"See the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil"

... and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever" - therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken."


Where is Eve in all of this? Doesn't she become like one of them, too? Can't she reach out her hand every once in a while and take also from the tree of life? After all, wasn't she the one with the gumption to talk to the serpent in the first place? There she is, merrily driving the plot along, tra la la, with precious little help from Adam, thank you very much. She even gets a name and a dressmaker for Chrissakes. And then bam! suddenly, she's invisible. That's some crappy narration right there, I tell you what. You don't just drop the most dazzling character right in the middle of the story. That's just plain out bad storytelling. Ask anybody. Hell, even Hollywood knows that.

But I'm getting sidetracked. I didn't intend for this to be a narrative analysis of biblical characterizations of Eve. I'll save that for the dissertation. Which I am currently not working on. But let's not talk about that, either. That way lies intestinal disorder and anxiety.


I was talking to a friend last night, and something hit me. I'm going to be finished soon. Done. My dissertation will be finished, printed, submitted, defended, revised, and submitted again. And then I'll walk across that stage, a fluffy velour beret perched on my cute little bob, and I will be done.

Now, normally, this would fill me with panic. Change is scary. And I've been a student for twelve years. In fact, I have been a student my entire adult life. I'm not sure I know how to be a grown up without being a student. Some of my grad school colleagues have begun making that transition to adulthood while still in school - getting married, buying houses, having kids, investing in RRSPs. Not me. I still live like a student. I have a grad student apartment, grad student furniture, no savings to speak of, no car, no husband, no kids, no life insurance. I am free to spend my spare cash entirely on shoes. Why, this very afternoon, I'm going out to buy myself some new red boots. Why? Well, I had a dream last night that I had red boots. It's that carefree, laissez-faire, devil take me where he may attitude of someone who is still a student. My actual age doesn't matter. I'm a student, not a grown up, and I don't have to make grown up choices.

Yet.


See, that "yet" should scare me. Yets have a tendency to become nows in time, and all those yets that have been nipping at my heels are, quite suddenly, on top of me. But I'm not scared, and that's the confusing part.

Liminal periods are crazy, wonky, redefining times. I've never been a fan of redefinition. Ask anyone. I hate the unpredictable. Comfortable, complacent, patterned, predictable, known - these are things I can get behind. But unstructured upheaval? Change? Not so much. And yet, here I am, excited about the whole damn thing. I'm about to move out of the garden, to assume an entirely new identity, and I can't wait to redecorate. Anything could happen. I can become anybody now.

All hell is about to break loose. Fortunately, I've developed some sympathy for the devil. Hopefully, he'll take that into account when he starts playing his tricksy games with me.