in the hall of mirrors

14:23 10-3-18

14:23 = 2:23 pm

10 March 2018 = Saturday

...

Having left M. with a hug at the station (one of those hugs between men that always make me wonder, in a flash, whether non-gay locals find this unusual, but then I always decide not to care), I turn and walk – not, as I said I would, towards the buses, but instead towards the big department stores. This is in fairly direct contravention of his advice and expectations, which are that, on the day before Mothering Sunday (do they still call it that? – I mean, the English version of Mother's Day?), the cosmetic counters at the department stores will be completely overworked and distracted and frantic. I have agreed with him and said no, I wouldn't want to go today then, but with the background thoughts: it's not an unpleasant day, I want to walk around some more anyway, will it really be that crowded, I want to investigate this and/or handle and/or complete it.

'It' is an item on my to-do list – N.'s birthday is a week away. I had thought of things I would like to give her – I'd already made a list of possible books, and how about another trip to Barcelona together. She has nixed both of these – she has enough unread books (yes, okay, that was more like imposing one of my fetishes onto her birthday than actually trying to make her happy with one of hers), and Barcelona is too complicated at the moment, so: a detailed list of specific pieces of flatware (oh yes, didn't we have a conversation last month where she said she had a new set of silver, she'd bought it with her mother – or her sister, something like that? – and still needs various pieces, oyster forks and lord knows what else); and the possibility of a facial at one of the department store spas.

Flatware is not really my thing, so I have already decided on the facial, and I have already explained why I am not supposed to go order the facial now, because it will be too crowded because it is the day before Mothering oh you remember all of that it was three seconds ago, but I am going anyway because the street is crowded and lively despite the intermittent rain, and I get lonely and bored in my supposedly pleasant, quiet apartment with plenty of room to work. Disregard please, old complaint from nearly sixteen years ago that goes something like, I would have been happier if I'd moved into an apartment in the middle of town in 2002, but it's too late for that now and it was unrealistic anyway and we have walked through that conversation eight thousand times, so.

Facial: okay. A web link messaged to me by N. leads me to John Lewis, Clinique, a fashionable webpage, and a long list of facials, damn, which one is it supposed to be then? Aha, she mentions which facial she wants in another note. But the webpage gives phone numbers for Oxford Street, other places in the distant south, and Leeds – but nothing for Newcastle, which suggests to me that they don't do those facials here, so I mentioned this to her in another WhatsApp message and she said oh, well Fenwick's may have this kind of thing too? So I have a printout of the Fenwick's webpage in my pocket. Though I think I will go to John Lewis anyway, it's a hair classier, and perhaps something about the webpage is wrong, or merely blurry and confused, as with so many commercial and public things these days. If it can be said to be only these days, that is.

Which is why I am stepping out onto Northumberland Street and turning right, rather than turning left, which would be more in line with what I said to M. that I was going to do. As I walk in that direction I do know that I am not entirely out of sight of M., but will assume that he won't notice (he is good at noticing things, but he is not at all paranoid) or that I'm either a bit confused or that I've decided that I want a bit of a walk. Which is also sort of true – I mean actually both of those things are sort of true, though as I veer right the definiteness of wanting to go to John Lewis, or perhaps Fenwick's depending on what actually happens, and order the facial is not only more present, more real, it is also more probable, as I am already pushing myself into going that way.

I didn't mention that, interlocking with these texts with N. about exactly what presents to buy, and talking with M. about politics, and about the lemon tart I just had at a table in the café on the third floor of John Lewis (did I mention that there seem to be recursive patterns in operation today?), the coffee I ordered for him, and the tray I made him carry because I tend to be too shaky for carrying trays full of liquids these days, and M.'s advice and discussions around N.'s present, is a series of texts (not on WhatsApp but on Message) with (and here I must pause and check my technical structure because I am introducing another male friend whose name starts with M; it would be impossibly confusing to also call him simply M., and I never like those bits in romans à clef (note the plural) where you represent people you aren't quite naming with initials that don't match their real ones, as that seems kind of fake, so – despite the visual inconsistency we'll choose to call him M2, which is only a little weird given the range of arguments against all the alternatives) M2, where I told him that N. wants flatware, which I think is boring, or a facial which seems more possible, and he said cool, how much is it, which suggested that we should perhaps split the cost of the facial.

I may mention that I have been more casual about spending money in the past year – reduced long-term plans, discussed elsewhere, and the end of paying tuition at the Jung-Institut, and a strong sense of you-can't-take-it-with-you have meant that dinner at an expensive restaurant doesn't seem to qualify as a realistic source of anxiety (note already documented visits to Zürich restaurants last month) but instead to be a perfectly reasonable ask (it is in fact faintly possible that I spent a bit too much at Christmas, if people were worried about reciprocating, but hopefully they wouldn't panic about something so trivial). Oh, and in this case, that is to say the case of the present for N.'s birthday, she is someone it's a pleasure to give things to – she is what used to be called discerning, which means she cares about and likes special gifts, not only of special quality but if they are specially appropriate – and it's a landmark birthday anyway, one with a zero at the end of it (which reminds me that I am more than one year older, which reminds me that I did want to finish the Jung-Institut program by the time I was 60, and it's too late for that now that I'm 61, but there is a push for me to finish by this summer, which would require finishing the thesis in four months, so I'd better get to work on that when I get home after being out here walking around in the middle of Northumberland Street, and of course there is also the unfinished second symbol paper but I won't think about or mention that now). So, for a birthday with a zero in it, I'm happy to spend more – it's celebratory, it means this isn't just another regular birthday.

On the other hand sharing the cost and symbolic gift of the facial with M2 would be a pleasure in itself, a sort of metafamily kind of thing, so that seemed interesting, so I told M2 so in a message while in the café with M. and while finishing up messages with N. And he said yes, so this will be a two-person gift, a facial, I will sign the card with both names and then get M2 to pay me back later, so that plan has a clear path to completion.

But by now it is already several seconds later than the point where I walked away from M., and started to go right rather than left, into and through the busy street full of shoppers, near the large fruit stand with the big, bored-looking young guy selling fruit (everybody really liked that movie, what was it, God's Own Country, about the sullen gay farm guy, but I haven't seen it yet) and the underlying noise, which is actually music, is taking an unexpected turn. There is almost always a busker of some kind in front of Marks & Spencer's – a guitarist usually, and sometimes something more startling (there have been singers, flautists, or flutists if you prefer but that always seems a rather clunky term, and occasionally the shock of a bagpiper). Today it is a young guitarist, in his 20s perhaps, someone I don't recognize, longish hair, possibly somebody's student (there is always a flash of worry here: is he one of my students, unrecognized, someone I don't remember from a large class, and he will think I'm a heartless, uncaring jackass, a bad parent sort of thing, if I don't seem to know who he is? but this one is busy, preoccupied, so there will probably be no reason for concern), and he is playing something sort of unexpected – he has accompanying music coming out of a boom box, but it is unexpectedly minimalist: this sounds very much like New York-style minimalism from the 80s or 90s, repetitive and rich, but definitely in a popular music vein.

Are there pieces like that I don't know? – probably, I tend to miss a lot of pop trends; so is this a piece I could actually recognize, or is this something he has created himself? The question can't be answered at this point and with my limited knowledge, though I suspect J. from San Jose, who knows a lot about groups like King Crimson, or the various people hanging around B. in Los Angeles who are eager to get his attention on topics related to minimalism, or J2 in Finland or F. in Liverpool or for that matter kind of a lot of other people, would be able to weigh in at length on it.

So, what we've got is a cheerful busker, guitar, boombox (are we still supposed to call them that, and isn't there any useful technical variant for electronically reproduced music, as opposed to old tapes and CDs? If so I don't know it). And shimmering, pleasant minimalism, a broad ensemble texture that suggests someone has listened to orchestral versions of similar textures but is responding with other sounds, something that mixes orchestra and electric guitars and drums. Pleasant. Half-thinking, half-not-thinking, and aware that I have already passed one man sitting against a building with a dog without giving him anything, I am veering approximately within throwing distance of the guitarist – or more accurately of the guitar case – and I do find myself working out the details: is there change in my pocket? yes, so can I get some out without dropping backpack or bag? luckily yes, can I tell what two coins I've just picked up? no, unfortunately, but one is heavy enough that it's probably a pound coin so that's all right, am I veering at the correct angle to reach him and is anyone in my way? it seems as though things are looking okay –

I toss two coins in the case while continuing to move smoothly, and equally smoothly he turns his head and smiles acknowledgement without missing a beat of his guitar work, all in the time of the two or three yards of my veering close to him and moving away. So that's done. As I continue walking down the street I also half-turn back towards him, continuing to connect with the music, and also the texture has just changed a bit, will there be a clue as to whether this is something I have heard before, or heard about? – no, there is a bit more guitar, though. All right, I've done my duty here.

Perhaps part of the reason I connect more rapidly to M2 in the entire discussion of N.'s present is that he hurt his hand this week, rather badly – I don't even remember the entire story, though I did hear it, but he managed to scrape skin and nails off two fingers, lots of blood and the appearance of those parts of us that are usually out of sight, concealed by containing flesh. It was obviously a shock for him, though by the time I saw him in the pub on Tuesday he was cheerful – still holding his left hand, splints on two fingers, in the air. (This is perhaps more of a source of anxiety for a guitarist, and we were all especially consoling). He will take some time off his work at the café – which is probably necessary, though they are deciding just how long that should go on. So M2 is a bit post-shock, and at the same time cheerful and relaxed, and self-aware, and wondering at a larger level, because he's going through that thing that we all do when we are jarred out of our routines – a return to bigger goals, an attempt to refashion, to reorganize, so he wants to get some work done (I'm assuming he can type with his right hand, at least) and talk to me about applying to get into a Ph.D.

Which intersects, at a social level in the pub four days ago, and also two days ago in the same pub although indoors, and also in terms of life-lines, with M3 (I am thinking we may need another naming convention, but it is obviously too late by now), who is also a guitarist – or perhaps he plays several fretted instruments, I can't quite remember – and who was both a departmental success and a departmental anxiety, as he won one of the fellowships it's so hard to get here, but then fell seriously ill in the middle of his own Ph.D... and then recovered, and ultimately finished, all in a complex cloud of group responses: everyone trying to be supportive and sympathetic, while simultaneously also being anxious, without of course wanting to burden him with our anxiety (should we tell the government that you're too ill to continue your degree, will we win fewer awards because of this intrusion of the ruthlessness of the real, unplanned world?). And so many, slightly chaotic, personal communications, because M3 is personable, funny, and known to everyone; and because he is also the kind of person who is very aware of his own illness and its more serious possible consequences; and because he is smart enough to have already noticed, or guessed or intuited, everyone's messy sympathies/anxieties/comments, etc.

So it was, on one side, a very time-conscious table in the pub, at least during the point when we met two days ago, at least for part of the table – and even the other parts of the table were a bit more time-aware, more loss- and change-aware, than they might normally be, after the injury, the jokes, the beer. Like a sudden lifting of a veil, everyone becomes more aware of time in its longer forms, in its comparative aspect, in its processes: where worry and hope lead, and where they don't – as well as that awareness within such awareness that worry and hope seem less meaningful when the larger arcs of lives and paths and expectations and occurrences are seen in their vast complexity.... But M2 also looked cheerful, almost happy in his freedom, rooted as it is in disaster and pain – he keeps telling us how gross his hand looked, and he won't show me the picture (he knows I don't like, for instance, horror movies): it clearly was a real shock, but now he seems – is it that he is detached from his normal patterns, as suggested above? Free, then, in a way: at least for the moment.

Of course I complete my swerve away from the busking guitarist, negotiating the Saturday crowds – at times a distinct source of my admittedly problematic irritation with the locals: I used to think, you can tell that they aren't city folk, the way they drift around – some of that is of course affected by the many students from the two universities (can you believe that I have, at times, barked "Spatial awareness!" at groups of congregating undergraduates in the hallways of our building, an instruction suggesting reference to a broad set of concepts that are probably not accessible to them in any case, and are certainly not more accessible to them because of my barking (barking, in which of two senses, divided by different cultures of slang?), okay let's say pithy, instruction, which may be evidence of my social dysfunction more than it is of my impatient urbanity) as well as the various families and fragments of families (of course baby carriages are cumbersome, but really, are you even trying to aim that thing anywhere at all?) and people from many countries (I still think, based on four years in Hong Kong, which is admittedly actually a very limited span of experience, that Hong Kong crowds had a particular relationship to space that was tough for a Westerner to negotiate – the background assumptions being that everywhere is always crowded anyway so what's the point in trying to get out of people's way, and so they just don't).

But since my favorite part of all that is my own status as urban and arrogant, it's easier to see the whole complex mess of people as evidence that all of them are more small-town or even rural than I am. Which fits my current irritable prejudices about the English – it's Brexit, it's May all over again, these are people who have Never Been Anywhere, unless to a tacky beach resort.

So the swerve is nearing the end of its arc, but it's hitting another kind of snag: the small man with the possibly-Turkish-or-Romanian mustaches and the magazine that is sold by the homeless here. This is, immediately, a complicated situation: there was a time when I regularly gave him money, when he was at the bus station next to the other side of Marks & Spencer; but he got increasingly demanding, wheedling and manipulative, and now he always tries to guilt me into giving him a pound or two, and I have come to resent that. So, more than most of the people panhandling around (note to American urban dwellers: there are actually very few of them by your standards – just a handful scattered across the center of town), I don't react well when he shows up: I'll usually give perhaps one person, per day, one pound, or on a pleasant day two people, or when I'm busy and self-involved none; but he raises the specter of trickery, of hopelessness, of desperation, on the receiving side of my decision: he will always be on the verge of collapse, I will always be measured, as though in one or another religious system of good and bad, by whether I overcome my annoyance and give him something anyway.

But I'm continuing to swerve and have had contact with other people, partly on purpose to block his view, so that this merely produces the familiar combination of (1) irritation, (2) not giving him anything, (3) his plaintive response which I avoid paying too much attention to, (4) afterthoughts that I should turn around and give him something, and (5) thoughts that I really should feel guilty, that I have failed or been greedy. Of course in some ways (5) influences (2) – the irritation of the whole relationship has made him a repeat loser, and I can justify it internally because he has made me feel bad, which results in an entire lack of charity. Of course these small tensions are nothing to the shattering memory of beggars in Cape Town... but there's no time for that memory now, we are too many miles, or kilometers I suppose, to the north.

Behind the man with the magazine is a patch of wet pavement, which brings up the problem of the currently slightly unpredictable weather: yes, it does feel like the beginning of spring, so soon after that snow – people are guessing at how to dress, sometimes guessing rather badly, they are wearing too much or not enough, but they know we are headed out of anything you would really need to call winter. The occasional flashes of shabbiness – do I merely interpret these things because I want for them to reflect current politics, the larger scope of a more brutal government, in a country where conservatives love to ignore the North – meaning here, of course? Am I reading loss and anxiety into the commercial world of this city because I expect it, am I overinterpreting? But in capitalism expectation produces results – the pure symbolism of money is emphasized in that relationship: however much you thought you had, if the news is bad and ideas of poverty and loss are floating around, suddenly you seem to have much less. Possibility evaporates, and we're left desperately husbanding what we have while worrying about some unknown but disastrous future....

Of course in such a context getting a Clarin's facial (what is Clarin's, anyway – has it existed for long? Certainly I interpret the company name as chic and high quality, though not from any real previous knowledge, but purely from their logo and location, which tells you something about the effects of advertising, and of a special glassed-in area of John Lewis... it occurs to me that I don't even know who John Lewis is, or was – he must have been a successful businessman, like the mustachioed Selfridge in the television series) becomes yet another disconnected shard of luxury, the fragments of the massive commercialism that always holds this country in its grip. The sensate, sensual, immediacy and pleasure of the facial, for N. that is of course, is partly a justification – far better than those chunks of glass sold as expensive crystal that my mother so disliked as gifts – yet another thing to dust, as she said each time. So: something transient but pleasurable, with a real though temporary impact on the body, which for me these days translates into 'real' value – unlike, interestingly enough, more permanent but immutable objects: luxury items that can't be consumed, which don't seem very interesting to give as gifts over the past few years.

The curve past the guitarist and past the man selling the street magazine has gotten me near to the long, high, channeled entrance ramp into the big shopping plaza, that plaza which will eventually lead to the point of focus at its center of perspective, by design of course, which is the square outlined by the outer corner entrance to John Lewis and, catty corner to that, the inner corner entrance to Fenwick's, so that I am assuming there will not be monstrous legions of mothers, grandmothers, mothers-in-law, surrogate mothers and hopeful mothers-to-be, all crowding around the area in front of the glassed-in spa-in-store with the Clarin's name displayed above it, so packed in that it is impossible to get past them, so demanding and focused on their needs related to Mother's Day (sorry, I meant to say, Mothering Sunday) that I will have to retreat, abashed, penitently aware that M. was right, and this was not the day to order the facial for N. –

but nearing the entrance also gets my path entangled with the paths that belong to a group of three or five (they seem such an enmeshed group that it's hard to notice exactly how many there are) tall young university athletes in various brightly colored plastics, the last of which passes near me, checking his phone with some unnamed anxiety. An immediate sense of their youth, of their focus on some things and not others: a sense of men, as men are – attractive but also raw, unfinished, not only because of their youth but because of the singleness of existence in the body: a sort of messy, sexualized innocence, a cluelessness about what they want and will do, about whether they can confidently know anything from an individual point of view, as they run and jump, and walk around in groups, or perhaps teams, or packs. Like any gay man I'll think, hello, what's this, and look, but after a moment my impression shifts to a slightly sad, slightly kindly pity, a hope that they – or the one I focused on last, the last one to pass me, that he – will figure out what they want, what they are, and not encounter too many decades or too much misery in the way towards it.

Time and the way it passes, we only perceive the three spatial directions but we estimate the measure of the fourth, of time, by its effects: and then we speak of time in spatial metaphors, emphasizing our inability to really see it. But we constantly see its effects, in someone passing us in the street, in the telescoped awareness of past and future, in the visionary split seconds that are embedded in each person we pass, that become quasi-visible as though on a series of blurry screens in the mind's eye: what will happen to each, what happened to get them here. What they want, what they hope, what we hope for them.

Of course if this expands too much one gets the kind of strange quality I used to read in those French 'new novels', when I was fascinated with Robbe-Grillet, with Butor, later with Perec – or, most hilariously, with the opening chapter of Nathalie Sarraute's The Planetarium, where an unnamed narrator goes on and on and on about the small round door she has had made, its wood and details, the custom-made silver knob, and the dent that the workmen have left near the center of that door, on their last day, just before they packed up and left. She looks at it and frets and worries and interprets and guesses for the first fifteen pages of the novel, an amazing inner monologue based on such tiny things, internal time stretching endlessly – and what influence would reading that have on me, what is there about awareness, or about detailed unawareness, that happens in following the threads of such thoughts?

But the door is swinging shut behind the last of the young athletes, and I reach out and grab it just in time, pulling it out a section of arc while moving into the space it outlines, going through the door into the shopping mall, where I will see about ordering the facial for N., for the birthday, for M2, for....

•••

14:29 = 2:29 pm

10 March 2018 = Saturday

Links

The six-hour essay exam is about to end: I am in the small, coolly organised office at the top of the building, looking down across the garden to the lake.

I have eaten my lunch at the table to my left, gone through my bottle of tea and had a bit of coffee, dozed at points – and then awakened and powered through the final two hours, bringing five pages into focus, with an admittedly bizarre coda relating my interpretation to gay culture....

•••

I am in Zürich, it is February, there is snow; later there will be rain.

I am taking my last two exams at the Jung-Institut; I talk to students I haven't seen in months, and newer ones I hardly know.

I wear the long black Italian cashmere coat that makes everything so... well, so central-European.

The small, wealthy city rises around me, organised, elegantly sensible, calm.

Everything travels through screens of memory, interpretation, and diffuse and changeable chains of meaning....

•••

On the train back into the city, I sit next to R., the director of programs – who, though she is always kind to the students, has a strong sense of right and wrong: as she is a doctor (and a psychiatrist, therefore several categories above me in prestige), she looks at situations with a professionally ruthless eye. They had a meeting with the 'other' Institute, much of which went well; but at the end a woman who had been central to the split years before said, weepily, she just couldn't sign any agreement between the institutes, her memories were too tragically painful.

R. told her: don't be ridiculous, aren't you an adult?

I agree, mentioning my own background with a university department split into three by the childish rage of a couple of old men....

Given the broad existential problem of aging people who cling to old neuroses, because they aren't sure of anything else: I agree with R.'s cool anger, something which also comes with age – the accurate judgment of those who still, with however few years may be left to their lives, make themselves crazy: because that becomes their remaining kind of self-indulgent fun....

•••

My picture exam is in the morning: just forty minutes which, after that six-hour stretch, fly by.

M. fans out a series of pictures; they were created electronically by a patient who made them on an iPad during long train trips.

Spread across the table, in date order, I've looked up the more idiomatic German words for those that have titles. We spend the forty minutes going through them with questions, answers, discussion – from the first strange picture of a playground incident, through jungle beasts, men in a pool, a boss with her face grayed out – to the last one, an absolutely relaxed painting of a man standing in a city park – the kind of thing that, among artists, represents pure seeing: just presence, no anxiety.

M. thanks me and sends me out; when they call me back in, M. is happy, though the second examiner wanted me to articulate the individual symbols in more detail; but I have passed, it is done.

•••

In the library, B. and I talk about jobs and life plans: he may have to leave Europe if his visa status isn't changed, and would his daughters stay here with their mother for two years, or go back with him – what if the family were split for two years? I am sympathetic at first – it is not a good time to be foreign, not anywhere – but then impatient from another angle, and we have a brief, chaotic argument: I find myself being severe (but when am I not) and he objects with Brasilian passion.

I wonder, afterwards, if we will continue our plans to write our theses together, or if that relationship is now damaged....

•••

An official email late at night: I have passed all my exams. Which fits my mood, which has a quality of – what? Of emptiness: after being overly focused for weeks or month, then the pressure falls away. Nothing seems terribly necessary or interesting at the moment: I see this mood in my students when they finish a major project.

It is after midnight, but the internet is always open. I buy several ebooks by Ralf König, the wonderful gay German comic artist, and read through the night about Konrad and Paul, who are changing: Paul, who has always been impatiently horny, is getting older, and doesn't like it.

Time, change, age. And funny: and sad.

•••

At the Coop, I buy some food – Swiss herbal tea, a loaf of good bread of course. And, why not, another chocolate bar.

•••

H. is teaching two seminars, a couple of days before he speaks at the public seminar on Saturday. He is famous, I am curious to meet him – he is distinctly older than I had realised, and he shakes slightly, but seems constantly and brilliantly in gear: it's no wonder his writing is so intelligent, he obviously never stops thinking.

And, when I have a broad question, he shifts from one register of meaning/psychology/science/belief to another; he can easily juggle a number of frames while maintaining a ruthless clarity of vision.

We talk for a while, and something clicks, a sense that we make sense to each other, that my questions connect to his answers – and an unspoken sense that we both hold ourselves slightly away from other people, from the ones who still think that they will live forever: we will gravitate towards each other across rooms for the next few days.

•••

I visit the library of the 'other' institute: ISAP, in central Zürich, has a small but modern library. I realise while going through their catalogue that this library does not have old materials – no surprise, as this institute has existed only since the foolish split into two institutes.

The new, young American librarian is friendly and cheerful, she helps me track down a few unexpected sources; and a British woman doing research in an alcove turns out to be a cousin of B., who teaches at my university, and who in fact joins our HIV patient group to talk to medical students every two weeks. I promise to say hello to him; all is friendly, and I tell them, as well as a tall Russian student with blonde hair and a flowing ochre dress, that they should visit 'our' library, that they would be welcome.

That evening I email 'our' librarian to make sure I haven't created a mess... but I haven't of course: so many years after the split, all the younger people are happy to work together.

Indeed, we merely roll our eyes when the old, dramatic stories come up....

•••

Does it make sense to get my hair cut here, in this large modern salon a couple of blocks from the Institut, in this posh suburb on the expensive side of the lake?... ah, what the hell, it's only money.

I am received graciously, given espresso and chocolate. The young man who takes charge of me has a hippie-ish look; he is friendly, and we share an oblique sense that we are both lonely and feel like talking on this winter afternoon, isolated in the middle of the busy salon. He lives in the city, in the area where the hookers and drugs are – when I recognise it I give a single bark of laughter and ask what that life is like. But he doesn't laugh, and says it is noisy and hard to sleep; I ask, as I tend to do these days, what he wants – what would make him happy – but he doesn't know, though he wrinkles his eyebrows in concentration.

It is a good haircut, I look dashing in my black coat. I thank him warmly as he walks me out into the winter air.

•••

The train back to the city, this time with W., the director of studies – he is German, a cheerfully muscly middle-aged dad with an argumentative school-boyish charm.

He has a PhD in philosophy, and always wants me to tell him what analysis is like, without quite being willing to engage with it himself: I end up giving hints and abstractions, but we always get along well, and we're both sorry when I come to my stop and step briskly into the rush-hour crowd.

•••

As I found two references to AIDS in Jungian writings at the ISAP library, I'm chasing them down at the Institut library, helped by the beautiful J. (no really, she is beautiful, a charming Hungarian mother of two who looks like a popular and respected actress accepting her second Academy nomination). An hour of fussing, copying, and looking for someone in the building who can access an antique CD-ROM ends in the realisation that both references are to articles that I already have.

Well, that's why you take down complete bibliographic information on everything at the point when you find it, isn't it?...

•••

I talk to V., who graduated last year – she is visiting, her life is changing; and she may come to England for a bit, and even come see me. There's a sense of connection: if some of the Jung-Institut students have given up some of their former relationships, we seem to now be a meta-family... which seems worth having.

•••

I get back to the Stadelhofen station as evening darkens; the stand with the macaronic sign for "HEISSE MARONI" is there – I've actually never bought roasted chestnuts in winter, I think it is time. The bag is warm, I eat a few of them – they are good, toasty, a bit messy; I roll up the last few and stuff them back into my bag.

•••

There is a fiercely intellectual seminar this weekend – various analysts and academics are taking on problems of meaning.

H. is there of course – this is why he came all the way from Chicago – and P., who used to teach here, who is an old friend. A panel of people who vary somewhat in wisdom – by the end of the two days I have clear favorites and non-favorites, of which the lowest ranked is the woman who said she didn't want to criticize Shamdasani – repeatedly.

I'll admit, it must be maddening to be a rival of Shamdasani's: he's incredibly prolific, detailed, precise, has dug up more about Jung than anyone since, well, ever – no wonder her wide smile has such a savage edge to it as she repeats that she doesn't want to criticize, in between harping repeatedly over a subtitle in the Red Book that she thinks is poorly translated....

No, she's not an analyst; and who knows if she's ever been in analysis.

But I'll admit, I find it hard to understand how someone can do years of research on psychoanalysis, and yet remain so vindictively, unwisely, publicly entangled in such spectacular, slow-burning rage....

•••

Monday. I spend the day in the hotel room, sleeping, recovering; later I chase some of the reference materials I found on the web.

That evening, I want to go to a good restaurant: Gamper is closed, so that's out – what else then?

Five-star, nearby... there is a place I've passed a number of times, assuming it was a small pub: a remarkably sophisticated, mildly experimental, tiny restaurant  on a quiet old street a couple of blocks from the lake. I am the only customer – it is the first day of schools vacation, a Monday, winter, snowy – so the streets are incredibly quiet.

Wystube Isebähnli is its name. They claim that's German, you know.

The waitress tells me all about everything: the menu is fixed, she picks a wine for me.... this is heaven.

•••

A bit later, it's gotten crowded – sort of: there are now also two talkative Swiss men enjoying themselves. But it's still pleasant; and the chef who owns the restaurant has gradually shifted from saying one friendly thing as he goes out the door to smoke a cigar – he's Turkish, an artist with opinions about everything – to sitting down and talking to me about food, about Zürich, about time, and about when he started smoking at age 17.

At which point he remembers what he's doing and goes out to smoke....

While he's outside, the waitress checks if I mind waiting for a while between courses; but I already read on their website that dinner reservations normally last two to three hours. So I'm fine.

•••

It is the last couple of days. B. has spoken to me again, and everything is fine – we are permitted to fight without losing our relationship; which I suppose speaks well for our training.

M. and B. and at least two others (do I remember everyone?) want to Skype weekly to discuss our theses – I've gradually been influenced by their determination to finish in time to graduate in July, and may actually push myself.

Finishing in 2018!... I like the idea... with a certain cautious skepticism: because I am skeptical, above all, about myself....

•••

The last Saturday, W. has a seminar of practical work where we role-play meeting with analysts. We are all fairly critical, and whoever is in the hot seat is generally fairly nervous – except R., who has just finished her degree, and who has some years of counseling training to boot.

I'm neither intimidated nor envious, why do you ask?...

When it is my turn, I am clumsy and self-conscious and repetitive and aggressive and incoherent; but I suppose it could be worse. I chalk it up to a learning experience: one I could afford to repeat.

•••

A bit tired, a bit sad: staying in this small business flat on the last night, packing, resting; wondering what time I should go to bed.

I am unenthusiastic about travel these days, even the relatively easy lug-the-suitcase-to-the-airport, two-short-flights-separated-by-Dutch-cheese-shopping, grab-a-taxi-home process that will take place tomorrow morning.

I realize, as I've been thinking all week: I may not come back to Zürich much more, not for long anyway; not after the degree is done....

•••

Sleep. Fragments of dreams rise, fall. And again sleep.

Fifth Continent, part deux

[A week in Cape Town, South Africa, at the end of July 2017... continued from part 1. Yes, I did take a long time to finish writing this!....]

•••

On Tuesday morning we are good and organised tourists: or really Amanda is, and I follow her, still coughing a bit. We are going to see the penguins! – did you know there are penguins near Cape Town? When you go down the peninsula on a long train ride – an astoundingly rattly train, in terrible condition, with windows so scratched it's almost impossible to see through them; but a train – you reach windy cliffs between blue-grey ocean and beautifully streaked skies, dramatic seascapes with small coastal towns that are far from everywhere.

Amanda wants to go into a shop that has local crafts and clothes because she wants an Asian robe of hers remade: she speaks with the tall, attractive black woman who does the dressmaking, and they compare various fabrics and styles – it is a discussion that is intensely engaged, two people who know what they are talking about and have interesting opinions about every facet of the decisions. The woman's face is remarkably warm and open; perhaps she seems much more patient, much more as though she is enjoying herself, because it is a small town: fewer people, fewer contacts – she isn't waiting for the conversation to be over.

We go to a local restaurant – a handsome young man, with dark curly Italian hair and endless wit, distracts me even more than I am usually distracted by such.

(A cluster of questions arise, ones that are embedded in different conversations across recent blog posts. Culturally – is it a reality that a certain percentage of men I meet are gay? I am always bad at this level of gaydar, when I am away from gay ghettoes; it always feels as though connections are filtered through a chaotic range of mistaken meanings.... Emotionally – are my responses embarrassing, or natural? I would be unhappy, but not entirely surprised, if it was the former. Physically – is it really impossible that any of them may actually be interested in me – I do know that the young enjoy flirting because it is in itself fun, and I agree with them: there doesn't have to be any real intent behind it, it's just eros. Socially – I'm not actually embarrassing, am I? Probably not; I rarely push these types of boundaries, in fact it's a part of my shadow that I assume I am going a bit too far at a point when others think I'm behaving normally. Psychoanalytically – yes, anima; yes I imagine, increasingly, possibilities of relationship: which is certainly not a bad thing. But also not necessarily a thing that would ever show up, that would ever have a result, in the real world. More defensively – on the other hand, A. has a hot boyfriend, and look at him....)

•••

We want to go see the penguins; the weather is windy, gusty, and we need a taxi or car. The handsome waiter calls another waiter, a lanky black guy with a mobile face – he tells him we want to go to the penguins, and they work out whether he can leave for a while, to take us there and back, etc. The white waiter is jokey and a bit pushy with the black one, who is not from South Africa: is this just lads teasing each other, or is there a problematic power imbalance? The black one takes the pushing with easy, smiling humor, and we go out to his car.

The gusty rain, blowing through a high sky that seems linked to the sea and the end of land, is intermittent as we arrive at the beach where the penguins live; a few cars here or there, people sitting in them probably waiting for a break in the weather. We have umbrellas and we proceed, intrepid Antarctic explorers (can I count this as another continent, my sixth?... okay I didn't really think so), and walk along the wooden pathways and the rocky beach, looking across a dramatically shaped map of sand, drizzle, dunes and puddles. We take some photos, see penguins at a distance – and, coming back to the car as the rainy wind rises again, our guide comes to show us two tiny penguins curled up in a nest near the path.

He drives us to the station, but there is heavy traffic, and there are no alternative routes: it is like some California towns, a coastal town that has one road with two opposing lanes – but he is unworried, and we make the train with a couple of minutes to spare.

•••

The train is more crowded in this direction, most seats are full: it is now late in the day, and people are going back and forth for various kinds of work. Amanda has a plan of her own: she will get out at the suburban station near where her hosts live and walk from there; I tell her that I can figure out the return from the city station to my hotel. When she leaves I am, however, uncertain: I am the only white person in the very crowded train – everyone looks tired and self-involved, there is no visible risk in anyone, but they are much more poorly dressed; I feel self-conscious about my leather jacket, the iPad in my bag... overlapping aspects of race, poverty, an unknown culture, and the many warnings we keep getting about crime, from the hotel staff, people in the street....

A long, slow train, many stops; crowded. Only in the last two or three stops do substantial numbers get off, as we reach the city – this is all stretched out: Cape Town is a city in parts, with suburbs and small towns scattered across a long stretch of coast, the density of people and buildings never high but always changing. The windows in the train's car are still so scratched and blurred that I can rarely read station signs – but it turns out that I am headed for the end of the line....

which is a seriously vast station, Kafkaesque in its cement immensity, an underground with very long distances between stairs or doors or signs – the large crowds know where they are going, when to split off and go up or across or turn around, but I don't, and it is not an easy negotiation. This is not a small, reasonable station posted with information, but a vast, long, multileveled space that seems both underground and above the city – levels don't appear to lead naturally to a ground floor: I am lost in three dimensions.

And yes, a bit watchful, a bit concerned.... simultaneously a sense that the crowds streaming towards many different stairways, escalators, levels, doors, exits, are preoccupied and safe – but also aware: one of the reasons there are so many guards, so many warnings, is the vast numbers of people coming from poorer, more desperate parts of the continent.

At least it seems that way... I walk up and down stairs, a block or two or so, retracing my steps a bit – I ask for help, take it, rethink, turn around – then rethink again... huge dark tunnel, up stairs to a vast hall that has proportions that suggest Mussolini or Piranesi, it is hard to get through the gate; a couple of turns along walkways and stairs, a vast outdoor plaza of vans selling food, thousands waiting patiently for rows of buses in parallel lines in a low-ceilinged, dark space that fades into distance, but I keep going down as much as possible and finally reach street level. More rows of buses, more people selling and walking one way or another – I finally find myself at the end of a long line of taxis, and trail along towards the front. The driver stutters, seems a bit fragmented, but he is pleasant, and I am very tired, and want to go back and collapse.

Which I do... wondering if there was actually anything at all to worry about... wondering if I should feel guilty for worrying... being aware that I have lived in a place that is remarkably safe for many years now; and I'm not sure I know what to do in other places.

•••

On Tuesday evening, I have dinner with Johann and his wife. Johann is a sociologist, recently retired from the university, who has been studying at the Jung-Institut with me – he finished two years ago, I think; this is his city, and it is a pleasure to have dinner with them. Wines are carefully chosen, the fish dishes vary each day depending on what is found at the market – this is a rather special restaurant, with a decor that is colourful, simple, but practical; because this place is for real foodies.

We talk about our lives and what we all do, which is especially interesting because Johann and his wife are both academics who are also engaged with psychoanalysis and counselling. She is great fun, with a slightly acerbic edge to her humour, though that may be because she has had a cough for three weeks that is clearly a relative to the cold that has taken me down.

Smart people, fun, who know how to enjoy their fish, and their wine.

I am a bit too open about feeling dismayed with being so careful in the streets, with the sense of vast and desperate poverty around the train station; with huge differences in prosperity and all the crime that seems to be attached to it. Johann's wife rebuts me with some astonishment: they have recently visited Portland and Seattle, and were startled by the homeless there. But it's different, I argue: though I know I haven't been to the West Coast for more than a decade, and I honestly don't know how different it all is any more.... 

I can't actually tell you the truth about any of this: with the various aspects of not quite having my feet on the ground – the colds and medications, the warnings, spending five or six days in a beautiful new city where I haven't really grounded myself in walking around – I am honestly confused: guarded, and groggy, and guilty for feeling guarded, still uncomfortable with the beggars, staying near the protecting men in the streets –

Barbara, who is tiny and delicate and tough-minded (I told her when we spoke later in summer that Amy Adams in Arrival had obviously studied her to create the role), tells me that she visited Johann last year; she is American, has traveled a great deal, and lives in Geneva. So. When she tells me she didn't believe the warnings about dangers, and she walked around for a week with no problem, I wonder if I've fallen for something... or projected something. But I don't know: was she just lucky? Stories from friends and locals are that robbery and kidnapping are serious and real....

so, what do you believe?

As with everything else these days: real conflict, real breakage, real splitting; and huge conversations that expand all these things. Where is the reality....

•••

Wednesday. I will finally meet one of the musical contacts given to me by Martin, who kindly outlined an entire plan of action – most of which has disintegrated in a cloud of cold medications and used tissues – but I will manage to do this one thing. Bongani, a famous gay composer who has lived all over, wrote an AIDS cantata at one point, and I should talk to him about it. I meet Bongani in a cafe in the harbor shopping centre, after getting only a little lost and a little late; he is talkative and funny and complicated, grandly opinionated and very quick, and a tiny bit competitive (think: Londoners or New Yorkers who are in the arts). I am not as well dressed, but we talk about everything in the hour we've got scheduled; after a while I evidently pass muster, because when he leaves for his lunch with friends he asks if I'd like to join them. I'm supposed to meet Amanda, but I message her and tell her to meet me at the restaurant.

The building where the lunch is – what is it? Near the waterfront, in a sort of disconnected area, is an unfinished new hotel built into something that was a large industrial building, a mill I think. An architect has played clever games with preserving and revising, ending up with a combination of heavy and functional, overlaid with witty and contemporary – it is interesting and strange, somewhere between the Wall in Game of Thrones and a trendy museum of contemporary design. We go up an elevator to the casually stylish eatery, again something that is between, this time between a café and an upscale bar – everyone is dressed better than I am (oh well).

The lunch (should I call it a luncheon? – no, it's too fabulously informal, too self-consciously easy-going) is... well, what is it? Lively, loud, artsy, fun – a balancing of style, success, real pretension, and real artistry. (I think of L. who hangs around in high-bred circles in New York – the famous and the rich, and the interface between the brilliant and those who can throw funds at them... she occasionally, kindly, maintains a friendship with me, a bit like greeting an old family dog who never amounted to much. She would know what to do in this situation.)

The undeniable leader of this table is a Cape Town woman of Greek extraction, recently divorced and obviously a social lion at an 'alternative' angle, who talks about everything – she is loud and hilarious and confrontative and great fun. And the guy... a handsome – no, a really handsome – okay how do I explain this... an Australian guy in his forties, a designer and artist who has done some stage design and decorating – and who is honestly the most charming man you have ever, ever, ever seen.

Really.

I mean... relaxed, easy, sexy, friendly (someone who is probably accustomed to people falling in love with him on a daily basis, and who handles it without a qualm). Warm smile, rangy fit body, graying hair and casual cowboy-ish clothes, engagingly enthusiastic about a vast number of projects, looks you in the eye with an open smile, and...

Perhaps you had to be there.

Yeah, okay, I did indeed babble. Some. Or a little more than some. I mean... honestly, what can you expect. Clearly at this point I'm out of my league, though I manage to engage in a bit of intellectual fencing and world travel and serious topics and...

Yes I know that doesn't necessarily...

Yes, of course. I'm calming down now.

•••

On the way to this lunch, I did indeed text Amanda that we were changing our destination. She finally joins us as we order lunch, having gone out of her way – a bit, we haven't gone terribly far, but getting phone messages has been difficult on the city's system. Amanda is clearly surprised at the substantial change of tone and energy from the way she and I have talked privately – and at points she seems a bit bored, a bit disaffected, something I haven't seen in her before; if these people are entertaining and self-consciously funny (and, don't forget, one of them is intensely attractive), they are also a bit – perhaps the word next to the word I'm looking for is – self-aware....

I am of course so infatuated that I ignore her boredom; she does engage after a bit, and unexpectedly enters the conversation to assertively clarify an opinion, and her reasons for feeling that way. With me Amanda has been gentle, and she is obviously an introvert, but it is inspiring, and a bit instructive, to have her shift modes to become briskly strong-minded, unconcerned about her reception by this chic trio.

The handsome Australian leaves for another engagement, and I manage not to fall off my chair or run after him. Bongani and I explain some of our musical discussions to the Greek lioness, and I explain my background with HIV/AIDS (I must admit I do that way too often, people are probably a bit put off by it but they never show that of course...). We finish lunch, the chatter continues... and finally we all split up, loudly and friendlily going off in different directions, with much explanation, discussion, advice, and multiple versions of good-bye.

When we are alone, I apologize to Amanda for derailing her a bit, but she is fine now – and we walk out into the city for another couple of hours, before going back to our respective homes.

•••

It has been a pleasure to get rid of the awful cold I've had since my arrival, over the past twenty-four or thirty-six hours or so.

So I notice that I am now starting to have yet another cold: a different one – second of two, winter in South Africa, misery and tissues and medications and snorting.

And, well: there you are then....

•••

The final evening: I have packed, I have paid my hotel bill – I have, I think, organized absolutely everything. I'm not looking forward to the flight, but I've done my best to minimise its difficulty. Clearly I've already left Cape Town, some hours before I actually go, but –

Amanda is having dinner at a Thai restaurant in the suburbs, with the family she's staying with; it's on the way to the airport, why don't I join them?

I take a taxi through several very different landscapes, city, suburb, near-countryside, my fully packed suitcase absolutely ready for my exit, and heavy; the restaurant is entered by a peculiarly shaped door, one wedged into the corner of a block: again there is the Cape Town combination of easy-going, interesting, pleasant, and a bit ramshackle –

But, despite my aggressive preparation and focus on the long night flight ahead of me, this is not merely a transitional moment on the way home: because this family is startlingly interesting, startlingly kind.

I know we don't often admit this, but let's face it: there are people who are far more alive than others. We may have friends and acquaintances, and people we meet briefly, all over the world, all kinds of people from all kinds of circumstances, but –

some of them unquestionably have more resonance, more depth – there is more time and awareness, more life around them than there is around other people.

And this family – there are twelve or fourteen people, several overlapping generations – is honestly fascinating: even a brief hour or so in a corner restaurant heightens, brightens, deepens the future and hope and connection.

I am sat next to the grandmother, across from Amanda – her old friend and her husband are on my right, the youngsters across, the aunts at the other end of the table. Some are visibly distinctive – the adolescents have intermittently sullen faces and mildly rebellious clothing, but even they show bursts of enthusiasm and remain connected, and happy under the teen disaffection. Grandmother, who radiates a patient authority built on what looks like a good working relationship between herself and Time, is actually a Jungian analyst who brought analysis to Cape Town decades ago – she is calm, clear, fascinating: she only asks the kinds of questions that matter.

(I think of my one encounter, about thirty years ago now, with Paul Monette, when Steve Schulte sent me to him to get a document signed in the hills above Hollywood: as I left his office Schulte warned me, 'he has no small talk' – and indeed, when I arrived, Monette immediately plunged into asking me what I wanted to do with my life, in the pale southern California sunshine of a veranda overlooking the city. Shouldn't all conversations be like that? – could we try to stay awake every day? – honestly, I wish I could...)

And Amanda's school friend is lovely and intelligent, her husband cheerful, the kids and aunts and brothers alive, all bursting with what they're going to do next. There's a clear continuity between Amanda's calm awareness and these old friends and their relatives – life creates life, I suppose.

But my taxi has arrived, and I am going back to the airport.... I hug Amanda, say an earnestly regretful farewell to this large family that I met just an hour before, and disappear into the rainy night.

•••

Such real people, such a living place: as I've already said, I can see how easy it is to fall in love here.

But winter, cold, disorientation – they pull the city back, and it fades into mist and past.

•••

The flight home is, on the one hand, not bad – on the other, my digestion, my side effects and pains, cannot really manage these long stretches. It's better than the trip out, but still....

A decision building over the past few days crystallizes on the plane: I won't travel any more, not these big trips, not for fun or work; when I finish the AIDS research grant application that I was supposed to finish a month earlier, I'll yank out the planned travel expenses – I just can't do these things at this point in my age, my health, it's asking too much.

•••

Though, of course, I have had a lot of analysis by now: and I realize that I frequently say that things are over, that I will do this or that thing no more, and that I don't regret it.

Writing a few months later, I remember this assertion and still take it seriously. Except....

I hear myself say these things and, as though I were an analysand in the other chair, in that aha! moment of intuition that brings a large and diffuse pattern to light, I see that this promise is so grandly, so tragically assertive exactly because it isn't quite real: and that's very true of me, isn't it – throughout my life, and especially in the past two years, it is a familiar pattern for me – one probably obvious to those who know me well, but largely something I don't see, can't see: I keep giving things up, without really wanting, really planning, to give them up....

Now there's a pattern: I always say the same things, and my friends don't quite believe me, and at some level, heretofore invisible to me, I don't believe myself either.

I think of the Fisher King....

•••

Well: we shall see. Meanwhile I am home, with no plans to travel again.

I think, of course, that the trip was a disappointment, that it was difficult, and I did so little....

•••

Then I reread what happened, because I've written it all down and it's there to see: and I think – maybe I am wrong, yet again.

Und Zürich wieder

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....

Pornopolitical

I keep noticing that, over the past few months, I post more pictures of hot guys on Facebook. I am more frank about commenting on attractive men, including plausibly non-gay ones. I am blunter, and more direct...

On the one hand, yes, I'm thinking about not being alone, and trying to reconnect with some expectations of being in a relationship again – even if only in imagination – even at sixty years, and even when I am not exactly underweight, or over-muscled. So there's a falling into eroticism, to the extent that an old guy like me is actually capable of that – and thus a carelessness about what others think: I do indeed know that Facebook is a public forum with many different people on it, and that some of my friends and acquaintances are less comfortable with pictures of guys with their shirts off than others.

(Of course I also know that it's possible to unfollow someone while still remaining a friend – and while I'm confessing things: for some years I've maintained a special category called 'Acquaintances' – it's where I put people whom I do know, but whose posts are.... hmm. What may I call them. A bit aggressive, a bit crazy, a bit tragic, or a bit too shatteringly winsome to encounter before I've had my morning green tea. And probably there are many whom I know and hold dear who feel the same about my posts – which is fine, so long as I never find out about it.)

(I have had one relative – the most ardently pro-Trump – defriend me; when that happened I threw up my hands in disgust – disgust with them, not the situation: because making détentes no longer seems particularly interesting to me. I'm willing to ignore that relationship for however many decades it takes to recover.)

But it feels as though, since Orlando, since Brexit, since Trump – since a dark wave of oppressive aggression rose above our heads, a kind of control desperate to return to a past that never actually existed – posting pictures of hot guys on Facebook has become... POLITICAL.

I didn't say it was high-minded, exactly. But it is political. Kind of.

It's like the wilder drag queens, the Theatre of the Ridiculous, and various assertively sexual creative works by gay men, by women, by lesbians and transgender people and others: yes it may seem a bit much, and I know that not everyone will be comfortable with everything. (I mean, really: insisting that everyone must accept every image and practice is pure political ideology – sexuality is by its nature complex, and always has an essentially private facet: there would be something wrong, and also quite boring, if everyone were thoroughly comfortable with everything.)

So, I know it's a bit obnoxious, a bit heavy-handed. I know some people don't really want their daughters stumbling over such images on Facebook – and I do understand, though I'm not a parent, that the process of growing up has become uncomfortably complex in an internet culture, and I do respect people's anxieties.

But, just as I feel colder and more ruthless, more impatient, with this current remarkably stupid world, as May and Trump and Putin and the rest try to make fools, or slaves, of all of us – so I am also a bit impatient, a bit bored, with any idea of censoring myself for politeness' sake. Even for my friends –

because, as theorists have noted in the past: straights seem to have no idea how much obnoxious heterosexuality they fling at us every day –

and if all those Other Sides aren't going to take better care of us anyway – then why the hell should we try to take any kind of care of them?..........

Gastronomic, hypothetic, erotic

Barcelona...

So, history: frequently, between about 2003-4 and 2008-9, Susan and Rob and I spent some time each summer in Barcelona, or Sitges, which is nearby enough. Changing circumstances, the deaths of Chris and then Dennis, and my increasing preoccupations in Zürich broke that pattern...

And: a few years ago, Susan gave a seminar at the Barcelona music conservatory, and said they were really interested in her work – and that I should contact them. I sent a couple of emails – can we set up an Erasmus exchange? – but no answer. I assumed, well, you know: a large conservatory, attitudes between conservatories and universities – they probably aren't interested.

Then, a couple of months ago, the Barcelona conservatory emailed me out of the blue: they had heard of our department (ha! not because I had already told them about us, of course) and wanted to set up an exchange. Some fussing around, G. wanted to go in my place, I semi-gracefully capitulated; then he was too busy – so, fine: I get to go to lovely, strange, warm Barcelona again, to set up an ongoing relationship... that is intended to support going back and forth fairly frequently.

Uh, I mean, for the whole department, I mean... not just, like, for me. You knew that, didn't you?...

•••

Just after Easter is acceptable timing for them. I tell Norma about it, and she wants to go – so we set up an entire week, over Easter vacation. (Yes-I-know-don't-visit-a-Catholic-country-around-major-church-holidays... but that was when we could go; and it ended up being fine.)

Four days of Norma and I – some fantastic/exotic/complicated restaurants, including some modernist cuisine, plus its current avatar of Catalan-Japanese fusion. Various wonderful meals – at points it was as though that was the main point in being here (my fault, I think).

That first night, a series of small plates (Norma photographed the complicated menu) one after another – fifteen courses, I think? by a frantically energetic bunch of young guys that included some Adriá students.

A later evening, a plain modern café two blocks from the apartment – young people, trendy – great food: and I mean really great food. Small neo-tacos, experimental combinations by someone who really knows what they're doing. And, at the next table, two handsome, bearded Spanish guys talking energetically, kissing at intervals – and this isn't even the gay neighbourhood.

Two dud meals, which isn't too bad. Please read online reviews before going in.

Much architecture, much Gaudí. Parc Guëll was the high point – I'd never gone into the cordoned-off central area; Norma ordered the tickets, which was smart. Much calmer, much more beautiful – that park really works if you can experience it as a park, some place calm and quiet, without all the masses of tourists.

Good Friday!... parades; men and boys in black robes, like the Inquisition come to town. With mockups (I hope they were mockups) of flagellation; statues of Christ – one gaunt and bleeding, another more reservedly covered with a purple robe. A tiny, pale girl in a nun-like outfit, with a tragically pale cast to her face her eyes a bit sunken – she was part of one of the school group parades, and looked a bit too much the part of the suffering believer for my entire comfort. She caught Norma's eye and gave her a small card...

Walking, the harbor... some points where I got peevish with the walking; Norma is thoroughly energetic and likes walking. Well, I got better, after a while.

•••

Could I live here?... I really wanted to, seven or eight years ago. Then I thought: no, that probably won't work – I can't afford it; then with the rise in planning a late career as a psychoanalyst, the mildly anxious sense of the restrictions and qualifications on working in Spain (as in Italy), the number of Jungians in Barcelona (about a hundred?), and how long would it take for me to work out the language...

But I'm thinking about it again. I know, Bologna: but honestly this city is larger, more fantastic. I probably lose some clout by having a Sicilian name, which makes me just another foreigner in a city full of them. But I think it wouldn't be hard to work in English; and perhaps I could occasionally work in German or French, and eventually polish up some Catalan or Castilian... the psychoanalyst from another country, with a heavy accent: it's been done before.

Reading Claudia Roden and Zafón, Robert Hughes, Michener... all on Barcelona, on Spain. Rediscovering my desire to be here... and watching closely to see the good and bad points: a big, gorgeous city; shabby/scruffy in spots; lively, artistic in others; too many tourists; good weather, good food...

El Raval is much too scruffy. The Barrí Gotic is increasingly touristy. El Born – hmm, used to seem a bit boring, but now... except for the smell of urine on too many corners. The Eixample? Maybe, some part of it that's not too massive....

I do still like the idea.

•••

Then my plane home is canceled. Laurie and her family have no trouble getting home to southern England on the same day – but I don't have their luck: planes are full, I have to stay three more days.

And cancel analysands, appointments, students... move a class back a week...

Sergio, whose apartment we are using, has to come back – but fortunately we like each other, we share the apartment. Slightly more complicated are his old girlfriend, and then his new one – the first takes me as part of the family, the second is cooler, French, and clearly would prefer the apartment to herself.

But Sergio likes me, we manage. All a bit chaotic...

•••

On the last night: a small, funky restaurant on the quiet, dark side of El Born, with surprisingly good food; a charming young waiter, who keeps catching my eye and smiling, and laughing, as though slightly self-conscious; and says at the end, Adéu!...

So: I keep seeing guys, and it is erotic. Not exactly sexual, but instantly passionate, sensual: a sense of possibilities, which rarely appears in Newcastle.

Now, at my age (yes, Virginia, I am 58) it may seem a bit graceless – tacky? – to go on and on, especially as these men are often distinctly younger than I am. (I don't put much cachet on youth – it is fortunate that I generally find 20-year-old men uninteresting; which easily keeps me out of trouble on a university campus. Unlike some people I have heard tell of.)

Perhaps it's just that younger men are, themselves, more on the lookout....

But I don't want to act like Goytisolo. Or Capote or Genet, or (please, no) Burroughs. No tacky slavering over the young and handsome.

Perhaps I can be like Cavafy – of course his endless wistfulness does seem a bit pathetic after a while; and so many of the men he is watching have such disastrous lives ahead of them....

•••

But it is the last day. I could live here, I think. (Let's check those regulations again.) And it is pleasant to see the buildings, the sun, the food – the men....

Bologna - Train - Circeo

Five days in Bologna; with a vague idea of possibly living here some day...

Or, well, perhaps not.

There is a great deal of beauty in this town: the buildings, the food; the charming kindness of the two men who run the bed and breakfast that was suggested by some London friends. Of course there are also the graffiti, the posters... whole sections of the city where it feels as though the younger (student, or not necessarily so?) population includes a lot of people who think scrawling on walls is an expression of individuality – rather than conformity....

Hmm, I do sound like a grumpy old git, don't I.

Two truly extraordinary meals, the kind that make you wonder why you put up with some of the crap you eat in other countries: and there would have been more such meals in Bologna La Grassa, if I hadn't had some stomach problems (I have to watch it with coffee, and I'm still a bit fragile as a result, as I was a couple of months ago – I must develop the ability to refuse an espresso, even in Italy, even in the morning, even after a fine meal).

Though when I take a turn to the right off the main shopping streets, I discover a considerably more beautiful, fresher neighborhood, with wonderful old buildings in warm colors, small parks... what about if I did move here, and put together an analytic practice? A lot of this city is truly beautiful, in a calm and pleasant way.

But, with all the ups and downs, the sense that I may be not giving it enough of a chance – it feels a bit small – perhaps too small. I know about the intersecting links among various northern Italian cities, I know about the famous university, but... this might be just a more charming version of the problem of living in a place that isn't really mine, and isn't really big enough to have big surprises, unexpected events of the kind that I miss from the years in SF, LA, Berlin. And why should I go through all the trouble and expense of moving to a place like that?

I am of, at least, two minds... and think of Sara's dream about the two of us, which seemed to symbolically reflect our separate wishes to live in another country; and of Thomas' desire to live in Italy... and my own desire:

which may be, above all, to know just what it is that I want.

•••

A train from Bologna to Rome – I am braced for chaos and discomfort, but instead am amazed by a fast, clean, pleasant, air-conditioned (that bit is important) journey. At one point I realize I am not sure of my next train connection, and ask the businessman sitting next to me, who is using his iPad on the interwebs, how to figure that connection out – he is very kind and gives me the departure time, neatly locating it online. I thank him with gratitude...

Unfortunately the second train, the one that I am transferred to, is like an exaggerated satire on a horrible Italian train from the 1960s: ancient and dilapidated, minor things broken, full to bursting with sweating people – I stand in overwhelming heat, between the door and the toilet for an hour, watching my annoyingly heavy bag....

At this point, and yes I do realize we're talking about decisions based on absurdly brief chance experiences, any desire to live in Italy is evaporating fast.

•••

Circeo. Unless it's called San Felice Circeo – that doesn't seem quite clear: I think probably the little town at the tip of the peninsula, one along the long coast between Rome and Naples, is what is called San Felice Circeo – and Circeo is the area as a whole. Or maybe not, it doesn't seem to be terribly important.

A small town, a beautiful, indulgent hotel – with the most charmingly friendly front desk clerk imaginable (yes, he was gorgeous, I should have managed to sneak a picture, what else is an iPhone for?). Thomas drives us down from the dusty station and the hideous train to a charming paradise, and I am increasingly ready to forgive all. (Or, at least: to forgive the desk clerk.)

This is designed for people who are well off, I think: though perhaps the town has 'regular' people in it – but the villas in the hills, the gracefully curving white and blue houses designed by Alessandra's grandfather, are clearly designed for an upper-class income. The house where we are holding the conference is relaxedly beautiful, like a dream of a beach house – simple and casual in some ways, rounded corners and small staircases like a ship, but also absolutely complete, such that you could really live here.

And, of course, I am thinking of really living here... okay well not here, not in this house or its kin, that would be no more likely than living on the moon.

•••

But it is Thomas who makes sure that I see the town, on our last day: and it is truly amazing – you walk under a large arch, and are on a long piazza paved with cobblestones, entirely surrounded by houses that are about two or three stories high; warm brown to yellow stone, old fountains, children playing up and down the street. No cars: people are walking along and talking, they go into and out of the large and gratifyingly air-conditioned bar, which serves espresso and gelato all day; some shops, a lot of living spaces. The wide band of gold-grey stone rolls down towards the ocean...

Yes, I could most certainly live here, there is no doubt about it.

Thomas says: and there are places like this all over Italy. We have to see them...

In your car, perhaps, I say.

He says, let's do it.

And we walk up and down, with Alessandra, with my new friend the brilliant and witty Parisian Marie-Hélène and her cheerfully rough-edged Corsican brother, with Giovanni, with the serious young filmmaker Ludo, with my other new friend the down-to-earth American Dianna and her Italian husband, and with the others...

until we have to go back to the car, and leave paradise.

Mid–

Solstice night, nadir of the year. In the middle of the long night: the point where our day goes down to seven hours, then the direction reverses and the day rapidly lengthens...

This winter I seem to be waking in the middle of the night – not a new thing: since my 2009 stroke I generally need to go pee around 3-4 a.m. on any given night. (A small Science Fact for you: when older people need to get up to urinate at night, it is not because of, say, any weakness in their waterworks – it is actually the deterioration of a minor brain function: we are designed such that when we sleep, kidney function slows way down so we can sleep through the night. But it's not a strong evolutionary need, so that particular mini-module out of the various brain functions breaks fairly easily when we get older; for me it happened quite abruptly in the stroke.)

And I'm accustomed to that... but this is a bit different: I am awake a bit longer, happy to read or open a window, walk around the apartment a bit. (Unlike many northern Brits, I don't turn the heating off at night – yes yes don't nag me, I know that's more expensive and less green... but I can't stand the cold.)

And since I read – somewhere, recently – that, in the eighteenth century and before in Europe, it was perfectly normal for a night's sleep to be broken in two – that the northern nights tended to be 3-4 hours, wake, light a candle and read or sit, then back to sleep again until morning – I now feel pleasantly justified.

Of course, as you will no doubt remind me, I should be able to do what I like without reference to history, science, fact. But I am so made that I am always fairly beholden to concepts...

I think that, in this case, my body is somewhat relieved that my mind now has a reasonable justification for this habit; and that I can comfortably enjoy being up for an hour or so, without feeling as though I've ruined my sleep or the next day or anything similar. A pleasant way of making the winter less onerous.

The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories: among all the Xmas stuff, an interesting reminder that a proper Victorian Christmas always had its ghost stories, as important or more important than carols and trees. A wonderful story by Gaskell – so well written that now I want to read more of her.

Deep night, the cold, the dark: and a good ghost story....

South

... a conference in New Orleans.

On an airplane, headed from northern England, via Amsterdam and Atlanta, to the real heart of the very South.

Unfortunately, I keep being surprised at the sloppy, smelly American passengers in my last couple of air trips to the States – and they always seem to be so loud, too; and they take up so much room – pushing bags aside for overstuffed suitcases that obviously should have been checked, on flights where the service is slovenly, offhand and obviously depressed.

Of course, I know that I am too loud, for the northern English city where I live, and often for the norm in various cities across Europe; D., for instance, although we are friends and colleagues, often expresses barely covert (really, virtually passive-aggressive) irritation that I don't shut up more, or at least tone it down a bit. But perhaps I'm not used to hearing American volume en masse any more.

On the plane, they show a couple of films of exaggeratedly heterosexual American life – lots of families and children and relationships, and grandmothers and sons and wives, and such. Common denominator, I suppose.

I am, as it happens, reading Erikson's book on child development in preparation for my Zürich exams next summer... And some combination of all this makes me wonder: if many human lives, and many problems, are characterized by the dense knotting of several levels of positive and negative meaning between people, distributed across complex events and life stages – then can we say that I have unfortunately had a later life characterized somewhat differently – by unraveling, by a loss of meaning?

People dying; moving too far away from knots of lovers, friends, family... there is a sense of dissipation: by which I don't mean drinking and such, but simply the process, as a gas dissipates into thin air. As though the sorrows and confusions of my life have ended up lying a bit too far from their original objects, drifting tenuously through empty spaces – or perhaps it is like unraveling strands of rope. It becomes possible to see what happened in the past, but the results are a bit abstract – this is all like looking back over a story, and polishing details, when you already know the ending... or, perhaps, the lack thereof.

***

But there are a lot of rapidly shifting feelings and moods during this trip of nearly a week – so many changes, places, people: at first I was a bit shell-shocked, partly by that long plane trip. (How did I manage to go from northern England to New Orleans via three planes – eighteen hours total in one direction, then twenty-two in the other? It honestly seemed worse than those old trips to Hong Kong, which were at times twenty-seven hours long... but back then the airline was much pleasanter, the attendants happier and more helpful, and there was more space.) On the first day or two there was a lot of wondering just what I was doing at this conference – nobody seemed to remember me, nobody seemed to want to talk. Fortunately, this changed a great deal during the conference, and I was no longer another forgotten foreigner by the end.

And it is the kind of city where you can walk around and look at houses, and think: Ah, I wish that I could live here... in the French Quarter, the small buildings have an aliveness that you could imagine as part of a beloved home. In every street, you change your mind: no, I would rather live there...

***

In any case, New Orleans is enormous fun – in a frankly rather rough, often visibly poor kind of way. But they truly do know how to enjoy their lives: the Discworld book Witches Abroad is a blithe parody of a trip that Pratchett must have taken to New Orleans... including the wonderful food that is made out of anything (scrapings from the bottom of the bay, or rivers), but which has a real sensual magic to it. A wonderful scene in a market, where Nanny Ogg meets one of the local witches – who has a big pot of gumbo sitting outside her tent, a plate next to it for coins, and that plate is overflowing: Nanny Ogg tries the gumbo, and says: so, they pay you whatever they think it’s worth? The witch says yes, they do... and Nanny Ogg says, tentatively, and you don’t get loaded down with a lot of diamonds, and gold, and such?...

Long lunches and dinners, astoundingly rich food – and, most unexpectedly, the people are all so sweet and charming: as you would expect, the many tourists are mildly obnoxious (it is like Amsterdam or San Francisco, where tourists expect to have raunchy fun they wouldn’t ever have at home, and therefore behave accordingly – unfortunately, as when we had to convince German tourists in San Francisco not to piss on the street corners); but everyone I meet who actually lives in New Orleans seems truly civilized, charming, and friendly. And they flirt, also charmingly, which is always good for an aging ego. (The most unexpected case of this was the hotel clerk in his late twenties who said, So, young man, how can I help you?... I did snort in amusement.)

Best meals? There were a number of them, over six days – a rough-edged, loud diner full of tourists that Dan chose, because he had heard that the ‘blackened oysters’ were not to be missed. And he was right: a wonderful dinner of oysters roasted with spices on top – we devoured them, overseen benevolently by the bleached-blonde biker-chick waitress (she clearly missed getting to have a cigarette hanging off her lip), and then headed out into a Halloween night. Bourbon Street was busy and crazy, in a hectic and overcrowded way – there were a number of truly amazing costumes, with astounding craftsmanship; but it was even better at the eastern end of the French Quarter, in the trendy/scruffy/young/gay neighborhood, where Dan took a lot of pictures. We told people how good their costumes were, too – a blonde woman who had drunk so much that she was slurring her speech, an elegantly dressed Colombian man with painted-on scars and bruises (I forget what he was supposed to be, but I think Dan recognized the reference).

A number of times I went to the wittily modern/traditional mix in the café Green Goddess – possibly too often, given how many other restaurants were available – five or six meals there? Well, it was nearby, and it was (though you are getting sick of strong comparatives) really, really good. By the second time, the waitresses knew me, both the gentle dark-haired studious one and the brasher, rougher blonde one (a youthful, possibly lesbian, version of that biker chick). I went there with Mitchell, Susan, Rob – the food was good enough to make Rob happy (always a tricky negotiation, so it’s lucky that went well) and it was outdoors, which on most days was wonderful. Because it is in a street that has no cars, the tables merely face another set of charming houses and restaurants, painted in pastels and with flower baskets here and there – a good place to spend some time; I think Susan and I sat around for six or seven hours one night, joined for part of the time by others.

***

Bookstores ranged from excellent to scruffy, but they all exhibited a real affection and passion for books, used and exotic and bizarre. I went back to one of them several times, a large, dark space filled with shelves; the pleasantly talkative proprietor looked through my list of books-to-find-someday, and managed to pick five or six off scattered shelves. It was a pleasure when he complimented me on the list, which was evidently fairly esoteric and interesting – there were bursts of tourists asking for more standard current hits, and he dealt with them quickly and casually. I did find Beerbohm (although I still can’t ever find an affordable copy of that small multi-volume set of the collected essays – perhaps I never will), an older edition of Katherine Mansfield’s diaries (I was a bit uncertain about this one, as there is now a completely revised edition – but on the other hand, I’ll probably never get a chance to compare versions next to each other, so I bought it); and a book on Anne Rice, which seemed a particularly guilty pleasure in what used to be her city (I didn’t quite feel I could read it until I came home, as I would look like – yes, horrors – a tourist).

There was also a gay used bookstore in the scruffy-trendy neighborhood – but the exceptionally casual (apparently demi-stoned) proprietor left the place closed with all the lights on, then later had problems with the electricity going off, then finally let me look through a mostly dark bookstore. My sense was: a lot of uninteresting junk, plus some unexpected knockoffs… but it was too dark to know much by the end of that visit.

Incidentally, you could tell from the guidebooks – even the conservative ones: Frommer's was surprisingly dramatic – that the writers from New Orleans were still deeply angry, deeply grieved, over Hurricane Katrina. There is a lot of extraordinary writing that reflects such a lot of sorrow and pride – that they survived, that they weren't helped more, that they are fighting their way back up, inch by inch... the passion behind this is remarkable.

Dinner with James (one of Mitchell's students, therefore instant 'family') on the last night, back in the trendy neighborhood: excellent food, a number of different dishes – a bar/restaurant with a playful interface between those carnally intense seafood dishes that are always so good here, and subtle postmodern variations that didn’t ruin them. Most surprising was the band – a pianist, trumpeter, and an oval-faced young singer, doing 30s jazz; they were absolutely excellent (jazz as casually played on the street in New Orleans is far more remarkable than the most skillful stage performances elsewhere – it is the expert local language). The singer really caught my ear: you know how those old recordings have particular overtones, a quality I had always ascribed to the technology – missing spectra, or amplified ones. She was recreating that with her own voice – which raised the interesting question: when it originally appeared, was that quality a matter of training, or of technology? Probably an unanswerable question now – if the recording is all that is left, how can you know what the sound was before it was recorded? A great musical/culinary experience, at any rate (and a fairly powerful existential/Jungian discussion with James that came into sharper focus after we walked the length of the French Quarter to get back and sit in the big, brightly-lit hotel lobby, as people watched football, interspersed with bulletins on the election).

The last morning, I had time to go to an old-fashioned Southern-style café with tables outdoors under the trees, and a huge buffet designed for tourists. The waiter was a sort of elderly black character actor, enjoying his professional role and playing with it – again we became friends during the brunch, and he started to make recommendations and steer my choices. At the next table was a family from Atlanta, with a big, loud father who kept talking about Romney and the election – and was pushing the waiters around in a way that was just a hair away from outright racism. My waiter started to get a distinctly and visibly sour expression: we exchanged looks of sympathy, but when I commiserated he said: I am a professional...

I had to leave a bit too quickly because it was getting to be time to go to the airport; but it was still a striking experience.

***

My paper was surprisingly successful – I was nervous during it: parts seemed to me too dry, too lifeless; and I realized during the course of it that, because there were so many things to explain about each slide, my examples and text were both far too long. But I managed to skip over two pages smoothly, without anyone noticing; and I cut both of my later examples short – rather unfortunate that the audio didn’t fade out evenly, but oh well, no one seemed to be too upset.

Most excitingly: it seemed as though that people thought it was really beautiful, which is what was intended. I keep feeling as though much of my writing in the last decade has perhaps become academically rather sketchy, casual – but it does tell stories, and reach points that seem to me more important than merely technical detail. And in this case it was successful: working through Derek Jarman’s last films, even with several pages and examples missing, in order to come to some more sympathetic understanding of his point of view in the face of death, actually came across...

I may not be the most useful of musicologists: but at least I seem to be talking about things that people find actually interesting.

***

And there was time spent with Mitchell, after too many years (he is always taller than I remember him, as we usually only talk on the phone these days); and with Fred – who is now happy with a sweet-tempered boyfriend. And a ridiculously brief encounter with Andrew, absolutely in passing – I think we only exchanged quips with no greetings. And many other friends and acquaintances… and no, I didn’t do a perfect job of remembering people's names, but I can’t do that even at home, so you can’t expect much at a large conference.

And the trip home, as bad as the flight out – and the background anxiety over the election – I didn’t hear that the Crazy Psycho Brutal Boss had lost until I got home, geographically far from the loony politics of modern America; and then that was a pleasant relief. Late evening after many hours, a frigid apartment because the heating had been off – but it was pleasant to lay on the couch, turn on all the heat I could find, and drag together some food from my own kitchen.

I do enjoy the best parts of travel, but as I age I have become quite a homebody…

***

Ah, but the food – and the people and the streets and the houses – of sensual, relaxed, slightly crazy New Orleans.

Lingue

A good day at the Jung-Institut – the middle one of three hot days. Tess's writing seminar was very good – why in fact doesn't she do this for four hours a day for three weeks? that would work – and when people chose to read their work it included a man with a beautiful voice in Portuguese, a woman in Hungarian, and Spanish, Korean... some people translated, some preferred not to. And it honestly didn't matter: the sense of a beautiful and personal memory was arresting in each case.

And then another party with the Italians, plus a bunch of others: great fun. An outdoor barbecue – there's nothing like a mitteleuropäische butcher's to give you a lot of stuff to put on the grill – and people added a lot of their own touches right up to the chocolate, and we were there from seven until midnight (at which point I dragged Thomas away from Giovanni who was protesting that he was just about to put on more coffee, because, as I severely said, I'm old and tired and have a class in the morning).

The theme of languages kept drifting through the party, though in this group it was much more chaotic, more languages being used, more people having only certain languages and not others. A funny but rather smart-mouthed young Swiss girl told me what she thought of Americans who couldn't speak anything but English, to which I replied: so, exactly how good is your Romansh?...

That stopped her momentarily, enough for us to get talking a bit more friendlily about everything. It was interesting, in fact, when she noted that some of us were studying at the Jung-Institut; she said, á propos of nothing, well, I'm busy and perfectly satisfied and have lots of friends and I like Zürich and I like the idea of my work, but I am a little bored it's true. I told her to start keeping a notebook and writing – well, whatever seemed to come up...

When I finally got home, I was digging through my bag looking for my room key, past the two double bags of Weißwurst that they'd given me (left over from the barbecue), and I thought: thank God I'm not a Freudian, I'd never get through this door.