When I received the email, I was holding a piece of toast. Dry, no butter. I remember this vividly because it was the last thing in my life with a clearly defined purpose.
“You got tenure!” my partner said, beaming.
“Oh! That’s… great,” I replied. “I think?”
And so it began.
In the weeks since, I’ve found myself unable to commit—grammatically, affectively, institutionally. Where once I might have said, “I teach,” I now say, “There are moments in which I find myself adjacent to pedagogy.” Friends have grown concerned. My dog, unfed.
I went to text my partner: “Be home soon.” Instead, I wrote, “Circling back into the infrastructural imaginary of shared dwelling—if, indeed, dwelling can be shared.” They replied with a thumbs up, which I interpret as either affirmation or resignation. Or both. Or neither.
Soon, everyday phrases became impossible. “I’m hungry” became “There emerges, within this organismal enclosure, a not-unfamiliar sense of lack—interpretable, perhaps, as nutritional, though not necessarily limited to metabolic vectors.”
I have begun chewing paper.