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| CURRICULUM VITAE |
POETRY White and Brown Bodies: by Mehnaz M. Afridi
As I sit upon the precipice of perhaps what was once called counter-contrapuntal by a dead man, my call to the “other” has always been in tension: He is the other, the whither art thou? The white semen that has turned so much blood white, the body that has been scarred with an unrelenting passion for killing. Am I awed at this other that I share a body with and lay naked nights and mornings, only to distrust the masking of bodies as white and brown and to tattoo one another with meaning and numbers that break open the seal of identities with bodies without color but a fermenting sense of social colors. Attempting to eradicate the difference between reality and dreams the way in which to deny and repress but sublimate the colonial within and yet make love to the colonial outside. What is this jargon that masks the simple pleasures that love deeply colored fragments of our imagination. Imagination, reality and poetry run into each other and smash into one another when we expect it but don’t know it. I see their two heads, and set of toes in profile, lit by the light of a little bedside lamp: His brown whisky hair; her head leaning close above him masking his perfect nose. The shadows have no color no formation but two figures that when lit reveal their identities, colors, forms, and sex. Who are we when we mask the very life that runs through our veins, the red deep blood that dries up and makes a stain for life? The only stain that we can trace even after we leave its running stream we herein lie amongst it's stain even when we are still. He whispered in her ear the musings of love and she smiled caressing the nape of his neck that for 6 years had made a slight dent in her own two forefingers. She smoothed his hair and made a full-bore osculation upon his perfectly sized white lips to find that the whiteness disappeared as she kissed this strange lip like form, the color, the shape and the length disappeared into the dancing dark shadows. One night she awoke to find him entwined with her body, and for a minute she was not sure whose leg was underneath or on top...no dimension and only illusion. He had his leg upon her and then she swore she saw it under her, and then she saw it disappear like a sharks corpse. She dreamt of the slaughter of the many women that had succumbed to the white devil’s body and she froze, whose body was this? Who owns this body? Is he truly white and is he Mount baton’s surrogate son? She accused him of what she accused the many devils that ran around outside her bedroom window screaming in drunken phrases at women who had one shirt on and one shirt off, she watched them scale the walls of terror with military guns, genocide of her-selves the bodies of her identity slaughtered in the name of the white devil. She awoke. And, He awoke to find in her brown facelessness two piercing ghosts that whispered an ancient theme that Love had no parameters, dimensions and emotions Love was on it’s own, strange, metaphysical that could not be explained like God...A daddy long legs that approached the heart with severity and came towards it like an alien green awkwardness. I sat up leaning on the white wall facing the deep maroon curtains that had been the power of passion in the bordello, I watched him look at me, in me, over me, around me, and I knew we were dead. I asked him: We are dead. Can you not see? He was shocked but I only knew that to tell him the truth would be the death of the surfaces and colors of bodies, histories and memories. “ To die means finally owning up that we are strangers. Who could be more of a stranger than a dead person?” His hazel eyes, his “alien” eyes pierced into me as he slowly lay me down to make love...
The Madness of Academic Jobs By Mehnaz M. Afridi A thrust of a door, the breaking of a hinge, Cracks that breathe the path of freshness, A breath of new air amongst the musty dissertation books, A looming god-like fear, A dark cloud, Spiders in your classroom Notes forgotten Students grimace Monkeys on your back Get off! A beep An email A response A rejection A swinging pendulum A day of fear A day of hope A day of hopelessness A year of loss Check your email! Go ahead let the monkeys scratch Let them say “no!” You quiver You open the message You had hoped for a phone call Letters of negativity pile up You can’t throw off the rejection Your life of academia could be forgotten A flash of rejection A flash of hope A life long journey into a labyrinth of darkness A suicidal mission A hope that “somebody truly loves me.” An obsession: checking email every 10 minutes Checking your mail box five time s day Checking the caller ID on the phone It’s nighttime and no more activity A relief and you can finally fall asleep
Completing a PhD is a bad dream but the nightmare of applying for a tenure-track job in academia is one of the most stressful and painful experiences. It’s excruciating enough to pour over books, research, and writing for years. Unfortunately, the moment of crisis imposes itself when one is ready to apply the doctoral brilliance to teaching, academic service, and the freedom of writing. One dreams of a home university where one can be respected as a colleague, friend, have a bit of power, and a lighter teaching load per semester. Some will fulfill this dream, and some will not. The excitement of running against the pool of applicants, buying the first new suit, a stronger resume, a clean pad of yellow lined paper, and a crisply sharpened pencil, the mundane preparations for a possible interview. Watching for jobs to pop up in the Higher Chronicle of Education every Friday, checking the Internet for jobs in one’s area of studies, rehashing the resume every time something even remotely resembles your area are common activities. The obsession of learning new interview tactics, the chaos of thinking about a move across the country, a lover that might not follow, a child that might be displaced, or you simply might not be happy. These thoughts invade your life for months until you receive an email accompanied by a beep sound ---an invitation that entices the use of the new suit and pencil. You are eagerly checking the calendar for interview times even though your days are blank--- you fantasize that you will be busy interviewing all day. After careful thought, you figure out how not too sound too eager nor too gallant. After choosing the precise time and day of the week that you know you will be alert, you give them a time and date. A few hours later they write back “We do not interview at the requested appointment and date”. You quickly run to the wardrobe and make sure the suit is still there and the pencil neatly placed upon the yellow lined pad. You return to the computer and open up the date book that stares back with hollowness, okay so you give in, I’ll just adjust their request by half an hour. You smile that you did not totally compromise. A few hours later, the interview is confirmed. You hop onto the net and look up the department, the faculty, and even photos of the faculty to analyze. You look for their degrees, the courses they teach, and the schools of thought they come from. You click onto a faculty resume, and the resume looks like a page of unfamiliar events. You fear you don’t like these people, how dare they disrupt your life, but suddenly the familiar smell of your pencil makes you relax. You dream of teaching, having your own office, a plaque on the door, stationary, travels to give papers…you sigh and feel confident that you mean well, and after all a PhD! As days go by, more beeps tug at the computer, you have two interviews and you know (pray) that one of these two will come through, you hope, you know and then you hope again. The interview time nears, you feel unbalanced, blank, and you check to see the times, and dates. Make sure you don’t get them mixed up and leave yourself an hour in between if not more. Lots of water! A must as you know how parched you will be after hours of question, and that measly glass of water won’t cut it! You pack your suit, and two white shirts incase you sweat too much; you know your hair must be cut and a nice fake leather briefcase would enhance the image. You have been reading six books, and if you choose one, you might not feel like reading it. So, you toss a coin for three and the one that wins has to be the one you were hoping to put off! Day one: Interview # 1. 7am, you are awake. You have been awake all night; as a matter of fact you have not slept in the fear of not waking up. You know you have three hours to get ready, and you jump up. Make coffee, just one cup! Not to be too jumpy. Not too much food incase you feel queasy, another look at the job description, and a manila envelope with all your extra syllabi. You have everything but you have become an obsessive compulsive, checking your envelope, bag, job time, and place of interview…you are tired, a bit dizzy. As you walk out of the door, you briskly check yourself in the mirror, and smile. Say a little about yourself to yourself, primp and walk out. You enter a dark gray room where many of your fellow neurotic colleagues wait, you start to hate them, fear them, and you wonder which one is your competitor. Who is wearing a better suit? Who has a nicer bag? Oh god, you are going mad, and all of a sudden, you hear a faint unfamiliar voice pronounce your name. You strain to listen and it’s you, they are calling for you! You want to run away but somehow the power of your body takes control you walk towards the faceless call. You smile, your hand grips a strong shake, and you follow the voice, herded through a maze of estrangements. You hear lots of chatter in a large hall with somber academic colors, and tweed jackets. You enter a tent as if in thirst of company and become coddled by fabric that looms around you. You reflect upon the tents in the desert and how you wish you were on a hike with a good friend drinking water. There are four of them. You panic, you don’t recognize them, you were certain that the woman had brown hair and the men were younger. As they gaze at you, you want to scream, “I am barking mad!” You’d rather chat about the weather, your love life or lack off, your anxiety, your desperation, and most of all about your new suit! They lean towards your file that lies in front of them highlighted, notes scribbled at the corners of your name, your teaching statements and syllabi lie naked exposed to everyone. You collapse in a chair with no curvature but a hard back that only grasps sides of your body, and you wince. They take turns at questions---they are watching you, your writing, your words, your name, your life, and you pretend to be calm: fearless and confidant. The sweat starts to pour as you utter a full statement, your stomach grumbles and you know you should have had more than half a bagel. “So, how would you teach an introduction survey course in your area?” I smile, how easy, how silly, with so much teaching experience how can one go wrong? But I stutter, repeat myself, and name books that I never have taught nor will I teach. Oh my god! “What is your dream course that you would like to teach?” Ah ha! Well, that’s easy, I grasp my folder with my dream syllabi, I start to describe the course that I have never taught, and realize that a dream course is a fiction, no? They seem bored but smile. One of them has not made eye contact with me; he is immersed in my letter of intent, glances up from his bi-focal and proclaims: “So tell us a bit about your dissertation, research interests etc” I am happy, relieved this is my life, I know my dissertation (I wrote it!) but forget the argument; I focus on the one chapter that I was going to write but never did! He then glares at me and I am convinced he knows that I am mad, swirling, out of control, my suit is wet under my arms, and the pencil in my bag smells of airplane washrooms. It has been an hour and I am fading, away, they amuse themselves with jokes, we discuss a bit about the culture of the university and then I feel the proximity of the exit. With a certain abruptness a voice proclaims, “Well, time is up, this was a pleasure,” I sit stunned. Shocked, the hour of insanity has come to a close and they are releasing me into my realm, my life, and my comfort. I look at them, smile, and my hand grips theirs as my body leads me through the maze of rooms into the room of where the madness begins. Day 2: Interview # 2. 6am, no need to sleep. I am in a daze. No sleep, the food was wretched at the Motel 6, I bumped into an old graduate colleague whom I made love to and, utterly despise. Yesterday and today are no longer separate days. I wake up feeling less dizzy but more spacey, my body jittery with the anxiety of another day of hell. No freshness, a day has aged my face, and my suit is crinkled with sweat marks that peer through the woolen thread. I jump in the shower---the motel has no hot water, I scream in agony as the cold-water rinses last nights’ dirt, and I shiver. No coffee today, too jittery. I walk out without even a quick glance at myself from the fear of Dracula eyes, sweaty suits, and the pencil nearby has become a noxious element. “What would be an introduction survey course that you would like to teach?” “What is your dream course if you were able to teach it?” “Tell us about your doctorate work and your research interests?” Their Questions sway me from my ideas to the upcoming reality of facing empty hours of waiting, dread floods in as I sit answering the last questions, and they nod and smile. Abruptly the voice of release comes and I am exonerated. 9am I am back home. Check the computer, check my email, check the phone and at 11am check the mailbox. I turn to a novel and stare at it imploring it to interest me; I look at the film collection and abhor any images. I go to my desk and stare at a blank page hoping to write another article in the race for being published, I call a friend and analyze the interview, scrutinize the interviews, wonder why no one has called or emailed. An acknowledgement to my grateful emails for the opportunity would make me feel at ease. I putter around the house, look at objects, glance at old books, read Vanity Fair, clean the refrigerator, gaze at my family like a ghost across the dinner table, and my obsession flowers into a maddening sensation of desperation. Am I a good scholar? Am I good teacher? Is my work worth it? Why am I here? Why didn’t I become a lawyer like my father wanted? Why didn’t I take business in college? 40 days after the interview. I am on the phone with a friend chatting about the job searches, lack of meaning, bills and a fear of being unemployed forever. I hear a call waiting beep, I ask my friend to hold on. “We would like to offer you a tenure track job at the University of Relief and Happiness…” I am thrilled, overjoyed, I scream, cry and hug the voice make love but I remain calm and collected, sounding official yet pleased. I ask for some time to mull it over. We hang up. I jump so high that I twist my left ankle. I walk around the house in a daze, whom should I tell? Who can truly understand my happiness? I call my family then my closest colleague and friend he will share the plateau of joy and happiness. 2 weeks after the offer. I am anxious, should I take this job? What should I negotiate? Will they agree or hesitate? Waiting anxiously to accept…Wish me luck!
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