Sharpened pencil

I sharpened my University of Washington School of Forest Resources, Creating Futures Since 1907, made from recycled newspaper! pencil. I left it all this time, kept the object as untouched and pristine as the day I removed it from the manila envelope that brought my acceptance letter, so crisply formal, now over a year long past. It sat on my desk, right underneath the computer screen, one of three, as a reminder of things to come.

It was there for grant proposal discussions with my advisor during my lunchtime, surreptitiously sneaking salty bites, when I read daily REDD newsletters about injustices in Indonesia, when I wrote my mentor for checkups, when I made ties to likeminded academics with similar research in Mexico, when I found exciting grants, when I invented funding possibilities, when I talked to friends about housing and rain, when I calculated my debt if the money didn't come, when my advisor told me the money might not come, that the economy is not smiling but that the research is desperately needed, when I remembered Atlantan porches and reading Davis' description of Mexico City's slums, not realizing then that I would soon traverse Neza twice-a-day, when I thought I wanted to be an academic, why I thought I wanted to be an academic, when I thought about the academics I knew and how the work keeps coming and how this deadline cannot wait so let's put it off but projects end to be replaced by an equally ephemeral deadline that defines the passing of time better than chess games on a wooden table chronically covered with petals from the week's flowers, mostly white or yellow, bought outside of a cemetery on the way home from work.



And when I realized that I love videos in every capacity. Even bad ones. Especially bad ones. But haven't you been working with videos, Mary? but that was different work, you see. Explaining the science is great and all but in comparison to the farmer using a more sustainable system, to see it working and to watch his blue eyes from underneath a sombrero say that he worries for his grandchildren because conventional agriculture is a scary thing to imagine as the dominant paradigm 50 years from today. No comparison. They are inherently different stories and processes in pre-/post-production & production.

So I thought again about why I wanted to be an academic. It was expected of me. Such promise.

Yet things have come and gone and I am here and not in Seattle and it is not as scary as I thought. As a matter of fact, I do not feel a modicum of anxiety about my decision or about opening a new chapter with Mexico as it is the first time in our 3 years together that I do not have an expiration date.

So I sharpened that pencil and now the pencil is just like all the others, scattered across my desks and in old marmalade jars stuffed with spoons and business cards. Everything about it except the pencil's graphite, which is as sharp as the apex of my sea change, and when moved against the paper in my notebook makes a noise, a naturally forced one, like baby fingernails on a wet chalkboard.