Kira Disapproves

*cover your eyes and ears if you’re squeamish*

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Lila just vomited up an entire mouse. (Yes, I’m actually blogging about this.) She’s been sick on and off for a month now, and several vet visits yielded no answers except she might have a “nervous stomach” or she might have “swallowed something.”

Well. We have an answer.

And all I could think as I stood there tossing an entire role of paper towels over the poor thing so I’d be able to pick it up and dispose of it (well, all I could think of other than EW. EW. EW.) was that Lila had a bigger day in terms of producing something than I did. I’m in major procrastination mode right now, and feeling very overwhelmed by life in general. Lila, however, has now had a breakthrough and just ate an entire bowl of kibble and is sleeping soundly.

Make of it what you will.

Incidentally, I found in my e-mail yesterday evening about five paragraphs of Kira-wisdom circa 2007. I’m pretty sure the notes were musings from when I was supposed to be working on my Study Plan, the presentation we make as first-years in my graduate department of our project and where we see it going over our time in graduate school. It’s too embarrassing to post the whole thing, but the following comment was noted separately from the rest and it really got to me.

“speaking in words you do not easily know is what brings you to the words that are truly missing.”

I’m not sure what I thought that meant at the time. But it’s interesting because my project was very different then, and something along these lines is closer to what my project is today. I’m interested in looking at the idea of cryptomnesia historically as a term that was used to explain how people know things that they don’t actually know — with cryptomnesia, an idea gets dissociated from it’s source. For example, someone might have an insight of a line of poetry or a song lyric but think that its their own original creation and completely forget that it’s really a song they’ve heard before. Something about not knowing the source — the name — of a thing makes it seem more personal and, I think, can make it easier to manipulate and think about in new contexts.

I haven’t quite figured it all out yet. But it’s interesting that the way I was thinking then, even if it was a bit overdramatic, was already trying to articulate the same problem I’m trying to think through now.

You know, the general problem of graduate school. Not the dog problem.

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