Dead Letter Office (IV)

Thanks for stopping by, if you haven't for a while; here's a bit of an update. Best to all, melancholic.


Dread my lord G,

It’s disastrously hot here as well—I just spent the morning and afternoon standing/sitting/swooning in various lines (DMV, Student Health, City Hall) getting my “life” together, and in the eleventh hour, I might add. Come to think of it, I think that my life has only ever been together in the eleventh hour; things always seem to start falling apart again once the clock strikes twelve, but I suppose that’s because I refuse to pay a bill until it’s been properly fermented, aged, and served six months down the line by a member of the sheriff’s department.

The bad news is that all I have left is basically a pocket full of change, after all of my bills/obligations are paid off; the good news is that I’ve had some pretty exciting bills of late, including plane tickets to Guayaquil, Ecuador, plane tickets from there to the Galapagos Islands, and an eight-day tour on a small boat with Q (believe it or not) and about ten biologists. (I’m presently memorizing a stanza from Byron’s Don Juan, the only English poem of which I’m aware that features any Galapagan fauna, in this case the glorious boobie [it’s from the shipwreck/ cannibal scene]:

Of poor Pedrillo something still remain'd,
    But was used sparingly, --- some were afraid,
And others still their appetites constrained,
    Or but at times a little supper made;
All except Juan, who throughout abstain'd,
    Chewing a piece of bamboo and some lead:
At length they caught two boobies and a noddy,
And then they left off eating the dead body. )

[My sister M] is engaged to be married to an Ecuadorian, a native Galapagan (a guy, not a tortoise or sea cucumber), and I thought that I’d check him and the place out; she seems very happy there, by the way.

If I had to do it all over again, I don’t know if I would, as this has positively broken the bank, I am utterly destitute, but on the other hand, I’ve never swum with sea lions before, or eels, or hammerhead sharks, or eaten roast guinea pig, or seen a whale, or slept on deck a hundred-ton biologist’s vessel, and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t sound like a passable vacation.

Otherwise, I’ve had a good work year—I wrote a rich, eighty-page chapter, one that has I think surprised my committee, and they’re pretty damned friendly now; I was a fellow of sorts at the [impressive institution] in DC, and delivered a thirty-pager that was well-received; but for the last two months, things have been black around here, static, immovable; I’ve been dogged with this unflappable feeling that this is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife, as the Talking Heads song goes, and I’m all but out of ideas on how to get the life I want, short of working, of which I am nearly mortally tired.

I go on the job market in September, at long, long last, of a certainty, and it will go well, but damn, G, it’s been a long haul; I’ve accomplished near everything I’ve wanted here, as my goals have been almost entirely personal, and having all but fulfilled them, I hardly know where I am anymore. But I’ll get it together for the job market; no worries. This trip should be just the copper-wire scrub to the brain that I need before I pimp myself out before the hiring committees.

I will be accessible via email for the next couple of days, but then will be in a place where the stars are strange and internet access is touch and go. Apologies for the white noise; from nothing comes nothing, as that Celtic jingle goes, and I’ve got basically nothing going on here. I did read a beautiful Ashbery poem the other day, though, entitled “Small Song”:

The reeds give way to the wind,
And give the wind away.

Damned beautiful; I’ll end on that one (it was either that one or the boobies); good to hear from you, G,

melancholic