in the hall of mirrors

There was a conferencing...

The conference went well… the presentation was basically semi-successful; I realized that I’d gone about it the wrong way round (must be inductive rather than deductive – there are few ways to annoy people more effectively than generalizing about things), but there were still some good moments, and I think that my instincts about the topic are on the whole good. Spurious got irritated with something that he (mis)understood in the presentation, and took out after me – I responded with equal irritation, convinced that he was about 10% right, about 50% unfair/unhelpful, and about 40% just plain wrong. Later discussion settled us with each other, and hopefully he’ll help me fix some aspects of the paper that need fixing.

More importantly, and more enjoyably: the ‘Stimmung’, or personal connection and intellectual discussion, was very successful indeed. People were relaxed, interested, and good at talking to each other, and about each other’s work. This despite the overwhelming heat. Always a good thing….

One disappointed moment, as I stole a siesta on the second day: the sense that this is a good process for an intellectual, and a good process for intellectual work – but that I won’t, nevertheless, be getting much more work done in my life. And that’s not, let face it, a matter of ill health and life difficulties – though I frequently, implicitly or explicitly, invoke those, or allow them to be invoked. It’s just a matter of patterns established at an early stage of my life: the laziness of lying around, the scattered pleasures of undirected reading, the fluidity of having ideas without developing or researching them…. oh well. Old story, with several dramatic episodes (me at the age of 17, me at the age of 21, me intermittently in the 1980s, then in the 1990s... you get the idea).

•••

Other fragments of the conference:

On the second night, there was a slightly exasperating presentation by a Respected Psychologist – last night he and I, and David, had talked/argued over wine, but in his presentation he pushed ideas that seemed to dismiss or process into flatness most of the possibilities brought up in the conference. (Mood manipulation, or putting people in a good mood – would you say that is the same as producing well-being? Ooh, I can’t go with that.) Ah well… thank goodness I didn't end up in the sciences; so many people and ideas must seem so opaque, so incomprehensibly wrongheaded, from a relatively technological/experimental point of view… at least I feel I have some idea of how the world works, at its best.

David: “As the cauliflower of discourse sinks into the gazpacho of time…”

Spent some time talking to a cute recent graduate… dark hair, dark eyes, very serious, Irish accent – hmm. As I get older, younger men become more interesting… but no, I’m no predator; I suppose that I just still hope that, perhaps someday, someone will be themselves interested in me. Aware, of course, that the probability of such things decreases over time....

Annoyingly, according to I–, it appears that I sway back and forth when giving presentations (rather autistic of me)…. hmm. Yet another thing to fuss about.

Going to Japan

I’ve never been to Japan before. On a crowded street corner, breathing the acid tang of the gray air, I look at the little hand-drawn map and try to figure out where north is. The oval, blank faces flow past as though they ride on swift, efficient engines, though occasionally one glances at me: gaijin, foreigner. I turn and walk through a great wooden temple, silent rows of shaved heads visible through a cloud of incense, and enter a tiny storefront bar. A karaoke machine sprays music across the narrow space; but as I dig for a red thousand-yen note for the waitress, voices come abruptly from the speakers: He’s not doing well; he hasn’t recognized me for two days, and hardly opens his eyes any more. I tune them out; it must be some American soap opera. The chef lines up sushi on a black enameled tray; the maguro is like butter, it’s so perfect. I even eat the octopus, so his feelings won’t be hurt. I leave by a different door and turn left, crossing through a quiet formal garden to the foot of the mountain, and climb to a gold and red shrine. A party of nobles has arrived just before me, and a young samurai, tattooed and carrying a vast sword, condescends to explain that they are going to view the iris fields. Idling outside in the afternoon sun, listening to the monotone chanting, I notice an intricately carved sedan chair draped with pale green silks. A delicate hand pushes the curtain aside slightly; it holds a Sony Walkman, from which come tinny voices: I can tell you, he’s not in any pain; the drugs take care of that. But there’s not much we can do at this stage. Annoyed, I turn and cross behind the shrine, push apart the great wooden doors, and take the long steel escalator down to the subway station. The crowds are dense around the car doors, but the tiny stores are nearly empty; a bookstall looks interesting, and I glance through a collection of haiku, feeling the roaring trains through the floor. A flood of uniformed children rushes past, running to get to school on time; two little girls break away from the group to stop and gaze at me. I’m surprised and can’t remember the proper address for children, but as I stand tongue-tied the smallest dashes up and pushes a tiny, carefully wrapped package into my hand, and they run away, giggling like mad. I slip the package into my pocket, smiling to myself, and turn to ask the bookseller how much for the book, but he is gone. Shrugging, I put the book on the counter and turn to the door behind the stall; as I go through it, I hear voices booming over the public address system: He didn’t want to be revived. I know it’s difficult, but you’re going to have to make a decision. Outside, the road outlines a chessboard of wet, green rice fields on the south, out to the horizon; to the north, there is a small wooden pavilion up the hill, open to the spring air. The path wanders through a patch of tiny white flowers; I pick one, sticking it in my buttonhole as I climb. Three men in the pavilion are talking quietly; they rise and bow at my entrance. We exchange many polite phrases, but finally relax and prepare to write a renga, a chain of poems. The oldest fusses, handing me paper, brush and ink while the others wrinkle their foreheads in concentration over their scrolls. Can you hear me? We’re going to turn off your respirator, forgive us please, try to show if you can understand – I turn and close the door behind me to shut out the noise. Sitting, I arrange things before me, ink on the left, scroll unrolled to the first panel. As the old man begins to snore, open-mouthed, under the enameled bowl of the sky, I chew on the end of my brush. I count syllables in my head, trying to work out the first line: something about, what it’s like, to come to Japan.

[Los Angeles, 5/10-6/1/91]

[Published in His: New Fiction by Gay Writers, edited by Robert Drake and Terry Wolverton. Boston: Faber & Faber, 1995. Translated into German as 'Reise nach Japan' by Erwin Matalla & Jörn Wolters for Aktiv, Hamburg, August 1991, and Haki Journal, Hamburg, September 1991.]

Aesthetic

Continuing working on presentation – made a bit annoying by my body suddenly coming up with several small annoyances all overnight (a swollen lymph gland, a slight sore throat, my back got twisted last night and aches a bit on one side, and my gums hurt – slightly – all more like little, irritating warning signs or systematic glitches than real problems – at least now).

The possible flaw in my work so far: I spend lots and lots of time makin' things pretty (detailed rewriting of small phrases, graphics, and just general fussing around). Appropriate perhaps, because this is a presentation about aesthetics, and aesthetic things. But perhaps also a bit risky....

I notice that, although when I do it well people say of my academic papers that they like the writing (and sometimes they say I have interesting ideas), no one ever says that the scholarship is careful. Or even particularly good. Well heck, even if they did, I probably wouldn't care much.

Hmm, maybe I need a research assistant. Ah, dream on....

Vision

The (first) presentation went well; I was tempted into attending the big social climaxes of this first conference (dinner, concert), but while taking a break in the concert hall to work on the second presentation, I realized I needed to go home and really spend time on it.

And so came home... spent the past 5-6 hours completing the structure and Powerpoint slides.

Surprisingly intense stuff I'm talking about: not just the concepts – hmm, well, making Powerpoint slides about Buddhism, Heidegger, Proust, being, awareness, and time, is kind of like saying: Hey, can I show you my snapshots of Mount Everest?

But the music is powerful, and truly does lead back to the concepts. And brings up a lot of emotion, passion, inspiration.

Glory....

...scattered...

My guest has finally arrived; a charming, sweet, small man, very elegant and friendly. And although he has dramatic stories about the various and confusing mistravels (new word!) of the past three days, he is quite relaxed and un-stressed about it. (Caracas, Madrid, Paris, here – does that sound like a direct or convenient route to you? No, me neither.) I did feel distracted at first by his presence, in the face of the presentation I'm still writing – but it's already calmer.

(Of course, given my concerns about time to myself to write in the next forty-eight hours, why on earth did I invite various Latin Americans back to my apartment last night, and agree to their bringing Dominican rum, guitars and mandolins?... I had to kick them out at 1 am, feeling like a terrible host. But my father would have loved their music, they even played some of his favorites.)

But still I am rather scattered: drying clothes, cleaning up, doing bits of the presentation. As so often in my life, it feels as though the important things are happening in the interstices of trivial things or things I haven't quite got a handle on. And what's even sillier about this is that I know that my life is relatively under my control – as an academic, I don't have to show up some place at 9 am every weekday, nor do I have to do work that others dictate; living alone, I don't have a barrage of complex problems with children, partners, etc. Yet focusing still seems hard. Just a bit confused, diffuse, exasperated by the business of living, and by focusing on other people and events....

Ironic, for someone working on a presentation about awareness and being.

Discomfortable moment

Last night was the last HIV patient presentation of the spring/summer; it was an odd one – not like our usual casual, confident get-together with people we know well, talking easily to young students who are always fascinated and slightly appalled. This was an elaborate, rather stiff, formal presentation run by some people up from London - big graphics, business backdrop, Powerpoint, dinner afterwards ("would you like chicken or salmon?"). I think a pharmaceutical company was underwriting everything, which is why there was so much obvious and unnecessary expenditure floating about. The idea was to talk to GPs (general practitioners) about recognizing and referring patients with HIV.

Well, mostly it was fine... if, as I say, rather stiff and overproduced (and under-attended; a large area of the country with lots of GPs only resulted in 30 confirmations, and of those only 13 (!) actually showed up). A_, the new young consultant at our clinic, gave a basic introduction – bless him, he is still so young, and always a little clueless about people/emotions/communication; but he means very well, and throws lots of technical facts around. Then a more experienced, and more opinionated, GP from the Manchester area set things on a somewhat firmer social/pragmatic footing. Then Paul F– and I talked....

The weird moment came from the two guys at the back. They both seemed different than expected – didn't act like doctors, if there's a way that doctors act; I thought they both seemed more like football coaches (Paul F– said he thought they seemed like thugs). One of them weighed in about the tricky-but-familiar situation of telling partners of people diagnosed with HIV, without the patient's consent; we all leapt in, trying to offer advice, information, etc. – he was having none of it; he blustered away, treating us as fools who had no idea what we were doing. He said something like, "well, you'd call the police if someone were shooting people with a revolver, wouldn't you?" Hmm, well, haven't heard that kind of metaphor since the late 1980s (for instance, go look at Alan Bownes' sleazy but interesting play Beirut, which was a paranoia-violence-sex-end-of-the-world one-act about a grim AIDS-driven future, from 1986 – you probably won't be able to find it, though; it was trendy at the time, but we're talking underground, small publisher, etc.).

I tried to explain, unsuccessfully, about the whole we-and-them thing – that thinking of the situation that way was based on thinking of AIDS as something that was brought in by Them (fags, furriners, bad people who had sex and shot up all the time) to infect and destroy Us (you know. Good people. Us. Me, my wife and kids. Normal people who vote Republican, and make immigration laws). He still thought we were all full of horseshit. He didn't talk to anybody (except his friend in the back row), and at the end of the meeting wolfed down dinner and left without having anything to do with anybody else.

Yuck... well... hmm. I suppose it's better that he was there at all. It was rather strange....

***

On coming home, located Patrick and Catherine, who have been discussing the possibility that he will move in downstairs. They were both looking good; summer does treat people well, and they wear stylish clothes and lighten up generallly. Then dragged everyone to a bar that was filled by the gang associated with the Latin American music festival; a very good DJ, and a very sexy, cheerful, beefily gym-built young black guy from Brasil, who was playing guitar and singing (Patrick was entranced). R– was there, handsome as usual (he does look older these days, though – the ravages of time and the dancer; but that merely adds to his potential attraction as partner material).

Talked again to J– and his girlfriend, the tiny, exquisitely charming lawyer. She was again charming and fun, and said the perfect thing that made the whole 'revolver' moment mentioned above all right – when they left (they'll get on a plane early in the morning) she said, "Keep up the good fight." Nice of her, it helps to think like that...

Forecast: finer

Once again, the weather is better, and so am I.

That Venezuelan houseguest is again delayed, and confusion reigns on that front; but his Latin American identity has somewhat influenced the whole situation, as I merely feel like: oh well, okay, no worries. (Now you can see how valuable it was for me to live in easy-going San Francisco for years, and how much I wanted the Sydneysiders to get me in the habit of saying 'no worries' at every turn – it can be valuable to live in places where the existing culture is at odds with one's own personality...).

Writing. Powerpointing. Listening to music, and of course doing better work since the computer is in the 'office' middle room rather than the living room (plausibly I should keep it here).

Sunshine on the basil, thyme and cilantro plants: I do need to buy bigger pots, but they don't seem too unhappy.... And a dazzling tune, played by one of my colleagues, Catriona MacDonald, a very fine fiddler: called, quite appropriately, 'The Joy of It!' – it's an intricate, spiralling tune with a few shifted beats here and there, each of which make the tune leap forward into ecstatic polyphonic arabesques.

***

This morning, I was briefly lying on the couch; the sun made that side of the house warm, without it getting hot. It was so lovely and sunny, I thought of a favorite Chinese poem – one that I had begun to set to music some years ago in an unfinished song cycle that I had titled 'Bronze Mirrors'.

Summer day...
Reading in the heat of noon
I grow sleepy, put my head
On my arms and fall asleep.
I forget to close the window
And the warm air blows in
And covers my body with petals.

(Yuan Mei, 1716-1797; translated by Kenneth Rexroth)

Easter

Dead men were
Flung spreadeagled from the barricade.
The fight drained from our angled wounds.

We fled the bunnies
And their flashing hatchets,
Limped across the reddened curb

Into the alley,
Its end blocked by a spaceship
Guarded by ducklings with long black knives.

You said:
Let’s fight, we’ll grab the ship and fly,
Set the controls for heaven.

And I said,
Falling forever into the ground:
Wild rabbits couldn’t drag me.

[Los Angeles, 7/24-9/25/91]

[Art by Michael Sowa]

Analysis

Monday/Tuesday: the sequence of actions –
(a) Awakened early, stomach in difficulties, feeling stressed. Attracted to dreams and sleeping (because of avoiding responsibilities, because of the pleasantness of relaxing, because it was chilly out), stayed in bed.
(b) Received several phone calls, tried to ignore, let machine take messages. Finally answered one call on my mobile, was told that friendly American academic (academic friend?) is in town, and we’re going to dinner with him. Agreed to join group, though aware this would destroy possibility of doing work tonight.
(c) Got up early afternoon, stumbled around, annoyed over pattern of day and the various ways it was getting out of my control. On the other hand what would I have done that was so useful, otherwise? Showered, then thereby felt better; laundry, cleaning up.
(d) Slept again for an hour or so.
(e) Started to type lyrics from the show I’m writing about into a document so that I could use them in the presentation.
(f) Interrupted this quasi-work to go out to said dinner. Walked through town – thereby getting some exercise; the day had gotten warmer and pleasant – was ultimately glad to see colleagues and visiting friend/academic. Enjoyed dinner, it was socially pleasant after some initial awkwardness (it looked at first as though we were all a bit detached from each other, and/or a bit tired of each other – which makes sense, one of the delights of summer for academics is getting away from one’s colleagues for a while, but we got over it). All got rather hilarious, and fun; I was myself a bit silly, but enjoyed it all. Also good/valuable (?) to see famous friend.
(g) Dinner itself: some of it very good, some of it okay. Probably spent too much money, drank too much alcohol, ate too much fattening food, but still enjoyed it socially.
(h) During dinner was told that I would have a houseguest – for a week – slightly dismayed at first, then thought, no that’s good, I’ll get kicked out of the front room and will have little to do but work on presentation and other papers.
(i) Traveled with I–– to club to briefly greet/talk to visiting writer from New York. Fun to talk to writer and his charming girlfriend, even over loud music. Left after about fifteen minutes, thinking hmmm, I should see writer’s presentation this week. A pleasant connection; and frankly it's nice to know people who are successful in the arts.
(j) Sleep. Ill by morning (rich food and alcohol); got over it by midday. Phone call to meet with student; cleaning up to prepare for houseguest; bought lunch with said student at nearby café, rather than making lunch. Thus bad (paid money) and good (house clean, brief social contact); and also of course ambivalent (enjoyable lunch but probably more than I needed to eat; espresso might wake me up but might bother my stomach; etc.).
(k) Home, finished cleaning, realized houseguest wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow. Lay on couch, slightly sleepy.

Why would I record all this in such absurd, probably quite tiresome, detail? Well, I find myself – as I often do; but more consciously now, and even with some criticism of the process itself – trying to decide what in all this list is good, and what is bad. If I am too depressed/isolated, then social contact is good, isn’t it? But does it waste time I should be spending writing? How about the conflict between the pleasure/inspiration of good food, and the relaxation of wine, on the one hand, and gaining weight or getting less healthy on the other?

And larger issues: what are the relative positions of pleasure, and of work? How will I know when I'm wasting my time... or taking care of myself? Or, to put it another way: when are useless/devolutionary habits running me, or (of course!) when am I thinking/worrying too much?...

Heidegger: in talking about Being, he adds something unexpected – that it is not that Being is the only 'right' way of being, as opposed to habit and trivia and mistakes. He offers a rather forgiving lever out of anxiety – he says that being everyday or trivial is perfectly normal and part of Being, that it's the ground from which we might be able to do something better, a ground that can't be eradicated and shouldn't be despised. This is sort of like when Buddhists say that the confusion and attachment of life is actually the material you use to find a place beyond it – you can't erase the muck, it's the fertilizer for making something grow in your life.

Simple enough, I suppose. But I'm never entirely sure which fork I should go down, at any given moment... the anxiety about judging is of course typical of my personality type; but it makes some days, with all of their dull and bright facets, engender extraordinarily unwieldy towers of judgment and concern.

I should have been a beachcomber....

The hospital room, at midnight

Drained neatly, each hour,
stapled to a network
of steel, wet plastic,
web of blood and urine.

Before the final bell
of this fluorescent night:
an orange.

Oils burst, wild,
juices glow,
virginal, cold – alive! –
a caravan, the blue-white sky,
red haze of cinnamon, and
bitter aloes, desert wind.

In any trap,
escape is within:

it will be
white cinnamon,
sweet aloes.

[Los Angeles, 3/7-27/90]