tea & sympathy

Grading. Grading on the subway. Grading while on line at the burrito place. Grading before going to bed and again first thing in the morning. Sigh. I took a stack of papers with me to France but didn’t make much progress, in part because I got off the plane with a cold. The south of France is lovely but French culture doesn’t really work for me: I don’t drink or smoke, I hate baguette, I’m not crazy about little dogs, and I can’t eat cheese. Sitting at a packed outdoor cafe doesn’t appeal to this solitary Scorpio, and so when I first arrived on Wednesday, I actually wished I could speed up the clock. I don’t like to travel alone, and as a woman—and a woman of color—with only limited French, I felt insecure in Aix-en-Provence (though I generally found the people to be friendlier than Parisians). It’s a pretty town (photo above is Cathédrale Saint-Sauveur d’Aix) but it seems people mostly go there to shop, and that was the last thing I wanted to do. I got some ibuprofen and vitamin C from the pharmacy and spent the first couple of nights recuperating at the hotel. Then Laura arrived on Friday and everything changed—I had a running buddy! A sounding board. A friend. I’m not a big talker but whenever Laura and I get together, we find endless issues to discuss: teaching, grading, the pros and cons of being in the academy, the pros and cons of US & UK publishing, immigration, ambition, relationships. And the conference itself, of course, which was interesting and really well organized. I think both our papers were well received, and we met some interesting people, including American graphic artist/illustrator/professor John Jennings whose hotel room was right across from ours. We ate at Chez Grandmere Friday night and had “authentic Provencale cuisine.” The next day we checked out the local bookstores, ambled through the outdoor market, and had pizza in a candlelit, cobble-stoned corner of Aix. We shared our family histories and projected where we’d be in five years. John requires students in his hip hop visuals class to come up with a tag—“What would yours be?” I woke up this morning trying to answer that question. I think I’ve settled on “bittersweet” or “bittasweet,” though it’s probably not wise to pick a tag that can be reduced to “b.s.” This morning I was at the central branch of the BPL listening to the amazing poetry my two middle school classes created. During our second workshop I asked them to circle ten words that represented the essence of a special memory. A tag is sort of like your essence—if you had to reduce yourself to ONE word, what would it be? I thought about “scribe” but that seemed too one-dimensional. I like bittersweet because it represents contradiction but also balance. In my third workshop with the students I asked them to make two lists: words others would use to describe them, and words they would use to describe themselves. “Sweet” isn’t a word that would appear on either of my lists, but I like “bittasweet” because there’s at least a little sugar in me…though these days I’m so stressed out that I’m consuming more sugar than I really need. While I was in France I got thirty emails a day, including two stressful surprises: the book I plan to write about African American YA speculative fiction is going to be announced later this spring at another conference (never mind that I haven’t actually finished the proposal), and the editors of an anthology on urban children’s literature asked me to contribute a chapter (by June). Trouble is, I haven’t had any time just to write for myself and that’s why the “bitter” is threatening to overwhelm the “sweet” in me. I don’t even have time to record all the details of my time in France. I made a dozen mental notes but can’t remember half of them now: sugar cubes in the shape of hearts, Lionel Richie’s “Hello” and the theme from Flashdance playing on the shuttle bus radio, a thin sliver of a moon in a starless sky. On the flight back to NYC I watched Puss ‘n Boots and (when I wasn’t laughing my head off) nearly wept at some of the coloring—I remember seeing a Maxfield Parrish exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum and having a similar reaction. How do you capture the color of a child’s dream? Do illustrations teach us how to dream? I need to write but can’t afford to let myself drift. Not until spring break. I had tea with a friend this afternoon and she reminded me that there is a time to “frolic” and a time to work. What matters most is that you apply yourself fully to every task, trusting that you will be changed by the experience. I think that’s what worries me…