Küsnacht/Zürich: classes, seminars, meetings. Although everything is very organized and conscious, especially the way I do it (iPad at the ready, taking many notes and tracking various things to do), we sometimes mention to each other that there is something strangely aware and resonant about things – we may dream more, we all get into various moods, and if the training is hardly a via regia to the unconscious (comparatively speaking), one nevertheless senses signposts and, perhaps, small, handheld GPS monitors giving conflicting directions to triangulate across various inner states....
But, while I remember most of the week, I'm not sure I remember the important parts, so I won't try. A pleasant first interview, the first of six to study at the Jung-Institut; he was very kind and pleasant – but he did say that the photograph, and the e-mail I sent to schedule our appointment, both seemed rather cold and formal.
I can't do much about the photo (taken in the subway station in Newcastle, in a booth whose lights bleached out my face while a sign on the wall commanded me not to smile); the e-mail... well, there are several aspects colliding here: I do generally get fairly tired of business e-mails; and probably my students get abrupt communications from me because e-mail just doesn't seem to be the place to discuss things (in fact with most students it's a better place to cut discussion short, and tell them to come see me in person).
And perhaps, most of all, I don't want to pretend to be friends when the analysts are trying to decide whether to accept me – better to be a bit cool and give them the freedom to make a decision. Yes? No? Or am I projecting some kind of anxiety... ah well. Anyway he said he enjoyed meeting me, more than he expected to from the photo and e-mail.
Some of the more entertaining times this week were spent running around with Antonio, who has reached the stage of taking his first two qualifying exams. Roberto was driving – in an excessively Italian way at some points; I suggested, as we made a U-turn in the town above the lake, that the Swiss police might not be amused. He laughed and agreed, and kept on driving like that. We had a sprawling, chaotic late-night dinner-and-cigarettes-and-grappa competition at a restaurant that was known for being founded by Italian leftists – everyone (including the waiter) kept telling me very proudly about its history, which I couldn't quite follow to be honest. All I'm sure of is that a lot of famous Marxists have had coffee there.
At one point conversations were getting complicated, as I could really only speak with Antonio in English, and a mustached older historian in German, and a translator in French mixed with bits of ungrammatical Italian (I don't even remember Roberto's favorite language choice) – they were really happiest chatting at top speed in Italian among themselves, I think. When the waiter offered us Fernet Branca, at which everyone expressed disgust, I tried to explain the very strange and hilariously campy novel I was reading last month – Cooking with Fernet Branca – they may have thought I was a bit nuts, but in a far-left bar full of Italians that is not a social handicap. (If I haven't buttonholed you and tried to explain this novel, I can tell you that the narrator is an Englishman living in Tuscany who specializes in 'experimental' cuisine – garlic ice cream, oysters in chocolate, and other bizarre recipes – and thinks no one knows he's gay, when he is obviously the one who put the 'camp' into the Boy Scouts.)
Today I met Antonio and Cristina, who had come up from Milan by train for the weekend; and we met an old flame of Antonio's, a blonde German woman who was enormous fun. She had photos of all of them from twenty-five years ago – she was drop-dead gorgeous at the time; she had done some modeling and frankly looked like the exquisite star of an extremely chic European film that has a lot of people looking depressed in cafés. But now she's basically a hoot; when Antonio decided we should go down to the river and swim, we both said he could swim, we would act as parents and sit in the riverside café and drink beer. And make disapproving and parental comments. We had a great deal of fun, and talked about everything under the sun for a couple of hours as hunky Swiss guys (yes, I'm sure there were girls too) went up and down in swim trunks and the current season's tattoos....
But you must think I'm doing no work at all. Really: I am working hard. I am....
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