During the summer months, it might seem like things are quiet here. But we’ve been plenty busy with “backstage” work to make sure the rest of the year goes smoothly. Usually it’s not the sort of work that makes for interesting reading, but this lighthearted bit of email exchange about office moves was so delightful that we thought we’d share (with permission, of course).

On an office move from the basement of Soc. Sci. to temporary lodgings elsewhere…
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… June 4 your bunker will be invaded by uniformed men with strange accents and rolling carts. they will pack and remove everything. do nothing to stop them. change is inevitable. should you return to said bunker after this date, it will be as though you never existed there. you have thus been forewarned.
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strange to say, whenever I’m there, in the shadowy cavern beneath the auditorium, my office, across the hall from and not to be confused with what can only be the most desolate men’s room in the state of North Carolina, which is what I have for a view, the men’s room door, to the extent that I can see it, given the quality of light in the room, spilling in from the drainage gate at the top of the cement cylinder that the window looks out on, if looks is what it does, if window is what it is, now and then a shadow passes by, maybe a student who’s been lost for decades, looking for the office hours of some long dead prof, somebody who everybody thinks retired to Costa Rica but in fact died and turned to dust in one of the other offices, strange to say, there in my office, with my bright little notepad before me, I already feel like I never existed, I’m either not there when I’m there, or anywhere else I am, I’m also there, only there, in my office, my bunker, my home, home at last!!! O joy! How can I bear to leave it?

This entry was filed under English Faculty.