Back in the happy days of October, it was easy to tell my new employer sure, I'll take the job in Iowa, pack up, and drive a pickup truck 2,750 kilometers through the icy big hills of the Berkshires, the lake-effect snow corridor from Buffalo to Cleveland, and the prairie blizzards of I-90 west of Chicago. Yep, it was easy then to make a decision.
Now this thing is setting in. My Sweetie thinks I'm not at all nervous of even affected. Not true. I am nervous, worried, edgy, and fighting with an internal spectre of mortality. For Chrissakes, I'm going to be fifty-fucking-two pretty soon. Can I really do this and then settle in in time to teach everything from Earth Science to algebra and calculus-based physics, and a basic mechanical engineering course (Statics) that I'll have to cram pretty quickly to stay ahead of the students? I had a full year of electrical engineering at one point, so I suppose it's fair that I should pitch in where needed at a quite rural college. If not me, then who?
Is the spectre I'm trying to tamp down or at least deal with might be something like Robert M. Pirsig's Phaedrus from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? For those who don't know, it's Pirsig's non-fiction account of travel, family, and engagement with the spooky internal unknown that lives within us in context of an academic career in the northwestern US and the experience of Quality through the mechanical perfection of a motorcycle. Albeit in my case it's my father-in-law's old pickup truck, not a motorcycle, family is wife not son, and career is science, not philosophy. Shoot, just go read it, or re-read it like I'm doing now.
Well, I'm not in the dark place Pirsig was working through in the book. I don't think, anyway. At least I haven't felt like I needed in-patient help with the looming pathway of time that lies ahead of us all. But there is a lesson. The lesson is we can go on, we can move, we can face our loved ones square-on with courage that our choices, decisions, good fortunes, and mistakes are handled the best that they can be.
Meanwhile, our friends are some of the greatest. Today, my old buddy Dave took some of the edge off the prep challenge, "Instead of blocks and planes, draw beams and walls. Nobody will know you didn't study mechanical engineering." LOL!!!! And another old friend in the Minneapolis area has offered bukoos furniture. Wow. This just feels so much better--so much easier to summon courage--with love like that. Thank you.
Posted by The Owl on Dec 08 at 15:56. Filed under: reflections
