Hurray!!!

So, my good friend and co-worker successfully defended her field exam today. I am so proud! She is one of those people that I can't remember what life was like before I met them. (Pardon the grammer.) It's been an awesome two years, doppelganger. Congratulations!

Now you get to help me write my thesis. (lol)

Lasts

Today I turned in my last seminar paper and went to my last class. This was sad and happy all at the same time. I keep thinking, I don't know how to do this. And I know the longer I think the fewer choices I will have. I'm better at leaving when there is a clear geographical break. When there are a few continents in between you and where you want to be and who you want to be with, it is much easier to know that, hey, you really can't go home. So this is a new experience. How do I leave when I don't want to go that far? I like these people. I like this place. (Well, Philadelphia and Villanova. I am quite ready to move off the Mainline.)

I don't like not knowing things.

How many "Friday" parodies can there be?

The answer: a lot. And most of them are really clever. (The Ravenclaw parody maybe my current favorite, since I fancy myself a Ravenclaw, although the Good Friday version was really funny also.)

It is crunch time.

I had to train my replacement today.

Maybe this will be good for my writing, because I am good at writing, and I can immerse myself in it.

I have to do so many things. I don't know if I can. I don't know if I want to.

So, back to writing. Crappy, crappy text. (I know I am hard on myself. But what else can I do?)

Figures

I've become slightly obsessed with time travel lately. Probably because it would be SO nice to hop ahead a wee bit in time and make sure everything turns out okay...

Also, it would be nice to have an infinite amount of time to write. And perfect. I hate imperfection.

Sunshine

It has been a long week or so since I last posted.

Full confession: I really hoped I'd missed the deadline to apply to walk in graduation. Then I wouldn't have to decide, even though I would have decided through my indecision. (And I could also be filled with life-long regret, because that's just how I roll sometimes.) But I got a reminder email and figured it was a sign that I should fill out the form and then I felt much better about everything, in some ways. So no regret about that, I guess. I just hate feeling like an orphan charity case at these things.

Anyway. Same day I met with my advisor and he was like, prospectus almost ready! This is kind of terrifying. Now I have to defend it. And get criticism! Eek! However, I need to do that, and I'm kind of excited too. (I mean, I really do like my thesis topic. Kind of a lot. Which makes the potential criticism that much scarier. But, but, but. That's part of the deal. Learning to be comfortable with imperfections kind of sucks. Learning how to write and rewrite has probably been one of the hardest things to keep on learning this grad school experience.)

It just feels like everything has shifted into hyperspeed. At least the sun and warmer weather has decided to show up more often.

Time Warp

The first thing I noticed as we drove to Central PA was the loneliness. People like to talk about the beauty of the countryside, and whole movements have been centered around the idea of the purity of nature compared to the wickedness of the cities and the need to "get back to nature" and beauty and all that. I can see it, but I can't feel it. Because what I felt driving through and what I remember feeling from when I lived out there was the loneliness. You can go for a long time between farm houses. People cluster along the highways like they are rivers, connections to other places. Lifelines. Not for me.

It was interesting in other ways too. Like when a cashier asked for my phone number and I realized that my area code would not be strange to her at all, as it is when I give it to people in the Philly area. I guess we always carry pieces of our past with us. I enjoyed seeing college friends that I hadn't seen in ages. But it was also bittersweet as we realized that next year, given visas and job needs, we might be really and truly scattered. I had not realized how many of the people I was counting on to be in the Philly area might not be here in a few months. We kept talking about transitions. Transitions transitions.

And now for a quick book review: Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor is one of the best books I have ever read. I came across this author's name years ago in a blog post about the dearth of fantasy and sci fi written by writers of color. But my library in Central PA had never heard of Okorafor, so I put her on a list to read in the future. When I saw her latest book in a Borders that was closing, I decided to take a risk and purchase before I read. I am so glad I did, even though it meant I got even less sleep than usual. Who Fears Death deals with a lot of hard and horrifying topics; the main character is born of rape and the main impetus for her heroic journey is to save her people from complete genocide. The magic is unique and the characterizations complex and vivid. I don't want to keep rambling... I'm going to track down Okorafor's other books the minute I have freedom from my thesis, haha. (Another motivator. I'm so good at finding new motivations. You'd think I'd be beyond done by now!)

Circles

So I find myself heading back to Central PA today. I really don't know how I feel about it, but I've been refusing to visit friends who live there and I finally just felt like I was being rude in continually saying no. Also, I confess to some morbid curiosity. Who will I be when I get there? Will the place remember me? We'll see. Letting go takes a long time.

Also, I fear that my committee thinks I have given up on my thesis. Not true, although I did (for an extremely brief moment) seriously consider failing on purpose so I could take another class in the fall. I decided that paying for the class would be the better course of action! There is a visiting scholar that I want to learn from, altho frankly, even if there hadn't been the visiting scholar, there is a chance I would have shown up for classes anyway, to visit. Have I mentioned I have a hard time letting go? haha.

So life is interesting. We'll see what happens.

I watched "Mother and Child" last night. It was a moving film. I cried (not unusual). But I wonder, why, why, why, do the majority of films/books/etc that focus on women deal with their childbearing status? This movie was filled with women who had babies, who couldn't have babies, who you assumed didn't want babies, and yet, in the end, babies were all that mattered. I enjoyed it, like I said, but I was extremely bemused by the "bitch" character who explicitly stated a desire to never ever have children ever suddenly being like I WANT THIS BABY when she unexpectedly gets pregnant and then she turns into a Nice Lady because of motherhood. I dunno. It was just like... where did that come from? The transformation was too sudden. There were some other narrative issues (one story line just, disappeared completely), but overall, it was a thoughtful film and I enjoyed it.

Thoughts (of the emo variety. Still. I know.)

I probably will go to graduation. When I expressed my vehement plan to NOT GO, one of my friends was aghast. "But you love your department! Your professors will all be there!" And it is true that both of those are strong motivators, but also reasons that make me not want to go because I don't like endings. So we'll see.

It's just such a weird transition, I suppose. I'm not quite sure what to do with myself.

I've been sitting in the library for hours trying to write cover letters and in that time about ten students have come and chatted with me, so I guess I did something right here! Now I just need to snap out of the "If I can't have THIS I don't want ANYTHING" and figure out what the real grief is and not let it dehabilitate me. Blah blah blah. Same old same old.