I feel it all

I can't say I actually 'feel it all' or even 'feel it all a little bit', but about some things I feel very strongly. Especially when I read secondary articles on books I love. The other day I was reading something on a story called "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and if you can dig out Eng Lit 101 Norton Anthology, I highly recommend 30 minutes of your life to scour that poem. Well, I was reading what some scholar had written about it, and I felt like this person was distorting absolutely everything I loved about SGGK. They were saying awful things, distorting, what I perceived to be the real intention of the story, and I got so angry. At first I was seething with anger and started to call this author all sorts of bad names for the harm they were doing to Gawain's repuation. But then, I surprised myself by bursting into tears. Showers of them. I was so angry, but at the same time, so sad this person refused to see such beauty in a work I thought was obvious, made me cry at first in anger, and then, in sadness for them. Now, its rather silly to cry over something someone else wrote, when it hardly concerns me, only the text I'm reading.

My advisor has suggested a different route I take with my thesis, and while I know this will ultimately prove beneficial, I have found it initially frustrating. I was venting my frustrations to poor Fran, to which he replied, "Well, everybody hates work, Nat. Just buckle down and it'll be over 'for you know it." [Fran usually hits my moods spot on, so it was quite surpsingly when] I found myself replying, "But I don't hate work. I love what I do. I really love it, and its so odd for me to dislike what I'm doing, as I've never disliked a days work of this in my life." Frustrating, yes. Very frustrating. But do I love it? Yes, I really do. It strikes a chord somewhere that inspires my entire being. I often think its with my faith. However, with this resonance, with this love of my subject, with this frustration in work, I can't help but think of my other, dare I call them colleagues?, who are also plodding along in their Medieval History and Late Antiquity dissertations along with me, and I can only raise the ever-essential glass of wine to them in a warm-hearted and like minded toast, that they may find deep fulfillment in their dissertation and lasting oh-so-deserved pride in the work of their hands; that they not find it vanity, but surprising joy, and that their minds uncover the nature of the medieval mind.