Haven't been writing new posts for some days. This in spite of a great deal of activity and input – but perhaps so much, and with such contradictory results, that it seems difficult to construct a coherent blog entry out of any of it.
Much of the past days (twelve days? – since I said anything 'in the present') has been good; organizing things, meetings mostly went well (with a few bad spots, but that's normal), standing up to talk to new students, and feeling as though most of it was productive and will prevent future problems. But among all that were scattered the usual nasty moments, the kind of moments (and some are rather lengthy) that leave me dismayed with people and/or with myself. Perhaps the biggest problems are around authority and (dis)respect – I have a position that should enable me to make certain decisions, or at least should allow me to expect that I would be consulted about certain decisions; yet that often doesn't happen, and several of my colleagues don't seem to feel that they are thereby doing anything wrong.
It's strange, and I keep trying to figure out whether I'm just being paranoid – a difficult thing to decide; since I've always been singularly bad at keeping my footing in shifting patterns of power (especially problematic in one who came to adulthood in the viciously competitive Reagan era), the overlapping networks of orders from above, inflected by colleagues who seem to feel free to snatch the reins out of my hands whenever they feel like it, plus occasional bursts of sheer malice or manipulation from beneath and above, leave me frankly queasy. I've spent several days out of the past five in bed – not because anything really awful happened, but simply because I felt utterly unequal to the unpleasant things that people sometimes do, in passing as it were.
I remain, as always, bemused by most people's abilities to justify any dishonorable thing they do, and matching inability to see it from anyone else's point of view – all worsened, as so often for me in the past decade, by explanations that these differences are cultural, and that as the foreigner I'm the one who needs to give up, or apologize, or is expected simply to lose every battle. It's like walking onto an endless, low-level battlefield, but you don't feel certain of your ability with weapons – ultimately perhaps this is merely a portrait of the tarot's suit of swords; certainly, though our situation is better than many, academics are simply difficult people, and the complex world of assessment, fees, chaotic systems and diffused responsibilities is a poor one for them to inhabit.
But I should mention something good: two nights in a row with spurious and his mother, who was visiting this weekend; a woman both charming and tough-minded – one can see where her son gets certain ways of speaking (they both sometimes talk rapidly but intelligently, with a sense that even lengthy phrases operate as single linguistic units – I have had to ask both to slow down), plus an instant honesty, a dedication to clarity, that makes both of them immediately trustworthy on a number of emotional and intellectual levels. It was lovely, in fact, to see P–, who is usually fairly shy with strangers, getting into a long and animated conversation with her – perhaps the world is simply better for the presence of some people. If only, in fact, everyone were more like that.
But the others: what should I do about the others? Retreat, give up, fight, or continue analyzing myself to see what I did wrong in each case? But I have analyzed myself for years, and the frank truth is that it has gained me little – perhaps I will end up like my father, though he was considerably less irritable and more optimistic than I have ever been. You could tell, in his retirement ceremonies and in letters to and from him, that although he had made significant contributions to his field, his disinterest in office politics left him with less authority, and of course less money, than one might have expected.
But the winners rarely concern themselves with the losers, I suppose....
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Later: having written about it, it all looks less painful, less difficult, less important. The benefits of writing – or perhaps more accurately blogging....
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