Well... not quite the anniversary.
It was thirteen years since this blog was begun... as of yesterday.
A day late, that's appropriate for a thirteenth anniversary, yes?
•••
No posts since the new year; which doesn't mean I'm giving up on this. I do like the blog, I like writing it....
I want to transfer it to a better website, get somebody to help redesign, something that looks better and is more flexible. A multi-page website – psychoanalyst, academic, blog. Do I make all those pages visible to each other? I'm not quite sure.
•••
Since January I have finished the thesis for the Jung-Institut, which is an accomplishment somewhere between 'amazing' and 'finally,' and which is also a torso of what it should be. An attempt to draw up all the heaviest, most unbearable aspects of thirty-five years of HIV/AIDS: infection, fear, anger, the rotting body... death of course.
A draft of about 160 pages was taken down to 80 at the orders of my supervisor – they're going through a period of wanting to simplify the academic side of the training....
I'm never terribly impressed with such policies – my own university sets a maximum number of pages, which I think is merely tacky, but even an expansive Wagnerian PhD student had to comply. It's okay, he's kept all that he wrote and will continue to publish, I hope.
And, of course, compare the situation of my dear John, who basically wrote about four theses... at least he got not one but two degrees for that.
As for my own thesis, it currently feels a bit like I've ticked a box: as I get into the idea, as I look at the draft and see what needs to be rewritten and what is missing, I know that this will be a book....
which is good, because (pay attention, children, I need to boast while pretending to be humble) I have been commissioned for one, and very probably will manage to get a second through the same channel. With a reeeeally goooood publisher. And, because circumstances are different, because much is written, and most of all because I am now very different, this time I think these books will happen – one this year, the other within a year or two.
Given the neurotic exasperation of arguing with my supervisor, and my rather sad anxiety that I was once again proving my inability to finish large things, it was a great emotional rescue to get the book commission in the midst of that conflict.
I'd already written a note to myself, on the new whiteboard by my desk:
"write past the thesis – aim for the book(s)"....
•••
It has been a cold spring, with continued miserable politics.
But I have been flying along my own path – relatively calm since getting over the thesis, and even that was a fairly attenuated anxiety.... bored and annoyed by the world, and by the irritability and anxiety of so many in it, I've been floating in a world of word, psyche, screen....
At some levels I am calmer, at others more irritated by others, especially when they are themselves fractured, unhappy, anxious.
(But I don't mean my own analysands – I am patient with them, I think. It is actually a great existential relief to firmly know that place in myself where I can step back from my own feelings, and ask instead: what is this? There is a calmness there which is of course professional in nature, but which has its own quality, like a still pool in a Zen story. Even amidst my irritation with so many others, a couple of days ago, while dressing, I suddenly paused and asked: what is that irritation? Why does everyone seem so anxious, so self-lacerating – of course there are the cultural level, and the political level – but what in this anger is being created by me?....)
•••
The past couple of days have been beautifully warm. It won't continue of course, but this has been the kind of weather I love – why is it not like this for, say, four months a year? Then happiness would reign.
•••
The last couple of weeks of writing the thesis, I was eating more, and not caring – there was too much to focus on. And so I am now heavier, and irritated, even publicly embarrassed, about that, though of course no one else notices. More importantly, I do not feel well – the heaviness, poor digestion and aching, and the weakness – I haven't been going for walks; and I do, too frequently, start to shake, start to become really weak, usually for several hours.
I still assume this is my doing – an extreme lack of exercise; though this is happening too often. It could actually be something external – though really this is probably just an exceptionally ridiculous version of the ways people let themselves fall apart as they get older, which is of course a good way of dying before time.
I'll get out more, I promise – I promise myself.
As so often: there are really no excuses.
But then, of course, in my life, there have been so many points where there were really no excuses.
•••
Thirteen years.
A box of books in the mail.
Sunshine, warmth, birds.
Writing in a café; the charmingly handsome man behind the counter.
And spring: a real spring....
I've missed or lapsed reading your blog.... Do keep going, I get what you mean the world, this city and everyone I know wreaks of anxiety, from my eyes at least.
Posted by: Paul L.Mitchell | May 15, 2019 at 10:30 PM
Do continue — though I’m not the one to ask it …
Posted by: Charles | May 16, 2019 at 06:24 AM