[This was my last column for the Observant, the newspaper at Maastricht University, where I've written four pieces a year for four years]
Endings
That idea that came to me in 2017–the idea that more should be known about language at the end of life, and that language at the beginning of life might shed light on it–became several pieces of journalism and academic articles, then a book, which I submitted to my editor last October. Now, after six years, two trans-Atlantic moves, two job changes, and a pandemic, I’m done.
Maybe you can relate to the way I felt in October. Ever done a project for a long time, one that organises your whole life, until it stops? It’s as if the North Pole vanishes, leaving you there with your compass wavering uselessly.
You feel like a crustacean that’s molted its shell and must walk around soft and pink. Experience says that you’ll grow a new shell eventually. At the time, though, it feels impossible. Everything is irritating and dangerous, nothing is what it was, and suddenly you have to pay attention to the world again.
No wonder people work on the same book for fifteen or twenty years. No wonder people stay in school forever.
Of course, I’m not done with the book, not completely. There’s copy editing, and proofreading, and gathering blurbers, and publicity. But those activities don’t provide navigational aids for living. Not like trying to wrestle a mass of inchoate ideas into some form that others will find sensible, maybe even appealing, with one eye on the clock and the other on posterity.
The only sensible solution? Get another project. And I’m working on it. Who knows where this one will take me? In the meantime, I’m leaving this column behind–this is my last column for the Observant. I’ve enjoyed writing for the university community and working with my editors. I’m thankful to them for letting me write on topics that I might not have otherwise (a lost wedding ring, bilingualism at this university) and for the opportunity to cultivate brevity.
