Dr C, party of one

A few weeks ago, Renee commented that I seemed to be revisiting a lot of long-ago stories in my blog, lately. I guess that's part of what we do when we're in the middle of some kind of transition -- scan our pasts to kind of recreate the coherent thread, look at the most resonant bits from a different angle and suddenly see a new constellation.

I'm at the airport heading for my crazy trip to Europe for the week, this indulgent little pilgrimage to the part of germany I lived in when I was a kid. I can't quite articulate what moves me to do this, exactly, except it's something about drawing a line under some stories and patterns from my history that still have too strong a watermark, and about going back to the place where I was pretty strongly formed just as I'm trying to shape the next life. I don't expect some kind of Exorcising of Demons -- it's not that dramatic -- more like circling back through space that's as echoing as being in interaction with people I've known for decades.

This eve-of-the-journey is a demarcation between three days in south florida for a conference with my colleagues J&D and my little spree into germany by myself. The florida conference was a cool tonic -- the time before I left was pretty overheated on a number of fronts, and it was a pure joy to be able to just absorb and listen and talk and muse at this conference. I knit a sock through most of it -- cast it on in the opening plenary and finished the gusset decreases on the plane -- and the sock became kind of iconic, even making it into the final conference slide show.

The knitting gave me a chance to feel my way through that space, a possible offshoot tribe of my fielding world. I had the honour of being named an Associate of the Institute, and now I'm plotting about collaborations, and workshops, and writings and links. But for now, just good to open doors, and reflect hard on how happy I am with the person I seem to be able to be post-doc. So many threads, all of them red and potentially powerful. Feeling space to keep growing into.

No pics of the conference (or the sock), since my dialogue with technology has been a bit monologic and profane this week. My phone has been turning itself off and draining the battery, there was almost no wifi where we were (even the phones didn't work), and I forgot my camera cable. But I'm tickled by the juxtaposition of current-future-me bobbing in the ocean in Sarasota and (badly) salsa dancing with social constructionists on Saturday and landing in Heidelberg and pelting down the autobahn on Monday. So more when time.