With everything going on at UCLA, and at Columbia, and two hours away from me at Emory, it almost feels wrong to write about anything that’s not police violence against protesters, and groups of brutal attackers wrongly termed “counterprotesters” who in fact weren’t protesting anything but who attacked nonviolent people and were not penalized for it, while “law enforcement” stuck to the literal letter-of-the-law and made sure to arrest hundreds of people not for any acts of violence but for camping out on the lawn. This is the country I was warned about. All of it colors my thought-atmosphere in the same way climate change does. I read an article recently about how we’re running out of groundwater. And it’s highly unlikely that the federal regulations needed to slow the process will ever pass. Because “Freedom.” Where, in this disregard for human life, is freedom.
With Arlen’s death still at the forefront of my mind, I think, in the way I often think as though I’m responding to him, “This is what you thought you couldn’t handle.” I say thought because it’s my belief that we can all handle anything. But we have to have our reasons to want to handle it. Some of mine, these days:
Here in Georgia, 13-year cicadas and 17-year cicadas have emerged at the same time. The music they’re making with their steady and gloriously loud screech-hum is like nothing I’ve ever heard. I haven’t yet been down by the river where Ian tells me that the volume is so loud it sounds “like static.” But I’m grateful to spend my life with someone who says, “I went for a bike ride by the river because I wanted to hear the cicadas.” Ian spent his early-childhood years in Japan, and cicadas, for him, are a home-sound of summer. They’re so cute and strange-looking and beautiful, and they step so slowly, and pause for no discernible reason, and they can fly impressively high and quite fast, but they hardly do.
I have the privilege of setting my own schedule this summer, which means I’ll get to all the novel-writing that, ironically, the first year of my MFA program did not allow. Though around the 10th time I ranted about an MFA Creative Writing program that doesn’t allow for time to write (intensive hours spent in Writing Center tutoring, mandatory hours at the literary magazine, multiple teaching-centered classes), Ian reminded me that I’d have had some time if I didn’t pour so much of it into Criminology Theory, a deeply demanding Sociology class courtesy of GCSU’s remarkable Criminal Justice program. No regrets, however. That class changed me in the way that all scholarly pursuits are supposed to, and it remains the first course I’ve taken since my undergraduate days that had me up past 1am working on a project for the sheer joy of what I was doing.
The Museum of Natural History in GCSU’s Biology building is one of the most inspiring spaces I’ve ever stumbled into on a whim. Taxidermied animals large and small, informative display cases of bones, nearly every sort of mammalian skull possible. A taxidermied black bear poised ready to strike, which gave me a horror-movie-type jolt every time I turned the corner and came face-to-face with that majestic beast again. Large-leaved plants thoughtfully placed to add a nature-feel to the atmosphere. I’m not sure who among you is invested in the lesbian werewolf novel I’ve been at for what feels like half my life (in reality it’s about 6 years), but one of the most thoughtful pieces of criticism I’ve received on the most recent draft is that there’s no real indication of what my protagonist is interested in outside of her tumultuous romantic life (oops). Gettin’ all into those bones yesterday gave me some idea. For the first time in a year, I started writing a scene.
Between the red eyes of the cicadas and the red cardinals, I get lovely flashes of red outside my window at unforeseen moments, which I always appreciate.
Drew Barrymore in Scream. I haven’t seen the film since it was in theaters but I dutifully remedied that last night and damn, for someone who (….you know this by now, right, because it’s been 22 years?) is going to die extra-first, she plays Casey’s unaffected sweetness to the hilt. Decades later and I’m still fantasizing that we got it wrong, that her fighting spirit wins out, that no one who was so prominent on the poster could end up as Ghostface’s first victim. But there it is. We can’t control the grief, we sit with it. Nothing says life, life itself like the Scream franchise. Let that be the most millennial statement I ever make.
Oh, by the way, even though I’ll be teaching Freshman Composition next year, I don’t have work over the summer and would be grateful to get paid for writing anything, should you know someone who needs anything written. I now have a year’s worth of experience helping Nursing grad students in a renowned intensive program with all of their written work, so when I say anything, that’s the word I mean.
You’re also welcome to sign this petition, courtesy of GCSU’s chapter of the Georgia Campus Worker’s Union, to make sure that I and especially my gen-z colleagues work for a living wage. Our stipends haven’t been raised in 15 years and you can help change that:
https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/gcsu-workers-need-fair-wages-now
I definitely didn’t plan to end on money, though. Cicadas!