When I left for the ?field? to go to San Francisco, I never thought that life would feel that different for me there as it is here in Chicago. Now that I am back doing the student thing, I really see how being full-time in an academic environment is really its own unique social space. I am dumfounded by the fact that I can spend all day reading and writing and that everyone (Biella looks around the computer lab) is doing the same darn thing. Soon I will be back in SF shocked out of this idyllic state.

I have made attempts at going to Berkeley to use the facilities but I never feel like a student there. In part it is because I don?t really know many people there. But I think the timeless weather of the east bay, which is always nice, does not make it feel like school. Fall, which never hits the east bay, is here. The trees are brilliant. They are on the one had momentarily dying but at least they do so in style. The leaves are so very beautiful, with red, yellows, and oranges giving life to the gothic architecture of University of Chicago. I think I associate the change of seasons with the process of learning, as the change of seasons metaphorically is a good way to think about what us academics do. Basically, we take some stuff, raw material, and transform it into some different and finished process or thing that has a resemblance or relationship to that early stuff but in the end is different. The change of seasons really captures the beauty of transformation and how one can be in one place, yet be in an entirely distinct state over time. It reminds you that life moves along and in terms of doing academic work, that is a good thing : )

The fall represents the excitement of starting a new project, a new academic year. There is a vitality in the air that makes you want to go ahead and start something new but then winter comes along, and it can make for wonderful conditions for really focusing in on work as you don?t want to step outside in the cold freezing winds but it is also a good metaphor for the darker side of the creative process, where you feel completely stuck in some pit of despair where you question the very essence of what you are doing. Luckily or better said hopefully, you emerge out of this pit with a more clear sense of what you are doing, ready to deliver something final after months and months of hard work. Your birth comes just in time for the birth that is spring.

Funny thing about ?birth? is that yesterday I think I have come up with a gross but highly accurate (for me at least) metaphor for what it is like for me to write a paper. I have been working on a conference paper for the 4S Con (No h0mee, academic conferences are not CONS!!!) and it is the first academic paper that I have written in what feels like ages. It was a messy birth to say the least but you know, I think underneath all the blood and placenta lies an a-ok- baby? And yes, it is gross to think about writing papers in terms of giving birth but that is what the process usually feels like for me, not that I really know about the actual process of birth but I can project. Sometimes it is easy and the critter just pops out, while other times, it is a terribly messy birth but really the critter is fine. One just needs to clean up the gunk all of the paper. Then there are those disastrous births that require not just a C-Section to get the darn thing out (truly painful and requiting an excess of drugs like loads of caffeine) but perhaps also cosmetic surgery as there was some serious damage when you brought the critter into the world.

Speaking of blood and guts, I should go do some more placenta cleaning, opps, I mean editing.

Funny thing about ?birth? is that yesterday I think I have come up with a gross but highly accurate (for me at least) metaphor for what it is like for me to write a paper. I have been working on a conference paper for the