How's My Studying?

Here is the time for the sayable, here is its homeland.
Speak and bear witness. More than ever
the Things that we might experience are vanishing, for
what crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.
---Rilke, Ninth Elegy

I've been reading the Duino Elegies most nights before going to sleep. I worked my way through them slowly. It might has well have been for the first time -- except for a few lines, I didn't remember much. My edition is bilingual, and every so often I'd flick my eyes to the left-hand side and scan for familiar words. Not many of them, but some.

I am in a strange place with my reading. I find myself reluctant to start anything new, particularly anything long. I've been reading through books I've read before, opening at random and just following a few lines. Or looking for marked passages. I've been meaning to start Independence Day for a week now, and I can never do it. Instead, I page through Rilke, Franzen, Kafka, Bernhard, Roubaud, Proust.

And I am in a strange place with my academic work. I feel I don't study enough, don't work hard enough. It's strange to have so many free hours. I probably shouldn't. According to my wall calendar, I am supposed to have a working thesis/hypothesis for one paper and a topic for another by tonight. I told myself that in order to compensate for the .... well, slowness of campus life that I'd throw myself into academics, but so far that hasn't happened. I'm not a hard worker.

I need a book with a tone to match my current state. Starting something new carries the prospect of failure, of wasted time, but really there's nothing to lose. And at the same time, I can't understand what's stopping me from finding solace in the books I already love

Anyway, that research topic....