in the hall of mirrors

Anniversary

Well: a surprise – ten years today since I started this blog.

Cue opening vamp for 'I'm Still Here.'

(MJ, you'll remember how much needs to be put into that song to carry it off...)

•••

Time, change.

Current health update: last week was terrible, this week wasn't bad. I took advantage of seeing the senior HIV/HCV specialist on Thursday to ask him about long-term expectations, and whether I could choose him as my doctor when my current doctor retires late this year...

He said some things I knew, and some that were more unexpected: the HCV will probably be cured, we'll know for sure in early September; after the cure liver cancer remains a possibility, and cirrhosis doesn't simply go away –but the probability decreases steeply, and with patients who don't drink much (= me) a lot of the cirrhosis should clear up.

And yes, he's happy to be my doctor (he said 'I'd be honoured', which was kind); and since, of all the doctors at the very skilled Newcastle clinics, he is the best with general health and behaviour patterns (rather than focusing on treatment regimens), that sounds like a good idea to me– especially as it seems as though I may have somewhat more toxic medications for some time to come; I need someone who is good at the subtle balancing acts of the body's processes.

•••

Time and change: even moving, finally though fitfully, from winter to spring brings everything to life –

but in a way that somehow emphasises its contingent, changing nature, and the sense that so many springs and summers are in the past.

There is some cross-focus among the papers I should be writing, which tangle with archetypes, with life and death and politics; and continuing to read Aion for the online Jung-Institut seminars, with its chaotic drift through images of transformation, eternity and existential focus; and reading the dark 'Dis' chapter of Kalsched's new book, which is both very striking and a battle to get through (why do I keep falling asleep?); and reading, tangentially though perhaps all too appositely, Geoff Ryman's WAS (one of the two great AIDS fantasies, along with Michael Bishop's Unicorn Mountain – but I've read the Bishop, while I've always struggled with the bitterness in the Ryman – but am fighting my way through it now)...

all these things, with sun and light and winter and spring, keep me watching life as though partly inside it, and partly outside.

•••

A dream of two people, one the lead singer from Lord Huron (I first heard their ecstatic but strange 'The Man who Lives Forever' a few weeks ago; a gauntlet thrown down by the puer, by the Icarus of the young man who wants to transform the world, and be young forever – one that ends up holding its energy in the air by fusing IV and V, then, in the studio version, pushing as many circling, ecstatic lines toward upper registers as it can...) and a woman, more symbolic and less real, who marries me in a festive ceremony: and a relaxed eroticism between the three of us – but I sleep with the singer, who in the dream is utterly embodied and male, without anxiety about the world: he sleeps next to me, arms flung back, full of the intense abandon of the deeply physical –

it reminds me, as I have repeatedly been reminded over the past few months, of the eighth Duino Elegy – not the shattering first one, which always fascinated me when I was younger: but the eighth, where he speaks of

... the Open, which is so

deep in animals’ faces. Free from death.

We, only, can see death; the free animal

has its decline in back of it, forever,

and God in front, and when it moves, it moves

already in eternity, like a fountain.

In the dream, that is what the singer is: part of a living world as are the animals, moving endlessly in eternity, like a fountain.

•••

In WAS and in the Kalsched, there is a focus on children who lose track of their childhoods – and who, through anxiety or horror, lose too much of their contact with the natural world, too early.

Stoppard's radio play 'Where Are They Now?' is about a boy in an English public school, one who is miserable, pushed around, angry – but Stoppard does something amazing on the last page, where we suddenly see the boy playing football, running toward the goal, ecstatically happy with the summer air, the energy, the cheers of his teammates –

But of course you can see the loss: children who lose track of their own humanity, or perhaps their own animal joy in the world, and spend their adult lives trying to get it back: though after so many years it has receded like a distant tide, no longer bolstered by the energy of the younger body, and it takes long patience and transformation to get near it again.

•••

An odd moment today: Michael asked how my week had gone – I said I was feeling much better; and also that, aside from writing articles, everything else was going smoothly, up to date –

it may not sound like much; but the fact that I can experience my own time, my life, as something distinct from whether I am getting work done, as opposed to having the lack of productivity devalue my existence (as it has for much of my life) – this is both strange and deeply relaxing.

•••

My analysands also seem to be full of life, of spring – even those who are struggling or frustrated are writing stories, rethinking their lives; there is a sense of new growth, of buds and rapid movement forward, emerging in all of them.

•••

Makis and Nik are joking in a café, no apparent boundaries to their energy and happiness; people wander the streets on a sunny day, among the stalls of the market in the middle of town. Things are full of life... I seem to perceive it as a gestalt, as a remarkably dense world of experience (somewhat like my students when they are enjoying themselves performing in the local bars on weekends); I don't feel quite as though I am in the midst of that life, that liveliness, but it also doesn't seem that I can't have some contact with it, in some ways.

But there is still a sense of time, and distance, even as life goes on in front of me: as though I understand more deeply than I ever had that I could have spent more of my life out in the world, but that, as always, past years cannot, unfortunately, be retrieved. Which is, ultimately, not so bad: the possibility, the imagined alternate reality, can partly stand in for the missing reality: it is not such a disappointment.

•••

A certain warmth, a certain light, to things in these past few days of spring.

Talking to analysands, bright sunlight crossing the room, energy growing during the session.

A dream where I sleep next to a man who is un-self-conscous, creative and vividly alive.

All of it still framed in past-ness, in possibilities that I no longer believe can quite be reached by me: but the energy appears in dreams, in conversations, in the feel of warmth on the skin....

Spring

And, distinctly strangely, after only three days, feeling much better...

even, perhaps, better than most of the past seven months, since the first change in medications.

(Honestly a bit bewildered by this... no sense of weakness at any point...)

Yes of course, it is perhaps merely shifting biochemistry and mood... probably helped by cutting one of the toxic evening pills (only one out of about ten, but who knows perhaps that was good enough for the moment). In any case, my energy didn't give that sickening drop to zero, or lower – no shaking –

so, an ultrasound and re-examination on Thursday, to make sure anaemia and other problems aren't getting worse.

But as for today, it was  a beautifully sunny day; rested a bit in the middle of the day but didn't need to sleep –  and when I did go into town, a sunny, almost warm day; sitting in a café with Makis and Nick (both wearing sunglasses!), telling jokes and stories; then wandering through town.

Sunshine. People. Laughter. An easy conversation in French with the owner of the café, sunny roof tables at a trendy pub, one of those Scandinavian stores with witty, brightly coloured kitchenwares and drawing supplies...

Simple: but a truly relaxed sense of time, an anxiety-free casual joy in walking along with Makis – a reminder of the everydayness of enjoying the fragments of life.

I'm actually not utterly incompetent at enjoying myself: I just have to be reconnected, reawakened from time to time.

Sunshine, people, a pleasant street life, someone to chat with: the things I've been remembering from the past, or projecting onto a future in a different city – a future that sometimes seems fearfully distant –

Haven't I said, occasionally, to students and to patients – just walk out the door, it's not locked?...

Haze

Two-thirds of the way through a twelve-week HCV treatment.

Ordered in Chinese food, then the next day had a virus, fever, etc.... somebody sneezed, I suppose.

Fairly wiped out for two days;

in analysis (over the internet), an interesting focus – at one point my analyst points out that I speak of myself as a third party, abstractly, from a distance, especially at the beginnings of sessions.

Two emails – one of the other Jung-Institut students has died, sadly, of breast cancer – she had many people who cared about her a great deal, there will be a ceremony at her house in California, and probably an emotionally generous one.

My brother emails me that he met a guy who knew me in high school – he lives in a different state from where we grew up, so this is unexpected – and I get a strong compliment, second-hand as it were, from ages past.

I struggle slightly to answer both emails – they are dark and light; but I am having a bit of trouble engaging with them, and have to practically construct the appropriate answers to each; as though writing an exercise in good communications for a manual.

I sleep for an hour; then to the hospital –

As I sit at the bus stop two blocks from home, I think: I really should have taken a taxi.

It is a sunny day, I don't even need the light jacket; that spring well-being does touch me, lightly.

The HCV nurse responds to my look, skin colour, lack of energy – she suddenly wants a lot more tests, has me do a chest x-ray.

The hospital is busy, efficient, today – I do feel as though I can barely respond to questions, but try to fit into the framework, and everyone knows what to do with someone who is a bit out of it.

Tests, the X-ray, very efficient. The television in the waiting room has a clip on the nasty little sociopath who is shredding the NHS – in talking to the nurses I start to say something that might be inappropriate, then scale it back to: it would be nice to push him off a cliff.

Still a bit of a risky thing to say. (I note that, in my imagination for several days, I have generated a fantasy that many of the more rotten politicians all over the world suddenly have heart attacks, strokes, accidents – would it be better if they were all at the same minute, or would that bring in conspiracy theorists? In any case you would want something where no detectives could develop any suspicions of any living people...)

They agree, and say there would be a long line to push him off.

Blood test. I go into the waiting room and sit down. An elderly lady, fragile, follows a few minutes later and takes a ticket – I think, damn, I was supposed to take one of those, go up and get one. She says, shall we trade? I refuse of course, smile, encourage her to go ahead. She asks where I'm from – oh she'll be in America this summer, for a wedding – I ask where; she has to figure it out, finally says, Colorado. I say oh that will be beautiful, you'll like it.

She has a large bruise on her forehead, and a walking stick; she is perhaps in her seventies.

She says she and her husband are going for a cruise in two weeks – I ask where, it is the Mediterranean – that sounds wonderful, wear a hat. We are pleasant, engaged, generous to each other – but there is a moment when she touches her forehead and looks anxious:

and I think, I really, really want her to make it to that cruise, to that wedding.

Back in the HCV clinic, a nurse calls one of (my favourites of) the HIV/HCV doctors, whom I haven't seen in a while – the particularly kind, warm-hearted one. He has two medical students with him, and introduces them, but I am finding it hard to engage.

I say, this probably isn't anything, I caught a cold from a food delivery –

he turns to them and, laughing, says, this is Paul, he works with our patient group (more compliments), we know him quite well, but he always makes it sound as though there's nothing the matter with him –

do I, I think to myself? That doesn't sound right. I whinge endlessly, to my ears.

So: treatment for thrush – I say, you're kidding, that sounds so eighties! (and history opens behind me like a vast door).

Concern about the anaemia; drop one of the three pills in the evening, that will help. (And it's not the major HCV medication so won't matter.)

Back in six days for another look.

•••

So: my analyst, the doctor, see me as a bit detached from, unsympathetic to, myself...

Perhaps this is what they mean: not only this haze of illness, but a sense that increasingly, for months, I look at my life – and illness, death, people I've known, political chaos, the vast sweep of changing history – as though I am looking at a small glass globe:

the earth, floating in a bubble....