back in a saddle

I ran into the former president of my university this morning on my power walk. He’s looking old. He recognized me as someone who used to work for him, I guess I should be a little flattered. I’m sure, however, that he has no idea what my name is or where I work. He did ask how things were and told me to give his regards. He was out walking his westie, carrying his cane and limping like a hip replacement candidate. There’s a guy who overstayed his welcome by a long, loooonnnnnnng, time. But as I walked away from him I longed for his days of benign neglect. Now that we have a meddler, micromanager, a guy who thinks in the equation of his university that faculty are a confounding variable, a nuisance often minor sometimes major, the hired help, it’s not so much fun. And I fear of the doings of our new dean, what agenda has she brought? I am torn between becoming actually involved and learning what I need to learn to participate in the fight, and shutting off my caring bone and just doing as I’m told. Being, in short, hired help. Why should I care? Should I care? I care?

I’ve got a project I want to work on. It is the exemplification of my fear of committing to projects, my fear of failing, of doing poorly, of being a bad researcher, of not understanding the information I do find. But the project’s been in my quiver for 13 years now, ever since I was tenured here at this institution. I’ve worked hard on it and I’ve completely ignored it over the years. I’ve made numerous commitments to do something with it, anything. And skipped out on them. Now I’m done with that. I finished another project that came along afterwards and I am moving on to the next, prior thing. This thing. This project about Belle Mazur, favorite aunt, odd woman, and fascinating person all rolled into one. She was that relative you hear stories about, the one who led such an interesting life you can’t tell fact from fiction. I’m not sure what form it needs or wants to take, but I’m hereby putting myself at the service of this story. I open my hands wide and make ready my heart. What is first, I wonder? I keep trying to find the trajectory of the narrative. Is that the beginning of the project?