Redzenradish

10:48 pm: Another decade has gone by. It used to sound like a chiché, "time flies," and now it is bleedingly true.

This year begins with the loss of my beloved fur person Kadar. My cat and I have had a relationship longer than either of my marriages. He was in my life for 18 years. His loss has been devastating though I've been in a similar place with the loss of pets many times before. It never gets easier.

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.