The people who ought to know the most about process baffle me with their disinterest in having one.
Process be not intuition. Or the other way around. Or both.
Intuition is unsafe, imho. Like institutional memory, it's hard to improve intuition. It's a gut feeling that comes from the same place that brings you bias, prejudice and a yearning for Snuggies.
Processes can be refined.
Intuition fails, and does so with an unshakable sense of righteousness.
I'm all for good, improvable processes. I work in the right place for it, too. At a center for quality, efficiency and competitiveness.
Meanwhile, in the second week back on campus at Columbia, we had a protest outside Low Library today. People carrying mattresses to support the student who was raped, and who has decided to make visible what would have otherwise been an invisible burden.
She is making it artistic. Making something felt into something seen. Would that we all had the craft for that. Or the will. Or both.
I talked with my favorite coworker, who used to be in publishing, about why I love NYC. I said, and I quote myself here, "I want to live and to be and explore. To feel what there is to feel in life. Just like every other twelve year old girl."
No, but really. I've found myself here, even if I wasn't lost before I got here. My colors have become deeper, my feelings stronger (or at least more obvious and interesting to me).
No, it's more than even that. I'm taking sides here. For some things and against others. I'm choosing things and rejecting things (people, too). I'm more well-defined than I've ever been and I fell less changeable.
Those may be the words that I look back on in twenty years with grief and self-pity. But somehow, I doubt it. I doubt that I'll look back on this time with anything but admiration and gratitude.
