Feeling for the Wake

Most of my thought-space has been occupied by applications for, procrastination of, and worries about graduate schools. As those of you who listened to me this past academic year, particularly in the spring, a good part of me is increasingly invested in breaking out and starting a bakery, where I might put some community and environmental ethical experiments into play or practice (they both feel appropriate). Unfortunately, or perhaps it is for the better, I was unable to find housing away from home and such a venture requires new, fertile ground on which to grow. Now, I am finding my roots and leaves reaching further and further away from my present locale, though I adore the time I get to spend with my mother, and my time on the aforementioned tasks is subtly painful. The plan as it stands is to go to graduate school, write and work some amazingly brilliant academic tomfoolery, then look a bit more thoroughly about me and open up a bakery for a few year. Such is the aim, one I wouldn't mind starting now if my situation were more appropriate.

For the moment, my energy waxes and wanes as I explore programs, scholarships, and the potential destinations that may lie ahead. I seem to have found myself in one of those parts of the story that gets glossed over in the film version or sticks around a little too long in the book. What I need to do right now is put my life, accomplishments, and aims into a short, concise, and encouraging narrative that conveniently fills a handful of text boxes and uploaded documents. Meanwhile, I bake pumpkin cakes and can pear preserves and refine a seedy bread recipe, much to the excitement and kind words of friends like Miss Kalisa and Miss Adrienne, and therein finding the calm, reflective, sociable joy that I presently have difficulty embracing. A small tug-of-war goes on, one side pulling me toward the future, the other dragging me to the present--odd as it may sound, I don't feel encumbered by the past. Neither side feels inexorable nor dull, it is only that each prevents me from the accomplishments of the other. What I want is one, or the other, or both; but I feel a bit like I get none of the above--which the GRE study books tell you is an unlikely answer.

I missed much of the lovely, uncommonly warm and sunny autumn day because I was determined to work on applications. I would happily work on them outside, if it weren't for screen glare, and happily meander about on a walk or bike downtown to find fine company or even dig a bit in the yard before the real cold gets settled in; but it was almost gone before I knew it. With the time change, the sun sets early enough to knock me off my feet. Had I had my way, I would have probably fallen asleep by 8:30 yesterday evening, with the sun vanished hours ago. Although, I may toss this off as fading vestiges of that particular kind of loneliness that sets in with missed (or nonexistent) opportunities of shared blankets, warm drinks, evening movies, and bundled up strolls. If so, I might enjoy the coming cold just as a change of heart, a change that locks me up inside with plenty of writing and reading to accomplish--such transition is pretty familiar and might be helpful this time around.

The day has closed in a positively wonderful way. I continue to work on canning, this time a far greater success than the previous attempt, and with the excitable company of Miss Adrienne, it felt new and... vigorous or vitalizing or rejuvenating in some way. With Kalisa's further company, we fawned over foodstuffs and chatted this way and that, eventually reading Jo Ann Beard's The Fourth State of Matter aloud on the deck. Now, with a rough resume (which I prefer spelled with accents) in digital hand, more than a little work accomplished with the applications, and a warm fire at my side, the day seems recovered in spite of my own shortcomings.

I began writing this consider the idea of "the wake," where other travelers leave their disturbances behind them, but provide an easier route for those behind. The wake caused by boats also disrupts the surroundings and can be trouble in urban waterways. The wake has a dual reality: the reality of the traveler or pathfinder identifying and responding to the behavior of others, & the reality of the traveler's disruption and difficulty for those around her/him/hir. I had planned to lead into something insightful about this dual reality, but now the synthesis of my own writing and this characterization fades. I do not know if I am following and enjoying wisdom of others, the watcher from the coast observing and feeling the perturbations, or one who is making the wake behind me and simultaneously confounding and enlightening those behind or around. It is a strange lost-ness to feel such. For now though, perhaps my own ignorance may serve as a blessing, for I certainly feel blessed this fine evening in this fine house.