My friend Gurdonark writes this morning of a physics project that took many semesters. I have a project, too, that has languished.
I quit being an official graduate student in spring of 1998. I had made some valiant work on writing my dissertation over the winter, then had gotten pneumonia, broke the flow, and decided it was time to say, “The End.” I got a job and eventually got a master’s degree based on a paper i wrote very early in my graduate tenure. I’ve a bucket of frustrations in the area of my dissertation, knowing belatedly that the work i did out-stripped others’ PhD work, but i missed having someone help me understand when enough was enough.
After that experience, i started a project making a phoenix “costume” out of neckties. I envision a whole series of images: woman in bodysuit and necktie, woman bound in more neckties, woman cocooned in neckties, woman freed as bird with neckties as feathers. I worked a great deal in the last few years i lived in Philadelphia; once we moved to California, other concerns took over. For several years the completed right wing hung in our living room. I’d forgotten the simple work of stitching the left wing together was still needed.
This past March i set a deadline for this project, as the boxes of neckties do take up a bit of space that could be used for yarn. Also, i’ve risen my phoenix self from those ashes. I have discovered how i can crochet a torso piece, which answers a design question that has stalled me: how would i make the body of the costume?
Will i pull this out and complete it? Or will it suffer the same end as my dissertation? A third of the year stretches before me.
I could finish this.