Hey friend, happy December from Noel Chomsky here.

I took a break from Anthrodoodles this past month to focus more on my grad school plans. I figured from the start that finding a program would not be a linear process, but already I feel I may have my finger in too many pies—a rather unpleasant image for an idiom, now that I see it written out like that; what kind of a monster would violate a pastry in such a way? Let’s start over.

Picture a hummingbird gleaming under the morning sun, burying its beak into the brimming vessels of nectar we know as foxgloves. Its position midair, just like all of life, is fleeting; the feathered body floats in a frenzy, eager to appease them all, and all at once. One teaspoon of sugar here, another teaspoon there.  And so on.

I suspect we have all been the hummingbird at some point in our lives. I have friends who have been hummingbirds for as long as I have known them. For the past several weeks, I, too, have been flickering in such a manner between all of the steps that lie before me in the interim before I even reach the application portal.

Right now I’m in the process of brainstorming ideas for potential projects I may want to carry out for my PhD.  And let me tell you, “brainstorming” is one of the most thrilling and indulgent activities I have come to know in my post-graduation life, alongside propagating my succulents and buying a new set of stamps at the post office. I find the work empowering; you conjure up your dream research project and treat it as if you are the one person in this galaxy who can do it the way you plan to because it’s tied to who you are. Nothing is beyond the realm of possibilities, that is, within the limitations of funding and foreign national exchange visas and the approximately seven years you will be in the program and all that stuff.  This, coupled with gathering relevant literature that will set the frameworks for those projects and trio’d (?) with looking into specific programs that will support those projects, has all kept me rather occupied. For this reason, I had to set aside the video project completely and be comfortable with not making progress on it for a little while.

I don’t have much more to share with regards to my grad plans. Much is to remain unknown and beyond the grasp of my control, but I suppose that is simply the modus vivendi of the COVID era as a whole, and nothing particular about my situation.

But Backstreet’s back and so am I. Perhaps the short pause was good for me and for the fetus of a dream that is Anthrodoodles. I’m coming back to the script with fresh eyes and the healthy zen mindset of dear-god-please-just-get-this-damn-project-up-and-running-already. Plus, over the past few weeks I’ve randomly woken up in the middle of the night visualizing certain scenes from my script, and I think once you start getting prophetic visits from your project in your sleep, it means you’re on the verge of something big.

But I always like to leave you with a little something at the end of each post.  One of these days it will be the link to my completed video.  Seeing as that day has yet to arrive, here’s a frame I was recently working on—maybe you’ll recognize them by their facial hair.  Hint: a 17th-century philosopher and a 19th-century anthropologist, somehow connected to the Nature-Culture Divide . . .