My son’s choice for bedtime reading last night: the final clause of every right-hand page in Derrida’s Specters of Marx. (I know. I know. But I honestly don’t encourage this. He just wants to read my books… If it helps, we also read a picture book after…) So he’s going along, reading what he can, asking for my help with anything multisyllabic. Along the way, he periodically looks up from the text to offer some commentary. That commentary went something like this:
“Oooh! This book is spooooky!”
“This is a very silly book!”
And, my personal favourite:
Him: “Do you know what this book is about?”
Me: “What’s it about?”
Him: “It’s about how we can’t be anywhere, now.”
Quite right.
***
At the moment – just now (the now that, as Hegel teases, surely loses nothing if we write it down) – I am not anywhere. Body, landed heavily in Melbourne. Mind, floating lost, betwixt and between. Emotions, still hovering in London last time I checked. Was in the office briefly yesterday. Alien after a long absence. Curious why someone left an article on quantum mechanics on my desk; equally curious why they didn’t tell me who they were. Annoyed at the person who “borrowed” the cable that connects my university computer to the university network, resulting in a great deal of confusion trying to work out why I couldn’t log in, before someone went, “Oh! Yeah! That!” Flabbergasted by the person who decided to become alarmed that I haven’t been around in a month and, rather than, say, checking my blog, or emailing me, or talking to one of my supervisors to find out where I was, decided that the right course of action was to contact my next of kin, worrying them, by telling them that other people were worrying about me. A note to anyone who becomes confused about my whereabouts: I am perhaps the most easily tracked postgraduate student in all the university – and under most circumstances, I don’t even bite. Email me. Check my blog. Don’t panic. And don’t panic others.
Less impressionistic writing will have to wait until more of me feels settled in something like the same time zone. Right now, it’s too soon, or too late, and I can’t be anywhere…
I wish I could say welcome back to sunny Oz, but it’s not where I am, and I suspect – all Sydneysider prejudices to the fore – that it’s not where you are either and not just coz you’re lagging in London! Hope the settling back into here and now doesn’t take too horribly long, and isn’t attended by sickness (it often is, for me). Oh, and that lil one? Da Cutest. :-)
Well, I’ve been rained on across the planet this past month – no reason it should stop just because I’m back home :-)
I’m hoping I paid my sickness dues at the beginning of the trip – I took a cold over with me, and seem to have left it, if not the rain, behind…
Hey NP – great to have you back! When you are ’somewhere’ I’d love to catch up and hear all about your travels.
Hey there! I’m around – even if not “somewhere”. I’ll actually be on campus over the weekend (and, of course, during the week) – just shoot an email, and we’ll catch up when you’re free. (The poor folks at the coffee shop thought I’d fallen off the face of the planet… ;-) So I’m sure they will be happy with our renewed patronage…)