Continuing, in the night, this uneasy fascination with change, time, life – the night is still hot, the pillow still like a heating pad.
It was all probably produced by the long bursts of heavy, outward-directed work of the past weeks, that have finally left me dried out, tired – in the midst of this heat. And helping C– move today (or, more accurately, not helping much; I did take her to dinner afterward as a slightly guilty show of support). Which means my dear neighbor of four years is gone, to be replaced by lord only knows what.
Watching television, yet again, after reading some of those graphic novels (comics to you): what if by some twists and turns I had ended up in media, rather than the arts or academe? I would probably have been better at it (I am after all a rather sloppy intellectual, with a fairly casual education, and what might be called a rather weak or flimsy spirit); though I might not have had the energy for the pressures of media life – on the other hand, there are many niches in media life and popular art forms, and I might have found one that I could have handled. And if such a life had caught me early enough, I probably would have found a more continuous energy – the longueurs of my life might simply never have happened.
However, I can also sense how quickly I would have gotten frustrated at the shallowness of what is allowed; not many people in media/popular arts get to live in their dreamscapes, most are merely put to work in what is usually fairly trashy day-to-day production.
So: a life that would have had more money, more employment continuity, but probably more existential frustration... hmm.
And what about tomorrow, which is Monday? Shouldn't I be doing some boring academic administration? Can I coast for the day? Will it be so hot that every activity seems to be called into question?
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