end of the semester musings and reflections

well, since i have "all of this time on my hands" before summer classes start i have been left alone with my thoughts. as an aquarian, and dev can proabably attest to this, being alone with one's thoughts can either be a good thing or a discursively circular thing.
i have been thinking about loss lately...loss and potential loss...maybe because i watched a six feet under marathon...maybe because i am always thinking about change and waiting for the other shoe to drop (and not necessarily in an overly dramatic way either). regardless, i tend to read in order to get away from myself which i should know by now doesn't actually do that but the opposite...nevertheless i forge onward. i picked up the 5th harry potter book again and started reading...i came across an exchange between harry and luna lovegood that stimulated my analytical processes to start turning...not to mention a familiar sadness. now for those of you who are not familiar with the characters, luna is somewhat of a strange bird...queer if you will. however, in her exchange with harry she describes to him the meaning of loss and recovery that i thought was extremely profound...i know how luna feels and i think that she describes life from a queer perspective that confounds the borders of marginal and normative bodies to be insightful and, forgive the word, "true."

"[Harry] turned the corner toward the Fat Lady's corridor when he saw somebody up ahead fastening a note to a board on the wall. A second glance showed him it was Luna. There were no good hiding places nearby, she was bound to have heard his footsteps, and in any case, Harry could hardly muster the energy to avoid anyone at the moment.

'Hello,' said Luna vaguely, glancing around at him as she stepped back from the notice.
'How come you're not at the feast?' Harry asked.
'Well, I've lost most of my possessions,' said luna serenely. 'People take them and hide them, you know. But as it's the last night, I really do need them back, so I've been putting up signs.'
She gestured toward the notice board, upon which, sure enough, she had pinned a list of all her missing books and clothes, with a plea for their return.

[....]

'How come people hide your stuff?' he asked her, frowning.
'Oh...well...'She shrugged. 'I think they think I'm a bit odd, you know. Some people call me Loony Lovegood, actually.'

Harry looked at her and the new feeling of pity intensified rather painfully.

'That's no reason for them to take your things,' he said flatly.
'D'you want help finding them?'
'Oh no,' she said, smiling at him. 'They'll come back, they always do in the end. It was just that I wanted to pack tonight.'

[....]

'Are you sure you don't want me to help you look for your stuff?" he said.
'Oh no,' said Luna. 'No, I think I'll just go down and have some pudding and wait for it all to turn up...It always does in the end.
...Well have a nice holiday, Harry.'
Yeah...yeah, you too.'

She walked away from him, and as he watched her go, he found that the terrible weight in his stomach seemed to have lessened slightly." (862-4)

Loss and issues of queerness and it's implications to (hetero)normativity are really resonating with me right now. One could argue that this is a textual example of either melancholia or perhaps the work of grief and mourning. I tend to move toward the concept of "working through" (ala Kelly Oliver in her book _Witnessing_) that attaches itself to a processes of grief. Is it the lost object or something else that we are mourning? If the object actually comes back the mourning could start to begin its work. However, what if the object never comes back? Does it necessarily mean melancholia? Is melancholia always a negative thing?
Like i said before...i have too much time on my hands right now.