Suspended Inanimation

I am in a state of suspended inanimation. I'm just not in the mood to work on Derrida and Stein tonight. Surprising really. So, in an effort to trick myself into writing, I am going to write about not being able to write about my paper.

For instance, I'm not going to tell you that Derrida's tracings of the etymological definition for "archive" leads to a discussion of an archive as being both a physical location housing physical things but with a rich textual history. I won't describe how Derrida's own lecture about Freud's archive leads to his analysis of Freud's Pleasure Principle and the Death Drive that are always already in constant conflict and in constant colaboration. I won't tell you how in focusing on Freud's text, he in a way inscribes himself into history. I won't tell you how I will use this reading of the Archive as a lens with which to read Stein's _Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas_ as her own textual archive. I won't explain how Stein's text, and indeed her physical archive, both say something about the way we are obsessed with archiving.

Now I'm lost again. How in the world will I manage this beast with two backs--haha--at least I can still make myself laugh with an allusion to Eliot who alluded to -- bible? Dante? Yeats? I can't remember.

The Spring is here . . .and I'm in here

I have nothing profound to say today. At least nothing that language can help me articulate. And yet, I type on. I type in this room, less cheerful today since a certain someone is missing from it. This room, this room, I think inhaling sharply, aware of the quiet hum from the humidifier, the squeak of the door as it labors open to fill this vacuum of student energy with one more, one more and re-opens begrudgingly to allow one less and one less. The clicking of the keyboards alone verifies that actual work is being done, but so much work in graduate school remains abstract, remains in the void, bouncing around and within our eager heads.

I wish to be outside. To be out among the sunshine, the light breeze wafting in and out of the embroidered holes of my new pink Gap blouse. I smell vaguely of the outdoors, vaguely, I say--triumphantly! I mean. A mixture of light sweat and Victoria's Secret "Angel." Outside is what my soul cries, my body vies, and my heart yearns for. I reminisce like a crack addict, still high from her last liaison with euphoria.

And still there is one more admitted, one more crinkling away at the GPSA snack stash; counting calories, weighing options, waiting to come over to steal into my coveted musings. "50 cents please." And still the inner-world of my people, those "in the program" drones on.

And then one more. "Soon," a precious voice soothes, soon you'll be released to bask and shutter in the chemically-stimulating fever that emerges, welcomingingly, with the spring.