in the hall of mirrors

BERLIN

Because Berlin is, of course, BIG.

And this trip, that impression is very strong. Big streets, big spaces between them – all as they were when I was a student here in 1994-5, and on one or two visits since then. As I tell my students when they plan to come here on an exchange program, so that they're ready for that overwhelming experience.

This is of course like New York, London... but because the actual space covered by Berlin is so much larger (there is more park and open land in Berlin, by design, than in other metropolises), and because although there are powerful, well-designed subway and surface trains that go all over the place, but... there are substantial distances between stops. Even the distances between building entrances: most of the world's cities would have three, or five or more, doorways between any two Berlin doorways.

Interesting that this trip, for the first time in all those experiences, it doesn't seem exhausting or depressing that it's so. I still love places such as San Francisco, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, where you can fit an interesting life between a few hands-widths. But perhaps since I already knew it was like this, I'm enjoying it more this time than I usually do.

And of course, in its BIG, stony, bearish way, Berlin seems remarkably energetic and tidy these days, more than in the past. The streets, the cars, the buildings... The market in Nollendorfplatz is fun, I buy some spices and teas (I'm curious about the honey jars, but skeptical about taking glass jars in a suitcase – I've been lucky in the past but won't risk it). A nearby Antiquariat has three out of four (well you can't have everything) classic volumes by Meier, the rather peculiar man who had been Jung's secretary, who wrote in such a strange, scatter-shot fashion.

And everyone seems so cheerful – Dörte, energetic and full of stories and plans in her big dress and scarf; Herbert, gentle and handsome as always, enjoying a beautiful Japanese meal with me (we enjoyed it much more in fact than the waiter, who seemed to be having a difficult time with our orders). Chuck, chatting with me all too briefly upstairs in a gay hotel – recently redecorated by the owners (those ridiculous plush-silver chairs – he says not only do they look silly, but you can't sit on them because you slide off). Joseph, who always seems to be getting away from his lover to socialize with other people, still going strong.

At the conference, I gave my talk about wisdom and Schnebel, and it went well – in fact I think it was welcome, in a welter of rather technical papers where people proved that various of his compositions had structures (who would have thought it?). The Universität der Künste, which was the Hochschule der Künste when I was last here, seems to be doing well too – and it is interesting to notice (did I realize it in the 90s?) that some of the architecture is Nazi-era. But, like everything else, it is BIG.

What other experiences?... oh, seeing Walter too briefly; and of course time spent with Schnebel and his wife Iris. She seems so fragile now, a bit lost – I had a tendency to make sure I was near her on staircases, and when it was cold outside. He, on the other hand, seems healthier than ever at eighty... I hope I'm doing that well at seventy, frankly.

And the disaster at the start of this trip – when I inadvertently shaved my mustache off – well, you know the plastic doohickey that keeps the razor a certain distance from your face? It had fallen off in my bag, and I didn't notice in time. Ran that thing right across my face and said, hmm, that's a lot of hair that's come off, that's a bit... AAAGH. Two hours before my big speech....

But hey, it's Berlin. I can pass it off as – a facial-hair experiment. You know, a sort of social commentary on the need of non-intellectuals to have some sort of consistent look?....

nah, I wouldn't buy it either.

Bruchstücke

I am slightly less disoriented/anxious than I have been for three weeks. Slightly, I say; at least enough to have some sense of distance from it all; and a bigger sense of time, as though I can perhaps imagine different ways that the fear and confusion of the past days can fit into larger parts of my life. And perhaps can step out of them.

Finished the Dresher article. It's well 'made', and quite dramatic, if I say so myself – and I do – though often, as is admittedly true with much of my writing over the past decade, it's not as technically deep as it should be. But hey it reads well.

Pushing myself into writing the Schnebel presentation for next week, an 80th birthday symposium in Berlin. And listening to his music makes me conscious of, oh, what shall I call it? – aspects of strong-minded creativity, of cultural work, of meaningful communication. Aspects I identified with when I was younger, but gradually lost... well, really, lost the belief that I, myself, could actually engage them. Because I'm flaky, a bit lazy, too easily depressed, too scattered. Too... sleepy. A cultural/intellectual also-ran.

But even listening to much of the work he has done reminds me of the admirable possibility of truly engaging with people and thought and memory... and I find that deeply impressive. Schnebel leaves me in awe of someone who could make such a strong intellectual commitment to the world and all its symbols and meanings – and who could help maintain such frequent, deep, changing contact with a huge range of things that matter.

As though he never has the urge to just give up and coast... someone who is always, energetically, awake to things that are important: and not merely through some dogmatic theoretical program – he's not one of those who picks one idea and hammers away at it forever, creating safe territory to stand on so that he can sell himself as yet another product. He really wants to know what is next, for him, for us, for the universe – what there is for us to do....

In my Berlin speech, I'm trying to talk about wisdom. It's hard, especially because there are no modern theoretical/philosophical/psychological contexts where the word or idea of wisdom is really a comfortable or dependable one.

But I owe it to him....

Deliberate crises

Lately there is a strange sense of a kind of semi-ordered chaos: as I am by turns angry and disoriented, or surprisingly pleased, or overwhelmed, or insulting, or reasonable, it seems as though I have been pushed (or: as though I have pushed myself?) into this psychological place.

The physical/real-world explanations are obvious: months of anxious preparation and attempted rigid control related to the medications I'll start on November 5, exacerbated by new, unexpected appointments and ultimatums delivered by the hospital and my acupuncturist over the past two weeks; plus the start of the school year, with the usual huge increase in questions, responsibilities, spreadsheets, meetings, and swarms of alternately sensible and nonsensical phone calls and e-mails. (And why am I waking/sleeping erratically, missing meals and not caring – even missing my pills?... no no I promise not much, just, well, twice in the last week. Which is a lot for me.)

After a quiet summer, with some too-rational part of me having pathetically planned to maintain total control over the medical situation, it all feels like an onslaught of demands: and the fact that I can handle many of its individual parts makes everything worse, because I cannot simply collapse and say, I can't deal with anything at all.

And then there are the more distant worries – that the trip to Berlin in two weeks will be chaotic and exhausting, that the school year will be difficult to get through, that winter will be uncommonly depressing... and, behind all these smaller things, like those low noises in the film Inception that signal the multileveled darkness of dream time, the sight over Skype, most weekends, of my mother in the hospital, with my sister talking to her kindly, taking such loving care of her: but Mom looks very, in fact painfully, near the end of her long disintegration... so, yes, you can figure it all out yourself: funeral, sorrow, loss, guilt, and that sense of disorientation and collapse that can't be sidestepped, no matter how long one has prepared for it.

There is one distant, nearly abstract idea that suggests that this is not all hopeless – that, in fact, I have deliberately driven myself (I have deliberately been driven?) into this space of what feels like crisis, chaos, disaster. (Rather than, for instance, depression: because becoming increasingly unable to feel is of course a strategy against stress and fear.)

It's connected to something reasonable but surprising that came up in a lecture at the Jung-Institut this summer, when a skilled analyst listed the personal traits that were required in a patient for (Jungian or Freudian, or Adlerian or Gestalt for that matter) analysis to be a good treatment choice.

One of them was a high tolerance level for anxiety: in other words, analysis is not at all like simple therapy – it's not to make you feel better, not in the short term anyway. It is designed to push you into the things you find most difficult to handle, into the parts of your mind that are the most primitive, or shallow, or confused, or even (slightly) damaged, so that you can learn to deal with them rather than avoid them.

Which might mean that my lack of control lately is a good thing... not much fun, admittedly; but a step forward, rather than one back.