In dreams begin responsibilities

The last time I described a dream here, it seemed like a pretty straightforward response to Stubb’s imminent departure for four months of out-of-state work.  Here’s last night’s offering:

I am at a writers’ conference of some kind–it seems to combine elements of a summer conference (like communal breakfast) and an MLA/AWP style professional convention (panel discussions, etc.).  Also in attendance is the writer who is my most important teacher–in other words, someone I revere and would never want to let down.  It’s almost breakfast time, and later in the morning I am scheduled to give a craft talk. 

I have prepared nothing for this talk.  I have a topic–the associative leap in poetry–and somewhere among my effects I have a couple of relevant books out of which I could photocopy sample poems for a handout.  But when I look for these books, they either don’t seem to be there, or they have whole sections missing (in Robert Bly’s Leaping Poetry, the last section, “Home Grown Poems,” has fallen out of the binding and is nowhere to be found).  I start outlining my talk, thinking that I will draft an introduction to read and then spend most of the time vamping on the poems that will be in the handout, but also kicking myself for not starting earlier than the morning of my talk.  I also keep toying with the idea that I will just cancel the talk, which seems to be a plausible idea as apparently these talks are optional.

Then I wake up and sigh with relief that it was all a dream.  But then I realize–I’m still at the conference!  I have just woken up on the morning of my talk, and I still haven’t prepared anything!  In a comic strip, this would be the last panel.  But I am still dreaming, so I go through the whole thing again–should I prepare something?  How can I fake my way through it?  What will my teacher think?  And everyone else?  Why didn’t I start earlier? and so on.  Oh, and even as I’m fretting about these things, I’m wondering if I really have to skip breakfast in order to prepare the talk, because I really want to spend breakfast sitting and talking with other writers, especially my teacher.  But I realize this is crazy, because if I am going to slap something together I’ll need every minute between now and then.

It was really good to wake up from that one for real.

A brief history of time

Countdown to the end of summer:  The Snork Maiden goes back to school in four weeks–the day after Starfleet Academy starts.  And good grief, I just realized that my New RU class starts in less than three weeks.  And I have done almost no preparation for it so far, aside from the occasional idle thought.  It is a graduate creative-writing class and will be run mostly workshop-style, so we’re not talking intensive prep every week, but it will be heavy on handouts and I do need to plan and carry out a serious day of going-to-the-library-and-photocopying-stuff. 

The class has a particular focus to it that I think will be interesting and fruitful for the students and me.  But there’s no anthology or sourcebook to support this focus, so I have to find the bits of paper on which I’ve scribbled titles over the past few months and continue brainstorming a list of things I will want to hand out.  Then onto JSTOR and into the library–and probably also to the computer to email friends, begging for the handout from that talk from 1998.  And back to that syllabus I drafted in the spring to see what resemblance it bears to the course I think I want it to be.

I’ve also been in a little bit of avoidance/denial about a time conflict between Starfleet’s school day and two meetings I need to attend at New RU.  I think it can all be worked out, but I can’t take it up with the appropriate people for another week or so, even though now is when I am motivated to do it.  Oh well.

The lion, the witch and the supply cabinet

I was catching up on posts over at the intelligent and witty Evil HR Lady and followed her link to (The Customer Is) Not Always Right, a fabulous compendium of ridiculous things customers have said–like this one  about a customer who couldn’t figure out how to exit the toilet stall.  Fun–and addictive!

From Russia with love

On the plane, I sat between the Snork Maiden and a middle-aged guy who spent most of the flight talking in Russian with his friends across the aisle.  We’d exchanged polite hellos when he sat down, but he didn’t say anything else until about the middle of the flight, when he turned away from his companions to me, gestured toward my copy of Slaughterhouse-Five and said, “We hev chust been talkink about the book you are readink.  Is a very great book.  Appreciated by people all over the vorld–not just America!”  He told me that he’d met Vonnegut once, too.  He seemed delighted by the idea that I would be teaching it with high-school students this year.  It was a brief exchange, but I will remember it. 

So, the first of August.  Wow.  I agreed to teach some college-essay-writing workshops at Starfleet Academy the week before faculty activities start, so next week is my last full week of summer vacation.  We’ll probably head out to visit Stubb and the Snork Maiden will stay there for a few extra days while I go back to do the workshops.  First, though, she’ll catch up with her friends–she’s been missing them–and go to her first soccer practice for the fall season with her new team.  And I have a checkup with my new gynecologist and should probably get some maintenance done on my car.  It will be nice to have just a fairly calm week at home after all the traveling!