Aquí se trabaja mucho

Yesterday was my day off. I worked on service related issues, and attended a social meeting for Spanish majors where I got a lot of advising done. At night I went out and saw two new rock bands who were very good. At the meeting with the students and at this barzinho later I had the distinct feeling of being in the 1970s, when I was an undergraduate. I am getting this feeling from my classes this semester, as well. It is as though people had finally thrown off the yoke of Reaganism, and had become curious once more.

Saturday and Palm Sunday

→Scrub deck, work out, grade three classes
→Minutes for that meeting and attachment with legislative bills and AAUP webinar information, as well as note on actual date that motion was voted upon
→Study abroad proposals
→NO research or writing allowed until all grading and planning for courses is finished!
→Remind students about time / location of Monday office hour
→Arrange bibliographic instruction

Monday

7: Plumber
10: Office hour
1: Appointment off campus
2: Appointment off campus
Work on the deck, work out, prepare classes, work toward abstract in Spanish

Tuesday

Call roofer
Drop off car
Teach
Work out
Get signatures on study abroad proposals
Keep working on deck
Keep working on Spanish version of abstract

Wednesday

Clean house
11 Jerry
Office hours
Finish writing letters, including to Mihai
Keep working on Spanish version of abstract
Prepare classes
Kayak — aim to leave 5:30 PM

Maundy Thursday

Teach three classes
Work out
Keep working on Spanish version of abstract
Commemorate proposed death of César Vallejo

Good Friday

Maybe take kayak to the bayou — I am not sure
Get ready for sewing, gardening, and painting Easter week
Keep working on Spanish version of abstract
Work out
Commemorate actual death of César Vallejo

Saturday

Finish and submit Spanish version of abstract
Work out
Work on deck

Sunday

Easter. Do something entertaining

Easter Week

No research, no writing, only recreational reading and movies
Get everything ready for classes and the end of the semester
Sew, paint, garden, fix door and finish deck
Take dress to tailor
Chase roofers to get an answer
Finish writing letters
Deck helper comes Monday, dermatologist is Wednesday, dentist is Friday
Work out, go hiking, visit prison, visit Creole plantation Laura, do different things like this

Special

I am going to run for something, and I am going to have a campaign speech. Things to remember for it:

♦ my academic background and affiliations make me an effective advocate for several disciplines
♦ I am not doing this for a course release or for money
♦ I am not anti administration; I am even pro administration because administrators do a great deal of useful and necessary work.
♦ At the same time I put research and teaching, and therefore faculty first, and I am a union maid
♦ I stand for research, quality teaching, student power, and a strong faculty voice in policy and governance

Axé.

Short story noir II

There is a character in the story I would like to interview so as to understand. I do not understand her or identify in any way but I would like to understand, to be able to see the world from her view. I want to find other literary characters like this.

It is a person who has risen out of poverty but misses it. I do not know whether she romanticizes it — that is easy to say. I think what she misses is the real thing, not the financial struggle but the rough people and circumstances, certain cultural things that went with it in her region.

It is perhaps because she was young then and the pleasures of youth are associated with this environment; that is the rational answer I have now but what I want to know is, how does it feel to miss the things she misses?

Axé.

Shenaz Patel

Le gardien du port connaît bien Charlesia. Elle passe régulièrement devant sa guérite et se dirige vers le quai. Elle scrute l’horizon, dans l’attente vaine d’un bateau qui la ramènera dans son île natale.

Diego Garcia n’est plus qu’un souvenir, la nostalgie douloureuse d’une vie simple rythmée par la production de Coprah, les jeux des enfants, le seraz de poisson-banane et le séga du samedi soir.

Depuis des années, Charlesia se heurte à l’incompréhension, aux questions sans réponses qu’elle ressasse et que lui pose un jeune homme. Désiré pourrait être son fils. Confronté au mystère de la naissance, il découvre peu à peu le drame de ses parents, et de son entourage. Les voix de Charlesia et de Désiré sont légères et inquiétantes.

Au-delà de leur révolte, c’est le drame intérieur des Chagossiens que raconte Shenaz Patel, leur déportation et leur existence de déracinés à l’île Maurice, depuis que Diégo Garcia est devenue une base militaire américaine.

That was about a book I really need to read.

Axé.

Old Boys

External review may not really be external. I feel like a character in a narcocorrido but I might just be viewing an old boys´ club.

Axé.

Fragment 1: Like A Rolling Stone

I will write a novel, and these are fragments from that proto-text.

*

He would play this song for them as an example of what would happen if they were not good, or if he were not. Their anger at being taunted this way is branded into their musculature. They do not like it.

The song used second person verbs in scorn and steady hatred.

Of course they must do their utmost to avoid living out on the streets. And the One would have been living out on the streets now had she not had his help. Don’t do what I have done, she sang.

Yet by learning the skills that would keep them from living out on the streets, they were distancing themselves from the One. This was harmful and they might be thrown out before they knew enough.

And he and the One had not wanted to succeed, but had been forced to it. They resented that, and felt proud of time spent not trying. That time was their identity.

Their success surprised them, they said.

“We were not as talented as  they, it was clear, because we had to try. They were made of finer stuff.”

“We did not know history because we had no personal memories of the Depression or the War, and because our school had not covered Europe yet. We did not know history.”

*

The two dyads battled each other for their lives, and this novel will not use the first person except in quotation marks. It will write in the third person of some characters falling into darkness.

*

They had suffered a great deal when they were poor and then again later, when they made the sacrifices they must to ensure they would not be poor again.

They would have liked to be artists and they felt bereft; there were great holes in the air around them where once their work had been.

They fall into darkness and mild water fills their gaps and breaches; wavelets rock and cover them.

Axé.