Isle of Nerd

In these grad school planning days, I've been talking with my thesis advisor to discern the best plan of action. Her advice has been go for the programs with the active, innovative 20th-century Brit lit gurus, then find a school you like from there. Well, I'm not actually sure that was her plan, but it is my plan now. She pointed me to IVWS, which despite my research last year, I hadn't joined. But then I did, and plans have rapidly come together to go to this year's annual conference in June.

In Glasgow.

It'll be a big, expensive thing, but I can't think of a better way to, in my preparations, get the net back up in the air (or spend my savings). In the best case scenario, I could have some great conversations, find a mentor, and get wonderful new research ideas. In the worst case scenario, I still get to go to Glasgow and the Isle of Skye. I am almost painfully excited.
In all of my research last year I avoided looking up pictures of the setting of To the Lighthouse because I wanted to see it as Woolf paints it. I had my own vision of her hills, shores, water, the house that lives and breathes and ages with its sometimes-residents. But last night, hanging out with my parents and talking about my trip, they showed me their pictures from their tour of Scotland last September.
I had avoided looking at these pictures or even talking to them about their trip because I was so overwrought with jealousy then. I was fresh off a year very, very hard at work on To the Lighthouse writing and research, and a heavy dose of writing about and acting in a great production of Macbeth as Lady M. (set, to those who don't know, in and around the east coast Highlands)
As soon as I saw the pictures (my dad, a little ant walking around the shore as my mom snapped the vista from the winding road; the view from Dunvegan castle where my mom sat and drank tea and felt like Mrs. R) I just involuntarily burst out crying. I was so happy to see how much it looks like I hoped it would, except stupid-beautiful and grander and more enchanting and colorful. I am just totally dumbfounded and blinded by it, and really looking forward to the next month of research before I go.
Ahh! I hope this all works out! So stoked.

Netting

Things I am thinking about:
1) Going to grad school
I have now, as of today (!) been out of school for exactly one year. The 9-5 world has not been unrewarding in that it has delivered so much perspective, in particular that I love school and have been deeply self-conscious this year about not reading enough, writing enough, collaborating enough, and synthesizing enough. I described it to my mom yesterday that in school I felt like there was this netting over me-- sort of a well-lit, translucent, glittery web of ideas-- and more ideas and information and pieces of culture were alternately cast into and drawn from that web. Outside of academia, I feel like that net has, like, been cut down (to switch to a different metaphor) somewhat triumphantly (like the quasi-glory of an under-underdog beating Duke or something), and is just a trophy of some middling accomplishment, and not actively in use, and (to switch to a different metaphor), putting stuff in that net at my feet is like some kid shoving a dead fish into a net when his dad's not looking to pretend like he caught it. Slimy and wrong. My aim to put in some applications this fall would, at best, get me into grad school, and would at worst get the net back up in the air, to glitter and catch ideas (or to catch a nasty shot from downtown, or to catch some non-slimy fish). OMG this train of thought is making me crack up. Other kinds of nets to consider: fishnet stockings, butterfly, profit/loss, internet.
2) Switching to wordpress (?)(!).
I get a little embarrassed now and then about this blog title, which I came up with sometime in the early-middle part of college when it was ~super e-hip~ to have usernames/ blog titles with two simple, delicate nouns... gag. BUT! Whatever. It might be nice to blog again, and take some pictures of my life, and keep in touch with my now far-flung friends, but I should do that in a place where I'm not self-conscious about dumb archives.
3) Oh GOD, can I go to the beach yet?
I can go about 3 months without being in sea water before I get really anxious and feel like I'm being deprived of some essential joy. It is time.