Dreaming Nearer, Farther, Faster

This is the difficult part. I have a lot left to do before I can consider this semester done; much of it is grading, but not all. My building is being renovated this summer, which is great, but it also means that I have to functionally move out of my office by the end of the weekend, taking with me anything breakable, precious, or presently occupying any surface except the interior of my bookshelves or filing cabinets. (When one has to empty every one of one’s desk drawers, one is confronted, brutally, with many stupid decisions to just shove a thing into a drawer rather than deal with it, such as the buttons I have accumulated from 9 years of student events and clubs and awareness days & the extra nameplate I had from the years I had an office with two doors & the tea I didn’t like enough to drink at home.)

But beyond making me rather unsentimental about all of my desk drawer detritus & that loose leaf tea I purchased while I lived in Wyoming (yikes, self, yikes), the process has foregrounded a lot of things. My work office, and therefore all of the books I am leaving on the shelves, will be entirely unaccessible until August. Thus, anything I might want for course-planning for fall 2023 or spring 2024 has to come home with me now. And since my home office is also in its usual late-semester state of disarray, all of those books are Gathered Unto Me in piles beside the piles of new books I haven’t shelved because I want to be reading them immediately if not sooner.

All of this is somewhat overwhelming, but there is also the giddy hope of soon curling around these edges. The start of summer is Second New Year for me; though the feeling of summer vacation has long since flown, this fleeting time away from the classroom means different considerations for my days and a lot to look forward to: visits with dear friends and some travel and a writing workshop I will tell you more about soon and a grand adventure or two that will certainly end up on the page. There are the smaller pleasures: not only time to read, but to finally finish weaving the poor scarves that have been sitting on my loom for an eternity; to try making English muffins and croissants; to replenish my stash of freezer bao and dumplings; to finish spinning last year’s Tour de Fleece yarn before this year’s Tour starts; to get really extra about my Bike Rally preparation. To rethink my fall classes and begin the process of crafting those days; to start dreaming a little bit toward the spring classes because I expect December and January will be somewhat more distracting than usual because of the other bright dream on the horizon.

This summer, I will be getting ready to launch my novel, which will arrive in November. Last week, I sent some requests for blurbs. This week, I’ve been working on my publicity questionnaire. In the weeks to come, I will be working on companion pieces and final proofs and likely a bunch of things I don’t even know about, and I feel giddy.

What are you looking forward to these days?

What I’m making: I made, somehow only for the first time, the Browniest Cookies from Smitten Kitchen for our end-of-semester department hoopla1. Judging by the empty container at the end of a scant two hours, they turned out well!

The dough comes together in a single pot (the same one in which you melt your butter and chocolate together). The only delay is a bit of chilling time, but that also means you can make the dough when it’s convenient and bake the cookies when you want warm cookies. My only modification is that I used half milk chocolate and half bittersweet chocolate for my chocolate bits. These would be a good choice for picnic-type events; there’s something very welcoming and unfussy about a dish of cookies, and because of the intensity of the chocolate, these are not especially sweet. …if you were to warm up one of these cookies and top it with a scoop of ice cream, I would think you very clever and correct.

What I’m reading: I have started sneaking pages of Rita Chang-Eppig’s debut Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea. I have been looking forward to this novel ever since I saw the Publisher’s Marketplace announcement for it. Very much looking forward to the moment I can just devote my whole brain to it.

What I’m writing: I don’t currently have any new writing news to share with you in these grading-centric days, so please forgive me for a re-share, but it’s for good reason: Hernan Diaz’s fascinating novel Trust won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction! I had the pleasure of writing about it for the Ploughshares blog last year: Authority and Trust. If you haven’t read it before, please be aware that my essay discusses the book’s structure in depth, which also gives away some of the novel’s best turns.