Saturday Sweet

I love Saturdays. Invariably there are hooligans mucking about on the street into the wee hours of the morning, but by the time I roll over and hug my feather pillow in the sunshine of the morning, they've deserted the streets and the only noises from opposite my windowpane are the pigeons, who coo and cluck in general good-naturedness.

This Saturday was a particular treat. The postman brought my recent purchase from The Exotic Teapot for which I was quite grateful, and the door buzzer was all it took to finally get me up for the day. I sprayed down my entire bathroom with Dettol to beat the encroaching damp and mold, and with the scent of bleach and productivity freshening up the air, I stepped freshly showered into my Saturday!

I'm a lover of tea. I haven't always been, but I'm a devotee of the heart now-- there's simply nothing better than a nice cup of tea precisely when you need it. Morocco brought fresh mint tea into my life, but my current fancy is this: my new glass teapot!

I will shamelessly admit, I like flowers. Yes, I'm a girl/woman/feminist/professional and I LIKE FLOWERS. I like the way they look, they way they catch and play with light, the way they sway in a breeze, the scent in a room, the softness of the petals and the expression on the face of the man immediately before he pushes a bouquet of them into you arms. I like flowers.
This tea combines my love of both TEA and FLOWERS! It's display tea, or blooming tea, and it's fabulous. You see, dear reader, why the acquisition of the glass teapot was necessary?!
Purchase of the actual tea is at the moment entirely through the tinterwebz, but I'm hoping that somewhere around here will start stocking it soon. Here's what it looks like pre-teapot:

A little like a tea tampon, I'll admit.

 They come in about eleventy-billion different varieties, and you can buy a sampler pack off ebay.co.uk direct from China for not very much. This does mean that you get a good variety of different ones to try and no idea what any of them are! It's fine, it's tea, you won't be disappointed. Next, introduce tea-pon to hot water:

It starts to open...

...And opens a little more...

In the meanwhile, I ate my delicious omelette with
onion, grated carrot, mature cheddar and various herbs.

And here we have it! I think this one is Lyrics,
though I could be wrong-- I'm going by the
picture on the ebay description!

See-- Flowers AND tea!

My little Moroccan tea glass, not filled with
mint this time, but rather the mouthful of
petals which is blooming tea.

Still going into the evening.

The nice thing about this type of tea is that you just keep topping up the hot water-- each bloom will give you at least two full pots of tea. I sprang for the teapot warmer stand, pictured above, and powered by a tealight. This I can get behind-- pretty, and keeps my teapot hot!

All in all, quite pleased with myself on this front. I've another teapot to fuel my quest to write up my dissertation and it's pretty to boot! Next instalment of Ikebana and the rest of the Marrakesh posts soon, dears, promise!

... And let's reinvigorate!

Aaaand, we're back! I know, it's been so long. Truth be told, part of the absence of new text resulted from me losing my login details and thus being foxed out of the dashboard. Oops.

So, what's new? New year, new abode, new shoes, new classes, new hobby, same old me.

The New Year: 2011 is set to be the year in which I complete my doctoral dissertation in contemporary philosophy and visual culture (read: general humanities bullshit) whether I'm ready or not. Honestly, I'm not ready-- so many things I've only skimmed when I should have read, listened when I should have noted, gotten up and made dinner when I should have written. But now it's down to the wire and I must put up or shut up, and shutting up won't get me a job. And a job is unquestionably what I want out of this whole melange of marginalia and tea stains that I'm calling my dissertation. More on that at some point, it's unavoidable.

The new year also saw me falling in love. What? you say with great distress, You, in love? Yes, it's true, but not with a man. Not even a woman. A little girl actually, named Coco. She's the daughter of a dear friend and the close of this past year heralded in her existence outside the womb and into my arms. I was lucky enough to be hanging about for her first month of soft cooing, bottles, nappies and evenings in the rocking chair, and the word 'privilege' doesn't even begin to cover it. She's beautiful: big blue eyes, tiny mouth, exquisitely long fingers and, best of all, she giggles in her sleep. Leaving Boston at the end of January and knowingly walking away from her was one of the most counter-intuitive things I've ever forced myself to do. I'm lucky enough to have a near daily dose of Coco-cam through skype, which is essentially what's keeping me sane. Holy hell, broody, Batman.

New Abode: I've relocated to the Eyrie! It's a top floor flat in the older section of town, which is both for better and for worse. I miss the period details of the old Nest (the high ceilings, the plaster internal walls, the paint, the ceiling embossing and roses) but the Eyrie is the whole top floor of an old granite building with a view of the North Sea and the mouth of Aberdeen Harbour from the kitchen window. Pretty spectacular. So is how cold it can get. Being in such an old, though disgustingly central, quarter of the city means there's no gas-- everything is electric as they can't just put in a main. Electric heat, electric cooker, electric shower, the works. It's not been as pricey as I had feared and we've got a meter that we top up as we go (so no surprise bills, which is BRILLIANT) but the storage heaters are something to be reckoned with and the storage hot water tank makes showering an adventure. Will you have enough hot water to finish shaving your legs AND rinse the conditioner out of your hair? WHO KNOWS! Yes, living life on the edge, that's me...

The New Abode has also brought a new flatmate, and she couldn't be lovelier. She's soft-spoken, not an axe-murderer AND she cleans! It's amazing. I didn't know her before moving in, but I couldn't have pulled a luckier draw. Her girlfriend has recently relocated from Denmark and now there's pleasant, chirpy Icelandic spoken in our kitchen on a regular basis and it makes me really happy. Somehow the sound of people speaking kindly to each other, regardless of my lack of comprehension, is enough to brighten my mood.

New Shoes: Trivial, but there's nothing that makes me walk taller (quite literally) than a new pair of shoes, and I've recently acquired two pairs. Office clearance sales are dangerous places, especially when chronically skint, but I'd recently had the misfortune of discovering at the most inconvenient of times that my pair of Primark lace-up flats had come apart at the seams and I couldn't fault myself too heavily for dropping a tenner on a pair of blue velvet and leather wingtips. Additionally, a girl can never have too many black stilettos, and the satin was just divine, so they came home with me as well. They are undeniably reminiscent of my very favourite pair of shoes EVER, which I bought a few years ago from Jones Bootmaker (also on sale) and have worn very selectively to things like my masters' graduation ceremony, but alas, the cobbles round these parts destroy pretty heels with single-minded ferocity. Thus, the new pair has been acquired. The dress heels are dead, long live the dress heels.

New Classes: This is a bit misleading. They are technically new in the same sense that the polluted river is always new everytime your wellie slips into it. The students are new, but the overwhelming majority of the syllabus and films contained in the screening list are not. This is just fine by me as it means that I have less to scramble to prepare as virgin material. I've got four sections of Intro to Film this half term and couldn't be happier about it. These, with the two screenings I'm running weekly and the hour of prep time for which I'm being paid should mean that I'll be financially solvent, if only for a little while.

Then, there's new close reading group and seminars for the coming months, new discussions of old books and all the other joys of academia. I sat in on a one-off lecture by Martin Crowley this evening and was simultaneously daunted and exhilarated. There, sitting plainly before me with his heavy-framed glasses and sky-blue socks was the soft-spoken man whose reading of Antelme has so influenced my doctoral work. And then, at the pub afterwards, he thanked me for attending and encouraged me to email him and strike up a correspondence. At what point is it appropriate to ask an academic to sign some part of ones' skin? Just askin'. If the rest of the seminars are half so interesting, it'll be the best time here yet.

New Hobby: So, with the patient instruction of the old flatmate, I've taken up Ikebana. It's the Japanese art of flower arranging, and I adore it. We meet on Sunday afternoons, and it's simply the most calming thing possible. I'm decided to go back to attending Mass regularly (which is a post for another time) and once I've had my cup of tea in the vestibule, I wander casually across the Castlegate, stop at the Markies' flower stand (they have a flower loyalty card, isn't that great?!) and then into the steamy warmth of the Coffee House on Gaelic Lane. The attention to the faces of the flowers, the angles of trajectory and the gentle bending of stalks is as restful as meditation and doesn't take nearly as long to achieve. Here's a sample of my latest work:

Poppies and Brush Roses, January 2011

I'll try and keep this up to date with a little Sunday flower treat. It's nice to go and tread gently with the transience of cut flowers without having to drag Heidegger back out into the light. Well, at least, not until Monday morning.

Same Old Me: Well, that about sums it up, doesn't it? I'm still living in essential intellectual quarantine until I self-actualise into a Doctor of Philosophy. I'm still drinking too many cups of not-quite-hot-enough tea. I'm still a little lonely in the evenings as I wash up my single plate, fork and knife. I'm still falling asleep to the dulcent tones of David Attenborough as he narrates the natural world for me via BBC iPlayer, and I'm still occasionally lucky enough to have him provide the voiceover for my dreams. Long may it remain so.

Books

So, I finally bought the book that we've been discussing in my Monday reading group since last September. Yeah, I've still not read it and yet participate in every discussion as we go along. I love half-assed intellectualism on my part.

Anyway, I suck no more! Amazon.co.uk will deliver onto me the most recent addition to my Blanchot collection: The Step Not Beyond. Woot, fair reader, woot indeed.

I've also ordered The Unavowable Community and a few other gems off of Amazon.com (because the exchange rate blows) which will be delivered to a friend's house (also because international shipping blows). I'm hoping they love me enough to ship them to me in a padded envelope of acceptable dimensions. That would be great.

But anyway, I'll have the major text before the massive conference here at the Uni at the end of the month. You know, the one with the major international scholars on Blanchot all in attendance. I've basically read it over Sergi's shoulder, but now I can apply my own soft lead pencil to it. I officially declare this a win.

Right, bullet time!

Okay, so I'm sorry, I'm a shit blogger and have been remiss in my updating. SO MUCH TO TYPE! Ergo, the wonder of spot editing!

• I'm living with a wonderful, delightful woman named Danger Muffin-- D-Muff for short-- and she's fantastic. She moved here from MI and, despite a failure to communicate for 6 years, has clicked back into my life like she never left it. We originally met through the MSF and have a mutual unhealthy relationship with Shakespeare and Arts Organizations in general. As it is, we're living at approximately the same speed. Which is the speed of light and sound. Together. Amplified.
• My student loans still haven't come through. This makes me a sad panda.
• I'm working too many different jobs. I can't keep them straight. And I haven't been in my office in ages. I'm sure I'm supposed to be doing something for the Ph.D., but for the life of me I don't know what. Good sign?
• I haven't heard from DS in ages. Again, sad panda.
• I've been cast in a production of Miller's Crucible at the University. And which character is little Miss Melville portray? The "death-haunted, embittered 45 year old woman" of course. Type casting? Please say no, I only look 35.
• My crossword addiction has hit record levels. The careers office is enabling me by saving all their old copies of the Herald and the Guardian. I still buy the Times on a daily basis and hit up the Washington Post online. Sick, sick puppy.
• I've rediscovered my love of white russians. They're delicious and way kinder to my tummy-lining. For a change up, I will order a vodka and cranberry, but only because I believe in the fight against UTI. I also drink gin and tonic because malaria is a bastard. Ergo, all my cocktails serve very strategic purposes.
• I think that Scotland is currently underutilizing my generous and nurturing side. I'll expound more on this at a later date if I get the time.
• Damn facebook. Yes, I use it and I love it and it's the only way people who know me in real time can reach me on a consistent basis, but it keeps telling me all sorts of disconcerting things. What things, you ask? Apparently everyone I used to know is either getting married or spawning. No joke. Entire photo albums of engagement rings, ultrasound pictures or tiny humans fresh out of their wrappers-- they're everywhere. I used to think my being perpetually between boyfriends wasn't that unusual, but apparently I'm a piraha. Still, better than being perpetually between husbands, right? Right?!?
• I really miss playing the tuba. Unfortunately, there appear to be very few of them in Scotland, and even fewer that belong to me. That number being zero.
• The roses down near the beach ballroom are still blooming.
• I still love Scotland.
• It no longer strikes me as strange that I'm here. What does seem strange is that I was never not here. Is that odd?

Enough for now. I'll finish writing and then backdate the rest of the Wedding entry, it's just too much for my less than nimble little fingers at the moment.

While You Were Out...

Big changes upon which I will expound in due time (read: not now). Best to bust out the bullet points for this one, methinks!

• Got a new job on campus, that basically means I'm on campus every day, breathing the academic atmosphere and shifting my focus back away from shift work to intellectual work, despite the fact that I basically do office work. Regardless, it pays and it's fewer and better timed hours. Baby gets her evenings back! *woot woot*
• Quit the wine shop, which was good fun and good viniculture education, but not so related to my life as I want to be living it post-phd. That, and the basement where all the wine is stored had a ceiling so low that even I couldn't stand up straight. This is shocking if you know how tall I actually am in flat shoes. That, and hauling the cases of wine about was doing my back in on a repetitive basis.
• Came to the sad realization that I have an abusive landlord. This requires a whole backstory that I really don't have time to write at the moment, so I'll just leave it at this.
• Found a new flat! I'll be letting it from the parents of a friend, and it's b-e-a-utiful! The rent is a £100 more than I'm paying now per bedroom, and it's just a two bedroom place. This is a good thing because...
• A very dear friend of mine, let's call her Jen, is moving here from the US! YAY! She's basically fleeing the country, for many reasons I'm sure. But I've just secured a two bedroom apartment for us, and she arrives towards the end of October! And since it'll just be the two of us, no more sharing a bathroom among six people!! Exclaimation points for everyone!
• On the short list for providing a new home for a lovely pup-- Bonnie. She's a bonnie wee lass, an older Scottish Terrier who really needs a new family to love and adore her, but I need to double-check that the new landlords would be cool with having a fully-trained smallish dog in their flat. I really, really, really hope they are, as I've been wanting a dog for a while now.
• Booked my train tickets down to Bristol for this woman's wedding. I've not been that far south on this lovely island yet, so seeing the countryside from the train should be nice. However, it's going to take ELEVEN HOURS to get there. No joke. Even for me, that's a lot of countryside. Here's to hoping the train has wireless-- some of them do, so stop laughing.
• On the way back from the aforementioned wedding, I'm stopping in London. There are some bride's maids committments that I've got to fulfill on Saturday morning, and that means that I can't leave Bristol early enough to get back to the 'Deen the same day. So, it'll be Miss Melville in London: One Night Only! I'll be spending Saturday night in the fully capable care of Aplha, who's living down there nowadays, and crashing on her floor if there's any crashing to be had. I have a sneeking suspicion that we'll just stay out until she pours me back onto the train at Kings Cross and then I'll have 8 hours to sober up before changing in the Burgh of Edin. I'm anticipating carnage and shinanigans.
• My welcome and orientation meeting the the Ph.D. of DOOM is slated for the 25th. Holy shit.
• I get my own office. Or, at least a desk in a cupboard somewhere. They were a little hazy with the details. Regardless, I'm putting my name on the door, even if I have to whittle it there myself, Old Red-style.

I think that's about all for now. Needs must run to the mobile store to try to get someone explain to me why the new phone I bought is doing a fantastic impression of a rock.

Dark have been my [waking] dreams of late.

"Man is the indestructible. And this means there is no limit to the destruction of man."

--Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, p. 135

This is basically my thesis. Man, in being man, cannot be destroyed, but only infinitely afflicted in the attempt to obliterate him. However, despite the endless use of force and torture which forces him into non-existence, no one can undo his existence-- you can never make him un-be, and therefore he is indestructible. However, the seas of pain and endless anguish can force a split within the mind/soul/heart/whatever you want to call it, which is the only thing that allows one to perhaps survive in some small way if indeed your body is not dismantled. In order to have some relation, some sense of being human, one must have a relation to another, literally an other, and in times of extreme and prolonged trauma, the only one available to bear witness is the afflicted themselves. And so we create our own other, remove ourselves from the explicit situation. But if we do survive, how does one go about reconciling these two selves?

The only option is Language. (Yes, Language with a capital L.) If one can find the place of speech, the act of speaking will engender a re-living of a trauma that was sectioned off in the radical other self, and perhaps bring about an experience in the present of the past, not necessarily healing-- you can't heal some wounds, just not going to happen-- or reconciliation with it. Things like the genocide resist to their core these obscene efforts of rationalization and contextualization, the smoothing touch of history. Instead the raw pain and unending anguish must be felt, again and again, and bleed onto the listener, the attentive receiver of the words of the other, so that the wails of that tortured, mutilated other don't fall on barren ground.

This, and all the pages recounting first-hand testimony from on the ground in Hiroshima, comprise the multitudinous hues of my nightmares.

And I'll be doing this non-stop until Monday, but it's not like the Ph.D. is going to be any more cheerful. Le sigh. Still, I think this is really, vitally, critically important to the human condition, the contemporary plight of the wounded many. So, there's nothing else I could be doing, really.

And that is a heartening thought.

What has two thumbs and a research assistantship?

Answer: This Girl!

Needless to say, I'm absolutely over-the-moon happy about this. According to the Guru, as a direct result of my "unflagging and dogged persistence" he's decided to help me out. I will be his Johnny on the spot when he needs something researched or photocopied or whatever, and in return he'll make up the difference for half of my fees.

Check? Check.

I called home nigh-on instantly, and my mother freely admitted that she'd stop "quibbling" with me over my decision to stay, which I had only just recently made. Thank goodness.

This week has been jam-packed with Alpha staying in my flat, seeing old Geo pals, working furiously on the masters' diss (read: facebook) and a lovely little wine and cheese party that I'll tell you more about on a night when I'm not overwhelmingly exhausted from how awesome and respectable I've become.

*cue cheeky grin*

Really, I'm just relieved that future-me won't be crushed senseless by college debt. I'll still be crushed, mind you, just with a little sense to rub together. I hope.

Working Girls and Girls Who Work

... There's a difference.

So, as most know, it's hella expensive to live in Aberdeen, as opposed to the States. On the surface, it looks like things cost the same, but then one must take into account the exchange rate, and if you happen to consider this while grocery shopping, your joints will grind to a halt and you'll find yourself completely unable to move, much less place that wedge of cheese in your basket.

Ergo, I work at just about every random job you can imagine, dear reader-- not because I like playing with cats or shepherding drunks, but because I need the money. Rent, groceries, the occasional pint: it all takes funding. Right now, I've got four basic part-time jobs, one of which is primarily seasonal. Firstly, (and most infrequently) I'm a house-sitter/child-minder/dog-walker/cat-feeder extraordinaire. No joke. However, it's only recently that I've been paid to house-sit, and that was a welcome improvement. I mostly provide these services for my faculty and related members of academia, and it provides a little pocket cash every once in a while, but it's hardly possible to depend on it. Secondly, I work with a photography firm that does graduation services around the north of England and Scotland. Again, this is all dependent upon when the services are and which contracts the company snaps up and all that. There will be another spate of them in the fall, but we're pretty quiet at the moment, which is too bad because it really is a good daily wage. Thirdly, we have the club. Now, there are two different establishments in this particular building, four bars in total with two seperate cash desks. I was originally hired to work the upstairs desk, the one leading to the 80s music review which allows teens and 40-somethings alike to dress ridiculously and groove to Prince and other vintage tunes. It's only open on Friday and Saturdays, and I only worked Saturdays-- this left Friday for general carousal and debauchery when I could afford it. More on this turn of events later. My fourth soucre of employment is at a wine shop. It's a nice little place, about 50 paces from the door of where I'm currently living, and all in all a good fit. I get on decently well with my co-workers and apart from once issue haven't had any problems with the manager (who is wound so tight, I think he irons his socks). The best part of the job is that it's close to the house and there's a staff discount. No joke.

But back to the club. Now, your friend Miss Melville has never denied being a bit of a prude. I like to think of it as being classy, but whatever. And I've been known to toss a few back in my day, I won't deny it. However, the number of drunk, lerching folk I've seen tumble in and out of the door of the club has been enough to really put me off the cheap booze recently. And then they went one better: I got transferred to the other cash desk. You see, children, the downstairs of this building, all owned by the same to men, is a strip club.

I'm going to let that sink in for a minute.

I know take a 6-pound cover from men who want to enjoy the poffered goods of what claims to be the premiere lapdance club in Scotland. Ah, goooooo, good sir. On the up side, I'm learning an awful lot about the industry and how it functions and a new subculture of foreign girls who barely speak english trying to make it here in the UK and sending money back to their families. As a sidenote, apparent the sharks to do send the money to Romania won't accept Scottish bank notes, and this is a perpetual issue. Inga is constantly asking me if I have English notes, and at first I was simply annoyed because it disrupted my counting system. I finally asked the assistant manager/bouncer about it, and he told me the deal. Now, I set them aside.

I've worked pleanty of scummy jobs in my young life-- most noteably, the third shift at the gas station in Michigan's Prison City. I chatted with hookers, brewed awful coffee, swept the lot, gave away day old hot dogs to bums and generally held down the fort through the long dark hours. But this is a whole new level of sleeze. I sorta understand the young bucks who come in for a stag do or with a bunch of buddies. It's the ones who come in by themselves, collar up and sober, who creep me out the most. Then there's the older guys who are in by themselves every day of the week. I was told yesterday that this place is open every night of the week, 365 days a year. Which means that good old Donna from Down Undah is bending herself around the pole on Christmas Eve, New Years Day and Easter Sunday. There's something that I find cripplingly sad in that.

Now, I just sit behind the desk and take money. I don't dress like one of the girls-- in fact, I pull my hair back and wear a fleece because it's cold by the open door. Yet, I still get harrassed. On Saturday night, the best man in one of the stag parties leaned over the desk, clasped my face and full-out laid one on me, and before I had time to react was out the door. Stunned. Who does that? Then there's the older guys to persist in asking if I'll walk them home. Usually the bouncers shuffle them along, but they usually have more dangerous things to see to, and I can normally take care of myself. But if they harrass mousey old me this much, what are they saying to the poor dancers? The manager, who is a proper hard nose, asked me how I felt about working behind the bar. Now, while I think it would be a useful thing to have some bar experience on my resume, I'm not sure that I want it at a strip club. And it would mean different hours AGAIN, and I'm sure the level of harrassment would only increase... I don't know.

And on top of all this hourly work, I'm supposed to be writing my masters thesis/dissertation. I'm not even done reading for it. Fortunately, I was talking to a fellow coursemate this past week and she's in pretty much the same spot, but anyways... Yeah. Let me tell you just how impossible it is to read Blanchot while listening to Back in Black by AC/DC and telling Veronicka once again that she has to have her commission money to Craig by 2 am. I finally finished the essay in response to Hersey's Heroshima Saturday night, but the combination of depravity in the club and the image of trying to pull washerwomen from a rising tide and having their skin come off like gloves in your hands was too much for me. I don't know how I'm going to balance this. Normally I'd have a drink and walk it off, but I don't have the time...

The work at the club desk is now both Friday and Saturday, and while the additional money is nice, I'm not sure how much longer I can do this. But I have a feeling my rent is about to jump, and I'm barely making it as it is. Le sigh... dammit.

What to do?

This is my life. This is my life in debt.

What with all the talk about the credit crunch and bankruptcy and Mutie in my ear about howmy student debt will keep me from ever being able to finance a house, ergo I will never have a home, ergo I will never get married, ergo I will never have children, ergo I will never be happy (you think I'm joking, this is PRECISELY her logic and it always has been-- remember, sweet but broken), I'm in a hell of a spot trying to make up my mind about how I'm going to spend the next three years of my life.

I've been accepted here at the University of Aberdeen for my doctorate, and I really really really want to stay. I love this city of granite and mist and roses, I adore the Centre, and I finally feel like I've got the right project at the right time with the right people advising me-- I feel like I might actually do something that will have an effect outside of my tiny corner of academia (worthwhile as I've always contended it is) and maybe help out the general human plight. That's heady stuff, ladles and gellyspoons. More on that later.

Anyways, I've had a hell of a time justifying driving my poor little self even further into debt. It's 9k british sterling to stay here, so roughly $18,000 a year for three years. Let's round that up and say $60,000 for the whole kit and caboodle. On top of the $45,000 I already have (I think that's right) that would bring the total up to a gut-wrenching $105,000.

Some of the other schools with programs going in what I'm interested in are Princeton, Yale, Emory and Columbia. Then there's the old favorites of the University of Chicago and Notre Dame, along with Dalhousie and Memorial. I've been checking these out, and here's the hard facts:

Princeton: $29,910 per annum
Yale: $26,800
Emory: $27,770
Columbia: $30,532

These are the schools doing work in my specific area. Just for the sake of argument, here are some more numbers:

University of Chicago: $31,680
Notre Dame: $28,970
Dalhousie: $15,452
Memorial: roughly $14,000
(and just for the hell of it) U of M: $27,124

The killer about most of these is that they're FIVE YEAR PROGRAMS. That isn't for a masters-and-doctorate degrees, that JUST for the Ph.D. I'm not 100% sure if that's the way it is at Yale and Emory yet, but I just got confimation of that for U of Chi., ND and U of M. So, even if I were to get considerable funding, it's likely to cost more for the degree over five years than the three years at Aberdeen. The two schools in Canada don't have programs in my area, but they do have a general catch-all called an Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program. What this basically seems to mean (as I'm gathering through correspondence with both schools) is that I'd be on my own, with support from two of three faculty members but without a department. What I'm woried about is how it will read on my CV when I do have a Ph.D.-- is it a bit like a Liberal Arts degree for an undergrad? I don't want to pay for a degree that nobody's going to respect.

As for as the continuing pursuit for funding here at Aberdeen, I can give you the list of peace and justice institutes that I've contacted if you'd like, but I think it might bore you, dear invisible reader. I've learned that the UN has funds for the third year, or "write up" of the doctoral candidacy, but nothing before that. Still, good to know. Even the Rotary in Jackson wrote back and said it sounded like a fine project but they only fund international business ventures. :( I've gotten a few helpful hints at other sources to check into, but these groups seem to be pretty stretched for cash all over at the moment. But so am I, so I keep looking.

With the job(s) that I have right now, I can cover my own room and board. Not a problem. It just all boils down to fees. I haven't heard anything about the ORSAS grant, the one that would pay the difference between International and UK fees, and The Guru seems to think that's not entirely a bad sign. Apparently they're pretty quick to reject you here and slow to hand out the acceptance letters. Either way, I'm feeling a bit shakey on that one.

I've been looking around to see what else I could do with the degree that I'm earning now, and if I were to come back to the States and teach at a Community College, it wouldn't be in what I've been sharpening my claws on-- there are merits and rewards to teaching remedial english to 20-somethings, but compared to what I COULD be doing, it all just seems to pale.

It's taken me a long time to feel confident enough to admit that, but I guess there's no disputing it anymore-- I really want to do something with my life, and I'm done questioning whether or not I'm good enough or intelligent enough to do it. So far as I can tell, the only thing holding me back is money.

To quote somewhat darkly from Shakespeare, "I am now steeped in blood so deep that would be as tedious to go back as to go o're," and I'm afraid it's true. Aberdeen seems to be the least expensive and most prestigeous of some very, very expensive options.

So... thoughts?

You know that last post?

Yeah, the one where I thought I had a plan for my Ph.D.?

HAHA-- the Guru took fifteen minutes at the most to BLOW IT APART. It's dead in the water, totally not going to work, and I think I may have competely and utter shattered the illusion that I know what I'm talking about even half the time. Oops. *winces in intellectual pain*

On the upside, we sorted out a masters project, which is really more in the order that I should be doing things. Le sigh.

"I want to dedicate the next three years of my life... to THIS?!"

Here's a nebulous little rant that I would like to turn into a dissertation. Any and all input would be greatly appreciated. Especially if any of this makes you think, "Hey, that sounds like [insert reputable author here]!" I'd like to flesh out the literary merits of this project, you see, and not drive myself mad in the process.

The Nebulous Truth Project: or, Why humans are definitively incapable of telling the truth.
When an event occurs, the subjectivity of the observer is a point of interest. Perhaps the observer is the recipient of the action of another or indirectly related to the recipient, but never the individual taking the action (the one perpetrating the action is aware on some level of his or her motives, despite the level of self-honesty and engagement with motive), but the action is still something that happens to, the victimization is already inherent. If the observer is removed, the witnessing and relay of victimization follows with perception. [Insert Kant here.] This perception, prior to reception, is the starting point.
In that first second when seeing something startling, one does not immediately process the images and sounds with language—there is a moment of thought without words, and this is as close as we as humans with human language can get to the truth of the experience. [Insert Sartre here, garden reflection from “Nausea”] The instant we begin to think about what we are seeing, hearing around us, we do so in a two-dimensional language which mauls and limits meaning and experience to its death. [Insert Blanchot here.] Language distances us from the truth of experience but imposing limits and creating a space for rationalization, reflection and interpretation. When we choose words to relate the experience, even in striving for honesty, we give only our interpretation through word choice and only our (by definition) individual point of view. Did the man “run” down the street? Did he “hurry”? Or maybe “race”? The subtle connotations of these variants for what may be a unitary action is the main point of this third turn of distancing, the first being seen with our two fixed eyes and hearing with our limited range, the second being thinking in language, the third the choosing of specific language. [Truth Commissions here?—the closest they can get is step three.]
The reception to these words (note: not perception—there is no truthful input, only hearsay) is effected by the style of delivery, the environment, prior bias of the receptor, all this on top of the distance from the truth already established in steps one through three, and is step four (step zero being the happening-truth, the absolute truth of what really happened—ground zero you might say). [O’Brien and “The Things They Carried” goes in here somewhere]
Perhaps this account, this witnessing is heard by someone who has been trained in the production of literature, someone who knows about foreshadowing, character development, alliteration and so on—and they are the willing receptor of the story, and from it create in deliberately literary and chosen language the story. Maybe they even call it fiction. With the production of a document, we are now at step seven (four is the witnessing, five the second reception, six the thinking in the writer’s brain, and seven the writing out) if not step eight due to the input of an editor. Then, if the book is read by anyone, it is received a third time, and we’re now eight or nine steps from the truth. Is there any truth left in it at this point? The steps continue if a report is generated from the witnessing, and then later a fiction is created by a word smith, and at every turn more steps are added—the stage adaptation, the film script, the eventual interpretive dance and new age symphonic movement in the event’s memory. But by this point, the event is nearly unrecognizable.
Those not feeling the blow or seeing it land have little to do wit the truth of it. We assume the suffering of others, we take on their pseudo-experience and hijack their story—is this ethical? Perhaps more constructive—is it useful? By the time an event becomes literature, we have (by definition) interpreted it and drained the happening-truth out of it. What takes its place in the void? Is it only the falsehood, the lie left by the removal of the primary truth, or is there something to the literary-truth which gives literature its worth and universal truth which may be exhibited in particular with happening-truth manifestations but exists outside of that? We cannot know the truth of an event, even large-scale events, and history is littered with others wrongful assumptions and assimilations, and while contemplation on the great events of the human past may prove of some small use, the overall certainty of anything is impossible. [Insert Tolstoy’s epilogue to “War & Peace” here]
If one accepts that truth and beauty are inherently linked [Insert Aristotle and Plato here] then the beautiful works of art, of literature which are representations, interpretations, must have their own truth. [Insert Heidegger “Origin of the Work of Art” and Benjamin “Art in the Age of Reproduction”] This is the story-truth, not the happening-truth. [Reintroduce O’Brien to the argument] Through literature, worlds we have never known become more real than the far side of town [Blanchot] and what is essential in truth is called to the fore/ [Insert Heidegger here—a lot of Heidegger, “Poetry, Language, Thought” etc.] The removed experiences of others, admittedly fictional or not, enable us to vicariously experience with none of the bodily risks, and allow us to access truths perhaps otherwise unavailable. [Insert Sontag here, mostly “The Pain of Others”]
So, what does all of this mean? What is it worth?
Beats the hell out of me.
Please, help.