Redzenradish

12:27 pm:
 

Another fire, early in the "fire season" for this, but there are now 4 fires around Los Angeles. This is a view of the La Canada/Flintridge fire from my back yard. As I took this pieces of ash were swirling in the air around me. Not a good day for asthma sufferers. The sunrise through the smoke was very ominous, apocalyptic.

Next week I start school again, this time my doctoral program. Perhaps that's the reason for all the catastrophic stuff going on: I'm finally doing it! What the heck. I turn 50 this year. Life's too short to not go after what you want if you can.

07:39 pm:

The Simple Bird

Cento: Rumi, T.S. Eliot, Anne Sexton

 

 

 

Flowers open every night

Made cool, the dry rock and made firm the sand,

However, nothing is just what it seems to be—

 

 

The cloud in folklore that became

The deceitful face of hope and of despair

And was transformed.

 

 

Be the whole.     You hear a mote whirl

Talking of trivial things—

The suffering brother of the wood walls.

 

 

Grief settles thick in the throat:

The cry of quail and the whirling plover,

And you, simple bird that you are,

 

 

Wake and walk out inside this dawn,

For those who walk in darkness

Without trying to walk to God.

 

 

The clear bead at the center,

Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled.

12:38 pm: Academia Forever
After a long and weary Fall semester of teaching (love the teaching, I was feeling old and tired), the new year started with getting sucked into jury duty......a tragic, month-long case involving a man dying of mesothelioma who was suing seven companies whose aspestos-containing products he was exposed to in the Navy back in the early 60s. I was an alternate so I had to sit with the jury during the trial and then remain in the court house every day while the jury deliberated. The man won his case, which was a good thing as he was awarded enough money to make however many months he has left more comfortable and his wife will be provided for once he's gone. I felt like an open wound for much of the trial as the man and his wife were there daily. I don't think there was one juror who wasn't weeping when they both testified about what he's been through so far, having had a lung, diaphram, and the pericardial sack around his heart removed.....although all that did was buy him some time.....buy them some time.

During all this I'd been sending out PhD program applications. Five of them. I've heard back from three universities so far and have been accepted at one. So, I'll be a PhD candidate this Fall although I'm not exactly sure where yet, depending on what happens with the last two universities. No matter what, I'm happy to be finally acheiving what I'd been working toward my whole life. It feels pretty amazing and even a bit surreal, although I'm sure reality will be hitting home soon enough when I'm studying for qualifying exams or defending my thesis.

In the mean time, yo está aprendiendo español at a nearby community college to help satisfy the foreign language requirement in nearly every PhD in English program. I'm actually enjoying this as much as I try to let go of my type A /top grade earning behavior. Learning just to learn. What a concept.

Joe and I are also grateful he has a job. With the economy in a particularly grim state and the construction industry being no stranger to cut backs and layoffs, we are still more fortunate than most.

10:11 pm: Another Masters Accomplished

           

This is me and my study group (Jen, me, Sarah, and Vernita) sharing champagne after taking the written exam. We survived three hours of writing, responding to essay questions that test one's understanding and knowledge of a two page reading list of literature from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf. We studied all summer and slagged through 5-7 hour study sessions. My group was the greatest. We got the work done and laughed a lot in the process.

To date, Vernita and I have had our oral exam waived. Our written exams were considered "excellent" and so the oral exam is unnecessary. I never thought that would be the case for me! So, now to prepare to teach again at Loyola in the fall and to prepare for applying to PhD programs. No rest for the academically weary, but I wouldn't trade any of it.

07:26 am: Long Time No Blog

       

I graduated a couple weeks ago with my second Master's degree. I still have to take my comprehensive exam in August, but I know I'll be ready. I am posing here with two of my fellow graduates and teaching fellows Laurence and Vernita. I have a severe case of graduate hat-head.

These past two years have been insane, both as a student and as a professor teaching for the first time, but it's good to be doing what I've always wanted to be doing. I wasn't sure my marriage would survive, but I now have a brief reprieve before applying to PhD programs. 

This summer will be chock full of activity, too. Hopefully, Joe and I will head to Baja California where I will learn how to sail, I am taking Spanish classes, I have lesson plans to prepare for teaching college writing at Loyola in the fall, while also studying for the MA comprehensive exam. 

Below is a picture of the building on the Loyola campus where I taught the past two semesters and will be teaching again in the fall.

       

10:22 pm:          

Insanely busy. I got a teaching fellowship and am heading into week five of teaching freshman composition while also attending to my own graduate classes. Sleep is a luxury these days! I'm loving it though.

09:30 pm:            

Yet another fire. I took this picture from my back yard late this afternoon. The smoke is from a fire in Griffith Park, which is a distance from us, but the smoke began blowing to the east and the south of us. As it stands now, the fire is still raging, out of control, threatening homes in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, the Griffith Observatory, and possibly the L.A. Zoo. Joe was driving home from a company function tonight around 9 and had to take the 5 freeway past the park and he said that not only could he see the flames, but he could feel the heat on the side of his SUV. He said the fire was a couple hundres of yards away, not miles. 

They think someone either set this fire, or it was started by a transient's cigarette.

12:13 am:

           
                                                                         picture by Pixelpusher


And people wonder why the word "apocalypse" is so ingrained in the lexicon of Angelinos. This was what people were watching last Friday as they drove through the area. My house is on the other side of the hills opposite of the Hollywood sign. I went out of my  house around two to get something from my car and smelled smoke, then noticed the huge column of smoke in the sky. Later, when the wind was blowing more strongly onshore from the ocean a snow of ash began to drop into my yard. I could feel it all in my lungs and although I'm miles from the fire, I had to close up the house and turn on the AC to filter out the particulates in the air that wafted into the house through the open windows.

In the midst of this and other forms of turmoil I am applying for a teaching fellowship at my university. Life has been consumed by school, reading, writing, discourse........It's a good thing and I hope I get one of the 5-7 teaching positions opening up this fall. 

Life continues on. Things burn. Things are planted. We all survive anyway we can, brush the ashes off, and move on.

10:39 pm: The holidays are upon us. Or, as one songwriter penned, they come "swinging at your head." I think it feels more like the latter. And so another year moves to a close.

I survived my first semester of my second graduate school program. The rest of life is having a hard time surviving.

Anyway, blah, blah, blah.......

I'm not writing much here because I've noticed friends tend to check in here to see what's up with me and neglect to actually connect with me. Kind of defeats the purpose of having friends you want to maintain a connection with. Love the information age. So, my entries here have been sporadic. I've been busy with academic writing anyway......lots of papers. Lots of thinking about how I'm going to structure this next part of my life.

If the holidays can be happy, may they be so.

04:46 pm: The Angels Are Singing

BEFORE




AFTER




It's happened! The patio is finished! The angels are singing! 
We still need to resod the yard area, but beyond that we'll just add plants and other decorative things as necessary.

But for all intents and purposes, IT'S DONE!!!!

08:30 pm: Time Goes By
I'm heading into the third week of another grad school program. Again, another language to learn, another set of expectations to meet. It's good to be back in a literary dialog with texts read by intelligent readers.

It bothers me that I hear many of the students refer to themselves as nerds though. I've had to justify my interest in learning and books all my life. In tenth grade they used to call me "Britanica" because I raised my hand one time too many with a response to a question in class. I'm tired of this. We can own our love of reading, our love of learning. Scholarship is a time honored discipline. We are in an august company. We are no longer nerds, but people who are now respected and taken seriously for our passion. I want to tell these students we need to stop appologizing and own this.

11:01 am: The Patio Persists
               

It's been a while since I've posted anything. This summer has gone by so quickly. Work on the patio has taken much of our time as you can see above. Joe's done most of the work, however, as I've started reading ahead for my first semester at Loyola Marymount.......three classes which start next week. There's tons of reading and writing to be done.

We weathered the month and a half long heat wave that started mid-June and are now in another, much shorter one. During the peak of the last one it got up to 112 here one day. It's bad when temps in the low nineties feels almost chilly in comparison.

And now, back to Dickens........Great Expectations, which is required reading for a Critical Methodology class. God knows why. Dickens takes some time given the density of language and his attention to detail so I'm re-reading this classic now. Dank, foggy, Victorian England makes a nice counterpoint to the relentless heat and sun of L.A..

11:15 am: I Love This Photo
             

I found this photo on the Weather Underground web site. I have to look up the photographer as I love this photo!

03:35 pm: A Hawk's Breakfast

             

As Joe was leaving for work the other morning and I was out to pick up the newspaper in the driveway we watched what looked like bird down floating toward us in the air. When we looked more closely we saw a merlin perched on the utility pole behind our garage, methodically plucking what turned out to be a blue jay he had caught.  Even with the back yard in disarray, nature comes calling. I'm not a fan of bird-on-bird violence, but the presence of a hawk always causes a sharp intake of breath and a faster beating heart.

The heat continues. It's going on a month now of 90+ degree heat. It makes me mean and whiney. I'm sure if I was back east I'd be bitching about the humidity. A little variety would be nice, though. A little let up. A little meteorologican mercy.

11:59 am:               

There's a wierd light outside, gray tinged with yellow, making things look a bit jaundiced. It doesn't come through in this photo, but it's a kind of light one doesn't want to spend much time in. It imparts a kind of restless quality, an uneasiness. And it's hot. Hot. Yesterday it got up to 100. This heat wave is oppressive and unrelenting.

There's monsoon weather over the desert to the east affecting us, stirring up storms. We woke up past midnight hearing rain on the skylight. Good thing we went back to Home Depot yesterday and purchased a bit plastic tarp to protect the mountain of bags of concrete stacked up in front of the garage. It may rain again today. It looks like it.

Joe's been traveling on business quite a bit lately, so during the reprieve from back yard construction I'm reading quite a bit. The weather makes one want to hole up in a closed up, shades drawn, air conditioned house. My reading choices are a bit schizophrenic though, jumping from Gertrude Stein to chick lit. When it comes to books and reading it's all good though.

11:46 am: Some dreams have an uncanny physical effect that carries over into waking life. Last night I dreamt a man in medieval type costume, a king or some kind of ruler, swung an axe and drove it into my left shoulder. I've had trouble with the left side of my neck and shoulder since we've moved here. I know part of the reason for the trouble is tension. Every time I get on the freeways for any length of time the muscles there ball into knots and it takes a hefty dose of Advil to get the aching to stand down. Now I have an image of an irrate medieval ruler driving an axe into my shoulder. In the dream I survived, only to have some other irate medieval man try to blow some kind of poisonous powder into the wound to kill me. Beyond the possible issues with older male authority figures I can still feel the blade in my flesh.

Something to ponder. 

06:00 pm: The Patio Adventure has suspended for a while. We got as far we demo-ing the entire deck including the grill island and got all of the debris hauled off. Joe's roughed in the wiring and gas line for the new grill and the fountain that will be coming.

So, there was more hauling yesterday in weather that's way too warm for me. And there have been more visits to Home Depot than I would have ever made in one lifetime, but I try to keep the vision of the end product, a wonderful new patio with a fountain.....a green and cool and tranquil place (if our neighbors behind us aren't throwing a party or doing their own home improvements). It's also good to get all the termite infested wood off our property, not to mention that there were millions of ants living under the deck along with more than a handful of black widows.

So, perhaps by July 4th we'll be having mint juleps and mojitos on our new patio.

04:47 pm: Demo Man
             

             

             

Here's a man who's proud of his deck demolishing. Of course, today we had help--very hard working day laborers who we kept supplied with water and lunch and frequent breaks in the 100 plus degree heat.  Their help accelerated the process of this whole deck project and my own back and shoulders and legs and feet were very grateful that they were here to help Joe. The entire deck is now demolished. 

The day started with Home Depot ringing our doorbell with an entire flatbed truck loaded with the stuff we ordered to do the deck. They unloaded it all with this cute little forklift and suddenly we had an entire driveway down the length of our property filled with bags of concrete and huge canvas bags of sand along with the bricks and pavers. 

Tomorrow, we start to build........

03:19 pm: Patio Renovations or Welcome To Work Camp
Before.............     

             

After........

             

Jesus! We started ripping out the termite infested deck and jacuzzi yesterday and we're still at it today. We're saving money by not having contractors come in and do this, but it's back breaking work. Here's my contribution below. I've hauled at least 10 of these wheelbarrow loads to a dumpster we rented out front on the curb. Advil is my new best friend.

             

11:44 am:

Just when you think the Wild Kingdom outside the house has gone docile, it rouses you from your bed at 11 p.m. with a violent rustling and snarling somewhere in the trees lining the dead end of the street (which is at the end of our driveway). I leap into my jeans and grabbed a maglite and ran out of the house. My next door neighbor, Ernesto, was out with his flashlight as he and his wife heard the commotion, too. There are two raccoons who live in the trees there, but it sounded like something was being attacked. We searched the area with our flashlights, but didn't find anything and by then everything had calmed back down. That's when I realized I'm standing out in the street with jeans under my big wrinkled pajama T-shirt and my wild hair that I had just taken out of the barrette in preparation for sleep. What a rare treat for my neighbor.

Of course, I forgot that raccoons mating can sound like demons attacking one another. Their amour sounds frighteningly violent, although we couldn't be sure that's what was happening. Ernesto thought it might have been a coyote attacking something. I know that happens, though I haven't heard the coyotes lately.

The Wild Kingdom inside our house is intermittantly harmonious. We had an accident in the family room on Monday morning, which could truly have been an accident. Joe gets up first and lets the dogs out, but sometimes he dawdles getting to the door. Sometime in the blur of his being awake and stumbling to the back door one of the dogs peed on the family room carpet. This is the room they are confined to and are not supposed to soil as it's part of their comfort zone. The only thing that kept me from sinking into depression over this was telling myself that perhaps one of them didn't take care of business on their last outing the night before and couldn't hold it......though the accident happened about two feet from the back door. I had the priviledge of hauling out the wet vac to suck up dog pee at the crack of dawn as Joe had to pack for a business trip. Not a good way to start the day.

Still, there are good moments, like now, when the Bean Girl is contentedly washing herself in the sunny spot on the window sill and the dogs are curled up on their beds after their morning romp with blissful looks on their napping faces and the mockingbird is singing just outside atop the telephone pole.......