Ugh

It's the first sunny morning in forever, and I'm glad for it, but also tetchy.  S and I are slowly chipping away on the distance course; that slowness makes us both edgy, and we're worst when we have to work together, as we did first thing this AM.  I think he resents having to do the course at all, though he doesn't blame anyone since he did agree to it, and we both are frustrated with how slow it is and with having to try and coordinate our efforts, even though i suspect it will be a better, stronger course for the combined work.  Basically it sucks and we'd rather be working on other things, but we can't, it needs to get done.  I'm trying to think whether we'd enjoy it under other circumstances... but I suppose there's a reason I wanted out of multimedia design.  I kinda forgot that just because I can doesn't mean I want to.  Blech.  Only now we are committed

Yawn.  This is boring.  But I don't really want to get down to the next lecture - I'm off to the hospital soon and I'll have al afternoon to work on this.  My mind wants to pick on all the other projects I'm not doing - the SSHRC re-write, several book reviews, articles in various states of revision, my renewal application.  And then there's baby stuff... mostly needing to get a mattress, but also setting up a registry, maybe an amazon list.  None of it is really that urgent, though.  tinker tinker.  Soon I'll have a baby to take up all my time and mental and physical energy, and then as soon I'll start finding time on my hands to pick away at all those other projects if I have the focus for them.  I don't know.  I don't feel clear cut about anything theser days.  Except maybe that it's sunny and birds are singing and croaking and the breeze smells sweet and I really don't want to be grumpy all day. 

I should get new glasses.  And see a dentist.  And arrange for massages.  And take the care in.

My hips hurt like a hobbled horse.  I just can't bring myself to care this AM.

Oh gods

It's Monday morning, the sun has already dissappeared behind rain clouds, Laird's car is dead, I'm nauseous and headachy, and it's hard to reach the keyboard over my burgeoning belly.  It's swiftly a day begging to feel sorry for itself, but I know I can't let myself get started down that road.  As of today, I have four weeks to finish two grant apps and the distance course among a myriad of other annoying tasks.  It's doable, even given my reduced capacity, but only if I stay on task and do what I've set out each day.  And today, it's this module of the distance course and restructuring the CFI grant. But i really donnnnn wannnnaaaa.  Ya know?  It just feels so futile - and our styles are so different and I don't even know why we're bothering except we promised and so feel this need to drag ourselves over glass and salt until we've created something filled with the bitterness of its own production.

Wow I'm definately trending towards melodrama today and I feel so utterly useless.  I can't keep feeling this way.  Empty vessel, right?  I was lying in bed thinking about these lessons.  Not sure how to start - talking bout the lyre/lyric connection perhaps and then word sound - Western wind and Cuckoo to get them thinking about sound and emotion, then the specifics of diction - kinds of sounds and the terminology that describes sound patterns more generally; then rhythm, metre, pace; then rhyme.  There's a lot to cover.  Sigh.

Sounds
Western Wind p23 - sound (sad)
Sumer is icumen in p24 - sound (happy)
Holy Sonnet XIV p44
London p102
Dulce et Decorum p226-7

rhythm, pace, metre
The Windhover p182 - sprung rhythm (echoes images)
To His Coy Mistress p62 - pace
Shakespeare sonnet 55 p36 metre
next to of course god I p229 - pace

rhyme
Shakespeare sonnet 55 p36 - sonnet
next to of course god I p229 - sonnet
When I consider how my light is spent p58 - sonnet
Constantly Risking Absurdity p278 - internal rhyme
The Flea p43

Making courses

This blog served me well to get the Kalamazoo conference paper out, but I've been on the road or focused on other tasks since then.  Today, besides looking for some references for a grant application, I'm committed to tackling another sticky writing task: the first year distance course.  Despite my assurances to Scott, I've been avoiding this.  I like the flexibility and spontaneity of teaching in a classroom environment, and I'm nervous about fixing my ideas on screen, afraid they will look mundane and simplistic when written out.  I know I need to breathe through that - I'm writing for the same first years as I teach, and what seems simple to me is complex to them.  Plus this will give me the chance to fully develop what I always feel rushed in delivering in a class.  it's really the one-on-one teaching mode I wish I could invoke most of the time, and much of the slippage and oversimplification that happens in the classroom comes from having to speak to 40 different people at different points of comprehension.  I told NIcole yesterday that it's about goals - what's the goal of the lesson, and does everything lead towards it.  So for today, that'll be _my_ goal - identify the goal of a lecture and aim for it.  And today's lectures: Intro to poetry!  (I'll be back later if I get stuck)

Day 4, a little bit more

So skipped Friday, since I was at the drs and then at meetings for the rest of the day.  I made progress on Thursday after I went home, though.  I skimmed through a few articles on Thursday.  The first two helped to pin down Margery's timeline - she's born around 1373, married around 1393, and leaves on pilgrimage in the fall of 1413.  The best options for her trip to York are 1402 (CC May 25) and 1413 (CC June 22).  It's most appealing to posit the later date, since it means that she has to have seen or encountered the CC plays the day before she leaves.  The arguments for this (based largely on Charity Scott Stokes' analysis) are that her husband agrees to the vow of chastity on the condition that she pay his debts before she goes on pilgrimage, that her father dies in October 1413, and that she leaves on pilgrimage that year.  There are ambiguities - the trip to York and the one to Bridlington (where he proposes the deal) might be seperate trips, and she also needs time to take her vow of chastity with the Bishop of Lincoln before she leaves.  It is perfectly reasonable to suppose that she goes to York, Bridlington, and Lincoln between June and October of 1413, but there is no way to know for certain, and that's a lot of travelling for one summer.

Glancing quickly at a couple of other articles, one stresses the state of widowhood and its growing cultural expectation of divine intercession (prays for husband), the other points out that anthologies excerpt Margery and Julian in attempts to increase the representation of female writers - instructors encounter "a desire (or mandate) to include more female voices... and an increasingly female readership in need of some context for the voices presented" (Peterson 418).  The latter article focuses on some specific contexts (regligious movements, ideologies of women and the body).

After all this I had a good talk with mom about how I might structure my discussion and came up with this:

1. Introduction - the need to include and explore the female, not just elite
2. Texts - reflect and shape conceptions of the urban woman
1. York Plays - Eve takes resp for actions; Noah's wife emphasizes marital equality and Noah acknowledges his mistake; Mary acts with authority throughout, but especially as a widow near her death; Mary Magdalene - as witness?
2. Margery - operates businesses (brewer, miller), negotiates chastity and finances with husband, demonstrates agency by defending herself, travelling, dictates text.  
3. Links - what teaching these together can inspire
1. Reception: Margery likely saw the York Plays the year she left on pilgrimage; while she demonstrates agency prior to seeing the plays, they reflect and reaffirm her attitudes towards her own subjectivity and her authority to negotiate within the family unit.  Margery becomes a model of reception, suggesting how female audience memebers might understand the York plays as afirmation of women's rights within a patriarchal dynamic and their reformation through Mary.
2. Motifs/themes: Both texts emphasize women as speakers of truth, even is weaker or flawed; the importance of chastity but also of social responsibility to the family unit (which trumps community); the dangers of worldly pride; and the value of mobility... likely more.  

Finally, it's important to keep the session's goal and title in mind: Lighting the Flame.  This is about inspiring instructors and, ultimately, students about drama.  My point is that the drama can communicate social/cultural realities for everyday citizens, the 'middle class' of medieval society, as opposed to the elite or the very poor.

Day three, how you be?

Ok, so yesterday went downhill fast.  Call it hormone productivity intervention.  Today I've been handling details for the trip and for stuff while I'm away, and I have meetings all afternoon, so I don't have a lot of writing time.  But I do want to keep going.  It's noon and my first meeting is at 1:00.  I'm going to go heat up my lunch and then get back to bullet notes.

• page 31: she will be tormented as "any roton knawyth the stokfysch" - a particularly middle class metaphor?
• Page 32 - the first visions she describes focus on Mary; Christ tells her to "thynke on my modyr" and she proceeds to imagine Mary's gestation, birth, and upbringing, later erving Mary.  The descriptions of her involvement in the Nativity story are particularly domestic.  When she follows Mary, she does so "berying wyth hir a potel of pyment and spycys therto."  On the way to Bethleham, she "purchasyed hir herborwe every nyght" and "sche beggyd owyr Lady fayr whyte clothys and kerchys for to swathyn in hir sone whan he wer born, and, whan Jhesu was born sche ordeyned beddying for owyr Lady to lyg in wyth hir blessed sone.  And sythen sche beggyd mete for owyr Lady and hir blyssyd chyld" (page 33).  By the end of the description of this first vision (chps 6&7), she posits herself as a second intercessor.  Christ tells her she will kneel before the Trinity "to prey for al the world" and she affirms that she would have Christ save herself and all the world from damnation (page 34).
• page 34: Christ claims he will be a "trew executor" for Margery in dispersing the value of her prayers.

Need to head home.

Day Two, How Do You Do?

So, some last minute progress yesterday when I finally sat down to work through my CFI notes.  Still no work on the conference paper yet, but I'm definately clearing away a lot of the distractions and finding myself faced with increasing stretches of empty space and time begging to be filled with writing.  Of course, just because I have the time doesn't mean I have the discipline, but that's why I'm here, starting with a little freewriting.  Scott got home last night and we spent a leisurly couple of hours today cleaning and nesting, but now he's downstairs trying to sort his life out and I have a couple of hours before I have to go in for a meeting at school. 

I suspect the place to start is to compile notes and examples, basically talking points.  That might even be all I need.  So here's what I have so far.  My abstract focused on femme sole (a term that perhaps I can find a proper definition for?) and the work women did in trades, merchandizing, running households and travelling.  (reading through my old undergrad diss, I cam across a note from Garrett that women would be particularly involved in the household finances - again, support for this would be lovely).  I want to talk about the creative lives and lived experiences of ordinary women as reflected in MK and the York Plays, particularly of medieval urban women.  The link here is MKs possible witnessing of the plays (and certainly exposure to York civic culture), and I'm suggesting that a focus on the female expereince can highlight the themes and tropes of these texts, and perhaps help us understand how women readers may have received these texts.

OK, so, questions so far - definition of femme sole, evidence of women's involvement in household finances, and liklihood that Margery saw the plays.  Re the middle one, note Margery's request for the keys and the financial implications after her illness.

SO, stuff from MK:

• page 19: "a man dwellying in Dewchlond... cam int Yngland wyth hys wyfe and hys goodys" - This is likely her son, and it's interesting that she doesn't identify him as such; also of note is that the wife and goods come together?
• page 23: "And anoon the creature was stabelyd in hir wyttys and in hir reson as well as evyr sche was beforn, and preyd hir husbond as so soon as he cam to hir that sche mygth have the keys of the botery to takyn hir mete and drynke as sche had don beforn.  Hir maydens and hir kepars cownseld hym he schulde delyvyr hir no keys, for thei seyd sche wold but geve awey swech good as ther was...."  - here health and illness is measured financially; evidence of female centrality to household.
• Page 24: description of her fashionable clothes and her attempts at brewing and horse milling, "for pure covetyse and for to maynten hir pride."  While these episodes exist to demonstrate that she would not "be content wyth the goodys that God had sent hire" she also suggests she "was on of the grettest brewers in the town N a three yer or four tyl sche lost mech good, for sche had nevyr ure therto."  This suggests she was successful for a short time.  Page 25, describes the horsemill as "a newe huswyfre."  The desc implies that her repeated failures were interpreted morally in the town.
• Page 28 - first mention that she wanted free of her congugal duty, "it was very peynful and horybyl unto hir"
• Page 30: she describes a vision in which Christ says "how schalt nevyr com in helle ne in purgatorye, but, whan thow schalt passyn owt of this world, wythin the twynkelyng of an eye thow schalt have the blysse/ of hevyn."  This is unorthodox (yes?) and echoes Mary's special treatment.  In the York Death of the Virgin she asks "whane I schall dye/.../Pe fende pou late me no3t see" (132-4) and Christ responds "pe fende must be nedis at pyne endyng" (154) but then assures her that she will go directly to heaven.

More in a bit

Getting Back on the Horse

Term is over and the transition period is up, or ought to be, in any case.  I'm spending far too much time playing solitaire, a good sign that I'm avoiding thinking about what I need to do next, which is switch into research and writing mode.  Part of me doesn't care, wants to slack off, claiming both a tough year and the priviledges of pregnancy, but the truth is that the year was no tougher than most and pregnancy should be a motivator, not an excuse, since I'll almost certainly be unable to be productive in the last couple of weeks before labour and the few months after it.  Moreover, one never knows the future, and I could end up delivering early or experiencing complications.  I should get my work done while I can.  As much as I would like life to give me special consideration for any number of reasons, doesn't mean I get it (or merit it, even).  We all want special treatment; we all have to work anyway.

So, case in point, I just played solitaire for 20 minutes, accepted a breakfast invite, and wept over the election results.  OK, fair, I'm going to lack a bit of focus - it's summer, major events are taking place, and my body is filled with people making chemicals - but I also have a career to uphold here.  First on the roster are two conference papers.  The first, for Kalamazoo is a short (10-12 minute) pedagogical discussion of connections between Margery Kempe and the York plays.  I've been reading both texts for examples, but not with a lot of effort, so I'm only picking away at both.  I have let this one go on longer than necessary, given that its a round table paper, although I don't want to beat myself up, either, since I've been taking care of a lot of other important business, too.  But yeah, I need to get it written this week, since I leave town next week for Kal.  The other paper is a class lecture that I want to adapt to conference level.  Again, probably straightforward, but it needxs to get done sooner than later.  Other than that, I have a revision and some reviews lingering, none of which will get done if I keep waiting for focus to descend on me.  So, it's time to get back on the horse, and to schedule (and stick to) writing and research time.  Doable.  Just need to commit.