Fragments

I was talking to a client I haven't seen for a while today, and I told him that my graduation date is August 2. He said "wow, I can't believe you're almost done -- it's the only thing that's been consistent for you as long as I've known you." He tagged right into the core, there -- I think the identity story of student has has shaped almost everything for so long that everything is loosened now. Being a student gives me a reason to spend half my time not working on client stuff, flitting back and forth across the border, framing myself as learning and therefore not Finished (and maybe not fully accountable for things?). Framing myself as distinct.

I'm so close to finishing, and people keep asking me if I feel good and I just feel... numb. It's all tangled up with loss, and not having a shaped sense of who I can be WITH a phd, and how it could have meaning for who I could become. I started this process because I wanted to expand ... something. And I don't know if I feel expanded... just... more multiple. Do I feel I've "become a phd"? My life has certainly shifted -- but most of the time now I feel more articulate in explaining what I do so badly.

I think I've lost the habit -- if I ever had it -- of being happy. I have so many shiny pieces --I have a lover who makes my blood rush faster and who is complex, makes me stretch further. I've had multiple clients from my past show up this week saying "I need your wisdom." I have more than a lifetime's worth of friends who delight in and love me and give me so much. I have a woman in my life who was my lover for 14 years and who awes me with her ability to reshape that love. I can climb mountains, and ride bicycles far and fast. I have work partners who are unbelievably strong and meshed with what I need -- and who can tell me that they love me, who finish my thoughts when I fumble, who make me laugh. I am finishing a phd that I worked hard for and I think is a GOOD piece of work -- and can build on it. And I don't know how to fuse all of these pieces together into a mosaic of stained glass and light.

My thesis chair quoted this Raymond Carver poem to me a little while ago, and it stuck:

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

I don't lack for love. I need to learn to feel beloved.

Often comments on husband's strength and masculinity.

33 As a 1930s wife, I am Poor Take the test!

Flowing and drawn

If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
-- Elizabeth Bishop


**

Still rewriting, realizing I've elevated this massive document to another level but now the second half isn't coherent with the elevation I've done... no time to fully rewrite, so contemplating a somewhat schizophrenic version where I think I understand my work now better than is reflected in the written document. I guess that's better than some alternatives.

Panic slowly subsiding, but still feeling drawn, a little tongue-burnt, wondering why I can't do all of this without such intense emotion.

Back to the writing.