I've been out of town for a week and completely off the internet. A nice release yet I was surprised how often that my mind wandered while driving and I found myself thinking about various blogs that I read regularly and wondering what was new. Although I came up with a few ideas for posts of my own -- I find the empty highways of eastern Oklahoma very conducive to deep thoughts -- now that I'm home, I feel a resistance to writing here.
Much of it is grief. I'm experiencing the major and profound loss of my dad, the very different yet not insubstantial loss of a career in academia, and the on-going sense of loss and disconnection from the Middle East. I am numb to the war, the politics, the atrocities; I am numb to teaching and departmental petty battles; I am numb to much of American culture, the TV, the racism of society (my local paper just started a series on forgotten parts of the US where whites forced out minorities from 1876 until, well, until today). A violent urges to retch is the only reaction I have. An honest reaction, yes, but not very conducive to blogging.
My interests are less global these days and more . . . more . . . I don't know, unfocused? Wildly varied?
My new interest in eastern Africa continues although I'm cooling towards international adoption; community supported agriculture continues to sustain me as does attachment parenting.
For the first time in a long, long, time I am interested in reading again. A decade plus in graduate can really diminish the urge to read. I read two newspapers daily and the New Yorker and The Economist weekly but I feel ready to move on to actual books. This is a new and hopeful feeling. I'm resisting the desire to go to Amazon and one-click away. I want to join the local library and read for free (without the emotional or financial pain that all that graduate school reading provided).
Perhaps, while my subconscious processes the losses and changes of this spring, I will blog about books.
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