This is the longest break in my blog record since I started my PHD. In the last 3 weeks I have packed up the old house moved too the new house, had a week in a school doing the Odd project, delivered a paper at the leaping in to the limanel Pgr Conference, done a lot of gardening and now feel pretty exhausted . It is clear now that footballs not coming home. I don't seem to be able to switch off, every job seems to generate another job. The PhD work has suffered a little because I have been too busy to think.
I went back to the old house to delver the conference paper, it felt strange to be rattling around in the large empty rooms. The WiFi switched over to the new house the day after the conference finished and I haven't really been back here properly since then, I have a new home. I haven't had much time to write or to take stock. I dodged a supervision last week as I don't really have much to show. I quite liked my presentation at the conference though, there was something about picking a line from Deleuze and Guattari and working it into my practice that I quite liked - it is at least the thread of something to follow.
Yesterday I unpacked all my books, from my PhD shelves. This was interesting as I have them on 3 shelves, the old historical baseline books which are mainly philosophy and British cultural theory. Then the central shelf which is the literature I really need to take account of - stuff on research creation and lots of Manning and a couple of new materialist classics and then lots of practical stuff on ethnography and writing - this is my pragmatic shelf ( its not quite big enough and runs onto the bottom shelf). The rest of the bottom is taken up with Ruskin and then there are the historic adventure playground books - there are not many of these but I think they will be useful at points.
Even though to reference Walter Benjamin I have unpacked my library I don't feel like I am ready to start writing again. Something needs to give, there needs to be a pause for breath. Moving house has not been easy. It has required monumental focus and graft and I don't feel at all settled yet. I think when I get to the end of July and the playground opens up again there will be a point to refocus and come up for air. I remember a quote about been a tunneler and occasionally having to pop your head up out of the ground to see where you are. Alfred North Whitehead in his flights of the speculative imagination talks of dropping down from the cloud in a plane- to land and take stock a while and find a sense of place and direction. I feel very much like this, lost in the busy pragmatics of life. I am relatively happy and I want this feeling to carry on for a bit. It will lead into an intensive period of some kind of fieldwork and then I will do other bits and bobs and spend time writing all this up next year. At least that is the best laid plan of mice and a man.
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