Happi-ness

This slightly scary photograph was taken on the last night of the retreat. I think what it shows is something I am very conscious of at the moment. I am very happy and content. The strains of the world seemed to have disappeared. It is a whole week since I left the retreat, in some ways it is a lifetime ago and other ways it is the blink of an eye away.
It has been a week where various things happened that touched me or rather woke me up. I finished the PhD novel and sent it off as you know from previous posts which was very satisfying and made the PhD seem very real particularly as the DoS and I have been discussing when the final viva could be. Then I was introduced by Kate Wheeler, who was instrumental in their online creation, to the BBC's archive of interviews with authors going as far back (or as far as I have found at the moment) as an interview with Virginia Woolf talking about mysterious demands and the duplicity of words. It has been fascinating to listen to them as they are often frank and honest interviews. For example AS Byatt learnt plotting from The Bill in its early days. Finally, yesterday I was given a paper to read that has been written ready for a conference in a few weeks time. It was a wonderful read, it made all my critical nerve endings come to life and crave more. The PhD mind was well and truly awake as I was then fascinated to realise that the Woolf interview resonated with this paper 73 years apart but both equally valid and inspirational. My world is full of circles, lots of circles. I love my life full of circles.