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I am enjoying campus life again, getting lost in the library stacks, walking up and down the stairs with large piles of books, taking pictures of trees, sitting in coffee shops half the day, making photocopies the other half, walking, walking, walking everywhere. Last week I found a copy machine giving out freebies and felt like I won the lottery. I copied for three days straight with my card balance frozen at $7.90.
Oh how good it gets.
If you're wondering what I'm working on, the abridged version is "late eighteenth-century British language theory and culture." The real version is I go through hundreds of journal articles with alternately brain-numbing and sexy titles like "Squirrell's in the Breeches: Onanism, Diarrhea, and the Aesthetics of Antipanaceatic Discourse," and try to figure out if there's anything useful in there. If you think I made that title up, you can go to Google Scholar and see with your own eyes.
Still, I'm not minding this eighteenth-century business after all, and thinking chapter one will be writing itself soon.
Something's reminding me, at every turn: intention creates the world. In the beginning was the word, and the word creates the world. So I am watching, stalking the words, the signs - inventing, creating with conscious intention, complete suspension of disbelief. And synchronicities are saying yes yes yes yes yes!Can you believe it's snowing today??Love and blessings to you all
I am unusually productive here. In less than a week I've gone through a month's worth of to-do lists and old unattended business, errands and emails. I also set up a workspace, signed up at the gym, got in touch with old friends and professors, drove to Chicago and back, saw three movies, and worked on my relationship with the cat.
My mom's cat and I are on the rocks. She's taken to hissing and swatting at me at random times, which scares the hell out of me. I normally blame the humans involved (bad energy fields and things), but this whole "walk silently on your toes and pet her only in this precise exact scientifically correct way" is a bit much. Things are slowly improving between us, thanks to a lot of catnip, treats and rubber-band flinging around the house -- rather painful at first, since it took me a lot of tries to figure out how to not snap them in my own face. Yes, that was not funny! She hasn't come around fully, but she's accepting the bribes and hissing less, which I'll take to mean that we're on the right track.
Stefania is now officially my "dissertation coach" (I am going to launch this as a new professional title, not to be confused with "dissertation advisor") and has vowed to kick my ass or else. She just put me on a 50-page/month plan, which is insane, but she won't take no for an answer. Dr. Phil is nothing, believe me.
Good things about Michigan: cheap gas, wide parking spaces, free wifi at the gym cafe. Pains in the ass: need to get snow tires and a car port.
My movie recommendations: The Science of Sleep, The Last Kiss, Little Miss Sunshine.
Most of you know I've arrived, and how I tell the story. And if you haven't heard it yet, it goes something like this. On October 8th 2006 I set out on this trip, one foot forward, the other one kicking and screaming. I've known this was the thing to do, but like all the big moves of my life, my heart takes them divided. Leaving the things I love because the path is calling, and this magical heartbreak moves things, with invisible hands, just where they need to go. I took to the big open road, one interminable stretch of highway, Bay Bridge to Chicago. Ammy was watching at the window. Then three days of driving, beautiful and crazy. The first day through California and Nevada sunshine, gorgeousness of water, mountains, desert, textures, layers, colors. Then Utah, Wyoming... and there it was black sky, rain, hail and snow all the way through to Chicago. And the things I saw... enough to laugh and cry and pee your pants all at once.
The leaves in Michigan are just starting to change colors. Yellow, orange, brilliant red - a kind of red I had forgotten, brighter than fire, sparkling. Even the urban landscape has a spaciousness I had forgotten.
Something about this place grounds me. Enough of me, I think, for what needs doing. I'll tell you the rest along the way.
