Captain's Log, Day 9: I Lament What Should Have Been

Date: April 12, 2020

Time of post 11:45 PM

Quarantine Day: 28

Last Song I Listened To: “Long Live” by Taylor Swift

Last Person I Communicated With: literally on the phone with my mom as I write this

Last Thing I Ate: chicken alfredo & wine

Last Thing I Read: The Way of Thorn and Thunder by Daniel Heath Justice

Current Mood: content but always mildly frustrated

One Thing I’ve Accomplished Today: did an FB live read-aloud with Lexi!

One Thing I Want To Accomplish Today: read some more of Justice

One Reason I’m Stressed Today: I’ve been putting off doing dishes (and laundry) for days

One Reason I’m Happy Today: had a Zoom “Digi-Easter” with some of the other grad students, and got to do the read along with Lexi

I actually started working on the PowerPoint for the Taylor Swift paper that
I was supposed to present at PCA this week. I was (am!) really excited about it!

Dear Apocalyspsers,

Happy Easter! (Though I have a hard and fast stance that it’s not Easter unless you sing “Up from the Grave HeArose,” so I hope you sang that today; otherwise, it’s not really Easter.) And, maybe because it’s Easter, I’ve been thinking a lot about what could have been this semester. Like, Jesus could have stayed in the tomb. He could have never let Himself die on the cross for us. We could have been doomed for an eternity in hell.

But we weren’t.

There are a lot of things from my Methodist upbringing that I don’t agree with anymore (most recently, the Church's stance of not taking a stance on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ clergy); there’s a lot about organized religion, in general, that doesn’t sit right with me anymore. But the one thing that I’ll never be able to shake is Jesus’ message of hope and love. I’ve seen it. I’ve experienced that hope and love in ways that have me utterly convinced there’s something bigger than us out there, and that’s part of what’s getting me through this quarantine.

There are so many things that could have and should have happened for me this semester. 

My Instagram story from when I
submitted my PCA abstract.

My Instagram story from the day
my PCA abstract was accepted.

I was supposed to present at two conferences that have been cancelled.

I was supposed to walk across the stage on May 15^th and look at my parents in the crowd and wave and smile and tell them how grateful I am for them. I was supposed to introduce them to my friends, who they’ve been sending cards to for two years now solely because I won’t stop talking about them. Now, I don’t know if those two incredibly important parts of my life will ever meet.

Noelle, Mikayla, Molly, and I had a panel accepted to the
national ChLA conference. It was supposed to be our last
adventure together. Earlier this week, they officially
cancelled the conference.

I was supposed to spend March through May celebrating with my best friends: nights out after successful defenses, a Shrek-themed Prom, SAGE Events (dodgeball and movie nights were already on the agenda), speakers like U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo and Children’s Lit scholar Kristin Bluemel, and just spontaneous movie nights and game nights and trips to Lawrence. Those things are all rescheduled or scrapped entirely.

And, usually, I have a pretty good relationship with disappointment. I’ve learned not to expect perfect endings, but too always hope for one. I think that’s why I get so much joy out of life—because every good thing is a little bit of a surprise. I don’t know what that says about my psyche, but I definitely like it better than always having my heartbroken. This semester, though, I think I let myself expect the best. (Because who honestly thinks something as catastrophic as a global pandemic will happen and cancel graduation?) So I’m having a hard time putting a positive spin on this—though there have been plenty of nice things happening. I asked my cohort for pictures of us since we started grad school, and, boy did they come through. Within minutes, I had dozens of pictures and videos of us, and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a cohort that gets along better than us. I was instantly reminded of all the amazing times we’ve shared and all the fun we’ve had. I may have teared up a little. I love them so much, and my heart hurts that I won’t get more days like that with them. It was nice to relive those moments, but it’s not Prom. It’s not graduation. And, for that, I’m a little bitter.

Logically, I know I’m doing my part. I’m staying in. I’m social distancing. I’m grocery shopping once every 2 weeks and only going to one store when I do.

But some people aren’t.

And that—that makes me furious.

Some people are so ignorant and full of themselves. The Kansas lawmakers who challenged Governor Kelley’s order to not have church gatherings of more than 10 people. (Thank God the Supreme Court killed that.) The State of Alabama for keeping state parks open so my Type 1 Diabetic brother still has to go to work. Trump for being so obnoxious and incompetent. This reminds me so much of the day I came home from second grade sobbing because other kids wouldn’t listen to the rules. I’ve never been a fan or corporal punishment, and I feel like I’m being punished with quarantine.

Knowing now that this was the last time
we'd all go out to Aggieville together
makes this picture extra special and
extra sad (2-8-2020)

But I still can’t bring myself to fall into a pit of total despair. As much as I want to be angry, I want to have hope more. I guess I just know my personality. I’m living alone, my parents 900 miles away and my friends unable to physically with me. If I emotionally crumple, I’m not coming out of it.

So I’ll hope. I’ll hope for a treatment and a vaccine and for people to stay inside for the love of all that’s good. I’ll hope that the CDC gets a handle on all the outbreak epicenters and that rural hospitals are able to treat current cases. I’ll hope that, somehow, someday, some way, karma works out in my favor, that I’ll get my “one more moment” with the people who, like me, had so much taken away. I’ll hope that Trump gets his ass voted out of office in November and sued for every awful, inhumane thing he’s done.

A decade ago, I might have described these hopes as prayers.

Now, I don’t think the semantics matter as much as the intent behind them.

Wholeheartedly, may the odds be ever in our favor,

Katie

Captain's Log, Day 8: Quarantine Daydreams of the Future

Date: April 8, 2020

Time of post: 11:28 PM

Quarantine Day: 24

Last Song I Listened To: “TiedTogether with a Smile” by TaylorSwift

Last Person I Communicated With: email to Dr. Kara Northway

Last Thing I Ate: ice cream sandwich

Last Thing I Read: classmates’ History of the Book projects

Current Mood: it’s varied; I’ve been excited and content and also nervous

One Thing I’ve Accomplished Today: got a good bit of Apocalypse and History of the Book HW done

One Thing I Want To Accomplish Today: watch the short film for class

One Reason I’m Stressed Today: Oh, you know…the future

One Reason I’m Happy Today: Dr. Northway gave us an extension on our research paper proposal! (Also, I watched 3 Harry Potter movies today [6, 7.1, and 7.2], which always puts me in a good mood!)

Dear Apocalypsers,

We’ve been talking about various futurisms in class the last few weeks—Afrofuturisms, Indigenous futurisms. Futurisms are all about reimagining what life could look like. In his essay, “Afrofuturism 2.0 & the Black Speculative Arts Movement: Notes on a Manifesto,” Reynaldo Anderson gives a few definitions of Afrofuturism, specifically. Anderson says that, according to Kodwo Eshun, “Afrofuturism may be characterized as a program for recovering the histories of counter-futures created in a century hostile to Afrodiasporic projection” (qtd. in Anderson 228) and that the movement “is a critical project with the mission of laying the groundwork for a humanity that is not bound up with the ideals of white Enlightenment universalism, critical theory, science or technology” (Jones qtd. in Anderson 228-229). In light of imagining these different futures, I took some time to imagine my own future.

I’ve always taken comfort in the future; it just always seemed so much exciting than my present. My mom used to get onto me a child because she said I was “wishing my life away,” but I just get so excited for what’s to come. Of course, there have been times where the future terrifies me more than anything, so, when that happens, I ignore all the sticky uncertainty of the immediate future (“Where will I work over the summer?” “Where will I live next year?” “Where will I work?” “When will this quarantine be over and how will it affect me long-term?”) and imagine my end goal—the proverbial white picket fence life.

Today, I was particularly missing my cohort, and I thought about our perfect world. This is what I came up with and sent to our GroupMe, because, naturally, I’m going to share my “headcanon” about us with them:

Can't wait to write books on Harry Potter
  and YA and trauma theory one day with
wonderful woman (and all our friends)!

“I can't help but imagine this group chat in like 20 years, and Rebecca is our publisher, and she's juggling V's book tour and constantly in here reminding us about deadlines, and we joke that "Lexi won't start her chapter until the day it's due," and Dustin is the model author and meets all HIS deadlines for his next best-selling novel, and any time we need a Marxist lens we just @ Cailey, and Mikayla is always here to explain the trauma theory that she wrote and revolutionized Children's Lit with, and Gina and Nick are always trading ideas for their scary horror novels, and Noelle knows that she can always ask any of us to Zoom with her students, and when Molly does she convinces them that she and Noelle are married, and we make plans to go to conferences together where we'll catch up with all our old profs and new colleague-friends and sit at the same table during the closing banquet and giggle the whole time.”

Right now, that’s the dream. It encompasses so much of what I want “when this is all over” (whatever that means). In this future, we’re all still friends, using the same old group chat we started in grad school. We’re all in the fields we dreamed of; we’re happy and successful, and we’re still helping each other be our best. I want more than anything to see that future come to fruition. I’ve seen it happen before. Dr. Tatonetti spoke so kindly of Daniel Heath Justice, telling us that they knew each other from grad school, and Justice even mentioned Dr. T in his acknowledgements of The Way of Thorn and Thunder. For me, that’s the dream, to watch someone you care about and have worked so closely with for so long succeed at all their goals and get the recognition they deserve.

One day, Dustin will do the "dress like a book
cover" challenge with his own book! Mark
my words! (And he'll definitely put us all to
shame with his timeliness! Rebecca will have 
her hands full for sure!)

This whole post reminds me of Taylor Swift’s song “Sweeter Than Fiction” from the movie One Chance (2013). In a way, the song kind of imagines a futurism for the people its about. It’s told from Swift’s POV as she watches someone she loves struggle toward their dreams. It starts off all too familiar for grad students: “Only sound that you hear is "no" / You never saw it coming / Slipped when you started running / And now you've come undone,” but the whole point of the song is the line in the pre-chorus “Someday you won't remember / This pain you thought would last forever and ever” (Swift). This song never fails to make me happy. It’s upbeat and optimistic, and it’s like my whole personality in a song. And the bridge—God, Taylor Swift writes the best bridges in all of pop music, and no one can change my mind about that—the bridge is what I’ve always wanted to say to someone, and it’s such a fitting message as graduation comes around: “And when they call your name / And they put your picture in a frame / You know that I'll be there time and again / […] / I will say, I knew it all along / Your eyes wider than distance / This life's sweeter than fiction” (Swift).

I know so many writers, both creative writers and scholars. I know people who want to be teachers and publishers and librarians. And these aren’t easy things to become. Years of grad school, multiple rejections, grueling years of “paying your dues” to the industry, none of that is easy. But I have to imagine a future that makes all of this worth it.

Maybe it’s naïve. But it’s the light at the end of the tunnel that’s getting me through right now.

So when I close with “May the odds be ever in our favor,” this time I don’t just mean it in the COVID-19 sense. I mean it in every way. From now until forever, I hope the odds are in our favor.

Katie

Works Cited:

Anderson, Reynaldo. “Afrofuturism 2.0 & the Black Speculative Arts Movement: Notes on a Manifesto.” Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora, vol. 42, iss. 1-2, Illinois State University, Spring-Winter 2016, pp. 228-236.

Swift, Taylor. “Sweeter Than Fiction.” One Chance: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Sony, 22 October 2013.

Captain's Log, Day 7: There's No Going Back To Who and What You Were Before

Date: April 6, 2020

Time of post 11:45 PM

Quarantine Day: 22

Last Song I Listened To: “Infinity” by One Direction

Last Person I Communicated With: the Apocalypse class GroupMe

Last Thing I Ate: macaroni and cheese

Last Thing I Read: The Way of Thorn and Thunder by Daniel Heath Justice

Current Mood: meh

One Thing I’ve Accomplished Today: grocery shopping (and what a task that was)

One Thing I Want To Accomplish Today: watch the short film for class

One Reason I’m Stressed Today: I’m weirdly concerned that the UK Prime Minister has been hospitalized with COVD; like, I was for some reason convinced that world leaders wouldn’t get it

One Reason I’m Happy Today: my parents have been sending people in the cohort congratulations cards when they pass their defenses, and people are so surprised and happy when they get them! (Molly got hers this week!)

"There’s no going back to who and what you were before,” Unahi to Tarsa, pg. 32 of Daniel Heath Justice’s The Way of Thorn and Thunder (2011).

Dear Apocalypsers,

This week for class, we’re reading a high-fantasy novel by a friend of Dr. Tatonetti’s, and the above quote really stuck out to me. (Side-note: I cannot wait for the day that I can teach novels written by my friends. It’s an inevitability at this point. I’m putting it out into the universe.)

Feels like a good time for some high fantasy.

Here's a thread of quotes from Daniel Heath Justice's #TheWayofThornandThunder #KynshipChronicles pic.twitter.com/9dYOgwJAiS

— Katie Cline (@katiebethbug) April 6, 2020

We keep saying “when this is over;” stores have signs that say “temporary hours,” and I’m reminded again of the tenacity and persistence of the human spirit. Yes, this will pass, as every other pandemic has in the past—but when we step out of our houses and apartments like Plato’s proverbial man inthe cave, will it be the same world? I’m no expert, but I hope we’ve changed. And I don’t just mean that I hope we hold onto this sense of community and respect for healthcare workers, grocery store cashiers, and postal workers or our newfound appreciation of teenagers in fast-food jobs and everyone else in food service—though all those things are good and should ideally continue. Tragedy always brings the nation closer…for a little while, at least.

And I don’t just mean that the world might get their act together and wash their hands regularly and that governments will be more prepared for future crises (though as long as Trump as in charge, I doubt the U.S. will).

I think the world will feel different. We’ll have lived through a major historical event (I hate myself a little for typing that; I’ve seen it so many times, and I’m kind of over it), and that changes someone. 

Changes us.

Hopefully for the better.

I know that I already feel different. I’m not sure how to articulate it right now, but I already feel more appreciative and more grateful. I also feel angrier and a little more cautious. I’m definitely even more aware of how very ill-prepared we are for disaster and how incredibly lucky we are not to have had a pandemic of this scope in 100-ish years.

Really, to quote Taylor Swift, “All I know since yesterday is / Everything has changed.” And that’s a very surreal thing to be aware of. I’m not sure how I’ll feel when we finally come out of isolation, how long these anxious feelings will linger. I went grocery shopping today, and the air in WalMart was just tense. It was so quiet and empty. People weren’t bumping into friends and having conversations; there weren’t screaming children. Half the people were wearing surgical masks and the other half were abruptly stopping in the middle of aisles to stay 6ft away from another shopper. How long will grocery shopping make me nervous? How long before the thought of my parents going out to the store won’t make my stomach tighten in knots? I’ve always been afraid that I’d lose them early in life, but I’ll be damned if it’s COVID that takes them from me.

All I know about this image is that this is Matt Smith
as the Eleventh Doctor, but I liked the quote.

Unahi tells Tarsa that she can’t go back to who she was before, that she’s not the same person she was. That seems to be a running theme in this class: After Deckard falls in love with Rachel, he can’t go back to retiring Replicants; once K believes he’s Deckard’s son (and half-human), he can’t take back the hope that gives him; society can’t go back to the way it was before the apocalypse in The Road; Katniss can’t stop being the Mockingjay and go back to before the Reaping when she was just a poor girl in District 12; Jane can’t change the fact that she was sent to Summerland; Tarsa can’t go back to just being a Redthorn warrior now that she’s a Wielder.

We can’t go back to a time before COVID-19.

And I guess we could argue about whether any of us ever had a choice in all this—Fate vs. free will and all that jazz—but it doesn’t really matter. It’s kind of like in Doctor Who where there are keyevents that can’t be messed with or the whole universe will be screwed up. Or like the entire plot of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2017) where two 11-year-olds just mess with the past and drastically alter the future. We can’t go back and change what happened, so maybe we just have to take each day as it comes and deal with the future when it gets here.

May the odds be ever in our favor,

Katie

Works Cited

Justice, Daniel Heath. The Way of Thorn and Thunder: The Kynship Chronicles. University of New Mexico Press, 2013.