yik

the thing about my dissertation is that every time i feel like i'm getting closer, like seriously closer, something comes in to make me think i can't do it, or it's stupid, or i'm not getting the sense of the entire thing. so i get tripped up.

like right now. does Meridian do civil rights trauma in the same way that The Salt Eaters does? Clearly not. And yet trying to define this other way leads me back to some weird space in which i have 25 pages written on everyone i'm writing about but i can't get it together enough to feel like it's defendable by October. it's just not. and that's struggle, such a strange and enormous struggle.

and what does that Che Guevera bumper sticker on my car mean, anyway? the new one? because now i feel like one of the THOSE people. "a true revolutionary is guided by feelings of love." perhaps i think that's true. but do i want it on my car? we'll see, because it's there.

i think the bottom line is, for me, that tthere are some essential things--spirituality, accountability/community responsibility, and self-interrogation that was missing from feminism as i learned it.

ugh, and see, again, where am i going with this? i just need to see myself as an authority, interjecting in to what the authorities are saying. even the dissertation project is true, serious, complete at that moment. but i don't have it yet.

typos be damned, i'm posting. this now.