Butt In Chair: the great injunction for writers (okay, perhaps not as great as 'Done Is Good', as it's a bit less presentable in mixed company – whatever that means these days) from Susan M.
I am in my chair today, having moved myself and computer from the living room, where the increasingly beaten-up couch, television, and distractions of literary trivia live, into the middle room, where there is a clearly defined working desk and shelves of philosophy, cultural studies, semiotics. I, at least, feel less useless; and the distractions are, at least, more high-minded.
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I don't understand why I always, on assembling a cup of tea, end up with a sticky smudge of honey on my fingers, or on the mug, on its handle somehow – it seems to come from nowhere, from some weird opening into something that should probably be called H-space. And I always notice at the point when my fingers are on the keyboard, on the trackpad, on some papers....
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Bothered the past few days by the self-pity so heavily embedded in my AIDS writings, in this blog, and frankly in my personality. After reading bits of Stephen Mitchell's anthology The Enlightened Heart (I love Mitchell as a translator; this is his collection of spiritual prose), I kept thinking: yeah, well, my own real problem is that I'm so impressed by my own problems. Which, let's face it, aren't huge ones. When I think of the book I'm supposed to be writing – and, in fact, one of the two articles I'm supposed to be writing right now, before that book – the underlying message is one of how tragic my life has been; and that gets in the way of writing it – I know I can tug on heartstrings, but I feel rather cheap doing it. Well, I suppose there's no way past all this, other than being aware of it, and trying to grow out of it....
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Yesterday (Friday) was a lost day: Wednesday had been okay, if faintly depressing (final marks settled on last year's postgraduates – and no matter what I did, I couldn't make the numbers come out with more than one Distinction – but apparently they were all pleased enough with their Merits, so that was probably just my problem); Thursday was hard-working but effective (taught two classes, and did them well – ah what an ego boost that is! – which will tell you a lot about me as a teacher, both what I do correctly and what's wrong with my teaching – as you can probably figure out, I tend to teach as a 'performer', which creates enthusiasm and also probably leaves the students feeling a little used, a little browbeaten, at times).
Thursday evening I went to the health food store, and unfortunately responded too easily to marketing; I bought slippery elm bark (not the pills which, as V– has said, never do anything, but the stuff itself, powdered). Drank it in a mug before bed. Was a wreck Friday – despite the generalizations made on the box about how good it is for the digestion etc. etc., it is clearly meant for people who have constipation – which is, frankly, never a problem in my life. Running back and forth to the bathroom, tired and with body systems racing out of control, on a day when I'd vowed to sit and write....
So today is what yesterday should have been, plus some time to (continue to) recover. We'll see....
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Unfortunately, the tea, and especially the hot chocolate (no sugar, but chili included) has probably been a bit much – now my gut (my short, and admittedly partly euphemistic, term for my whole digestive system, which I experience as sort of a large, intermittent problem right in the middle of my body, and so want a short, easy term for, a term that feels immediate but not repulsive) is suddenly jumping around again, overstimulated... sigh. I wish the whole gastro thing would just function, do its damned job, and stay calm. Of course, lately, with the new meds, things do seem better – but how much better?
Rain on the window, but the sun still reflecting off the clouds: pleasant, relaxing. Opening the window for a few minutes (just a few, since it's cold) would be good....
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I know that a lot of other academics, scholars, writers, book people, also worry about not writing enough, or find steady, productive writing difficult to do; and that many of them regard parts of their bookish activities with skepticism or dismay (the tendency to read trivia, or to read unconsciously, etc.).
But I wonder about those who conceal such worry: K–, for instance, in his big Amsterdam apartment, with his desperate egotistical attempts to make himself look important, even when he encounters an old, more successful colleague – what worries, what despair, is all that pompous self-aggrandizement covering up? And does he realize how ridiculous he sounds, endlessly funneling all conversations back into His Achievements? – we all take him less seriously, not more, after hearing him maunder on and on about his own current projects and Their Significance.
(Of course, confronting K– with his old colleagues was my fault, and perhaps something he would have avoided if given a choice – one small way that I've changed the world, especially the world of those composers who were important in Darmstadt in the 1960s, has been in taking them to see each other again. I've reknit several relationships, dragging men in their sixties across one or another European town to talk with their old lovers, their old rivals, their old friends, and probably their old enemies – always with my Californian ingenuousness, my non-European assumption that they will be glad to see their pasts face to face... which I'm sure isn't often true; but I'm also sure that, always, even when the discomfort was palpable, those confrontations were good things – at least better than no confrontation, better than hiding and ignoring and pretending.)
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Waves of unhealthy energy, again, up and down: the overstimulation of the chocolate, the rather druggy passions of a body out of balance, tingling feet and hot neck and panting breath. Hot or cold, energetic or sleepy, all rather fluid, out of balance: but less hopeless in this room than in the other one – although lying down to sleep is not so easy here, at least I feel a bit ill, a bit fuzzy, in a room where the signs are all of thinking, not of wasting time.
But perhaps I'm a bit too ill: I think I need to really lie down, probably on the bed – should have had some form of breakfast I suppose; but now even that seems too difficult....
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Late afternoon: boy, I made myself ill somehow – could it really just be that chocolate on an empty stomach? (Admittedly after a day of an upset gastro system.) Still rather trembly, in bed; haven't eaten, when I get up to find something to eat I'm too shaky to stay there.
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... okay sitting in chair again; the day is fading, sky now dark gray rather than light. Still trembly, but heated up yesterday's rice dish to eat something (there wasn't much left though). Talk about self-pity, and self-reflexivity: how annoying. And how odd – although it does all help somehow that I made myself ill in this room, rather than the other one: although I didn't have the couch to collapse on when I wasn't able to do anything else, it seems that at least I tried – and the day isn't really over yet....
A brief evening return to the casual 'idle-isms', and even the honey theme, I started with... I, and my stomach and palate, were comforted by some 'mandorlata' and 'nocciolata' (almond and hazelnut creamed with honey, bought at an Italian deli in York last week) on wafers. Pleasant, lovely, heartening stuff....***
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