I really did mean to update yesterday; I thought about it off and on all day. But I was so anxious with everything else that was due today that it just didn't happen. S'okay, though theoretically that image notebook is supposed to be every day. Monday is clearly a day I should just not try to do anything but work, given that everything is due on Tuesday this semester. Instead, I played a little bit of computer game in the morning, and had lunch with Jim and Kerry, which was fun, but somehow stretched out for a long long time. I finally got to really working around 5; it was a late night.
But I'm reasonably happy with my semiotics piece, which did end being a piece of postmodern creative nonfiction after all; I did it in the form of a letter to Kevin (one I will actually send, since there's stuff in there he doesn't know) talking about semiotics through the lens of our relationship. I'm not sure I can summarize that in a way that makes any sense -- here's a random sample paragraph, which also probably won't make sense. :-)
"And then my junior year I met you, a grad student mathematician. And before long, when I heard the word "math", I also heard the word "love". As the years went by, more and more signified meanings were added to the sign of "math". Failure had to make room for sexy, and for brilliant, and for socially inept. And those were perhaps already part of the broader cultural myth of "math", as witnessed by Good Will Hunting, but they became inextricably part of my own private signification. Society may reinvent the mathematician's image ten times in the next ten years, adding layers of meaning to the myth, but my own "math" will never again be the same as theirs."
What's particularly odd about this piece is that it's nakedly honest, in the way my letters to Kevin generally are (perhaps a bit more so than most, actually), enough so that I'm not comfortable posting it in its entirety here -- and yet I'm handing it in to class. I know my classmates will be reading it through the lens of 'this is an assignment' and perhaps not trusting the truth of it as a real letter...but then again, they might. And if they do, they will know far too much about me. I had some of the same feeling when I handed in a piece on poly stuff to a workshop at Mills. This writing thing; is scary.
At any rate, I've done more writing this weekend that I have in months. In fact, I'm not sure if I've ever (other than at Clarion) gotten so much done so quickly. I blame Tim Pratt. (I know he's shocked at seeing his name show up out of nowhere. :-) Hi Tim!) Seriously, the man is fiercely productive. It scares me. I think he has a full-time job and everything and he still produces like mad. Reading his journal maks me feel that if I don't write or revise something every day (preferably twice a day), I'm a big fat wuss who doesn't deserve the honorable title of writer. Which is nonsense, of course, but it does serve as a motivating force, so I'll just take advantage of that and continue with the nonsense.
Hungry, sleepy. Must eat something and drink tea if I'm to get through the day. Later, munchkins.