Now a lot of that title consists of code words, jargon we may use professionally, but that we wouldn't expect ordinary folks to have come across. Writing, teaching, and art are all creative activities that require that you break from linear thinking if you are to discover new paths, new directions, new solutions. And since we've been so inept at writing - just check out the latest television programs; teaching - need I say more than No Child Left Behind; and the confusion with which art is dealing with graffiti and museum art and not quite knowing which is which and which belongs where. Besides, I've known for a long time that it was time to start a novel, quasi memoir, but remember I am postmodern. That means that I will not accept even Habermas' contention that we could at least have a maetanarrative for discerning the truth or worthiness of validity claims in governance discourse. No we couldn't. The criteria by which we judge truth and relative merit when it comes to doling out limited resources are solidly situated in the context of power and wealth.

Lyotard argued that there are no metanarratives. I agree with him. I also think there is no such thing as consensus, unless you wish to mean by that phrase coerced consensus, such as George W. Bush runs up the flag pole every now and then in support of his vision, which he considers both "right" and "privileged."

The problem with bureaucracies is that they are run by rules and procedures that the clerks of the system tend to reify. That means the rules take on more importance than the people the rules were designed to make things more pleasant and efficient for. And the trouble with that is that the bureaucracies, in their eagerness to evaluate their services and win a larger market share of whatever they have to entice the consumer, always conscious of the need to update themselves, the better to compete for market share, really do create committees and subcommittees, like those of the House and the Senate and all the Investigatory Commissions designed to make it look like we're doing something until the people get tired of asking us to do something.

I'll bet you're getting the idea that I'm not fond of bureaucracies and their rules, Weber's iron cage. That's what I think he meant by that term, the constraints of the network of rules that limit human initiative and repress creativity in the interest of market efficiency. I think "iron cage" describes my feelings pretty well. Most of our institutions, like schools, turn me into a caged tiger. Saber-Toothed? Well, I'll have to tell you that story, and we'll see.

I started out as a writer. My model was Andre Gide, and, in particular, his Journals. I wanted to tell a story, but not a sensational story in which larger than life characters engaged in larger than life adventures. I wanted to share the bits of frustration and passion that fill the interstices of the time and space capsule most of us come to believe we're trapped in. Francoise Sagan, and Bonjour Tristesse were all the rage at the time that I would have gone to France to write. But that was not what I wanted to write. I didn't go. I know the Chair of my French Department thought he talked me out of it for other reasons. The real reason I didn't go was that I had a husband, a mother, and degrees. It seemed unreasonable, since I would have known only Renee Lang in Paris to take off to a new country, a new culture, an adopted language, when I already had severe doubts about the direction in which literary culture was moving, and had already partially chosen my "outsider" status. I wanted the freedom to develop my own identity, my own personae, my own stories, and I wasn't sure I could manage that in Paris.

So I didn't divorce my husband and fly away to a romantic new life. I was right. If I had to choose again today, I think I would still choose my own path. So you can imagine, after all my musings that it's time to write a book, how shocked I was last week when the book began to write. I have drawings all over the place to illustrate it as it writes, and I have the Web to share it as it happens. I knew that I would understand my retirement soon. I just needed a little time, and the summer is affording it to me.