chairing

The chair-shadow works well - it stands in for what's present, but can't be given material life in blog-words.   Looking at Wells's The Invisible Man for tomorrow, plus some writing on voice, ventriloquism, and air by Steven Connor, makes one think about the connections that exist between invisibility and sound, or silence and object hood.  Chairing - that was the trouble at Rutgers, too, when it came to blog writing: it takes up whole swathes of one's day, and then one can't really share the experience publicly.  That isn't meant to signify that anything worthy of momentous secrecy or discretion takes place on most days - far from it.  But one can't talk about - except in the broadest, blandest terms (a) a meeting with a new potential dean (b) a meeting with a - I can't even find the right adjective - a graduate in need of conversation (c) a colleague, ditto (d) a meeting with the current dean - and so it goes.  Somewhere in all of this was an enjoyable hour and a half doing orals prep with another grad (the first and last time, I imagine, that I'll ever juggle Pudd'nhead Wilson, Leaves of Grass and The Time Machine on the same occasion).  As I said to the current dean - I was so glad that one particular hat that I wear doesn't carry a course release with it, because I can't be alone, among chairs, in finding that hours spent teaching, in whatever form, are a release in themselves.