Epilogue: Great Escape
GLOSS #13
Next Time: Epilogue: Great Escape
[this is a GLOSS on the Epilogue, which has been linked here for your convenience. This chapter will also be reshared on Substack Notes.]
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This is what happened Next (Time) after the events of the Prologue. I wanted to conclude my own personal Big Quit after the entire rest of the memoir was concluded, so I did imagine (and want) my readers to flip back and remind themselves of the Prologue’s events before then coming back to this.
I really tried my hand even more at a Braided Essay technique with this chapter than I’d done previously, and I wonder whether the different strands of the braids feel more like tangents or distractions than facets of the same kaleidoscope. What do you think? I have fun going down the Third Place and Flying Buttresses rabbit holes, but then that’s my own particular ways of nerding out.
As of the writing of this chapter, I’d heard absolutely nothing from anyone at ‘Subway’ U, and as of this gloss’ composition? Still nothing. At all. Even from the secretary. Their silence draws out all the way down the years from May 2022 to today. And tomorrow, I have no doubt.
As of this writing, I haven’t received a single email from anyone in the theatre department, not the Chair, not Tenured Jim, not the secretary, not anyone, telling me anything. No acknowledgment of my leaving, nothing about anything resembling an exit interview. No friendly or otherwise casual reachings-out on any of my personal social media. Nothing. Not a hello. Nor a goodbye. Certainly not a thank you.
From one of Herb Childress’ final emails: ‘I hope you're proud of the work you've done. It's a terrific, complicated, messy story with no artificial resolutions. It's really good. (did I say? It's really good.)’
He had a couple suggestions about the next ‘chapter,’ too – the Annotated Bibliography? But I’ll talk more about that in next week’s GLOSS. I think I may be refurbishing that one pretty soundly before I start the next round of sending this out to
ghostsagents and publishers again.
I included some clips of this chapter in my Popination essay on the Tivoli brewery, which is on the campus where ‘Subway’ U is situated. I had gone back after my Big Quit, and it felt strangely trippy, as I Mused about in that essay, after all this that happened was now in a slightly further past.
It was kind of weird, walking up the hill to the light rail station, waiting for the E train, taking it down to Auraria campus, downtown. That’s not a campus I have to go to anymore, but I wanted to compose a Popination piece about Colorado’s oldest brewery, and a pub that has given me comfort through the last leg of my long time teaching at one of the three colleges that share this urban space. So I did what I had done for many, many, years, and haven’t done for a few: I put in my earbuds, played a podcast, and took the train to Tivoli.
Speaking of sending this out again, I am about to have a whole quarter (DU’s version of a semester) with no classes assigned to me, so I’ll have a terrifying amount of free time for about 3 months (assuming they give me classes the following quarter). My husband is actually excited for me: he’s so psyched to see me move this memoir forward more, and also start the next big project. I’m not sure what my agenda is for that few months of Spring, but I imagine I’ll dust off my proposal for Next Time, maybe concoct one for the Problematic Tropes duology of series, and… maybe start something new? We shall see.
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TODAY’S BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Dolezal, Joshua. ‘The Big Quit,’ Chronicle of Higher Education. May 27, 2022. (Link)
McCulloch, Gretchen. Because Internet. New York: Riverhead Books, 2019.
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1989.
Zuko, Jenn. ‘Popination Tarnation,’ from Zuko’s Musings. Sep. 4, 2023. (Link)
Zuko, Jenn. ‘The Third Place,’ from Zuko’s Musings. Dec. 19, 2022. (Link)