and above all there is the pressing terror of time running out. time - it was easy to console myself that it will all come right in time - there are numerous precedents, of course - all my last minute essays - barbara nolan's chaucer paper for which an idea only came 3 days before it was due, nohrnberg's spenser paper which idea only came last minute and which paper i produced overnight while packing - and there was watching each of my friends' theses coming home to roost as one deadline after another arrived for them - and sure that i would land just as safely, if a little more unsteadily - but addy's late thesis - throws me in acute fear - and doubt - that it is possible, it is, to be unable to turn in something, to fail - and i think i will fail - addy is more responsible than me - though not very much more, and she works - late - she's not like me, for me imsonnia is never a problem and who favours going to bed instead of work, however pressing.
oh this extreme strickeness - not a fear of not doing well - but deep guilt for not having worked harder, started earlier, thought better, consulted more. i looked at my proposal, something i in fact haven't done since last year - and i could cry at how much i've deviated from it, how many better ideas i had then, and how much there is to do that i haven't. bob says we should never beat ourselves up for that - that we all have platonic theses in our heads and we must learn to accept that which we do achieve, even if it isn't ideal. he also brought up divinities shaping our ends, although i can seldom take comfort in that line. i know what he means by the platonic thesis and my proposal was never one thesis worth, but several different theses ideas stuffed into one because i couldn't decide - and still can't and haven't - so that leaving most of it out is actually a good idea. and could i have chosen a larger topic with more varied branches? this wasn't a one year thesis idea, but too large to handle - oh - not beyond me, if i had three years it would be a different matter - but at this stage, and as a one year project - it wasn't going to be done. on that count it's so much easier then to let go of the platonic dissertation i envision and to try to conceive a compact essay of significance in one of these areas. i'm suffering the opposite of writer's block, but a kind of inability to move, trapped by endless possibilities, like lilith weatherwax running through the endless hall of mirrors trying to find her real self.too many ways, and all of them temptingly engaging, that i can't even decide on a attack plan or sorts.