Category: Personal

  • Things

    A time of flickering changes, referents – going through books, CDs, tech, implements and bowls and glasses, my office at school, my office at home, the living room, the kitchen: the world of things. There are burdens here, and entanglements – I am approximately as good at letting go the world of things as I…

  • Last session

    We agreed that today would be the final session of my own psychoanalysis… Strangely enough, this is the smoothest, most successful ending to an analytic relationship I’ve ever had. With each of the other three Jungian analysts, things went somewhat wrong – circumstances, unplanned aspects; two of them were a bit self-centred or careless about…

  • Vision • understanding • evanescence • eternity

    The last three days of being in Zürich… ••• Wednesday, 9:30 am: Dunbar gives his first lecture of the week at the Jung-Institut; he has visited here before, and he led a session of Nancy's online seminar this spring. His approach seems at first a bit strange, then fascinating – he points out we generally…

  • 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,…

  • Shift

    A dream fragment: One of two simultaneous dream narratives, partly remembered – don't remember the other one. A friend and I are at the front door of a house, a porch light over the door; an old woman is inside. We come to talk to her, twice – I know she won’t remember or understand…

  • 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…

  • Shafts of light

    From the chilly, detached sadness of last week, unexpected changes – a day and a bit that were more entwined with the life, and lives, around me – Friday, an official reception – you know the drill: speeches, food, suits, paintings for sale. But this one has much more life in it than most: an LGBT History…

  • 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…

  • Sketch of a conversation

    … You didn't really think you were having strokes, did you. Well, if memory – no, I suppose not; there would be other symptoms? Yes, there would. So: dissociation. But more dissociation than I should expect, yes? That sense over the last few months, from the last year – more connected, more of myself aware of…

  • Allegiance

    Last night, a wonderfully pleasant evening for my sixtieth: eight people at table in a Persian restaurant, then back to mine for ice wine and sweets. ••• (And, as I am thinking now of England, and my English friends, many of whom were around me at that table, I am also suddenly aware that the three grammatical/idiomatic…