater and (2) by how long the audience is willing to watch a performance. On the one hand, these conditions reflect a unique set of constraints, for drama is a text which is bound to more than the space of a page. But perhaps the most curious aspect of the genre is that despite occupying a physical space and a designated amount of time, drama cannot be held; unlike film or other mediums where one is able to rewind, pause, fast-forward and so on, dramatic performances are, for the most part, continuous and forward-moving, and once a play ends, it is impossible to recreate the exact same conditions of that performance twice —i.e. cadence, inflection, choreography, even audience. Thus, the script, the theater, and the determined length of the performance serve only as a blueprint; they set up a framework, but what occurs within the space of that framework is essentially fluid, always changing. Thus, the conditions of drama create a unique tension—while the physical space and the space of the script create boundaries for what can and cannot occur, the performance that takes place within that space make it a text that is, essentially, without a singular, stable form.

We also see this paradox reflected in drama’s thematic structure. It would seem that the fundamental argument of all drama is that nothing is transparent. Drama approaches reality with the assumption that life is mysterious, which is why, arguably, in each plot, control slips away from the protagonist. We begin with a character who says “I’ve got it” –meaning, someone who believes he or she possesses a whole series of possibilities or solutions—only to soon realize that this is not the case at all. Why? Because life is revealed as one of contingency, without reliable probabilities; the world of drama is one of surprise.

Thus, dramatic action is open to a series of reversals and failures, and it winds up in a place radically different from where it started. The result is that the protagonist begins to accept that nothing is predetermined, and thus constantly second guesses his own assumptions about the world around him. We see this, for example, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where Hamlet constantly doubts his assumptions about his father’s death. Ultimately, however, Hamlet resigns that “the readiness is all” (4.2.237). In other words, outcomes or consequences which might occur cannot be calculated or foreknown, only embraced with readiness.

Of course, along with each protagonist, every drama also has an antagonist, who insists on control, on that story being that story, and he is unscrupulous to this fact. So, what you get in drama is also a conflict of experience. Whereas the protagonist lives with contingencies and creates the possibility for growth, the antagonist never realizes this, or, rather, realizes it too late.

What this project seeks to do is to advocate that, as writing instructors, we approach our classrooms as sites of drama and our roles in those classrooms and our students as protagonists. By using the term “protagonist,” I do not wish to imply that the aim of this thesis is to heroically save the fields of rhetoric and composition. Quite the contrary—my thesis will argue that these fields do not require any saving at all; that by giving up our antagonistic will toward mastery—the desire to find the precise ”key” to a/effective writing pedagogy—we might instead be able to open up the field to the possibilities that come out of impreciseness, out of failure, out of not knowing. And by seeing our students as protagonists, we might better be able to help them give up their insistence that what they bring to the classroom—a set of values, experiences, ideas of what writing is and is not—need not be what they leave with. We must, like the protagonist of a drama, occupy a space predicated on contingencies, refusals, blockings. And most importantly, we must take away all expectations of what we as instructors will bring to the classroom, and like Hamlet resign ourselves to the idea that in the composition classroom, the readiness really is all.

traveling bug is biting me hard

To say Georgetown is a strange place would be a gross understatement. As an employer, it might be best described as a schizophrenic monolith-- a tightly woven bureaucracy with an occasional mom-and-pop sensibility. It's both the Roman Empire right before the fall and Apple circa 2007--an ever expanding, customer-service minded, innovative, well-oiled machine.

And it's for that reason that I have somehow gone from being jobless next fall to having secured employment, once again, at Georgetown, based on a fortuitous run-in with an old colleague. And I'll be receiving full benefits. Amen.

When Nothing Goes According to Plan

I guess it's easy to forget the things that make you happy, but I am convinced that there's no better moment than when that feeling takes you by surprise and rushes back into you like a fierce wave of energy and anticipation. Having the opportunity, once again, to teach Shakespeare at Georgetown has put me back into that euphoric state of last April. I remember getting up really early and being unable to fall asleep at night because I loved what I was doing so much that I couldn't wait for the day to begin again. And each day on my way to work lines of dialogue would be floating around in my head and I'd recite Shakespeare's words over and over again like a prayer. And maybe accepting the opportunity to teach Othello this semester came at the cost of job security next fall, but a little voice keeps telling me that this was the right decision and from the delightful mess of books and old notebooks covering my floor and the sound of Harold Bloom's podcasts that have been echoing through my apartment all afternoon, I can''t imagine doing anything else.

Life seems to be piecing itself back together again. I haven't been this happy in a long while.

2011: Believe

I like to think that as the clock struck midnight and Friday became Saturday and 2010 turned into 2011, the sky opened up and covered the entire city in fluffy, white flakes. After all, can you imagine a more beautiful greeting to the New Year, a new decade?

Of course, in truth , the best New York could offer was leftover gray slush and instead of the soft patter of snow falling, the New Year sounded a lot more like strangers, angry neighbors, and music with too much bass.

Yet hours and days later, my memory is less true and more wishful and so I can tell myself that flakes really were falling as I left the party, jumped into a cab, and headed back to Stacey and Sarah’s apartment that night.

My second December trip to New York came and went too fast, and so did my trip to Florida. Both trips were reminders that there are people in my life who love me, unconditionally. Family count as most of those people, but so do Sarah and Stacey. I’ve known Stacey and Sarah for what seems like forever and it goes without saying that these girls are more like sisters than friends; we try on each other’s clothes, we set each other up on blind dates, we tell each other when there’s food stuck in our teeth (sometimes), and when we’re together we laugh so much our chests hurt and eyes begin to tear. But most of all, we’re there for each other, to hold each other up even when we feel like falling.

For me, the New Year, a year which seems more and more like a year of possibilities, didn't begin when the ball dropped or champagne bottles were opened, but rather, it began the next morning with hugs and words meant with love and understanding, while sitting in the living room with my two very best friends.

And so, later that morning, as I left that city to return to my own, the streets were still empty and quiet and the sky still gray and the slush still muddy. But because of that huge grin across my face and that warm, grateful feeling in my heart, I’d still like to believe it was snowing as my train pulled away from Penn Station.