enough of existential whinging! enough of this nihilistic o there is no point nonsense! alison milbank is right that once you write a page - even if it's utter nonsense - you will feel better. like thank you letters, she said. the more you put them off, the worse it gets. but the moment you've written them, it's amazing how good you feel. i haven't got pages, but i have worked through a rossetti poem in the library, and worked out exactly what i want to say about it, and really very pleased with myself for combining 4 or 5 different ideas about riddles in the one discussion. and bob reeder says he has a friend working on rossetti who might have time to read my 3 pages, so considerably excited. also, i did skip all my classes today, which was put to much good use, such as talking to nohrnberg, and sorting through some ideas. oh! and i showed him what i had found - a scottish riddle as source for macduff! - no - this should be kept for later, for it deserves a paragraph on its own. yes, and got some new ideas from nohrnberg on alcuin and his disputations with pepin, and the q&a format underlining the idea that riddles are cathechismic transmitters of knowledge, and particularly pointing out the word "riddle" in one of them. actually, i need information rather desperately on alcuin, and i would be dearly indebted to anyone who can tell me something about this.

incidentally bob reeder is my hero of the week. everytime i run into him he patiently allows me to dump heaps of ideas on him and then patiently encourages me to go on and do my thing. i'm convinced that if i followed him around for a week with a laptop the thing will be written *snap* like that. i shall devote a hefty paragraph to him in the acknowledgements. do people write acknowledgements in theses? alison milbank said why not? much more sensible than taking out an ad in the cav daily, she opined. hee.