Dissertation

Sometimes people ask how work is going. . . So, do you want the long answer or the short answer. The short answer is, "fine." The long answer is maybe fifty pages, single-spaced, plus lots of notes. If you want that, let me know, since I'm always looking for comments. But to fill out the short answer a little, it's a bit hard to stay focused and I get sidetracked on all this stuff I really need to know, but really isn't going to make it in the dissertation. Already, the two chapters I have written have spawned another chapter each. Or rather, after writing half what I had planned, it was already too long, and I could see how the remaining half could be it's own chapter. Which is fine, except that my current time schedule doesn't really allow for a five hundred page monster. Anyway, these kind of meaningless logistical problems aside, is anyone beside me interested in Ennin's Record of Pilgrimage to the Tang in Search of the Law? Or its place in the journal tradition of East Asi? How it speaks to the question of the Japanese appropriation of Tang culture in the early Heian period? It seems like I already have a vision of the whole thing, and although that shifts slightly as I fill in the details, the actual dissertation writing is much more the sometimes interesting, sometimes tedious job of filling in all of the details. But there are so many details I don't have time to go after, so many questions I can't answer, so many things I should look up, but don't seem to have time to. Even if I do, I can hardly keep them straight in my mind. Anyway, let me know if you are interested in any more than this, and like I said, I can e-mail it to you.