Help me, I'm in liminal space

K has just left today and many sleepless nights filled with much needed academic and life changing discussions have left me worn out, exhausted, and oddly revived mentally for this ultimate task ahead...so the chattiness has payed off!!!!

I have been thinking a lot about the project at hand. Why in the world did I choose such a difficult concept for my thesis? Why didn't I go for something I felt more comfortable with, something I already felt I had some experience with? Why did I choose anti-racism and feminism? Well the obvious answer is that I'm crazy:) The next obvious answer is that these areas have concerned me since I gave a very pedantic speech combining Barry Manilow's "I made it through the rain" with MLK's "I have a dream" speech (it was horrible and no, I won't recite it here). But in a lot of ways, it goes deeper than that.

I have had to have really uncomfortable conversations with my husband the past few days. He's telling me those things he wants the kids to know if something should happen to him...the lofty "this is why I served" ideals that I never want to hear, certainly don't want to ever have to explain to my kids, but fundamentally important. He needs to know that I will explain the unexplainable to the kids should the unthinkable happen. And I have to nod quietly and not cry thinking "I don't want to do this...I don't want to do this" but encourage him to speak because the silence has been killing us.

I have to encourage my son to share his worries about his dad and our lives while he's gone. Ultimately he seems concerned that daddy won't be daddy anymore and that he will have to grow up too fast. I have to hold his hand and tell him that everything will be okay, we'll work it out, the world does not rest on his shoulders---all the while I'm thinking I'm scared too and I know that he will grow up too fast but I can't help that. I wish I could.

Then I think about my work. Not my students. I am comfortable as a teacher. I know that I do that well. I wonder how I'll do it with all of this pressure on me but I know with the confidence of having done this before that I will put on my big girl panties and deal. No...the work I am thinking about is my academic work. The work that I love to hate and hate to love....why couldn't I have been an accountant? Why do I feel compelled to push myself beyond my limits on a regular basis? (why don't I feel compelled to do the same with my body?) And then it struck me. I haven't had a name for it before, but most of my life and most of my meaningful moments occur in the very liminal space I am exploring in my thesis (everyone shout A-ha)

I have always been drawn to the in-between. When I first began going to UND I found that I loved the drive to school. I didn't quite understand why I would love this drive. Any other time I push down Highway 2 I'm bored but on days that I am going to "work" I find that the drive helps me get there. As I leave the row of flags behind and gaze longingly at the Dairy Queen I know I shouldn't have, I begin to feel relieft. Music is just a little too loud and I stare through the windshield at the fields. the mostly barren and stripped masses of landed, dotted with farmhouses and I think. My mind explores both lives that I lead. I am in mental transit. My life and its problems don't seem so big before the acres of tilled soil. The fight I have with the kids becomes trumped by the fight I am fighting with the wind threatening to push me into the ditch. I have always thought of this drive as the gateway between base Lisa and academic Lisa. The shift happens gradually just as the fields grown smaller. By the time I reach the first row of billboards I am mulling over issues for my class, I interject theories of Marxism and Sedgewick. I contemplate the ramifications of Foucault and the theories of Cornel West. And now it occurs to me that I literally drive in that liminal space---the space of no binaries, the place of just me, all of me, no pretending, no show...just me.

So while at times my acedemic endeavors seem pointless and frustrating I really believe that they help us find out more about ourselves. What would K be without Foucault now? See how fundamentally that academic work has shaped your life...liminal space has shaped mine. My only question now is how to live without the binaries in my life and live more in the liminal...and how to translate all of this into my work.

The sky is falling

It has finally happened...I knew that it would. I've been waiting for it but somehow I had hoped that it wouldn't. I was hoping that I wouldn't hear the news, that something might change, that we might be wrong, but it was inevitable. Kind of like having unprotected sex but feeling a bit shocked when you find out you're pregnant. Life changing and you knew it would probably happen but you still put your head in the sand and wonder why you're so thirsty.

Craig's been unofficially tasked. Leaves Aug or Sept and not back til sometime inApril. We knew it was coming. Had hoped and thought it would be a bit later...but there you go. The brave new world.

So I've been thinking that I've really got to get this thesis done cuz every semester I've been in the program something weird has happened. 1st, Sept 11th...not good for anyone---2nd, cataracts, makes reading a little hard not to mention surgery to correct and healing time---3rd, move to England two weeks after semester ends, no stress there---4th, precancer, daughter swallows quarter, best friend leaves, generally feel crappy and overwhelmed...did some of my best writing though---5th post hysterectomy and hormonal crazy woman who can't write to save her life and now last, single mom with two kids, no Mary Poppins, writing thesis and defending while playing all the roles...

I have decided to finish my thesis for Fall because, quite frankly I don't think my health or the state of the world can afford for me to continue this degree:) It is all my fault and I'm sorry...So ladies begin looking to the heavens cuz the sky is falling

No really...duck....the sky is really falling!!!!;)