Sitting Awkwardly

Success, as Dr Crazy pointed out in the comment(s) to the previous post, is harder to re-channel into productivity. I think of my own tendency to be extremely prolific in creating - academic writing, non-academic writing, music - in those transitional periods surrounding failure. Around the dawning point in relationships that they're not working, but before the crisis of disjunction has been reached. In the terrible waiting period before the slim envelopes start arriving, or in the echoing silence some time after they've stopped arriving. In short, to respond to Crazy's 'why...a profession that has rejection at its center', I offer up the possibility that every blasted last academic works better with a few bitter failures at which to stare. Works better with a bunch of thin envelopes to fan the embers of productivity into the hellish flame of actual work. Speaking of which, I'm still attempting to re-capture the bitterness of a few days ago and keep the 'edge' for my work as I continue revising something for publication as an article. In order to eventually re-revise it into book form, some mysterious hybrid space between dissertation and article...

Affirmation, or, what self-assessment hasn't delivered

I'm annoyed I can't hang on to my 'me vs. them' mentality at the moment. I've been offered a side-door fast track to a book contract with Big English Press (no points for guessing when it's 50-50, sorry). Which is, of course, a Good Thing(tm), and might do something in the future to assist in redressing this 'unemployed academic' problem. On the other hand, the work is precisely what it was before the letter extending this welcome boost arrived: nothing's changed, and my bitterness against academia for 'its' treatment of me this last round has no reason to have altered. On the other hand, I feel like Sally fucking Fields and her tragic 'you like me' Oscar acceptance. Sigh. I've managed to keep my head down and stay focused on producing the work for all these years, which, clearly, is all I need to continue doing. Yet I can't stop myself from looking up, looking around, and wanting to bask in the glow for a bit. Hmm. Maybe I am still bitter. Phew. That was close. Just bitter in a chipper, cheerful kind of way.

Embarassment

OK, I can't actually remember the last time I've been in a 'branch library' before today. University libraries, repository libraries, hell, academic bookstores, even big chain bookstores. But walking home this evening, I decided to stop in at the branch library a mere block from my current place of residence and break in my new City Library Card.

It's fucking awful. I was thinking some Hegel, maybe some Kant, maybe I'd get really really lucky and find some literary theory. I wasn't counting on the philosophy 'section' being one and the same as both the 'religion' section and the 'mysticism' section, and also rolled in with 'psychology', blending imperceptibly into what must have been 'sociology'. Teach Yourself Dream Interpretation? Kaballah in 30 Minutes? L. Ron Fucking Hubbard? I use the scare quotes intentionally; these are sections and/or categories only in the loosest of senses. In the library's defence, I suppose, they had a tolerable biography section, a cute little section on New York, and a Spanish-language section, presumably a concession to the actual neighborhood. But it was truly truly apalling how few books were in this library. Barnes and fucking Noble stores have more books, even more non-fiction and classics and philosophy and religion, and are better fucking organised, than was Small Branch Library.

OK, they have no money. No budget. Free wireless access, lots of VHS tapes and DVDs, even a full-time 'reference' librarian, although the one query I saw her answer was 'Where can i find something on World War II' (from a well dressed man in his 40s who is either a complete idiot or was engaging in the little known - but quite popular in its underground circles - pasttime of librarian baiting. Her answer? 'Umm. Why don't you ask her, over there, she just showed somebody else where those books are'. (And, again, the Civil War and World War II were modestly, though reasonably, represented. World War I, apparently, just not as popular. Plus 2 copies of Heaney's Beowulf and a copy of Donaldson's translation.) But I'm truly horrified - the ivory tower aspect, something i don't generally believe in (it's an ivory tower only if you let it be; get off your ass and out there if it's an issue) driven home, hard, in the face of the intellectual and, well, book-ish poverty of my local library.

intransigent transience

Part of my ongoing annoyance with academia at the moment stems from a minute, yet hugely significant, aspect of the search for employment: the ever-present awareness of transience, that this too, shall pass. I moved from The City (UK) to The City (US) (one of only three places in the world I know of with the sheer hubris to use the definite article and nothing more to denote itself) intending to spend 8 or 9 months here before, in an ideal world, taking up a position somewhere in the world. So far so good. And, as an aspiring academic, I'm well aware of the lack of geographical choice involved: with only certain limitations, you take the best of what you're offered. Thus, through the September-February hiring process for tenure-track positions, I was living life on the balls of my feet, ready to move on to wherever the ivory tower beckoned.

But. No love on tenure-track positions, I then latched on to the jobs being posted in England in drips and drabs. One in particular had my name written all over it; my failure last week to obtain said position has, I suspect, more to do with the hassle of hiring foreigners than anything else, but what's a girl to do? So after the minor crisis of faith last week (immediately preceding the weekend spent at a conference filled with the mediocre and the employed - trust me, it wasn't a pretty sight), I decided I simply had to throw down some roots in The City, to plan on being here for another 16-18 months. What I forgot, of courese, were the late-stage tenure track positions, and the sudden rush of adjunct positions only now being advertised. I clock it at 6 months of sending off applications, trying to stay mobile for the one that will (must. might. shall. if i'm lucky) come through. So my resolution to entrench myself a little more firmly, to step away from la vida peripatetic, has crumbled like a dead leaf. I figure between the UK and the US, the process should finally come to a screeching halt sometime around June or July, just in time to take a deep breath before plunging into next year's applications. I cannot communicate how little enthusiasm, how little energy, I have for this ongoing process.

recall

At a bar last night, stepping outside for a fag, only to over hear a man on his mobile utter this priceless gem, "Remember when we took Fallujah?". From his build and posture, he quite easily could have been military. But 'we'? And who on earth was he speaking to with that line? For that matter, speculating it was an army friend, what are the odds of not remembering that whole urban siege fun-and-games nightmare?

Things personal have kept me from posting much here. I'm hoping I'll get back into a rhythm. Although a conference this past weekend, and having to explain over and over my unemployed, cloudy-future status, has me rather anti-academic at the moment. Plus the list of job apps to complete seems to be getting longer rather than shorter. Such are the chronicles of the inivisible non-adjunct...