Category: Illness
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Key
Fall… University is starting; I'm in better shape than last year – not energetic, but cheerful, calm. Frequently my body falls into a haze of slow-motion quasi-weakness – not like a sickness, just drained of energy; but it doesn't feel like a problem. I suppose it's only a problem when other people are expecting me…
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Raise your glass
I can't easily explain it: a link between an unexpectedly named day, a song I didn't understand, and a set of unfamiliar feelings…. It's been a bit odd: I was throwing references to this stuff at my friends all day – most people seem vaguely pleased, but a bit puzzled. That is probably because the…
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A different three in the morning
'Three in the morning' has shown up in several of my published papers around AIDS since the mid-1990s. It generally refers to the same nexus of memory, feeling, implications: a quality of being in a hospital room, an anonymous room that could be anywhere, in the middle of the night; lights are very low but…
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Temporal, again
Reading about Chronos and Kairos: clock time and experiential, 'aware' time. (It's only a couple of months since I first learned that Chronos is not Kronos… an error caused by the similarity of the English sounds; in Greek they are completely different, and represent different pre-Olympic deities. This leaves me a bit abashed, I thought…
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Und Zürich wieder
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by
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…
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Anniversary, again
The eleven-year anniversary of this blog…. Well, hey, it matters to me. A bit. ••• After a brief but unpleasant virus – probably caught on that hasty train south and back – everything has a slightly disconnected feel to it: still coughing occasionally, but so what?… work to do, but really, who needs it?… Shower,…
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Easter week
Maundy Thursday. In the night I wake coughing – side effects I think, but perhaps I also caught a minor cold on the train back on Wednesday. Paracodeine (given to me by Antonio, a couple of years ago – I had the flu in Zürich, missed most of the classes that month; on the last day Antonio, who is…
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Closing doors
So: in a burst of extraordinarily blinkered and sociopolitically aggressive pettiness, the UK government pulls us out of the EU. I've been joking for months that I have two passports, but unfortunately they're the ones nobody wants… but just try to trade them for something more respectable, better. Slovenia? Great, flat trade, or shall I give…
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Temporal
Perhaps the problem is one of time… Yes, I am influenced by finally (i.e., at a later point in time than anticipated within the implied framework of some unspecified but apparently familiar system of planning) seeing Arrival. But also wandering through spaces of analysis, self-reflection, mild illness, trying to get some writing done. Late, of course. Time…
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Summa
A dramatic year… One that stank for the world, of course: major moves into aggressive idiocy. But it's not very interesting to talk about Brexit and the UK, Trump and America. Or about dead celebrities – some good people are gone, yes, but that happens always. And many of them were old enough that grieving doesn't seem…
Paul Attinello 