Crossing Frontiers

Crossing Frontiers

My week – my double-stuffed-with-cream-rich week among my tribe is done… a very good space, as always, affirming, provoking, tweaking, in all possible ways. I leave national sessions every time a sharper person, operating in some more complex set of neuron firings and noticings and connections.

So many vignettes and stories all woven together in this chaotic, high-octane system. Hours of conversation with Linda and her flint sharp mind, roving over the territory of both of our studies, our theoretical base flushed out and located, Such thinking-with support from my faculty guys. A committee meeting that pushed me to the next level on my dissertation. Presenting to the newbies on social construction, feeling myself living it. Talking talking talking, a multilogue of ideas resident as much in the system between us as in ourselves, talking concepts with Jan before our heads are off the pillows. Intellectual gluttony, almost disembodied, bodies that are just thoughts and hugging and glasses of red zinfandel. Running in the heat to assimilate it all, celebrating the grads at the end of the week and dancing barefoot into the night. Support in our village.

Of course there’s some lunacy – I was nonplussed by a reaction to one piece of work I did, where a pretty searing analysis of my own failings of moral authority and engagement with my identity was met with the observation of “cute.” And we sometimes pay hyper-attention to the ebbs and flows of energy, reading friendship rifts and minor tears where they’re really indiscernible. (Someone I care about and had noticed nothing but support from apologized for an “act of micro-aggression” she’d committed on me). Some frustrating clashes of epistemology. But… these are the inconsequential fissures of an unprecedented kind of community of practice, where we work on making the social worlds we believe are possible.

I left with some clear deadlines and a sharp sense of purpose and timing. Frank and Barnett pushed me to timelines and deliverables and it’s all good. I feel grounded in my project and am aiming at my graduation date of January 08 in Santa Barbara with a strong sense of purpose.

I’m pondering all of the frontiers crossed since I started this program. I was emailing Beth from my treo while I was eating breakfast at a (shudder) TGIFridays at the airport this morning. She replied, I never in a million years, 5 years ago – 2 years ago, even – would have believed that you would ever send me an email, “I’m in Washington DC on my blackberry in one of the most Americanist food chains in Ronald Reagan airport.” I would add to that, “on my way home to touch base briefly and then rush off again for a squeezed in overnight date with my male lover who lives in NY state.”

So many boundaries opened up, edges rubbed open. Two literal border crossings in one day, identity frameworks bursting apart, stories full of possibilities written. Navigating the hyphens.