Open windows

The window is open on very overcast skies, my oven is on, and I'm actually *cooking dinner* for the second time in three days. Even more impressively, I'm cooking dinner *for myself*, and making enough to have leftovers.

Today, labour day, the notorious first day of "new resolutions" for all of us who actually looked forward to going back to school, got excited about pencil crayons and empty scribblers and pristine mathbooks, was a good recalibrating day for me... on all sorts of fronts. After a weekend of both some excess and just a little too much socializing (all of it *good*, mind you), I've been completely quiet today. Reading, working on a paper, making comments on a chapter my friend P wrote for a book on transformational learning, lying on the couch reading Bitch, emailing Important People, hanging out a little bit with my online friends.

Inside my loft, the space feels restful, finally, in counterpoint to the agitated outside, the busy market, the grim skies (tail end of Ernesto), the fighter planes flying around aimlessly for the airshow down at the lake. (Sidebar -- what IS this anachronistic display of "might" about? We HAVE no military planes to speak of -- why are they zipping around showing off tandem dives when, presumably, we're over-committed in a war already? The air show thing always evokes my childhood moments on the airfield at the base in Baden, me in my brownie uniform shaking hands with Prince Philip while the mounties rode through their paces, other Exciting Moments with planes darting about. These are probably the same planes that created awe in 1974).

Today, 10 years ago, was the day A and I got possession of our house. I can't imagine having predicted a decade ago where I'd be on September 4, 2006. In some ways, I don't know where I am, of course -- but I can see some of the paths that are taking shape, starting to be shaded vividly in, all past this milestone date of January 08 when I am aiming to be done the phd. The dissertation proposal is in my committee's hands right now, with a conversation planned for next Monday -- my life will get new organization around that once it's approved. Eek. So exposing, sending that proposal out into the world, such fragile ideas.

One of the things I've been doing this week is rereading two of my favourite John Irving books -- Garp and Hotel New Hampshire. Both are heavy handed, Hotel in particular, which doesn't stand up to the joy it gave me in my early 20s -- but I obviously gravitated to it this week for a reason -- the aphoristic messages of pursuit and purpose: life is serious but art is fun; the leitmotif of the perfect ending of gatsby and the green light, and the ending he set up to rival Fitzgerald's: "Coach Bob knew it all along -- you've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. You've got to keep passing the open windows."

I feel the dissertation worming its way into my soul, singing along with other barely sketched out dreams, making me obsess in all the right ways. More green tea, more home-cooked meals, more time making this place feel like a space for Real Work.