De File

I suppose it's to be expected that I'm feeling strange of late, given all that has transpired. The surprise for me is that this "strange" is not a euphemism for "bad." I do have moments of sadness and worry, of course. But I also find myself periodically flooded with a sense of well-being, as if I were finally beginning to make my descent after a long, hard climb. I mean, I know I'm still climbing and will be for some time. Yet the sensation of having already made it through the roughest part is providing needed sustenance and focus. It's almost like positive visualization, a coping strategy I have used far too rarely in my life. Anyway, this is not the kind of introspection I'm good at it and certainly not the sort I should share very often. So I will desist. Suffice it to say that I'm doing alright from a mental standpoint and only slightly worse from a physiological standpoint, somatizer that I am.

For as long as I can remember, I've been extraordinarily sensitive to the moods of people around me. In fact, I've usually been more attuned to how others are feeling than how I am feeling myself. Again and again, friends have advised me to focus more attention inward and worry less about what's going on around me. But that's easier said than done, when you're psyche is configured the way mine is. I'd be hard pressed to recall a time when I was intensely caught up in a mood that wasn't the result of identifying with someone whose mood was similar. And that's a problem, obviously, one that's been brought home to me with renewed force in the past few days. At the same time, I don't want to throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water. While it may be a bad idea to be consistently other-directed, I think that some disregard for the self might turn out to be a positive, in the end. So where -- and how -- do I draw the line?

I washed the kitchen floor this afternoon. As I have previously noted here, in a variety of contexts, I have a devil of a time doing anything by rote. But it's when I'm doing the floor that this deficiency is made most apparent. I had sworn to myself that the method I devised the last time I executed this time-consuming and onerous task was good enough to stick with. When I actually got down on my hands and knees, though, I was unable to repeat myself. And I'm content, because the method I chose today now strikes me as the best of all possible methods. It seems unlikely, though, that my conviction will last until it's time to do the job again. Still, I haven't given up hope that I will one day settle into a mode in which I accept the mechanical reproduction of everyday activities.

I've been trying to start the new year right, but as our sentence-of-the-day instructional German calendar reminds me, "Der erste Schritt ist der Schwerste." For example, although I love the idea of the calendar and am thrilled that Skylar wants to learn the foreign language in which I'm most proficient and deeply invested, it bothers me that the pronunciation guide this thing provides consistently deviates sharply from what I regard to be standard German. For a native English speaker like my daughter, the result is an accent that sounds an awful lot like Pennsylvania Dutch. There's nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but I still find it unsettling.

I am also having trouble getting back into the mode where theoretical speculation comes easy. During the holidays, I found myself shying away from all reading -- exhaustion and an excess of sugar being the likely culprits -- but especially the sort of dense, philosophical prose that normally inspires me to avoid taking the world too superficially. I'm starting to think that my decision to post a piece to Zeek every week, rather than every other week as I had originally proposed, is having a deleterious effect on my mind. I have talked with "real" journalists who bemoan the difficulty of navigating in deeper waters when they have several deadlines each week. Am I suffering the same problem on a timeline that most of them would have regarded as a vacation?

Another struggle involves the resentment that I've had difficulty keeping at bay lately. Although I have long prided myself on the ability to perform "invisible labor" on behalf of people I care about, I suddenly find myself periodically flooded with bad feelings when I think about how much time I've spent doing work that only I will ever be able to quantify in full. While I am happy for the people I have helped, that experience of vicarious pleasure is increasingly overwhelmed by a brand of self-loathing, rooted in the conviction that my life would be a hell of a lot better if I'd pursued my own interests with a tenth of the energy with which I promoted those of others.

And then there is the frustration I feel at not being able to make a firm decision about how I want to develop my career as a writer. If I am no longer satisfied doing assignments to assist ventures that seem sure to push me into the margins, what do I wish to pursue instead? I am confident in my ability to craft a variety of sentences, but lack a clear sense of how that repertoire might be collectively mobilized to a single end. I have plenty of ideas, mind you, but am having a terrible time committing to any of them.

Well, that's enough complaining for today. I had considered discussing my more earthy vexations as well, but think it best to continue keeping that part of my life private -- or at least only obliquely public -- for the time being. For one thing, I continue to deem it possible that if I can finally turn the corner and begin doing the work that I value most and for which I am most likely to be valued, the personal challenges I have faced in recent years will eventually fade away. Then again, I once thought it probable, so some of the sea ice on which my external façade secretly floats is starting to rumble. One of the few friends in whom I feel comfortable confiding insists that it's just a matter of time until I find myself on an iceberg cast adrift on the high seas. I don't yet want to agree with that conclusion, but am starting to wonder whether my resistance to entertaining it isn't the source of all my other struggles.

I still haven't caught up with a world in which people post their wish lists online and actually get a meaningful response. But since nobody asked, I thought I'd give a rundown of my own special desires:

• A six-pack of Jever pilsener that hasn't gone skunky with age
• A large bag full of real sour cherries
• The smell of a sugar-free Monster drink, the sort in the blue-and-black can, on a cold December night
• That Big Red Book of Carl Jung's, recently made available in English
• More friends who are up, literally and figuratively, for indulging my only-after-10-pm night life
• A good showing against Kansas on Tuesday
• A whiff of yatagan
• Credit where credit is due
• A DVD of Germany In Autumn
• The sound of a burbling stream
• A turntable that has both analog and USB outputs
• The discovery of previously suppressed Jean-Jacques Beineix films the equal of Diva
• A human touch
• The use of an apartment in Berlin for a month
• A case of A-Treat red cream soda
• A DSLR worthy of my photographic ability
• The Lego Hogwarts Express
• Coffee with Adam Phillips
• The chance to perform in an avant-garde staging of J.G. Ballard's Crash
• A complete set of the recordings, including outtakes, that Rainer Ptacek made in the last year of his life
• Dinner at the old Café Terra Cotta, at Campbell and River, circa 1997
• My Olympus portable digital recorder, together with its contents, inexplicably vanished sometime in 2008
• A weekend in Mendocino
• That enormously comforting sense of having begun in earnest
• A patron, individual or institutional, to pay me for my writing and editing
• Three hours at The Shelter
• A reason to get the Lox platter at Saul's, sometime in the late 1980s
• The Matchbox Pontiac GTO, #22, from the late 1960s and early 1970s, in purple and with the faux-metallic hubcaps on Superfast wheels
• A surefire regimen for improving one's vertical leap by about six inches
• That spot where the back of the neck becomes the side of the neck
• The strength to pursue my passions now, instead of deferring them to a future that may never come
• A hug

Needless to say, the list could go on longer than a Henry James sentence. But that will do for the moment. If you have any questions, drop me a line.

For some reason, the last month or so has been filled with unpleasant interruptions in the flow of my relations to the object world. Again and again, things that were functioning normally have broken down without warning. The cars, the computers, the washing machine: I shudder to think what's going to "disfunction" next. And it's not just technology. Glasses have been breaking with unusual frequency. Today I found the cashmere sweater I got Skylar last winter rendered useless by huge holes, most likely torn by a certain cat's teeth. And yet, for all of that, I don't feel particularly fatalistic. Maybe enough of my inner life was already out of joint that I find comfort in its being mirrored back to me from the external world. Maybe I just don't have the energy to get worked up anymore. Or perhaps there's some other factor at work. I keep remembering what it was like after the Bay Area's big earthquake back in 1989. In the immediate aftermath I felt totally intoxicated with adrenaline. Even after several weeks, I still got a rush every time I saw some broken structure or rode on BART at 4am. I don't want to sound too Steven King-like here, but it could be that there's some paranormal force that manifests in times of rupture like this.

It's been a while since I posted much here. But my absence was not the result of a conscious decision to disappear. I just lacked the conditions necessary for me to do much social networking. My parents were out here for Thanksgiving, meaning that I spent a lot of my time bustling about in the kitchen. The whole time they were visiting, my daughter Skylar had the flu, further prying me loose from my daily routine. Although she apparently had the H1N1 strain, it was a mild case. Basically, she had a persistent fever for a week and felt weak and easily overwhelmed by excessive stimulation. I felt bad for her, but am glad she was still able to enjoy her grandparents' visit and partake of the Thanksgiving repast. And then there was the simple fact that my parents' aren't computer people. Although I did have to work on a few deadlines while they looked on, I just didn't feel comfortable blogging in their presence. I had the sense that doing so would be like text messaging at a dinner party. Anyway, I'm back. I grew sort of attached to the freedom that came from not posting, so I may produce fewer entries per week going forward. But despite the anxieties stirred up by my "blogiversary" a few months back, I have decided that it wouldn't make sense for me to call a halt to this journal. As Neil Young didn't say, it's worse to burn out than to fade away. . .

For years I've listened to friends who love music the way I do describe what it feels like to pass that tipping point when they are suddenly consumed by the urge to be rid of some of their records. And I've shuddered each time, possessed by the conviction that such a move may lead to harder stuff, like dispensing with one's entire collection because it seems "redundant" in the era of digital media. Tonight, though, as I contemplated the sixteen boxes that comprise the vast majority of my CDs, I found myself identifying with that impatience towards material goods. "What would it be like," I thought, "to sell or donate all of this stuff?" It was like being tempted by the serpent. In fact, I found it much easier to imagine dispensing with my entire collection than sorting through it to figure out what I could bear to part with. But then I realized that what I was really contemplating was abandoning everything about my identity that was the result of conscious self-fashioning. It's hard to conceive of a spookier prospect, given the way I've lived my life since I was a teenager. Perhaps that's why I was momentarily seduced by its allure.