A Weekend Spent Mostly Behind A Book

The view across rue Seguier from my front window

My entire weekend has been pretty intensely devoted to something I have spent precious little time doing for many years--Improving My Mind.  Studying again.  Reading and annotating (Stein).  Reading and not annotating (a couple of web articles about Stein; a huge and wonderful social history of Impressionism / Paris that I found in Raquel's apartment, missing some pages where plates have been razored out but still immensely fascinating); a history of the Nazi Occupation and its aftermath (When Paris Went Dark).  A Review of French Grammar I found in the apartment. Lots of stuff.

This is actually one of the things I fantasized about when I took this job, although last weekend, my previous opportunity, I ended up marking in-class journals, re-working Raquel’s draft schedule, and obsessing over trying to get sketches and drawings of the Tahoe cabin ready to pdf and send to an architect friend—that and taking some long slow Clydesdale (Percheron, I guess) runs while babying my prone-to-cramp calves.  Yes as I implied earlier I am giving myself a crash course catching up / getting ahead of the readings for A in P (thank goodness for the more leisurely schedule compared to the windsprints of the GT), which is actually a true pleasure: it sounds insane to say but I know how to read a Henry James novella and really get into it and be able to teach it.  This is a strange reminder of what after all was the metier that I thought I was going in for, back before the demographics of the late 1980s job market (lots too many white men chasing way too few jobs)  and my quixotic choice of emphasis ("Not another Shakespeare scholar.  Don't you know we're revising our curriculum to emphasize more relevant texts?") as well as my own self-sabotage ("Mr Stenzel spends too much time on his teaching and not enough on his publication efforts") led me to the career I had at UC Davis.  Eventually this career became a nonstop diet of writing courses leavened with the occasional Summer Abroad (dealing with some wonderful students as well as a bizarre mixture of travel-struck naifs, "fun"-bent Greekies and archly posing pseudo-sophisticates).  

This is half the hallway before my trap(ezoidal) door

I was talking with someone before I left about that twilight time before the writing program’s Amicable Divorce from the English Department, when the unanointed lecturers were occasionally allowed to toil in massa's vegetable garden (and teach literature courses for their sabbaticalizing betters) instead of toting dem bales of composition cotton while singing spirituals of solidarity.  Prepping a new lit course was a heady undertaking, extra work done in breaks and on the fly: crafting new writing assignments, re-reading old works and old notes, slamming up new reading lists and staying a week ahead of the undergrads (mea culpa).  Those were exciting times, kind of what I am feeling right now, the joy of flexing intellectual muscles and being satisfyingly tired from the workout.  The unspoken goal for all of us back then seemed to be to kick ass and be so much better than the more-published Academic Senate competition that the sagacious students would actually look for the non-professors on the at-first-generic yearly schedules, with STAFF instead of a professor’s name denoting someone who knew how to make a lecture interesting, or run a real discussion, or write comments neither snarky nor vague.  Of course when your competition was too often has-beens or never-weres preternaturally talented at putting undergrads to sleep despite the uncomfortable desks, with or without whispers of Inappropriate Behavior thrown in, it didn't take all that much to make a good impression.  The fact that we lecturers so seldom had the luxury of repeating a literature course lent the whole enterprise a desperate calm, I don't know how to describe it.  There was no way to justify the amount of work one put in, yet somehow we kept doing it.

Having the time to study, and to reflect on these and other matters, may be one of the best benefits of this month in France.  It’s hard to admit in some ways, but one outcome from the overwork on Project Palaces the past year is the realization that I really cannot keep up the extent and intensity of the physical work I was doing—some of you readers know about the lingering peripheral neuropathy (tingling-wake-you-up-hurting fingers and hands), general aches, and specific pains--and the creeping conviction that as I approach the Big Six-Oh I could and should ratchet that whole aspect back to a sustainable level, preferably a low level, and maybe pursue and develop some of the not-as-physically-demanding-or-damaging talents that I still apparently have.  It takes a 2 x 4 upside the head, but He Can Be Taught.  My fingers are returning to normal, mornings no longer agony the way they were a bit more often than I admitted at the time.  I'm stretching every day (using the pink yoga mat that I plucked as it rolled across the Quai des Grand Augustins the day after I got here--I looked around in disbelief, saw no claimants, and walked home with it under my arm.  Not even dirty.  Can I get an "Amen!"). 

Voila the pink mat AND the styrofoam table-shims

On the downside, all the sitting is taking its toll, and that stretching may have to be ratcheted up: this morning I started thinking about the ergonomics of this place and realized the table is simply too low.  My legs have been getting super tight, even as I attempt to stand up, walk around, and stretch every 15 minutes or so.  Yet I find myself sitting sitting sitting as I get stuck into a book, and I forget the physical side.  Oy.  This morning I found a hunk of styrofoam that was being tossed, took a knife to it, and carved four blocks about an inch and a half thick, and big enough to accept the four skinny wheel that this table rolls on.  So far it's a decent choice: the wheels sink into the blocks just enough, and the angle of my knees seems healthier.  We'll see.