The school year wound up remarkably firmly, last Friday... which was welcome. Yes, well, a few more things came up – a plagiarism case (that turned out not to be one, which made life easy), a handful of students rejected from the year abroad (since they're trying for conservatories there are more rejections than most departments get, but I Know People at institutions who might be arm-wrestled into taking late applications, and so fire off a slew of emails).
Exams over the next two days: Dreams and Case Exam, Psychiatry, Individuation. Notes, reports, my own analysands – remembering sessions and dreams from months ago that had faded from memory; and because I know he'll ask about my own analysis, going back to my own dreams – ending with the fuzzily vast topic of individuation: which has so many specific parameters, but which can't entirely be defined....
And I am aware of a light backwash of sadness over the topic, that returns from my own analytical experiences over the past six months. Which is only a sort of flash of a thing, embedded in an elemental understanding that I am not quite what I was: my internal world is clearer, vaster, calmer –
but, as I've noted in several blog posts, something in me – a relatively childish part I suppose – also wanted life to actually, magically, be different: to live with someone, in a different climate, but somehow with friends – to have a livelier, healthier life –
instead of course I'm weaker, less healthy; but also calmer. More accepting – well, mostly.
Yes, a light backwash of sadness....
•••
I packed, planned, gathered study materials so that I could stare at things up to the last minute for each exam. This morning, the taxi – I am chatty, the driver a bit less so, but he doesn't seem annoyed. Airport, planes, lines, papers...
Unexpectedly I run into Mohammed, one of the good-looking lads who hang around Drew and Kev, before my flight. He's from Saudi, and will come back to do a degree in the fall; we talk about best plans, where they might go. He walks me to the stairs when my flight is called; the first part of the journey, Newcastle to Amsterdam.
Then more airport shops, airport food....
Striding along at Schiphol, at one point I am suddenly so weak I have to move to the side and sit down; then... I keep going. Energy remains erratic, I shake slightly from time to time, wonder if people think I'm drunk perhaps. I can travel, but you can see why I am disinclined to go on long trips these days – I haven't gotten so weak that I have gotten into real trouble, yet, but of course that could happen, in transit.
Oh yes okay, didn't think of that, it could happen at home, too. But then that could happen to anyone.
•••
Individuation... a larger awareness... time and change, and that which doesn't change....
•••
Zürich is really hot – and I don't mean jazz clubs and dance parlours. 91 degrees today (= 33 C.), only a bit less through Monday... the Swiss don't seem fazed, but visitors do.
Which may be explained in a moment –
arrive, pick up package with apartment key, go and buy train pass and tickets; tell an irritable young English woman how to get to Bern, which causes her to dash off toward a ticket kiosk rather than continue complaining into her phone, which I regard as a win; take a train to Zürich Hauptbahnhof, then Stadelhofen, the tram up to good ol' Asylstraße...
The building remains slightly oddly yellow (who picked that paint? and why is only half the building that color?). I am moving steadily, slowly – it is truly hot. A sense that that is actually kind of healthy for me, if rather sweaty....
I go buy some food, come back to the apartment – but rather than unpacking and organising, turn around and go to the familiar Italian restaurant up the street.
•••
The owner and the waitress are glad to see me: we've gotten in the habit of speaking as friends over the past three or four years, though they see me only a few evenings in a year. Over the past two years they have seen me become a bit shakier, a bit more uncertain – I tell him I won't have wine, just iced tea, and he nods, odd as that may seem in an Italian context.
She is in a lively, expansive mood, as so often – she tells me about her upcoming vacation (Italy, somewhere else, then Slovakia – why would you go in that order? – but okay), and says that the weather has been like this for A Month.
No wonder the Swiss are acting as though they're used to the heat... and she agrees that, yes, more people are getting interested in air conditioning, despite the Swiss habit of regarding it as Unhealthy.
The owner has suggestions, but I finally go for the vitello tonnato – I don't have it often, it is a luxury. Theirs is not as delicate as some I've seen – it's really pretty robust: a sense that someone said, What I really want right now is vitello tonnato, so I'm gonna make it – everybody get out of my way....
•••
When you see people only occasionally, have no real reason to make contact, don't know their full names – why is it still so touching to meet them? Sometimes more than dear friends you know well....
If there were people you never saw again, people who vanished, and they were good friends, you might be sad – but you would fairly clearly know who they were. You would have clear memories, a sense of names, what they were like – what you were like together, what it was like to talk to them, or argue, or smile at them.
But when you meet kind, warm people in rapid, casual encounters – ones whom you particularly like – there is a sadness about knowing that this will be a connection that vanishes. And somehow, now, it seems sadder than the end of connections with real friends – they will have memories, but this is just an impression, a smiling face, someone who is instantly happy to see you.
•••
Tiramisu (of course).
No coffee, thank you, and I can't really handle a liqueur.
Take care... I'll see you again this week... thank you so much....