in the hall of mirrors

Fragments of the day

Acquisition and maintenance

One of the somewhat pathetic aspects of my life – not just in the past five years of English exile, but since I was started to lose faith in my creative abilities and future career, at the age of seventeen – is my tendency to spend much (and I mean: much) of my time in the acquisition of things (for a long time, books, and then music; and later video, foodstuffs, electronics); and in the maintenance of those things, of my living quarters, objects, clothing, body, and the organization of all of these.

This of course creates an environment that tends to (at least partly) enchant the casual visitor: the bibliophile enters my living room, full of bookshelves of tidily organized, well-kept volumes, with shelves of equally neat CDs, DVDs and other media. The gastronome looks through the kitchen pantries for exotica and strong and complex combinations of flavors. Visitors to my apartment, if they have certain tastes, have entered a charming playroom of things that will amuse them – certainly when spurious comes by for a meal, he spends much of his time browsing the shelves (blah-feme not quite so much, possibly because he is more a gourmet than gourmand in the world of books, or possibly because of his more extrovert/conversational relationship to social events).

Unfortunately, this static world of cared-for things, though as pleasant for me as it is for visitors, tends to exist as a world of potential, of accessible value – a sort of consumerist world of culture, a museum of history. It makes me a librarian rather than a writer; and perhaps I would have been better as a librarian – the daily minutiae of care and organization as a living, combined with lower expectations of innovation and creation, would certain match my activities better than the career I actually have.

It is as though the whole is waiting for a user: as though I would make an acceptable partner for someone who really got work done, who really created things – and I could sit quietly in the background, making sure dinner was ready on time, that the timetable of appearances was kept up to date. As though I am really a secretary to my own potential ability, to my own talent: and, fatally, not its executive....

•••

Listenings

Particularly interested, lately, in two very different, though perhaps equally talented, musical creators: Porcupine Tree (which is apparently mostly Steven Wilson) and Stephan Micus, the German multitalented instrumentalist and singer.

Both deeply expressive, intelligent, complex: naturally Porcupine Tree is more cynical and contemporary (was there ever anything more savagely accusing than their new video for 'Fear of a Blank Planet', which is more exactly and cruelly critical of the disasters of our culture than any naively angry burst of traditional punk?); I was first drawn to them through what is still my favorite song of theirs, 'The Sound of Muzak', which is something I clearly need to use in teaching my first year students exactly how contemporary Adorno's ideas really can be.

And what could be more strangely, ambiguously, wistful than 'She's Moved On'? – the material, and fragmentary phrases, from a simple two-dimensional relationship gone predictably wrong – but with all the bizarre and inappropriate weight of feeling implicit in any rejection packed into the music, making its impact vaster than the apparent 'trigger', making the whole a universe of emotion.

But then Micus: so sad, and yet with so much belief in time, experience, reality, life – implicit in his music is something that is the exact opposite of cynicism, an implicit sense that life and music are worth everything.

Alternating them: a roller coaster....

•••

Fear of the future

Though it is still mid-August, I am already intimidated, tired, by the oncoming train of the next school year. It is a shame it all feels so heavy, so unfulfilling, so insistently chaotic, so essentially full of the noise of nonsensical demands and confused mismanagement: some of this is, of course, the nature of the UK university, with its endless, tangled puppet strings leading from every tiny thing we do all the way up to a faceless government bureaucracy that has no sense of academic values. But unfortunately a lot of it is also my dread of the students themselves – their demands, their irresponsibility, their emotional desperation.

It is ultimately a hard thing to be a teacher, at least for thinking types such as I am: the circular repetition of years, where every successful relationship with a student is replaced by one where one has to go back to the very beginning; such that every student who grows into a wonderful colleague worth talking to is abruptly replaced by a nervous, sullen seventeen-year old who has to be convinced that there is some good reason for them to be here.

And the return to the same topics, to the same beginnings, each year – terribly stressful, at least for me; fortunately we are allowed to teach different topics, different specialist courses each year (though the foolish bureaucrats of the university and government tend to dislike this, wanting predictable and repeated courses so that they can impose the simplistic check-boxes of quality control). But even a new topic is not so satisfying when so much time has to be spent just engaging the students – so much time convincing them to do the work, to care about the material, to think about it all; by the time they are actually doing the work enough to enjoy themselves, and for me to enjoy talking to them, the year is over and they move on.

Madness, really. How desperately we all need an entirely different kind of university: one where teachers drop in intermittently, talking about what interests them at the moment; one where students come to what interests them, only (with no curriculum or programs), and return when they have interesting questions and answers. In such an environment, of course, it gets harder and harder to tell student from teacher (also as it should be).

Sort of a Black Mountain College, or perhaps some kind of Neillian university. And why do we put up with any less?...

... a good night

Last Wednesday, after a long day, I went out with Patrick to his favorite pub; we talked to acquaintances of his who turned out to be charming, intelligent and friendly, went on to a club, and stood around on the outside balcony (recently expanded for the newly exiled UK smokers) until closing time at 3 am.

P. kept commenting that it was so strange that I was so cheerful, talkative, involved, and above all awake. It was almost – slightly – embarrassing that he thought this was such a change but, as I told him, I used to be this way all the time; or, if not all the time, at least much of the time. When I was younger... I often went out to restaurants, bars, clubs; and sometimes I would indeed get tired and go home (I've never been a power partier – both a matter of physical energy and a low boredom threshold for many people and places), but often I would enjoy myself and stay up late.

Perhaps I'm thinking about it too much, but I can't help but wonder: after a day where there was some coffee, and tea, and champagne; and a fairly healthy dinner; should I be pleased – excited – interested, at least, that I was so energetic for so long, without feeling ill or miserable?... and of course I'm fairly sure this is all in the context of, not only the bright thrills of a warm midsummer, but also the gradual detoxification of my body that seems to be happening in the wake of the reformulation of my Kaletra last November.

Friday: a brief drink with Bennett and Merrie turned into a light dinner, and more drinks, and talking, talking, talking. Much fun – they're always interesting (and they kindly let me tell story after story about myself, which always makes people seem even more interesting). Home after 11:30; and still not really tired....

Then last night, dinner for all three of them; though I didn't go out late with Patrick (after midnight?), I could have – and I wasn't completely wrecked, exhausted, irritable, by the time everyone left.

The biochemical roots of energy, of behavior: I know, of course, how vast these can be – from HIV medications, from interferon and an anti-depressant I had to take with it, from thyroid failure and wobbly metabolism. It's just rather strange to think: is my experience of the past years not merely affected by my medications – but entirely contingent on it? What if I were – to some small extent – occasionally – to become young-ish again, happy-ish again?...

A vast, and for me pregnant, question.

A beautiful light

The light, not yet dusk but getting there slowly in this far northern clime, is beautiful. It's been a real summer for weeks on end, which is rare here.

I'm not completely incapacitated, at least not for blog-writing, but have been in a sort of reactionary hibernation after traveling – although I've been back for eight days now. Traveling itself was chaotic, with bits that were wonderful, but which went by fast enough and with enough stress around them, that I could hardly pay attention at the time; but in reflection they are really giving something back to me, a pleasure I didn't notice while in transit.

I wrote some fragments while traveling – I won't put them here, not yet; and I won't try to lengthen them into anything solid, but I want to go through and make them at least basically sensible. Not really a travelogue this time: more like a few brief postcards.

But I can say that, in line with all I've said in the past couple of months about stirring feelings, the shift upwards in health: and now, having finally recovered from a long school year, and this trip; somehow, and more than ever since I landed in northeastern England – and even during the anxious year in Australia, and perhaps the time in Hong Kong – I'm peaceful, expectant, and happy.

Waiting for something to come up on the horizon: life, maybe.

work... ing

meeting. meeting. meeting. angry clash. meeting. meeting. meeting.
home. uninterested in much. trying to do real work on paper for next week.
meeting. meeting. lunch in staff room. meeting. meeting. meeting. meeting.
home. DVD player is broken, can't play movies. Trying to tell me something?
meeting. meeting. meeting. meeting. meeting. meeting.

So, these seven habits of highly successful people... okay, I know, these are people who get up early, they are undoubtedly morning people, perky and hideously cheerful upon awakening, and they schedule their days and never sit around watching television or playing computer solitaire or just sleeping...

so, these seven habits of highly successful people: if I were to do just, say, one habit occasionally, would I get one-seventh of a miraculous amount of work done?

Tomorrow morning: meeting meeting meeting.

This paper. Sigh.

Well I've got my Powerpoint slides all pretty anyway. Some content would be nice of course but...

Aargh.

Oh well to bed –

Good things

(a) A second meeting with Melinda, the psychologist from the HIV clinic and my friend. (There was a long delay between our first and second meetings this time, because her mother died; when we were walking out we paused in the summer sunshine and she told me, tears in her eyes but calm, about her mother and her death – a strong-willed, unafraid woman, who knew what was coming and was very direct about it.) Melinda wants to do some relatively simplistic/behavioristic stuff with me, which should be interesting; as I've said, the opposite of my old Jungian work, but such pragmatism seems useful now.

(b) Returned to the gym, after ages away; a nice return visit. They have redecorated and, although things don't look terribly different, the equipment is actually hugely different – and better; and a friendly, helpful sort of regular guy as trainer. And, thank heaven, the piped-in music is now far less obnoxious, far less loud.

(c) And made raspberry chocolate brownies just afterwards. (I note that there seems to be a disparity in values between (b) and (c).) They didn't solidify well – too many raspberries I think – but what the heck they've got chocolate and raspberries in them, so they're not exactly unappetizing.

(d) A wonderful hour-long chat with Mitchell in Los Angeles, who is huge fun and I miss him greatly. Perhaps we will get to stay in frequent contact over the summer. Tomorrow I will call Trisha on her birthday – another major, faraway, pillar of my emotional life.

(e) Arrangements for travel and seminars are lining up a bit more neatly; there is still too much to be done, but the structure and connection to what I want to do is a bit more under my control. And two trips are invitations, which makes me feel a bit more successful, less of a failure, less of a patsy to the system; which is of course good.

Summer, long days... maybe continuing to do things will get me – somewhere....

Apologies; and rambling

My apologies for not posting this week... frankly, my thoughts and experiences have been too fragmentary, and too dark, bitter, repetitive, to be worth putting into even this miniature form of public presentation.

Continued rage over promotions, or lack thereof. Anger at students, who are being incredibly dilatory and irresponsible, in a way that feels utterly disrespectful. And every conversation, every contact, seems to include casual comments that glaringly emphasize the pointless and unsuccessful character of my career and activities; even this blog – and I unfortunately notice and remember them all.

Plus a peaking despair over the diffuse stasis of my life: in contrast to the exploding spring (really, up here, it is alternately explosive – green and sunny, plants impatiently pushing out new growth – and grayed out by the too-frequent dull skies, like non-functioning buttons in a computer program), I remain too passive and inert. And, sadly, most of my support systems have vanished – Vanessa is dead, Catherine on an island in the Pacific, and even P. is away living his own life, without any need of me.

I became desperate enough to meet on Friday with Melinda, the psychologist at the HIV clinic, for the first time in a year and a half. She is a remarkable, kind, intelligent and supportive person; as a therapist she tends towards the practical, which makes her input very different from the mystical Jungianisms I enjoyed with Mitch, fifteen years ago. I don't see her often because her schedule is heavily overburdened, and I know she has many more needy patients; and unfortunately, for a long time, our meetings were constantly deflected from my problems to managerial concerns with the HIV patient group (as the group was established under her aegis), so our meetings became more and more businesslike, but less and less what I needed for myself. But it was good to see her again, and without the distraction of group matters; and it was even better that she took my current concerns seriously, making another appointment in two weeks time – and with her schedule that is practically triage.

The past couple of days were also characterized by symptoms, annoying illnesses that came seemingly out of nowhere – twice I burst into sweats, without a temperature; aches in various joints, like my winter arthritis made worse; and fatigue, weakness, even strange bursts of panic that seemed as much neurochemical as psychological. This all had me very nervous until I realized that on Friday the doctor had given me a new medication – a minor one which he said had "no side effects" (hah! – well, lawyers who work for pharmaceutical companies always list every possible side effect, to forestall lawsuits; but doctors pretend there are no side effects, because they're afraid you will imagine that you have them. An old story, and one which often leads to unexpected illness/panic of just this sort). So that's all fading away rapidly; it means this three-day weekend has included no work and no exercise, but at least I know why, and I know it won't get worse.

And also in these two days, several long chains of multi-part dreams: characterized by going back to earlier parts of my life (one the University of Virginia, where I went to college in the mid-1970s, and which I've only revisited once; the other my beloved San Francisco, especially of course the Castro area), as well as by finding and losing precious things, and by landscapes that seem strangely distorted and blasted by time and disaster, yet which open out into spaces that show new life.

However, above all, these dreams are full of friendly people: even in the parts of these dreams that are full of broken objects and dead foliage, everyone in them seems happy to see me, wanting to be helpful, kind and caring.

Strange, and suggestive: that in the midst of death, absence, loss, disintegration; and in contrast to a real world that seems empty of connection or support; that these dream figures are so, well, 'there' for me....

Therapeutic

One way to get past sullen dullness is to do things, to make things, to have something to take care of.

Two window boxes with herbs: parseley, sage, rosemary and thyme – and basil, as it happens; some new plants, plus the three rather tired ones I'd had in the windowsill all winter, all of which desperately wanted larger growing spaces (and now they have them). All very simple – something I'm sure either of my sisters, especially the elder who does landscaping, could have done in ten minutes without thinking – for me a bit more complicated and fussy, but ultimately successful. Slightly annoying to lose a few inches of sunlight in the room – up here you need all you can get – but I like the boxes anyway.

And the plants are finally perking up a bit... yes, the tops of lots of them are chopped (I used a bunch of basil and rosemary on the chicken last night). But the basil already looks happier than it has in months – its roots have clearly noticed all of the compost and plant food and water and, above all, room to grow, in just one day.

Hmm: symbolic, that. I guess I should go out for a walk, yes?...

Time: imposed, imagined

Sleeping too much, drifting: probably my thyroid is off again. Since Duisburg: several busy days, mostly administration, and a conference day; a lot of floating anger about promotions, ambition, respect; all among the strange long days of Spring in the far north. Those are the more sharply defined moments in what has felt like a soft, bright fog of vaguely lost hours.

I've been reading a lot of Avram Davidson lately, as I've mentioned. Dense sentences, and a rich, complex experience of time and accident. But behind it all is the lengthy tale of Davidson's increasing irritability, his irascible and uncomfortable old age, his sense of failure, his constant complaining about money and success – all of which sound rather like the way I'm getting with age. Resentment as a way of life, and the entire sense of time as a narrative of not-enough....

And Gerhard and Kunsu have to sell the house in Kreta, and I wonder how they will manage their old age. And Laura will be visiting Edinburgh this month, and I'll get to see her – but will have to answer her questions about how I'm doing, in comparison to her relatively successful, streamlined life. And my eldest sister and her MRIs, and my younger sister and her shaky job security; and my mother in her nursing home. And Trisha battling with her business while setting her poetry aside, and Terry as perpetual freelancer who's currently doing well, but not forever; and A. who has moved in with K., and may be finally settling down at long last; and L.'s new Irish colleen, who is moving here, changing countries for her new relationship. R.'s rather arrogant successess, D.'s dimming prospects. Perhaps it's no accident that these friends-and-loved-ones are mostly in the arts, or academe, or other thinking-oriented lives; it's a tough and unpredictable world to live in. But all these people will get older, more fragile: somebody will need to take care of them – who will it be?

Lives, and time: that eerie sense that we all end up recreating patterns over and over – and some manage to break patterns; and some patterns are more welcome than others. One of the most valuable aspects of the academic and literary lives is reading biographies – that is, reading about people: one becomes very clear that most people who suffer do it to themselves – and most people who fail seem to do it to themselves too, though it's not always entirely clear how that happens. And success is unavoidably a matter of chance, a roll of the die.

It's sort of a fanning-out of my usual anxieties about myself, to think about all the people I know: how they will do now, how they will get through their days, what will they be like when they're older. And a smearing of quantum variations in possible universes: as though you can imagine the whole fan of possibilities opening out from each moment, and what each might entail. As though ambition, anxiety, hope, despair, are multiplied, but not into mere grayness, but into a vast swatch of hues: all pastel though, because the intensity of emotional focus on any particular career problem or a hope is leached out by all of its variations.

Strangely, this makes me feel even more helpless in relation to my life: with all of floating time and possibilities, it becomes even more difficult – no, not difficult: merely implausible, merely rather pointless – to focus on doing something right now, on engaging in some action. One of Tanith Lee's beautiful stories in Tamastara runs through two parallel lives, one of a boy, one of a girl, both with the same soul and born in the same moment; both have joy and great sorrow (the boy a beautiful drone who loses his looks in a bus accident, the girl a dancer who marries without love). At the end the whole story evaporates as the soul moves on: the two stories were parallel visions of what might happen if the soul chose birth then, but it doesn't – neither story happens at all, both are negated into vastness.

This is sort of how my life feels now: sleeping too much, a bright fog: drifting – in time....

Lose an hour

Normally I am annoyed to lose an hour in spring – and elated to gain one in the fall.

It's not just getting to sleep late (my schedule is such that usually I could do that anyway), but the larger association with how I manage my life – I'm kind of full of the White Rabbit's "I'm late, I'm late", about everything that matters to me. (Yes, I know: frantic yet slothful – what can I say, people are contradictory.)

Not so annoyed today, however: the longer days are coming at a point when there is more time for me to concentrate, and the general feeling of well-being may translate into finishing projects. Even the ones left behind by V. are not too daunting (I'm going to get other people to help, frankly).

And as I'm up so late, while my computer finishes processing a mass of video data (I could leave it alone to finish everything, but of course it's sort of an attractive nuisance), the idea that it's 4 am rather than 3 am doesn't seem such a big deal....

And the whole weekend is suffused with a solitary pleasure (no, not that one – get your mind out of the gutter): re-reading, for the umpteenth time, Avram Davidson's The Phoenix and the Mirror – what a dazzling world, what a pleasure. This was the first of his 'Vergil Magus' novels, which were based on the medieval legends that transformed the Virgil of the Aeneid into a magician (it occurs to me that one of my postgraduates, the one working on Renaissance hermetic magic and music, would love this – perhaps I'll find him a copy for a graduation present when he finishes). Davidson had huge and dazzling erudite fun mixing facets of Imperial Roman and Renaissance Italian cultures in the way implied by such legends, not to mention playing etymological games that are sometimes intended to seem 'real' in our own world and sometimes not. And it's such a grand adventure, with such fascinating comrades....

Incidentally, the other night I had dinner with Spurious and his frequently-mentioned friend W. A fun dinner, although I managed to wreck my digestion for several nights afterward – and only recovered today (Bad Gut Nights are such a deep part of my experience, like dry skin, and dreaming, that they dictate my entire relationship to time and life). But what was really remarkable was finally getting to meet the infamous W.: Spurious is right, he does indeed say those smart but scathing, dark things, all the time. But what Spurious never mentioned – that I recall – is that W. has a charming, pleasant face and voice, plump cheeks and glasses: he is not the gauntly supercilious aristocrat that I had imagined... and that changes absolutely everything, the way an actor can change the meaning of a play just by looking a certain way. Here is this pleasant, amusing person, saying these dreadful things, but in a way that transforms their nature such that –

well, I finally understand the drama of their scenes together: it is not any kind of nihilistic black comedy; it's an affectionate, even familial, rather light comedy. You know: the way people say that Chekhov writes comedies.

So you see, Spring changes everything....

Brighter

It's that point in spring, at this northern latitude, when the days start getting longer startlingly fast, and I wake at 6:30 am with the day already begun and sunny; and the students cheer up. I predict a relaxed funeral for V. on Friday as a result – something more like a wake, which is a good thing.

Also a good thing because, in the wake of V.'s death, I'm trying to do several presentations, trips, complete some research, that we were doing together. I'm already acutely aware of how much I'd depended on her to make sense of all the difficult bits – as I said a couple of days ago, I'll have to 'internalize' her to make it through everything. All this increases my research activities, but of course I'm also feeling physically/mentally better the past few months (the difference is undeniable), so I'm fully capable of this. Lazy, intractable, a bit skittish from past failures, but still capable. V.'s going to need to watch over me a bit I think (you hear that, my dear?).

As for the funeral: frankly somewhat worried about what to wear. Note to self: if you lost some weight, you could wear all those nice clothes that sit in the back of your closet....