L'esistenzialisme da Etty Hillesum

My progress evaluation looms and that is why I have gone awol from this blog for the last little while. Now that i have the money for the work, i have to justify my project which is hard to do when you are trying to catch up with the reading you should have done already. And now my head hurts ... so I am grateful to my considerate superviosr who has put it back till the end of January. But now that I am getting up to speed with the reading research as opposed to the thinking research, I find that I have more and more thinking research to do all over again. But I'm glad I started with my own perspective and my own thoughts, and now they are been fertilised by those who I choose to read and whose books I touch with a respect that is reverent. But I'm sure you didn't need to hear that; I just needed to say it.

With all this thought I've discovered the need to be physical a little. I constructed a bookshelf when I really couldn't think anymore, which I know still sounds a bit of a nerdily intellectual think to do. But today I had a short game of football, getting a slightly injured knee for my trouble, which brings me back to my body again with a bump. And also bumping into an old friend around the campus, being James, we're just about to hit the pub and talk of times old and new, while I can offer him the guest room - a thing I haven't been able to do for many a year. He's in transit to and fro his supervisor and it was serendipitous that we met as we did. His topic of research has been partially completed already by a group of eight other people woking as a group, so he has to work quickly on the rest of his idea before it gets done as well. He's a geneticist.

Anyway, an extension means I can live and move and have my being a bit more while I distill this drama of love and suffering which I have in my mind and read about in Etty Hillesum's diary until it takes on its own form. Simone Weil says to stay with the ambiguity of a problem until a solution organically presents itself. My problem is that I have the solution, but am not sure what the question is! But little by little I'll discern the way. I've found secondary sources on Etty in Italian, thank God, as Dutch would be out of the question. [Maybe you can give me a hand some summer, Barbara!] Anyway, i have till the end of January, which news alone deserves a pint.