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Forks and hope
Dec. 18th, 2010 12:51 amI mislaid my lists. I'm sure there were other things I had to do today, but I worked through piles of paper in lieu of those lists. Someone consulted with me about a writing project. I dinner partied (before ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
desperanceasks: chicken and pinenut and spinach sausages, silverbeet from a friend's garden sauted with garlic and lemon, salad, pear and rhubarb icecream, malmsey, Louisianan coffee and chicory - it was a night for simple food).
Mostly, though, I worked my way through about thirty articles and interviews and two small books. They didn't advance me much, but at least I've read them. I added about ten notes to my new pile of notes and realised that this weekend I can finish with all my piles of outstanding books and papers except the historiography ones (for which I'm simply not ready yet) and the close studies (which don't need to be finished until the end of January. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, because I keep reading and thinking and my research doesn't seem to progress. This is just a stage things are at and it will get better, but it's chosen a week to happen where life is a bit stalled in general. Life imitating the structure of a novel, really.
Also today (part of having dinner) we watched the most recent Indiana Jones movie. I was full of snark. This fullness of snark is why I'm merely philosophical about thirty articles and interviews and two books producing such a paltry number of notes.
I have five other movies in a stack, all of which are unlikely to produce anything less than vast snark, just waiting for other days when a lot of hard work seems to produce nothing. I'm perfectly happy to share the watching of movies and the snark and feed friends coffee and alcohol (though I'm now out of malmsey) - just ask and I might even reveal the five other movies I consider snarkworthy.
It's days like this when I realise that I've done this before. I borrowed those six movies from Donna and piled them ready, in the knowledge that such days were very likely at this stage of my doctorate. It's not just that I've done it before, though. It's that I know so many people who've done doctorates and novels (and even doctorates with novels). Some of the stages apparently have graven themselves deeply enough into me that I prepared for the need to be snarky.
Last time round, from memory, I did it by annoying folks with Lewis Carroll recitations - the truly unlucky were forced to listen to stories of boojums. The victims of my recitations were international students and I had convinced them that this was important to their cultural understanding of Australia. My understanding of snark has obviously developed over time.
Way back then, I could recite Jabberwocky in French and the first stanza in German (Martin Gardner was required reading in my family when I was a child). I carried both French and German versions with me for most of AussieCon, in the expectation that I would have much time alone and could remind myself. The papers ended crumpled and forlorn until I gave one away in a moment of boldness. That's another story, and an unfinished one, too, because this year has been so very odd.
desperanceasks: chicken and pinenut and spinach sausages, silverbeet from a friend's garden sauted with garlic and lemon, salad, pear and rhubarb icecream, malmsey, Louisianan coffee and chicory - it was a night for simple food). Mostly, though, I worked my way through about thirty articles and interviews and two small books. They didn't advance me much, but at least I've read them. I added about ten notes to my new pile of notes and realised that this weekend I can finish with all my piles of outstanding books and papers except the historiography ones (for which I'm simply not ready yet) and the close studies (which don't need to be finished until the end of January. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, because I keep reading and thinking and my research doesn't seem to progress. This is just a stage things are at and it will get better, but it's chosen a week to happen where life is a bit stalled in general. Life imitating the structure of a novel, really.
Also today (part of having dinner) we watched the most recent Indiana Jones movie. I was full of snark. This fullness of snark is why I'm merely philosophical about thirty articles and interviews and two books producing such a paltry number of notes.
I have five other movies in a stack, all of which are unlikely to produce anything less than vast snark, just waiting for other days when a lot of hard work seems to produce nothing. I'm perfectly happy to share the watching of movies and the snark and feed friends coffee and alcohol (though I'm now out of malmsey) - just ask and I might even reveal the five other movies I consider snarkworthy.
It's days like this when I realise that I've done this before. I borrowed those six movies from Donna and piled them ready, in the knowledge that such days were very likely at this stage of my doctorate. It's not just that I've done it before, though. It's that I know so many people who've done doctorates and novels (and even doctorates with novels). Some of the stages apparently have graven themselves deeply enough into me that I prepared for the need to be snarky.
Last time round, from memory, I did it by annoying folks with Lewis Carroll recitations - the truly unlucky were forced to listen to stories of boojums. The victims of my recitations were international students and I had convinced them that this was important to their cultural understanding of Australia. My understanding of snark has obviously developed over time.
Way back then, I could recite Jabberwocky in French and the first stanza in German (Martin Gardner was required reading in my family when I was a child). I carried both French and German versions with me for most of AussieCon, in the expectation that I would have much time alone and could remind myself. The papers ended crumpled and forlorn until I gave one away in a moment of boldness. That's another story, and an unfinished one, too, because this year has been so very odd.