another late night. . . . writing

I'd forgotten how much I hate late night command performances in front of a blank word.doc screen with only the prospect of having nothing to say to those expecting to hear a presentation of your paper to goad you on.

I sit and jiggle my legs.

I get more tea.

I check email.

I wrestle three more sentences onto the screen.

Inevitably I remember Annie Lamott's Bird by Bird and her command to write a "shitty first draft" and then hope you don't get run over by a bus before you can get to it the next day and revise it before other people read it and think "what a crapola writer she was, after all!"

I write something here and wonder if I should look for a picture to ease the nakedness of the words.

I stretch my neck and back muscles - looking upwards - and notice that the chandelier has cobwebs in between the candelabra lights. The feather duster is 7 steps away tucked into the bookshelves. Maybe I could dust it real quick and then take a look outside to see if Jupiter and Venus are still visibly aligned. The cold air would revive me.

Crap.

The house alarm is on. Setting and unsetting it makes loud beeps which will wake up the king, who's asleep.

And I want to be asleep!

Okay. So push "PUBLISH POST" and return to pulling words out of hiding and push-pinning them onto paper. 22 hundred of them so far - a little more than half the amount that proved too much for the last academic conference I attended not too long ago. That was a real academic presentation, though. The thing tomorrow is supposed to just be an informal 'work-in-progress' discussion among colleagues. What's more, the head of department has already edited the blurb describing my work to cut out the more academic references. "Don't want to scare anybody off before they get there!"

Great.

For this, I'm still up at midnight, agonizing.

I'm considering forgoing the ubiquitous powerpoint presentation as a mute protest. Thinking is not about entertainment, it's about thinking.

"Physician, heal theyself?" Philosopher, think thyself! Stop looking for rest and entertainment.

Then, maybe I can get some sleep.

my hero. . . .

I really like this lady! Go read what Kate DiCamillo has to say about writing.

"God bless you, baby."

photo is of Kate - linked from her website, which I trust is ok. . . . .

a defining story

I watched "Homeless to Harvard: the Liz Murray Story" tonight.

It was inspiring - yes. Mind-numbingly depressing in the beginning. . . Liz Murray, a real person, has/had drug-addict parents who effectively leave her to raise herself. She ends up on the streets - her mother dead of AIDs, her father (also with AIDs) in a homeless shelter - but finally goes to school, and wins a New York Times scholarship that takes her to Harvard.

It was her "story" that got her the scholarship in 2000. In 2003, before she graduated, the movie of her story was done. The memoirs of her story were published in 2005 - don't know if she'd graduated yet (do know that she left Harvard and returned to NY to "help care for her father" and enrolled at Columbia. Thereafter, it appears she went on the speakers' circuit and speaks - you guessed it - on her story.

Young girl overcomes tremendous odds and spends the rest of her life talking about it.

Somehow, there's something missing in that formulation of a story. I wanted to know what she did at Harvard; what she studied; what she aspired to. I wanted to see her old life transformed - left behind. I wanted to see her step out of the old, into something - not just to get out, stop, and then endlessly rehearse the last step.

"I got out; you can too." is a great message, but "got out" to do what?! Is just the 'getting out' enough to get you going? Not for me it isn't.

It's as if her story ended before her life did. That's one of the saddest things I can imagine. But maybe she will move beyond this part, and do something with her life, whether or not we ever know about it. I hope so.

viva minus 15

Housekeepers today, so I was up and out early and headed over to the local college library and my favorite easy chair in the aerie overlooking the atrium with nothing but the dissertation and a pad of paper on which to record errata.

I have two pages [of errata] already.

The good news is that I'm mostly enjoying my own writing. I think Magda was able to insert a whole lot more structure than I suspected - or would ever would have included - since I tend to operate by the maxim that if I have to tell you what the points are, I obviously have failed to make them. . . .

I don't know where I got that idea, but I realize now that it has been firmly in place for a very long time. I intend to banish it, forthwith.

Much better just to tell people what the points are, rather than trust that they'll 'get it', if you just make the points as strongly as you can. . . . Of course, it doesn't make for very compelling writing, but then I need to decide whether I'm in the business of writing, or providing information - or something else, entirely.

All of that is way too egg-headed for me today.

The point is: I enjoyed the writing, I found enough typos to keep me busy, and I didn't mind the telegraphed plan of the dissertation. In fact, I found it rather reassuring to know just what it was I was going to talk about next - and why. [Doesn't that sound ridiculous? Yet it's true.]

It's a gray day. Warm. Warmer outside than inside this ridiculous rented house we inhabit. Yet it feels wasteful to open up doors and windows, as "the heat is on".

I'm waiting for a buddy and we're heading to the greenwood to talk about security systems. I'm also hoping for a walkabout, and then a pint after. Then - perhaps - I'll be in a proper frame of mind to resume the conclusion of chapter 2 and start on 3. Actually, chapter 3 is one of the 'fun' ones - insofar as you could count anything in a doctoral dissertation as "fun."

headline questions

Have you noticed that more and more news headlines are posed in the form of a question?

I remember my Journalism 101 class, and the importance of the "attention-grabbing" function of the headline. These days, however, attention-grabbing has turned into "engagement-seeking". Everything is interactional these days. News isn't news - it's a guessing game!

Guess who won the Florida primary?

Guess who's back in hospital, being observed 'mentally', after "bizarre behavior"?

Guess who died? Who wrecked? Who lied? Who made a fool of him - or her - self?

I usually refuse to read "articles" like that, just out of principle. I resent being dragged in by idle curiosity. Today, however - on AOL - I bit on the headline for this article, the headline for which was "Why did Feb. 17 Make the List?[of days you shouldn't travel]".

As I'm traveling on Feb. 17 - this was information I clearly needed to know. I clicked on, only to be referred to yet another article which supposedly would enlighten me. It took me a while, but I finally found it - buried in the middle of an otherwise unastonishing - and, frankly, uninteresting - article. Why shouldn't I travel on Feb 17? Here it is, quote-unquote:

The 50th running of the Daytona 500 takes place Feb. 17th. I don’t even live in Daytona Beach, Fla. (I’m in Orlando) and I’m thinking of getting out of town. Don’t even think about renting a car — they’re taken that weekend. And stay away from the Orlando theme parks, unless your idea of family fun is to stand in a long line with a lot of rowdy NASCAR fans.

Here I thought we might be dealing with some universal wisdom applicable universally - like, maybe, Feb. 17 is the day all airplane wheels fall off, or when the refuelers 'short' the jets on fuel just to piss off the pilots, or the day all the new air traffic controllers control traffic without supervision, or something like that, or meteor showers, or SOMEthing. . . .

But no. It's the DAYTONA far-reaching 500. whoop.

So! Don't go outside. You might get run over.

Luckily, I'm only going to Ireland. . . . . I might be safe. Maybe.

my new word

It's: excursive.

It's splendid! Here's the definition, courtesy of Wordsmith's A.Word.A.Day:

excursive (ik-SKUR-siv) adjective:
Tending to wander off; rambling.

My thoughts are excursive. Elsewhere, other definitional sources emphasized the excursional aspects of "excursive" - the going on a trip, making an excursion. And that's what I find intriguing not only in thoughts, but also in writing.

Other people - I am told - can find it merely annoying; not to the point. (Those are the same people who manage to draw up an outline before the fact, and then write to fill out the outline. I'm always surprised at where I end up. I do outlines at the end, to figure out how I got there. . . . )

By the way, you can subscribe to get a new word every day by email - NY Times called Word.A.Day "The most welcomed, most enduring piece of daily mass e-mail in cyberspace." I've been getting it for years. It's also a major source of the quotations I collect. . . .<

And the painting above, by another way, is by William Bradford, an American painter, 1823-92, who was related to the wife of a rather wealthy man I know, who apparently has several original Bradfords in his home. . . . This is not one of them, but it's one of my favorites of the ones I could find online. Their Bradford - the one I saw, anyway - was more cloud-ey; very somber and ominous. Right up my alley, in other words. I liked it well enough that I managed to remember the name long enough to do some internet research.

And there you have it! Excursive thought and writing. Voilà.

minus 11 - the door

well, that's a formidable entry. Or barrier! Wonder what it's to be.

It's Saturday, the toughest part -or day - of being 'on deadline' [as the king says] and having to be out of usual life. We have our usual Saturday routine - I know I've written about this before - where the king goes to the drycleaners and stops by the wine shop and the artisanal cheese place (where they know him by name) and picks up fresh bread and cheese and wonderful olives of several colour types and little mini-baguettes with fresh ham and brie on them for lunch. Then, we decide whether we're having Oranginas or white wine.

Today, white wine. I'm gonna need all the help I can get, which is probably why I should have stuck with Orangina, but I have never exactly been the 'prudent' type. Now I'm upstairs with chapter one ("The Re-Write") and the king is doing laundry*, heading out to get dinner (we're having company!?) and will then settle in for some college ball.

I'm hiding the fact that I'm writing 'other' stuff - he doesn't know that I've started this site. . . . And it's going to be a little tough telling him! And harder every day. I have no idea how to do this. I see now that I already have some 60 [60?! Try over 80!!!] postings, each of one which was done 'in secret' as to him. Not consciously. We really have no secrets. But I've not told him about this. I'm not sure why I have wanted to keep properprophet so private. It's funny: no one I "know" knows about this place. Not yet. And I'm a little careful about sharing sites I have posted comments on with my 'real life' friends, for fear that they'd find this place. What's the deal with that?

This is one of the questions I think I had early on about "who" we are, when we're prophet, or Non-Essential Equipment, or Adorable Device of Destruction, or Mir, or Lemon Stand - although some of those women give an indication as to who they are. It's funny to think about the images we've chosen to camp out under. Machinery, plywood stands, butterflies, corvids, weapons, regret . . . .

I remember reading an article about 'avatars' - I think it was when I first came across Second Life, which believe it or not was part of my research! Turns out that Judge Posner (the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge who thinks that academic moral theory is worthless with respect to making judicial determinations) appeared on Second Life to talk up a new book. You can see an illustrated transcript here.

So - you see - I am working! Stop to think, too, that "avatar" means "incarnation", which is very relevant to theological dissertations! sigh.

Anyway, I think the whole thing of secrecy or anonymity or virtual 'life' or whatever you want to call it has to do with consequences. I can control virtual consequences. If I piss someone off, or they don't like me, or I don't like them it's easy: no more contact. Delete messages (or don't allow them in the first place!) Don't visit. Deny access.

We can't do that in real life. And in real life, the people who know me can read what I've written and say "________, would you ever get real?!!! Stop messin' around and start writing! Kwitcher bitchin. . . . ." And that would be horrible.

So, on the one hand, I can control adverse consequences and on the other, I can presume on the goodwill of strangers. But not forever. At some point, you have to become friends. Or not.

Who was it said: "I love mankind; it's people I can't stand!"

That's how we are in the 'blogosphere'. Or: how we are at our worst in the blogosphere. . . . Because I think we can also make friends. I've read about people who have. And I know how I feel about the people who've come alongside me these last few weeks. . . .

By the way. . . . is there an uglier word than "blog"?! Or "blogosphere"?!!!! Barf. Who thought of that? I hate that word. It curdles my bone marrow to think of calling myself a "blogger".

I am a WRITER.

Best go get some writing done.
(*the king's mum has already had confidential discussions with him about this, asking "Is everything OK in your marriage. . . . .? Bless her heart. . . . ahem. . . . .)

minus 18

The cat . . . . is on the bathroom mat. Head to paws. Sleeping. Blending in, gray on gray. Feeling my eyes on her, she sits up and returns my gaze, sphinx-like. Her eyes start to shut again as I turn my face back to my MacBook.

All is mostly forgiven.

Both my husband and my mother seem to think that this means I can't have any liquids close to the computer anymore. No more coffee. No more pints of water. No finishing my dinner wine as I get back into who is this guy, Habermas, anyway?! I find this ridiculous. That's like saying I can't go outside anymore because a tree branch might fall on me and kill me. Or a truck run me over. Or a hoodlum hold me up and shoot me over my cellphone.

Actual headline in today's paper - front page, people:

"Man found guilty in cell phone killing"

They're killing cell phones?! What are we coming to. . . .

Eighteen days left. Gird myself up. Don't let go. Keep on going. All the lovely pith-isms and go-get-em's and you-can-do-it's. . . . No. Not enough to sustain me. But hopefully enough to keep me going. One more moment. Then another. And I do have that which sustains: the sense of calling, I guess, that this is an assignment I was given and having been given it, I will also be given the means by which to finish it. Yeah - it looks pretty cheesey on paper. It won't look good unless I walk it out in actual life. . . .

Still, the diminishing number is a good thing. It means the day of my deliverance is coming closer! One way, or another. Oh - yay!!!!

day 3 - minus 21

Ok. So I'm freaking.

This morning, I wonder whether I should have started with the higher number and counted down, rather than the lower one and counting up. Which conveys more stress, do you think?

The worst bit of it is that I don't actually have 31 days. I only have 27 days, (now 25 - oops, 24) minus however long it will take me to get the thing copied and "soft-bound", whatever that means.

OK. so - 22 days? 21? I think we'll have to do the backwards count, cause I'll never get the full picture otherwise.

One good thing: I was cleaning up some text I wrote a year or so ago, and really found it pretty easy to cut all the over-the-top bits and advocacy for a certain point of view. I've been a lawyer so long, I am just always usually picking a side and arguing for it. I'm supposed to be "objective" on this, though. . . . Anyway, it wasn't so hard to cut out all the arguments I'd peppered the text with a year ago.

Poor Magda. She's had to deal with this for years now!

After knitting 5 or 6 inches day before yesterday, yesterday I knit one row. The king was giving me a bit of a hard time about focusing on anything other than my dissertation. . . . He's probably right. But I don't have to like it!

For today, I'll try and remember to take it with me. I have a doctor's appointment. There I was, last week, trying to cancel a diagnostic test I had unwisely scheduled for later this month, and here I am this week, going not for the test, but for a doctor's visit before the test, because they're "concerned".

I'm concerned that they'll just tell me it's stress and I'll have disrupted my afternoon for them to reach this major diagnostic insight. sigh.

Coupla things: Google translate is not bad! Granted, you probably need to speak the other language somewhat in order to make complete sense of the translation (from the German, anyway, perhaps other languages are different, but we all know how amazingly ridiculous the German sentence structure is! If you want proof, all you need do is read Mark Twain's That Awful German Language which I find laugh-out-loud funny! But then I mostly speak German, too. Scroll up to the top, by the way, if you get dumped into the middle of Twain's article, which a link test kept doing to me. Sorry!)

I got to cook yesterday - for some reason the king was not insistent that I not have to take the time away from work. I like to cook, so this was a good thing. We have very little food in the house (as the king is in charge of food shopping, which he hates) so this was a challenging thing. The potatoes weren't too fuzzy, though, and there was half an onion, plenty of garlic, a bounty of herbs outside and an almost-full carton of eggs: Tortilla de pappas was in order. Spanish frittata-type thing a friend of mine who now lives in Spain turned me on to. You serve it with a garlic mayonnaise and, ideally, a green salad.

No salad. Frozen broccoli, though! That'll do. Defrost, saute in olive oil with onion. Just a bit of caramelizing and you're all done! And, of course, half a baguette from the freezer (that's the one food chore the king does like: Saturday stop at the artisanal shop for fresh french bread - best I've had outside of Paris - and cheese. And maybe a run into the wine store).

Well, the day is getting away from me already, and I can't afford it today! I have a pre-deadline deadline, insofar as if I don't get Magda the last chapter - and the intro - by Friday, she won't have time to do any revisions before I have to turn in. New term is starting and she's swamped. So these next few days are crucial.

And the housekeepers arrive today. OK. Eat your heart out: I don't have to clean house. The king had a housekeeper before he married me and I advised him - even when we left his former big house - that I really would prefer to keep the housekeeper as housekeeping is not exactly my forte. . . . and, bless him, he did. Now I clean before the housekeepers get here. The things I don't want them to clean, anyway. Like certain wine glasses, my wooden kitchen stuff and anything silver or other polishable metal. . . . So I have to do that before they get here and then hopefully get out before they get here or I'll be talking for an hour. I'm glad they like me. But when we talk for an hour, the kitchen floor is sticky after they leave. I think they figure the hour's talking is the equivalent of an hour's work. And, granted, I'm sure they don't like me that much! But they do seem to like talking to me. Best just not to be here when they get here.

One day I'm sure I will be glad I recorded this minutia. Off I go, then!

day 2

This time will fly by, I know it. Before I know it, I'll be saying "There are only three days left. . . ."

sigh.

Yesterday, it occurred to me that the scholar's collar will be finished well before the end of hell month if I don't ration the amount of knitting I am allowed to do each day. I measured everything up and came up with only a half inch allowed a day! (it's a short scarf. . . .) Well, I blasted that limit yesterday. By another 5 or 6 inches. I did however come up with the rather sensible notion of harvesting all the articles I have stacked up and filed, accumlated over 5 years of postgraduate seminars and other handouts. If I find just one a day, that's 30 more secondary sources I didn't have. (that I do have, but just haven't quoted or 'applied' to the work I've been doing.

The king always marvels at my ability to make something good out of 'found' stuff. Why not here?

I would prefer to work with the primary texts, but if they want also a bit of a hash on what others are saying. . . . so be it.

Feeling a bit low today. I worked myself into a proper gloom last night, considering all the gritty details necessary before this thing can be put to bed. Is it physically possible? Then there's the simple fact that I don't see an answer to this problem of how law and ethics should relate. I comfort myself with the recognition that no one else has found a 'solution', either, over centuries of ponderings. But the centuries of pondering has left quite a layer of guano that has to be scraped away and it seems I can't say anything without finding myself neck-deep in the stuff.

Hell, I can't even talk about 'foundations' without being bombarded by the 'foundationalist/anti-foundationalist' dispute! And if you want to talk about 'rational', do you have to distinguish between Kant's reason and the Enlightenment's idea of it? Oh God - help me! (and I am speaking literally, here.)

The days continue fine. The door is open to the screened porch and I begin to hear more crickets instead of locusts. I am always surprised to realize that the transition has taken place, outside of my awareness.

I have resolved the 'which came first' puzzle in the question of Maman's birthday vs. anniversary: "a" comes before "b" - so anniversary is first. Card (ok - letter, I didn't go shop for a card) duly sent yesterday. My brother reminded me "you have to eat", so we're going out to dinner tomorrow night. Should be fun, actually. We're going to a favorite German restaurant. With any luck, the weather will continue fine and we can eat outside! Killer schnitzel. Spaetzle. Rot kraut. Weiss bier! yum.

And now: back to my regularly scheduled program.

seriously

Magda appears to be trying to get me to put this off and not submit until April. I think it might have something to do with her schedule, insofar as she is now aiming me at other people to get feedback from. (but she hasn't said that).

My new Ricoeur book (Reflections on the Just) arrived and I've already found 3 cool things in it:

1. There's a difference in attitude in the political and legal systems of 'Code' law countries (i.e., Germany & France) who rejected Montesquieu and went instead with Rousseau. . . . They proceed instead from the presumption of a "general, indivisible will" - presumably a common will - instead of starting from the position of an adversarial argument in which the so-called will is first worked out. . . .

2. We are shifting "error" to concepts of "risk" - and making the relevant inquiry one of insurance rather than responsibility.

3. At the same time, we seem to be shifting 'uninsured risks' [that result in harm] to the criminal realm. Ricoeur says: "The risk in making 'everything crimininal' is that politics, once submitted to this kind of intimidation, will be handed over to a rampant process of victimization." (251)

Oh - and one more thing - 4. he points out the amazingly refreshing reminder that trying to 'resolve things after the fact' is to overlook that "knowledge that has [now] become certain could only have been one option among others at the time." (255)

How I wish that all these special study groups and inquiry panels would remember that one! I get so tired of the Monday morning quarterbacking that tells us all what we should have done, now that we see the results of what was actually done. It reminds me of my Nana, who used to yell at the ball carrier:

Why are you running up the middle?! There's NO ONE on the sides!

Followed shortly by:

WHY are you running down the SIDES when there's NO ONE IN THE MIDDLE?!!!!

ach. . . . we just can't get it right, can we? We keep forgetting that our action never takes place in a vacuum. Not only do we not know all the facts (usually), but we also don't know how other people will respond or even if - maybe - something as stupid as an open window or relative humidity might play a role until after we've taken action.

Hannah Arendt talks about this in The Human Condition:

"It is in the nature of beginning that something new is started which cannot be expected from whatever may have happened before." This ‘unexpectedness’ is only one of the “three-fold frustration[s] of action – [namely] the unpredictability of its outcome, the irreversibility of the process, and the anonymity of its authors . . . calamities of action [which] all arise from the human condition of plurality.” (220)

There now. I'm feeling a bit steadier, even IF I suspect my tutor has doubts about me and my ability to finish this. The more relevant question is will I be governed by her thoughts? Or by my own plans and intentions?

Right.

Back to work. . . .

the unkindness of ravens

They have taken up roost in the trees around my porch and call insults to one another. At least that's what it sounds like to me. It could very well be something else entirely:

"Hey - good move on that landing, buddy! Your tail feathers look good in that configuration."

"And you!!! The way you found that bug was nothing short of amazing. I can't believe you shared. Ravey, you rock!"

"Guys? Let's not forget old Sage over here. He's the one who's been finding the best conference roost trees since before we were hatchlings. I say Caw! Caw! Cawraw to him!

I wonder why we have 'murders' of crows and an 'unkindness' of ravens?

There are more questions today than answers. Why can't I soar above and get a raven's-eye-view over where I've been and write about it? I don't know. But I finally gave up, for now, anyway. We're back on the ground, digging in the dirt, looking for edible bugs. Once I get the last chapter at least drafted, I hope I'll be able to see just where it is I've been.

In the meantime, I'm trying to take all of Magda's comments as kindnesses, no matter what it sounds like. It's a postmodern thing, I know, but for today I chose to make my own meaning. Whatever works for me. . . . after all. Here's hoping that it does work!

In the meantime, a sketch from yesterday. The ants have just about emptied the hummer feeder. And I'm off to get a big gulp of whatever it is I can find to carry back to the dissertation today. I'll drop it there, and go back for more. I've got one month and 4 days. The countdown to hell is about to start. Actually, I think it just started. . . .

backwards, as usual

Why is it so easy to write here, when each word of the dissertation is like pulling teeth?

And actually it's not so easy today. I'm feeling antsy and icky - there's a term of art for you: "Icky". sigh.

The good news is that I realized (writing a friend) that there's LOTS of stuff I could be doing that's a whole lot worse than my current allotment of what I should be doing.

Writing my dissertation, for instance, is a whole lot better than:

1. Being shot at in a foreign land. (or in one's homeland, either, for that matter). Ok, so: Being shot at.
2. Being in prison.
3. Having nothing to do.
4. Having grueling labor to do, in hard circumstances, with little reward.
5. Cleaning feces.
6. Make-work in retail - "Look busy!"
7. Spending the day with the 'difficult' person (whether they bore you to tears or drive you up the wall).

I'm sure there's more I could think of, but it's better that I think of ethics and its proper relationship with the law. Because that's where I'm spending my day, and grateful I am, not to be shot at.

Not yet, anyway.

I think that might come later. The viva voce. . . .

Anyway - here's a bit of Clannad. Can you believe I never knew that was Bono singing, too? I always liked the voice. . . . good to see a bit of Ireland. I could use a bit of sideways rain and a steaming pub. The king and I remarked just this last Friday that you know you've been away from Ireland too long when the Guinness outside of Ireland starts to taste good. Our Guinness at the local Irish pub-lookalike was tasting pretty good. . . .

second word and more

OK - help! I've started writing and can't shut up. . . . .

Here's the first bit:

There is a tension between an ethical teleological aim - a striving towards the ‘good life' or good purpose - and its deontological aim, namely the restriction imposed by the obligation to conform one’s action to what is ‘right’: the moral sense of what one ought to do in any given circumstance. This is not a new tension; it is very old. Aristotle dealt with it. Kant dealt with it. Hegel dealt with it. Then, coming more quickly now, Marx, Kiekegaard, Nietzsche, and William James all dealt with it. More recently, John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor and Paul Ricoeur have dealt - and are dealing - with it.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Socrates and Plato, for example, are not agnostic of the issue. Neither are any number of more recent moral philosophers and theologians who address issues bounded by questions of the ‘good’ and - or - the ‘right’.

Now - is one agnostic 'of'? or 'on' on issue?

achhhhh. . . . how boring can I get?!

CONSTRUCTIVE comments welcomed. (isn't this exciting?! OK - don't answer that.)

lavender green - reprise

ok - ok - I know! I'm supposed to be writing. . . .

I have the first word, though! It's: "The". Whaddaya think? Good, huh?

In the meantime, having found so much fun stuff lately on YouTube, I went to look for a lavender blue/lavender green rendition. I found this really cool band, above. Never heard of 'em before. Maybe I can check them out after I've written my second word. . . .

current circumstance summary

Having gotten the 'religious bit' out of my hair regarding the proper view of circumstances (see WARNING: explicit religious content) my current circumstances stack up as follows:

I love my king. He's just brought me tortilla chips & black bean/corn salsa AND a cheesey dip that I don't even like to think about what it might do to my arteries. . . . . this, to make up for the fact that I have to stay upstairs and work and not be downstairs with him and Emancipated Son #1 and wife of same, watching football and drinking beer.

Block party last night was great fun - although I spent the entire time talking about the dissertation. (People kept asking!) I also got two offers of help re: the 'next-step' I have in mind, A.D. (after-dissertation).

I read all I could about writing an introduction - including several examples I happen to have on hand - but have yet to actually write the first word of MY introduction. . . .

hold on a sec. . . .

No. That didn't work. I thought I might be able to knock off the first sentence (just to get it over with), so I went over to the word.doc that's supposed to be my Introduction and stared at it for about 10 minutes while I finished off my chips and the cheesey stuff. Which leads to the next current circumstance: I've gained 4 pounds.

No - really. I've gained 4 pounds. A reliable 4 pounds heavier on average for a week now. Gotta stop with the tortilla chips.

My brother is back from an undisclosed mountainous region in a time zone 9 and a half(?!!) hours different from Washington D.C. time, and it was really good to talk to him. I feel bad because I don't really understand his wife - or maybe it's that she doesn't understand me (but anyway there's not a whole lot of understanding going on) - and I know he wishes we were better friends. Me and his wife, that is. He and I are famous friends. Anyway, I know he wishes I talked more to her while he's gone, but we just don't. . . .

And now I have work to do. The king is doing the laundry (and he does this well) and is preparing food for the day and will be in charge of the meet/greet when the emancipated offspring arrive.

All I have to do is. sit. here. and. write. the. first. sentence.

How hard could that be? And how does how I get through it fit me for either heaven or hell? And does 'hell' - now - fit me for 'heaven' later?

I have so many questions. . . . .


funny. . . . I thought of the Supertramp song that asks so many questions, but searched under 'Question Song' rather than 'Logical Song' and came up with another old one from Moody Blues which is pretty damn appropriate, under the circumstances. . . .

good news - bad news

I hate it when people ask me which I want first, so I'll cut to the chase: the bad news is I still have some 20K more words to write. (This, in spite of the guidelines that say the dissertation should be 'concise' and that there is no minimum word count. . . .)

The good news is I have been reading about The Introduction (10% of the dissertation) and reviewing comments (now that I've stopped crying and can actually see - just kidding) which consistently ask for more summaries and forecasting introductions (which could take up another - say - 5K words, all told), leaving me with just the final chapter I've been agonizing over and some fill-in-the-blanks where Magda has surgically removed anything of current interest to anyone from existing chapters.

OK, OK. . . . she's not that bad. Actually, I begin to suspect that when I hand this in, my acknowledgments thanking her are going to be of the very, incredibly, sincerest variety because I begin to suspect that she is being my lifeline here and I've just been too dumb to see it.

So: this weekend is the Introduction.

Last night, I went through chapter headings and subheadings and looked at my outline and made some rather significant tweaks and it's actually looking somewhat coherent in a way I did not intend when I started this. (which is a scarey thought).

The other really cool thing is that this morning I woke up and had in my mind my next project - which is what I will need if I intend to continue on this research/writing sort of thing - and which fits amazingly well with a position I read about a month or two ago, was interested in, but couldn't figure out why they might be interested in me. I think I've figured out, now, why they would be - or at least why I hope (dream?) that they might be. . . .

I find this 'next step' aspect really encouraging, because I've been stuck so long on the current step, I'd lost all vision for the 'what next?' - the 'so what?' It's amazing what I'll put myself through if only I have a larger goal!

And now the really good news - in an immediate, shallow sort of self-gratifying way - it's after 5 pm, which means that the Oktober Fest down the street is in full swing and the beer is cold and the band is hot! (if you like oompah. . . . ) So I think it's time for a cold one; meet the neighbors; grab a wurst; try to talk some trivia.

and now a word from your sponsor

Stay tuned for further hair-raising, hair-pulling episodes as Prophet pulls through the final stages of finishing the dissertation.

Prophet is working on the overview this weekend, so wings are back on and she's soaring overhead, looking down. (Remember the scene from The Crystal Cave where a young Merlin learns about maps? Think that.) No boundaries, just the view of the roads already established, natural barriers, silly routings and dead-ends.

Once the journey has been charted - start here; end there - we'll follow her as she translates it to paper. Next week, we'll see how that mapquest plays in Peoria - OK, not Peoria, but overseas in Europe, which is even more exciting - and we'll see how she fares at the hands of Magda.

THEN - oh you're going to love this! - we'll start the countdown.

31 DAYS OF HELL. Take the amount of work still to be done, divide it by 31, and you can see the daily dose.

Tune in. Do.

. . . .here's wishing I could tune OUT. But hey! here, it really IS "all about me." That's the hell of it. And now, just for fun, a song from Chess that somehow came to mind from the earlier talk about maps and borders. . . . "my land's only borders lie around my heart." (aren't you glad I learned how to post videos? grin. . . .)

ashes to ashes. . . .

How I felt yesterday. The title, anyway. Ashes to Ashes. But I love the melody piping through this song. . . . It actually gives me a bit of a 'so what!?!' feeling. (if you haven't already - click 'play' above and then continue reading)

So. Yesterday. Started ok. Ended crap. More comments. Worse than the first. More reading ordered. More languages. More secondary sources. More "You can't say ________ without first ____________ [insert impossibly-high-hurdle].

It reminds me of James Michener, who seems incapable of starting stories except at the very beginning - giving entirely new meaning to the phrase "First, the earth cooled." Hawaii actually starts with stories of lava flow.

Michener pulls it off - barely - and not with everyone.

I'm not even interested in lava, or with 'first principles' or anything like that. We have words in our lexicon - let's use 'em. I don't feel the need - first - to reinvent language or investigate the basis upon which I talk about principles, values or even God. Unless, of course, it becomes apparent that we are not talking about the same thing!

And it's pretty *&^%$@@#! apparent me and. . . . let's call her Magda . . . . apparent me and Magda are NOT talking about the same thing!

sigh.

Well - the good news is that I got comments for the next chapter today, and they are - good. . . . - mostly! Or at least she says the chapter is good. . . . I haven't read the comments yet. I think I'll leave that till later. I don't need any further evidence of failures to understand. . . .

This week is apparently going to be all about wrenching feelings of inadequacy and incompetence. Not fun. Not for me. Not for anybody, I'm sure. But it is what it is. . . .

I cautiously approach the elephant in the room: Maybe I can't do this.

But I'll never know if I don't try, eh? I mean: Really Try. So. On I go.

Tuesday

. . . . and it's another new day, thank God.

I was pretty dejected all day yesterday, and accomplished nothing. I didn't even post wierd pictures or engage in diversionary ramblings! Actually, I pretty much shut down.

The king read the comments and told me there were 14 - or was it 16? - "goods". There's the very distinct possibility that I'm over-reacting. (do ya think?!) Anyway, today's a new day and I'm about to hit it, and finish the last chapter and send it on.

Meanwhile, this week is shaping up to be a tough one. I should be getting marked-up chapters by email each day. My tutor is of the German persuasion, so small talk and encouragement is not something she keeps on her usual palette of relationship tools. The other thing I realized yesterday is that her tense of choice appears to be something resembling the 'unreal conditional,' which I finally recognized tends to communicate "futility" to me. (which might be why I feel so bad so often right after I've talked to her. . . .) I must assume that it communicates something different to her, however, as she is continuing to work on this project and seems to expect that I will, as well.

It must be different in the German.

Anyway - still trying to figure out how to do things like put in YouTube clips - let's try this one more time. It being a Tuesday and all, how about a little Moody Blues, Tuesday Afternoon?



just the thing. . . .