Et dikt

I'm thinking about my former academic life in the U.S. a lot this morning. I found an email from the president of the university I used to work at explaining how the global financial crisis is affecting the budget there, and it looks terrible. They will be implementing unpaid "furloughs," which just means a mandated stretch of time without pay, and other drastic measures. The budget is tight at my new department here in Norway too, but here they're talking about making people pay for the free coffee, rather than take unpaid furloughs! I don't think that will happen during the four years I'm here.

Then on Ravelry I came across this amazing poem by Canadian poet Tom Wayman. It's one of the best things I've ever read about the teacher-student relationship, and about how we as teachers feel about our work:

Did I Miss Anything?

Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class

Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered

but it was one place

And you weren't here

(from The Astonishing Weight of the Dead, 1994)

The last "Everything" stanza rings so true for me, for how I view my job as a literature professor. Things are so far very different here in Norway, though, since lectures aren't mandatory. I'll be interested to see how my attitude changes over time here.

In knitting news: I finished knitting and felting all the Easter eggs on Monday, and they turned out very sweet. Yesterday I slogged through some more of the last sleeve of KE's Islender. When I finish it, I will still have to add those 5 additional centimeters to the first sleeve, and about the same amount to the body before I can start assembling it. I'm dreading that, as I'll have to use the sewing machine, and that's always traumatic. Still a little under one skein to go on the stole. SO bored with these projects right now! I'm itching to cast on something new, of course, but have so far resisted the temptation.

That's mostly because I don't quite know what I want to do next. I'm going to rip out the green cabled cardigan and the shetland jacket, and make something else out of the yarn. I think I'll just make two vests out of the two colors of shetland yarn, rather than trying to figure out another two-color sweater pattern. I'm thinking of making the Ravelry standard, Thermal from Knitty, out of the green Finull yarn from the cabled cardigan, but am not super enthused about it. What I really want to make is something completely new, maybe even entailing buying new yarn (gasp). This cardigan from Sandnes really appeals to me, and I even went so far to buy the pattern. The brochure also contains this pattern, which may work for the 10 skeins of Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool that I haven't been able to figure out what to do with so far, which is how I justified buying it to myself. Looking forward to ripping out both projects, at any rate, as that's always fun for me, for some sick reason.

ETA: gosh, I completely forgot to mention the biggest news of all, which was that I ordered a sofa! We're so excited about taking over the whole house in 3 weeks, and obsessing over an appropriate sofa for the space was the way that excitement manifested in me. This is what we ended up with, which looks really boring on the website. What I like is the line of the wood "frame" at the bottom, and the variation in the fabric, neither of which come across very well online. It is scheduled to be delivered 13 May, the day after my Mom arrives for her visit. Yay!