I am resting today as I think I overdid things yesterday. It was nice to be back at the playground working in the sun. When I got home I wrote some field-notes for the first time in 4 months. Field-notes are an affirmation of ethnography and in turn doing research. The fact I started up again, as I worked on the loose parts play platform seems appropriate. It was a good day, I manged to fit a second hand slide to the platform and digging holes and cutting wood was a good reminder of the work I have done in shaping a landscape.
I had spent the last week worrying about my final panel review meeting which I hadn't worried about before as I was oblivious to it. I felt like the giant machine of academe was processing me again; though from what, into what, I am not sure. It is unclear why I got so stressed about a formality but I very really did get stressed. I gently wondered what would happen if they decided I was too crap to progress and if I could just diminish and go back to my pre- PhD artist state. However as I tell my kids it is rarely possible to feel happy while moving backwards.
I like the first picture I have blogged, it is from a few days ago when I walked past the platform with the dog on the path at the back of what we call "up top' . The photo isn't actually from then as I didn't have my phone with me but I popped back to take it the day after. It is a good angle to appreciate the tree growing through the platform, I am not sure if this is because its a new angle or if the lines meet differently. I've got used to seeing it from the front and when you are on the platform you only really notice the trunk in the middle - the tree and the platform are much more a single thing or two things working together from this new angle. They both tree and platform look like something that has grown over time.
It was nice to do some graft, my back is a lot better now but at the end of the day it started to feel fragile. I have done a number of counter intuitive things that have put my health at risk over the past few days. I feel stupid taking these risks but I can't work out why I continue to take them - it is like some strange compulsion or an unnecessary personal testing. I read some of Deleuzes 'the fold" this morning - he just isn't very funny without Guattari - he is like Ernie Wise without Eric. I read the section about having a body, I really didn't get far, sometimes I like to pretend something has sunk in and I have perhaps got further than I think but sadly today this wasn't true. Liebniz, the Baroque a strange take on differential calculus, the distinction between the Monad and the singularity were all like water flowing off a ducks back and not sinking in. I put the book down and took the dog for a walk.
My body stretched out and aching seems far removed from a body without organs. Perhaps it is the obsession with the physical world of flesh and things interacting, the setting of yourself against the wheels of entropy that forms a robust core of things and thoughts. Not singularity, monad or subjectivity, more like Samuel Becket's habit that chains the dog to his vomit.
Something feels different today - like I have had to switch on after a holiday I didn't realize I was having. I have done lots since Christmas, I have been busy, I have read and I have written stuff but in most ways I haven't really for all sorts of reasons beyond my control been fully engaged in doing a PhD. It is good to recognize this and start to put some things and thoughts in place to move things forward. Ending my fieldwork and writing up will be interesting - I will kick the ball to the autumn - it has been a year of kicking balls forward.
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