I miss sleep.

I'm finally writing the paper that will serve as the basis for tomorrow morning's presentation and discussion. I'm presenting on the historiography of commemoration in Canada. It will be fun, because I like muddying the water. I'll make them question government attempts at making memories permanent (or "concrete," as I once said in an unforgivably punny paper title) by making them realise that there is no inherent meaning in the symbolism used in monuments, and that you can't guarantee how other people are going to use or understand monuments in the future (or the present, for that matter). And we're going to get all imagined communities. And I'm going to make them identify what people mean by "heritage," and whether we ought to be teaching it in the classroom, and whose heritage is it anyway? And what's the historian's role in this jumble?

But I still have to write this paper, where I have far more questions and messyings than I have statements or concrete observations. And we're fifteen minutes away from 2:00am. And my class is in seven hours. And I also have all of my European history reading to do (or at least the article where I'm leading the discussion), for the afternoon class. Granted, I can do some of the reading during the lunch break, but keep in mind that this is reading that I normally do all week. But I had to shift my focus onto Canadian history for once.

And so, I'm going to be thinking wistfully about sleep (and probably have to edit this paper a whole bunch before I present it tomorrow), and drink large quantities of water.