The Creative Seed

At the point that I approached Penelope for help I hadn't yet changed my topic but was close enough to it to be enveloped in a gray despair. An actress friend told me about Penelope. I was skeptical: I didn't think this difficulty was about my career and it wasn't about establishing a home business and finally, I didn't think of my scholarship as artistic or even particularly creative. But I was also desperate. I called Penelope and of course, it didn't take her long to help me to understand that writing my dissertation was exactly about all the things I was convinced it wasn't.

We worked on organizing my days. I kept a journal, which consisted mostly of what I did to avoid doing what I needed to do. We talked. It was of course, Penelope who picked up on what brought about my first breakthrough. She noticed that I never spoke of wanting to finish my book but only of having to, of "shoulds." "Why do you have to?" she asked. "Who says should?" What became clear was that I had been struggling to complete my degree for approval from my father, to "show" my siblings, in order not to disappoint my advisor and friends.

I had to find out why I was doing it for myself. There followed a period of list making: what would happen to me, should I finish? What would completion do for my inner life, my outer life, my ability to achieve my life goals? The process amazed me. I am very much in touch with my inner life. I knew there were patterns-positive and negative- and principles guiding my choices as well as a vision of the future to which I consciously refused to pay attention. Besides how much future could I be concerned with, when a wall was blocking it from view? But I lived my external life intensively in the NOW, engulfing myself in details that became so important the purpose of my days could be lost in the profusion.

Ironically, this absorption in details was also a significant failing in my dissertation and wasn't finally corrected until two weeks before submission. I could related the number of Roman miles and Roman soldiers on the northern frontier but couldn't find the words to explain what made the frontier a significant object of study.

This was the phase where I learned to take my work more seriously than the details of daily living. I learned not to do things I had never considered "undoable" before. Not to answer the phone, not to be available to everyone's needs because I wasn't holding a nine-to-five job in an office, not to lunch with friends, not to study Italian because someday I would dig in Italy (it could wait) and finally not to teach courses that consumed my time, energy and interests. In effect, I was learning to say no to myself, to my runaway games and my diversion tactics.

One night, toward the end of this phase, when I closed my eyes and thought about the road before me, I realized I was standing on top of the wall-gazing out at the road beyond it-and all I needed was a way to get down to the other side. That is when I broke my right hand and wrist. I'm not saying I did it deliberately, but it meant I could not work on the three data chapters of my dissertation because they depended on graphs and maps. Here again, Penelope helped me to discover what I could do. I finally changed my topic-yes, after seven years I finally discovered what I wanted to say. I gave myself permission to ask a professional (and ex-student) to do my maps; I unloaded my poisonous outside reader and enlisted the help and interest of a truly supportive archaeologist. I rewrote my outline every week and in the end wrote my theory chapter. That was also when I realized I needed to work away from home. I was not someone who could stay focused on work when I was surrounded by the rest of my life. I needed to carve out a workspace for myself and go there everyday.

In the late spring of 1998, with the help of my advisor, I transformed the cubicle at Hunter College where I met with students, into a marvelous work space with a computer desk and drawing table, book shelves and file drawers. And, at last, I began to have fun. I was actually enjoying writing my dissertation. I had found the real key to completion.

The rest of this story is, as "they" say, history. I said I would submit in Spring, 1999 and at least once a month recalculated the number of pages I could write in a day, week, month, almost as often as I had revised my outline the year before. But in March 1999 I was ready for my defense. And then came revisions. Remember those trees that were obscuring my forest? It was finally time to chop them down. The totality of my revisions entailed delineating the shape of that forest for my readers, and in the last two weeks I did it.

I graduated in May 1999 and spent an ecstatic week being called Doctor Bernice. Perhaps what helped me most in these final weeks was Penelope asking me to close my eyes and once more picture the wall. But when I did, I saw that I was back on the road standing in front of the wall once more. The roses were a deep red. I could smell them. Then, I saw myself reach out and thrust my hands behind the climbing stems. No thorns. My groping fingers found an iron projection. I grasped the handle and pulled. I had found the door in the wall and it was opening toward me. I walked through.

I'm back on the road again. It stretches long and I don't see any markers to tell me where I am. The sun is very bright, but the air is light and cool, I'm carrying only a walking stick, and I'm not at all tired. I don't know where I'm going yet, but this trip I plan to have a wonderful time along the way.

Sow yourself like a seed.

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