On the Shoulders of Giants

   The post-graduate life has consisted for me of two diametrically opposed experiences. The initial phase was characterized primarily by a marked absence of time. I defended my dissertation the day before classes began for the Fall Semester, and thus my defense celebration was notably low-key. Not only did I have to wake up the next day and teach, but I had to go home that evening and prepare for my first day of teaching. I had two preps, which in the grand scheme of things is not an excessive load, but working a part-time job in addition added considerable stress while low-level depression, anxiety, and sleeplessness contributed a perennial exhaustion. The money was good, the stress was bad.

   This semester, though, I continue to think in terms of semesters. This is despite no longer having any formal connection with a university. My work with the National Humanities Center keeps me coming to campus most days, but I'm no longer a student or a professor, and since the entirety of my adult life has been defined in those terms the transition has a psychological component as well. It has been nice to take some time essentially off - to have days where I did an hour or two of real work and ten hours of recreational reading, indie gaming, Netflix watching, or similar. The tidal wave of money which washed over my life last semester (for four months, I earned the median US income!) left enough on the beach to ameliorate financial pressures for quite some time, but the time on my hands has slowly become a problem to be managed rather than a pleasant vacation.

   My immediate aim is this: to shake off the infantilization of a graduate education and self-consciously, intentionally, and with malice aforethought to create a new kind of life for myself.

Chytrá Zebra Dobře Ví

   March is approaching its abrupt and final terminus. Halfway gone is a glass half full. As, in a curious coincidence, my glass is right now. Life differs in the particulars but it seems to me that the central tendency thereof remains unchanged.

   I might have amounted to something if it hadn't been for banjo picking. Or so I may be able to claim at some hypothetical future point. At which point I will still have accomplished nothing but may have acquired some proficiency with the bluegrass banjo. The callouses on my fretting hand have started to harden and I've gotten a couple roll patterns down. My banjo may even be in tune. Defeating entropy one string at a time.

   After all these years I've retaken up running. It's like the mob. Years after you think you're out, one morning you get up and there's a pair of running shoes next to the door. I may at some point actually run a race again. I feel frequently frustrated at my dragging pace, which is completely unreasonable. Nevermore shall I see eighteen, and no cruel taskmaster has dragged me up the side of a mountain in almost a decade. It'll probably take at least three months to PR. Of course, by then the average temperature in the shade will probably be 115 or so. Extreme dehydration therapy.

   I have sought professional training in the mystical art of how to be funny. This ain't 'nam, Smokey. There are rules. And I have been learning them. 201 is almost over, really. Another two more weeks and then another comedy show. I don't know if it could stack up to our big debut last month, but I hope that the drop-off in our youthful enthusiasm will be more than compensated for by an increase in technical proficiency.

   Somehow in all the commotion the regular demands of life continue to proceed. Stuff to read. Books to find. More stuff to read. Stuff to grade. Some stuff to write. Oddly spelled words in somewhat less typical alphabets. Birthdays and drinks and boots and breads. Some considerable amount of time spent saving a lushly rendered fantasy kingdom from (spoiler alert) certain doom. One must have one's little diversions.

   En sevdiğim daha çok yazıyorum.

Co Udělaš s Opilným Plavcem

    Christmas is immanent and imminent. My departure for colder climes is only a matter of time, indeed of hours. The semester has concluded almost completely, with only one minor bit of secretary work to go, but the pleasure and thrill of ABDdom is that vacations are not in fact vacations, and a full draft of chapter one (as yet untitled) will occupy a significant chunk of the next three weeks. The way is mostly clear to a satisfactory conclusion, but it ain't over 'till it's over.

    The conclusion of my peripheral activity made no particular difference in the general course of my life, but nevertheless I was gratified to receive high marks for my performance. It's frequently said that the kinds of people who end up in graduate school are those who have learned to base their self-esteem on their end of semester report card, and certainly said interpretation explains the burst of satisfaction I got from those A's. Meanwhile, in the more central world of dissertating, my committee regards my linguistic diversions with one skeptical, exquisitely raised, and somewhat furrowed eyebrow. Learning for the sake of learning is somewhat less valued than I had hoped, but as long as I continue to make satisfactory progress towards becoming Dr. Robertson my advisor will tolerate my foibles.

     Speaking of which, Dr. Popelka informed me this week that the latest edition of Historica has hit the streets, and thus I have thus with little pomp and ceremony become a published scholar. It only took five years. Hopefully I'll manage to repeat this feat, but even if not I've made an impression, an indentation, however small, in the sum total of human knowledge. That's kind of nice.

    As far as the rest of the matter, I'm underwhelmed by my recent commitment to physical exertion and will have to clear up more time for the acquisition of washboard abs in the coming semester. Nutrition, sleep, and other basic indicators of optimal functioning are floating at or near optimal levels. I'm continuing my emphasis on cultivating individual human relationships instead of the largely impersonal and inchoate expressions of sodden interpersonality which have diverted me in the past and I feel the richer for it. In particular, I would like to thank Brittany, Sarah, Julie, and Meredith for putting up with my crap and being amused by my antics.

     Also, I'm in Colorado for the next eleven days, so if you're around we should hang out. You know who you are. 

Je To Komplikované.

   It's remarkably uplifting to have students tell me that recitation is making a difference in their understanding of the material. Though I tend to play the cynic in conversation, I do try to inform my students in the course of our recitations, especially since the course I'm teaching, The World Since 1945, is a very broad survey and covers a very wide combination of issues and events. Lecture is a hundred minutes a week, but to cover (for instance) the evolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from 1948 to the 2^nd Intifada in 2000 in the first lecture and the course of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the second lecture leaves the students completely lost. In a way, it's amazing to me how little they know about the world. Further, though, when one thinks about just how many discrete data one needs to have a reasonable grasp of the major events of the last sixty years, I suppose it's not unreasonable. In any case, all I think I can really do is provide an interpretive framework that hangs on a few key points, a way to think about the world that doesn't rely on an in depth grasp of the details. Frequently I feel like it's a hopeless task, but occasionally a student will come in to office hours and tell me that the readings always make a lot more sense after recitation than beforehand and that sounds like adding value to me.

   Beyond the vagaries of the instructional schedule, life lurches along. Turkish and Polish have more or less ceased to produce new material to learn and shifted over to a review focus aimed at preparation for the final. Some stress is missing in the process as I have no real idea what my grade is and it doesn't really matter in any conceivable capacity, but I nevertheless would like to do well and so it's back in some ways to the mindset of high-stakes testing. Despite the low stakes. I somehow managed to talk Jenya into joining me for ballroom, and so far we have completed the American Tango rotation. As it turns out, a more or less five year hiatus does no favors for one's competence, but it did (largely) come back. In pursuance of true fidelity to my material I moved to mutton chops for Halloween, and due to the extension of the Halloween season I've only started growing back the chin this last weekend. I guesstimate another week or so before normality in facial hair is restored. Responses have varied from one friend who physically recoiled in shock and disgust to several people who have importuned me to turn it into my regular look.

   The semester is, it seems, lurching to an end. It's getting about time to start organizing my 18 month review and planning for Thanksgiving and Christmas. For which I am excited. After missing Christmas last year I'm really looking forward to decorated trees and Christmas cookies and pies and presents and snow and such. The desiderata of the season.

Başlıyorum yaşamak.  

Hatır İçin Yapılan İş

   I and my domicile are in a very similar state. Worn down, slightly empty, a fair bit of cleaning and arrangement remaining to be done. The weekend has been less productive than I had hoped in some ways, and slightly more so in others. I have restored the arms of the Habsburg Emperors to their rightful place on my wall. I've acquired a pea coat, against which the chill shall struggle in vain. My bike is fresh and new, the shattered axle a mere figment of discarded time. Autumn chill creeps further on a daily basis, pumpkin beverages have become widespread, and deadlines are creating spontaneous stress-induced deformities.

   The Fall Formal was, to my understanding, a great success, to the extent that a complaint was levied against our merriment. The sheer quantity of liquors consumed is, in the sharp light of the morning, near overwhelming. The recycling bins have already been well-fed, and more is yet to come. But I was quite impressed at the sheer style and quality of this department's fancy duds (as well as those attendees who were not actually historians, whom I ought not (and cannot!) overlook). Not one, but two tuxedos. Little black dresses. There were even, memory reliably informs me, shawls. And a special guest appearance. The week has peaked and it's all downhill until Thursday at 5:50 PM.

Co on bys chtěl řict?

Sie Meint, Sie Wär Alleine...

The skies have been gray and cool, mirroring my disposition. I have been given unto, and from me has been taken away, with the end result being considerably less satisfaction with my lot than would have been otherwise. Nevertheless, one can go nowhere but forwards. It's entropy, you see.

In happier news, my exercise program continues to produce excellent results. Admittedly I have yet to achieve anything like my previous 5K PRs, but considering then I was both eighteen and some forty pounds lighter I think I'm not doing too badly. I pulled off a 45 lb curl the other day, which has been pretty consistently at or above my maximum output. Hopefully sometime in the next couple of weeks I'll be able to increment that up to fifty. I feel like my bench progress is somewhat lagging, though. In any case.

Turkish and Polish continue to advance. Unfortunately, so does the time I feel compelled to devote to them. It may have been a bite beyond my ability to chew while simultaneously making satisfactory progress on my dissertation. Beyond the simple time demands, I've been having trouble keeping all the words straight in my head. Last Thursday, we had our first Polish exam, and for one of the questions we had to translate backpack into Polish. Looking at the question, what popped into my head? Çanta. Batoh. Rücksack. But not until a bit later when I came back to the question did the Polish word, plecak, finally strike me. Sometimes I worry about my Czech slipping away as well. It takes a noted effort of mind to say 'to je' instead of 'to jest' these days.

It still seems to me that my social life is fragmented. It is, I think, an artifact of my peculiar schedule but I haven't quite adjusted to it yet in a way that seems acceptable to me. I do have a lot of stuff going on, but I would like to emphasize here that I think you're awesome and we should hang out soon. Also, if you have any cute single friends, you should introduce me to them.

Oh yes! I have an awesome new netbook. It is tiny, turquoise, and eminently portable. Now I can... work... anywhere...

Tygře Tygře Planoucí

All the news that's fit to print.

Apparently last year the webmail server that UNC uses migrated to outlook, and they kept the old one around as a living showpiece of some sort. Since I was gone for the year and my e-mail was inactive, I didn't find out about it until I sent in a support request to the IT department to find out why my e-mail wasn't working. Some fascinating stuff in the backfiles there. In any case, as far as I am aware I am now fully integrated back into the UNC community and all of the technological accoutrements pertaining thereto are fully functioning, but I'm a little paranoid now.

Sections start this week, so I have nothing to report on that front. Started Polish, it's going well. The professor really knows what she's doing, and so far the main problems are pronouncing the words without an overpowering Czech accent and remembering which preposterous cluster of consonants goes where when spelling. Everything else is pretty much the same as Czech. Though there are some false friends to beware of. Other than my own favorite, šukat/siukac, I recently ran across chyba, which means 'mistake' in Czech and 'surely' in Polish. Turkish has been less interesting, considering we're still on drill and kill on the alphabet. Some of the vocabulary for the first test is somewhat odd, which is fun. Dwarf, earthquake, steel, paternal uncle, fever, and strawberry, for a sampling.

Mimo toho neřeknu nic. 

Nothing Wrong and Nothing Right

I dreamed about Kyle today. There were adventures, of the sort one has in a dreamscape – stuttered, frequently nonsensical, conveyed largely by impression – but I very vividly recall the very end of the matter. We were packing, he and I, and I knew in my bones that he was leaving for a long journey. In some manner this seemed right and proper – it had always been me who left, who packed the bags and strode boldly or tremulously into the future while Kyle stayed home. In any case, it was a tremendous packing job, one only fully realizable in a dream – a couch, for example, ended up zipped into a carry-on. When the dream shattered and I realized where I was (namely, in my bed in Carrboro), in that half-awake state wherein dream and reality are hard to distinguish, my strongest impression was of saying goodbye and watching him turn and walk away.

It took me a while to get out of bed this morning.

In some ways it's more challenging being here, since this is in the most direct sense real life; neither an interregnum nor a vacation. Here I stand, and every day I must decide on either paradise or prison. Penury continues to raise its ugly head, but I am familiar with every nook and cranny in that craggy visage. Frequently I feel alone, and frequently I wish Brad was still here for an adventure and a whisky, but Meredith has been kind enough to keep me company disproportionate to my deserts and bread cast upon the waters shall, I am confident, return tenfold unto the giver. Alex has moved in and now the house is much more closely approximating a home. I leave for Seattle on Friday, at a godforsaken hour of the AM, and the week after I return the school year begins.

It may or may not be shark week. I'm uncertain.

In Memoriam

Words are not my forté, despite being my stock in trade.

On the 24^th of June, 2011, my best friend was killed. I've written that a number of times now, and it hasn't gotten any easier. I met Kyle fourteen years ago. We were twelve, had just started junior high at Lincoln after less than stellar elementary school experiences. Sure, we were dorky, but together it was okay. We had our ups and downs in the first couple of years. We were scared, and uncertain, and at times lost, and we lashed out occasionally. But regardless of what happened, we always stayed friends. Later on, though, we grew as people and in so doing we grew together. We were inseperable in high school. I remember accidentally calling his home when I intended to call my own. I remember spending literally days at a time in each other's company. Silence between us was never awkward, but simply comfortable. Whatever I owned was his as well. It was he who brought me together with all of my old friends, so dear to me now. It was he who led the way, my pathbreaker, my guide. Without him I wouldn't have started the IB program, I would never have started debate, I would never have ran cross-country. He believed in me when I didn't believe in myself, and that more than anything made me the man I am today.

I am stretched on your grave

And I'll lie here forever

If your hands were in mine

I'd be sure they would not sever

My apple tree, my brightness,

It's time we were together

For I smell by the Earth,

And I'm worn by the weather.

When my family think

That I'm safely in my bed

Oh, from morn until night

I am stretched out at your head

Calling out unto the earth

With tears hot and wild

For the loss of a man

That I loved as a child.

Oh, the priests and the friars

They approach me in dread

Oh, for I love you still

Oh, my life, and you're dead

I still will be your shelter

Through rain and through storm

And with you in your cold grave

I cannot sleep warm.

I've idolized Kyle for as long as I've known him. He was my invincible golden god, my hetero life partner, the one person I've ever known who never judged me. I could tell him anything, and I did. It's been a long time since I've had the privilige of seeing him every day. I moved away for college at eighteen and never really came back for any length of time. This geographical seperation attenuated some friendships and ended others, but made no impact whatsoever on me and Kyle. I talked to him every day, in Miami, in Germany, in Chapel Hill, in the Czech Republic. He was like gravity, like waking up every morning secure in the knowledge that one's right arm is firmly connected to one's shoulder. In many ways, he was the foundation upon which I had built my life. And now he's gone, and I feel his absence in a thousand different ways and in a thousand different places. I imagine I always will.

I like to think of you as brown and tall,

As strong and living as you used to be,

Because they tell me, dear, that you are dead,

Because I can no longer see your face,

You have not died, it is not true, instead,

You seek adventure some other place.

I hear you laughing as you used to,

Yet loving all the things I think of you;

And knowing you are happy, should I grieve?

You follow and are watchful where I go;

How should you leave me, having loved me so?

We walked along the towpath, you and I,

Beside the sluggish-moving, still canal;

It seemed impossible that you should die;

I think of you the same and always shall.

We thought of many things and spoke of few,

And life lay all uncertainly before,

And now I walk alone and think of you,

And wonder what new kingdoms you explore.

Over the railway line, across the grass,

While up above the golden wings are spread,

Flying, ever flying overhead,

Here still I see your golden figure pass,

And when I leave the meadow, almost wait,

That you should open first the wooden gate.

Utíkal Pryč, Nevěděl Kam

   I haven't really quite felt the kind of culture shock I was expecting. Perhaps it's because everything is glorious here. The weather is glorious, clear and warm. The grass and the leaves on the trees are a rich emerald green. Flowers are in abundance. The sky stretches for forever, cloud-castles in the sky. The mountains, snow-capped, gleam in the distance. The clutch fits neatly in my hand, and I sing along to Ready Kirken with my arm out the window. The pillows are soft, the bed is enormous, the shower is hot and the water pressure is high. There's so much space – my entire apartment would fit into the kitchen here. There is a dryer. There is ice. The coffee is gorgeous. My family is awesome. My friends are awesome. My hometown is awesome. I can speak to people and they understand me, and I understand them, and that little stab of anxiety that presaged an attempt to communicate in Czech is now absent from my life. There are, of course, new anxieties to take its place, as I re-enter society and resume my role as a responsible adult, but it feels good to finally be able to take up the reins of my authentic life again.

   People ask me how it was, living in the Czech Republic, and I struggle with an answer. It is not a straightforward question. It was difficult. It was rewarding. It was an experience that is and, I think, will remain very difficult to communicate in any coherent way. I think I am a better and a stronger person for having done it, almost in the sense of one who conquers a tremendous mountain, fords a great river, and I'm sure that I will be nostalgic for aspects of that life as the novelty of America and Americana fades. For now, though, I'm simply happy to be home.

"We take our fetters with us; our freedom is not total: we still turn our gaze towards the things we have left behind; our imagination is full of them."
-Michel de Montaigne," On Solitude"