Sobriquet 54.7

This week has been uncommonly stressful for me and, as a result, I haven't been able to muster up the energy I'd need to write anything worth reading. I did, however, continue working on my dissertation each day. In fact, I have made what I believe to be a major breakthrough in my thinking about the Elizabeth Costello chapter I hope to begin relatively soon. Oddly, just when things seemed to make working on the dissertation next to impossible, I ended up having some of the most productive brainstorming of the entire project. I imagine the sort of person for whom such serendipitous coincidence articulates the existence of some benevolent force in the Great Unknown would chalk my good fortune up to that obscure entity. It was that significant a development. Of course, being the good secularist that I am, I am inclined to attribute this happy circumstance of mine to the materialism of neurotransmission. The sacred language, however, does more justice to the emotional impact of it all than does a more sterile statement about the torsions of my mind.

At any rate, I will write about some of my reading another day when I am not so sleepy. I decided to play Escape From New York last night and drove to Vermont, where I promptly got lost in Bennington, ending up in front of the obelisk commemorating the Battle of Bennington at a quarter to three in the morning. Let me tell you: that's some creepy shit in the dead of night, too. Thanks to a sparsely clouded sky, the moonlight reached the monument and succeeded in casting one of those eerie nighttime shadows over the park grounds as I drove past, adding a dash of horror movie ambience to the whole scene. The air traffic warning lights, glowing menacingly from the recesses of the monolith, only intensified what was then, and in retrospect remains, a truly beautiful moment of otherworldly sublimity. And, as far as I can tell, it was -- and is -- purely, wholly mine.

Thus fortified by the strange beauty of the unexpected, I sat down and read another article on Elizabeth Costello.

For tomorrow: Read or plan.