The finished thing

Good news! But first, a parable:

My first year of college, I'm hanging out in my dorm room with some friends, and a friend of theirs whom I'd just met. Let's call him CM (for Cookie Monster). Maybe we've just watched Monty Python -- we're lying on the floor or the futon, cracking nerdy jokes or some such. The conversation hits a lull, and CM turns to me and asks nonchalantly,

"Do you have something that I could eat all of?"

I look nonplussed.

"I just, feel like eating all of something."

I remember there is a partially-eaten box of cookies that could be sacrificed to the Monster's all-consuming (literally) hunger. He eats them. End of parable.

I can't really describe how confused I was at that moment. I had never associated the activity of eating with the idea of consuming a pregiven quantity. For days, I quoted him bemusedly to other friends. But (while I still don't tend to choose my food according to my ability to eat all of it) I do understand his obsession with finitude and completion.

The news is that I've submitted a chapter draft to my advisors. It's (temporarily) finished. That's what I've been working on the past four weeks, ever since getting back from California. And I kind of found it impossible to write anything else, including blog posts, while I was working on it. I had to get it done, to the point that I even typed up the bibliography.

I don't really know why I found the cookie episode so bewildering at the time. I love consuming all of things.