Fragments of busyness, many of them – as I move through the overlapping needs of our exam period, various scattered administrative tasks, applying for a promotion, applying for a job elsewhere – and move towards research leave.
Reading unusually alert books (though still not books about AIDS, which I probably need to be reading right now): the brilliant, complex James McCourt, who now has seven books (and that gives me hope – given that his first book was in 1975, and he seemed to vanish for years, even decades, his sudden productivity since 2000 is heartening), and the less skillful but still pleasant John Connolly. (Yes, and they're both Irish – tells you something about language, thinking, and the pleasant facility of the Erse.)
Odd moments of alertness, of waking up or noticing – something, as though I'm being told things – or as though the possibility of noticing, of being aware of where I am, of when it is in my life, is always there, but suddenly I actually register it. I turn my head, and it's like waking from a dream – except there is no dream, and I'm already awake: and I can't quite remember what I just realized, what I saw out of the corner of my mind's eye.
Tonight, thinking: three days and sixteen hours until my official research leave starts. (Okay, the real change over to being on leave will be fuzzier than that, but it's a goal to head for.) And the thought: I'm waiting for... my research leave? or, I'm waiting for...
nothing?
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