Out West

O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea:
So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

Once upon a time (two and a half weeks ago) I decided to take a fall break and drive to the West Coast and back. All I can say is it seemed like a good idea at the time. I've never actually driven that far (and it's doubtful ever I'd do it again, not alone, anyway), but at the time, the thought of a little California sunshine was very appealing, and driving seemed the way to go.

If I had known what kind of a trip it would be, I would never have left home. The day I left, it was sunny, hot, and pleasant here, but I went through a number of climate changes before I got back and soon realized I was smart to have packed so many layers (though the two bathing suits I included never got any use). I left in the afternoon, at first driving a familiar stretch of interstate between Lexington and St. Louis, and then stopping for the night about an hour west of the latter. I got a clue that this wouldn't be a normal trip when the desk clerk at the Holiday Inn* (see comments below) did a double-take on seeing me and said that another guest who looked just like me (and was dressed like me, apparently) had just gone up in the elevator. Of course, that was a bit strange, but . . . what the heck. Coincidences happen!

Driving across unfamiliar stretches of Missouri, Oklahoma, and the Texas panhandle, and encountering increasingly unpopulated segments of road, I decided getting through quickly was the best plan, so I drove all night through New Mexico and found myself in Arizona the next morning. Looking for a hotel in the town of Holbrook at first seemed sensible, but on closer examination, I decided a more touristed area would be safer, so I drove on to Flagstaff, where finding a suitable hotel proved challenging. Looking up one that sounded reliable, I discovered it was outside of town, and I drove through miles of forest and desert only to somehow miss it and end up napping in the back seat of my car next to a residential area, waking in the middle of the night and discovering, on the way to get gas, that I had literally been almost next door to a Best Western. I checked in and spent the rest of the night in bed.

Although I was close to the Grand Canyon (which I have never seen, except from the air), I had by that time decided that to get where I was going was highly desirable, and that perhaps I would see the Grand Canyon on the way back. Pressing on, I crossed the state of Arizona, not before discovering in Kingman that my passenger side door had been unlocked (probably while I was at the Best Western). Since I had lost my keys (at home) back in the summer, that gave me pause, but by a strange twist of fate, it was actually lucky for me that this happened because I had just accidentally locked the driver's side door (with the motor running) and was thus equal parts perplexed and overjoyed to find the passenger door unlocked. After somehow getting on the interstate going the wrong way for 20 minutes (Arizona, your signage?), I righted myself and headed for the California border at Needles.

Now I have spent considerable time in California, but driving across the desert in a car was totally new to me. I had been here before on a train, but everything looks quite different when you're in a car, especially by yourself. By this time, it was dark and a little scary. An unexpected light moment came when the border guard, prior to giving me an inspection pass, asked if I had any live animals with me. I'm not sure why that was funny (three days in a car, and you get a little punchy), but I laughed and told him, "Just me."

I drove to Ventura County, almost home ground for me since I went to school next door in Santa Barbara County. I hadn't realized finding hotels in October could be such a challenge, but evidently October is high tourist season in some parts of the West. I ended up staying in Santa Paula, a nice town though a small one, but checked out of my hotel on Sunday, earlier than planned, to head down to L.A.

All I wanted was a good night's sleep in a decent hotel, and a little sightseeing the next day. I thought of going to the Getty Center. When I got to Santa Monica, I started to stay at one of the fancy hotels near the beach, but a trip to my room convinced me otherwise. I was stuck in a remote corner of the hotel, out of sight of anyone else, with a lock that didn't seem to quite work (this became a theme on the trip). I hauled my suitcase back down to the desk and told the clerk I didn't like the room. She offered to reassign me, but having gotten a bad vibe from this experience, I told her I'd look elsewhere.

I can't honestly say why, but I was no longer sure I really felt comfortable in L.A. I drove around for a while, decided to go down to San Diego, did so, tried to find a hotel district, and somehow found myself on the residential side of town, no hotels in sight. (Finding a hotel in the dark when you're tired isn't always as easy as you might think, along with the fact that experiences of the last couple of days had me leery.) Since I knew no one in San Diego, I decided after all to drive back to L.A.

The next day's adventures included going for what was intended to be a short walk, getting dehydrated, not being able to find my car, almost deciding to fly home in panic and frustration, and finally locating my car with the aid of the police. The police helped me look through my things to discover if anything was missing and told me to call the next day if I discovered anything amiss later on. After they left, I noticed once again that my passenger side door was unlocked. Wow! After spending the night at a favorite hotel in Santa Monica, I called in to report this the next day.

Could the trip get any stranger? Well, yes, actually, it could. After I ate lunch in Malibu, bad fish forced an emergency stop in Santa Barbara. I was ready to call it a night, and the hotel seemed nice enough, but after taking a shower and lying down for a while, I became increasingly uneasy about the door -- which did not have a dead bolt lock -- and the open transom above the curtains. I checked out that night, and after driving north in search of another place to stay, I suddenly wanted to be gone and decided to head home.

On Halloween, I found myself crossing the wide open spaces of Nevada, trying with difficulty to reach friends and family on my cell phone. Since this saga has already gone on too long, I won't go into detail about my unsuccessful attempt to see family in Idaho, the invitation from a friend in San Francisco to come and visit, my drive back to California and the Hotel of the Windy Corridors in Stockton, the impossibility of finding a parking space in San Francisco on a Friday night, and an overnight stay in Morgan Hill with a hotel full of lacrosse players. Heading east the next day, I experienced one of the few moments of joy and ease on this trip as I passed through the fertile hills around Gilroy, where they grow many things, including garlic -- whose scent suffused the air. The hills were enveloping and welcoming, and I was sorry to leave them behind, reminders of happier times on previous trips.

The scenery from Bakersfield to Barstow, and then on to Needles, across the mountains and down to the desert, was magnificent, but I felt like I was viewing it distantly, on a very small television. It was like something out of an old Western, especially the closer I got to Needles. I have heard that California is many states rolled into one, and I certainly had proof of it on this trip. I saw parts that I had never seen before, or had never seen by car, which makes a big difference; even the familiar parts looked strange, as if they had been flipped upside down. As a child, I remember once or twice experiencing a strange sense of disorientation, in which suddenly directions seemed to have reversed themselves when I came to a familiar place from a different angle. That sensation was something like what I experienced on this trip.

I stopped not long after dark in Kingman, Arizona, where I ended up in a room with a loose safety latch; traveled on the next day to Amarillo, Texas, where I had the identical problem with a safety latch in a different hotel chain; and finally decided I was getting home no matter what, so that I drove carefully and methodically across parts of five states before crossing back into Kentucky and collapsing at a Sheraton on the outskirts of Lexington. I took what was almost a semi-vacation that last day, going to the mall, buying chocolates, and shopping. I came back to my apartment the next day, Wednesday, and thought about kissing the door frame once I was inside. (I was so tired, I forgot.)

I could (and will) call this trip "The Vacation That Wasn't" or "I Dreamed a Dream of Driving to California, But This Was Not It." I could also call it "The Magical Mystery Tour," though my use of the word "magical" isn't meant to connote anything positive. I could call it "Into the Wild," though that title, too, has been taken. Or with the Grateful Dead, I could truthfully say, "What a Long Strange Trip It's Been," and be perfectly accurate.

One moment of great clarity stands out: I was driving west on I-80 in Nevada, whose harsh and immense landscape might as well have been the surface of the moon, when a great loneliness came over me. The only thing I could think of was my own apartment, my books on the shelves, and how much I wanted to see them. I was so far from anyone I knew, or anything familiar, and all I wanted was to get back home. And so I did, eventually. And here I am.

Like Dorothy, who wanted to leave Kansas so badly, I find myself, at the end of the yellow brick road, back where I started, if a little worse for wear. I was looking at a picture of myself that I took after getting home and thought, "Wow, the wear and tear is kind of showing." It brought to mind what Indiana Jones famously said: "It's not the years, it's the mileage" (literally).

On the other hand, it may not be anything that a good night's sleep and a little moisturizer can't cure. Check with me in a couple of days.

And if you yourself are on the road, drive safely.

Stories of the Wind

This afternoon I heard a strong wind in the trees outside, and it made me think of a paper I wrote a few years ago about the role of the wind deities in Navajo and Greek mythologies. I remember how strongly the wind blew that week, whistling through the cracks of the window in my room as I was writing. It was a cold, blustery December wind, fierce and shrill, an uncanny but appropriate backdrop to my scholarly efforts.

The wind I heard this afternoon had a different timbre. It was an autumn wind through and through, like the one Shelley addressed as "O Wild West Wind, thou breath of autumn's being," "sweet though in sadness." It was an expectant wind, unlike the storm winds of winter and summer, which somehow seem just part of the season, striking not a new note but blending into the overall effect. An autumn wind is restless and heralds change.

In many mythologies, wind is the life force of creation, the breath of the divinity. In some cases, it is the speaking of a word by a god (whose divine breath shapes the word) that creates the world and its humans. I was especially charmed by the conception of the wind in Navajo stories, in which the wind is present not only in nature and the gods but in each individual. Wind plays a central role in creation as well as in the ongoing relations between humans and deities. It sometimes takes the form of a helpful god appearing to an individual in times of trouble or need. At these times it takes the guise not of a powerful storm but of a quiet companion, whispering advice and wisdom. Not quite a guardian angel or a conscience, it's more like a sage friend. The Navajo call this wind deity Nilch'i.

Nilch'i plays an important part in the adventures of Reared Within the Mountains, the hero of The Mountain Chant. He appears to the hero at crucial times, issuing guidance, giving warnings, and teaching him how to access and use his own power. Although Nilch'i is a deity, the life force in him is the same force that animates Reared Within the Mountains and all other people. Nilch'i is much like an inner voice, inspiration (from Latin, "to breathe upon or into") that arises when the individual pays attention to its sometimes subtle utterances.

I was struck by the contrast between the role of the wind in the Navajo stories and the Greek myths. Heroes in the Greek myths are often at odds with the winds, which appear as tools of the gods, used to manipulate or punish humans; Odysseus and Agamemnon battle the winds on several occasions, usually coming out the worse for wear. Once, the god Aeolus tries to make Odysseus a present of the winds by tying them up in a bag, but Odysseus's men set them free, whereupon they blow the ship wildly off course, displaying the tricksterish nature that is often their hallmark.

The portrayal of the winds in both traditions is complex, but I see a fundamental difference between them centered on the issue of power and control. In Greek mythology, humans often seem to be at war, either with nature or each other. They are guided by the principle of Arete, "excellence," often in military and athletic pursuits that involve competition or strife. In Navajo mythology, the key concept is Hozhooji, living in harmony and beauty. Strife and discord are a part of the scene, but an individual seeking Hozhooji learns to live in balance with contending forces. Anyone can do this; you are not dependent on the whims of the gods or the impersonal workings of Fate but rather on your own ability and desire to live in tune with nature and other people.

In the Navajo stories, even a wild or destructive wind has its place and purpose in the overall scheme. It may cleanse the world and prepare it for a new season, like the wind blowing leaves around my apartment building this afternoon. It may come as a whirlwind, drilling a hole in which the hero shelters from his enemies. Or it may simply bring needed rains.

To me it seems that the wisdom in this Native American tradition has been trumped too many times by forces thriving on antagonism, but it's always possible to change course. I love the Greek myths but have always thought it would be tough to actually inhabit the world they portray (though in a way, we do inhabit the world they portray). I can better imagine living within the boundaries of the Navajo universe. Life is still difficult there, and certainly the winds still blow. But how different it would be to be measured not by the length of your sword or the size of your ship but by how well you listen.

Household Gods

The other day I read an essay by someone who was critical of people who identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious." His general point seemed to be that people who think of themselves this way are dabblers, holding only a shallow acquaintance with the beliefs and texts that inform the world's religions. He seemed to believe that these dilettantes are invariably fence-sitters, guilty of cherry-picking only the spiritual bits that appeal to them and blithely avoiding the hard truths that are always part and parcel of a religious worldview.

I wonder what he'd think if he ever visited me. I won't even get into my book collection. After three years in a myth studies program, I have books on Buddhism stacked on top of books about the Hebrew Bible, West African religions, and Celtic folklore. Texts on Hinduism share shelf space with volumes on Native American traditions, Christianity, Islam, and ancient Egyptian gods.

Like everybody in my program, I studied all of these belief systems and more, seriously and open-mindedly, though I wouldn't call myself an adept in any one of them. Our goal was not to choose among them but to try to understand their core beliefs, their origins and development, and above all the stories they tell us. I thought of myself as "spiritual but not religious" a long time before I started graduate school, and the program pretty well convinced me I was on the right track with that approach. I've always been cross-disciplinary in my thinking and have found that being eclectic is not only very enriching but also makes greater sense of things than trying to find all the answers in one place.

I was raised as a Christian and came to have doubts about some of the dogma of the Church, though I was not sorry about the structure and moral fiber I ingested with my upbringing. Myth studies not only introduced me to beliefs different from the ones I learned in Catholic school, it also gave me a new respect for the texts and traditions of my own past. I read parts of the Old Testament in graduate school that I only heard about in catechism class and had never actually read for myself.

One of the professors at school liked to say it's helpful in any given situation to stop, look around, and ask yourself: Who is present? I'm asking myself that now. Over to my right, on a shelf behind my writing desk, is a statue of Ganesha, Hindu remover of obstacles and friend to students. Every time I happen to see him, I get a sense of well-being; he just looks so calm and immovable. On the bookshelf across the room is a statue of Kwan Yin, Buddhist goddess of compassion, sitting serenely atop a crescent moon. In the hall outside the living room is Bastet, the watchful Egyptian cat goddess who sees everyone who crosses my door.

In the kitchen I have refrigerator magnets in the form of an angel with a quill and a manuscript, a pretty little Virgin of Guadalupe, and a tiny metallic goddess engraved with the words, "How do I set a laser printer to stun?" I used to have a Shaker Tree of Life on the wall in there. (It's still around here somewhere. I'll have to find a new place for it.)

In the bathroom, Aphrodite (with one eye on her own reflection) and Hecate, triple goddess of magic, preside together over the sink, lotions, and potions. In my bedroom, a dancing Shiva, another Virgin of Guadalupe, a golden Buddha, my Japanese lucky cat, another Kwan Yin, and an exultant spring goddess coexist on the bookcase. There are also two dreamcatchers, a small angel, and two rather chipped and bemused looking gargoyles (they've been knocked over a few times) who act as bookends on the dresser.

What the gentleman who wrote the essay might interpret as sampling I prefer to think of as "taking all the help I can get." I'm so used to living with the images of all these different entities that I admit I often forget they're even there. But that doesn't mean they've forgotten me, and who knows what good they've done for me without my knowing it, simply because I've made room for them.

By the way, I've yet to hear complaints from any of them about having to share quarters, though they probably wish I would dust more often.

An Off-Cannes Film Festival: It's Archetypal!

I used to enjoy reading mini-reviews of movies that appeared regularly in a local publication. And when I say mini, I'm serious: the reviews were only a short sentence or two. They were pithy, often witty, sometimes mean-spirited, and not to be trusted as a guide to what you should actually see. They were interesting to read merely because it was fun to see the writer sketch an entire film in a few words while turning a catchy phrase.

I thought I'd try to do the same with the movies I've watched over the last couple of weeks at home. None of these films are recent, some of them are quite old, and this is not necessarily a guide to what you should actually see. Also, I think there's plenty of meanness in the world, so I'll leave that element out. Witty is probably aiming too high, but pithy I should be able to handle, having both headline-composing and haiku-writing within my realm of experience.

I always thought it would be fun to be a film critic, and now, through the magic of blogging, I can be, even though the pay isn't much. I'm calling this "The Eclectic Minimalist's Archetypal Film Roundup." If you read anything into my choice of films, it's your own fault, because there's no premeditation involved. I just know what I like (or think I like. I'm not always right). Here's the roundup:

Garden State
Boy living in L.A. heavily medicated goes home to Jersey, meets girl, does primal scream therapy on truck in a rainstorm, self-heals in a bathtub. Reading: Persephone charms Hades clean out of the Underworld.

Man on the Train
A bank robber and retired teacher forge a friendship, sample how the other half lives, exchange notes on slippers and target-shooting.
Reading: Hermes and Hestia have tea and shoot at cans.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)
Three smart-aleck comedians zoom through the canon with a heavy emphasis on the tragedies (because "they're funnier"). They're right.
Reading: Hermes, Dionysus, and Apollo start their own circus.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Man-about-town journalist suffers catastrophic stroke, is forced to live imaginatively within severe limits, aided by heroic women.
Reading: Wounded Dionysus, attended by Mnemosyne and Muses.

An American in Paris
Gene Kelly paints, sings, and dances his way into hearts of two women, loves one, takes the other to a party, fantasizes choreography to a Gershwin melody.
Reading: Hmmm . . . the Apple of Discord maybe, but there are only two goddesses, and this is Paris, so there's singing, dancing, kissing, and starving artists, but no Trojan War.

Adam's Rib
Married lawyers mix careers and love in a hectic battle of the sexes in which the winner is -- it's a draw!
Reading: Zeus is bested but turns the tables on Hera, then they go to Connecticut.

Clerks
Generation X minimum-wagers get profane, play hockey on the roof, wax philosophical, attend a funeral on work time, weather bathroom death. First annoying, then wise.
Reading: Satyrs at the convenience store who sometimes channel Saturn.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Young lovers dream, meet secretly, get pregnant, and are parted in a candy-box setting where everybody (even the mailman) sings. You can't get that song out of your head for days.
Reading: Aphrodite gets walloped by Hestia, which may or may not be a good thing. You decide.

Inherit the Wind
Teacher is arrested for teaching evolution; lawyers, politicians, townspeople, demagogues jump into the fray. Sharp and surprisingly modern.
Reading: Apollo loses, but the battle lines get blurred in the melee.

Coco Before Chanel
Early life of Coco Chanel, who dreamed of success on stage, struggled in a man's world, crashed some parties, made her own clothes, and then other people's.
Reading: Artemis becomes Aphrodite. Or, Ariadne picks up her own thread, grabs needle.

Cool Hand Luke
Couldn't get disc to play.
Reading: Mercury in retrograde. A failure to communicate.

First Day of Autumn

Last night I went to the Oktoberfest at a local church, a festival that's made a name for itself by bringing in exceptional musical performers. The last time I went was years ago, and I went there on an artist's date (I was doing the Artist's Way at the time). It was a sunny afternoon, and other than it being a pleasant day with a big crowd, booths, and bratwurst, I don't remember anything about it. This was in the days before Oktoberfest became hip by inviting big-name musicians to play in front of a crowd of beer-drinkers, kids, parishioners, college kids on dates, and hipsters.

My first impression last night was that, besides having better music, the fair has gotten more elaborate. I walked past innumerable games, bouncy houses, Cinderella castles, and other attractions for kids. Out in the open area, between the Bingo tent, the stage, and the food vendors, there was a sea of people, but no one I recognized. My dilemma beforehand had been what to wear, since the afternoon was warm but the night was going to cool off, and in the crowd you could see every possible answer to that problem as devised by other people: I saw women in sandals and women in boots, guys wearing shorts and T-shirts, denim jackets, sweaters, and blazers.

What I didn't see was anyone who looked like me, that is to say, unattached. It was definitely a family-oriented occasion. There are times you can go someplace by yourself and feel perfectly OK about it, but Christ the King's Oktoberfest isn't one of them. After a brief reconnoiter, I determined there was nothing to do except eat, drink, stand in line to eat or drink, play Bingo, or wait for the music to start.

I felt very conspicuous, just standing around (I didn't have flashbacks to the time I went to godparent training alone and received the icy stares of seven or eight married couples, all of whom were going to be parents, though it may have been in the back of my Catholic mind somewhere). I was almost on the verge of sneaking into the church to sit and look at the stained-glass windows (something I used to do in my college days) when I noticed a sign for a silent auction taking place in the church hall. I figured it would be something to do until the music started, so I went in and made the rounds of Wildcat athletics paraphernalia, game baskets, gadgets, and, on a special table in back, a slew of cakes, bundt, caramel, lemon, and iced, which diverted me for ten minutes or so.

Back outside, the musicians, Chris Hillman (of The Byrds) and Herb Pedersen (of The Desert Rose Band) were getting ready, and I was dithering about whether I even wanted to stay. Deciding it was useless to leave without sampling any of what made Oktoberfest famous, I rather indecisively took up a post at a back corner of the seated crowd. I wasn't about to sit. By that time, with the sun going down, it was getting chilly, and I decided that staying on my feet would help me stay warm and also enable a quick getaway.

The music was very good, though something a little less mellow and more rocking would have been a good excuse to move around more. As it was, I managed to bounce up and down on my heels. I never got over feeling out of place in the crowd, but a certain stubbornness prevented me from bolting, and I made it through the first set. While the sounds of mandolin and guitar drifted through the darkening air, and the odor of mustard and sausage wafted around on a stiff breeze, I reminded myself that I'm a mythologist, and that I could look at the scene with a mythologist's eye. I tried, but I have to admit drawing a bit of a blank. I knew I was at a harvest festival, but this suburban church parking lot, with its barbecue, hot dogs, bouncy castles, and soft drinks, didn't seem to have much in common with bringing in the grain. Then again, it's probably one of those things that makes more sense if you come with a crowd.

I lasted through the first performance before heading to my car. That's when a tiny burst of magic set in. I walked down the wrong street, which was OK; I felt like walking and getting some fresh air, so I took the long way around. On either side of the quiet street, warm light spilled out of houses; a half moon glowed between two rows of trees. I had a sudden, vivid memory of being out on a long-ago Halloween, roaming from house to house in the dark with a bag of candy and an even more delicious sense of license, magic, and mystery.

By the time I got home last night, it felt good to walk into the warmth of the hallway, and my apartment, which had seemed a little oppressive earlier in the day, now seemed cozy and clean and blessedly free of the odor of mustard. I celebrated surviving the Oktoberfest with hot chocolate and toast.

If there is any moral to this story, I guess it might be don't go to the Oktoberfest if what you're really in the mood for is something more mysterious. But if you do go, take a friend.

American Graffiti Meets the Amduat

When I watched American Graffiti Friday night, I tried to remember the last time I saw it. It might have been when I was in high school, and one of our teachers brought it in for a class viewing. I had also seen it at the theater when it first came out. It turns out I remembered hardly any of it. I seem to recall finding it a little slow and wondering why everyone at the time was so crazy about it. I'm not sure people still cruised when I was in high school (I was a bit out of the loop back then), but otherwise the characters seemed a lot like people I knew. They were ordinary and did ordinary teen-age things, none of which seemed all that significant.

But this time, when the credits came up, I felt slightly stunned, the way you feel when you've just seen something great and mysterious. This is not my first time to realize that a movie (or a book) changes as you change, but it was one of the most poignant instances of that experience.

A movie about a right of passage is probably going to look different once you've undergone that passage yourself, it's true, and this movie is about nothing if not the threshold between youth and adulthood. You can't be nostalgic about crossing this threshold when you haven't done it yet, and you especially can't be nostalgic if you hated your teen years to begin with and didn't give a parting glance to your own high school days.

But looking at the characters now, I relate to them in a way I didn't back then. I can understand the reluctance to leave the known for the unknown, the good, carefree times for the uncertainties of a life you have to make for yourself, and trusted comrades for a wider world that in the light of day seems more daunting than exciting. At the time I left high school, I didn't feel I was leaving any of these things, but now, having made my way this far, I understand that for people who did enjoy their youth, graduation means crossing a divide over which you can never return. In some ways, it may be an advantage to have been less than thrilled with your teen years because after that there's nowhere to go but up. If you peak in high school (like Graffiti's hot-rodding John Milner), it's an early fall from grace.

Despite being intensely ordinary, the people in the movie carry archetypes that went over my head on the first viewing. The class president, the head cheerleader, the hot-rod king -- all have experienced glory on their small stage and discover (or are about to) what it means to lose that shining moment, almost like Greek heroes just past their prime. The unbelievably fabulous soundtrack, along with Wolfman Jack's on-the-air commentary, constitutes a Greek chorus for the proceedings: the falling in and out of love, the dangers of the road, the excitement of youth and freedom. The Wolfman, now long since passed away himself, is a kind of oracle in the film, idolized by the young, steeped in mythology, and existing in his own remote cave, a small broadcast center outside of town, where Curt manages to track him down while looking for help with love and life.

Listening to Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock," the film's opening number, and realizing that the entire story takes place over the course of a single night, I thought about the Amduat, the Egyptian book of the underworld journey, a comparison that's probably escaped most reviewers (but one that makes Curt's initiation into the Pharaohs seem most fitting). The Amduat recapitulates the nightly journey of the sun god through the underworld, also representing the journey of the individual soul through the world of sleep and dreams and the afterlife. Like the dreamer, the sun god encounters foes, helpers, other gods, and various strange figures in his nightly journey by solar bark. Steve and Laurie, Curt, John, and Toad pass the hours of the night cruising in their cars, encountering friends, rivals, those who would harm them, mentors, and even (in Curt's case) an elusive goddess in a white Thunderbird.

In the Egyptian night journey, the twelfth and final hour holds a special significance and danger. The final moments, just before dawn and the triumphant return of the sun, are the most hazardous, since all the forces of darkness lie in wait for a final chance to throw a wrench in the works. In the movie, everything comes to a head in the climactic pre-dawn showdown on Paradise Road, with John racing to defend his status against a dangerous newcomer, Falfa. A mournful Laurie, trying to assert her independence after breaking up with Steve, is in Falfa's car. As Steve races toward the scene, the two drivers take off down a screaming straight-away at high speed, until Falfa loses control and flips his car. Laurie and Falfa escape before it blows up, but the accident seals Steve and Laurie's fate in a way neither had anticipated.

Against the backdrop of the rising sun, Steve, who had been the voice of reason when Curt expressed doubts about heading off to college, now promises a sobbing Laurie that he won't leave her. Toad is jubilant over John's unblemished record, but John, who is a few years older and sadder, tells Toad he was losing until Falfa blew a tire. Awash in hero worship, Toad can't believe it, and his enthusiasm helps John put off his growing realization of mortality until another day.

Curt, meanwhile, finally gets the call from the girl of his dreams after spending the last few hours of the night in his car, only to realize that she will remain a dream because now that it's day, he has decided to go to college after all. At the airport, it's Steve, not Curt, who remains behind.

It's as if the entire lives of the characters have been lived in a single night, as if with the sunrise, without their planning it, a line has been crossed. According to the film's epilogue, Curt goes off to become a writer, Steve becomes an insurance agent in their hometown, John is killed by a drunk driver, and Toad goes off to Vietnam, where he is eventually MIA. Dreams deferred, new beginnings, early death, the passage of time. It's strange how this movie, playful and trifling as it comes across at times, holds so much more than was apparent to me at 15.

Although I thought I had little in common with these people other than age back then, I understand all of them much better now. Curt's indecisiveness, John's awareness of aging, Carol's determination to find out where the action is, Toad's awkwardness -- all seem familiar. It took me several decades to understand this movie, and I'm beginning to see that years from now it will be different still. Besides capturing the flavor of a particular place and time, it reflects you back to yourself, however far you may have traveled on Paradise Road.

Looking With Persephone

A couple of weeks ago, I was taking an evening walk when I noticed how pleasantly cool it was. This was in the midst of a heat wave, which made exercise in the middle of the day unwise at worst and unpleasant at best. It was one of those evenings that gives you a foretaste of fall. A true summer evening, even as it cools down, retains a lazy residue of the warmth and humidity of the day. Those evenings that signal change have a completely different character, even a slight urgency. Hurry up! Time to get the harvest in and the barns filled! You'll be carving pumpkins before you know it!

At the time, I thought, "How nice this feels." Even as inveterate a fan of summer as I am can't help but be a little refreshed by the cooling and hint of change in the air that generally comes around Labor Day. This year, having been baked to a crunch during an unusually searing summer (on the Fourth of July, it seemed the height of foolishness to step outside the door without a sizable water bottle), even I say the cooling is welcome.

There have been times in the past when I didn't want summer to end, but my feelings are conflicted this year. September and October are usually very pleasant here, and the turning of the leaves can be spectacular. You're always aware, though, of November, that moody month with a split personality, out there waiting in the wings. In the best years, it's a continuation of October's glorious red and gold riot, Keats's "close-bosom friend of the maturing sun"; it may even be an Indian summer extravaganza. In the worst of times (which seems to be most of the time), it ushers in an unending series of dark, damp, and gloomy days that last, off and on, until the latter part of March.

Still, there is a certain buzz about the early and middle days of autumn. I have been reading essays lately about the association of fall with new beginnings. A Jungian writer points out that this is when school begins, older kids go off to college, and adults return to their jobs with (we hope) renewed vigor and enthusiasm for new projects that couldn't get off the ground while people were out on vacation. There is a cozy quality about fall and all of that soup-making, squash-baking, leaf-raking hearth and home activity touted by homemaker magazines and advertising campaigns for cardigans and corduroy. It's beguiling, in a way; you can still be active outside, but the inside of your home is more welcoming than it was in July, and you may actually want to be in your kitchen, making chili, pigs-in-blankets, and apple cake.

I think this emphasis on change and new beginnings is real but ironic. In nature, spring is the time of the new. Spring is when Persephone, forced underground in the autumn to spend the six dark months with Hades, comes joyously back to the earth accompanied by new flowerings, the greening of fields and trees, and the warming sun. For many of us, however, although spring is a very welcome sight, it does, in fact, signal an ending -- of the spring semester at school, of the season of serious work and deadlines, of the calendar of normal activities soon to be interrupted by summer vacations. When I was an undergraduate, I sometimes felt at a loss in the spring, viewing summer as an upheaval that required new plans to be made.

I'm different now, having reverted to my childhood mold. I always say that no matter how hot it is, I'll take a summer day over a winter one any time. Exhilarating winter days of sunshine on clean, sparkling snow are an ideal but rarely seen, but a summer day is always a summer day. Spring and fall are more ambiguous, each signaling change in its own way and each (unless we work on the land) at odds with some of our human purposes. Maybe "April is the cruelest month," if your circumstances are unlucky, as mine have sometimes been. But, all other things being equal, could it ever top the last week of November? Or the first week of January?

Even as I welcome the release from the heat, I find myself looking back over my shoulder with regret, like Persephone, at the bright skies, warm nights of fireflies and crickets, and full-leafed trees of summer now receding. Orion is rising, but Persephone is fading. Three months from now, I'll be dreaming of July. Have I ever dreamed of December?

Reading With Others

This summer, I tried something new with reading. I usually pick out books by either browsing or selecting titles I've heard about that sound intriguing. This year, I came across NPR's "Book Lists," which provide recommendations in various categories like "Books for Introverts," "Travel Memoirs," and "Intelligent Romance." I figured my tastes were probably a lot like those of most NPR listeners, so I looked over their suggestions and decided to take some of them on. I was also assisted by a recommended reading list I saw in Real Simple (a short list of five, all of which I ended up reading eventually).

Call it a book lover's experiment. How does picking out books on my own, based on my own predelictions and idiosyncratic interests, stack up with relying on the suggestions of intelligent tastemakers? (OK, I am a librarian, but I don't think that's relevant -- I never worked in a public library or in reader's advisory.) I was curious to see how closely my tastes coincide with those of other "discriminating" fiction lovers (I stuck with novels) and whether this might give me a short cut to that most elusive and highly desirable thing, a joyous banquet of summer reading.

I was excited to encounter these lists because, to tell you the truth, finding the kind of books I enjoy isn't that easy. It's wonderful to come across serendipitous finds, but a truly momentous book doesn't come along every day (or even every month). I guess it's a lot like relationships, where the really big finds are few and far between and therefore precious. I figured taking suggestions from others would get me out of my rut and expose me to writing I wouldn't find on my own, sort of like a Match.com for bibliophiles. It was worth a try (which is what I said when I tried out the real Match.com).

In June I started checking the library for the Real Simple titles, which are what I started with, and I finally realized that when you're interested in the same books everyone else is reading, you have to reserve them if you want to get your hands on them before Christmas. Then it wasn't until the end of June that any of my reserved titles became available. The first was The Innocents, a contemporary version of The Age of Innocence set among a close-knit, well-to-do Jewish community in Hampstead, in the north of London.

The mythologist in me always likes seeing an old story appear in a new guise, so I enjoyed the way the author made the story her own and found it to be, in true postmodern fashion, more nuanced and ambiguous than its predecessor. Who was sympathetic and who wasn't? Hard to say. Next, I read Seating Arrangements, the story of a Cape Cod wedding, whose wealthy characters I deemed greatly annoying throughout most of the book. My main take-away was genuine surprise at the end when these characters, whom I had found unlikeable, suddenly became understandable, each in his or her own way, in the last pages.

Next, I dipped into The Spoiler, a sharply written send-up of publishing, newspapers, and the collision of entertainment and journalism. I liked it, despite the dark and ironic ending, and appreciated its evenhandedness and crisp style. The Uninvited Guests, which I had been especially anticipating, turned out to be an almost indescribable blend of an English comedy of manners, Dawn of the Dead, and a bit of Jean Paul Sartre. It had one of my favorite characters of the summer in Smudge, the family's enterprising youngest daughter (and the only child in the story). Next, I tried to read Overseas, an unabashed romance/time travel combo, but I somehow couldn't make headway with it, in spite of the fact that I kept picturing Hugh Jackman as the male lead. (This novel was highly popular and NPR recommended, but I guess I need my romance more subtle, not to mention that time travel is a tricky thing in my book.)

I also delved into a couple of NPR's picks from last summer, both of which had Shakespearean themes, which I seem to be slightly obsessed with lately. The Great Night, a re-write of A Midsummer Night's Dream set in San Francisco's Buena Vista Park (near Haight-Ashbury) seemed like a sure thing. Alas, it was full of broken characters and a downright scary troupe of fairies that left me sad, despite a very imaginative handling of the magical realm. The Tragedy of Arthur, which involved twins, their relationship with a scoundrel of a father, and the discovery of a purported new Shakespearean play, was like a bookend to Great Night, with its tale of betrayal, tragic flaws, and a curious amalgam of true and false. I couldn't bring myself to read the play, which appears at the end, all the way through.

By August, I had covered The Girl Giant (which starts out sad but gets better. Moral: don't put off those doctor visits) and The Red House. I had read Mark Haddon before, but to me The Red House is his most accomplished work, poetic, insightful, and engrossing. It reminded me of Seating Arrangements with its sly way of slowly revealing all its characters as multidimensional, upsetting any judgments you may have made along the way. It also had an unforgettable and truly disturbing ghost story intertwined with the family drama. I moved on to The Age of Miracles, which was accomplished and original but depressing. I wanted to say to the author, hey, couldn't you at least have left Julia and Seth alone to spin out their story? It's the end of the world, for crying out loud, do you have to kill off the romance, too?

To finish my experiment, I read Mission to Paris, the tale of an actor caught up in the moral quicksands of pre-World War II Europe, which I found fascinating. I liked the main character's intelligence and principles, but I found the sex scenes, which seemed heavy on adolescent male fantasy, jarring. The last book on my list was Gone Girl, an addicting, unpredictable mystery combining black humor, a Manhattan couple, the recession, and a bucolic Midwestern locale to unforgettable effect. The end was a bitter pill but hardly surprising considering the psychotic nature of the couple's relationship. (Note to self: Is this what marriage is really like? Must find out before doing it.)

So that was it, my tour of what other people are reading. What was the outcome of my experiment? I have to say, honestly, that while these books provided moments of amusement (and at times, incandescent writing), I'm not sure I did any better with this list than I would have on my own. A good book (like beauty) really is in the eye of the beholder. My taste, offbeat and unique as it sometimes is, is still, I think, my best compass when it comes to the wild and woolly terrain of reading. (I came to the same conclusion about Match.com, it may not surprise you to know. I guess I really do have to figure things out on my own.)

To celebrate the end of my experiment, I went back to an old favorite of mine, with almost the feeling of someone who's been eating all her vegetables only to break down and get what she really wants, a hot fudge sundae. It's been over a decade since I came across Nicholas Christopher's A Trip to the Stars, and I've read it two or three times since then. I never heard of anyone else who's read it. I don't know if it was ever on anyone's Top Picks or bestseller lists. I'm not sure if the library even has it . . . and that arcane quality is probably part of the appeal.

I finished it a couple of nights ago, with some sadness. It will be a while before I can re-read it (you have to pace these things). But I've already started another book, one which I found by browsing in a bookstore some months back, and so far I'm really enjoying it.

To each her own.

A Visit to Earthsea

I spent the last few days re-reading Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy. I first read A Wizard of Earthsea years ago for an undergraduate Psychology and Literature class and was really taken with not only the story but the prose. Ms. LeGuin's style in these books is low-key but elegant. Her hero, Ged, is homespun and unprepossessing; in the beginning, he's not even that likeable, having rather a large chip on his shoulder and a need to constantly prove himself. Of course, as they say, pride goeth before a fall, and Ged's flaw leads him to the edge of darkness, where he struggles to undo the damage he has done and mend the dangerous hole he has created in the fabric of the world.

How to describe the charm of LeGuin's EarthSea? It's no country you recognize, although her world of islands, surrounded by an ocean whose outer boundaries are unknown, is a little reminiscent of Europe before Columbus. It's a world beyond time, with villages, castles, goatherds, wizards, sailing ships, and dragons (and these dragons speak, but you have to know the language). Each island is a different land, with its own customs and peculiarities. Osskil, in the North, is cold and strangely inhospitable; Roke, in the Inmost Sea, is famous for its wizards; Havnor is known for its beautiful city of white towers. Karego-At, in the East, is the home of a Viking-like people who raid and plunder; Wathort, in the South, is the island of Hort town, a place of ill repute. The little-known Western lands, on the very edge of imagination, are remote and vague; dragons live there.

EarthSea is a world in miniature, which may explain part of its inimitable appeal. It's almost like a child's imaginary world, with everything scaled down to an almost cozy dimension. Only the ocean suggests great distances. The countries are pint-sized but together constitute a prosperous, various world full of people and animals we recognize, though dusted with a peculiar magic, and all the usual virtues and vices. There is also a matter-of-fact darkness running through the stories, very like the age-old darkness we recognize from fairy tales and folk tales.

Ged is a marvelous anti-hero hero. He is not handsome and not even tall. As a boy, he's brash and foolish, if clever; as a man, he is taciturn and scarred, yet inspires great love. In the midst of LeGuin's childlike world, he is complex and very adult, wild and ungovernable as a boy and silent and self-contained when grown. He grows from an impetuous child with a gift he does not understand but is impatient to use to a thoughtful man who uses his considerable power only rarely. He comes to understand that a wizard's powers, glamorous and alluring to an outsider, appear very different to one who has attained them and understands the true costs of things.

When I first read A Wizard of Earthsea, it was in the context of a discussion of Jung and the shadow. As an apprentice wizard, Ged unleashes, through an unauthorized use of a dangerous spell, a dark creature, who emerges from a rent in the fabric of things. Ged spends most of the book in atonement for his error, which takes the form of tracking down this darkness and putting it back where it belongs. One of the most memorable scenes has Ged tracking the creature across the sea in his little boat, as it walks, formless but terrible, on the waves. As he follows it further and further south, rumor reaches him of its passing, and he begins to realize for the first time, as people shun him, how much this shadow actually resembles him.

What Ged has created has emerged from his own darkness, the shadow of his own nature. Coming to terms with this makes him whole again.

A Wizard of Earthsea, the matchless beginning, is my favorite book in the trilogy; the second book, The Tombs of Atuan, is dark and almost painful to read. I think this is because the anti-hero heroine of that tale, while outwardly a powerful priestess, is in reality the victim of a cruel deception. The last book, The Farthest Shore, seems much longer than it is, somehow enfolding a feeling of great time and distance into a modest number of pages, bringing to a conclusion the theme of the balancing of light and dark introduced in the first novel.

The Earthsea trilogy encompasses many mythic themes in its simple, unassuming tales. Reading the stories at this juncture, I found myself occasionally catching a glimpse of a familiar landscape, though remote in place and time from LeGuin's Earthsea. The school of wizardry on Roke, of course, bears a slender resemblance to Harry Potter's Hogwarts. As Tenar and Ged groped their way through the fearsome underground passage beneath Atuan's tombstones, I was suddenly with Ariadne and Theseus, looking over my shoulder for the Minotaur. As Ged and Arren sought the source of the opening that was siphoning light and magic out of the world, I thought of Mordor; when they stepped through the faint doorway into the bleak, monotonous land of death, I thought of Childe Roland. When Ged, worn and exhausted, asked Kalessin to carry him to Gont, at which point he disappeared into the world of legend, I thought of King Arthur, spirited away and healed on the Isle of Apples.

LeGuin's books echo the themes of other timeless myths while creating a memorable and original world of their own, which is worth revisiting from time to time. I think it must be marvelous to be the creator of such a wonderful work of fantasy, but LeGuin would no doubt tell me that this kind of wizardry has both costs and benefits. Most things do.

A Forest, Near Athens

Last night I went to see A Midsummer Night's Dream in the arboretum. It's my favorite of the Shakespearean comedies and, as I've written before, once helped me climb out from under a mountain of research that was crushing me. For, behold: the forest outside Athens is a maze, Theseus is in the play, and the lighthearted entanglements of the lovers fit perfectly into my Chapter 4. It brought a badly needed element of fun and fresh air to my dissertation, like the throwing open of a window to a party on the lawn.

Unfortunately, for the people putting on the play, rain showers moved into town this week and look to be staying for a while. After examining the forecast, I decided it was less likely to rain last night than it would be on any other night of the run. So I packed up refreshments, a blanket, binoculars, and my folding chair and headed over on foot through the damp, yellow grass.

The sun dipped below a solid bank of gray on its way down, flaring out suddenly behind me as I crossed the field, soon turning the entire Western sky a flaming orange. In the opening scenes of the play, the dramatic sunset was a counterpoint to the subdued early action, in which Theseus and Hippolyta discuss their impending wedding, Egeus importunes the king to force his daughter to marry the wrong boy, and the lovers make their secret plan. The characters were framed at certain times by the woods behind them, so that even though we were on an open hillside, the presence of an actual forest was very palpable.

I've got to hand it to these people. The costumes, the set, and the staging let the magic of the play shine through. It can be difficult to bring MSND off without veering into slapstick and making it all seem silly instead of funny. I mean, you have fairies flitting around, quarreling, rubbing magic flowers on people's eyes, and turning a man into an ass. It's barely there, like a dewy cobweb, and needs a light touch to keep the whole thing afloat.

The cast had the outdoor setting, fading to black once the sun disappeared, on its side, the dark trees looming in the near distance, insects chirping, and the mild summer air effortlessly conjuring up a sense of place. We were in a midsummer night, those dark trees could be the forest outside Athens, and those insects flying high near the lights, radiance reflecting off their tiny wings, could be little sprites.

Onstage, the floating costumes, fairyland colors, and actors disappearing and reappearing through mysterious openings--sometimes even appearing from the direction of the audience--seemed to be who they told us they were--confused lovers, befuddled aspiring thespians, kings and queens, and mischievous fairies. Titania's bed, cushioned and bedecked just as a fairy queen's bed should be, floated out and disappeared at judicious moments, evoking the dreamlike feeling of a magical summer night.

Naturally, one must be ready to suspend disbelief in these circumstances. If the cast and crew are magicians casting a spell, the audience participates in the enchantment by bringing imagination to bear. For that reason, the play is different for everyone present. For me, there seemed to be something solemn peeking out from behind the trees in the forest near Athens, something unspoken running through and behind the words of the actors, something to do with the mysterious life force represented by the fairies, representatives of nature, who fix things for the lovers in spite of the king and Hermia's father. The play was woven of both light and dark in a way it hadn't ever seemed to be before.

I was sorry when it was over, and I took my time walking home, sidetracking and pausing within a grove of trees, gazing up at the cloudy sky, not wanting to break the spell. Some of it clung to me even as I was brushing my teeth in front of the bathroom mirror a little later. I was reluctant to turn on too many lights, and the shadows in the corners, instead of appearing merely dark, seemed filled with possibilities. Maybe there was some impudent Puck hanging around, ready to sour the milk or knock over a book once I was sleeping. I didn't mind too much. Perhaps another fairy would mop the kitchen floor for me, to even things out. Sometimes the material world needs a little moonshine to keep things lively (often, in fact).

Then, in a twinkling, it was midnight, the witching hour, and time to go to bed.

The Mythic Road

I was driving down a particular country road the other day, a drive I hadn't made in years. It was a hot, lazy June afternoon, just another summer day in Kentucky. I've always liked that road, which is scenic and beautiful no matter what the season is.

I attended an art exhibit at a tiny museum on this road years ago in the dark time of the year, the result of a collaboration between an artist and a poet whose imaginations ran to fauns, fairies, and living blackbirds baked into pies. It was exactly the sort of thing I liked, and I remember how magical the frosted hills and fields seemed when I drove home afterwards, as if someone had sprinkled pixie dust along with snow all over the landscape.

I remember another occasion when I took a weekend drive, this time on a benign April day of blue skies, out on that same road. As my car rose and fell with the roller-coast hills, and the miles of plank fences, grazing horses, and bright spring greenery rolled by my windows, I remember catching my breath, thinking, "I live here, and I still feel like I'm in postcard, not a real place."

Then there was the time I was returning from the Kentucky Book Fair in Frankfort, which is always held in November. It was twilight on a gloomy autumn day, and I was driving down a section in Woodford County where the trees on either side form an arched tunnel, so that you might almost imagine yourself in the nave of a very long Gothic cathedral. On this isolated stretch, with fields rolling out in all directions, I was startled by the sudden appearance of a large deer (or were there two?), leaping away from the low stone wall at the side of the road. That was long before I heard Rumi's poem, "Unfold Your Own Myth," with the line about chasing a deer and ending up "everywhere," but even so, I recognized some magic in this encounter.

I was remembering all this while driving the other day, drinking in the beauty of the countryside and tooling along modestly, when--lo! From the left side of the road, a blackbird flew into my line of sight. Flying low and deliberately, he swept across the road in front of my car, and I heard a thump. Looking back, I couldn't see anything, and I had visions of myself motoring down the road with a bloody bird on the front of my car. When I got to a place where I could safely stop (which happened to be the parking lot of the museum), I got out apprehensively, fearing a gory scene. To my surprise (and relief), there was nothing.

I got back in the car, somewhat mystified. Had I just winged the bird? It made an awfully loud thump for just a graze. And what caused the bird to do that, anyway? It's not as if he couldn't have flown above the car, or behind it. It reminded me of the only other time I recall hitting a bird, when one flew into my windshield as I was driving to Florida for a job interview. It had seemed like a bad omen and may actually have been just that (I didn't take the job, and I believe it was a good thing that I didn't). This latest bird, though, seemed to have melted into thin air, like one of the blackbirds from the pie, winging his escape from a floury end and not caring how many Toyotas he dinged in the process.

A few miles down the road, I had somewhat regained my composure and was musing over how much history I actually had with this road, when to my right, I noticed a sign for a narrow lane, "Faywood Road." My first thought was, "Of course. There are definitely fays in these woods, and somebody knows it besides me."

Sometime later, I realized that the name probably referred to the location of the road, running through two counties, but I like my explanation better. I can just imagine them, creeping out quietly under the full moon, once the farm dogs have all settled down for the night. They have their banquets and fairy rings under the trees in summer, and they dance and sprinkle frost under starlight in winter. Blackbirds fly in and out of their intricate dances, and they are occasionally accompanied by fauns.

One particularly sore and irritated blackbird will probably be sitting out the dance tonight, telling anyone who will listen, "If it's not one thing, it's another."

When the Fat Lady Sings

This is not at all the way I imagined I'd feel after defending my dissertation. In this strange new world, I'm feeling a lot of things I never imagined feeling. I just pictured a little more joy and a lot less weariness.

I remember the first time I understood the meaning of the expression "bone tired." I was traveling with friends, and we had spent a day walking around Amsterdam after three days in London (and a channel crossing) with little or no sleep. Jet-lagged, irritable, and looking a bit worse for the wear, we climbed endless flights of stairs in our very vertical hotel (Dante's Purgatorio had nothing on that place). We had to get up early the next morning to catch a train to Berlin, so prospects for R & R were not looking good. I remember falling into the huge bed, thinking, "So, this is bone tired."

If I had known I could ever feel more tired, I think I would have just stayed in that bed, which would have been a shame because I would have missed Salzburg, Italy, the Venus de Milo, and several pounds of really good European chocolate.

Who knew a dissertation could take so much out of you?

I started my degree program with excitement, anxiety, and uncertainty, but especially I remember the excitement. I knew I was doing something big and kind of daring, and I recognized the same feeling in most of the faces around me those first days at school. We heard the poem by Rumi, "Unfold Your Own Myth," which pretty much told the whole story, better than we could have imagined. We had all jumped into the rabbit hole, and there was no telling what we'd see or where we'd go on the way to our degrees. There was a part of me that, out of caution, held back a little, whispering, "Just take it a quarter at a time. This is putting you into debt, so be sure it's what you want." But two sessions into the first quarter, and I knew I'd be staying.

Our campus is a beautiful place, with gorgeous gardens and trees, glorious views of the mountains, and even a glimpse of the ocean if you know where to look. I always thought of it as kind of a Garden of Eden, a magical place I had finally managed to find after many hard years of searching. Yet, as I was telling a friend last night, as mythologists we are also aware that the snake was a part of the story. Now, there are many ways to look at the snake from a Jungian point of view, and in some interpretations this creature is a necessary means to achieving greater consciousness, a consciousness that could never be attained in a state of blissful unawareness. It's always been hard for me to accept the idea of treachery in the midst of so much beauty, but after all, ignorance is not bliss. If you were asleep, no matter how beautiful the dream, wouldn't you rather be awake? I would.

So there were many bumps along the way, and some disappointments. Still, it was the work itself that was so sustaining, and that never changed. All of the sacrifices made to go the distance were absolutely worth it, and I would do it all again (perhaps a bit less sweetly and with a lot more attitude). Those hours in the classroom and the talks with friends over meals, around campus, and during walks on the beach were golden. Even now, all of those memories are lit with a beautiful light in my mind, a light that will never grow dim.

I enjoyed the classes so much that I didn't think a lot about the dissertation until our final year. Although my topic had already chosen me, I think, I was not aware of that, and the process of closing in on it was painful. Although I had confidence in my ability as a writer, I had never written a long academic piece, and the idea was increasingly daunting as it became more real. Even though the dissertation formulation process was painful, I'm glad now that it happened the way it did because I was forced to really think through what I wanted to say. For a writer who writes intuitively and not from a plan, this was a challenge, but by the time I had finished my concept paper, I knew I had something solid to work with. Whether I could make it fly the way I wanted it to was a different matter.

Writing the dissertation was a lonely process. I knew it would be, but I didn't know just how lonely lonely could be. There were times when I felt like the last person standing on earth, wondering where everyone else had gotten to. My long-standing interest in mazes and labyrinths took on a much more sober air when I actually entered the labyrinth of writing about them. It's suddenly not a lark once you're in one for real, wondering, "How do I find my way out?" "When will I find my way out?" "WILL I find my way out?" And after a certain point, "When I DO find my way out, what will be waiting for me on the outside?"

So now, having struggled through and emerged, not always in perfect form, but determined, like Childe Roland, to the last paragraph -- here I am. I've done it the best way I know how, I've learned a lot about myself, and I'm hoping for a bestseller when I turn this sucker into a book. Maybe one of these days, I'll recover some of the carefree feeling I used to have and shake off the tiredness. I always wanted to be a full-time writer on my own terms, so maybe my dream will be realized now that I've finished my degree.

So, would I recommend that YOU get a Ph.D.? Well . . . that's a question only you can answer.

The Doors of Perception

I posted on Facebook the other day that I was going to try to see the divine in everyone I met. It sounded like a great idea, but after half a day I realized I was going to have to leave the apartment to do it (ha, ha!). To avoid getting blasted by the divine light that was sure to result, I decided to take it slow. I went to Whole Foods and Joseph-Beth Bookstore last night, and it was fairly late, so there weren't many people around. One of the employees at Whole Feeds greeted me with a friendly smile -- it wasn't at all hard to see a light shining through her. I was off to a good start.


But looking back now, I realize that even with my goal in mind, I was avoiding looking at people around me. I am often hesitant to look too closely at other people, whether from shyness or fear of appearing rude or whatever it might be. Actually, I'm now wondering if the habit of not really looking at others is part of what makes us dehumanize them. It's easy to go from avoiding their eyes to seeing them as objects in your way to the checkout counter to cutting them off in traffic. And it's no difficulty at all to move from that to projecting all of your shadow onto them. Everything you refuse to own in yourself gets shifted onto other people, and the less they seem to be like you the easier it is to do.


Did someone tell everyone about what I'm doing? All I know is that I received a radiant smile from a young man, a stranger, in the parking lot a little while ago. When I got to Starbucks and decided to challenge myself by actually looking around to see who was here, I immediately caught someone's eye and received another smile. We all know how powerful a smile can be, especially on a dark winter day. I've received at least three bonus ones in the last 24 hours, and I really think it was my unspoken intention to be more open that communicated itself to other people. Change your mind and change your life.


I was at a conference at school in the fall, and a young artist was there with an exhibit she called "Mirror Box." It consisted of climbing inside a machine that, with the aid of light and mirrors, allowed you to see your face and another person's superimposed. It sounds so simple, but consider: you climb inside and find yourself face to face with someone completely unlike you and then, by the magic of art, see what emerges from putting the two of you together. I tried it with two strangers, the second of whom was a young man with very dark skin and hair, about as unlike me with my Irish paleness as could be (his family was from Iran). Yet when I looked at the combination of our faces, there was nothing strange about the result. We looked like an ordinary person, not even particularly exotic.


I think we have been sold a bill of goods that encourages us to either ignore the suffering of others or to blame them for everything that's wrong, whether it's the Democrats demonizing the Republicans, Christians doing the same to Muslims, whites and blacks at each other's throats, or the rich against the poor. (My guess is that many of the 1 percent are just as upset at the state of the world as the rest of us.)


For all the thought and energy that goes into policy discussions on how to solve problems like famine, poverty, environmental degradation, and lack of economic opportunity, I'm starting to think the answers might be more basic than they seem. Maybe we just need to, as they say in Jungian terms, take back our projections. I think that is an eye-opener far more mind-blowing than any psychedelic experience could ever be.


If you ask me God left the world unfinished on purpose. We're supposed to do the rest. We are the co-creators and need to figure out how to eliminate suffering, advance the condition of the human race, and live in harmony with nature. Seeing God in others is not limited to human beings but includes all other creatures and the world itself. It means supporting efforts to eradicate hunger; sending money to help save the wolves and the polar bears (I know we'll be sorry when they're gone); and supporting the efforts of other countries to attain higher standards of living and more human rights. It means paying attention and speaking up.


I'm not saying anything that hasn't been better said by others. I'm not saying anything that I haven't always believed, but what's different now is that I better understand how I'm implicated in what's wrong in the world, usually by the things I fail to do more than bad intentions. Studying mythology has made me aware of (1) how unified we really are and (2) how there is often something very different from what appears to be there, on the surface, trying to peek through. There are so many openings to the divine, both in and around us. "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thru' narrow chinks of his cavern." -- William Blake.


I also have to say quite honestly that some of my best education has occurred since I stopped working and stayed at home to finish my dissertation. I have time to read, think, and consider. I think the struggle to make a living blinds a lot of us to what is really going on because it takes so much time and energy and leaves little over for anything else. Do we need a revolution in the accepted way of doing things? Is our Protestant work ethic making us less human? Just saying.

Kentucky Is the New Black

The first time it happened to me, I was in the soup aisle at Kroger. I was going about my business when I caught a glimpse of someone I thought I recognized and, for a second, was ready to say hi to a classmate. A moment later, the reality hit me: "I'm in Lexington, so that can't be someone from Pacifica." That was the first of many instances where worlds collided as I attempted to balance a working life and residence in Kentucky with the long commute to graduate school in California. Since then I've had to re-orient myself many times, placing myself in the proper time zone and locale when someone who reminded me of someone else gave me a split second of uncertainty as to my actual place in space and time.

I had been eying California from afar for years, wondering if I could ever make a life there, so I was really bemused by the ways it was becoming a significant presence in my day-to-day life while I remained in place in Lexington -- though it is not exactly accurate to say that I remained in place, because things were already changing. I had a dream right after starting school in which I was sleeping out on a balcony, up on a cliff overlooking the sea. Moonlight and then sunlight shone down on me, and I felt alive and exhilarated; I knew I was in California. I felt perfectly at ease in the dream, a moment of pure bliss that was succeeded by concern as I realized that the sea was rising fast and I needed someone to help me move my bed inside. My interpretation of the dream was that I had taken a definite step in a direction that my psyche approved but that I had a great deal of anxiety (not shared by the other characters in my dream, whose attention I could not get). My concern was not so much with drowning as with ruining the mattress.

Somebody I know once described Lexington as a "safe" place (compared to the great unknown). The familiarity is both comforting and, at times, stifling. Years ago, a restlessness so intense would come over me, often on a Friday night, that I would literally drive around for hours, picking familiar and unfamiliar neighborhoods with warrens of streets to get lost in, turning the radio to a rock and roll station, and looking for something -- adventure, novelty, occurrences out of the ordinary -- that I was not likely to find, at least in the places I was looking. It was actually a sudden decision, ten years ago, to spend a weekend in L.A, a rather unexpected act that took even my breath away, that started to inch me, little by little, toward an ongoing relationship with a place that in some ways seemed like an unlikely draw.

On the other hand, I'm a writer, and a writer is always looking for new ideas and experiences. Although people kept telling me it was Northern California that I should really be looking at, that L.A. was too shallow and uncultured, I discovered a fascination with the city that I couldn't talk myself out of. I have generally been well treated in L.A.; except for their behavior on the freeway, people seem easy-going and friendly (someone put money in my parking meter one time in Venice, and that has never happened to me at home). I am not an aspiring actress or screenwriter, so I haven't experienced the rejection that probably grinds down many transplants. I am overwhelmed by the effort it takes to get from one place to another, even just to park the car. The size of the place is daunting. But I have been amazed at the richness of cultural offerings, from the Getty Center to Disney Hall, and the sunshine is wonderful.

Yes, I am put off by the great emphasis on surface appearance and image that seems so prevalent there. On the other hand, my training as a mythologist tells me that images are often richly compounded representations of much that lies behind them. Movies are carriers of the collective imagination, and the film industry, often derided for a lack of seriousness, is actually an indicator and curator of the things that are most important in our culture.

In some ways, I've had one foot, or at least a big toe, in California for quite a while -- but in other ways it still seems like a million miles away. Last time I was there, though, an unforeseen development gave me a taste of home that I hadn't expected. Because who would ever have expected that homey, folksy Kentucky would become Hollywood trendy . . . but that's what's happened! Everywhere I looked, from the sides of buses to the sides of buildings, was the image of the hip as can be star of Justified, which takes place in Harlan County (and Lexington) and features a somewhat more colorful segment of the population than I can lay claim to myself. Nonetheless, references to familiar places and things abound, and the themes of violence, kinship, the difficulty of leaving home (and of coming back), and the conflict between regions and attitudes are both realistic and strangely inflected in a Hollywood accent.

This could be a sign that I might find myself more at home in L.A. than I could have expected. I might be the new "It" Girl, with my slight Kentucky drawl and name-dropping references to Ale-8-One (bottled in my hometown). On the other hand, consider the chances for disorientation. Last night, I was taking a closer look at a past episode for local references when I noticed low mountains in the background, obviously meant to be the hills of Eastern Kentucky. If you weren't paying much attention, the illusion was almost complete. But I recognized the broad, creased surfaces of the mountains surrounding L.A.: California mountains just don't look like the ones in Kentucky, which are darker and more somber to my eye. What I thought I was seeing was not in fact what was really there.

I've wondered for a while what a cross between California and Kentucky would look like. It might take some doing to bring two such different places together, but it looks like the popular imagination is already running off ahead of me. Maybe by the time I get there, there will be a local source for Ruth Hunt's bourbon balls, an art-house theater as hip as The Kentucky, and a porch swing with my name on it.

Bookstore Logic

Just today I noticed a bookmark that I've apparently been carrying around for more than two years. I remember the day I visited the bookstore in Louisville and the book I bought, a guide to Los Angeles. I've used the book many times but don't recall seeing the bookmark, which includes a quote from Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist: "To carry a book in your pocket or in your bag, particularly in times of sadness, is to be in possession of another world, a world that can bring you happiness."

I've always been a reader. When I was a little girl, I didn't read books so much as immerse myself in them. It was an effortless, unselfconscious way to enter other worlds that immediately became my own, as if I were just another character, looking over the shoulders of the other characters or sitting quietly in a corner. The books I read up until the age of 12 or 13 live for me in a way that few books have since then. At some point I became a more critical reader, which sounds like a good thing but in reality meant that stories lost some of their immediacy for me. It became harder to get lost in them as I became more aware of things like style, literary value, etc. The Nancy Drew books I loved at age 8 then became "formulaic," and I was no longer enchanted by the "silliness" of Dr. Seuss.

I had crossed an invisible border, leaving a magic world and stepping into a more pedestrian reality in which books still called to me, but more softly. My imagination still craved the luminous realm of fairy tales, of King Arthur and Robin Hood and the Little Golden Books, but I could no longer get there. I don't know if this happens to other people or not. Once in a while, a book would still sweep me into its world, a book like To Kill a Mockingbird or The Hobbit or some of the novels of Mary Stewart. On the whole, though, as reading became a more intellectual exercise, my capacity to feel its magic became less.

I actually remember telling a friend years ago that I was tired of reading about life and wanted to experience it directly instead of just in books. Be careful, oh, be careful, what you wish for! The god of libraries (Sesat? Thoth?) might have had a hand in what followed, possibly intending a corrective measure to curb my attempts to flee the library (which turns out to be bad form for a librarian). Let's just say I learned my lesson and am perfectly content now to spend the entire winter curled up with a good book, sipping hot chocolate and eating plates of cookies.

One thing that has somehow never waned is the irresistible lure of a bookstore. I remember sadly the days when all we had were chain stores at the mall, which carried bestsellers and paperback classics but not a lot else. Since then I've developed a pretty high bar for what a bookstore should be, and there are actually some stores that meet it. One criterion is that it should be possible to just walk in and feel yourself attracted to titles at every hand, without having to scour the shelves. (I know some people enjoy rummaging around to uncover gems, but I don't want bookfinding to be like work -- it should be like play).

This is a true story: I was in Northern California six years ago, touring the wine country of Sonoma County and environs. I found myself passing through a small town, no more than an eyeblink, which somehow appealed to me, even though I was on my way to somewhere else. I drove for another 45 minutes or so through an idyllic landscape but kept thinking about the little town I had seen. For some reason, I turned around and drove back, stopping to get chai at a little cafe, and then moving down the street to visit the town's little bookstore.

There was a table in the middle of the store loaded with books on a variety of topics, in no particular order. I picked up a book with an interesting title and opened it at random. The first word my eye fell on was the word "maze." Not surprising that I would notice this, since I'd been interested in mazes for a while. I picked up another book, on a different topic than the first one; again I opened it at random, and again, the first word I saw was "maze." A third book; again, at random, again, the word "maze."

I wasn't even thinking about myth studies at that point, but I knew enough about Jung to recognize synchronicity. I had always bemoaned the fact that that type of thing never happened to me, and now, shazam!, here it was. Of course, three is a magic number in fairy tales, and looking back, I see this incident as the opening by which I fell into the rabbit hole of a whole series of adventures, good and bad. At the time, I wasn't sure how to interpret this bookstore experience, but I kept wondering about it, until six months later, I was in graduate school, the last place I thought I'd be. I wrote about mazes and labyrinths several times, but resisted choosing it for my dissertation, not really accepting that the topic had already chosen me.

I now know a word I didn't know before, which is numinous, the quality of divinity or magic that shines through certain events, places, and things, revealing a pulsating significance where something very ordinary appeared only a moment ago. A good bookstore deals in the numinous, as does a good library. That's why it's important to be within reach of one or the other, and preferably both, if you are, say, thinking about relocating. I spent an afternoon and two frustrating evenings in Los Angeles looking for the one (there are several good used bookstores, but you also need one that deals in new books). I approached the last bookstore on my list feeling nervous, since I hadn't yet seen anything at all like what I had in mind. Would I end up having to move to Northern California (or Portland? or Seattle?) just to be near a good bookstore?

Fortunately, this bookshop turned out to be just the right size. Browsing yielded a good number of interesting titles. In one corner was a little boy surrounded by a pile of books, whose mother was threatening to leave without him (when last seen, he was still reading). There were thoughtful staff picks. I chose a book to buy, then changed my mind, picking up the one next to it, and thought to myself, this store could be the difference between my moving here or not moving here.

I didn't get to start the book until last night. I was finishing another book I had become engrossed in, a book about, of all things, a bookstore and a writer. (I had found it at Powell's, the Paradiso of bookstores, in Portland.) I picked up the new book last night, intending to read a little before going to bed. I liked the way it started, with a musing on the power of scent to hold memories; its setting in Provence; the romance combined with a touch of Gothic; the lyricism of the writing. Then, at the bottom of page 11, at the beginning of chapter 3, I came across the words: "Dom and I met in a maze." You're kidding me.

It was Bilbo who said, "the Road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began. Now far ahead, the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can . . ." 

Deconstructing Raylan

One time a friend made fun of me for going to San Francisco for a bluegrass festival. When you're from the Bluegrass State, it is pretty funny to fly to the Bay Area to watch people play the banjo. I was thinking about that last night while chilling in my L.A. hotel room, watching the program Justified. I've heard a lot about the show but had never seen it because I don't have cable at home (this is not a matter of Kentucky being primitive, just a choice on my part). Justified is a fictitious account of the life and times of a U.S. marshal in Eastern Kentucky and is peppered with references to Frankfort, Lexington, and other familiar places.

I know that people from the region are often sensitive to the way they are depicted in the media, but I haven't heard any complaints about Justified. That surprises me a little since the show is full of nasty, violent people involved in drugs, moonshine, murder, feuding, and other shenanigans. In the course of just two episodes, the handsome young marshal, Raylan Givens, was shot, hung up in a tree and beaten, thrown through a glass wall, and forced to play a deadly gun game with a criminal while his (girlfriend?/ex-wife?) gave the countdown. It's enough to make you wonder why anyone would want to be a marshal, but Raylan seems to take it all in stride, with a gleam in his eye and a soft-spoken but ready quip for every occasion.

People from Kentucky are used to being stereotyped, and some of the characters in the program don't stray too far from the tradition of stock characters that stand in for "hillbillies." On the other hand, they seemed fairly creditable to me as realistic people, if you consider the fairly narrow swath of Kentuckians who are definite hard-core criminals. I didn't see many people in the show who reminded me of people I know, but Justified really covers a different demographic. 

For me, one thing that did interfere with the realism was the accents. People from Kentucky definitely have them, but they aren't like the ones in the show. Hollywood can get the most exotic Eurasian accent down to a science, but for some reason they can't do Kentucky. You'd think they would ask George Clooney or Johnny Depp for pointers on verisimilitude, but no -- Hollywood Kentuckians always have a carefully exaggerated, slightly belabored sound, like the young, bespectacled bluegrass band I once heard in a San Francisco coffeehouse, playing folk tunes with the earnest quality of a string quartet.

I was expecting to like Justified, but my reaction to it was complicated by my dislike of violence. The entire premise of the program is violence, and in that it resembles all the other television crime shows, no matter the setting. One thing that's different about Justified is that the main character, Raylan, is depicted as somewhat enmeshed in the culture of violence, since he is working in his own hometown and has long-standing connections there. He is not an outsider but an insider.

I'm familiar with the myths and legends of Kentucky as an insider who has always felt like an outsider. I spent seven of my growing-up years away from Kentucky and came back at the very awkward brink of adolescence, learning just how difficult it can be to fit oneself into the tightly knit social fabric of the culture. I have never felt that I succeeded completely in doing it, which may be why I have a hard time knowing where "home" actually is. Watching Raylan banter easily and comfortably with his boss, his acquaintances, and the bad guys (the latter two categories being somewhat indistinguishable), I did not see a kindred spirit, but rather a dyed-in-the-wool Kentucky boy (albeit an exceptionally good-looking one). Even though Raylan has returned to Kentucky after living in south Florida (just as I did), his natural way of dealing with the people and their habits is something I'm still working on myself.

There is a tradition that a Cherokee chief described Kentucky as a "dark and bloody ground" to Daniel Boone. The creators of Justified have taken that appellation seriously in their depiction of the state, or at least a particular part of it. The stories I hear of nepotism, corruption, and violence in Eastern Kentucky (and those portrayed in the show) grow out of the same culture that has produced a rich brew of folk music, literature, and other arts. I can't fault this show for emphasizing violence when all the other cop shows do the same thing. But what I would find interesting is a show that explores not only the folklore of this complicated place but the very real and difficult struggles of people just trying to fit in. Instead of Justified, call it Satisfied. Or maybe Dissatisfied.

Ariadne Meets Arachne

So how do you pass the time when your dissertation draft is in someone else's hands and you're free to turn your attention to other things? We've been lucky with the weather this New Year, and there has been a succession of mild, sunny days, perfect for long walks in the afternoon under a cerulean sky. I have also watched a recorded course on Jung and spirituality; done some dusting; thrown away a bunch of accumulated receipts; made gingerbread cookies; watched Lord of the Rings all the way through; completed some paperwork; started and finished Death Comes to Pemberley, and ("Ta-da!") started a knitting project.

The knitting project may or may not be a good idea. I spent an hour reading through a "knitting for dummies" book and getting more and more intimidated. I was looking for the part that explained the difference between "knit" and "purl" and what all those little abbreviations in my "Vintage Pull-Through Scarf" kit mean. The yarn that came with my kit is a lustrous green merino wool with paler shades mixed in, 230 yards of it. When I bought the kit, I thought it would be self explanatory but found out that was not the case. It actually assumes you know what you're doing.

Attracted to the photo of the smartly knotted scarf on the package, I decided that this kit couldn't be too difficult to master, even for an absolute beginner. I mean, I'm getting a doctoral degree, right? How hard can it be? I have to say the whole knitting thing is a bit of unfinished business for me. I had an Irish grandmother who was constantly knitting sweaters (I have two of them) and who tried to encourage me from the age of 8 or so to pick up the craft. I think I received two of those little loom kits before I succeeded in completing a potholder, and I don't remember what became of the knitting kit, except that I never started it.

Part of the problem was that, although I loved dolls, play kitchens, and tea sets, the idea of actually doing something useful like knitting seemed less like play and more like being domesticated. It was more like work, the kind of thing that could result in someone expecting you to do it all the time. I remember I didn't want any part of it. Now that I know no one's expecting me to do it, I'm attracted to it. I like the idea of doing something complex with my hands that results in something tangible. It requires a different kind of intelligence than the one I'm used to.

It's off to a slow start so far. In my opinion, a book on knitting should start by telling you how to make a stitch, but mine started by pointing out all the difficulties inherent in knitting, all the mistakes you're likely to make, the deceptive nature of patterns, and the myriad types of yarn, including their drawbacks. In the midst of a discourse on the finer points of needles, I finally had to admit I was lost when I looked at mine and realized they might as well be chopsticks for all I could tell.

Leafing ahead, I finally found the place where the book gets down to defining terms and tells you how to make a slip stitch, which is apparently the entry point, the equivalent of "Speak Friend and Enter," for knitters. After attempting this very basic technique for several minutes without getting anywhere, I fortified myself with hot tea and gingerbread and sat down for another go. It seems to me that the instructions don't really match the diagram, but that might be my fault. A lifetime spent with your nose in books, studiously avoiding the domestic arts, may make you a little dumb when you try to shift gears.

Come to think of it, this business of knitting could be another way of tangling myself up in knots and intricate paths (once you start thinking about labyrinths they just keep coming at you). There is a story in Greek mythology about Arachne, the girl so skilled in weaving that she became conceited and was turned into a spider by Athena, the goddess of the arts and crafts. I don't anticipate attracting any dangerous notice with my own knitting; I'll be too busy learning the difference between K2tog, SSK, and K1fb, how to tell the Wrong Side from the Right Side, and what gauge means. Come to think of it, watching that Great Learning Course on The Divine Comedy might be a little less taxing.

Faint Sounds of Victory

The draft has left the building.

Last week I got the full draft of my dissertation boxed up and out of here, which was a big milestone. Although I face revisions over the next few months, I can now truthfully say the worst is behind me. When I started the blog two years ago, I said I wanted to have fun with the dissertation, and that I doubted anything good would come of it if I didn't have fun.

So, was it fun?

Well . . . parts of it were sort of fun, but not fun like a day at the beach or at King's Island. It was more like the fun you experience at the end of a run, when you feel good about what you just did but don't really want to go back and do it again.

When I was in the middle of my coursework, I sometimes imagined that writing the dissertation would be a luxury since I would "just" be concentrating on one project instead of juggling a class schedule and a job. The truth of the matter is that being in school was easier in some ways, namely because of the built-in deadlines, the regular trips to our beautiful campus, and the camaraderie of classmates. The end of that sustained contact with my cohort left me in a lonely spot, isolated at home with my books, like a female version of St. Jerome with a Starbucks card and a laptop.

In such a situation, it's easy to doubt yourself and wonder if you'll ever find a way to pull together all the disparate information you've been gathering into some kind of coherent whole, much less write the elegant and persuasive manuscript of your dreams. The more you read, the more you feel you need to read. You imagine someone poking holes in all your arguments and wonder if you'll be able to get through the defense without resort to smelling salts. 

I hear stories from friends about life events derailing their research, and I'm grateful that at least I've got it all down on paper. A year ago, I was exhausted after writing the first two chapters. I just had to let it stew for a while while I traveled and cleared my head, thinking of the best way to get from Madison to St. Louis, or where to eat dinner my first night in Seattle, or whether to stay in a bed and breakfast or a hotel in New Orleans. Then, when I did start writing again, I had to fight my way tooth and nail out of the bog of Chapter 3, an epic struggle that makes me think I now understand how Jacob felt after wrestling the angel.

Was it that intimidatingly masterful book on the labyrinth and the Middle Ages that threw me? The remoteness of the period? My relative lack of expertise in medieval studies? Looking back now, I think it may have been a needling feeling that there was something I needed to unearth, a basic way in which I disagreed with some of the conclusions I was reading, which hadn't come to the surface yet. Eventually, it was an immense relief just to recognize that I disagreed with one of my experts and could stand my ground on it.

The fun parts of the dissertation came fleetingly, when an idea would occur to me in midstream, like the way The Woman in White showed up in Chapter 5 and Bruce Springsteen materialized in Chapter 7. I mean, seriously, who would have ever thought of Bruce Springsteen ending up in someone's dissertation on labyrinths? (He's in there because of Tunnel of Love.) I also had the pleasure of not only writing about A Midsummer Night's Dream but finding research that supported my decision to put it in Chapter 4.

When I finished the proposal, someone asked me if I didn't feel a sense of accomplishment. I said that I couldn't really relax because I knew how much more I needed to do to improve it. I have a similar feeling now, knowing where the shortcomings are and the places that could use a bit more work. It's hard to know when to stop with such a big project, but eventually you run up against that ticking clock, and it forces you, willy-nilly, to let go.

Maybe this is what it feels like to be a parent, watching that little one toddle off to school for the first time, convinced that he's way too young to be out there in the world. As you watch, considering calling him back for one more hug, he disappears into the building without a backward glance, and the door closes behind him. You're left on the sidewalk, waving vacantly at an empty schoolyard, wondering how in the world you got there so soon.