Regime change…

Here’s how I’m hoping to have my days go while I’m up here:

7:00am Wake, Breakfast, pulling self together
8:00am Update Journal (tada!)
9:00am Gym
10:30am Reading
11:00am-2:00pm One on one meetings with students
2:30pm lunch
3:00pm Drawing
5:00-7:00pm Program Critiques
8:00pm Evening fun
12:00 midnight Bed

So is this going to happen? It leaves out a bunch of the other components of the summer program here: seminars, artists’ presentations, graduate boards , faculty meetings. But if I can stick to something close to it, I’ll be feeling pretty darn good by the end of the month
Am I just setting myself up, though? Providing myself with a blueprint that I’ll look at with regret in a couple of weeks. The time has a way of getting a way from one up here. And my history with Bard is so complicated. Am I now sitting a a dorm room pledging that this time I’ll get it right? This time I’ll be a good student (even as a teacher?)

Bush just said that he believed that freedom is the future “for all humanity” with an intonation that that made it sound like a death sentence.

Things I love about teaching up here in the summer: 1)the NPR station carries “The Writer’s Almanac”. Today, we find out, was the day that the Globe Theater burnt down and the day where Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence” won the Pulitzer prize. The plummy, folksy announcer reads poems that always seem full of baby animals, children and minor epiphanies. But he signs off by telling me to be well, do good work and keep in touch, three things I actually aspire to. 2) Movies are 6.50 at the Lyceum theater in Red Hook, except for Tuesdays when they are 4.00. Last night, my four friends and I were the only attendees for “The Chronicles of Riddick”. Before the movie, we kidded with the projectionist and then giggled all the way through the movie’s blizzard of ass-kicking, chelsea muscle queen psuedo-bondage and relentless catwalk stalking. The whole thing is basically a western, tossed off with gobs of cgi that are treated so casually it’s a real relief from the ponderousness of recent starwars movies. Vin Diesel has an early scene in long stringy dreads and beard which makes him look less like an ambulatory circumcised dick. Everything looks a lot better when you didn’t have to pay 10.25 to sit through it. 3) The surrounding farms have peach orchards that produce amazing fruit.

Tomorow: update on how the new schedule fares. Be well, do good work, and stay in touch -we do this for all necromongers

0 Comments +

  1. i think it’s so bizarre and disgusting how the conservative right and particularly bush’s cabinet keep using well thought out patriotic catch phrases. they all seem to deluded into thinking that all of their phrases like ‘evil will pay!’ and ‘let freedom reign’ will show up in the history books of the future.

    have you noticed their strange choice of ‘history book’ wording too?

  2. only 7 hours of sleep? and an hour to goof off online, first thing in the morning? and what about dinner? I only see breakfast and lunch in this schedule!

    I’d die. not enough sleep, not enough eating, and not enough being online!

  3. unless it’s your plan to cultivate a grumpy demeanor with students, I’d suggest a snack between gym and student meetings 🙂

    the peach orchards sound lovely.

  4. Teaching always splits me. I absolutely crave it, enjoy the role of passing on understanding. On the other hand, it often feels false, like I am ignoring my own personal work and funeling it at other people. And the institutions are all so different and seem to graft themselves onto real education in uncomfortable ways. Ever feel like that?

    “Ambulatory circumcised dick”?! … Guffaw at the desk here at work … . Can’t ever feel like I’m seeing anything other than cyborg when I see him.

    A season at Bard, though — maybe it’s because I’m way down here — sounds hyper-nice.

  5. 8:00pm Evening fun

    I like the sound of that. Makes me want to hop a plane to N.Y. for some «evening fun.» ;-{)>

    So is this going to happen? It leaves out a bunch of the other components of the summer program here: seminars, artists’ presentations, graduate boards , faculty meetings. But if I can stick to something close to it, I’ll be feeling pretty darn good by the end of the month
    Am I just setting myself up, though? Providing myself with a blueprint that I’ll look at with regret in a couple of weeks.

    You’ll just have to give it time. Me, I just have to admire you for being able to draw up a schedule with such ease. I’m really bad at scheduling my life, which is why anything seems to happen in fits and spurts. I tend to schedule by individual events and not by daily routine.

    Vin Diesel has an early scene in long stringy dreads and beard which makes him look less like an ambulatory circumcised dick.

    LOL! Someone should preserve that quote for all eternity in formaldehyde. Seriously, it’s priceless!

    Everything looks a lot better when you didn’t have to pay 10.25 to sit through it.

    Isn’t that the truth. It works in the reverse, too…I’ve wound up disliking films I’ve paid full-price for a lot more than if I’d just seen them on TV.

  6. Point well taken, although the result wouldn’t be grumpiness so much as an attack of the “vapors” leading to my fainting while they drone on and on about their work.

  7. And that line is really silly as well – if you follow the logic of the movie, I guess you could say that you kepp what you kill for. Maybe saying that extra word was just too much for the actors or something.

  8. And that line is really silly as well – if you follow the logic of the movie, I guess you could say that you kepp what you kill for. Maybe saying that extra word was just too much for the actors or something.

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