coiled like a spring

My second year of study starts tomorrow morning.

I have this rising sensation, as if I were being lifted very high, or as if I were in a slow rollercoaster ticking its way to the first hill. I am gaining potential energy.

Today has been marked by an absence of academe; I threw together a T-tunic for stealthmuffin's Halloween costume this morning, then poked at LJ and a computer game. No looking at PhD application sites. No thinking about the AAR convention. (Well, maybe a little. It's in DC this year...hint, hint...) No opening the Ricoeur or looking up that Wolfgang Iser book. Not even browsing Amazon for cheap textbooks. (Oof, that "Poetics of Biblical Narrative" is going to set me back a chunk.)

Last year at this time, I thought of the first days of class as this great cliff I was about to leap off, or a landscape that I couldn't see yet. Huge, unknown as yet: a fundamental change in my life that I could not imagine.

This time, I know what will be happening. I'm better prepared emotionally, but there is still this wonderful, wonderful vertigo. The questions are different: What will pull at my attention? When I open the syllabus, what is going to shake me? Where will I feel most--and least--competent? The vast unknown is gone, replaced by tightly focused unknowns. Just as opaque as the big ones, and no less fascinating.

I'm excited again. Tonight I will sleep as if suspended, like a pendulum pulled up and about to fall.