Category: Personal

In the past couple of days, the news on my eldest sister Sandy and her illness has gone from waiting to concern to finality – she went to the hospital this afternoon, in northern Virginia where we grew up, and chose to sign a DNR (do not resuscitate) form. Her husband is with her, and…

It is admittedly slightly peculiar to make much of birthdays, at my age – I don’t mean how many years (yes, 51 today), but the birthday itself, the person’s own self-celebration. Yet I always have cared about them, mine and those of others – I keep a lot of friend’s birthdays in my running electronic…

Small, annoying things: the bus that never shows, the canceled appointment, the report due three weeks earlier than the deadline I’d planned for. No surprise: the days coming up to my birthday on Sunday are typically annoying, frustrating, and emphasize anything that makes me wait or ignores my presence – then on the day itself…

London. “City, city!”, as cries Tom Rakewell. It’s been a pleasant if tentative weekend: having achieved a successful research seminar on Thursday, with the grand old man of musicological modernism Arnold W. in attendance (astonishing that he would be there – it couldn’t have been my topic, so I myself must have been the attraction),…

My sister is far better, sounded remarkably cheerful on the telephone yesterday. Friday I started calculating exactly what I had to get done before leaving for Los Angeles this coming Thursday; and panicked – nerves, anxiety, woke at 6 am to wander restlessly about, wondering how it could all possibly get done. (Especially as most…

Fragments of good things and difficult ones; much administration, many students (most of whom seem rather smart, charming, alert this year; as D. said, sometimes it seems as though changes in students are like the weather – who knows why they happen – which means, I guess, we should be grateful for good weather). A…

Distance, limits, boundaries: I seem especially concerned, even tense and anxious, these days around the connections between myself and other people. This, of course, after ages of lamenting that I am too alone – but perhaps partly as a result of that, I’m struggling not to experience other people as painful chores, as demanding and…

I am startled – and discomfited, and somewhat embarrassed, but I suppose also intrigued – by discovering, while doing this cognitive behavior therapy for depression, that underneath the depression is a wide pool of anxiety, nerves, fear. Anger and hostility, insecurity and defensiveness. Hysteria. Panic. It’s a bit weird, really. One of the things about…

My blogging has sort of slowed to a halt since mid-August – apologies (especially to those of you using neither RSS nor Bloglines, who have to actually bring up this page to see if there’s anything new engraved on it – that must be a bit like switching channels and seeing only reruns). Have felt…

Sorry I haven’t written… Continuing irritable, depressed, at a bit of a loss; plus intermittent unexpected headaches, and a chaotic gastrointestinal tension that seems, capriciously, to react badly to whatever I eat. Summer is now technically over, we’re on the verge of masses of work for oncoming students; three days ago a student, after apologizing…