Any old Tuesday 2

Dear Void,

The last 'Any Old Tuesday' post was at the beginning of this month and I'm stunned that it has already been three weeks since, and four since I started this blog!

If I've ever experienced a more humid morning, I don’t remember it. As I look out the window above my desk, I can see that, finally, those big globules that have been threatening to fall have. It rains. And the air lightens a little. Our HDR studio sits at the top of the Woolley Building just under the slope of the roof. And my desk is tucked into one of the dormers. The windows open with a horizontal pivot and at last, with a break in the heat, I can stop mopping the sweat off my face.

I look at my desk and wonder where I’m up to? More Latin? Continue on Nilling? Which thread from the commonplace should I follow. Back, I think, to Nilling, Lisa Robertson’s meditation on the codex as ‘a figure for the material history of thinking’ (2012: 11). I talk a little more about Nilling here and here.

For those who like their information quantitative, please know that I have made my slow way through 5 out of 27 numbered sections of ‘Time in the Codex’. TitC begins: ‘I open the codex; . . .’ and I move to think of my research methodology as ‘I open.’ (I had made this move at the beginning of last year). With a sense of not only opening transitively, that is to open an object (a book, a document, an email, a door, a portal) but also intransitively, as in ‘I, reader, person, open.’ I open to the possibilities of energy in/of the object (this eighteenth-century manuscript) and then I open to the possibilities of play-acting that energy; to indulge in mimesis. I figure the commonplace as circumspect, wary. It is not a social object. It was made for the personal. The commonplace is a shelter for units of reading to sit appositely, as a whole, a set. I talk a little bit about what commonplacing is here.

* * * *

We, the HDR (Higher Degree by Research) candidates have decided to have drinks on Friday to mark the beginning of this teaching year (many are tutors) and to say, ‘here we are, ready to make our contributions to our particular arts field(s).’ And we’re doing this bc it’s so easy to come in here, head down for the day, wrestle with the work and leave without ever speaking to one single person. It has been confirmed to me that it’s possible to go through three whole years like this. I’m determined that we should at least know each other’s names if not what our projects are. Ah, me! I long for collaboration. And one day I will have it! I firmly believe this is the future, no more thinking/working in isolation. The lone academic is dead, I say! Connect, connect, connect!

To that end, I printed out a sign and put it up on our notice board in the kitchen area. I look forward to reporting to you, Void, of Friday’s agreeablenesses!

Jx

PS. Now the rain is coming down hard and I don’t have my umbrella with me. But at least I’m not sitting in a pool of sweat.

PSS. No soundtrack today. I’m tapping away to the sounds of rain.