Well hello there

The tenure year turned out to be the year that I abandoned the blog completely. But I miss it! I am thinking of revamping the blog or perhaps starting a new one.

I am still most definitely Dr. Medusa, but this description--A single assistant professor with a tenure-track job in the humanities, a Southern family, a 900-square-foot garret perched atop a crowded American city, and a renegade gaze aimed at books, booze, bassists, movies, making out, style sweet style, teaching, tenure, writing, and all things narcissistic--needs some tweaking. While I am still happily perched in my Northern garret most of the time, The Someone and I are living a split Mason-Dixon existence between two crowded American cities. And I am no longer an assistant professor!!!! OMG. Tenure. Whoa. It still has not sunk in completely, but some things were just immediately different. In some ways, I didn't have to process the difference for a moment and I hit the tenure ground running.

My most important news to share: my father, who has been desperately ill, is doing much better and the prognosis is hopeful. I was able to spend an entire summer with him. It was a terribly difficult time but an amazing time and at moments just lovely and simple and joyful.

So I'm back and planning to be back, in some form, for a good long while.

Poetry Friday, Lorca

Replica

Only a single bird
is singing.
The air is cloning it.
We hear through mirrors.

I discovered a book of Lorca poems, Suites, last week in Paris in Shakespeare & Co. "Replica" is in a series of poems called "Mirror Suites." The whole collection, reassembled from notebooks after Lorca's death, is amazing.

Paris. I feel like I may not ever quite be able to catch my breath entirely again. I had never been. I found it to be stupefyingly, achingly, and almost frighteningly beautiful. Sublime. Sublimity itself.

My father is suddenly, unexpectedly very sick. I am leaving for the Deep Red as soon as possible to be with him. I am scared. Send all of your prayers, vibes, mojo, or whatever you can his way.

Dr. Medusa, Associate Professor of Gorgon Awesomeness

Excuse the blatant horn tooting. It's been a long hard ride. (Secret message to Idiot Wind: GAME OVER. Hah!!!!)

Quick Medusa Update

• Tenure: I still do not know. All good on all fronts so far but I still do not know. You cannot imagine how frustrating this is. This has been the most stressful process and the most agonizing year, in this regard.
• Real Housewife of Atlanta: The Someone got a tenure-track job in the Southland. This is wonderful and exciting news and a brilliant coup in a market that is temperamental on its best days and was, as many of you know, downright beastly this year. This also means we'll be having a Mason-Dixon romance and maintaining residences in two cities. Yes, we need your advice and wisdom.
  
• Wardrobe: I have just over a month to make some very important fashion choices for my Grand European Tour. Actually, it's just a conference and then a few days in London and a few days in Paris. I'll take it! I have to a) look fabulous at all times; b) be comfortable; and c) pack lightly. This is going to be VERY DIFFICULT TO ACHIEVE. I will be posting two This Week's European Wardrobe posts: the fantasy one and the practical one. Maybe I'll come out somewhere in between.
  
• Random obsessions of these past months: The Someone, Facebook, Wii Fit, Leo Babauta's The Power of Less, trips to New York (and Uniqlo, Brooklyn Industries, cocktails with fabulous former students, too salty salt bagels on hungover mornings, missing the bus to drink Lambrusco in Little Italy), Sober House, Bon Iver, Tom Tykwer, cyborgs, and Marcuse.
  

Triumphant return to the blog and full post to follow soon.

Pssst . . .

I am gearing up to make a triumphant-ish return to the blog. Is anyone still reading? I have interesting news, including what I plan to wear while I am in Paris in June and how I am might just become a Real Housewife of Atlanta (see graph) even if I do get tenure.

Wishing everyone a beautiful and prosperous new year

I made it to the MLA about 31 hours and many a Heineken after setting out for San Francisco. It was well worth it. I am back in the Deep Red for too many days before I reunite with The Someone at home and get to work on a new semester and a new year.

I have made a few resolutions. Last year's comical and purposely simple promise to do some "light stretching" worked out really well. It turned out to be more of a prophetic understatement than a resolution, as my life expanded in amazing and wonderful ways. This year I resolve to:

1. Say sweet things to self, rather than mean and nasty and self-defeating things
2. Become catlike in ability to get as much sleep as necessary (nap at will)
3. Develop ballerina-like posture--head up, shoulders back, chest forward (pirouette when and where appropriate)

So basically I will be a sweet-talking feline ballerina in 2009. I like it.

Observations from the road

• The airlines are seriously totally utterly broken.
  
• Heineken is yummy.
• I miss The Someone so very very much.
• Wild Turkey is cheaper than Heineken in certain Southern states.
• So is Jim Beam.
• I can no longer not own an iPhone. Seriously. The desire, it is strong.
  
• Nancy Grace is obsessed with missing and dead children.
• America needs a jeans makeover.
• Why not be drunk upon arrival to the MLA? Why not?
• This plane might actually depart at 6 p.m., with a delay of a mere six hours and fifteen minutes.
  
• My nieces and my nephew are awesome.
  
• My longing for The Someone occurs, I am convinced, on a molecular level.
• I wonder what would happen if I switched from Heineken to Wild Turkey.
  
• Or Jim Beam.