Busy Young Executive

"I feel as though my feet don't touch the ground but only dangle over the edge of the 'Managing Editor's Chair,'" I wrote to a friend.

"You don't belong here." The thought whispers through all the passages of my mind, hissing round corners and squeezing under the doors that almost shut against it. "You can't do this; what made you think you could do this? God didn't call you to this!"

I try to joke it off. My away message used to read: "Here's the world-famous Lit major, doing X, Y, or Z." A pun on old Peanuts cartoons. Now it says: "Here's the busy young executive, pretending for just a moment that she's still a Lit major." A whimsy, but a wistful one.

I spent an hour on the phone today with our chief booklist editor. I tried to explain what literature is (even Lit majors don't really know, but the textbooks have a definition or two that sound good), and why I don't think we can include works like Ben Hur in the list. She was wonderful, more than wonderful.

And now, thanks to my own ideas, I have to read, comprehend, and write an intro and questions (with answers) for a volume of ancient Egyptian literature. An anthology. Translated from hieroglyphics. For my classmates, this is the equivalent of writing four sets of DQ's for a Dr. Noe Lit class on Catullus... when you've never taken Latin. Due Wednesday.

Some of the titles are funny, like The Eighth Peasant's Complaint, or I Think I'll Go Home and Lie Very Still. That's what I felt like doing when I dragged myself home at 5:30--I wanted to go lie still. Some are profound. For example, The Debate Between A Man Tired of Life and His Soul. Much of it is very beautiful. Here are a few lines from For a Portrait of the Queen:

This was a princess.

Of the line royal, a lady most praiseworthy
and a woman of charm, sweet for love,
Yet Mistress ruling two countries
the Twin Lands of Sedge and Papyri.

See her, her hands here shaking the sistra
to bring pleasure to God, her father Amun.
How lovely she moves,
her hair bound with fillets,
Songstress with perfect features,
a beauty in double-plumed headdress,
And first among harim women
to Horus, Lord of the Palace.

Pleasure there is in her lips' motions,
all that she says, it is done for her gladly,
Her heart is all kindness, her words
gentle to those upon earth.
One lives just to hear her voice.

Translated by John L. Foster, Ancient Egyptian Literature (Texas: University of Texas Press, 2001), 101.

You see? It reminds me of the Bible. So there is richness and beauty in what I am doing, but that does not prevent the head from drooping, nor can it fire the spirit which is sick with longing for my gazebo and the smooth blue-shadowed ripples of Lake Bob.

"There will be hard times, you know---times when you can't just be doing it for me, or for the job. You need to know that God called you to this." Mama's timely words spoken in the midst of The Decision.
"I know," I murmured, gripping the phone, staring out the dorm window at my pond, facing the thought of facing the Big World four months sooner than I ever intended. "I know."

Today was a hard day.

But I know that God called me to this.