not much to say....

I've not said much about the class I'm teaching this semester. I don't know if thats a good thing or a bad thing. I've got one section of a second-year composition course with 25 students. The end goal of the course is to have students write a research-argument essay. So far the class has been going along as most do, not much to say at all.

As for my own goal of reviving a chapter or two and publishing it from my thesis, not much to say at all there either. I enjoy the research but its the writing that actually gets me. I could read and research for the next 100 years and never feel compelled to actually write one sentence! Writing is a painful activity for me, I don't know why. I like to be challenged, love to read, but the act of writing reminds me of what it used to be like when I had a tooth that was about to come out. My PaPa pulled all of my loose teeth when I was a kid. He'd come home in the evening from work, I'd dance around the living room floor, pulling at my tooth and tasting bits of blood and the open gummy feeling that a loose tooth leaves you with. He'd go to the kitchen sink, wash his hands and tell me to stand in front of him as he sat on the sofa or in the kitchen. I'd stand and let him shake the tooth, then I'd dance around the room some more and complain. Then he'd say, "Come on and let me get that tooth out!" My grandma would be in the kitchen making dinner and would try to persuade me to let him go ahead and do it and get it over with. So finally, after much dancing and pulling and jiggling the tooth around I'd sit on the couch and my PaPa would take a piece of string and wrap it around said tooth. He'd rock it back and forth carefully with his finger and then jerk the string, out the tooth would pop, into his hand. I'd go to the bathroom and wash my mouth out w/ salt water. I always loved the way it would feel when I rubbed my tongue over the open toothless groove. Smooth, salty, gummy. But I hated the tooth-pulling process.

So, how pray tell you might ask, is writing like getting your tooth pulled? Its that dance act I used to do, the anticipation, the wanting to have the tooth pulled, but at the same time not wanting to go through with the process needed to get the tooth out. Thats what writing is like for me, there is so much drama involved (all from me) and I dread it. Once I'm done, its a marvelous feeling, but its that dance that gets me.