Oh, the rain comes...

like it did that time last year, except this time I don't have a hole in my ceiling. Which is nice.

I am unfocused. I need a guide. I am focused, but on too many things. Too many epiphany-like things. I don't even know where to start in putting all of these things into words, into actions. In the past week, I have done an incredible amount of research (book research) and I have come to several amazing conclusions. And...

And what? There's too much going on in my head now for me to be effective with any of them. I've got to sort out this mess.

At any rate, I've decided that this state of being is "what it's like to be in grad school". That ever-elusive concept that I kept asking Masters and Doctors about last year. They said, "it's like nothing you've ever done before." Which is true, and also entirely unhelpful. So let me put this down into words, and then get back to trying to sort through the rest. It will come. I'm not worried. Much of the sorting is the doing. And I will do. Just not for a few more minutes.

First, grad school is like...

Grad school is like having an employer and going to work, and you have shit wages and too much to do, but you're getting paid to learn about things you really, really enjoy, and you're getting paid to relearn everything you thought you knew, so that you can then understand that you really knew it all along, just in a different way.

Grad school is like having an employer and going to work, and you have shit wages but good hours. All hours, in fact. There are those hours in class, and those hours in your office working, and those hours reading, and those hours tracking down obscure literature, and those hours arguing your points with people who may or may not agree with you but do so vociferously, and those hours where you're not technically doing grad school, but you are anyway, because you've got to think through it all and process all that's going on. Some of these hours occur while watching TV or sleeping, and those hours seem less and less like downtime because your brain is less and less inclined to shut off.

Because it's just so cool! All this stuff, if not new, is exciting! Because it's in your head. And if you took your opinions seriously before (which you did, because they're yours), it's nothing compared to now. It's no longer a matter of acting like you're someone worth listening to and making other people believe it. You really are someone worth listening to. You have entered your field. And you're new; you're the fledgling; your theories are imperfect, but your ideas are valid and therefore worth discussing.

And then you realize you have to figure out how to bring this all back to earth. Because it's great to argue with academics and figure out the answers, but if my people can't talk to me, can't understand me, never see me... what the hell good is it? What the hell good am I?

I feel there is a balance I must walk. I must be consciously aware of "who I am" so that I do not become "one of them". I am not content to live a normal life. I am not content to stand above the people I wish to serve. I seek a world that creates and sustains justice for all. That includes the participation of all players. I seek to be a mediator, I guess.

...

Ah well... this is already a weird Kati's-brain-is-overloaded-she-needs-to-vent-some-of-this-steam-out sort of post, so I may as well go into the absurd psychology of dreams. As a teenager, young adult, and now Official Grown-Up (tm), I have had a series of dreams in which I stood on the porch of a beautiful, old, slightly dilapidated, yet still quite elegant, antebellum mansion. And I looked out, and I see many other beautiful, old, slightly dilapidated, yet still quite elegant, antebellum mansions. They were all floating in the ocean, the porch steps running down into the sea, water sometimes lapping up in a salty spray. And there were other people in these mansions, and there were still other people in the water.

There had been an apocalyptic supernatural End Times sort of thing that happened and it left us where we were -- floating mansions and people drowning. And then there was a Titanic sort of struggle over what to do (Titanic both in the sense of massive and in the sense of the Titanic ship sinking and some people in lifeboats while others are in the water). Some people did not want to help the people into the mansions because these people in the water were homeless and bad, may bring bad consequences with them into the mansions, may as well just drown. But I could never let that happen. I would pull people in, and my mansion would fill, and all the while I would be yelling to other people in their mansions, convincing them to pull up survivors as well.

There would be many trials and tribulations along the way. Too many people, not enough food, struggles for space, heat, arguments, in our mansion, in other mansions. But at the ends of these dreams, our mansions would come ashore. We would have made it through together.

I don't guess I've talked to people about these dreams so much. In a way they seem rather weird -- down home southern-style mansions just floating around in seemingly endless water -- but it was beautiful. Breathtaking. I remember these dreams so vividly, and I have to say, these mansions floating on this oceanic backdrop... it is perhaps the most beautiful sight I have ever seen in dream or reality. And in many ways, these dreams have defined who I think I am, who I think I ought to be, who I strive to be.

I wrote a song about it, many years ago. And yes, I feel I can Officially have "many" years in my past and still be talking about things that have happened in my adulthood. Anyway, it's this:

I built the bridge that crosses the ocean
Gathered up pieces of time’s own creation
Caught withered hands, caught the masses, caught my mission
Watch as it falls, watch it crumble, watch the beginning of oblivion

Pieces fall; night takes it all
Pieces fall; nightmares take it all

I built the houses that swim in the ocean
Housing the people who drift through destruction
Search for the lost, search for future, search for a vision
God’s calling my name, the air screams, I’m lost in a sea of mind distortion

Pieces fall; night takes it all
Pieces fall; nightmares take it all

I built the mansions that drift in the ocean
I heard the battle, the gods fought in legions
Watching the end times, watch in frustration
I bridged the gap, I crossed the ocean