The border to another country

This winter I have not had ‘flu, which I attribute both to my willingness to pay for the vaccination (which takes care, I assume, of one strain) and good luck more generally. I have, however, had sinusitis, two bouts of gastro-enteritis (one at the same time as the sinusitis) and two colds, the second of which is engaging my immune system in a forceful battle right now. Indeed, I have been ill so frequently that when a new ailment strikes, the previous one is still fresh enough in memory that I can locate where I put all the over-the-counter drugs with which I treated it.

This suffering is minor enough that my chief energy is expended in complaining, rather than recovering, but I welcome nonetheless any sympathetic expense of comforting energy any fair readers might wish to give. It has the side effect, however, of focusing my mind on the congestion at hand (or, more accurately, at head) and not worrying about all those peripheral matters that usually engage my mind when I’m not in the classroom.

One of these has been the necessary revival of my academic CV, for purposes about which I shan’t yet be more specific. The CV’s destination is not as important as the strange feeling of revisiting all that work I did as a postgraduate: so many conferences, so much networking, so many ambitiously-phrased seminar and article titles. In my archives I found a report I wrote eight years ago for my then-department, admonishing the continuing staff for not attending a postgraduate conference, and was mortified both at the tone and the transparency of the thing. I sounded, for all my rhetorical fol-de-rol, like someone’s affronted aunt. What was I thinking? I had forgotten, until this uncovering, the extent to which I spent my postgraduate years in a comfortful bubble, sure of my talents and my employability, drifting perilously close to the notion that the world owed me a living. I only hope that in the time since passed I have learnt rather more academic humility.

Within that arrogance, however, was a strain of hopefulness too that I don’t now possess: that change could be effected by direct action, by encouraging others to do better, that expectations if clearly expressed could be met. I don’t regret its loss–I have my union mettle now, a more strategic understanding of the operations of power–so much as seeing its expression in my past makes me aware of its present absence. The long humbling of my first years in this job was hard, but with hindsight I can see its benefit. I don’t see how I could have carried on happy with such high-mindedness.

Harvestbro has been here on a flying visit, most of his time spent in Queenstown but with enough time over for a flying visit to the señor and me. It is a delight to spend time with my two favourite men together, just as I have been enjoying spending time with the señor’s family. The harvestbro is working freelance at present, combining audio engineering with DJing and running the drum clinics for which I suspect he will in time be famous among the folk of Fitzroy. Since harvestdad is also an audio engineer, we have something like the makings of a proud family tradition. Bro has the freelancer’s exhaustion, taking all available contracts to shore against the fallow periods, but is adamant that, with the financial planning skills that age and experience have brought, this is infinitely better than working a day job to support the night’s adventures.

The harvestbro has a role to play in my fantasy wedding, in which a decorous evening ceremony gradually metamorphoses into a hardcore drum + bass set in the early hours of the morning, but as the señor points out, such a plan is rather against the grain when we consider the reality of our family and friends, only a small number of whom would be likely to want to hit the floor in this fashion. It nonetheless dovetails well with any number of similarly implausible wedding fantasies, including one in which we drive south until we cross the Mexican border, or north to Gretna Green. Even as we have a simple, workable wedding plan which we can afford to execute when the time comes, I dream of a soundtrack, a night flight, Humphrey Bogart joining Ingrid Bergman on the plane. Sadly the time for eloping, the señor tactfully reminds me, has likely passed.