The thing about being in therapy is that you are more likely to be at least aware of the shape of your own ill health; and you see quite clearly that others are not so aware, because they do not devote 50minutes per week to thinking about it. And it is not fun being right in this way. It is just not as terrible as standing near the edge of the cliff.
Writing as therapy . . .
1. Already there are students asking for a balance sheet of their grades, beyond asking for their final exams: asking for a sheet justifying what they feel to be too low a grade. What the f . . .?!? I'll not swear any depositions just now. Screw you, e-mail, and your importunate ways.
2. Tentative yes ("Supportive") from one reader at the press that has my book manuscript. Internal relief and egress of fear.
3. I've gotten on an absurdly late schedule. I'm sleeping til 9:00 and after.
4. I miss swimming.
5. I want a wood shop.
6. Art is therapy. Writing is wallowing.
7. [Revoked].
8. Writing recommendations. How to find constantly internal and interesting features, moments, etc. without hating one's own baloney to the point of inadvertent sabotage.
9. Fatherhood. How to remain solid, immobile on the fixtures of life that growing minds have to internalize as immobile, while maintaining flexibility and good humor on all those things that require it, without regard (any regard) for the deliberate, learned, persistent provocations children automatically put out.
10. I will do nothing else except prepare my book until it is done. I will do nothing else except teach my hugely time-consuming Cinema of Colonialism class. I will do nothing else besides being a supportive and flexible husband and father, a centered, stable, friendly presence.
11. I will write Mission Plan and sell it. I will write LBNLGMC as an empire book connecting Australia, South Africa, and 1881.
12. I will no longer write anything for Daily Kos or any other internet source. The internet is dead for newbies like me.
Or newbies like me who are not great or brilliant at it.
13. Later in the year I will start Paper, a mimeographed journal kept off the internet and available only on paper. I will build a stable of like-minded high-profile contributors in art, criticism, history, and film. No one will write for me. It will fail quickly.
14. This summer I will try hang-gliding.
15. This summer I will take up whittling and sanding. I'll make a knobby back masseuse.
16. All those warranty cards and customer service cards: I'll send them back.
17. I'll start changing the filters and cleaning the filters that stand sentry over the wind tunnels in the house: heating, vacuum, oven exahust.
18. I will plastic-sheet insulate the windows. It is not too late. Yes it is.
19. I will bring or make dinner on Fridays.
20. I will immerse myself among people who do not enjoy grievance. Problem: most people suck. Most men, especially. And it is hard to make friends with women because of the obvious reasons in our f***** up society. I hate rants. But it is true. Most men have insecurity issues that make it hard for them to interact. Some deviate immediately into phony irony and lightness and platitudes. Some demand agreement or else they "don't understand" one. The pugnacity, lightly cloaked. How did men ever make a society of laws? The good times are only when they don't feel threatened and can observe and enjoy what is around them.
21. I have friends: two or three here in D.C., more perhaps if I tried to fill a room, not that close; I have a handful of other friends living faraway, I see then hardly ever: each time is like an installment of the Seven-up series.
22. J. She was my person. I miss you too too much. You were my.
23. Let S. and I. find it easier than E. and me.
24. Let my mom continue to walk around and stay loose and keep on her feet. Let her have inner peace now.
25. Let my Dad stay happy in his study.
26. Let my country stop debasing itself and get up and learn from the past instead of cleaving to its mistakes as a point of pride.
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