Dissed are excerpts from the dissertation that have been cut, killed, excised, burned on the altar of common sense and distance before being left here to not die…
This one hurt to cut. I remember thinking how clever I was and how it "Explained Everything. Duh." And, certainly, in looking back I can see the early versions of what I was just really starting to grasp. I did bring a good chunk of this up in the epilogue, but it took some reshaping. I like having an original (albeit excerpted) version of it here as part of this archive. After all, Sally and this comic were integral parts of the dissertation, critical actants that sat in my eye-line (tacked above the computer) the entire time I wrote and reminded me --without a word, with just a glance, without even really realizing it, in fact I'm only really realizing it right now as I type these very words-- why I was still sitting in my office chair, still looking for answers. Touchstone is too mild a word for that level of presence and pull in the overall phenomenon. But my true love didn't make it into the final draft: the incomplete tracing of the other actants at the end. I read that list and that timespace snaps into place around me. I'm-back-there-again-here.
