Reflections on two years in England
As of this past August 21, I have been living here for two years. In some ways it seems as long, but in others it seems as if it can not possibly have been. Time flies when you're having fun I suppose... or when you're too busy to notice. So much change in almost every aspect of my life.
This time last year I would not have expected to be married. Though the circumstances surrounding the swift timing of my nuptual were out of necessity to keep me here, looking back, I would not have changed a thing. I'm pleased to say that married life has not been a life-altering experience; I'd have been very concerned if it had been. As I've said many times, I married Adrienne because I rather like her and the nature of our relationship, and I'd very much like to continue it in perpetuity. We've got a great thing going, so why change it I ask? I am always greatly amused when people, particularly my parents (bless them) ask me how married life is. I tend to respond with something to the effect of 'just like unmarried life, except there's a shiny official document in our file cabinet with the words "Certificate of Marriage" in very posh black lettering at the top.' We're going to have a ceremony over here in December. It's sort of a mutation between a renewal of vows and a spiritually official wedding (since we only had time for a civil ceremony back home and our spiritual persuasions might not have meshed well with our families). It's also an excuse for our friends here who couldn't be there for the Stateside shindig to let the wine flow and celebrate with us.
Spiritually I have shifted very significantly. This shift has not necessarily been away from anything. Rather, I feel that I've come to see the universality of many of my beliefs, allowing me to embrace practices and teachings from numerous paths. I have always believed that all paths up the mountain ultimately lead to the same top, but I suppose that recently I'm discovering for myself exactly how true that is and putting it into greater practice in my life. I still try very hard to keep a regular practice of sitting zazen, but this is frequently difficult. Still, I sit whenever I manage to get the time or motivate myself to do so. I feel that I am walking my path as best as I can at the moment. It's a start.
Work-wise I am steadfastly remaining at the Armouries. Through the workings of myself and a few of my colleagues, gallery hosts are now getting the opportunities to do some more engaging things at the museum. We're going to start doing costumed handling sessions in the galleries. Basically, we'll be kitted up in garb appropriate to the gallery in question whilst manning a table of relevant arms and armour bits. There's also talk of gallery talks and tours, which I feel are long overdue. In addition to this, there are rumblings of new interpreters being taken on as four of them have left in past two months, leaving them with a skeleton crew. I've got my ear to the ground, but let us say that I'm a bit more... wary. In other words, having been burnt before by getting my hopes up too much, I'm keeping cool until everything unfolds.
In other news, I'm writing a book. Remember that English fight manual that I edited for my MA dissertation? Well, I've been back down to London to copy the other two that are in there, and I'm in the process of editing them so that I can compile all three to publish as the entire corpus of medieval English fight literature. People seem to think that it will be a valuable work and appealing to publishers who work with that kind of stuff. If I really push myself and keep good discipline, I should be able to have the thing done by this time next year. As it is I'm planning on proposing a paper for the big Medievalists conference in Kalamazoo that touches upon my findings, just to formally stick my flag into these texts before the greater academic community. It's a great little pet project that'll keep me in academic circles until I figure out whether or not I want to continue into a PhD somewhere down the line.
Oh, I almost forgot. Cadfael, my beloved desktop PC that I foolishly trucked across the pond from back home, has finally gone the way of all things. The power supply went poof-crackle-fizz last Sunday. I took this as a sign from the gods to finally get myself a laptop. So this entry is the first from my shiny new Acer Aspire 5630 (this info presented for all you tech-fu masters who are concerned about such things), lovingly dubbed Abulafia (read Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco for the reference). It will be nice to have a computer that is a) a bit more mobile and b) capable of playing UK DVDs so that we can rent movies and don't have to get all our DVDs from Amazon US. Thankfully I also found a gadget that allowed me to safely extract Cadfael's hard drive and transfer everything over, giving me all my files back AND now giving me an external hard drive on which to store stuff. Good times.
I think that should just about do it for now. I hope you are all well and happy. Best of luck and love to all (and break a leg for those of you getting ready for CT Faire).
Ta for now.
This time last year I would not have expected to be married. Though the circumstances surrounding the swift timing of my nuptual were out of necessity to keep me here, looking back, I would not have changed a thing. I'm pleased to say that married life has not been a life-altering experience; I'd have been very concerned if it had been. As I've said many times, I married Adrienne because I rather like her and the nature of our relationship, and I'd very much like to continue it in perpetuity. We've got a great thing going, so why change it I ask? I am always greatly amused when people, particularly my parents (bless them) ask me how married life is. I tend to respond with something to the effect of 'just like unmarried life, except there's a shiny official document in our file cabinet with the words "Certificate of Marriage" in very posh black lettering at the top.' We're going to have a ceremony over here in December. It's sort of a mutation between a renewal of vows and a spiritually official wedding (since we only had time for a civil ceremony back home and our spiritual persuasions might not have meshed well with our families). It's also an excuse for our friends here who couldn't be there for the Stateside shindig to let the wine flow and celebrate with us.
Spiritually I have shifted very significantly. This shift has not necessarily been away from anything. Rather, I feel that I've come to see the universality of many of my beliefs, allowing me to embrace practices and teachings from numerous paths. I have always believed that all paths up the mountain ultimately lead to the same top, but I suppose that recently I'm discovering for myself exactly how true that is and putting it into greater practice in my life. I still try very hard to keep a regular practice of sitting zazen, but this is frequently difficult. Still, I sit whenever I manage to get the time or motivate myself to do so. I feel that I am walking my path as best as I can at the moment. It's a start.
Work-wise I am steadfastly remaining at the Armouries. Through the workings of myself and a few of my colleagues, gallery hosts are now getting the opportunities to do some more engaging things at the museum. We're going to start doing costumed handling sessions in the galleries. Basically, we'll be kitted up in garb appropriate to the gallery in question whilst manning a table of relevant arms and armour bits. There's also talk of gallery talks and tours, which I feel are long overdue. In addition to this, there are rumblings of new interpreters being taken on as four of them have left in past two months, leaving them with a skeleton crew. I've got my ear to the ground, but let us say that I'm a bit more... wary. In other words, having been burnt before by getting my hopes up too much, I'm keeping cool until everything unfolds.
In other news, I'm writing a book. Remember that English fight manual that I edited for my MA dissertation? Well, I've been back down to London to copy the other two that are in there, and I'm in the process of editing them so that I can compile all three to publish as the entire corpus of medieval English fight literature. People seem to think that it will be a valuable work and appealing to publishers who work with that kind of stuff. If I really push myself and keep good discipline, I should be able to have the thing done by this time next year. As it is I'm planning on proposing a paper for the big Medievalists conference in Kalamazoo that touches upon my findings, just to formally stick my flag into these texts before the greater academic community. It's a great little pet project that'll keep me in academic circles until I figure out whether or not I want to continue into a PhD somewhere down the line.
Oh, I almost forgot. Cadfael, my beloved desktop PC that I foolishly trucked across the pond from back home, has finally gone the way of all things. The power supply went poof-crackle-fizz last Sunday. I took this as a sign from the gods to finally get myself a laptop. So this entry is the first from my shiny new Acer Aspire 5630 (this info presented for all you tech-fu masters who are concerned about such things), lovingly dubbed Abulafia (read Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco for the reference). It will be nice to have a computer that is a) a bit more mobile and b) capable of playing UK DVDs so that we can rent movies and don't have to get all our DVDs from Amazon US. Thankfully I also found a gadget that allowed me to safely extract Cadfael's hard drive and transfer everything over, giving me all my files back AND now giving me an external hard drive on which to store stuff. Good times.
I think that should just about do it for now. I hope you are all well and happy. Best of luck and love to all (and break a leg for those of you getting ready for CT Faire).
Ta for now.