breathe a sigh; but it will be full of clouds. Fog has clouded me lately– not just its beauty but its cooling thought, it obfuscation. All turns translucent with clouds in your eyes. Been away from this little corner of the art– and ‘blog– world. That’s ok, because much has happened, been done and gotten done. Typing has been part of another trajectory of late. And while that’s not all over– yet– I feel a fresh ray of sunlight, like some golden knife, parting the clouds with a razor-ish intent. What can one do when the knives of the gods are about?

To top the list, a tragedy: I broke the coffee pot yesterday. This is not so isolated an incident– I feel like some ne’er-do-well, gremlin-surgeon has severed and frayed some of my nerve-endings, and I am no longer fully in control of my motor skills. Doing the dishes– while a rare event at best– has turned into an ancient bombardment, a tearing down of Jericho’s walls. Porcelain rings and cracks like the clash of the mighty titans, showers of glass dole their mournful last bell-tones before they slip from my fingers and explode into cruel, watery knifes. Yesterday, the coffee pot– a stalwart companion– collided head-on with a sturdy, whiskey-like glass. It didn’t have a chance. (The whiskey glass made it out fine– but I am not taking this as a symbolic portent. My beverage of choice remains caffienated).

Thankfully, there remains an unscathed French Press. I am drinking the silty goodness right now.

So my MFA has gone through its roller-coaster ride, and I am shaky, nauseous, toyed with by the great forces of the earth resisting the speed and flight of the carnival-goer. My “outside” had to leave for Chicago, and for days and days it looked like I could neither reschedule the meeting at all, nor find an emergency Faculty to sit-in. But today, in perhaps an upswing of my instant-karma, both Lisa Cartwright and Frank Beiss have stepped up and said they could attend and crash-endorse me. So it looks like Thursday, October 14th is the day of reckoning.

And that’s where I have been, lately: in the midst of the struggles of arrangement and preparation, all the while trying to teach another quarter of Mongols, Zhengho the Eunuch Admiral, Ottomans and Slave Traders and Spice Merchants and Mughals. changes in the nathanielclark.org realm: foremost, much has been added to the skald cluster sub-site, from new pictures to screenshots to the war movie training list. Also, in short order, I will upload an html version of the Powerpoint (well, actually it’s openoffice.org’s Impress) presentation I will give the committee+. I’ve never used PPT before, and I am not sure I actually like it; but once I got into it I didn’t want to back up and do it all in some other format, so… oh, and plus Ernie– my advisor– has asked many times– specifically– if I would do a presentation in Powerpoint, so I guess he has a secret hankering to be in a science-like conference, and I am the man to bring him there.

Many thanks go out to PW for his digital camera, his spinach salad, and his many other, unlistable qualities. I also hope he enjoys another link to his site– may his Google rating skyrocket!

So, chaos grows its wild garden here, and I try sometimes to counter with bits of order & planning, but who am I kidding? I envy the organized, and admire their clear heads, but what’s the sense of deluding myself: I am no longer convinced that I am order’s child. But I do try and swim in the current.

No plans but the vague intentions, matched up with deadlines, that’s me. So it is with the MFA, it is with my life. Some of you might know, I am moving at the end of this month, out of the birdsong neighborhood, and to.… well, that’s just it. Don’t know, something cheap and temporary. Any leads? Let me know– I am open. Here are the plans: 1) visit the parents in Upstate NY for a bit, get a big soul-full of snow and cold and pine trees and bare trees and wear some layers. 2) Get out of the country for a bit, through an established program, or through mystical coercion; travel light, reduce my overhead; find an essential, and come back to what I missed, not what I think I should have, or be doing. 3) meditate, but not actively, on what the next phase of life will be. Talk has been talked about Japan, China, Korea, Russia, Uzbekistan. China would be intriguing, to see the Gobi desert; meet up with PW. Japan seems easiest, most lucrative. Korea has been worked through by Evan and ReJon, so the path is mapped (making it less desirable). Russia, well… there is a grave need to see Russia before I die. It is best not leave life incomplete. And Uzbekistan, well– maybe it’s the choice, the melange of factors that I find interesting: Turko-Mongols, Samarkand, Islam, Russia, the works… but that would probably mean the Peace Corps and I am not keen of granting 2 years of life to any organization; not any more. I was in the Army, the National Guard, and despite moments of impassioned delusion (where I think I could make it as a Translator and Interrogator for the Army), I know that what I crave is a bit more… unhinged than that.

Well, the sun is setting and it’s been cathartic to type these thoughts, I must return to the most important hurdle, right in front of me: getting this damn MFA done, signed, and delivered by the end of next week. And, another cup of French-Press coffee.

Peace to you, but not too much, lest you become complacent.