writewrite

As I write this, the sky is overcast, and a cool breeze is winding through my house. It feels not like summer, but like a day in early fall. Last night, at D and M’s, we all sat around a fire in a pit, talking, toasting marshmallows, and each other. The night was cool, perfect to be outdoors. This morning, my corduroy shirt still smells of woodsmoke.

For reasons of my own, I am taking today off. Back to work tomorrow, the first of July. Today? Although I can’t really afford the gas, I’m taking a small road trip. There and back again. And since it’s cool, Owen gets to come with me. Off we go.

Owen, who loves to play fetch, plays fetch so hard that in the heat he collapses if I let him play too long. It’s scary to watch your little dog come inside, stagger around and then fall to the floor, panting frantically. We limit fetch to no more than twenty throws this time of year. Which means we play fetch more often.

I have a cold. I was sitting in the sun trying to dry up my cold. It did not work. Now I have a sunburnt nose. And a cold.

Across the alley a man is painting a house. For the past two days he has been scraping the old paint off. Now the new paint is going on. Yellow clapboards, white trim.

Somewhere, someone is playing a radio in their back yard. Oldies. Songs I grew up with. Oldies?

I am learning to knit socks. Knitting and summer days seem diametrically opposite. To knit in summer I have to sit in front of a fan. If I knit outside, I’ll be knitting sweat socks.

The air conditioning is off. I don’t particularly care for air conditioning. The air feels stale, the AC unit uses too much energy, the use of it feels as though you become as confined to the indoors as being stuck inside during the winter. I’d rather be hot. Except at night. Then, I turn the air conditioning back on.

My cold makes me want popsicles. Orange ones. Green ones. Blue ones. Flavors which don’t exist in the natural world.

Later today I am going to ride my horse. This is not as pleasurable when you have a cold. Or when there is a thunderstorm, as there is predicted to be later today. Or when it’s hot, which it is. Still, as Winston Churchill said, “No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.” Right he is.

Late note: I took allergy medicine and my “cold” disappeared.” I just have a sore throat. This is not a cold. I hate allergies.

This is me, Owen, writing this. My birthday was yesterday. Not today. YESTERDAY. And you know what? Jean FORGOT my birthday. She FORGOT it. I waited all day yesterday for my cake and my three candles and my extra dog treats and my new toy and my walk and my extra game of fetch. ALL DAY I waited.

Nothing. No cake. No candles. No extra treats. I did get a squeaky tennis ball from Tractor Supply but that DOESN’T COUNT because it wasn’t a REAL birthday present. And I did get a lot of games of fetch but they DON’T COUNT either because JEAN FORGOT my BIRTHDAY ALL DAY.

I went to bed sad. And then Jean woke up this morning and said what she always says to me in the mornings: “Hello my Pookie Moo.” It’s annoying, I agree, but I usually smile and put up with it because she feeds me, throws tennis balls, and sometimes gives me big treats like pig ears or lets me eat horse poop. But today? I didn’t smile. Not at all. I just looked at her with my best forlorn sad dog look and I beamed thoughts into her brain about how she FORGOT my birthday which was YESTERDAY.

And then Jean finally got it. She said, as if she had thought this thought all by herself, “Oh No, Owen! I FORGOT your birthday which was YESTERDAY!!”

Duuuuuuuuuh, Jean. I knew that. I knew it ALL DAY.

Now Jean is thinking uo ways to make it up to me. She has played fetch with me only once so far, but I bet there are more games of fetch coming. And I know I’m going to get treats. Lots of them. And a cake and candles — THREE CANDLES because I am THREE. And maybe even new toys! And a walk in the woods. And a swim in the pond. Oh I’m a HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY DOG! Happy birthday to me!

This summer, I am putting together my tenure dossier. This big tome is composed of a narrative, supporting materials, and something mysteriously referred to as “supplemental” materials. The whole thing is meant to be an extended argument for why my university should grant me tenure. “Extended” is not the word I would choose, however. Bloated? Weighty? Something like that. The narrative alone will end up being something like 100 to 150 pages. I mean, really. Who wants to read that much about my life as a college professor? I don’t. I certainly don’t want to write it. Then there’s all the stuff to prove that what I wrote about my life as college professor is actually true. That is the “supporting material” part. Then, if that doesn’t seem to be enough, there’s the opportunity to put more things forward in the “supplemental” carton. The film you made, the entire exhibit of writing that was on the wall, the art the little kids put on the wall, the pink fairy wings that you wore on Halloween to amuse your students. That kind of thing.

No one, I am finding out, enjoys this process. Tenure dossier production is a misery, tortuous and filled with drudgery, made even more miserable by the dire sense that if this doesn’t work out the only employment option left is — what? A greeter at WalMart? Checker at Big Lots? Still, this process is one we all go through. And I have this dark sense that after having gone through it, we then become determined that all who follow us shall also go through this suffocating hell. Did I say that? I did.

Which leads me, finally, to the point of this post: procrastinating. I’m doing that right now. Writing about how I don’t want to be writing my tenure dossier. The one I had nightmares about last night. The one that is sitting on this desk, half written. Not quite half written. I even started reading a book about procrastinating last night rather than write this thing. What, I’d like to know, is the evolutionary advantage of procrastination? I mean if we dork around all day and don’t do our work, are we the lesser ones, the ones that get eaten by the cheetah, the ones who not being fittest don’t survive and therefore don’t get to perpetuate the species? That doesn’t seem likely. Maybe it’s species specific, period. Dogs, for instance, don’t procrastinate. I have never seen Owen look at his tennis ball and say, “Hmm. Maybe later.”

Owen, however, loves his tennis ball. Loves the zen of fetch, the burst of speed as he follows the ball, the rewarding joy of bringing it back. If I’m diligent about it, I might learn to love my tenure dossier. A friend suggested I see this as an opportunity to contemplate where I have been and then imagine fully where I might like to go. Looking at this project that way, seeing the inner fetch of it, the zen of it, the opportunity of it? Okay. Maybe now — or, well, soon — I can stop procrastinating and really get to work on this.

In my creative writing classes, fall and spring semester, I often have students write about their favorite season. Choose a season, I tell them, write about one perfect day, conjure up the season in words and images, stories we can see, use all your senses to bring the day, whatever day it is, alive. I really like to do this exercise in late January, or early February, when everyone is stir crazy from the cold, the gray days of Indiana winter, the latest bout of flu or strep throat or whatever virus is cruising through schools and work. The students write in class for twenty minutes or so, then they all read their work aloud, one by one. Invariably, and I know this, most of the students will write about summer. The warmth, the sun, the play outdoors, the time with family, barbecues, softball, vacation, water, sunburns. All that.

It’s a magical moment when we do this. Winter slides away. Summer rises up in the classroom, created out of words. The students sigh (seriously, they do), responding to stories of bonfires and cookouts, fourths of July, the long gilded days of June. There is much joy, of a quiet almost reverent kind, in the classroom when we do this. Of course my job, as teacher, is to point out that language has taken us away from chill dark days into another season, given us a gift, transported us. Magic. Not magic. Both. We talk about that, because it’s what we’re there for in creative writing class, and we move forward with a surer knowledge of what words on the page can do.

Still. When the weather is like it has been today, and will be tomorrow, words are not enough. I just want to be outdoors. There is not enough sunscreen in the world. I’m burnt and brown, tired and happy. Even though I must, I do not want to sit at my desk at all when the weather is like this. Today I managed a few hours. But I spent the afternoon outdoors, and the evening too. And tomorrow, if it is at all like today, I will find it just as hard to stay rooted to my desk, writing. What is there to write about? Winter? Ah. There would be magic in that, wouldn’t there. Maybe so.

Today, in the mail, I got a membership card from AARP. All I have to do to “activate” it is send in $12.95, and then, at 12:01 a.m. on July 20, 2008, I will automatically be added to the ranks of this venerable group.

I am so not ready for this. I mean, for pete’s sake, I’m still in my forties. Okay, extremely late forties. Okay, so I’m almost fifty. Whatever. But AARP? I’m not retired. Far from it.

What’s next? I imagine the Senior Activity Center calling. Hello, Jean? We have a lovely mid-morning therapeutic knitting class we thought you might be interested in. Discounts for senior citizens this month…

Then I’ll get a call from the subscription people at Arthritis Today. Subscribe now and get a free gift of Ginseng Garlic Green Tea! Good for Memory Loss! Gout! Bad Eyesight! Dysfunctions of all kinds!

Then there will be the first solicitations from alumni representatives wanting to help me plan my estate. And wouldn’t you be interested in the projects your alma mater has planned for the future?

No. And don’t give me a stupid t-shirt either. Go away. All of you.

Yesterday, I finally remembered, about two thousand miles late, to take my car in to have the oil changed. The Jiffy Lube in Richmond is amazingly fast — when there’s no line, like yesterday, you can get in and out in five minutes. They tell you that when they usher you into the waiting room. I never believe it, although I should, because it always turns out to be true. Yesterday afternoon, I barely had time to read the local newspaper (which also only takes five minutes) when the manager came in and said, “You’re done.”

At the counter, he read through all the things they had checked on the car — oil, wipers, water, tires, transmission fluid, air filter. Everything was fine. Then he told me the total, $42 something. Then he kind of paused, and said, “What kind of animal do you have?”

Oops. I had forgotten that Jiffy Lube also vacuums your car. And there was a LOT of Owen hair in my car, especially the front seat, which Owen will tell you , belongs solely to him. He thinks so, anyway.

“I have a dog,” I said. “A black and white dog who only sheds white hair.”

He laughed. “I have a golden retriever. Same thing: hair everywhere.”

Hair everywhere is right. My black car, black interior, is filled with white dog hair. And crumbly pieces of dog treats, muddy paw prints, a couple of gross tennis balls, a pink toy jammed into a drink holder, all kinds of dog detritus. I suddenly felt very sorry for the Jiffy Lube guys. “Did you guys vaccum all that hair out of my car?”

“We tried,” he said. Then, in an apologetic tone: “My vacuum’s not as strong as it could be.”

It was my turn to laugh. “Neither, apparently, is mine.”

I think he then said something about using tape to get the rest of the hair off. I’m not positive about that. He had a deep Kentucky drawl that obscured (to me, anyway) some of his words. I paid my bill, thanked him, and drove away in my slightly less hairy car…in search of tape.

Today, because the powers that be have decreed that We Shall Have New Carpet, I’m packing up my office at school. Everything. Books, files, all the weird junk I have accumulated over the past five years. Here’s a partial list of stuff I have found:

a glow in the dark rubber skeleton
horse Christmas lights
a pair of pink wings…I think it’s a Fairy costume
two tiny bottles of gin (they were part of a weird gift, Aaron, and no not from Truman)
one bottle of tonic
a pie plate
three horse shoes (every English teacher needs these, trust me)
a duck soap bubble thing that you can wear around your neck (another gift)
a pair of shoes I didn’t even remember having

There’s more. Dumb books (French for Cats, for example), six copies of Elements of Style (not a dumb book), a Fairy Tale book (why is this here?), a Dr. Suess book (I know why that is here), and something like two dozen dictionaries ranging from a small paperback ordinary dictionary to my favorite, The Historical Dictionary of American Slang which has no less than thirteen pages devoted to variations on the wonderfully expressive Anglo-Saxon word “fuck” demonstrating its possibilities as noun, verb, adjective, adverb, interjection, intensifier, and indispensible acronym root word.

Yes, we are having a lovely day here in English professor land. And right about now I have to say: Okay, Jean. Put down the books and put them into the boxes. Keep moving…