adrenaline

maybe because I was teaching a text I actually know well and admire profoundly and that is, admittedly extremely rich, I had a kind of amazing class today. My students were still awfully lumpy and non-responsive, but I felt like I was able to make connections and set up the text and put together the various details of individual characters into historical perspective and eliciting the organization/ideological schema of the text. It was exciting--but also felt a great deal like that run-on sentence I just wrote: giddy and additive. It felt strange to be so animated. I'm sure it was talking about Hannibal and his moving the war elephants from Tunisia through Spain, over the Pyrennées and the Alps and laying siege to Italy that instigated this jittery drive throughout class.

I managed to scoot in both the complex construction of the nation-state and a conversation about the failures of language and the attempts to expand the boundaries of literature by incorporating references to the plastic arts (ekphrasis). And I did so with gusto.

Miracle of the day: teaching was actually enjoyable. In the moment, exhilarating.

THE LISTS

to do class: Write JM recommendation. Grade midterms. Write Vergil lecture. Copy notes from King's Vergil 4AW. Prep Class. Grade papers.
done! Copied Vergil notes. Wrote Vergil lecture. Prepped class. Graded two papers.

to do work: Write Pépin performatic writing section. Read Roach.
done! Read Roach. Planned revision of performatic writing section.

to do life: Pay down debt (currently $3,430). Procure dog. Redo taxes. Call Jessie Delgado. Figure out Amazon.com problem. Repot ginko tree.
done! Cooked orzo.

to do blitz: sarah, marilyn, giulia, irmary, mariana, dar, nv, robin, fl, ek.

Netflixed: El espinazo del diablo. Very hard to watch. But the bad orphan character, there was really no reason for him to be so bad--other than the fact that some people are just evil without reason. Perhaps he was representative of the Franquistas, those who evil with no reason, who enjoy violence and the power that gives them over others.