One gumbo, Abita TurboJack, shrimp po'boy, and tour of Canal Street later, Rick and I peaced out for the beach.
There is little to say about the beach that isn't "It was awesome" and "Recommended: blow off work and go to the beach." This is where it was:
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This is what we did:
This is what this gymnast I know did:
Above-mentioned gymnast taught me this, which I then did (least awkward of all the awkward shots):
The weekend ended with late
beignets at Café du Monde and a renewed appreciation for the
Big Easy. I do miss hanging out there: it reminds me of a successful modernism. It straddles the old and new without crisis. It's comfortable with its unique history instead of imploding because it can't establish an identity.
It was worth heading out there and getting super-behind on my seminar papers right before the semester spins out of control.
It's hard to describe grad school, I've decided, which I guess is why I wanted to leave it for a second. People assume it's the same as college, which is totally justifiable, but my strongest defense is "Um, it's not really ... I can't really explain it, just trust me?" The heart of the difference probably lies in that I had no idea what I was getting into when I accepted the offer to study literature.
Of course I still love it and still feel it's worthwhile. I still think gender and women's studies in the late 19th/early 20th century is important. Valerie Traub and Suzanne Raitt are still my heroes, and women moving in history still keeps me turning pages and unpacking more questions (and paper topics). But plenty of people don't see it.
That's hard to overcome. Grad school forces you not just to defend the importance of your topic, but to defend your mastery of it while simultaneously revealing how very little you know about anything. At least in college you operated under the belief that people cared and what you had to say was important. Now, out of undergrad and pursuing literary study, people wonder what relevance studying literature has, why pursue it if it's unpopular and outdated, and why I'm wasting my time.
And sometimes they make a lot of sense. Who cares what fictional women did to conform to or reject established avenues of sexual agency 100 years ago? What value do Sedgwick's "Epistemology of the Closet" or Foucault's "History of Sexuality" have to women's history, and why am I writing papers on it? What point am I making in that "The Fisherman and his Wife" is Mrs Ramsay's tool to socialize Cam(/James) to an "ideal" Victorian womanhood, but the triumph is Lily's ability to "ground" herself, reject the marriage, and thereby reject an external definition of her identity, in the process of which liberation Mrs Ramsay has to die a bloody wartime death.
What do books from a hundred years ago and the
fish that are consumed in them have anything to do with anything? What does any of that
mean, to me, to women, to today, to history, to literature ...?
Right about here Richard usually cuts in with an "Um, wait. Let's talk about all the reasons why English is awesome and how much you love it and whatnot." And then he starts listing all the reasons why literature is awesome and why I love it. It is hard to be so defeated when someone else is quite sure you're still winning, and has pretty convincing evidence that resonates deep in my little English major's soul.
He's right, per usual: I can't help but let literature creep in (like "
The Conundrum of the Workshops" or the
Sun to Frank O'Hara) to ruin my pity-party because that's what it means to be an English major. Plus, other Lit students think Victorianism is important, or Translation relevant, which means
someone cares. I imagine American literature scholars pore over yellowing account books from the 17th century and make notes for Hawthorne readings because it means something. Me, I spend my days plugging through queer theory and primary texts and centering Woolf as a
beacon of hope because it does matter. Women
did react, and subvert, and conform, and challenge, and fail, and succeed and it's unpack-able in modern British literature. And that's important not just to women as a period study unfolds, but to our understanding of where women today came from, how they navigate gender/sexual understanding, and what that means for women of tomorrow. And me, which is awesome.
That is just sometimes hard to keep in perspective.
Thus it was really important to get away for a second. It's impossible to be locked up in the library with Woolf and fish for weeks on end like that and not go crazy. I'm extra-thankful for people in my life who understand how much what I do means to me (and are willing to remind of it). Thanks for keeping me grounded and not succumbing to the structures my
own culture has established to keep me squished.
THUS onto my 5022 seminar draft. I need a way better title than "Gutting 'Queer Fish:' Lessons from the
Lighthouse," but I'm seriously drawing the worst blank. Plz suggest.
