Another Sunday morning and finally some rest. My Roomba, which I have christened George W. Bush, is cleaning my house. It’s actually a compliment to our president since this robot can find its base and recharge itself. I just hope it doesn’t clean the neighbor’s house then tell me that it can’t leave until the job is done.

Since I returned from Boston, the flow of life has picked up dramatically, and the confluence of personal and professional events has created a different kind of motion with less time for contemplation and certainly less control. I used to do a lot of whitewater canoeing and rafting, and memories of those trips have come back to me in the few quiet moments I have had in the last two weeks. In fact the closest I have ever come to death was on the Ocoee River in Tennessee when I ended up swimming Table-Saw and Diamond-Splitter, two class III rapids. Of course I was with students, and of course I was the only one in the boat with any whitewater experience, so I guess if anyone had to spill, it should have been me. But I doubt I will ever forget the feeling that death was coming by water. Fortunately, at the last minute, I popped up behind the raft, and the guide pulled me in with his paddle.

There is a feeling one gets on whitewater that is a combination of exhilaration, fear, and fun, and a similar thing happens in life. You go along in a groove, looking at your surroundings, adjusting to them, and settling into a circle of motion. Then, in the distance you hear a higher-pitched sound of water moving faster and further as it snakes its way around rocks. One of the great achievements of James Dickey’s Deliverance is the descriptions of the river. It is another character–the main character in some ways–in the novel, and when I reread it as I often do, it is the river that I read for. The ebb and flow of fear and joy that is so much like life itself.

So for the past two weeks I have been in the rapids and time has flowed much faster. Looking at my calendar, I don’t see too many events, but it is always the rocks that you don’t see that make the river interesting. At small universities like mine, ceremonies are very important, and I’m happy to be back in a setting where that is the case because ritual is important for someone like me who looks for the sacred wherever he can find it. Flowing into those rituals are the new and returning students themselves who bring their own bundled energy seeking release. Each rock, seen and unseen, in the rapid is a story in itself, but like a canoer, I have just been flowing, moving between the rocks, and enjoying the ride. The remainder of this post, then, is just that: a quick trip through some rapids of the last two weeks.

• New faculty orientation. As I sat there I calculated that this was my fifth new faculty orientation, and I could predict pretty much what was going to happen. These things can be deadly. You begin the year with some excitement and even hope, then you spend two days bogged down in bureaucratic minutiae or perfunctory performances, and your spirit is sapped. I’m happy to say this wasn’t the case for me at Cool University. We received mostly useful information, and our work was fairly interesting. A highlight was the last speaker, who told us in less than ten minutes how he had navigated the university rapids for the last twenty years, and it was a story that was both practical and profound.
• Mentoring. Each new faculty member was taken to lunch by a mentor assigned by the provost. Mine is a kind and gentle philosopher who knows the Cool University inside and out. When we pulled up next to my car after lunch, I said “That’s Penelope, my car.” “Why is she Penelope?” he asked. “Because she is always waiting on me,” I respond. He smiles quietly and says “You’ve been riding in Homer.” Surprised, I ask “Why is this Homer?” He says “Because he’s an Odyssey.” We both laugh and decide that the provost is brilliant for putting us together.
• Dinner at the Provost’s House. The new faculty gather at the aforementioned provost’s house for a lovely dinner. We are all still a bit nervous and unsure of ourselves, but I find a table of economists and business professors, and we all lighten up as the talk and wine flow freely. Eventually, the president, an economist himself, makes his way to our table and enjoys talking with his colleagues in the discipline. I ask him if he thinks there are too many economists in the world, and he agrees, his wife even moreso. As the newbies begin to drift away, I am able to convince an administrator and a librarian to have a drink at a downtown bar. We enter and are the oldest people there by twenty years. We don’t care.
• Presentations. I make numerous presentations to student groups on campus about my center. I know very little about how my center actually works because I have yet to see it in action, but that doesn’t prevent me from speaking for as long as I am asked. I take along my own Sancho Panza, also known as my administrative assistant, to tell people how things really work. We make a great team because I am Don Quixote, and she is Sancho, always pulling me back to reality.
• Morning with the Wine Geeks. Worth a separate post but answers the question “How many connoisseurs and professors does it take to move a local wine distributor on a Saturday morning?”
• Penelope. She gets a checkup, her first since the journey, and new shoes. They are the equivalent of Manolo Blahnik’s, but I don’t mind. She’s going to have to wear them for 50,000 miles.
• Prestigious University. Naomi from Boston sends me a t-shirt that reads “Prestigious University.” It hangs on my office wall. The perfect gift.
• Dorms. We are a living-learning community, so I drop by the dorms at 2:00 am again to see what’s up. I play table tennis and talk about poetry with the students.
• Students. A steady stream of new and returning folks come into my office to meet me and share stories.
• Faculty. Before I perform my first ritual in my new role, a faculty member comes by my office to introduce herself, and she stays an hour because we find so much to talk about. It prepares me for my ritual that evening, and I have another sister-helper on the journey. I am up until 3:30am with three other faculty before an 8:30 meeting. When I get to the meeting, my comrades are not there. Lesson #1: hang out with the right people before an early meeting. I am called an “up with people kind of guy” and a “greeter.” I’ll take those as compliments, though I’m not sure they were intended as such.
• Presidential Dinner. The president of Cool University invites all faculty to his magnificent house for dinner. People keep telling me that it’s southern California, so nothing is formal. I arrive at the “pre-party” and find everyone dressed up while I am in a polo shirt, shorts, and sandals. I decide to roll with it rather than go home and change. At the party, I take my sandals off and go barefoot. An artist asks me if I’ve ever been a foot model because my feet are lovely. People ask about the new guy.