4:30 p.m. - November 14, 2002
Call me schoolboy again
The revised deadline is not manna in the desert; submission of final draft manuscript and subsequent publication date of April 2003 has been pushed to January 1, 2003, with publication and release in June 2003.
In simple terms, I got spanked.
A pie chart reflecting current thoughts and guilt ratio as 45% Slacker-Shame and 55% Shot Credibility, though was reassured I am (still) well loved and Everything Is Okay, other than the dates have been adjusted to better alow me time to tinker, revise, and get the damn book done.
Last night woke up after dreaming in French with my former professeur repeating, When you're done, don't forget to translate it into French by noon and my manuscript was covered in green ink and I was ashamed. And again when I woke up, I was exhausted so apparently I work during (non)sleep and my suspicion is near confirmation that I sleep in vain.
Regarding translation of the book en fran�ais, I am not doing that myself. No, I'll be too busy writing tomes 2 & 3 to worry about those persnickity qu�b�cois and how they call a car a char, as in chariot. Does anything Canadian make sense? To be eligible for sale in Canadian schools, the book has to be available in both French and English; yet the prospect of French-language sales is nil due to provincial absurdities (heh... get the double entendre? heee I'm in a mood). I'm more interested in the Japanese translation, scheduled to occur in 2004.
Eh. I'm really most interested in the royalties. I admit it. I've been working sums and my head becomes woozy when it sinks in.
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Stanford advisor (loathe to say ex-) emailed last night urging a face-to-face meeting regarding school. Yes, it is true; compliant in vivo, passive-agressive ex vivo. This morning went to brunch and it felt good to talk about literary loves (mine by far is the epic, a topic I've not written about here) and linguistic anthropology, and simply bask in the presence of a beautiful mind (damn, how do they sneak in?). Funny, but I was a pawn; I played right into his hands. How so? After an hour passionately debating epics and both wishing we had texts at hand, he revealed his desire: For me to return to school and as a reward/motivator, take the Epic Journeys course, new, taught by a visiting professor from Italy. He had the course description and reading list handy and admitted that he pulled clout to enfore interdisciplinary cooperation (at Stanford, the sciences [me] and the humanities resemble merry olde England's wars over royal succession: Nobody gets along) and I am assured a place in the course.
People, it made my day because I felt cared for.
But more than that, the thought of hearing Dante read in Italian and poring over epics in one of my favorite campus buildings? I'm sold.
Clever advisor, he walked with me to registration and was with me when I reinstated myself. I am back in school.
Because, of course, I couldn't take just one class, you know.
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I hope everybody feels the way I do now at least a few times. It is a good day.
I'm off.
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I have to milk every drop of feel-goodness from today. Don't let me forget.
