Perhaps the problem is one of time...
Yes, I am influenced by finally (i.e., at a later point in time than anticipated within the implied framework of some unspecified but apparently familiar system of planning) seeing Arrival.
But also wandering through spaces of analysis, self-reflection, mild illness, trying to get some writing done. Late, of course.
Time awareness past: memory, and apparently modified memory. Patches of time remembered as such, which are distinct from those remembered as still, or non-active though still breathing and living, tableaux. Areas of emotional memory that have their own life – most of them not terribly charged, but reflective.
Time projection of the future – which for me also has embedded clusters of anxieties: that which is not completed, that which might happen.
And the relatively broad, seamless stretches of idealised future circumstances, of being in some situation I think I have wanted – Barcelona, a partner, a cafe with friends while traveling – and being aware, as I often have, that the relatively undetailed quality may suggest a problem: that my imagination of my own future future tends to have a bit too much fantasy in it, which accounts for some of the weaknesses and the scattered results in my life. But that is my nature, and I don't hate it: it just suggests a need to pay attention.
The vastness of death, of existence before a certain time, and then after a certain time.
Wanting to see futures: not merely to continue existing, which hasn't seemed terribly interesting for a long time, but to continue living into a time of interesting change, hopefully positive change. Because of the change, more than anything, I think.
(Recall that dream a few years ago: a half-drowned San Francisco – the one where I sit on the open balcony of a Victorian high in a hill above what was Noe Valley, now largely submerged by the sea –a warm, mild sun across the islets of the altered, now quieter city, and we see occasional small boats between them: I am old, and I can hear someone I love, but cannot in the dream see, making a small meal in the kitchen – a dream suffused with time: and the dream-me is happy...)
***
Today I was mildly groggy/cranky – after about a week of mild side effects each evening, after I take the more obnoxious pills – today I met with D. on my required report on research plans – then emails – the computer is slow, I send yet another irritable message about it – an afternoon dotted with current prospective students – most have problems easily resolved...
in the midst of this I played, on the computer, Chris Wood's 'Walk This World with Music'. Eerie, dark, and electric: the dull world comes alive, and time dances with sudden energy –
The music itself tends to do slightly strange things with time: double-stopped chords, lots of open intervals – which always makes the music reference eternity: flashes of organum, pedal points, drones, static harmonies – and beginnings and ends of phrases are sort of curled around themselves in pitch and rhythm to catch and carry you: this is one of those pieces that pulls you into the rhythm, and you dance, alert and fast and defenceless.
***
Some of this strange relation to time is from analysis: as though in the past year I walked, sometimes fell, into deeper caves in myself – times of floating awareness, of contemplation.
And the framework of anxiety that would normally make me anxious in relation to those times: that I am never doing enough – that armature seems to have fallen apart, joints rusted and weakened, the structure of embedded guilt twisted and disintegrating, fallen across the pavement in twisting, collapsing lines.
All this is sharpened by my rather cold reaction to the dull world – political stupidities on both sides of the pond, the sharp focus on what I want and how to get it: assuming governments, laws, economies and institutions will not be my friends, calculating –
Which means that this floating time sense, archaic chunks of unfinished selves, are not distractions: they feel like important realities – in any case more energetic, more alive, than the pathetic realities of a bemused and chaotic world.
***
Do you know Nowotny's Time? A book recently suggested by an analysand – and that led also to the International Society for the Study of Time, which she used to head. Yes, of course time is a mystery, of course we are embedded in, creatures of, time: but even thinking about it begins to illuminate the caves we walk through....
***
I hope I can finish the articles – I like my editors, and don't want to mess up their projects; and I also focus on the Jung-Institut, on writing and research and stuff that the university, the patient group, various people, want me to do.
But yes, there's a slightly disconnected calm behind it – a sense of: yeah, whatever.
***
Because time is so vast: I'd rather watch the world slowly wheel, clouds drift across the sky – the heart beats, and I know that it won't do that forever. My own life and death have seemed especially – well, contingent, or perhaps, incidental – over the past year.
This is not a bad thing... it is not even an uncomfortable thing.
***
Looking across time: a widened view, not quite in focus; but taking it all in....
Comments