Whalebones

Today I met with my lovely supervisor, and as expected I need coherence. I need to make decisions about purpose in order to structure effectively. Some people find structure easy, when it comes to a poem, I can do this. I can feel the need to metre my feet, but the discipline of structure within chapters is so abstract for me, that I need to develop a system.

In poetry my ideas cascade and then I slowly shape, and reshape. I let the words collapse around me, and I pick them up, turn them around, and they begin to form. The words and the ideas are conjoined, one is born from the other, and I am never quite sure which way around this is.

So now, I need to develop the discipline of a social scientist. With headings, and subheadings, and if I imagine these as branches, and allow the words to bud and grow, then maybe they may bloom? Or maybe I need to just abandon my words for a little while, and re structure my brain to think in tracks of sequential thoughts? I need whalebones, a corset for the mind. I struggle to wear matching socks, how can I ever think in matching thoughts?

A PhD is rather a grown up way of thinking for someone who has a scattered head.

So my lovely, and clever supervisor has suggested a duel write; a document for the concrete, and a simultaneous one for the random, abstracts which always arrive whenever I go near words. That really is the best idea I have heard all week, so this week I will give it a go. Who knows I might actually manage to maintain the 'purpose' for a full page...