Letter From Where I'd Like to Be

Today I received a letter from a very good friend in Vietnam. He's teaching at the university I'd like to be teaching at next year, but, apparently, won't be. Seeing a stamp that said "Viet Nam" in my mailbox made me dance a little jig, and it made my average day fantastic. There's just something about a handwritten letter - from the other side of the world - that ranks up there with my favorite sensations: standing on the beach, watching the ocean and waking up so far away from civilization that all you can hear is crickets. Maybe I'm exaggerating a tad, but I was pretty excited.

Index

I now have just over a month before I have to be out of my apartment and have my thesis and reading list finished if I want to graduate in August. It's hard to believe it's almost been two years already, and so much has happened in those two years. Two apartments, two relationships ending, two admirers. Five classes of freshman I've taught - over a hundred students. One eulogy. A couple dozen new friends; several dozen new acquaintances. At least half a dozen weddings. One new 'niece,' a new second cousin, a new third cousin with a sibling on the way. A new cousin by marriage. Two bridesmaid dresses. Five fish. A new laptop. Somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred books. About a dozen workshop submissions. Another dozen papers. Two presentations at academic conferences. Several thousand dollars of debt. Two surgeries. Three fibrocystic lumps removed. One cancerous thyroid removed; one round of radiation pending. Thirty-odd get well cards. Five bouquets of flowers. Eight plants, seven of which are still alive. One dead blender. One uncertain future; an infinite number of possibilities.

An Open Mind Is An Asset

"For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive…."

Rainer Maria Rilke knew what he was talking about. I wish I could say I was well-read enough to know this quote without the help of a movie, but that's just not the case. As chick flicks go, though, _Kissing Jessica Stein_ is pretty good. It's kind of an anti-chick flick, really. Unfortunately it has a typically formulaic happy ending. I'm sorry, but the guy doesn't always come back.

I'm not sure what got me on this tangent. Actually, yes I do. A hot night and day spent pondering my life thus far and where it's going. And my usual obsession with the past.