Practice

Late November, and the weather is just turning cold.
Dusk comes early, blurring the edges of crisp, bright days. 

The new year is fast-approaching.
Can't believe how fast. A semester nearly gone.
Have I got my sea legs yet?
Yes and no.

 

These days I ask myself, how can I push past the ceiling of my current understanding? What improves the speed and efficiency of thought?
Practice.

Two Months In

It takes time.

Thoughts move tentatively this afternoon and sentences come in halting bursts. My mind is a fallen leaf, blown to and fro in the fickle breeze.

I am writing in the warm glow of a West Harlem coffee shop. Outside, great herds of dry leaves stampede down the street in gales of autumn wind. They move en masse, leaping and tumbling in the bow waves of passing cars. I imagine the thoughts slipping from my skull, smooth as a zipper, to join the fray. 

Two months in, the rhythms of graduate school have become familiar. It's a fluid dance between obligations: ever-juggling coursework and reading, thesis research and grant writing, exhaustion and drive. I often feel like an archaeologist, gently unearthing knowledge with the painstaking strokes of myriad small efforts.

As the season changes, I change too. Some husk of me peels away: an exoskeleton I've outgrown. Like thoughts and leaves, this too slips into the wind and blows away down the road.  

Reading: J.B MacKinnon's False Idyll, from Orion.

Listening: Royksopp- What else is there?

           Shakey Graves- Business Lunch

   Icky Blossoms- Cycle

Doing: I'm now also writing for State of The Planet. Huzzah! Click here to check out my stuff.