Things I Learned This Week

MFA Stuff, Barbara Pym, Lanthimos, Sweatshirt, Wally Birds, and Goodbye

I could probably fill an entire book with the things I learned this week. This bodes well for the semester and the MFA in general. That said, I am happy where I am.

First things first. In realizing the performative nature of teaching, I probably should have never tried being an actress and been a professor instead. There are no regrets, but all the countless illuminations that have occurred this week have made me certain I’m in the right place. Another member of the cohort pointed out to me that they had no idea the experience was going to be as profound as it has been. And that’s the perfect word. Profound. That’s what I’ve loved about being in an academic space the last 12 years. It is the internal shifts that happen daily when you live in a constant state of learning. It is the most moving experience to have your opinions either shifting or being affirmed at every turn. It is what makes being a human so great, and its easy in the everyday flow of work/eat/sleep repeat to lose sight of that. Or maybe you are so busy surviving that you never get to see it at all. The way I see it, literature is inspiration. It is living and breathing and constant. I am lucky to be here.

Speaking of lucky, this is the first time I’m sitting in my new office to work, and the view is lovely. From this seat I can see the shed my husband is fixing up. The branch outside my window is where the hummingbird comes to perch between feedings below. Soon, my husband will start work on the chicken coup for the six birds that are currently adjusting to the Texas heat on my porch downstairs. The man has done all this for me. Everything. For more than 25 years, we’ve made plan after plan. We’ve worked at manifesting dreams over and over again, and always they’ve worked out. I know this is good communication and planning and the sincere simpatico of two people, but it is also luck. We also know that we are just a moment or mistake away from the life shift that chances everything, for better or worse. So we are trying to savor this time. Because it is fast and fleeting and ever evaporating. And lovely.

My son left for his junior year at college and saying goodbye is filled with equal parts melancholy and joy. Even though every year he travels the same distance, every year he goes further away. This is good. He has his own life to make. It shouldn’t include me in the everyday the way it did, but still. Every time the man returns to me, I can still see the shadow of boy in his eyes, and I can’t help but miss him a little bit. But then I see the person he’s becoming, and I try and remind myself I don’t need to be a mother forever. If I hold on to him too long, he’ll get tired, which he does, a lot. He’s growing closer to his father in ways he couldn’t when he was little, and it makes me so happy. Still, so much of our relationship now is me needing him too much.

But I’m working on it.

Barbara Pym, where have you been all my life!?! Just finished her book Excellent Women for my class British Novels of Manners, which features almost entirely postwar/empire books by women. And wow, was she the queen of the quip. I found myself dogearing every page. Her sentences are so economic and funny and communicate a ton without saying much. Adding all her other books to the list of things I need to read, which is growing larger and larger by the minute. The woman had a fascinating career arc that has me—at times— wishing for my own spinster life of tea and typewriters. Currently muddling through finding instances of heteroglossia in the text so talk to me about it again on Thursday.

How am I just learning about Wally Birds? Thankfully two more seasons of The Great Pottery Throwdown are available, and in one episode, they craft bird wall hangings that mimicked England’s Beswick Flying Ducks, and in trying to Google that, I came across Martinware—the work of the four brothers—produced from the 1870s to the 1920s. Their ceramics included these completely nuts tobacco jars that parodied the Victorian obsession with natural history. The winged creatures are slightly grotesque and anthropomorphic, often taking on the mocking likenesses of prime ministers and the other people of the day. I could search this stuff for days. Gimme.

I have kind of a love/hate relationship with Yorgos Lanthimos, and because of that, I’ve held off seeking out all his movies. But—thankfully—my son is all about watching everything now, and pushed us to stream his 2017 film The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Sophie’s Choice meets some crazy obsession. The opening scene involves up-close footage of an actual open heart operation that is not for the faint of heart. Barry Keogan gives the best kind of willies, Alicia Silverstone sucks a thumb (not her own), Colin Farrell is fab as always, and I am reminded of how I wish Nicole Kidman would play something other than a rich wife. I would blame it on typecasting, but even the movies she produces she picks these types. Regardless, would recommend.

Lastly, giving it up for Earl Sweatshirt, who I got to see with my son in Houston in 2022. He has a new album out (Live Laugh Love), and you have to give it up for someone who got fame so early, but rather than taking the mainstream road, he’s worked within this really lo-fi realm where he’s given himself room to develop both as an artist and a human being. The guy’s definitely grounded, and I love the spoken word vibe on a lot of the album, including the last song “exhaust” (with intro and asides by Erykah Badu): More power to you, but it's no flowers in your vase / No amount of sugar gon' help with the taste / At the end of the day / It's really just you and whatever you think. He’s a righteous dude. If you wanna know more, check out this NYTimes podcast.

Quote of the week?

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."

— A.A. Milne

‘Til Tuesday kids.

Burgin

(An MFA grad student at 50+… follow along and read my story here.)