Still thinking about volcanoes...

26 May 2022: I guess I am still thinking about Dickinson's volcanoes today; about how we can carry so much just below the surface. By the way, earlier this week, I concluded my entry on Ruth Hall with a riff on Mrs. Hall calling Ruth "a smoldering volcano." And that got me thinking not just about Dickinson's multiple volcano poems, but also this post on Larcom. Nineteenth-century women writers (or at least three of them) liked that metaphor.

Today was very quiet: no meetings, no appointments. I spent most of it in my office reading about Harriet Wilson, typing up notes, sending emails, etc. Came home and got some gardening done. Didn't even really talk to many people beyond a few sentences. 

But all day long...so many thoughts and big feelings in my head, some personal and some (for our country) much broader. And a bit of light in the darkness that is worrying about a dearest friend's health--a glimmer of hope. And, along with that, continued and profound meditations about what her friendship has meant to me. What a gift she is. 

Big emotions. Big thoughts and feelings. And such outward quiet. It feels strange but also appropriate, at least for me, for right now. 

I have never seen ‘Volcanoes’ -

 25 May 2022:

I have never seen ‘Volcanoes’ -
But, when Travellers tell
How those old - phlegmatic mountains
Usually so still -

Bear within - appalling Ordnance,
Fire, and smoke, and gun -
Taking Villages for breakfast,
And appalling Men -

If the stillness is Volcanic
In the human face
When opon a pain Titanic
Features keep their place -

If at length, the smouldering anguish
Will not overcome,
And the palpitating Vineyard
In the dust, be thrown?

If some loving Antiquary,
On Resumption Morn,
Will not cry with joy, “Pompeii”!
To the Hills return!

-Emily Dickinson, F165 

The Dickinson Museum's poem of the week. Feels somehow appropriate.

Belated reaction to good news...

12 July 2018: Since I got the news about my promotion to full professor, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how it will change things for me. Will I go a bit easier on myself in certain areas? Relax a little? Become an even more prickly woman? Say "no" more? Swallow fewer volcanoes?

I still don't know how it will all shake out, but--fully 24 hours later--I am stopping to have more of a reaction to some good news I got yesterday: an article I submitted to Transformations has been accepted for publication. It's my first sort-of-big post-promotion achievement. It won't get me anything substantial--no more promotions to be obtained, no raises in the near future--but it still feels great. Maybe a different kind of great? Like, here's this good thing that is just good in and of itself. Something I can be proud of just because it is good and I like it and I worked hard on it. That's kind of cool.

"Swallowing volcanoes"

13 May 2018: "I don't allow myself to answer, very often; but swallowing volcanoes isn't good for the soul's digestive organs." --Lucy Larcom, in an 1857 letter to a friend, explaining how she holds her tongue around a certain colleague.

Ran across this little gem while doing some research this morning. I mean, tell me that isn't a terrific metaphor? 

I actually find myself trying to swallow fewer volcanoes these days. Feels pretty good!