deconstructive paralysis; or, my tumble and headlong freefall into the Symmes' hole

Ouch! Wyn eal gedreas! (The joy has died!)

Yeah...life has just unexpectedly demonstrated its ability to suddenly close in on humble, hopeless graduate students and transmitted the awareness (to said graduate students) that even if they put in twenty-two (22!) hour days for an entire week, they will still end up getting crushed. Our humble protagonists are then also graced with the simultaneous awareness that their awareness of the former in and of itself is really rather useless because they will inevitably end up blazing ahead and putting in 23.5 hour days...and when all is said, done, and insufficiently edited they will limp away feeling as though they could have done all that they have actually (objectively) managed to achieve in roughly three or four hours to the achievement of seemingly comparable end (though perhaps one which only achieves the illusory safe appearance of congruence in retrospect).

O' to be free to read Against the Day! O' to have written a better draft of my biotopography of Symmes! It was dreadful. In one place, I used the word 'promulgate' in a peculiar and...flat-out incorrect fashion. I had, at least to the best of my knowledge as gleaned by my senses, spent hours and hours writing this fantastic draft on a topic that alternately ravishes and rivets me. In short, I had the glowing, elusive sense of having made an important contribution to an underdeveloped region of the community of letters. Then it...all fell apart. It crumbled in my hands, really. I glanced up at the time in the upper right corner of my MacBook screen and six hours had passed. I was still writing nothing fast (the equivalent of "going nowhere fast" in écriture. At some point along the way the sun had set and my apartment was freezing. I had no idea what had happened during what appeared to be the last twenty pages.

Quel cauchemar! "Cauchemar" is the only mot to describe it. Et 'cauchemar' est masculin, non? [flush] J'oublie.

Anyway, I have to go and read Toni Morrison's Sula before going to my undergraduates' lecture. I have to teach the book tomorrow. "Oh great fun!" you exclaim. "Oh yes..." I reply in kind in a tone both wizened and wary. Maybe I'll write a Sula review tonight. We shall see...I just have this frantic progression of alternately warped, thorned, and luscious literary ideés roaring and splashing through the caverns of my cranium all times. Sometimes it's absolutely delightful and I love the world and everything in't...and then it's not...and then I see Benjamin Franklin at the Laundromat, which happened yesterday. I think he was doing Sudoku on a clipboard.

Hm. Well, in conclusion, I shall initiate a practice I shall call (dum, dum, dum) "Quoth Cate, the Wandering Americanist" or, I guess, QCtWA for I feel like cherishing and cultivating a relationship with the acronymic form (the most interesting and meaningful relationship I've had in years, to give you, dearest reader, a sense of the Wandering Americanist herself).

So. Today's QCtWA:
"Quaesivit arcana poli videt dei."

He sought the secret of the Pole
but found the secret face of God.
(Inscription, Scott Polar Institute, Cambridge)

and God kind of looked like...well..uh..this.