October 20, 2021:
"Give me remorse"
she says, hair undone, boots unlaced.
Counts to one hundred,
sighs her sworn truths:
in figures of figs and oleanders:
"All love ends in ashes,
didn't you know?"
October 19, 2021:
My colleague is gregarious to the point of insensitivity. She insists on photos at every occasion, gainsaying or pooh-poohing or flatly denying my emphatically expressed discomfort.
She's the colleague I feel most friendly toward: the one whose personal life I'm most comfortable discussing and to a degree being part of. She means only well — in fact she means to reciprocate by pushing me into some sense of ease with my own skin. What she ignores is how deep my depression runs.
In photos I see struggle. Clearly, unambiguously. My colleagues perhaps see a disheveled mad scientist type, an Einstein let's say whose chaotic appearance reflects lack of focus on the superficial. I see fear, and failure, and frailty.
My supervisor praises me for "ownership" — taking responsibility for the problems that arise. That's kind, but misses the point. To me, these problems are shelters: refuges. They allow me an external focus which takes me away from myself long enough and thoroughly enough to heal, even just a little bit. Photos of myself yank me violently back inward, in destructive, ugly downward spirals. I see the pain and the fear, and one or more than one of my inner voices begin to speak with frighteningly negative language.
October 18, 2021:
Heroism, not by choice, by necessity.
You're in every meeting, or the meeting will fail. Where your necessary role is to hand-hold the employees who will cause that failure, or in the more dramatic case do their jobs for them.
Unsustainable. Either replace this human mess with competent professionals, or remove yourself to some context where that's unnecessary.
- October 17, 2021: He was surprisingly aggressive, even confrontational.
- October 16, 2021: The process of emanation through descending levels of reality as theorized by Plotinus...
- October 15, 2021: I've misunderstood the relationship between Gnosticism and Neoplatonism.
- October 14, 2021: Also I suspect (but don't claim to know for certain) a main source for what later became Phenomenology in the broad sense:
- October 13, 2021: The Enneads are structured (by their editor Porphyry) as ritual...
- October 12, 2021: Isolated.
- October 11, 2021: Silence of the doghouse.
- October 10, 2021: Setback, disappointment, depression.
- October 9, 2021: Alcinous wrote:
- October 8, 2021: She was remarkably brave.
- October 7, 2021: I have to hurry through these pictures.
- October 6, 2021: Depression has measurable long-term physiological effects.
- October 5, 2021: Similarities to 1988.
- October 4, 2021: Infinite outcomes...
- October 3, 2021: I consulted the I Ching, it said, Stop bothering me.
- October 2, 2021: Interrupting, my friend says, "We're too old for this now, just hire someone."
- October 1, 2021: We stayed in a house in Piedmont.
- September 30, 2021: On the road along the cliff at the low point of my life her baby sister pointed me out to her colleague, and laughed.
- September 29, 2021: Goodbye, Norma Jean.
- September 28, 2021: That woman —
- September 27, 2021: That woman —
- September 26, 2021: The worst is its darkness.
- September 25, 2021: When the wind blows, the power goes out.
- September 24, 2021: I liked the old geography better.
- September 23, 2021: I remember those clocks so vividly.
- September 22, 2021: Blaming the victim took some obvious forms.
- September 21, 2021: You'd come on them in the woods.
- September 20, 2021: We found him dead beneath acacias...
- September 19, 2021: Returning with a walletful of platinum cards.
- September 18, 2021: It's striking that my friends from that period resent Professor Falstaff as much as I do.
- September 17, 2021: It's tempting to lay blame for that experience at the feet of Professor Falstaff.
- September 16, 2021: At the Fotis House I befriended a young philosophy professor.
- September 15, 2021: Lately I've explored my anger.
- September 14, 2021: She rolled her eyes in exasperation, when I told her I was moving.
- September 13, 2021: I'm reading a book written by a former colleague I think poorly of.
- September 12, 2021: I thought for a time that my colleague suffered from Long Covid.
- September 11, 2021: I loved her for a time.
- September 10, 2021: Steve Smug, and the advice that wasn't.
- September 9, 2021: We had a secret signal.
- September 8, 2021: Her ex considered himself a "bohemian".
- September 7, 2021: She was unfailingly convinced of her own genius.
- September 6, 2021: "I'm not going to try to steal you away," she said...
- September 5, 2021: Why Spinoza?
- September 4, 2021: Plotinus, Jung, medievals, hermeneutics.
- September 3, 2021: Very kindly, my elderly Lyft driver brings me all the way home...
- September 2, 2021: Credit where credit's due:
- September 1, 2021: The different working groups fail to coordinate.
- August 31, 2021: But that's not true.
- August 30, 2021: What is there to talk about at this age?
- August 29, 2021: They're going to release me.
- August 28, 2021: When our eyes locked, and I knew, and I chose to let it go.
- August 27, 2021: I never knew that other girl's name...
- August 26, 2021: I never knew that girl's name.
- August 25, 2021: I can no longer stand properly.
- August 24, 2021: Why? Why those two?
- August 23, 2021: We were addicted, then.
- August 22, 2021: I am thinking of sad things.
- August 21, 2021: Today I'm in intensive care after nearly bleeding to death...
- August 20, 2021: "You looked so stricken," she later told me.
- August 19, 2021: I woke with a burn on my lip, and an addicted lawyer named Colleen.
- August 18, 2021: I have no recollection of moving to San Francisco.
- August 17, 2021: J.D. Salinger.
- August 16, 2021: Can you remember events that never occurred?
- August 15, 2021: When he moves between worlds he moves on a Greyhound bus.
- August 14, 2021: She gave me Slan and Against the Fall of Night —
- August 13, 2021: Clouds are different in Southern California.
- August 12, 2021: "We're intelligent people —
- August 11, 2021: Baby potatoes, red and gold, chopped in half.
- August 10, 2021: Almond milk, frozen banana, frozen strawberry...
- August 9, 2021: We're going to end like seniors at Denny's.
- August 8, 2021: Which really is moot, anyway.
- August 7, 2021: To the Greeks, aphasia meant "non-assertion".
- August 6, 2021: Aphasia.
- August 5, 2021: I'm going to trash that bed.
- August 4, 2021: I hate my bed.
- August 3, 2021: The fires are apocalyptic.
- August 2, 2021: The house is dark.
- August 1, 2021: News video: huge black tornado off the California coast.