Creature Bug

In which I am prone to theatrics

Today was the day I headed back to school. For most of the summer I hadn't put too much thought into my classes because I knew I'd be teaching the same class that I've been teaching for the past three years. I don't mind teaching the same thing every year. Variety is not the spice of my life. Variety is stress inducing and full of anxiety attacks. Monotony is good for me. Monotony is totally underrated for persons such as myself who are easily riled by change.

Last week, however, I saw that my enrollment numbers were quite low in one of my classes. Low enrollment numbers are not good for adjuncts. Low enrollment numbers mean that the college will cancel the class because it is not profitable for them. (I understand it, and it's the best thing to do, so no bitterness of my part.)

I fretted.

I constantly checked my roster for more students.

I got a phone call on Wednesday: "The college is canceling your second section of speech."

Blah.

It wouldn't have been a huge deal except (1) it meant I would be driving six hours a week to teach three hours and (2) we need the income now more than ever.

I called the department chair, and discovered that I might be able to pick up a literature class because a professor in our department was suddenly having to step back from his teaching duties.

Perchance, could I teach a class about C.S. Lewis?

No, I could not. Unequivocally I could not. Teaching C.S. Lewis involves a heavy dose of theology, which I am ill equipped to teach at the college level.

How about, oh, say, teaching a literature of the Middle Ages class?

In a moment I died a thousand deaths, recalling my own experiences with taking that class as a student. Sorry, no, I could not teach it.

Well, then, what could I teach?

And there was my moment, my opportunity, the chance I had been waiting for all my life--or at least the past four years--and I blurted out in a moment of unbridled enthusiasm, "I can teach Irish literature!"

You see, in graduate school I took some classes on Irish literature. I even took a class solely focused on Joyce my first summer as a graduate student and my mind just about exploded. And then it didn't, and then I fell in love. Not especially with Joyce, but with Irish literature. Can I give you my speech? The one about how few other nations--and none as small as Ireland--has produced such talent and greatness? How conflict produces beauty and all that? Joyce, Yeats, Shaw, Wilde, Beckett, Doyle, Boland, Enright, Heaney...U2, Enya, The Cranberries, The Pogues, Van Morrison...seriously. SERIOUSLY. The best in the fields, these people.

I'm not even Irish. I just love Irish lit that much.

That was on Wednesday.

Friday morning I was approved to teach the class. Last Friday. Seven days ago.

And so in an instant my stress-level about the upcoming school year was multiplied by a million, and I alternately rejoiced at my good fortune, lamented about my lack of prep time, and freaked out--scratch that--FREAKED OUT about how on earth I was going to teach this class.

I was a mess.

And then today came, and I drove the 75 miles to school--alternately listening to Enya and Flogging Molly--walked into class with my head held high and my hand-outs firmly grasped in my hand and said, "Welcome to EN3111, the very first Irish literature class offered here."

And I didn't die. Or start crying. Or mix up the Nationalists with the Unionists, or mispronounce Sinn Fein, or forget when the Republic of Ireland came into existence.

Imagine that.

When I got home (after my traffic-filled two-hour commute), I danced in the kitchen and waved the spatula around. And Jason said, "It's good to have you back."

First day of school? Done and done.

Top o' the Mornin' to ya

(and that's Top o' the Muffin to you Seinfeld fans)

May those who love us love us.
And those that don't love us,
May God turn their hearts.
And if He doesn't turn their hearts,
May He turn their ankles,
So we'll know them by their limping. --Irish proverb

We won't be having a typical Irish celebration around here, but I do feel particularly lucky that I got the paper done for my Modern Irish Lit class on time. (HUGE thanks to Sarah who came down on Tuesday to watch Sydney while I typed away.) Hoping my mad writing skills earn me an A.

If you're looking for some Irish lit to get you in the proper St. Patrick's Day mood, here's a few suggestions:

• The Anchor Book of New Irish Writing
• Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, by Roddy Doyle
• The Inland Ice, by Eilis Ni Dhuibhne
• The Deposition of Father McGreevy, by Brian O'Doherty
• The Blackwater Lightship, by Colm Toibin
• Reading in the Dark, by Seamus Deane
• Grace Notes, by Bernard Maclaverty

Have a wonderfully lucky day!

Inspiration

Not too often does literary theory inspire me. Don't get me wrong, I love it. I do. It's the stuff that keep me awake at night tossing and turning. But it doesn't exact move passions in the soul.

'The attention which post-colonial theory pays to factors which disrupt, undermind and speak back to monolithic cultural structures surely makes this possible, not only in terms of gender and class, but in the competing ways in which notions of ethnicity and authenticity are constructed.'

Certainly I like Colin Graham's 1995 Irish Studies Review article as much as the next theory nerd, but it doesn't, you know, set my heart a flutter.

On the other hand...

Every once in awhile I catch something that sticks with me. That something that makes me nod my head, moves me to write stars and exclamation points in the margin, inspires me to use the pink highlighter instead of the regular yellow one.

'I don't compare myself to the dead. I hardly compare myself to the living. I would hope my writing is my own.'
--Anne Enright

I like that. A lot.

Freezing Over

Yes, we've frozen over. But I am grateful that we don't have as much ice as we had last year (which is when this picture was taken). Last year we were snowed in and stuck in our house for three days. That was neat for the first day, but then the power went out and all the fun quickly went away. Fortunately, this storm looks like it has passed; it's warmed up to a balmy 34, so the ice is quickly fading. We're lucky...Portland is still iced over.

My week has been much busier than I expected. Wednesday I spent the day finishing the reading assignment for my class: Reading in the Dark. It is such a good book. The writing is superb. Take this passage, for instance:

When we came into the kitchen, my mother looked up and the whole history of his family and her family and ourselves passed over her face in one intuitive waltz of welcome and then of pain.

Isn't that beautiful? Highly recommend reading it.

Thursday was spent running errands (not so exciting) and spending time with two of my former students-now friends (very exciting). I made Thai chicken with peanut sauce, and even though I was a bit skeptical about the recipe, I must say it turned out quite nicely. I don't get to cook much with peanuts since Jason is a member of the Peanut Allergy Club (no, it's not a real club). He wasn't around during dinner (basketball practice), but he was still a bit disgruntled that he couldn't eat leftovers. So he fixed himself a quesadilla. Too bad.

Had quite the grand time with my friends. Good food, good laughs...played the game of Life (I won with 2 million dollars!) and watched Napoleon Dynamite for the benefit of Devon, for she hadn't seen it before. I am always refreshed after an evening with friends, aren't you?

And then Friday I visited my parents, who were missing Sydney terribly since they hadn't seen her in two whole weeks. No matter about me, mind you, I'm just the transportation.

That about sums up where I've been, and so hopefully you'll find those acceptable excuses for my blogging absence. But, here, I'll teach you a new Irish phrase: Go raibh mile maith agat (pronounced: Gurrah MEEL-ah MAH hahgut). It means "One thousand thanks to you!" (A phrase which I'm certain to remember because when the professor wrote it on the board he wrote "1000 thanks to you" and due to some penmanship issues I was thinking 'What the heck does 'looo thanks to you' mean?' Ah, yes, still a bit on the sleep deprived state, can you tell?)

Dia annseo isteach

Okay, I know I've mentioned before that I'm taking a Contemporary Irish Literature class. It's an elective class to fulfill credit requirements for my grad degree (I'm getting my M.S. in English Education). I've finished all the education classes (hooray! they are boring!) and now all I have left is English electives. This is a dream for me. The class I'm taking this term meets every Wednesday from 4:30--7:50. I know sitting in a classroom for three and a half hours doesn't sound all that fun to some of you, but can I just say after tonight's class...I'm in literary heaven. I LOVED the class. It was as good as I had hoped for. Terms were flying through the air. Multivocalic. Metempsychosis. It was myth making, conflict producing, postcolonialist, postmodernist, postfeminist *sigh* perfection. I'm totally in my element, especially since I've had the professor for three other classes, one of which was a James Joyce class. We spent the night reading and discussing poems by Eavan Boland (Ireland's current preeminent female poet) and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill (most widely translated poet in Irish of this century) (pronounced NOO-la Nee GO-nal). I won't bore you with the details, unless you ask me, because I know most of you couldn't care two pittance for Irish literature. But it is GRAND stuff. You'd think with my green heart, my fair skin, and my red hair that somewhere in my blood there would be just a bit of Irish, but nope. In fact, I'm nearly half English (which is ironic if you know Irish history). Nevertheless, I'm hoping to write my grad thesis on Irish literature, hoping maybe I'll even sneak in a "research" trip to Ireland.

As for this post's title...well, every week we will learn an Irish phrase (Irish now being the preferred term instead of Gaelic). Today's phrase was Dia annseo isteach. (Pronounced JEE-un sho ISH-chockh). It means: God save all here.

Oh boy, the next nine weeks are going to be so much fun!