in the hall of mirrors

Tree, cloud

It is simple, but always striking... especially for one who comes from calmer climates.

The wind is from the west, blowing strong all week on the back of my flat, the side with my bedroom, the side where the kitchen and bath are built in. The kitchen and bath, being towards the back and more exposed, are surprisingly cold.

A tree a few yards from my back door is always tossed back and forth, all night – and a small cloud moves rapidly across the sky.

This is North Sea weather, rapidly changing, intense, cold: and dramatic. It reminds me how charged the world is, how much energy operates in and through it...

A bit strange, but beautiful.

Judicious, or slothful

"She decides, with misgivings, that she is finished for today. Always, there are these doubts. Should she try another hour? Is she being judicious, or slothful? Judicious, she tells herself, and almost believes it. She has her two hundred and fifty words, more or less. Let it be enough. Have faith that you will be here, recognizable to yourself, again tomorrow."
– Michael Cunningham (in the voice of Virginia Woolf), The Hours

An odd week. Quiet, and some work done, not the important work though.

Did you know that, if you take thyroid medicine – for hypothyroidism, not hyper- – that if you find yourself sleeping too much, for instance twelve or fourteen hours a day, and you simply double your dosage, that you start waking up again? But then you become anxious rather than depressed (with shaking hands, even). It's a bit like caffeine, I suppose.

I've been seeing Nanette in the hospital almost every day – which is not nearly as virtuous as it sounds: she has plenty of visitors and is doing perfectly well, she's just a little bored at this point. I must admit to a secret selfishness, one that will be obvious to anyone who knows me: in the guise of taking care of a friend, I am really just avoiding work....

Well, there are worse things.

While going to the hospital to see her, I've been entangled in trying to find the right – the good; the best? – entrance to the hospital, the one that's not too far from her and yet accessible. I think all her visitors would agree, there really isn't one. But while looking I've been taking the bus a stop further than usual, and landing in front of Marks & Spencer's, or Marks & Sparks as it's known in this part of the world. The part where... where they sell the food.

Now, Marks & Sparks is known for fairly ritzy (posh) food; lots of it already prepared or semi-prepared. I don't usually buy so much prepared food, but it's right there, and some of it's very nice, and it's not unhealthy... Of course it is also expensive and rather unnecessary (slothful, in the Calvinist view). But twice now I've bought various things, brought them home and heated and combined them.

And, perhaps less justifiably (because most certainly not healthy): the sweets. Perhaps most acutely, the Battenberg cakes. Mmmm... two-color, covered in marzipan. I didn't like marzipan when I was younger – in fact, none of us did except my father (and when we received some large, elaborate box of marzipan candies at Christmas, we would unanimously hand it over to him without regrets). But somehow, now....

But time keeps going, we're ever closer to teaching classes (just ten days now); and I'm older every day, and the book is not written, and Gerhard's message asking about the anthology is still unanswered.

On the other hand... I've seen Silverlake Living, and The Hours, and am now reading the latter to boot. I thought (ridiculously) that I was taking a break by watching the German television series of Doktor Faustus; not much of a break I suppose (also depressing, and now that I think of it also about venereal topics). And so thinking about depression, and AIDS, and giving up, but from outside as it were: with a clinical interest in understanding as much as I can.

And a dream today, at midday on the couch: that while traveling somehow through a place which turned into Zürich – where, in the waking world,  I will go to study Jungian analysis in just about a month – a handsome, gentle man found me a beautiful cottage where I could stay during my visit. Tiny, all vertical, all wood: but cozy and supportive and kindly, as much as architecture can be, anyway.

(There are so many threads that can be pulled out from all this – you don't know that my father had hypothyroidism, too, which caused him to go to sleep for a year when I was fourteen; or that my mother once, quite unfairly, accused him of being the reason I am gay, because his fatherly influence was absent in that crucial year, though I was already quite gay by then; or that surgery and symbolism around thyroids and throats is also floating around, related to at least two friends; or that my first novel by Woolf wasn't Mrs. Dalloway, but instead The Voyage Out, which I consider one of the great experiences of my life, from those first arresting paragraphs, where I was practically holding my breath at not only the complexity but the importance of all these words, as though I would understand so much if I could only get it all... and the details of the dream, which would merely madden you because they are details, but which are precious to me... and I didn't even tell you what a Battenberg cake is like, not in sufficient detail anyway.)

And so: the hours go on....

Picking up speed

Not so down: the sun appears to be out more, and even the days are longer since the equinox – it is always interesting to see how rapidly the length of the day changes at certain points of the year.

I am less depressed partly, of course, because of the impact of the world on me: more demands, and revving up to teach the second semester, which will make me far busier than I've been for an entire year. I still want some sort of analytic/psychological/cognitive explanation for my depressions and associated behaviors, so that I can get my hands on my own controls, so to speak – and no, sniggers from the back will be ignored. But if I can't get such an explanation, at least I can get a few things done.

Of course, with such demands comes anxiety – I've just awakened from my first related dream, in fact: one where new students collect in a room but no one comes to explain what they are to do, and various subsidiary academics look at each other in confusion, waiting for some sort of general introduction to start. Which it doesn't do... and then time is passing... and people are getting worried.

Ah well. At least I'm responding to e-mails, which I've largely ignored for a couple of weeks....

End

Having moved the computer to my desk in the middle room (actually I should keep it here, as this is much more of a 'work area' than the front room and couch, where I have spent far too much of the past five years) – I can see fireworks: the municipal celebration of New Year's Eve, the end (or perhaps, more traditionally, the verge of the beginning) of a year.

The top half of them, anyway, not covered by the bare winter trees and small row houses.

The fireworks are impressive, even from this distance; their energetic celebrations and implicit social contract make me feel a bit ridiculous, a bit ashamed – over the past week I have increasingly slept during the day, read part of the night, felt poorly. And even missed several doses of medications: I'm usually pretty good about them, but in midwinter and under the mark of depression I tend to lose track – I have missed perhaps three or four doses over the past week, which is of course not acceptable, at least not for any length of time.

Reading Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections – at first I was rather put off, then became fascinated: his memories of his own introverted confusions in his teens, and the resultant neurotic physical symptoms; it really turns into an engaging story, and one that reflects all too plainly my current depression/anomie/mild illnesses.

And I was reading sections of current technical (medical and psychiatric) textbooks on HIV/AIDS, downloaded from one of those illegal Russian websites: reading, especially, about the biochemistry of HIV depression. Depression is something most of the authors take for granted with HIV; it's apparently very common indeed (50% to 85% of patients, depending on what your defining factors are). Most of the writers are much more concerned with dementia and its biochemistry; depression is a side issue, with some of them prescribing minor stimulants for it (none of which I've ever heard of).

Of course, over the past year, I've become increasingly dependent for any successful energy on tea – especially exquisite, tangy green tea – and, very occasionally, coffee (though my stomach can't really stand it). And therefore, the obvious conclusion is reached: among my various resolutions, I should make a point of making them happen by drinking tea, regularly, in the morning.

Rather than, for instance, staggering from my bed to the sofa at 11 am, and sleeping until 4 pm, without eating or taking medicines... as I did today. Yes, I know, you don't need to tell me.

N.B.: I can't imagine how 'self-medicating' turned into such a negative term, unless it's the panic generated around AA, NA and associated programs. Given the tendency of doctors to allow non-life-endangering problems to drift... sometimes until they become quite real... it seems to be a survival need. For some of us, anyway.

***

And those resolutions, tame as they are – for the purpose of recording them in (horrible, accusing, demanding?) public – so that I can't pretend they never happened:

(1) To work DAILY on research projects.

(2) To get exercise at least once every week – moving towards twice a week if possible.

(3) To prepare classes and meetings beforehand whenever possible.

Signed, with a legalistic flourish,

Me

***

A later small addendum: I note from various casual messages on Facebook, as well as from certain comic strips, that there is leftover anger and exasperation in the US aimed at 2008 – that people are ready for the year to be over, because they almost blame the year itself for so many disasters. As an American living abroad, I don't feel that way myself about 2008 – this was a year when I put myself back together psychologically, more than I've been since 2000 – but I do understand.

However, admittedly, some of the horrors of the past year were visited on the country by its own structures – why was Bush ever elected, and why did people let him stay in power even after the illegalities of the 2004 election were obvious? Why did so many allow the financial and industrial powers to continue to operate scams that have been floating about since the 1980s? Perhaps because of the smug assumption of being a chosen land, of being immune to consequences. Like a twenty-year-old: pathetic, really... I hope that most Americans understand that these miseries did not come from some chance-driven, external force.

Happymerry

Early Christmas morning: between four and five a.m., briefly awake.

At the back of my mind for the past few days: the differences between holidays with family and friends, as opposed to alone, especially among the single and the older (like me of course). Alfred visited for two days, to the 23rd; he is a bit older than I am, and fairly famous, fairly well-connected. But because he broke up last spring with a partner after an all-too-brief period, he is roaming alone, searching for some place he can start again – and experiencing the bad timing of an economic downturn. He is handling it well, and is now off visiting another friend over the crucial days; but he also seems a bit at a loss, and feeling the isolation, the uncertainty (and yes, I'm undoubtedly projecting); and perhaps he is hearing in his head the silly, irrational questions that become so familiar for anyone who lives alone, such as the ones that start, Does anyone care what happens to... ?....

He told me news of Tom Disch – I hadn't known Disch committed suicide last July, after his partner died and his landlord started to evict him. Disch, who was a brilliant writer – especially when he wrote 334 – became increasingly bitter in his later years, as shown by his books from The Businessman onward, and his blog; he finally felt there was just no place for him, no alternatives and no places to go.

Then there's Geoff, on the other side of the world, leaving a slightly sad status update about having no presents. Other Facebook messages indicate that people are either with loved ones, or without; and that there is a certain avoided contrast between those classes. And, perhaps, most of all, there is my mother who, at eighty-six, won't get any visits until the day after Christmas; I tried repeatedly to call on Christmas Eve, but got no answer, as happens rather often. (And yes, you're quite right, I do feel guilty: in general that I am so far away.)

I, of course, am accustomed to all this for myself, but I do always need to manage my rather high expectations, which come from an exaggeratedly sentimental attachment to the holidays. It wasn't a bad Christmas Eve: a large lunch at the nearby Italian restaurant, where I was the only person alone.

And I'll also admit to a slightly willful avoidance of people connecting with me: I realized, today, over that lunch, that I don't want to ask people to spend time with me over the holidays – because, frankly, it's embarrassing. Somehow one wants them to want to spend time with you, to burst in, perhaps even with presents... ludicrous, I know.

I'm not sad, though. Except, perhaps, for mom; and then only in a general context of wondering why we have created this cultural/economic pattern that leaves people living alone, in apartments, in small houses, in rooms – especially on this day, of all the year....

A bit dim

After all that travel, as the days get short, my days are not sharply defined – my body seems a bit off to me: as though my liver, my body's processing systems, are slightly out of whack. Some work gets done, fragmentarily: I am in focus for an hour or less, then tired for an afternoon, sometimes strangely exhausted and nauseous for a few hours, then sleepy for an evening...

and television seems atrociously stupid, plus a braying, dismaying cloud of Christmas advertisements. Somehow merchandising seems especially desperate and nonsensical this year: as though the multinational corporations, fearful of general disintegration, can only demand with increasing shrillness that we buy things from now until the twenty-fifth.

I'm afraid I won't help them out much – I'll probably buy only contributions to Oxfam for my family. That isn't as dull and stingy as it might seem – it's too complicated to mail them anything really interesting, and of course my family doesn't for the most part need things bought for them.

Feeling a bit faded, intermittently a bit ill, takes the edge off all my ambitions: presentations, applications, even a performance coming up on my birthday. If I were of some aristocratic, non-working background; or alternatively if, years ago, I had chosen to go on disability in some way; I would probably now be quietly, gratefully, not doing much of anything for a few weeks. It is strangely easy to imagine – easier than it usually is, in fact.

But there are flurries of snow; and occasionally a sentence is better-written than it was; occasionally a paragraph actually makes an interesting point. And that makes the day worthwhile.

Hearth and home

The chimney sweep came this afternoon...

a pleasant man in his fifties, indeed covered with soot, indeed with black brushes of various kinds. And even a blackened, grimy cloth to protect the carpet – although it didn't look as though it would protect much, he's clearly been doing this for years, as the room looked fine when he left.

I gave him a cup of tea, which seemed appreciated (the milk was really rice milk – I don't have real milk in the house, as I can't drink it – but I've learned long ago that you don't tell people that, you just pour it in). We chatted about various things – the only thing I forgot was to touch him (touch a sweep for luck, they used to say).

It was fascinating to hear him talking about fires, from the 1960s in this area – because the fire in the grate was the only way of heating the house, well into the 1970s; which is why there's no flue cover (the fire was always going in the winter). He talked about drying his football clothes after they'd been washed, and trying to keep them from getting scorch marks.

Of course, as an ardent (ex-) Californian, I shudder at the idea of depending on a fireplace – of banking the fire up in the morning to bring the room up from, say, the forties to the low sixties. But it's an impressive bit of personal history....

Signal to noise

On a day when I'm finally finishing that article that has hung over my head for three weeks, almost finished; and need to work on airline schedules, voter registration, and other miscellanea, which really should be finished today...

not one but three invitations to chat, to have dinner, to go out. My negative response puts the lie to my usual complaint that nobody pays attention to me, that I'm pathetic and alone and what not.

I think it's a peculiar kind of synchronicity: when I actually get the energy to do something, perhaps I therefore – in some obscure, San Francisco-mystical kind of way – impinge more on people's consciousnesses.

How odd, and sometimes slightly annoying, is the timing of the world...

Of course it's a full moon. But there you are.

Autumnal acts

My cleaner, Katia, came today (she is Bulgarian, blonde, charming, and kind; she brought me chocolates when I had been in the hospital; her children and husband moved here a month ago from Bulgaria, and they are settling in to school, college, and jobs with alacrity).

We needed to do a Big Task: take the two window boxes down to the deck outside. Messy and heavy, but we did it.

I decided to take them down earlier this year, in a certain mild disappointment; the herbs didn't do terribly well this year – lots of bugs, gnats and aphids, and fungus that killed the marjoram, and I wouldn't buy either a curry plant nor a coriander plant again.

It's my fault, I think – I went with Bennett to buy the plants at a point when I was still very tired and ill from the hospital, and so left them outside for two weeks – and of course herbs simply attract bugs, outside, unprotected.

Ah well. It is still perhaps always good, to invest time and effort into growing things...

and yes, I still should be seeing about getting a cat. I promise I won't leave it – him, I think – outside for two weeks.

Last rose of summer

I know it's not really the end of summer, not quite yet: it is still three weeks before the meetings that introduce the semester start, four weeks before the students arrive; and although we've had a lot of wet, cold weather, there will still be warm days off and on for that month.

But it's Bank Holiday weekend, the one that marks the end of summer here; and in a weekend it's Labor Day weekend, the end of summer in the US. Everyone is away, having fun, usually in heavily planned ways – Susan and Rob are in Sitges, and for the first time in years I'm not joining them; Patrick and Colin are in Manchester for Gay Pride this weekend, and I'm not joining them.

It's also sort of the commercial gay pride weekend here in Newcastle – which means a chance to go to the local clubs and watch people get incredibly drunk, which doesn't seem terribly interesting. But at least they're doing something. And even the two tall young men who appear to be visiting the downstairs neighbors – in their absence? – were staying up until six and playing music (not very loudly but annoyingly enough). Which means even people I don't want to party with are partying.

All a bit of a shame, a bit disappointing: but not very much, because I've stayed here voluntarily (for the most part, anyway, even if the government has my passport for a few weeks), and have gotten writing done, which means the summer isn't as depressingly wasted as it usually is.

But it feels a little bit sad, to give up seeing people, going places, having fun, having a break: when my passport comes back I may find myself a weekend somewhere to make up for it....

There are strawberries and raspberries in piles in all the shops, that rot almost before you've gotten them home. I should live on smoothies.

Meanwhile it is sunny and beautiful; I still have to finish that paper, today I think, but I'll do so sitting in pleasant cafés.

***

And today is Hans-Rainer's birthday, so I should phone him. Have I ever told you about Hans-Rainer – the greatest romantic hope of my years after Reid's death?...

Hans-Rainer is a handsome, black-bearded German, about my age. When I lived in Germany for fifteen months in 1993-4, I did indeed meet lots of men; but Hans-Rainer was the great one, the one I wanted to live with. A former East German (ehemalige Ossi), he lived in the countryside around Berlin; at first his English was nonexistent, and his German peculiarly peppered with country proverbs and metaphors that I could barely follow. (Imagine meeting someone who explains things, in another language, by saying something like, "It's that or pluck chickens" – very confusing for an urban guy like me.)

But friendly, charming, sexy, and wonderful: every time we met during that year (when he came into Berlin), we would spend days at a time in bed – up to three, or four or five, days, not leaving the apartment and hardly leaving the bed, not seeing any good reason to leave it. My younger sister said: you marry the ones you can talk to – and, although he isn't an educated man, we would talk endlessly about – I don't know what, but we were happy doing it.

Some charming moments: when he got all impressed with how he looked in leather, and in khaki, and all sorts of other gay ghetto standards, in the mid-1990s – in East Germany he'd never had access to these things; he sent me pictures that he was so touchingly proud of, that he looked so cool. And driving his little Trabant, those incredibly miserably cheap East German cars, which was too small for him, and which required him leaning forward and putting all his energy into keeping the little 'Papi' (the nickname for Trabants, because they were practically made of paper) moving....

Since 1994, we often call each other, from one place or another; his English has greatly improved, although it is still pretty basic. I've often suggested he visit me here, but he never has much money – he's not great at holding onto his jobs, or for that matter  boyfriends; not because he's a horrible person, but just because he tends not to stay focused. A flaw I was happy to overlook; in latter years he's managed to work as a gardener, and remember to show up to work on a regular basis.

I'll call him today; perhaps I should send him a plane ticket for here....