in the hall of mirrors

Pillar to post

Irritable today... after spending too much money on things I don't really want, while feeling pushed from one thing to another – £750 for the privilege of staying in the UK, £440 for new glasses with frames I don't quite like. Phone calls to government agencies and chain stores, lots of voicemail and people apologizing but-it's-out-of-their-hands. Feeling at the effect of systems, administrations, corporations, institutions: a university that treats me offhandedly, saving money on me when it can; the governments that don't really want me in one country or another....

Big, sloppy, greedy, belching organizations.

At what point in one's career is there enough money, or respect or control of situations, that this isn't a constant aspect of contact with any organization?

Or perhaps it is a cluster of unsettled, frustrating dreams I don't even – quite – remember.

Last night was a pretty good conversation with David R., who always wants to talk about his Zen readings these days. These conversations are often several steps above any others available to me – though they are often a bit too abstract; it would be good if we could manage to be less conceptual about awareness, and about what really matters, and somehow state it in more concrete, more immediate terms.

Perhaps that's all it is: that any glimpse of trying to live a more adequate or real or sensible life clashes with the somewhat tiresome one that I've got instead....

Summer

The first day with a forecast of 70°, and with the east window thermometer showing 75° (my neighborhood is always warmer than the forecast – I think the weather station must be near the river – though, unhappily, the coming week will drop back down to 59° or so): I laid on a lawn chair in my back yard, in the sun, next to the herbs and pots we bought yesterday, which I will organize and replant in a day or two.

I thought this morning, on waking: minor aches and sleepiness are making it difficult to write, and as I can expect aches, pains and the low energies of age and intersecting illnesses to worsen over the coming years, it would be amazing if I ever finished this book, let alone any other. Ah well; perhaps that's just how it is.

But summer (or even a fragment, a taste, of summer) in a northern clime is such a vast change, and such a pleasant gift: I can't worry very much....

Restless spring

Five or six days of feeling better. No longer so weak or ill... and it's spring outside.

But not writing. Nor really working, in any way, not even going through old papers to throw them out. Some fragmentary gestures towards completing things. Perhaps if I at least finished writing about my hospital stay: not important, but it would be satisfying. Maybe....

It is clear that I am not back where I (emotionally) was before the operation: I'm not worried or guilty about not writing, but I am vaguely wanting to get back to work. Or at least feeling as though I should get back to work – or at least: that I have no good reason for not getting back to work.

And also: somehow, after all the quiet, steady, exhausting discomfort of the past six weeks, I feel as though I deserve some fun: or a change, or a trip, or something....

Mitchell says: who can I travel to visit? Anyone south of London is too far, though, and of course David O.-S. is no longer alive. Or, Mitchell suggests just reading, and not professional stuff – but I've been doing that, I'm still...

Restless. But a trip is probably too stressful (at least one that involves an airplane), and going into town is boring – all there is to do here is eat and shop, and neither is particularly dazzling. No, something else: a different place, a different air.

I want... something....

Spring

It is very late, or very early, depending on your preference – just after six a.m.

Sleep is for some reason impossible, I don't know why.

The other day an IKEA catalogue came in the mail, with 'SPRING' on the cover. I laughed, hollowly – all right, I didn't do that, I don't engage in bizarre dramatic gestures when alone, but I certainly had the same thought process as one who laughs hollowly, if you know what I mean. Despite the March winds, which I know as well as anyone must presage the breaking of the ice (if you're in Russia, anyway), it hasn't felt like spring at all – and it still doesn't, not much.

But those winds; and the birds outside; and the days are longer – already about twelve hours at this northern latitude.

Spring is wonderful, of course – warmer weather, longer days, better mood, healthier skin – but also a little nerve-wracking, because of course it indicates more time has passed when work should have been done. But I'll admit that, despite my usual insecure obsession with productivity, the fragments of work I've done lately make me feel rather comfortable about the future.

So perhaps we can start to accept the concept, the possibility, of spring: mostly there are only rain on the windows and wind in the chimney, but the signs of change are definitely present...

and... maybe that's why I'm sleepless....

Solstice

The winter solstice at 6 am today, on the 22nd; a full moon coming (early afternoon on the 24th); a light snow.

Though it will be a quiet Christmas, it won't be I think I bleak one. The house is clean and warm, with plenty of food, even a small panettone; and although my Christmas present to myself – a handful of amusing books, chosen over three or four hours on the second long sleepless night after Sandy's death for their short stories and pleasant distractions – didn't arrive at the university before it shut for the holiday (typical), there are of course massive numbers of books and movies neatly lined up on the shelves.

At this latitude, the day is seven hours, forty minutes long....

Calm and troubled waters

A week of quiet – mostly: Reading Week, the week when we don't teach classes. I have gotten many small things done, and worked a bit on larger ones. I've retrieved a certain calm from the time out – inevitably I'm a bit dismayed to go back to classes and meetings, and especially a research seminar in London, for which I'm still (as usual) only sketchily prepared; but I don't feel quite as worn out, quite as irritated, by people's demands and things undone.

•••

There are people who matter to me who are having difficult times: one struggling with chemotherapy and serious side effects, one newly diagnosed with diabetes. Then there are others with longer histories, the two colleagues with multiple sclerosis, the one with breast cancer, the one with crippling nerve damage which may get worse and may even kill her eventually. Some of them come to me for advice – with others we just share an awareness of what our mortality means. I am struck again, however, by a certain rather peculiar resentment – just as Philip's death of cancer, Vanessa's death of polymyositis, and David's death of – well what was it, I suppose "complications due to long-term HIV infection" – just as they all left me rather peevish, so do the problems of these others leave me distinctly exasperated with the imbalances of the universe.

Very peculiar, I suppose: it implies that I had somehow drawn a thick line between those of us who have AIDS, and everyone else – and blithely assumed that the task was to make Those Others understand what suffering, illness, fear and death were about. Rather than noticing the obvious, which is that a lot of people are marked for suffering on both sides of the line – in a way I'm very lucky that my personal focus for misery was AIDS, because I can share that with a lot of friends; while those with more isolating conditions (MS, cancer) often don't get the advantage of shared troubles. (Or, let's face it, take advantage of sharing troubles: and though I suppose many hospitals now push cancer patients to come to support groups, many never do so.)

Another peculiar aspect of these instinctive reactions: I am so sure (still, even in the midst of this cognitive behavior therapy) that I have made such a mess of my life, that the deaths of others instead of me seems entirely wrong-footed, utterly ridiculous: why would anybody choose that the angelic Philip, who had a relationship and was so important to so many people, would die so rapidly and awfully? And Vanessa was so much more productive, so much more connected to so many people who benefited from her work and life; and David continued being brilliant through all his complex illnesses.

It simply doesn't make sense. And yes, I know: I already see the peculiar decision underlying such thoughts – that the blunders I've committed have made me superfluous to the world, a decision I think I made back when I was seventeen (if not before – I tend to have little memory of my life before I went away to college). And it's part of this therapy to notice such underlying beliefs/decisions, and to try to come up with something better to replace it; but it's so hard to argue against – when I get phone calls about my long-unpaid student loans, when I start struggling with the promotions committee yet again, when I face how little real work I've done lately – I simply can't make sense of it: why am I still here, and they are gone?...

•••

Working on this London seminar: my rather dramatic PowerPoint is already pretty good, but there needs to be more writing, more concrete thought. And the topic is difficult: it is the one about music about AIDS, especially works that suggest anger and paranoia – so I'm listening to all my music about AIDS again. Which I will have to do for the next year, at least, as I need to write the book on the topic....

And I'll admit: at points it all seems too difficult. It's hard enough to get past my procrastination, my constant sidestepping into other activities, my self-hypnosis into a daily state of inertia; but on top of that, if I have to fight with the dark, draining emotions raised by the material itself – can I really do this? Is it even sane to expect this of myself?...

October

The weather has been doing very October-ish things the past few days – windy nights, rainy sidewalks covered with leaves, that kind of thing. This morning there was a bright sunny wash over everything, which was nevertheless golden – exactly like the proper light for late afternoon, but at ten in the morning; it was some sort of presage to a cap of gray clouds (and I mean a cap here: clouds in northeastern England are usually fairly stormy and complex-looking, but for some reason the past two days we have had utterly flat, dark gray cloud covers, which look from beneath almost like enormous round disks).

Slightly odd dreams, in that warm winter bedding that's so much harder to abandon: dreams with a tangle of elements from all over – real and imagined, past/present, things that can't fit together in the real world – but all apparently smoothed into a tale of safety, of escape, of freedom. Staying with my eldest sister in her New England house (she doesn't actually live in New England); talking to Trisha H., who then plans to visit, as I extend my vacation in this house for weeks, and weeks; investigating a local gay club, whose intricate elevator and stair systems lead past rooms with translucent walls where I can see the shadows of violinists practicing classical music; and then going outside on a vast roof, to see sugar maples, and other (nonexistent) trees of autumn New England, which have somehow gotten 'sugar' attached to their names....

What odd wish fulfillments are these. But all elements of a world that is safer and more pleasant than the one I've got.

Homebody

Having wakened with griping gastrointestinals (as has happened most days over the past weeks), and nothing I absolutely had to do at the office (I missed an academic presentation by Spurious – but he'll forgive me, it's not as though he won't have an audience), I spent the day lying around in a work-free environment.

Of course I am so peculiarly made that this included moving books around, copying CDs, and putting music in order... what can I say, my contribution to Asperger's is that I enjoy putting my books in order. And it's something that I could push much further today – because since Patrick and Catherine helped me put up shelves in the box room, I can do some serious reorganization.

It's always nice to see books that have been out of sight for a while....

Insults for the new century

Patrick has invented a new insult for our age:

"He has to pay people to read his blog."

He thinks we need a word for that kind of person, too – blogstitution? no, that's not it.

Perhaps this is in line with Anne's complaint earlier this evening that her students were unpleasantly startled that she has an iPod – as though it's so weird that 'Granny' is up-to-date (or, as I said, she is a Hep Cat). There must be an insult one could invent for that situation? –

suggestions will be gratefully received.

Glorious

A truly beautiful day, a glorious day.

There have been many fine days this summer – no question about it, the hottest year in history has given us the summer weather that seems proper to me, a real summer in the seventies Fahrenheit, with sun and breezes and all.

I am unfortunately so mechanistic (really: mechanical) that when there is a long stretch of gray days (such as the two weeks after my visit to Spain) I go all depressed. And on a day like today I am happy.

Unfortunately, the gray days still vastly outnumber the bright days (of both sorts), and I still am not getting things done that would enable me to survive in my career; so I still need a changed life.

But today it does not seem important....

•••

The workmen across the street – staunch British working class all – call out to each other a few words of Spanish, clearly referring to their vacations in Spain and the wonderful weather. Perhaps they also wish they lived in the south.

•••

While I'm replanting some of my window boxes, messing about on my small back deck, a local Goth girl goes by: long black dress, buttons all the way down. Arms crossed, rather sullenly. She has to walk the dog – and I can't believe that, at some level, she doesn't thoroughly resent her fashion choice in this weather.