Sunday Walk and Brunch

Our favorite spot, the Morcom Amphitheatre of Roses was a riot of fragrant blooms, and thronged for once with folks, lots of Moms and families and grandkids I imagine. After a lovely walk and brunch, the chatter of happy conversation was like the peal of chimes. You know, things are looking up. Friday's lecture went reasonably well, ended the Spring term, and then I was informed that a student organization voted me an Outstanding Instructor this year again. That's especially bolstering because I've really worried my teaching has been a bit dreary this year. Theory saved my life when I was a young queer without the words to explain why I deserved to take up space in a world that seemed to despise me, and part of the reason I have kept up teaching is to try to communicate the beauty and gratitude and provocation of theory for others... But in these last few years, what with my idiotic health emergency, then the hideous Trump election and its ruinous aftermath and the slimy realities it has exposed to the spotlight, and then my Dad's death from early rapid onset dementia a few months back on top of everything else have all undermined my faith in my choices (so many of which have come to seem precarious), my faith in the work of creative expressivity and critical thought to bring us forward together in spite of the ease of parochial short sighted greed and fear, my confidence in the power of my own words to be of some help to my students, to testify to the texture of our moment's distress, to clarify the stakes of our shared perplexity... I've been so depressed for so long by now that it has seemed hard to be interested in much of anything (thank heavens for Eric and Penny and the sfnal preoccupations I've made escapist recourse to all my life): and failing to be interested is unfailingly to be uninteresting. Anyway, it has turned out that teaching went well enough after all. The final papers are arriving more or less on time for once. And the papers really don't seem phoned in. They are making an effort, they are earnestly grappling with the texts and ideas. My students may have seemed bored out of their skulls quite a lot of the time, but clearly they were listening and reading after all. And this teaching award was something of a shock on top of that. A nice weird little flabbergasting shock. Maybe things are going to be all right after all.