home again
The days have been cold but bright and yesterday, a light dusting of snow that by morning left no trace. The semester is winding down, at long last, and I feel like I am regaining bits of myself, energies that have been scattered and worn thin these past months.
I received some thoughtful and necessary notes on a manuscript that I had let languish for a long time. I am not quite ready to return to it with any intentionality or seriousness, but when I am, I think I know how I might proceed. I almost don't recognize the person I was when I started writing it, the person I was, even a year ago, when I thought it might be done. I look at it now, and see how loose and baggy it is. How little focus. I am so out of practice. I am reminded of Joan Didion's observation about wanting to stay in contact with the past selves through diaries and notebooks, and I believe it, but I am not quite sure yet what to do with what I see.
The weeks ahead promise some sustenance. Filling the well. Little projects that have been put on hold, stitching, mending, taking care of neglected things. M. is threatening a real holiday "bonanza" and I am excited to see it. Hoping too for a slow return to daily writing, the throat-clearing, the wool-gathering, getting it all down.
The creative work of teaching has caught me a bit by surprise. I have come to think of course design a bit like book design, or "project" development. A prologue of sorts, orienting ourselves together. Then thinking of the semester in parts — by theme or technique or concept, each section building on the last, gaining momentum. A graceful kind of summing up that doesn't foreclose possibility or future direction, but instead, opens out to new questions, new practices. It is taxing, of course — the interpersonal dynamics, the energy of the classroom — and seemingly endless administrative tasks can dull the excitement of even the most generative and energizing of days. But I suppose I am surprised, in the end, how well it suits me. How it brings together all these disparate capacities I have developed over the years in various forms. Grateful to be doing work that gives and demands so much of me, after decades of feeling so adrift professionally, so unmoored. A strange and unexpected returning home to the spaces that formed me, creatively, intellectually. To settle a bit into the familiar shapes and pathways. And also to see them anew.
