The past few months: there is a lot to say, and not much to say...
I continue feeling weakened, sleepy, with problems centred on the new medications. I resolve them more successfully on some days, with various ancillary medicines, and not at all successfully on others.
There was a point in early January when I awoke, calm and happy, as though some of the old, incoherently dark stuff that was coming up in analysis between September and December was simply over: a situation that is hard to describe or explain, though I have pages of notes among my dreams. Some of the space and lightness has remained.
Reconnecting to teaching, students, colleagues.
And now in Zürich for twelve days – not going to many events (hmm, I probably shouldn't have paid tuition this semester), but having some excellent supervision sessions.
I am at times anxious and moody, defensive or a bit barbed with other students, especially around health; but that feels rather shallow, as though things have truly shifted.
•••
Coming home from supervision with Kast in St. Gallen the other night – walking through the cold, calm evening of a Tuesday in Zürich, with not many people about. I was walking through the upper part of town looking for a restaurant, to have some dinner.
And, as occasionally it has, a generalised weakness/dizziness hits me – the body just stops having the energy to move...
As I am next to the church above the Helmhaus, it is dark for some distance around, but there is a bench in front of the church. I sit for twenty minutes or so in the cold, shaking – not with cold but with fatigue – looking down to the Limmat where there are lights – trying to figure out how to get home – feeling like Ashenbach: no, not with the barber, or the strawberries, but when he just can't move any further –
As my energy doesn't improve I finally stand and move, steadily if shakily, across the dark plaza and down the stairs; a few people glance at me curiously. It is wonderful that the tram stop is just across the street, and I reach it, as though trekking across a wide desert, in a few minutes – few cars, few people.
When I get off the tram the woman next to me is pleasant, then as I rise slightly alarmed – she probably thinks I'm drunk. As there's nothing I can do about that, I lurch off the tram and get to my building –
as I go up the stairs I have that sense that occasionally comes to me, of generations of Sicilian and Greek ancestors: it has never been clear what their lives were like, but I assume there was a lot of steady outdoor work. Because I never faint, and can always push a bit further: there's stone in the blood.
And drop my coat by the sofa, take off my shoes, and lay shaking on the bed....
After a couple of hours I get up and eat some of whatever's in the house. Put the coat away, try to prepare papers and such for the next morning.
***
A., a doctor who is also a student here, tells me I'm exaggeratedly anxious about my health these days. Perhaps; at least partially.
Analysis over a computer connection yesterday – my analyst, who has multiple sclerosis, wants to discuss both the quasi-hysteria of anxiety about one's health, and also the real difficulties of being ill: both sides, the projected and the concrete. I feel too tired to work through it during our session (which is plagued by bad reception on his end – we will have to change our procedures), but afterwards it resonates with me. It is always both overly theatrical, and bluntly real, with me... there is no centre point.
***
Last night, in the middle of the night, I read in Magid's Nothing is Hidden a discussion of a Zen parable about the nature of the world: we are, at the same time, in both a world of suffering and a world of light. It is exactly the same world: no difference – the only differences are what we project onto it.
As is perhaps an appropriate reaction, my eyes teared up, then I was calm, and fell into a deeper sleep...