Mother, Do You Think They’ll Drop The Bomb? Friday, Jan 19 2007

Things continue to fall apart. I just can’t do work. I had to write my Lit teacher an anonymous letter explaining what grade I deserved. I don’t know how to respond to such a prompt. I don’t think I’m capable of doing work right now. I don’t mean to say that A = A, but if I could do work, I would. Wouldn’t I? I just don’t have the emotional or mental fortitude.

The little pink burn on my hand hasn’t left. It’s been months and months, now. I wonder if I should go and see the surgeon who reattached my finger. I wonder what you do about very minor burns. There’s no obvious nerve damage, and it’s hardly something anyone would notice. Hardly anyone would notice anything about me.

Emily is being kind. She’s a very authentic person, which I should respect more. I wish I could respect everyone more. I really and truly do. I just don’t have trust in me. It will be my ruination. I’ll know better when I’m dead.

I do have to spend more time with people, though. I have to choose carefully, of course. But I can’t stay alone all my life. I have never felt so badly. School to home, home to work, work to home, home to school. Nowhere I want to be for very long.

And James Joyce is kind of a jerk.

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Stasis. Thursday, Jan 11 2007

“Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito.“
“Yield not to misfortunes, but advance all the more boldly against them.“

Dear Seth,
I am truly sorry for this delay, but unfortunately there is little I can do about it. In fact, I called the Judge’s law secretary last week to confirm that the trial was still going forward on January 11th and I was told it was. Then I received a phone call this afternoon advising me that it would not go forward on Thursday and Friday. There are trial dates scheduled for February 5, 6 & 7 and I will do everything I can to make sure the case goes forward at that time.

Please don’t hesitate to call me or write me via email if you have any further questions or thoughts.

Very truly yours,

Mr. R______

That is my court-assigned law guardian. I was told about the delay from my father, whose lawyer called him at noon to confirm the court date tomorrow. Before one o’ clock, my father recieved a call to notify him that the trial will be delayed another month.

I cannot be spared an hour’s peace of mind. It’s enough to make a guy paranoid. Or enough to make a paranoid guy sure he’s been right all along.

I’m falling apart. Even my less perceptive teachers are noticing something is wrong. I don’t remember the last time I did work. I can’t do it anymore.

When I am having a panic attack, it feels as though I’m disconnected from the world, like someone has filled me with molten amber and it will harden inside my chest. Now it feels like the whole world is being held frozen, and I can’t sleep. My body knows there is something I have to fix, but I cannot think of anything.

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My Distracting Heartbeat. Tuesday, Jan 9 2007

“A human can very well do what he wants, but cannot will what he wants”.
–Arthur Schopenhauer, as paraphrased by Albert Einstein

“I like to think about consciousness, because I have it, although for the life of me I can’t think why”.
–James Gorman, “Fishing for Clarity in the Waters of Consciousness“

My anxiety is “breaking through”, as the doctor phrases it. I don’t imagine it breaking through anything, though. It’s more akin to a thick fluid seeping down from the crown of my head until my whole cranium is full. Anxiety is not a negative, it is a horrible set of perceptual imps that haunt my consciousness. There are moments of lightness, but they are even worse.

I was just in the shower and had a panic attack, but this one was clearly prompted. You have to be in a vulnerable mindset to have ones like this: I’d watched Ze Frank’s episode of The Show for today. It includes a summary of a fascinating article on conciousness from the New York Times. You can read the article in its entirety, and it’s linked again at the end of this post.

The article is, very basically, a scientific criticism of free will. Free will is among the most frightening questions in all of philosophy. I will be a nihilist, I will be amoral, I will percieve a sliver of objective reality, but if I don’t get to decide these things, that’s just scary!

Anyway, Ze raises a number of interesting points in his video blog. He mentions how recent an adaptation conciousness truly is. With that on the table, I began to wonder: What purpose does conciousness serve? Every concious being experiences suffering. Is it a viable evolutionary candidate, or will it be weeded out?

So thinking about how my perception is nothing more than an evolutionary wildcard filled my brain with anxious goo, and I could only take the briefest shower before darting out. I dried off hastily, covered myself in blankets, and curled up in bed assuring myself that I am no evolutionary error, that I am okay.

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Yesterday Belongs To The Dead. Tuesday, Jan 9 2007

Panel from “Pyongyang,” by Guy Delisle

I read an excerpt of “Pyongyang” in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 [1], which I strongly recommend. It is overfull with delectable things: Fiction, nonfiction, cartooning, miscellany. I admit part of my fondness for it comes from the amount of familiar things I found: Headlines from The Onion, transcripts from The Daily Show, and part of the script to “Me And You And Everyone We Know.” I feel like it is published just for me: It has very funny moments interspersed between longer, emotionally gripping pieces. Anyone halfway clever should find something in it to enjoy.

I haven’t been right lately, in sleeping or eating and especially not in mood. I asked my father if I could see the doctor again. Unfortunately, even short sessions with a psychologist are expensive, and just like in that Casiotone song, the money’s running out. I was seeing one of the best psychologists I’ve ever met. He could tease the truth out of me better than anyone I’ve met. But I don’t want to make a lifetime of seeing him, and I couldn’t afford it anyway. So.

I went to the school social worker instead. Her name is Santina, which sounds like something that quenches: A drink or perhaps a kind of sunblock. I spoke to her earlier in the year when I was worried about K. Now I’m worried about me. Santina is a kind and patient person. She seems to genuinely like me and tells me that I’m very perceptive. I’m glad to have her around. Unfortunately, she’s still an intern, so she’s hard to find and is only in my school a few days a week. That’s the life.

I still can’t sleep or do work or exhale deeply. My parents’ trial is this week, and Santina sounded hopeful for me. I don’t get a lot of hope. I don’t bank on hope, anyway.

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A Day At The Met. Monday, Jan 8 2007

Corpus Hypercubus, Salvadore Dali, 1954

In the Metropolitan Museum, as in any good museum, everything is suspended at about the same level. It must take careful orchestration, but somehow, all the art is made to appear equal. Of course, it can’t be. That doesn’t stop people from pausing contemplatively in front of a room of paint swatches. There should be a day of complete amnesty from ‘museum etiquette,’ when you can turn to the patron behind you and say “What the fuck am I even looking at?” with impunity.

The symbolism in Corpus Hypercubus is pretty bare. Christ and the hypercube, religion and physics. The absurd cubes have more menace to them than nails would have. The painting’s placement is what made it noticeable: It is not the bloodless Saviour held rigidly by time that catches the eye. It is in an out-of-the-way spot, given no particular grandeur in a very ordinary stairwell. Christ is not smiling above a doorway or leaning against a mantle. He is in a drafty corner of the building, with no spot lighting or framing, and he is mostly alone.

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