Sometimes semesters creep along and then with a whoosh they are over; time moves unevenly, even erratically, crushing us midway and not really letting up until finals week. This semester, though, is different. Time seems to be moving steadily, as I track the weeks with my little "i-pregnancy" app, and as our graduate seminar marches chronologically through Kenneth Burke's decades of writing. The semester is about 15 weeks behind my pregnancy, so that when we met our first class no one except for my co-teacher knew about my "condition," and now at week 22 (week 7 of the course) it's hard to imagine how anyone wouldn't have noticed. The halfway points of both are neatly correspondent.
There is a new physicality to the passing of time. Each week brings more wiggly, fluttery movement, or new positions I can't sit comfortably in. The increasing swell probably also serves as a reminder that paper topics are due soon. By the time the deadline for the papers themselves is looming, the sticky heat will have given way to frozen ground; Burke will have aged nearly fifty years, his theories fitting together a little better, though still not perfectly; and the movements inside me will feel less like fluttery, wiggly calisthenics and more like squirmy, crowded kicks. Most everything comes due; it's all a matter of waiting, marking growth of all kinds with patience and even a little glee.
