Oh blog, I've missed you. I've been in fearsome book-writing mode for months; fearsome, because I had plans to have finished a whole draft of a whole book, this book, by now. Of course, it turns out I have more to do. Lots more to do. Every day, new little mushrooms of you-still-have-this-to-do sprout out of yesterday's smooth soil. There are - a fact that shoots a hard sliver of ice through my veins - whole chapters still to write. I am going to bed most nights and wrestling myself to sleep amidst the tangles of what I haven't done. By day, it's a pleasure. I'm loving pottering through my stuff and sticking it together, realising the joys of the contradictions, moving away from the generalisations I'd been planning to draw.
I'm in Canadia this week, at a pretty darn thrilling conference, if you're thrilled by what I'm thrilled by. The papers have been a mix of right-up-my-alley and centred on eighteenth-century German natural philosophers I haven't read. Who knew north America had so many Schelling experts on its books? Schelling and I have studiously avoided each other for 32 years. Apparently this has to change. You think you're all safely on top of a history of ideas, and it turns out you forgot the protagonist. Gah.
Though I'm surrounded by clever interesting people, and green sprouting Canadiack spring, squirrels of many stripes, woodchucks and swans and frogs and swollen rivers, and though I've only been away a week, and though I am a grown-up independent person with an internet connection who's traveled before and for longer, I've been finding myself pining for home. I had an unexpected moment of joy at the Australian accent of the international reverse charges telephone operator, and felt my heart snap when I heard Beatrice Cat meow somewhere on the other side of my phone call.
Am missing her and Harriet extremely. I can be in touch with my humans, know that they're well, know that they know that I'm well, know that they know that I know that they know that I'm well, but I wasn't able to explain to Harriet and Beatrice I'd only be gone two weeks. Maybe they're not worried about me (I hope so), but I can imagine them trying to work it all out, trying to decide how many days they give it before they figure I'm not coming back. It'll be glorious to see them again. I expect they'll ignore me furiously for a day or two. Can't wait.
And at the same time, I'm plotting my return voyage to Vancouver, which is trees as thick as houses and jagged mountains and laburnum and raspberries growing like weeds. I like me a good mountain range.
