Swanning about

I've been swanning about again, heading home today from Albuquerque. It's been a full more-than-a-week. Am glad I did this New Mexico trip, though I'm ready to be home, need to be thinking and working and focused. I always get good movement on ideas and connections when I'm away, but need the home time to make something of it.

Spent the last five days in Albuquerque at a small conference, the division of the National Communications Association that concerns itself with social construction. It was a good reshaping place for me -- I always orbit the edges of this "real" academic world, the tenure track teaching/writing/publishing crowd. It pulls me into defining my work less from a studenty vague "some day I'll write some things" perspective and sharpens me into realizing I can do this now. Spending time in the Comms. discipline also reminds me of the deep multi-disciplinarity of my work, and underlines why straddling and lateral connections infuse my work -- am grateful I'm not a purist about eating food paid for by pharma companies, for example, unlike the guy who did his dissertation on the shifting discourse from impotence to erectile dysfunction. I liked him and his wife, both profs who do interesting work about commitment and performance and sexuality, but also realized how narrowly framed their worlds are in some ways.

The best part of this time here was L, my school friend who's becoming closer and closer. Funny that we sort of rubbed each other the wrong way when we first met, and now have such symbiosis. We're close on ideas, and I'm really happy to be her student reader, and I like her sharpness, her energy so much. She awes me, what she gets done in her life (three sons, one with severe cerebral palsy, an important job in a university, her research -- and she knows how to dance and let go). We had some giggly giggly can't-stop-laughing moments among our talk talk talk, and I love that we have that.

We spent the first couple of days at the beginning of the week in Santa Fe, with another school friend, and it just felt so RICH. We ate well, and hung out at K's, this crowded-in-so-many-senses sprawling ranch house (five teenagers, two tiny dogs, four adults, unbelievable flurry of art and antiques). Went to an exquisite spa in the mountains on Monday -- sat naked in the hot tub under the sky, dipped into a cold plunge pool, had hot stone massages. Talked and talked with these two smart, wise, funny, warm women. What a full life I'm leading.

And the opening note to my whole trip, last Saturday, Holly's wedding, the woman I met on a plane last summer, who spent the year in Afghanistan. Very pretty wedding. Some of the conventions give me the shivers (father presenting her to be married, introduced as Mr. and Mrs. with her husband's first and last name), but everyone there loves her very much, and it was lovely to be part of that crowd, and I'm just tickled about the ephemeral but durable part of the connection.

So many little plugs going into their sockets in my life, connections linking things together, electricity humming down the lines. Will get home late tonight, catch up with Darrell, who's been in Europe, see S for her birthday, do some work. Work on Monday, then drive off to ROC for a flying visit when F gets back from kayaking with his daughter in Maine. Work my ass off this week and deserve my planned weekend with F in TO. Somewhere in there I need to find me some client work, but it's all humming.