My PhD is in English literature from a Prestigious University and I work at another Famous University now and I have been in this field (starting when I was a graduate student) for fifteen years and I have never seen anything even approaching the levels of fierce commitment to particular (often overly narrow) understanding of literary concepts as the in the “is Destiel already canon” arguments. This is saying something since academics as a group are pretty fiercely committed to narrow literary concepts. I don’t really have a point, I’m just kind of in awe.
Shake It Off: Love and thanks to the cast of SAA 2019
Hello friends,
I've just returned from a week in Washington DC where I spent a few days at the Folger Shakespeare Library followed by a few days at my all-time favorite conference, the annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America. I would say that it's like Comic Con for Shakespeareans but there's a lot less cosplay (no, we're not a Ren Faire) and a lot more intellectually crunchy panels featuring the newest scholarship by brilliant scholars in the field. Some people in my position would, I'm sure, not be so invested in attending an academic conference that they spent the night before their first chemo treatment completing the paper in time for the participation deadline (perhaps the most on-brand thing I have ever done). They're occasions that we often grouse about, after all: the timing is bad; the flights and hotels are expensive; the schedule is too packed; the program doesn't have what we want on it; we have to grade/prepare lessons/do admin work when we get home. Admittedly, this is a more fun conference than many and I see a lot less general grumpiness about it than some I could name (*cough* MLA *cough*). It does share a little bit of the carnival atmosphere of Comic Con, culminating in a dance on the last night that could feel hokey (and does to some people...the conference is divided pretty sharply between dance-attenders and dance non-attenders) but which gives me the kind of warm feelings of kinship that you get from dancing at a wedding. Like: ah, nerdy as they are, this is my family.
[Below the cut: thoughts and thanks to the members of my profession.]
Perhaps this trip was kind of a weird thing for someone with Stage 4 cancer to be doing. I have, potentially, precious little time in this world (even in the best case scenario it's far less time than I'd anticipated) so why spend so much of it on work? The simple answer is that, with less time, it has become all the more important to spend it doing the things that make me feel the most like myself. And that means a trip to a rare books library where I can spend 8 hours a day combing through 400-year-old plays in search of annotations. It means doing a survey cross-indexing my list of plays against the library catalog while listening to all the Girl Talk albums in succession. It means the giddy satisfaction of closing out the library and going to happy hour with my fellow researchers. It means 10-hour conference days where I work hard and play hard and take copious notes in appreciation of my friends' and colleagues' fantastic minds (and maybe sneak a nap in my hotel room during the late-afternoon slump). And it means closing out the weekend with a community that has stepped up in incredible support of me in the time since I've made my diagnosis public in a way I did not expect and am profoundly grateful for - a fact which is the point of this post.
I found myself in the hotel bar somewhere in the neighborhood of 2am on Sunday morning, quite literally weak in the knees from so much dancing, guzzling water and keeping company with colleagues who I've come to call friends as we all, exhaustedly, said repeatedly "we should go to bed" and subsequently did not. There was a real last-day-of-camp vibe that infused the whole thing with preemptive nostalgia for the time--so soon!--when we would not be together in the same place. This is the thing about assembling in person only for a few days every year. There is never enough time to catch up one-on-one (or even many-on-many) among the events of the days. It's both the best and worst part of attending a conference where your colleagues are also friends. You're left wanting more time, more conversation, more connection. Many conversations and much of the friendship continues over various forms of social media, which I have a very deep attachment to and which has helped me make it through these years of instability and separation from people I care about. Some people regard social media or blogs (like this one) as a stand-in or poor substitute for the intimacy of real-world friendships. But for someone like me who became a teenager at the same time instant messaging apps came into existence (shoutout to AIM!) and who has had the repeated experience of developing a friendship or a friend group only to have to bid farewell to its members they are a godsend. They are a conduit for intimacy, fostering it but not replacing it.
At this conference I had the unusual and somewhat surreal experience of having people--some of whom I knew well, some of whom only in passing or from Twitter, some not at all--reach out and thank me for writing and sharing so much of myself. Some of them had been through something similar, either on their own or with a loved one. Others hadn't but wanted me to know that my experience had affected them and that they were on my side, hoping along with me for things to get better. I was moved almost to tears several times because, in that way that happens when you write and then post into the void, I wasn't sure anyone was listening. But they were and responded with manifold kindness. It seemed somehow symbolic of my experience with the academic profession overall. It can seem cold and empty, as we are all separated by space and time (especially the lack of it). And when we speak into it not as a professional academic but as a person the likelihood of getting any response, let alone a positive one, seems so slim.
That is, I think, why revealing so much of myself on here seemed somewhat risky to me and would to many people. We cultivate very carefully our professional selves, even in casual interactions, because the line between the personal and the professional is so blurry in academia. Often we use this fact to impute great skepticism to our readers (our colleagues); better not to show any vulnerability in case someone, some day, may want to hire you and who would want to hire a vulnerable human being? But in this case I've seen the other side of that grey area. I found a wealth of empathy where I did not expect it. And that as much as anything has made me want to keep working, to keep writing, to stay in this academic community. Your continued and continual support has really sustained me.
I do recognize, however, that one reason I'm able to share all this is that I have a secure job. I think I would still be posting about my experience in any case simply because it isn't in my nature not to share thoughts on the most important thing in my life. But I also know that it's my privilege to be able to do so, to even have the choice. And it is a choice that I have made in smaller ways in the past too. I still recall several years ago during one of my turns on the academic job market when I received an unsolicited email from someone I did not know (although we had a friend in common) informing me that my Twitter account was unprofessional and that I was likely writing myself out of a job. Of course, I cracked my knuckles and wrote a pointed reply about how I had quite literally written a dissertation on the concept of the public sphere and thought very carefully about what I wanted to put in public or not and, what's more, that it was only for me to decide and not for him to arbitrate. (For the record, I do not consider my account "unprofessional" since it is a purely personal account from which I sometimes tweet about work-related things. Also for the record, this person wrote back with an apology.) But that fear, stoked by incidents like that, would keep many junior people (or even senior people) from publicly showing their wounds--literal and figurative--in a situation like this.
I am glad to be able to speak. I am more than glad that someone is listening. As I return home from the conference, prepared to resume chemo again on Thursday, I feel sadness and trepidation, sure, but I do also feel energized and supported, raised up by a larger community of far-flung friends, colleagues, acquaintances; people I've never met face-to-face and people who are an integral part of my daily life.
Friends, academics, Shakespeareans, you are a wonderful bunch. Thank you for making this trip and this conference an occasion to recharge and return to fight another day.
Every time I see anyone tweeting about Gonzaga, the university that has a basketball team, I assume it's some obscure reference to Gonzaga, the king in the play-within-a-play in Hamlet who is poisoned. Because I'm a completely normal person.
I keep seeing this as a Tumblr promoted post and it cracks me the fuck up because I have a PhD in Renaissance literature and Henry Cavill was a minor cavalier poet and very definitely NOT the hottest dude on the planet...
I assume that everyone is in the mood to read a long post I wrote TWO YEARS AGO about how SPN was retelling the love story (Adam and Eve) at the center of John Milton’s 17th-century epic poem “Paradise Lost”? Yes! Of course you are!
“An Epic Love Story: Paradise Lost and Destiel”
I was prompted by @huckleberryofthelord‘s post saying
“can we talk about how there is no other story reason to have Adam (the beginning of humanity) in love with an angel, if not to parallel Dean (the manifestation of humanity) being in love with an angel <3″ to remember that I wrote this.
It’s not precisely the same, but at the apex of the story (The Fall) Eve is human and Adam is not and he must choose whether to remain divine (in the garden, ageless, deathless, in conversation with God and angels) or remain with the human he loves. Except it’s not even a struggle. The second he sees her returning, the decision is made because he loves her. He drops this garland he’s been weaving for her while waiting on the ground “and all the faded roses shed.” Before that, there was no death in the garden, not even flowers. They’re both lost, and so is paradise.
The genius of the poem and the reason it’s my favorite thing to teach (even though my PhD is in Shakespeare and that’s pretty great) is that you WANT them both to fall to stay together, even though it’s “wrong” in the sense that it goes against God’s will. Because it’s a better story. Plus, you’re fallen! You get it! And you got here because of their free will--their ability to choose to defy God and choose to remain together--so of course that’s your “team” as a reader. (It’s possible that you’re supposed to learn a lesson from this about how naughty and bad you are but, honestly, no one does so sorry Milton.)
I’ve said since Day One that someone on the SPN staff likes this epic poem. I wrote that post in 2018, after Dean’s grief arc in S13, and it’s only gotten more true. So check it out if you want and if anyone decides to read this 400-year-old epic poem lmk because I’m not in the classroom at my current job and I miss it a whole heckin’ lot.
them: you should join a cancer support group. It will really help.
me: nah, not much of a joiner
them: but you'll meet other young women and...
me: nahh
them: ...and then you can attend a conference on...
me: HOT DAMN THERE'S A CONFERENCE?! SIGN ME UP!!
My awesome fandom friends!! I have not been kidnapped and am not in the hospital...I am at the biggest field conference for my academic discipline that is basically our ComicCon so I am just distracted by the double delights of work and play.
I’m here through Sunday so, to quote Buffy, “If the apocalypse comes, beep me.” (Here “apocalypse” is really just “any significant Destiel/Cockles event” and “beep” is DM but honestly hers is much catchier.
Love love love to you all - I miss seeing your posts! 💜bex
“Whatever is begotten, born, and dies”: Sailing to 14x08
Ok fam! I intended, I really did, to write a nice chewy piece of speculation about “Byzantium” and what it might be referencing and how I think it ties into the “sacrifice” Castiel is likely to make. But then Tumblr went kablooey and also I have a huge series of events at work that are taking up all my time and also really wearing me out. So I’m going to push through and see what I can do! I also had some thoughts from this post I made before (which I know that @amwritingmeta added a lot of great stuff to the original post but Tumblr is being a total ass and not showing me those additions...reblog with link?)
Onto the new stuff! So, W.B. Yeats wrote a poem, “Sailing to Byzantium,” that is super famous and that you probably had to study in school. People like to use Yeats for titles so this may not even be relevant but I am a literature nerd of the highest order and I am not going to pass up an opportunity to geek out here. (Also: there is a 70s band called Byzantium that has a self-titled album and one called “Seasons Changing.” I guess that’s probably a more likely referent but idgaf I am going with this Yeats thing!]
[Fairly wild speculation based on a Yeats poem below the cut. Tl; dr is that I think Jack will die in 14x08 and that he will want to. The “sacrifice” Cas makes and the thing that Dean thinks is “unfair” is the same thing and that’s letting him make his own decision to die. But don’t worry he’ll be back.]
I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
III
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Gorgeous, right? Definitely read it out loud if you can. Do it! You know Misha would want you to. I’ll wait.
Now, although this poem is uplifting it is also about dying (yeahhhhh poetry!). In fact, the phrase “sailing to Byzantium” itself can be taken as an expression that means “dying.” The famous first line, “That is no country for old men,” contrasts wherever the (aged) speaker is coming from with where he is going--Byzantium, a place that is for “old men.” It’s true that the speaker doesn’t fit in. Even as he imagines young people in the fecund richness of his native country he refers to them as “those dying generations” who forget to make “monuments of unageing intellect” (aka art) because they are so caught in sensual pleasure. But they should not forget that “Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.”
The application to TFW at this point is clear. Jack is dying. He’s young, residing in a country where he was literally just catching fish at the “salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas.” Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. We were there when Jack was begotten (with that Christ-like language) and born and now we are going to be there when he dies. And death is very much on our minds these episodes - it’s the flip side to being alive, to being human.
The next stanza, “An aged man is but a paltry thing,/ A tattered coat upon a stick, unless/ Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing/ For every tatter in its mortal dress” (a thing which, of course, is accomplished through art). This initially made me think of Cas because of the “tattered coat upon a stick,” but THEN last episode Cas put his coat on JACK in a moment that emphasized his frailty, his humanity, and his move toward death:
(gifs originally by @supernaturaldaily)
“And therefore I have sailed the seas and come/ To the holy city of Byzantium.”
Now, it’s not a perfect match, but in the show Heaven is the closest you can get to this paradise of art Yeats describes. And if Jack dies, well, that’s likely where he’ll be going. In the poem, the speaker calls upon “sages standing in God’s holy fire” and envisions them as works of art. (*nods about resonance of “holy fire”*) He also asks that they “Consume my heart away; sick with desire/ And fastened to a dying animal.” He’d rather break his soul away from earthly limitations, the “dying animal,” and he wants it so badly it makes him “sick with desire” (though you can also read that line as saying his heart is “sick with desire” because he’s full of carnal needs and desires).
Could it be that Jack will want to die?? That that is what Dean and Cas are talking about in the hallway? He seemed to be going along that path already and goodness knows it would make him into even more of a Christ figure (waves at @postmodernmulticoloredcloak‘s beautiful piece about Dean being posed with Jack like a pieta at the end of 14x06). Incidentally, the poem ends with the speaker saying that, once he’s free of his body, he will never take a natural form again but constitute himself into a work of art - either a physical object or a song. I don’t find that super relevant yet but who knows?
So, now what do we know so far about 14x08? We know that it involves the Heaven plot line and that “angel radio is playing a distress call” and that “all of heaven’s gates are open.” Yikes. And we’ve got Lily Sunder there (yaaassss) being asked to help with some kind of “miracle” involving angels which she says she can’t do. In our other promo, we have an emotional DeanCas hallway convo (sidebar: I kind of want to track all the emotional conversations in hallways these guys have like I was doing with “front seat feelings”) in which Dean talks about the unfairness of something Jack-related and Cas tells him that of course it isn’t fair but Jack needs him.
What does Jack need Dean to do? I see a two distinct possibilities. It could be contacting Michael, or letting him back in, to get another vial of archangel grace. Or it could be....letting Jack die. I certainly know which of those two options is more likely to upset Dean that much!
So this episode will involve: 1) Heaven in distress and an attempt to save it; 2) Dean having to do something difficult that isn’t fair to try to save Jack; 3) Castiel making an “enormous sacrifice.” It’s fairly clear that the “enormous sacrifice” will be related to the Heaven plot while the Jack plot is (likely) separate.
In terms of “enormous sacrifice” I think there are only a couple options for Cas. I was initially saying “his grace” and speculating that Cas would become human for Jack but then 14x07 told us so explicitly that Cas would give his grace up in a heartbeat but that it couldn’t help Jack that I now thing that option is pretty much out. The only way it could still be his grace on the off chance that it can be used to close the doors of Heaven with the spell that Metatron took it for before (for which he needed Castiel’s grace specifically).
The other option is someone in, or all of, his earthly family. If Cas has to close himself off in Heaven to save it that would be an “enormous sacrifice” that lost all of them. If Dean had to be possessed by Michael again that would be a huge loss for Cas and my Destiel heart would love it. But, honestly, I think letting Jack die is the huge sacrifice that they are ALL going to make. And it would be hugely significant, in a way, if they actually let him decide to die because that’s been a fairly major sticking point (and example of codependency) in the past.
Byzantium is the place you sail to when you die and the speaker cannot wait to get there. Context clues suggest that Jack is in the position of the speaker. I predict that Jack is going to want to die, to demand it even, and that the hardest thing they all have to do is respect his wishes and let him. It is, after all, the season of “What do you want?” so if he knows they should darn well listen!
Tagging @elizabethrobertajones @tinkdw @bluestar86 @amwritingmeta @7faerielights @naruhearts @intelligentshipper @emblue-sparks in case they have thoughts to add or just really like poetry.
