SHTICKING TO YOUR STACKS

The first day of every month usually has the privilege to be a deadline. In generic logic that means that as soon as the first of September, for example, hits you, you find yourself on the way to drowning in a stack of papers, most often materialized as notes awaiting eloquent formulations for upcoming conferences. But the notes have to go and meet their maker, so that their maker can meet her deadline. The first, in other words, is a deadly day. Advice to writers who want to make it alive: start with a pun. My conference proposals have just been sent off and they have the following titles: "Crossing and Busting: Transfigurations of Translated Knowledge in Andrei Codrescu and Allen Ginsberg" and "Sesame Undone: Negotiations of Virtual Space in Federman’s blog [the laugh that laughs at the laugh…]". Unless the organizers of the panels for which these paper proposals have been made will drown in e-mails from interesting scholars, there should be a good chance that after the first deadline crossing and after having busted others out of the competition, hopefully, the opening up for a new space for writing will be enabled by the cry sesame! The job is done. The first of September is undone.