This Is What A Dissertation Looks Like

To the right of my computer is a full glass of water, a few bracelets i took off so they wouldn't clang against the keyboard as i type, Marci Blackman's novel, Po Man's Child, which i'll be teaching for tomorrow's class. To the left and straight back i have a stack of partially graded student papers, a mechanical pencil from Muji, a black plastic recipe box full of notecards covered in messages such as,"...the question of Utopia would seem to be a crucial test of what is left of our capacity to imagine change at all." (Postmodernism xvi), a copy of Stone Butch Blues on top of Lenin and Philosophy, on top of Zami, on top of Funhome, on top of Undoing Gender, on top of How Sex Changed. A pair of sunglasses are wedged underneath the Autumn and Winter issue of Fantastic Man, the one with Mr. Bryan Ferry on the cover. To his right are two pairs of headphones: one for sitting, one for jogging. Oblique Strategies is there too, to keep me moving. To my immediate left are the Cliffs Notes on Community Action Center: "Your key to the classics." There's an heirloom pumpkin at the end of the table, and outside? There's Gainesville.