That Mystery Floating Alongside

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  “The side of the ship made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling glassy shimmer of the sea. But I saw at once something elongated and pale floating very close to the ladder. Before I could form a guess a faint flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue suddenly from the naked body of a man, flickered in the sleeping water with the elusive, silent play of summer lightning in a night sky. With a gasp I saw revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the long legs, a broad livid back immersed right up to the neck in a greenish cadaverous glow. One hand, awash, clutched the bottom rung of the ladder. He was complete but for the head. A headless corpse! The cigar dropped out of my gaping mouth with a tiny plop and a short hiss quite audible in the absolute stillness of all things under heaven. At that I suppose he raised up his face, a dimly pale oval in the shadow of the ship’s side. But even then I could only barely make out down there the shape of his black-haired head. Howev...

Can't Believe It

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Whelp, in three days I will submit a draft of one chapter of my dissertation to my professor. To date, I am approximately 2/3 through writing this one chapter. With Christmas practice, concerts, work, and other end-of-semester activities, it's becoming a wild ride. The chapter being written is actually Chapter 2, which covers precedent research on my topic. In other words, I am merely telling the story of the research I've done so far. In short, I am suffering from information overload and not enough time in the day.  But it's getting done.

The difficult part of all this is that, at this point, everything is a draft, so I'll be living in revision-land for the next couple of years. Each consecutive course adds another chapter into my dissertation, and so the revisions will just grow and grow! But that's part of the process. And I'm loving it.

Here's something I'm watching listening to while writing. Please enjoy this! 

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