lazy blogger makes a list: the Unexpected.

Things I did not, really, expect to be doing, now or whenever:

-- Falling down a Julian of Norwich hole. [Holy shit.]

-- Letting go - at least temporarily - of the project that began as my M.A. dissertation, and not feeling more than a slight ache of regret. [I said to a teacher early this term that I thought I would write one more thing on this, because "I need to get it out of my system." I think I have got it out, or worked through the trauma, or whatever it is.]

-- Teaching Paradise Lost to undergraduates, even just for a day. [Frak frak frak frak frak frak frak. Or: did somebody say 'anxiety of influence'?]

-- Itching again to write about performance and nationhood, where my wee undergraduate self got her start and fell in love with the practice of early modernistry. [Heywood and the public theatre, this time, and good lord, so much cosier than effing Jonson and those effing masques.]

-- Straining only a little against emerging patterns that point me toward the study of drama above other forms. [I will have more to say about the how and why of this. But for contrast, see above, "Julian of Norwich" &c.]

-- Related: participating in a seminar at SAA. [Err... huh?]



Everything changes so rapidly; these early years of study have been heady for this reason. This perhaps has to do with a kind of thrill adjacent to that discussed below: an ecstatic acceleration - toward what is impossible to know - or (of?) accumulation. The Unexpected might be recompense for the Unconfronted. I must remember to enjoy it.