removing the obstruction

 I managed to remove the tree stump with Tom at some point over the Christmas break. It happened between the hangover and the winter vomiting virus.  We ended up snapping it using two long levers; it's last gasp of splitting timber was very satisfying.  It was so big that after getting out of the ground we could hardly move the bloody thing.

The new year has started and I have spent my first day back at work, pause, whatever that may mean. I have done some emails and some readings and gathered myself. I have picked up the ends of the raveling I've created.

It is good when you get somewhere to remind yourself that you have got there.   I did remove the stump and as with any good metaphor I need to layer this into my PhD process.  

Picking up a thread of a thought from the end of last year when I decided the purpose of doing as opposed to writing a PhD for a person like me is to endeavor to make something new. To bring something into the world, to create something.  Whatever is created and the potential for it is to a degree irrelevant. It does not have to be great or special, it can be poorly explained, derivative and  ugly.  What it can't do, at least  for me, is to be a representation of something that was always there.

At the back of much of my reading lies the lure of creation. Like a secret thread that gets swallowed and  eventually becomes an entwined part of a body.  The tree stump removal and the realization of the need to create something new are two events that span the end of last year and the start of this year.

The justification is for struggle. The moment when all that will do is muscle and sweat. The moment to find a groove, a refrain, a vibrancy, a purpose and to hold it dear.  I will plant the lawn and level out the place where the stump grew.  Many people might come in to the garden and not know the stump had ever grown there yet I will remember the struggle of removing it. Digging down deep with my mattock my spade and my hands and looking for any object, close to hand to help lever the obstruction out of the way. 

So this is the start of the new year where writing however bad finds its purpose.  I'm not sure why I started to dig up the stump but once I began the process the task took on its own requirement for completion.