Journeys - to the West and Elsewhere

I was sitting at my desk at home contentedly writing away when I glanced at the precariously structured pyramid of books to my left (the view to the right wouldn't have much more organized) and thought I would pause for a moment and reflect.  Several years ago when I was living in Quarry Hill for a year and living the life of a faculty resident for first-year students I posted a picture of a large pile of books, composed mainly of different versions of epics such as the Ramayana and the Iliad and Beowulf and the Sundiata and Journey to the West and the Popol Vuh - as well as a few select copies from the related small libraries that each of them has inspired.  At the time I was preparing to embark on a semester-long sabbatical to work on my long-delayed book on the epics, which would have mainly consisted of me tramping around the UVM library stacks or me monastically hiding myself away so that I could write.  And then out of the blue Zayed University asked me to spend a year with them in Abu Dhabi and Dubai running professional development programs and redesigning some classes.  Obviously, my life changed dramatically both professionally and personally, and I would not trade that time for anything, even if it led to some heartbreak along the way.  So, here I am a couple years later older and wiser - or at least older - and I'm back buried in the project.  I'm really happy with the progress, although it is an exhausting one.  I made the decision to tackle the longest and most complex works - and the ones that included the largest collections of related scholarly commentary and media (films and graphic novels and video games) - first, mainly because I like to take that approach with any large project.  In one form or another I suppose I'm a believer in the concept of a tipping point or a moment of critical mass when the project is so far advanced/evolved that it will write and complete itself.  With that in mind I immersed myself in the Ramayana and then the Journey to the West, and now I'm working on the Shahnama.  Theoretically, I will finish the Shahnama this semester (as much as these projects are ever finished before they're finished) and then delve into the Sundiata and the Popol Vuh over the summer (they're shorter, both in length and also in related scholarly research, although still fascinating) and then jump into the Iliad and Beowulf next fall.  I'm getting tired just thinking about it.  There's still much more to do after that, but I think that's a workable schedule for the next year.  As with all projects it takes a while to find your "voice," and especially so in this case because I'm treading a narrow path between scholarly and more generally accessible, but I'm really happy with how things are flowing now.  That said, check in with me in a year when I'm a shell of a man - or, more appropriately, even more of a shell of a man.  Still, this project is making me very happy, and providing me with a raison d'etre that I really need at this point in my life and career.

I would raise the issue of whether this pile of books is so high that neither Hanuman (from the Ramayana) nor Sun Wukong (from Journey to the West) could fly over it, but then I'd have to get into the debate over whether or not they're actually the same character and that's where it get complicated . . . as it always does with research.