Excerpt (1):

At some point during the existential crisis that is choosing to earn a graduate degree, my dear friend and cohort member said, So I found this theory of knowledge. 

I was in the kitchen putting jam on cold toast I’d forgotten about while taking internet quizzes about a fantasy novel. I looked at her through the doorway. We were both tired.  I said Yeah? Say more. 

She explained, “Okay so–I don’t know how to say this word, but it’s something like …(rhizomatic)

As she spoke, I could see it, this little stem in front of me with its perpetually growing branches digging through all the dirt to arrive at–I don’t know, something I guess. I thought it was beautiful, that it was the first thing to make sense in a long line of things that don’t. It made me think of a little neuron extending out toward various synapses. It made me think of that Sylvia Plath quote about a fig tree (I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest.), and I wondered if something could be a tree instead of its many branches, if the branches aren’t simply part of the tree and if the key to not dying is to be a tree instead of a branch. I mean, my thoughts weren’t so complex in that moment. In that moment I thought, Aha! This is how I will get away with writing a chaotic thesis!  And I ate my toast. But when I thought about it later, I promise I did have those more complex thoughts. 

I looked at Katie and said, “That’s perfect. I’d love to paint it.” 

She said, “That’d be nice.”

In my head, at least, the painting would be blue.