The Art of Fast Reading

I'm a fast reader. I've been one since I was a kid, and I swept the MS Readathon on an annual basis, toting home armloads of stuffed animals and trophies. (I'm glad to see it's still in existence - support it if you can.) The prizes felt pretty important them, but a quarter century or so later, I'm struck by the qualitative experience of reading (and writing) quickly.

There's certainly a balance to be struck - I notice that if I read too quickly, I skip words and sometimes meaning, and if I read too slowly, I get bogged down in unnecessary details. For me, reading quickly helps me navigate this disjunct, and it also assures that I'll find the curiosity and joy necessary to get through the hundreds of pages of reading required on a weekly basis in my PhD classes. 

Writing quickly isn't quite as slippery for me. I've been experimenting lately wi writing as fact as possible to see what comes out. My brain is usually a few steps ahead of my fingers, so that method works well for me. In a way, it does what Sondra Perl's groundbreaking notion of felt sense does when used in a writing classroom: it pushes away any overanalyses or fears or second guesses that can tend to hamper the writing process, and it allows me to explore my thinking more creatively than if my fingers are still. (There's an argument to be made here, too, for talking out loud, either as a writer at home or as a student in class.)

I'm exploring the power of speed and will keep it up in the coming weeks. After that, maybe I'll take another look at writing and reading slowly. I guess my stuffed animal days are over either way.

The Adventures of Axldemicat, Part One

Rest: She sleeps on the table my mom gave me that was once my great-grandmother's. that is where her sunbeam rests in the morning. I woke this morning to find her settled on my yoga blanket, something she usually only likes to do if I am already sitting there. 

Space: She jumps on the couch when I sit there, always on her side, and settles either on the New Yorker or a pile of citations I am working through for the professor I'm assisting. She is more than a paperweight - she is, as my friends say, my own research assistant. 

Projects: She burrows under the blanket draped on the back of the couch, then decides to sit like a turkey and purr even when I'm not petting her. 

Collapsing of Past/Present(ation)

I've had an academic interest in temporality since I took Emily Apter's class on periodization during my master's at NYU. Now, the personal side is coming in: my mother's death is sparking an examination of my childhood and my family history. That history is also intertwining with my theoretical interests in developing ways (more later on this).

Personal history comes up in my dreams a lot. My mother is usually there, sometimes sick, sometimes healthy, always recognizable. (This isn't surprising, according to grief literature. She was there a lot before she died, too, but now it's almost constant.) When I am stressed, I tend to dream that she is angry with me. more often, though, she's part of the fabric of my unconscious. Last night i dreamed that she was retrofitting a van to give herself a place to get ready for work. Two night ago, there was a grandma in my dreams: she looked like mine, but was mean instead of adorable. (When I dream that my mom is mad at me, its much the same feeling of displacement - not that I didn't ever misbehave and make her angry, because Idid, but because for much of my life, i have been my own worst critic and she has been my defender.) I realized today, with a bit of a jolt, that I want to talk to my dead-for-ten-years grandmother about the loss of my mom. I want to know how she handled her own mother's loss. 

I'm wondering if part of this is a trace of my extreme unease and anger that my mother wasn't given to chance to see me achieve more of the things I planned on. (She knew me as a master's student, but not as a PhD student, for one.) Both she and my mother had careers and children (and in my grandma's case, grandchildren) when their parents died. 

Even sharing this information in a relatively public forum is a decision I didn't expect. When my mother got sick, I decided, somewhat consciously, to post a lot of information about my feelings and the trajectory of her illness on Facebook. This was in part so I didn't have to explicitly tell people things and also, I think, because I wanted to vent and let off steam. (My mom often read and commented on those posts, including on some about my fears of her death. It was heartening and painful all at the same time, but I wasn't going to keep it from her.) Now that I'm working on my book and writing so personally in a wider online forum (for the four of you who read this and for the countless millions who could), I'm struck both by how reticent I am to air my grievances and what I consider defects, and by how necessary it is. I think my academic work and writing will always carry the stamp of who I am, and I think that's the way I want it.

Imagining Communities

As I learn my way around the vertical campus of my newest alma mater-to-be, I find myself thinking about community formation and belonging. I was welcome to attend CUNY events before I was a student there. The last time I did was several years ago. I will still be welcome to attend NYU events even though I no longer have an ID that lets me into its (many, spread out) buildings. I feel more at ease at the Graduate Center, even when I'm lost, knowing that I am allowed - and supposed - to be there. People whose job it is to critique and challenge and help deepen my ideas are supposed to be there. I am forming a close community with the people who will be my future colleagues. 

In a bit of an update to Benedict Anderson, then, I think the process of imagining communities is an important one. Some people stride right in like they belong. I'm one of those people, but I often don't have the feeling of belonging unless I have the sense that someone really wants me there.  I love the feeling of people looking up to greet me, the familiarity of walls, the sense that everything could be mine because it already is in some way.