Lisa Mendelman

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we grow, and what that process feels like.

In a classroom, in a friendship, with a mentor, with a parent, on paper, on a yoga mat, inside, outloud – the more I think about each context, the more the distinctions seem to blur. Even between what I would want to identify as “internal” or “independent” processes (developing a line of thought about, say, sentimentality in early 20th century America – something totally arbitrary like that), and the kind of growth that occurs in the dynamic, intersubjective dance of human relation. Inbetween-ness is part of the deal in all of these nonlinear processes, as are ambiguity, uncertainty, indeterminacy, and trust. Also – for me at least – ambivalence. So too contradiction, and a desire for a dynamic expansive and resilient enough to contain and hold that, too.

None of these terms have a necessarily correlated feeling (if you disagree with me, please speak now, as my dissertation project somewhat depends upon this claim). Hence the thrill of unexpected connection, the melancholy of resonant loss, the terror of disconnect (which, though it may be fleeting, always occurs in the lightning bolt moment of an eternal present), and the anxiety about and optimism of future possibility. And then the calm of that occasional flow state where the process feels like a gently-paced walk on stable, if slightly canted, ground. In the enduring aspiration towards the latter (wouldn’t it be nice if growth only ever felt like a crisp morning walk on packed wet sand?), it’s all too easy to forget that the affective range is part of the process, too.

In the words of someone who didn’t manage to append her name to her excellent insight, “No one you respect got there with certainty.” Perhaps not surprisingly, given my abiding affinity for rules and structure (which coexists with my abiding desire to transcend them), it’s comforting to recognize that, even in a subjective arena, there’s such thing as a definite no.

There are, I keep reminding myself, no exceptions – an imperfectly frustrating, imperfectly reassuring place to end a meditation on growth.

This update’s biannual status speaks volumes (or whatever the interweb equivalent is… pages?) about the first half of 2011, which shall henceforth be known as the year of unequivocal adulthood.

The past seven months have included a rigorous intellectual marathon culminating in a two hour uphill sprint, twenty weeks of teaching two different classes, a miraculously-passed Spanish reading exam, countless funding applications, and the (literally) voluminous beginning of my dissertation project. Exciting? Absolutely. Exhausting? Indeed.

True adulthood, it seems, involves catching one’s breath just long enough to replenish the oxygen supply necessary to make it over the next set of hurdles. Fortunately, I can’t imagine a more worthwhile set of causes or a more supportive crew on the sidelines.

With gratitude,
Lisa

*Dedicated to my uncle, the much-loved Bill Mellins

Happy new quarter/year/decade! [Insert ritual apology for time elapsed since my last post here].

Lest the relevance of this blogpost’s title end after its first paragraph, the rest of this post will self-consciously consume as little of both of our time as possible (meta-comment to my diligent students: a good thesis encompasses all of your paper, not just your first body paragraph)… As most of you know, I’m currently gunning towards my Part I reading exam in 8 (!!!) weeks. That would be 2 hours in 1 room with 3 professors, talking about 120 books and a 120 year span of American literature. Much as I love to write numbers out MLA-style, sometimes the figures speak best for themselves.

And with that said, I’m going to sign off for now and return to the morning’s apropos write-up of Mary Ann Doane’s The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive.

See you on the other side of the (hopefully still vertical) hurdle!

Or rather, since this is Los Angeles in October, triple digits are prevailing…

As I told my students last week, the weather gods have an uncanny sense of timing as it relates to the quarter system. They may have strong feelings about the semester and trimester, too, but I’ve yet to experience said academic calendars. Instead, I’ve spent nearly a decade confronted – without fail – by absolutely gorgeous (if recently stifling) sunshine in the first week of Fall and the last week of Winter quarter. As if the return to classes and external deadlines and then their ultimate most-intense manifestations weren’t difficult enough without the compelling beach weather! The latter is made even more complicated by UCLA’s proximity to the coast and nonsensical lack of air conditioning on certain floors of some buildings (ie, Moore Hall’s first floor, where I happen to teach a two hour seminar from 2-4pm in a corner room that gets fabulous late-day sun).

Not that any of this should be taken as a complaint. As anyone who knows me knows (and, let’s be honest here, my small – but appreciated! – readership is comprised exclusively thereof), I have a deep, abiding love of academics, in/at/because of all of their intensities (define my affection’s ambiguous object as you will; I’m pretty sure it holds across the board). To that end, bring on the books!

Also, just in case I have an as-yet-unknown reader who also happens to be a weather god, today’s temperature was perfect.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already late July, which means:

1. My birthday is just around the corner.

2. I have no more excuses not to tackle my summer reading, all 120 books.

3. Summer is nearly half over, even by the standards of the quarter system on which I live.

4. My birthday is almost here.

For as frequently as I comment on the ever-more-rapid passage of time and consider it an adult phenomenon, perhaps there is no other season that more intensely evokes my childhood and reminds me that this experience is nothing new (see items 1 and 4 above for proof of my perpetual youth). Not that I didn’t enjoy the school year (see my current profession), but there was nothing quite like endless days spent at the Laurelhurst Beach Club or the Viewridge snack bar/pool. From the gummy worms at the latter to the frozen high fructose corn syrup served up by Popsicle Joe in his idiosyncratic white Jeep, summer has always been tinged with the sugary sweetness of sunshine, free time, and seemingly boundless expanses of water (there was a time when swimming my 1s – aka 100 yards – at the Beach Club was an impressive accomplishment. I was six years old and under three feet tall; by those measurements, Lake Washington might as well have been the Pacific Ocean, albeit a cleaner, unsalty version).

These days, the experience of boundlessness attaches to the quantity of reading before me, though this literary ocean is no less exciting and terrifying than Lake Washington’s unfathomable depths were back in 1988. The sunshine’s been coming and going here in Los Angeles, and the free time is unequivocally a thing of the past, but the sugary sweetness of a summer birthday awaits. On today’s to-do list: write up Derrida and “The Yellow Wall-Paper;” book my flight to the Bay for next month; and, last but certainly not least, settle on which chocolate cake to order for next Friday. I wonder if the bar would let me bring a pinata, too…

PS. I’m in the process of taking down or updating the links to my articles. If you find one that’s broken, please let me know!