I’ve gone from one home to another. I went grocery shopping this morning, and now that I’ve stocked up on food I feel like I’m back here again. A trip to Whole Foods this morning to buy ingredients for a pasta sauce and a Sicilian caponata—my likely diet for the next few days. Last night was spent cleaning up my room, filing papers from last semester (sometimes carefully, sometimes by dumping them in a box and hoping there is nothing in there I need to find in a great hurry…) and getting ready for the new semester—new folders, and already a steady stream of articles and other bits and pieces that must be kept in order. I’ve been out for coffee, I’ve been to a class, I’ve been to the library: so, Georgetown life has, it appears, resumed.

I think I’ll spend the afternoon at home, cooking and reading. I started Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda last night. I was worried it would be tedious, but am actually finding it immensely enjoyable—and interesting, probably because I’m reading it with a real eye to its mechanics in terms of linear development. I missed my first class for National Identity and the Nineteenth Century Novel (I was still on a plane…) but was brought up to speed by Allison and Lisa yesterday. Professor Ragussis wants to take a formalist approach, and advised the class that we’d be looking at texts in a linear fashion, to examine not only what it going on, but that actual progress of ideas. It seems strange that I should get to the second semester of a graduate degree before I’ve had a teacher who wanted to do that. I’m oddly excited, to see how it goes. It’s also always nice to have a teacher who reminds you that things like chapter titles are important—it reminds me of Peter Steele, whose classes at Melbourne I always loved unreservedly.

I also have a lot of work to do for my Poetry/Poetics class—as well as writing responses to individual poems, we’re writing abstracts of the articles we’re reading. I’m not sure how I feel about this—I suppose I’ll see as the class progresses. It seems like a way of quantifying the pre-writing that will go into later aspects of thinking through the relationship between a poet’s writings on poetics and their actual practice. I also have quite a bit of Milton to read before Wednesday night—there’s no shortage of things to do.

Tonight Michelle is having some of us over for wine and cheese. It’s a belated birthday celebration, but it also just seems like a nice way to start off the semester. I’ve got to try to get in a good few hours of work before that. Getting back into the rhythm of working this way is going to take a few days… but it will happen. This weekend is going to be pretty full with study, but I’m planning to take at least half a day to do something new—a gallery or a museum or a visit to a different area… Something will happen. In the meantime, I suppose I should open my hymnal to page…