Pink Moon Summation
The last New Moon was 14 days ago. Only two weeks, as it ever is, but two weeks during which this scholar felt like she was being filled up to overflowing with thoughts thoughts thoughts. Useful thoughts, ridiculous thoughts, try-hard thoughts, I’ve-gotta-change-my-ways thoughts, not enough filmy pretty thoughts, no juicy thoughts, just in-for-mation. I’m overextended, to no real purpose, and until this morning (wah what a bad sleep from all that moonlight) I felt so pressured that if I whistled I’m sure steam would have come out. All this round and round in the mental space. And nothing concrete to show for it.
For much of the last fortnight (we really ought to go back to measuring by fortnights–fornights linked to the MOON cycle how romantic is that–) my thoughts were:
I’m so behind. Oh god, I’m a fool, I’m so behind.
There is no space to breathe. There is no space between. There are too many things to take in, to read and to know. Do we exist to shove down material, material, information even if it comes in the form of great knowledge, cool science, or classic books?
No. We need to breathe and have an experience. We need space to be wrong and foolhardy.
I felt like all the space was being pressed out of my life.
Luckily, extremely luckily, it appears to have mostly been a celestial phenomenon. I feel better today. Today—there is time. Time to do all the needful tasks, and a few dollops of sitting on the balcony feeling the sun’s rays after a long winter (think back– you can’t remember the beginning of it, can you?) and to write a tidbit extra. Thank goodness. If I don’t have a good waffle every once and awhile I feel I’m going to burst. And at this point in the Corona-quarantine I have pretty much verbally expressed every potential thing that I have to say, so better write it.
Let’s structure this waffle-post into three sections:
- Celebration
- Preparation / Illumination
- Exploration
1. Celebration:
On March 28, 2020 this blog celebrated being 1 year old! That’s really amazing, mostly to me. I can’t believe I have kept it going–I can’t believe I have been brave enough to write in public. I am so, so happy that it has been available for me to let some of my extra words out upon. It has been so necessary. It’s been a joy. It has helped me do that thing–you know, that thing they call “finding your voice.” It isn’t fully found yet, but it’s a very interesting personal search.
Do I have any plans for this blog? No. It’s not a side-hustle, and I am not a brand. Just that it continues to exist.
2.a. Preparation:
I just want to wheeze on a tiny bit more about my work-worries. 1) There is SO much more that I need to know, before I am done this PhD. Whew. That is terrifying but needs to be said. 2) I cannot believe how much TIME it takes to understand something—to be sure about even the most “basic” things.
I have come to the point where I have to justify the reasoning underpinning the corpus of texts I have chosen to work on. Of course, I have been working hard to understand theses texts for years, I hit upon my method of gathering data from them in late 2017, but in order to write this section of my thesis with authority I need to have read ALL the books and ALL their footnotes. I need to comb through my database, which already has 4,000 entries multiple times to track the museum numbers of specific objects. I need to check and re-check. And it is taking FOREVER.
All of this has to be done, in order to prove assertions that I started working from, years ago. But I couldn’t have worked out every parameter beforehand, years ago I wasn’t able to even ask the questions I am asking now, or see the potential problems other, more knowledgeable people might see. When it’s night and you can’t see farther than your own hand, you just stumble onward until you hit something.
Somehow, I thought this fact-checking process would not have taken as long as it has, it has eaten the last fortnight and will consume at least another. So I must bow to the reality that I will be fortunate if this “Provenance Problem” is fully sorted out by the end of April. I need to know it all, every word and number that has been printed regarding these objects, or someone will find a hole, and so much may crumble. I am a bit antsy, this seems such basic work—and I have been working off my assumptions for years, they have worn into comforting certitudes. However,only in the last week did I find 8 more rogue tablets which must be added to my corpus—Dios mío that comes from not reading a footnote fully. Comforting assumptions are not enough—I must get to the bottom of it all. Goodbye April—you too are vanishing into the mist.
2.b. Illumination:
A couple posts ago, I wrote about the blissful occurrence I have experienced, and one which I (desperately) hoped would come again, that of “every four months or so the clouds part and I realize something new about my work.” Well, that has kind of happened again, I have had a small breakthrough in the foreground while I have been chopping wood for my database in the background. The clouds parted—and I realized something that might have been obvious to any casual observer—but I have been looking at things too closely. I’ll paraphrase: basically, I have been “saving” all my history facts regarding a particular ancient city for ages, with the intention to write them up as the first chapter of my thesis, in actuality, as the introduction to it.
This past week, as the moon waxed, I realized: my thesis is called “Early Sumerian at Ancient City X”; it’s not called “Here’s a History of Ancient City X.” Good grief. I don’t have to, and I shouldn’t, write a long-winded introductory chapter treading all the ground several others have been over before. I only need to write a neat synopsis on Early Sumerian. (This will in fact be extremely “neat” in terms of “one whisky please, neat” because we do not know much about Early Sumerian). It will also be a hell of a lot more interesting (and that comes from someone in love with history) because I will be writing about what we don’t know, the questions we still seek to pose, which are so much more exciting, like tight-roping without a net.
So the clouds scudded out of the way and in a flash I saw: that writing about the language under consideration will create a much more useful introduction to a thoroughly philological dissertation. (The lovingly collected historical facts will be worked in at relevant junctures).
Sometimes you don’t know until you know.
3. Exploration:
Well, now that you have had (and even I have had) enough chat about my thesis and my budget (thank you it’s been very cathartic) I will give a quick recap of the books I have been looking into. I’m not going to overload myself in any way, this is a time for letting it all fall apart after all. I’m hearing “My Life in Middlemarch” on Audiobook, which is a memoir I listen to while cleaning or cooking; it’s interesting. I plan to write more about Middlemarch on this blog–I’m not done with it.
What I am done with is Lincoln in the Bardo, whoa, it is WAY too sad. And hits too close to home, reading it would be a misery. Not gonna do it, stopped it and will put it in the zu verschenken. Although it’s not like I wish that misery on the person who picks it up…Well, it has to go out of our house, that’s all. I guess it was interesting and experimental, but nope, not for me.
I have started kind of a silly thing, the DORKIEST thing really, let’s see where I get to. I’m going to sort of (and not if it gets too taxing) work through Shakespeare’s English History plays. Why? Who knows. But night is the time when we dance and bounce about! So…the time is now.
I am actually reading the major tome that is The Mirror and the Light, by Hillary Mantel—this may have suggested my Shakespeare fancy to me, or else something is in the air…I’m barely a quarter of the way in, and I am already rationing this book. I am trying NOT to read it. I want to make it last longer. I think it is the best written of the Trilogy, maybe the plot of Wolf Hall has faster wheels, but the prose…it’s just…sooooo intricate. I do not know how it was created—well, it is clear that it was woven. And it is beautiful, not dull at all although distilled from approximately one million droplets of impression and memory. I suppose if I only read this, my year is complete. But I am craving something for afters, something light light light. Powder light. Cotton-candy airy.
Let me know if you have any suggestions. If not, I put my trust in quarterly flashes of insight.
