The fall of 2008 was a curious time in my life. I think I can see now what I was up to, though back then I had not a clue.

October 2008 began an epoch of restlessness and daring unparalleled in my personal history. I can only hope.

My sister got married that month, in a wedding that bore some striking similarities to the one I (thankfully) didn’t go through with two years prior to that.

She asked me to wear a red dress, and stand up beside her while she made her solemn vows, and give a toast after dinner, and I did all of those things while railing against all of it deep down. I could not find it in my heart to just be purely happy for her.

It was one of those watershed or Waterloo or something drastic involving the universal solvent kind of nights. I saw myself becoming a bitter mean sad spinster, wasting my life on empty regrets and fiercely-held resentments, and I didn’t like that one bit.

Nothing changed for a while. I just fretted over my seemingly-inevitable future as a wretched old crone, worked and walked and wandered my way through days that seemed like they’d keep lining up just the same no matter what I tried to do differently. And I tried just about everything.

Then in one fell swoop I applied to graduate school halfway across the country, packed up and drove to Wisconsin before I knew what I was doing. Still didn’t once I got there.

But ideas and possibilities fell into place and, to continue the aqueous metaphor, my life gradually started to feel like it has tides of its own instead of being tossed about by other rhythms.

The things I now know about ears seem fantastic and mythical. They keep unfolding, too, which takes my mind on some kind of a ride.

Just when I think I’ve got a good grip on auditory anatomy and physiology, I find out about something like habenula perforata. Of course the fibers of the auditory nerve have to get into the cochlea somehow – and why not with a formal Latin term for tiny openings? It sounds like a spell being cast.

I’m glad that keeps happening, though I wonder how long it can go on. I used to crave full knowledge of anything that interested me, and took it to some silly extremes of little to no purpose.

These days I’d rather have knowledge that works and keeps on working because it’s constantly developing, because what it does best is transmogrify.