A complicated time.
The Book, the one I had all those bizarre death dreams about, arrived in my office TODAY. And yet I breathe.
Too much to do in the past weeks, some of it distinctly though not disastrously late...
Merrie and I performed duets on my students' musicals night. We made blunders but it was exciting, and the kids were... well, some of them were really fantastic. MJ would have been kind to us, but really pleased with them.
Then there was all that end-of-semester marking – so many students doing such intelligent work – a surprising number, perhaps three or four in each large class, are actually nearly publishable. And the ones that aren't quite that good are nevertheless smart, dedicated, imaginative, passionate in their investment...
And that applies not only to the enthusiastic class on musicals, but also to the large but remarkably successful class on philosophy and cultural theory.
But I did manage to make myself mildly ill while stressing over a computer disaster related to marking; and also over those duets – I really should be forced to memorise things weeks before they happen... very intense at some level of my memory and imagination, the one that remembers some of the concert and stage disasters from my intermittent but frequently undependable performing careers.
Ah, I shouldn't say that, it's like hacking away at myself...
And today, the final discussion of marks; I was left surprisingly angry and anxious over one probable error by another part of the university... everyone is trusting in university systems to repair a problem; but, in a department that reads so much Adorno and Foucault, can we really be unaware of the fact that large systems tend to protect themselves, even when they're wrong?... ah well.
I am definitely feeling the pain of one student who was affected by it – that awful existential moment when all your plans and hopes seem fall in ruins... I know it all too well.
We should not have marking at all: it should be like Black Mountain College was, once upon a time.
Tonight will be a short night, then several errands and running around, plane to Zürich, train to Locarno for a weekend in a beautiful part of Italian Switzerland... actually that adjective is kind of redundant, I can't think of any unattractive parts of Italian Switzerland.
My own memories, my own feelings, my own body – my own perpetual illness: how do I experience all of this, when summer beckons, when there is much to do?...
There have been points in the past two weeks when I've thought: but I am not calm, reasonable, sane! I am upset, I am thrown off base, my body is generating symptoms of anxiety and anger – is it allowed that I have years of analysis, that I am actually an analyst for others, and still be like this?
But all right: there is indeed a centre, one I don't always connect with, but I know it is there.
And nobody ever said that when you understood your own complexes and neuroses, you'd wake up the next day to sunshine and happiness...
So: keep
going.
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