historicality
have received abnormally large quantities of email in the past two days:
1) regarding the writing on the wall, due to great demand, I have provided instructions on how to locate said wall in London, if you should have the means and inclination to see it for yourself.
2) regarding the indecorous squealing, I am deeply touched by your many kind & wonderful words of encouragement. thank you all so much. I'll endeavour to reply as many as I can. some of you have even been with me since my extremely indecorous & inane days (cf. my archives), and while I am sometimes (esp. when reading said archives) amazed that you have stuck it out here so long, I am pleased & grateful (if also somewhat mortified).
upon receiving notice of the Gates, I had a curious sense of culmination. curious, partly because I am not particularly one for teleology -- every moment of doubt, indecision, error and contingency in my life is not accounted for by its incontrovertible resolution in my receiving this scholarship. but curious, also, because it is really not an end at all, only a kind of enormous & formless beginning, whose significance is presently as nebulous as only futures can be.