To-Do 12/2: energized!
Dec. 2nd, 2011 09:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thesisorbustYesterday I set the goal of finishing Elizabeth and Essex, and then I finished it! Whoo! This meant in practice reading about 170 pages in one day, which was about 100 pages more than my previous records over the last two weeks; I'm really proud that I was able to do it.
I went out last night for a drink with a pal of mine, and talking to her also helped me to feel more company and solidarity in writing/being afraid/having no money; she's a great friend and I need to be in touch with her more so that we can encourage each other (also I gave her this blog address. Hi G!)
Then this morning I had an 8:30am meeting with my advisor M, and we had a great conversation, and talked excitedly about Virginia Woolf together (Her: "Have you read Flush?" Me: "I ordered it! I'm waiting for it to arrive! Did you know it was serialized in The Atlantic at the same time as The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas?") and I read her a great passage from Lytton Strachey, and it was a pretty good meeting overall. She also assured me that theses don't have to be all that long - I was thinking 200-220 pages, and she said even 150 is cool, and that in fact shorter is better if you want to get things published. Sooooo that's good to know!
Energized! But sleepy from getting up so early! Odd combination!
To-Do List:
1)Walk the dog
2)Have 8:30am meeting with M
3)Start reading Three Lives
4)Make notes on Elizabeth and Essex
5)Clean the house a bit
6)Do some laundry
7)Cook the chicken and sweet potatoes in the fridge
8)Walk the dog again
9)Email schedule to M
10)Email department admin person about jobs per M's advice
I thought I'd also write down this passage from Strachey's Elizabeth and Essex, which when I read it was so beautiful and so in line with what I'm doing that I almost fell over. In the margins of the book, above this passage, my note says "this goes in my goddamn thesis introduction," because it does. If you're interested in what I'm doing, this is what I'm doing.
"The age - it was that of Marlowe and Spenser, of the early Shakespeare and the Francis Bacon of the Essays - needs no description: everybody knows its outward appearances and the literary expressions of its heart. More valuable than descriptions, but what perhaps is unattainable, would be some means by which the modern mind might reach to an imaginative comprehension of those beings of three centuries ago - might move with ease among their familiar essential feelings - might touch, or dream that it touches (for such dreams are the stuff of history) the very 'pulse of the machine.' But the path seems closed to us. By what art are we to worm our way into those strange spirits, those even stranger bodies? The more clearly we perceive it, the more remote that singular universe becomes. With very few exceptions - possibly with the single exception of Shakespeare - the creatures in it meet us without intimacy; they are exterior visions, which we know, but do not truly understand."
ISN'T THAT AMAZING. Worm our way into those strange spirits, those even stranger bodies. Oh god. It's like a gift from the dissertation gods. I read this like five days ago and I'm still SO EXCITED by it. Queer biography and queer historiography YAY.
I went out last night for a drink with a pal of mine, and talking to her also helped me to feel more company and solidarity in writing/being afraid/having no money; she's a great friend and I need to be in touch with her more so that we can encourage each other (also I gave her this blog address. Hi G!)
Then this morning I had an 8:30am meeting with my advisor M, and we had a great conversation, and talked excitedly about Virginia Woolf together (Her: "Have you read Flush?" Me: "I ordered it! I'm waiting for it to arrive! Did you know it was serialized in The Atlantic at the same time as The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas?") and I read her a great passage from Lytton Strachey, and it was a pretty good meeting overall. She also assured me that theses don't have to be all that long - I was thinking 200-220 pages, and she said even 150 is cool, and that in fact shorter is better if you want to get things published. Sooooo that's good to know!
Energized! But sleepy from getting up so early! Odd combination!
To-Do List:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
10)
I thought I'd also write down this passage from Strachey's Elizabeth and Essex, which when I read it was so beautiful and so in line with what I'm doing that I almost fell over. In the margins of the book, above this passage, my note says "this goes in my goddamn thesis introduction," because it does. If you're interested in what I'm doing, this is what I'm doing.
"The age - it was that of Marlowe and Spenser, of the early Shakespeare and the Francis Bacon of the Essays - needs no description: everybody knows its outward appearances and the literary expressions of its heart. More valuable than descriptions, but what perhaps is unattainable, would be some means by which the modern mind might reach to an imaginative comprehension of those beings of three centuries ago - might move with ease among their familiar essential feelings - might touch, or dream that it touches (for such dreams are the stuff of history) the very 'pulse of the machine.' But the path seems closed to us. By what art are we to worm our way into those strange spirits, those even stranger bodies? The more clearly we perceive it, the more remote that singular universe becomes. With very few exceptions - possibly with the single exception of Shakespeare - the creatures in it meet us without intimacy; they are exterior visions, which we know, but do not truly understand."
ISN'T THAT AMAZING. Worm our way into those strange spirits, those even stranger bodies. Oh god. It's like a gift from the dissertation gods. I read this like five days ago and I'm still SO EXCITED by it. Queer biography and queer historiography YAY.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-02 05:01 pm (UTC)That passage makes me all flushed, oooohhh.