Monthly Archive for May, 2005

It’s that odd, interrim feeling. The last gasp of consciousness, the death rattle of the day, somehow calls up this heretofore unseen, unknown reserve of ideas, thoughts and energy. Just when I thought I’d truly faded, could no longer be productive, could no longer keep my eyes on the (interesting) pages of the Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review, I dive into the pillow to find that I’m suddenly wide awake again.

I am Jack’s cold sweat.

What is amazing is how logical it all was, or still is, I guess. It wasn’t random, sprinkled loose ends, really, I was planning. It’s as if you fell asleep at the wheel (weird mixing of metaphors, I know), and found yourself having driven home, parked, closed the garage, and gotten halfway upstairs to bed.

• Plan for the Summer
  • E-Mail Melba
  • E-Mail Uncle Ted
  • Send off résumé to design firms
  • Call Ed re: parking, cable, logistics.
  • Buy Delicious Library, input personal, home libraries.
  • Finalize summer-reading list.
  • Get a schedule together.
  • Explore tickets/estimated costs of driving to Kansas.
• PS182 Paper
  • Lead off with quote from India’s Statement from WIPO
  • Focus more on individual generic manufacturers, their contracts
  • Get current TRIPS language from WTO
  • Import data into Stata.
  • Find a good Stata tutorial
  • Write. A lot.
• briSite
  • Better CSS. Validation?
  • Dedicated section for webprojects
  • Keep looking for cool, applicable txp plugins.
  • Fix digital camera.

All this just poured out, quickly, logically, like dropping the remaining puzzle pieces on the floor and having them fall, fittingly, perfectly, in their spaces. Perhaps the metaphor would be better if you were missing an edge, and the edge just assembled itself, as the image is in no way totally clear and finished and done, in any of the fields I was processing. But I may have defined the edges a bit more.

As beneficial as I’m sure all that is, I’d still prefer to be sleeping right now. No amount of writing this stuff down, no organizational system, will let the processing stop, for some reason. I know I’ll fade at some point, probably around 11 or 12, just in time for something like a siesta, and just crash, asleep before my head hits the thought-inducing pillow.

For now, I guess it’s to work, as much as I can, as intelligently as I can. We’ll see what happens.

Ok, tomorrow, one exam. Thursday, one 25-page paper on emerging tensions between international intellectual property law and developing nations, specifically India, specifically in regards to pharmaceuticals, and the role of generic manufacturers in saving those afflicted by AIDS around the world. It’ll be interesting. Fabuluously interesting, actually, but it’s still a lot.

The trick, I think, is not to get overzealous. I found the same thing while traveling. When I got to India, everything was so different, so weird, so incomprehensible, I tried to write it all down so I wouldn’t forget any of it. A new travel journal is like a new blog, but infinitely more enticing. With a travel journal, you can touch it. You can see the pages where you’re going to write about the historical monuments, the axes of history you have stepped on and danced across. With a physical journal, you can flip through the blank pages while on a train to someplace you’ve never been and allow your mind to exit the train early.

Mind the gap, mind the drop, mind the dolly with bags and packages and uniforms. Your mind exits the imaginary station early, explores the perimeter of an unknown locale. You can see it all, as the soft air hits your face, repelled by the flipping pages. You see the old man, sweeping his tea stall. You see the poor donkey, forced to a life of harsh toil. You see the one armed little girl hobble forth to get a good begging position. In your mind, you can see and write all these things, you can write down the details, from the smell when the carriage door opened to the texture and pattern of the ragged dress of the armless girl.

Yet I’m here. I’m in a chair in a land far, far away. There is no journal to flip through. There’s only my mind, scanning the worldtop with as much randomness and pleasure as the casual journaler fanning himself with his Moleskine.

I can still see it. I can still see it all.