in the hall of mirrors

Mid–

Solstice night, nadir of the year. In the middle of the long night: the point where our day goes down to seven hours, then the direction reverses and the day rapidly lengthens...

This winter I seem to be waking in the middle of the night – not a new thing: since my 2009 stroke I generally need to go pee around 3-4 a.m. on any given night. (A small Science Fact for you: when older people need to get up to urinate at night, it is not because of, say, any weakness in their waterworks – it is actually the deterioration of a minor brain function: we are designed such that when we sleep, kidney function slows way down so we can sleep through the night. But it's not a strong evolutionary need, so that particular mini-module out of the various brain functions breaks fairly easily when we get older; for me it happened quite abruptly in the stroke.)

And I'm accustomed to that... but this is a bit different: I am awake a bit longer, happy to read or open a window, walk around the apartment a bit. (Unlike many northern Brits, I don't turn the heating off at night – yes yes don't nag me, I know that's more expensive and less green... but I can't stand the cold.)

And since I read – somewhere, recently – that, in the eighteenth century and before in Europe, it was perfectly normal for a night's sleep to be broken in two – that the northern nights tended to be 3-4 hours, wake, light a candle and read or sit, then back to sleep again until morning – I now feel pleasantly justified.

Of course, as you will no doubt remind me, I should be able to do what I like without reference to history, science, fact. But I am so made that I am always fairly beholden to concepts...

I think that, in this case, my body is somewhat relieved that my mind now has a reasonable justification for this habit; and that I can comfortably enjoy being up for an hour or so, without feeling as though I've ruined my sleep or the next day or anything similar. A pleasant way of making the winter less onerous.

The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories: among all the Xmas stuff, an interesting reminder that a proper Victorian Christmas always had its ghost stories, as important or more important than carols and trees. A wonderful story by Gaskell – so well written that now I want to read more of her.

Deep night, the cold, the dark: and a good ghost story....

Joins

I sleep a lot in the past weeks... not in some sort of avoidance, just a quiet dream of winter...

I keep being aware of the joins, the cracks, between the great blocks of things that can be seen: if when I was younger a great deal of my thinking, and ultimately my research, tended to push past the self-satisfaction of intellectual complexity toward points where the iron vanity of made things seems to disperse into new forms, possibilities and freedoms; or where the world of created (artistic) objects either glowed with the awareness and ethical generosity of a given maker – or didn't –

now it seems as though my current concerns with the mind, with time, with quasi-existential awarenesses, are not so much about a particular goal (how can there be a real goal, with time and life and death in the shapes that they actually take on, the large rises and falls where I, and most of the people I know, are firmly on the downward slopes of later life?), as they are about –

the fragments of understanding: the sense that some of what I am looking for seems to appear between great chunks of apparent awareness, of structured understanding; that it is not the heavy articulations of logic and reason, not knowledge, nor direct attention, that get me anywhere that matters; but the subtle, almost uncertain glimpses out of the corners of the eye –

•••

In the waves of sadness, irritation, and a sense of strength that have come and gone over the past month, I have thought again, often, of Hans-Rainer. A month ago he sent me a link to a news program where he was interviewed – I suppose, although I normally abbreviate friend's names and avoid giving out too much information, there is no harm including the link here?...

And you will see a rather serious, graying man with a sharply handsome face talking about some storks found near Parlow. A good context for him – it is his nature to be talking with such passionate seriousness about birds in open land, about living things and how they are being cared for, brought back... living things and forests spring to life for him, more real and more sharply outlined than the shadowy repetitions of cities; it is a very different world than mine of pages and shimmering screens, of concepts and judgments and memories....

Last night I sent him an e-mail that just said: Ich vermiße dich. And he sent back a few hours later: How are you? I hope yust fine... Ich hoffe, das wir uns im nächsten jahr mal sehen.

•••

Lunch with Michael and Andrew. Shopping with Derek; wandering off by myself to buy expensive but good Italian foods at the new posh restaurant. The sensual world: I keep thinking lately – that Italian tendency to make, and of course to sell, very fine foods, and charge a lot for them, actually seems perfect for me in the growing storm of Christmas planning and shopping. Electronics we choose ourselves, clothes are hard to buy for others, furniture?...

but food, including really good food, is a gift that evaporates in a puff of pleasure: there is no need to own any more stuff, here is something wonderful that you eat, or drink, and then it's gone. The affectionate giving, the delight of unpacking, the experience, the fading memory – what else do you need for the perfect gift? Nothing.

The sensate world....

•••

Some of this comes from reading a lot of Ralf König lately: I ordered four more of his comics, or graphic novels, that I hadn't already got (yes, I have quite a lot of them). A resonance from first discovering, well really devouring, his work twenty years ago in Berlin, the language, the discussions, the guys, gay life... and Hans-Rainer.

Have I ever mentioned the days in Berlin when Rainer would show up unheralded on my doorstep, and we both had various plans but would just keep cancelling them, staying in bed for two or three days because there seemed no good reason to go anywhere else... then sometimes wandering around the city, always with a magnetic connection between us: and endless deferrals until we finally went back to the things we were supposed to be doing....

•••

Many people are shopping in Newcastle. I have work to do, but it is not as onerous as it has been, and not so much about death and loss. Meetings with students, then home sitting on the couch, then back again.

Day, then night: sleeping a lot, but not in any numbed or darkened way, just... floating through the North Sea winter, somehow.

The comics (graphic novels?): reading about men arguing with each other in Köln and other German cities, until my memories of places and experiences and language come alive. As does my memory of Rainer. I change the bed and think, but we won't really end up together, he lives where he lives, in his apartment near his aging mother in a village outside of Berlin, with not much money... and I live where I live, and couldn't afford to just drop everything and go where there is no job. We can visit, of course, but...

Late at night, from next door suddenly music: a graceful, actually beautiful bit of pop music. I put down the König, pick up the iPad, turn on Spotify... but the volume is too low, I keep trying with no success. The beautiful music fades and ends, I can't capture it.

•••

The divisions between past and present, between Berlin and Newcastle (and of course Adelaide, and San Francisco, and Hong Kong, and Los Angeles, and...).

In twenty-four hours, my fifty-seventh birthday: I am older, but healthy. I won't be healthy forever, of course, and I don't particularly want years of quietly fading away, alone. I want to live with Rainer, somewhere: making the bed with him in the next room, either showing him Newcastle or having him show me Berlin. Or – Bologna, or Barcelona.

I sleep a lot; I wake... halfway through a book, I put it down and close my eyes... I am in Newcastle; I get an e-mail from Berlin...

The edges, the corners, between the imagined and the real, between the remembered and the present: there is something I almost understand about time and memory, about love and breathing. There is some connection between remembering holding Rainer as he sleeps, warm beside me, and trying to plan a future that includes him: and also dreams forgotten or remembered, and memories, and comics.

Something that is more about a network of joy, calm desire, and lightly delineated hope, rather than the more focused blocks of grief: the borders and interstices between things I'm paying attention to seem as though, if I could only hold focus and peer through them, they would be seen to hold everything I've done in my life that matters at all....

Recovering

Today's two-hour lecture was probably the last AIDs activity for a while... except of course for catching up with some counseling.

Framed with a great deal of self-clarification – I felt the need to explain to my students that I was tired out by the subject...

And then did parts of the 'AIDS Rage' lecture, with most of the examples. Exhausted, came home.

This evening, putting things away: the apartment clean and quiet, myself calmer.

As I take clothes from the dryer, I think: sometimes revisiting these feelings, these ideas, is like tearing at old wounds...

Which isn't as horrific an image as it might seem to you: for me it feels only sad, rather – alert. As though I am watching myself, and keeping the past in my conscious mind.

I go through some of my psychology study e-books, reordering them, thinking of last night, when I read Ralf König's Bullenklöten – which is in a way a sexy comedy; but last night I was focused on the terribly sad ending, after one character's pursuit of raw sex has collided with his lover's equally frustrating search for romance – when both have been horribly disappointed by their illusions and mistakes, which have almost torn them apart, they find each other again on a northern beach...

– Er ist weg – es ist vorbei. Und safe war's auch nicht.

– Ich weiß.

and finally one puts his arm around the other.

Backwash

So, as the events and discussion around AIDS gradually dwindle...

even after World AIDS Day, there are still backwashes (or perhaps: backdrafts?) from all these memories and feelings.

Monday was the patient group discussion with graduate students in clinical psychology – which is always both easier and deeper than our more usual presentations for medical students: the psychologists pick up what we're feeling instantly, and we can go further – but that has its own demands....

M. and A. were there with me; both of them talked for longer than usual, driven by some wish to talk about things they hadn't said over the previous weeks, perhaps. M. especially, as he had been doing public discussions of HIV tests in schools, the conference, etc.: he told the story of the illnesses and death of his lover in the late 1990s – which I have actually never heard before: he always tells the story of his legal/public battle with the major retailer that fired him for being HIV+, but I'd never heard the part before it, which is where the real depths are.

It was... remarkable. I think he spoke for twenty-five minutes or more: full memory, no flinching, no fragmentation in storytelling – he was right there through the whole thing, and showed it to us with a simple, undemonstrative strength I didn't even know he had.

Then A. spoke about the various problems and ideas that have come up in the three years since her diagnosis – so many changes in direction, so much altered; it is still fresh for her, but she is present to it all. Some of this emotional solidity came from the subtle emotional resonance of twenty young psychologists, from our sense of their ability to stay with the difficult...

And afterwards, questions, discussion; and then, there wasn't much time left. We asked for just one more question, and one of the women said, What would you like to go back and tell your younger self to do differently?

M. and A. gave long answers about taking care of themselves, HIV testing, etc. My answer was crystal clear in my head – I wasn't quite sure it would make sense; I'd mentioned that I worked across the street, as a university professor, that I'd lived on four continents; but –

when they finally turned to me, I said: I wish I’d known it was more important to be with someone than to finish the dissertation.

Which was a simple, slightly deadly thing to say... there was nothing to say after that, either; just silence for a minute or two.

And we ended the session, thanking everyone for their time....