I am back - with much gratitude to Companion Crone - respect, appreciation and love. I thank you.
This is our 500th post.
And so cycles continue. Strange how time passes and differences accumulate and yet samenesses reside in the changes.
The tournament on which I was working panned out in a similar way to many others. I was afraid, I was petrified. And then it started and I got accustomed and I decided I liked it and as the end approached I felt the nostalgia rise and now it's over a certain emptiness. My work is over - not the tournament. Two more games. It will be worse once they have been played.
I am preparing for the next dreaded. It is like preparing for past dreadeds. My thoughts fragmented. My ideas spiraling. My reading extensive. Connections accumulating faster than I can process them. This time, at least, I have started writing notes, sections, passages. Maybe I learn some new tricks but my old ways persist.
Decisions remain challenging, debatable, somehow always fraught with uncertainty. I decided after having initiated the process of submitting a dissertation proposal not to submit a dissertation proposal. Was I right or wrong? I know it doesn't matter - I live with the decision I have now made. And I am not, I am not, ruminating upon it. Not at all. But the decision-having-been-made always leaves me with an open wound which it takes time to heal. The process of making the decision is like the ongoing need to commit some self-harm, cut and explore the flesh, take out a morsel and lay it under the microscope. The scars decisions leave. I am traversed with scars and some ache more than others. But I do not ruminate.
One thing is new: Crone and Old Dog cannot run together. Old Dog is too old, despite Crone's ponderous progress across the fields or through the woods. Old Dog walks. Maybe lies down when Crone performs some travesty of a HIT or yoga session on a patch of mown grass.
A young man at work said, 'There is a special cuteness about old dogs. Dogs are so sweet when they are puppies and they regain a different sort of sweetness when they are old. It's like people: babies are cute and so are old people.' Perhaps even Crones? But, whether or not, I was moved. Such a profundity of tenderness. Where is this toxic masculinity of which I hear so much? I find it more in my generation than in the young men with whom I work.
Great to have you back dear Crone. I enjoyed filling in for awhile. Wow - 500 posts!!!!!!!! ps I agree with what the young man said about dogs (it was my experience too) xxx