This line from Agha Shahid Ali's poem "By Exiles" from his terrific collection of Ghazals "Call Me Ishmael Tonight" - any questions why I had to buy that one? - served as the title of a conference presentation last summer and I love it ... still... and too much... because now that I finally and seriously sat down to write that essay (slightly overdue since November...) I would so like to keep the title but it throws me into constant conundrum of how to argue it - especially as I combine it with other lines of the poem ... and, as if this would not eat enough of my time and hirnschmalz I find the whole paper given then just unorganized, horrible and unusable for the essay I should construct from it ... and yes, it is one of those papers I wrote on the train and the night before presentation, and no, I am not really surprised....
But apart from a few useable paragraphs I might be better of writing just a plain new essay with ideas collected since then... oh and of course the few books I would need to check sources and quotes are all out until the end of the month ... and I have decided that I would write this essay this week, definitely! (and I mean that in the real and not the ed-ed sense of the word).
My Monday motivation is wearing thin ...
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