I did know what I wanted to do when I grew up way back when I was still thirteen. Then I grew up and for so many reasons, it didn't work out. I gave up on it completely when I was 24 and have spent the past five years trying to figure out what else I want to be when I grow up. I think I have settled it.
When I grow up, I want to be a peripatetic metaphysical philosopher-poet. Peripatetic because the Parapatetics wandered around the different Greek city states teaching philosophy to the citizen youth and I have this sneaking feeling that I will continue wandering around the western nation-states. Philosopher because I will be teaching it (parapatetically) and I also don't think I can stop and I like it. Metaphysical because one has to specialise, and publish or perish! Poet because it is otherwise very, very hard to write metaphysics and I like poetry and I like to sing. I also like the metaphysical poets.
I think that it is one of the delightful occupational hazards of loving the study of ancient Greek that one would look to its culture in order to pick out one's career path. I'm not sure that I would want to change that even if I could and besides, it will make my newsagent into a soothsayer and who doesn't want a soothsayer to be their newsagent?
It does make things seem clearer. Teach, talk, sing and write, wander. I tend to do these things; now I need to figure out how to do these things with people and have them exchange money for it. I have a concrete plan in mind already.
The haze is clearing.
Showing posts with label Greek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greek. Show all posts
14 February 2010
24 August 2009
The Other Side of Envy
I did tell myself in my strictest tone that I was to go to bed at 10.00, no arguments. It worked last night. Here I am, however, at 1.24am. I finally got really excited about going to London. I've spent a great deal of time with boxes and back pain this week. It's about forty minutes of packing, ten of whinging followed by three hours of sitting on the couch with the hot water bottle.
I have an ink stain on my couch, annoyingly: this is the price I pay for building nest on the couch out of blankets, pillows, my journal, several pens because I can never seem to find the same one twice, books of various kinds, both reference and fiction, my knitting and one or more shawls. I think I shall be quite content to be 65 and eccentric, once I get there. There used to be a cat and a pack of biscuits in there too but those have disappeared (and no, the disappearance of the biscuits was not an easy thing for me either). Somehow, the cap seems to have come off the pen - I only use ink pens for proper writing on paper - and somehow re-attached itself in the night for when I picked it up this morning, the cap was on but the pen was entirely empty and there was this big black mark. Time to get out the rubbing alcohol and old paper and rags. This has nothing to do with anything in particular so I shall return to the subject at hand...
...renewed enthusiasm. During all this knitting, pen covered, hot water bottle couch sitting, I have been watching movies set in London. I didn't start off doing that on purpose: I just picked one and then another one. Now I'm excited and my accent is doing that shifting thing that it does. We have an Oxbridgian Classics professor at the university and whenever I talk to her I get accent shift and then turn tongue-tied because I'm worried she'll think I'm making fun of her.
It's an odd, rather moth-eaten accent that I get living in England. It sounds British to Americans and American to Brits, although I do get the occasional confused inquiry as to whether I hail from Ireland or New Zealand. That mostly happens when I'm drunk. But it shifted enough today that when my sister called, she teased me about it.
She also told me she envied me a little. She hasn't been the only one to say that recently and it feels strange to me. Many of these statements come from people whom I envy. I tend to be envious of their ability to graduate from university in a normal amount of time and to hold down jobs and to settle down and get married and, in spots, enter into the property market. This has something to do with my impending 29th birthday, I'm quite sure, but a few (well, only one out of that list, to be quite honest - going to grad school has put paid to my worry over my ability to graduate with my BA, hold down a job, since I have a good reason not to for a whole year and I have no overwhelming desire to entangle myself with real estate for the time being) still hold. I only have intermittent envy over their mental boringness since I can see two sides to being mentally interesting.
I have spent the vast part of this summer longing for that one thing, as though I were a transplant from the earlier part of the 20th century. I would rather have that than an MSc, at the moment. I've had to sit myself down and, again in my sternest tones, tell myself that if I can't have it, at least a year in London and a good degree is an excellent consolation prize; and really, it is. Still, it's funny to see that while they have what I want, I have something that they want. Even my sister, whose life to me seems so well-run and complete and perfect of its kind and whom I would envy with an ill grace if she weren't such a lovely person and good, beloved sister to me.
I miss my cat. All this taking myself aside and giving my self stern talkings-to is a bit more to the side of madness than it was when he could be involved. Then it was more like being Alice through the looking glass. She had three: a cat and two kittens. Of course, things turned out rather more oddly for her than they have for me.
I find I'm on the other side and it's a strange place to be: it is strange to have something that can be envied, especially something for which I have had an incomplete desire all this unending summer. I don't know what to do with it, nor to think of it. The world has switched sides while I was otherwise occupied and I'm disoriented. That has happened fearfully often this summer but to elaborate would need another post.
Speaking of posts, this is no way to end one but I have been on an anaxiolytic-induced shambly rambling tropos all evening so I shall just give in. Did you know that in both Latin and Greek, fearfulness is such an important and prominent emotion that there are 'fear clauses' in the grammar? They are usually followed by the subjunctive, occasionally the optative in Greek (if I remember rightly - the optative is a verb mood so alien to English that I have always had a great deal of trouble distinguishing it from the subjunctive, not least because the conjugated verbs are spelt nearly exactly the same way) and even, in Greek, make use of a different negation word than most sentences. Now whenever I use 'fear' or 'fearfully' my subconscious shouts 'fear clause!' at me. I wonder whether, by virtue of lacking a formal fear clause, English is braver or just less realistic about human nature.
I have an ink stain on my couch, annoyingly: this is the price I pay for building nest on the couch out of blankets, pillows, my journal, several pens because I can never seem to find the same one twice, books of various kinds, both reference and fiction, my knitting and one or more shawls. I think I shall be quite content to be 65 and eccentric, once I get there. There used to be a cat and a pack of biscuits in there too but those have disappeared (and no, the disappearance of the biscuits was not an easy thing for me either). Somehow, the cap seems to have come off the pen - I only use ink pens for proper writing on paper - and somehow re-attached itself in the night for when I picked it up this morning, the cap was on but the pen was entirely empty and there was this big black mark. Time to get out the rubbing alcohol and old paper and rags. This has nothing to do with anything in particular so I shall return to the subject at hand...
...renewed enthusiasm. During all this knitting, pen covered, hot water bottle couch sitting, I have been watching movies set in London. I didn't start off doing that on purpose: I just picked one and then another one. Now I'm excited and my accent is doing that shifting thing that it does. We have an Oxbridgian Classics professor at the university and whenever I talk to her I get accent shift and then turn tongue-tied because I'm worried she'll think I'm making fun of her.
It's an odd, rather moth-eaten accent that I get living in England. It sounds British to Americans and American to Brits, although I do get the occasional confused inquiry as to whether I hail from Ireland or New Zealand. That mostly happens when I'm drunk. But it shifted enough today that when my sister called, she teased me about it.
She also told me she envied me a little. She hasn't been the only one to say that recently and it feels strange to me. Many of these statements come from people whom I envy. I tend to be envious of their ability to graduate from university in a normal amount of time and to hold down jobs and to settle down and get married and, in spots, enter into the property market. This has something to do with my impending 29th birthday, I'm quite sure, but a few (well, only one out of that list, to be quite honest - going to grad school has put paid to my worry over my ability to graduate with my BA, hold down a job, since I have a good reason not to for a whole year and I have no overwhelming desire to entangle myself with real estate for the time being) still hold. I only have intermittent envy over their mental boringness since I can see two sides to being mentally interesting.
I have spent the vast part of this summer longing for that one thing, as though I were a transplant from the earlier part of the 20th century. I would rather have that than an MSc, at the moment. I've had to sit myself down and, again in my sternest tones, tell myself that if I can't have it, at least a year in London and a good degree is an excellent consolation prize; and really, it is. Still, it's funny to see that while they have what I want, I have something that they want. Even my sister, whose life to me seems so well-run and complete and perfect of its kind and whom I would envy with an ill grace if she weren't such a lovely person and good, beloved sister to me.
I miss my cat. All this taking myself aside and giving my self stern talkings-to is a bit more to the side of madness than it was when he could be involved. Then it was more like being Alice through the looking glass. She had three: a cat and two kittens. Of course, things turned out rather more oddly for her than they have for me.
I find I'm on the other side and it's a strange place to be: it is strange to have something that can be envied, especially something for which I have had an incomplete desire all this unending summer. I don't know what to do with it, nor to think of it. The world has switched sides while I was otherwise occupied and I'm disoriented. That has happened fearfully often this summer but to elaborate would need another post.
Speaking of posts, this is no way to end one but I have been on an anaxiolytic-induced shambly rambling tropos all evening so I shall just give in. Did you know that in both Latin and Greek, fearfulness is such an important and prominent emotion that there are 'fear clauses' in the grammar? They are usually followed by the subjunctive, occasionally the optative in Greek (if I remember rightly - the optative is a verb mood so alien to English that I have always had a great deal of trouble distinguishing it from the subjunctive, not least because the conjugated verbs are spelt nearly exactly the same way) and even, in Greek, make use of a different negation word than most sentences. Now whenever I use 'fear' or 'fearfully' my subconscious shouts 'fear clause!' at me. I wonder whether, by virtue of lacking a formal fear clause, English is braver or just less realistic about human nature.
08 July 2009
Final Fourth of July
I seem to have lost the thread that leads from one post to the next post but I feel pretty sure that if I just keep writing them, I'll find it again.
This last weekend was Independence Day for us former colonials. I hope that it will be my last one whilst living here - I don't plan to move back to the states after grad school; I didn't want to move back in the first place and I get on better with my parents when I live on a different continent. Anyhow, because I'm off to London and two of my friends are off to Oxbridge and my very lovely ex-girlfriend but one is off to Missouri, all for grad school, we all four got together to watch the city fireworks from my back porch and discuss moving issues, house hunting and the fear of failure.
We've been friends as a group for three and some years now. The two going off to Oxbridge just got married last week; she's a classicist and he's literature with a classics minor. My ex-girlfriend but one - really now just a very, very good friend - is also a classicist and is going to study some very offbeat and interesting things about the classical tradition and classical urbanisation patterns. The Oxbridge classicist is going to work primarily on Greek paleography - she promised to take me to see the Oxyrhynchus papyri and I am unendingly excited. We are all a bunch of happy dorky people headed off to the promised land of graduate study. We've spent a lot of time together as a group, especially when N (ex-girlfriend who will henceforth be abbreviated because this descriptive reference thing is too clunky to be accommodated further) and I were still dating.
The Oxbridgers have been well known for hosting parties named after grammatical constructions in Greek and Latin. (Did I mention that we are all dorks? Is it necessary even to mention that?) There is a certain kind of construction for descriptive paraphrasis called an Absolute, so there was the Ablative Absolute party, the Dative Absolute party, the Genetive Absolute...recently we found out that there is a rarely used Accusative Absolute but we haven't managed to have that one yet. It could still happen.
Oxbridge boy and N have been best friends for years, since before either I or Oxbridge girl knew either of them. But it was at the time of the first Ablative Absolute that the Oxbridge people began dating each other and that N and I first got to know each other. She and I started dating near the time of the Genetive Absolute. Then at the Oxbridge people's wedding last weekend, N was Oxbridge boy's best man, which led to a fun discussion between me and one of the professor's small daughter who never has been quite sure whether N was a boy or a girl, which N gets a big kick out of. She finally decided that N was the best girl-man, on account of being a girl but the wedding program saying man and because she was standing with all the other boys up front instead of the other girls. That child is going to be very comfortable with gender queerness when she's an adult - it's great and it'll be an advantage if she goes into classics.
I do have a point to all this anecdote and it is this: between last weekend at the wedding with all those people who know what the intervocalic sigma is and this weekend on my porch, I noticed that I have a lovely group of friends. They have all done what they could to help me over the past few weeks, especially N, and I don't feel abandoned and rejected as I often have at the end of a relationship. (N actually sat there and listened to all the gory details - she has always been an above average ex but that really goes above and beyond). It hasn't been just these three either; it's been my Georgia friends and my across the hall neighbors and the rector at my church and some of the professors and even some of the people and the rector at my mother's church who've helped me.
Two years ago, when I had just got out of hospital and had the worst and most acrimonious break-up ever of my life, all of these same people were my friends. But two years ago, I felt completely abandoned. The difference this time is that I'm well.
I never did like the idea of borderline personality disorder and I still don't, nor do I think that I actually have it. But I looked it up a month or so ago and read what seems to me to be the calmest description of it I have ever seen, though it could just be that I was calmer, and something caught my eye. The 'borderline' in the name refers to being in a state of borderline psychosis. That much makes sense to me. It would explain the deep disjunct between my experience then and my experience now. Two years ago, everything and everyone felt hostile; I couldn't let anyone help me, especially with moving, because then they'd find things out about me and use them against me and come to hate me secretly if they didn't already hate me secretly. Every thing that anyone said was full of too much meaning, as though all words and phrases were talismans too inscrutable to understand but suggestive of grave consequences from the heavens to the depths for any reply in word or by deed. I couldn't understand what anyone meant when they talked to me and I was tongue-tied by the need to load my words with the right meaning, convinced that I needed to strike on exactly the right phrase, like a spell or incantation, that would tell them what they were asking so that they would stop interrogating me like that. I would be happy to take the suggestion that all of this was the result of a state of borderline psychosis; in fact, that does explain it much better than bipolar disorder alone. There would be no moral content in saying that I had bipolar II with concomitant psychotic tendencies - it would be a bit scary sounding, but it wouldn't have any moral content. Borderline personality disorder does, however, have moral content; it's in the idea of a disordered personality, a disordered self, which implies culpability and carelessness.
I was so much more ill than I knew. It's only since I've been feeling better that I've been able to see how far from well I was and for so long. It has only been nine months since I began to feel well, and only five that I have felt really well and I still feel better every month compared to the last. I have no memory of ever feeling well before, at least not in a longer-term, continuous, dependable way. It is a new feeling. I remember having the same trouble with talismanic sentences when I was seven.
It has definitely taken too long to find an adequate treatment and/or diagnosis but in a lot of ways it doesn't matter anymore, now that I have one. It's too late to do anything about the past now, and though I do wish it had been different, it is different now. Much like finally getting the bachelor's degree: it bothered me no end that I hadn't finished yet and so many years had gone by but now I have it and it doesn't matter to me that I got it this year instead of last because I have it forever from now on.
It's the same with my friends. I wish I had been able to understand that they were trying to help me and that I had been better able to accept that help two years ago. But it's there now and I still need it now and I can accept it and understand it now. Thank God.
So instead of spending this Fourth of July alone watching the fireworks from my back porch, we had a proper party with moderate drunken carousing and barbecue and I made my little pecan deadlies and there was bourbon and beer. It was a proper Southern celebration and the last any of us will see for years. There was even an illegal fireworks show that some people let off in the parking lot of the church across the street, which was better than the licit, city-sponsored fireworks. This time next year, it'll be time to stand in line at the Texas Embassy, which is a restaurant in London that's the hotspot for all the American expats who aren't invited to the party at Winfield House - it's a little cheesy but I have had some bizarre discussions about American foreign policy there over the years with junior VP's of various corporations so I still look forward to going. I'll be taking the Oxbridge friends with me.
This last weekend was Independence Day for us former colonials. I hope that it will be my last one whilst living here - I don't plan to move back to the states after grad school; I didn't want to move back in the first place and I get on better with my parents when I live on a different continent. Anyhow, because I'm off to London and two of my friends are off to Oxbridge and my very lovely ex-girlfriend but one is off to Missouri, all for grad school, we all four got together to watch the city fireworks from my back porch and discuss moving issues, house hunting and the fear of failure.
We've been friends as a group for three and some years now. The two going off to Oxbridge just got married last week; she's a classicist and he's literature with a classics minor. My ex-girlfriend but one - really now just a very, very good friend - is also a classicist and is going to study some very offbeat and interesting things about the classical tradition and classical urbanisation patterns. The Oxbridge classicist is going to work primarily on Greek paleography - she promised to take me to see the Oxyrhynchus papyri and I am unendingly excited. We are all a bunch of happy dorky people headed off to the promised land of graduate study. We've spent a lot of time together as a group, especially when N (ex-girlfriend who will henceforth be abbreviated because this descriptive reference thing is too clunky to be accommodated further) and I were still dating.
The Oxbridgers have been well known for hosting parties named after grammatical constructions in Greek and Latin. (Did I mention that we are all dorks? Is it necessary even to mention that?) There is a certain kind of construction for descriptive paraphrasis called an Absolute, so there was the Ablative Absolute party, the Dative Absolute party, the Genetive Absolute...recently we found out that there is a rarely used Accusative Absolute but we haven't managed to have that one yet. It could still happen.
Oxbridge boy and N have been best friends for years, since before either I or Oxbridge girl knew either of them. But it was at the time of the first Ablative Absolute that the Oxbridge people began dating each other and that N and I first got to know each other. She and I started dating near the time of the Genetive Absolute. Then at the Oxbridge people's wedding last weekend, N was Oxbridge boy's best man, which led to a fun discussion between me and one of the professor's small daughter who never has been quite sure whether N was a boy or a girl, which N gets a big kick out of. She finally decided that N was the best girl-man, on account of being a girl but the wedding program saying man and because she was standing with all the other boys up front instead of the other girls. That child is going to be very comfortable with gender queerness when she's an adult - it's great and it'll be an advantage if she goes into classics.
I do have a point to all this anecdote and it is this: between last weekend at the wedding with all those people who know what the intervocalic sigma is and this weekend on my porch, I noticed that I have a lovely group of friends. They have all done what they could to help me over the past few weeks, especially N, and I don't feel abandoned and rejected as I often have at the end of a relationship. (N actually sat there and listened to all the gory details - she has always been an above average ex but that really goes above and beyond). It hasn't been just these three either; it's been my Georgia friends and my across the hall neighbors and the rector at my church and some of the professors and even some of the people and the rector at my mother's church who've helped me.
Two years ago, when I had just got out of hospital and had the worst and most acrimonious break-up ever of my life, all of these same people were my friends. But two years ago, I felt completely abandoned. The difference this time is that I'm well.
I never did like the idea of borderline personality disorder and I still don't, nor do I think that I actually have it. But I looked it up a month or so ago and read what seems to me to be the calmest description of it I have ever seen, though it could just be that I was calmer, and something caught my eye. The 'borderline' in the name refers to being in a state of borderline psychosis. That much makes sense to me. It would explain the deep disjunct between my experience then and my experience now. Two years ago, everything and everyone felt hostile; I couldn't let anyone help me, especially with moving, because then they'd find things out about me and use them against me and come to hate me secretly if they didn't already hate me secretly. Every thing that anyone said was full of too much meaning, as though all words and phrases were talismans too inscrutable to understand but suggestive of grave consequences from the heavens to the depths for any reply in word or by deed. I couldn't understand what anyone meant when they talked to me and I was tongue-tied by the need to load my words with the right meaning, convinced that I needed to strike on exactly the right phrase, like a spell or incantation, that would tell them what they were asking so that they would stop interrogating me like that. I would be happy to take the suggestion that all of this was the result of a state of borderline psychosis; in fact, that does explain it much better than bipolar disorder alone. There would be no moral content in saying that I had bipolar II with concomitant psychotic tendencies - it would be a bit scary sounding, but it wouldn't have any moral content. Borderline personality disorder does, however, have moral content; it's in the idea of a disordered personality, a disordered self, which implies culpability and carelessness.
I was so much more ill than I knew. It's only since I've been feeling better that I've been able to see how far from well I was and for so long. It has only been nine months since I began to feel well, and only five that I have felt really well and I still feel better every month compared to the last. I have no memory of ever feeling well before, at least not in a longer-term, continuous, dependable way. It is a new feeling. I remember having the same trouble with talismanic sentences when I was seven.
It has definitely taken too long to find an adequate treatment and/or diagnosis but in a lot of ways it doesn't matter anymore, now that I have one. It's too late to do anything about the past now, and though I do wish it had been different, it is different now. Much like finally getting the bachelor's degree: it bothered me no end that I hadn't finished yet and so many years had gone by but now I have it and it doesn't matter to me that I got it this year instead of last because I have it forever from now on.
It's the same with my friends. I wish I had been able to understand that they were trying to help me and that I had been better able to accept that help two years ago. But it's there now and I still need it now and I can accept it and understand it now. Thank God.
So instead of spending this Fourth of July alone watching the fireworks from my back porch, we had a proper party with moderate drunken carousing and barbecue and I made my little pecan deadlies and there was bourbon and beer. It was a proper Southern celebration and the last any of us will see for years. There was even an illegal fireworks show that some people let off in the parking lot of the church across the street, which was better than the licit, city-sponsored fireworks. This time next year, it'll be time to stand in line at the Texas Embassy, which is a restaurant in London that's the hotspot for all the American expats who aren't invited to the party at Winfield House - it's a little cheesy but I have had some bizarre discussions about American foreign policy there over the years with junior VP's of various corporations so I still look forward to going. I'll be taking the Oxbridge friends with me.
15 March 2009
04 March 2009
How to Woo Women: or, a Post I Never Thought I'd Write but I'm Up Late and Distracted
Well, I have decided to bust out of this slow as glass life of mine and ask someone out. I don't want a girlfriend but I would like to do a little dating.
I spent a couple of hours lying awake tonight and while I was staring at the ceiling in between tosses and turns, I began to toy with the idea and try to pick apart, as I do, my motives. I came to the conclusion that the main idea is that I want to date, I see a prospect and it is therefore reasonable to take my chance.
Here is my guide to wooing women*: Enjoy and good luck!
Step One: Scout discreetly for gossip as to her likely disposition. This is tricky. Asking her best friend is usually not a good idea because her best friend is approximately 64 times more likely to let the cat out of the bag than any other acquaintance. If you're after a girl in your Greek class (and I usually am - I highly recommend it) then female classmates are a good bet.
Step Two: If the gossip seems propitious, invite her to join in a group outing. During the outing, be sure to sit next to her and find the occasional aside to whisper to her. It's best if you can make her laugh but it's enough if you can find a time to exchange glances. If all goes well, proceed to Step Three**.
If her response seems lacking, consider leaving well enough alone, or repeat Step Two in case she was just nervous.
If it all falls flat, it's probably best just to let go and return to Step One with a new woman in mind. Alternatively, throw caution to the wind and skip ahead to Step Five or Six.
Step Three: Step Two having gone well, invite her to have a drink or coffee with you. This gives you a chance to demonstrate your interest subtly by opening doors, fetching the drinks or even treating her, if finances allow. If she seems a little flustered by the attention, this is a good sign. If she doesn't but begins to flirt a little, this is a good sign. If she seems sullen or confused, then use your discretion about proceeding to Step Four; it may be time to jump ship.
Alternatively, proceed directly to Step Five or Six.
Step Four: Invite her on another group outing. Pay the same extra attention to her quietly in front of the group. If she takes it as her due, this is a good sign. If she beats you to the punch, this is an even better sign. If she seems flustered, this is not a bad sign. If she seems eager for you not to do what you're doing, return to Step One - it's a lost cause.
Step Five: Plan the date. I prefer arts events, especially opera. Picking a date that will not require you to make conversation throughout is a very good idea. Time spent together not in conversation allows each of you to try out being around each other without too much pressure. I do not recommend a dinner date for the first date unless you are a loquacious extrovert. The main thing is to take her somewhere where you feel at ease and where you think you can make her feel at ease.
The main event of the date should always be followed by a drink or wandering walk home or similar. Give yourself a chance to take hold of her hand before the night is over.
(Nota bene: Planning to do anything more than hand holding is likely to backfire.)
Step Six: Consult the bird omens carefully and then ask her to a coffee or drink with you. Show the same attentions as in Step Two or, if applicable, receive her attentions gracefully. About 40 minutes into the conversation, it's time to broach the subject. Depending on her experience with dating women, this can range from a simple and direct "May I ask you out sometime?" to a still direct but less aggressive inquiry along the lines of "How do you feel about women?" or if it seems very touch and go, a low key "I've really enjoyed spending time with you this last couple of weeks." Whichever option you choose, be sure to lead in gracefully***. Compliments are a great idea.
If you get a yes, or she beats you to the punch, proceed to Step Seven. If you get a no, bow out as smoothly as you are able and return to Step One with a new woman in mind.
However you plan to get through Step Six, be sure to arrive with an actual date, time, event and transportation plan in mind.
Step Seven: Spend some time making sure that you have decent underwear and some of whatever she likes to drink in your freshly cleaned home with new sheets on the bed. You'll feel better during the date knowing that your home is tidy. (I do, anyway, but it now occurs to me that this might be little odd. I wonder.) It is at least as important to insure that none of the clothes you plan to wear have holes in them, unless of course, having holes in your clothes is what you do. If you need a haircut, get one now.
Step Eight: The date itself. Relax and enjoy. You have successfully wooed a woman, or, possibly, gotten yourself wooed. Either way, take a moment to rest on your laurels, but only a moment, mind. It's time to repeat Step Six, with appropriate variation until you call it quits or move in together or get married.
*If you have your eye on a butch woman, you will need an entirely different approach focused on enticing her into asking you out. Instinct and sneaking in glances and casual physical contact works best for this.
***Gracefully is good but if you're a nervous person (are not we all to a variable extent?) and the only way you can get the words out is to be abrupt, then just go for it, blurt it out. If she likes you, she'll think it's charming. If not, you're better off without her.
I'm starting Step One tomorrow. Wish me luck.
I spent a couple of hours lying awake tonight and while I was staring at the ceiling in between tosses and turns, I began to toy with the idea and try to pick apart, as I do, my motives. I came to the conclusion that the main idea is that I want to date, I see a prospect and it is therefore reasonable to take my chance.
Here is my guide to wooing women*: Enjoy and good luck!
Step One: Scout discreetly for gossip as to her likely disposition. This is tricky. Asking her best friend is usually not a good idea because her best friend is approximately 64 times more likely to let the cat out of the bag than any other acquaintance. If you're after a girl in your Greek class (and I usually am - I highly recommend it) then female classmates are a good bet.
Step Two: If the gossip seems propitious, invite her to join in a group outing. During the outing, be sure to sit next to her and find the occasional aside to whisper to her. It's best if you can make her laugh but it's enough if you can find a time to exchange glances. If all goes well, proceed to Step Three**.
If her response seems lacking, consider leaving well enough alone, or repeat Step Two in case she was just nervous.
If it all falls flat, it's probably best just to let go and return to Step One with a new woman in mind. Alternatively, throw caution to the wind and skip ahead to Step Five or Six.
Step Three: Step Two having gone well, invite her to have a drink or coffee with you. This gives you a chance to demonstrate your interest subtly by opening doors, fetching the drinks or even treating her, if finances allow. If she seems a little flustered by the attention, this is a good sign. If she doesn't but begins to flirt a little, this is a good sign. If she seems sullen or confused, then use your discretion about proceeding to Step Four; it may be time to jump ship.
Alternatively, proceed directly to Step Five or Six.
Step Four: Invite her on another group outing. Pay the same extra attention to her quietly in front of the group. If she takes it as her due, this is a good sign. If she beats you to the punch, this is an even better sign. If she seems flustered, this is not a bad sign. If she seems eager for you not to do what you're doing, return to Step One - it's a lost cause.
Step Five: Plan the date. I prefer arts events, especially opera. Picking a date that will not require you to make conversation throughout is a very good idea. Time spent together not in conversation allows each of you to try out being around each other without too much pressure. I do not recommend a dinner date for the first date unless you are a loquacious extrovert. The main thing is to take her somewhere where you feel at ease and where you think you can make her feel at ease.
The main event of the date should always be followed by a drink or wandering walk home or similar. Give yourself a chance to take hold of her hand before the night is over.
(Nota bene: Planning to do anything more than hand holding is likely to backfire.)
Step Six: Consult the bird omens carefully and then ask her to a coffee or drink with you. Show the same attentions as in Step Two or, if applicable, receive her attentions gracefully. About 40 minutes into the conversation, it's time to broach the subject. Depending on her experience with dating women, this can range from a simple and direct "May I ask you out sometime?" to a still direct but less aggressive inquiry along the lines of "How do you feel about women?" or if it seems very touch and go, a low key "I've really enjoyed spending time with you this last couple of weeks." Whichever option you choose, be sure to lead in gracefully***. Compliments are a great idea.
If you get a yes, or she beats you to the punch, proceed to Step Seven. If you get a no, bow out as smoothly as you are able and return to Step One with a new woman in mind.
However you plan to get through Step Six, be sure to arrive with an actual date, time, event and transportation plan in mind.
Step Seven: Spend some time making sure that you have decent underwear and some of whatever she likes to drink in your freshly cleaned home with new sheets on the bed. You'll feel better during the date knowing that your home is tidy. (I do, anyway, but it now occurs to me that this might be little odd. I wonder.) It is at least as important to insure that none of the clothes you plan to wear have holes in them, unless of course, having holes in your clothes is what you do. If you need a haircut, get one now.
Step Eight: The date itself. Relax and enjoy. You have successfully wooed a woman, or, possibly, gotten yourself wooed. Either way, take a moment to rest on your laurels, but only a moment, mind. It's time to repeat Step Six, with appropriate variation until you call it quits or move in together or get married.
*If you have your eye on a butch woman, you will need an entirely different approach focused on enticing her into asking you out. Instinct and sneaking in glances and casual physical contact works best for this.
** If you're involved in one of those wonderful and suffocating lesbian things where you're still more or less glued to your ex, now is the time to give her a warning finely balanced in directness and vagueness. It's only fair.
***Gracefully is good but if you're a nervous person (are not we all to a variable extent?) and the only way you can get the words out is to be abrupt, then just go for it, blurt it out. If she likes you, she'll think it's charming. If not, you're better off without her.
I'm starting Step One tomorrow. Wish me luck.
23 February 2009
There Exists a Blog Such That it is Sometimes a Greek Class
I'm in an odd state the past few days, sinking often into a rather blithery state where everything seems 'lovely.' I hope this is not a sign of impending hypomania. That's the way it always takes me: I fall in love with everything, which has the further side effect of making me prettier. This is so much the case that other people will comment on it. So many odd urges but then again, I can think of at least two other possible causes for this shift in mood. All that I see at the moment is lovely, though.
It's lovely in a detached way. It's detached because it's universal and uncritical. Sometimes I think that it is the eros of which Plato speaks. It does feel more like a close intimation of an eternal form than like an affection of my accidental qualities.
Isn't that phrase wonderful? Accidental qualities: except that they're so often seen as in some way essential to an existent self - these days, at least. I do wonder. Are they? There is such a long tradition of arguing that they are not.
What was I rambling towards? Oh yes, the blithery-ness. I feel so odd that I think I might give myself the day off tomorrow. I'm not sure that that is the greatest of ideas but I think I might need it. I had a bit of an upset last night, which brought up a host of confusing feelings. Has anybody out there read 'This Side of Paridise'? I'm feeling a great affinity to Eleanor again. Wet hens having great clarity of mind, and all that.
I would like to actually do something.
The thesis is trundling along, now a week behind schedule. I want very much to put up my post about it but I haven't sufficient remaining concentration to do more than copy and paste about it. I can't do that because I have two journals I want to submit it to for publication and if I do so, then it must be previously unpublished. I'm not sure how much a personal blog counts as far as that but I'd rather not give myself the temptation to prevaricate about it or run the risk of harming my reputation.
The idea of 'run the risk' has its own verb in Greek: κινδυνεύω (kin-dune-ewo). Then there's λανθάνω (lanthano) which is to escape the notice of someone. There's another verb dedicated entirely to the idea of arriving ahead of another person: φθάνω (phthano). Such very specific verbs.
I suppose that last paragraph is not great evidence of my realization that this blog is not a Greek class. It is good evidence of my rambling state of mind. It is likely that I will carry on putting up miniature Greek lessons until someone tells me I'm being obnoxious or pretentious, which I may very well be being. (Be being: what is that? The subjunctive present participle? Odd.) The reason I keep harping on the Greek of things, though, is because I love the Greek.
Well, well. It is an hour later than I thought and high time I went to bed. Wish me luck on feeling a little more human tomorrow.
It's lovely in a detached way. It's detached because it's universal and uncritical. Sometimes I think that it is the eros of which Plato speaks. It does feel more like a close intimation of an eternal form than like an affection of my accidental qualities.
Isn't that phrase wonderful? Accidental qualities: except that they're so often seen as in some way essential to an existent self - these days, at least. I do wonder. Are they? There is such a long tradition of arguing that they are not.
What was I rambling towards? Oh yes, the blithery-ness. I feel so odd that I think I might give myself the day off tomorrow. I'm not sure that that is the greatest of ideas but I think I might need it. I had a bit of an upset last night, which brought up a host of confusing feelings. Has anybody out there read 'This Side of Paridise'? I'm feeling a great affinity to Eleanor again. Wet hens having great clarity of mind, and all that.
I would like to actually do something.
The thesis is trundling along, now a week behind schedule. I want very much to put up my post about it but I haven't sufficient remaining concentration to do more than copy and paste about it. I can't do that because I have two journals I want to submit it to for publication and if I do so, then it must be previously unpublished. I'm not sure how much a personal blog counts as far as that but I'd rather not give myself the temptation to prevaricate about it or run the risk of harming my reputation.
The idea of 'run the risk' has its own verb in Greek: κινδυνεύω (kin-dune-ewo). Then there's λανθάνω (lanthano) which is to escape the notice of someone. There's another verb dedicated entirely to the idea of arriving ahead of another person: φθάνω (phthano). Such very specific verbs.
I suppose that last paragraph is not great evidence of my realization that this blog is not a Greek class. It is good evidence of my rambling state of mind. It is likely that I will carry on putting up miniature Greek lessons until someone tells me I'm being obnoxious or pretentious, which I may very well be being. (Be being: what is that? The subjunctive present participle? Odd.) The reason I keep harping on the Greek of things, though, is because I love the Greek.
Well, well. It is an hour later than I thought and high time I went to bed. Wish me luck on feeling a little more human tomorrow.
14 February 2009
Those Foul Little -mi Verbs
Well, I just looked up the origin of the word "thesis" and found that it comes from τίθημι, one of those dread verbs ending in -mi. I will confess that I quite irrationally hate them and do my best to ignore their existence, which does not work out well in translation. Hint to budding classicists, do not get emotionally involved with the morphology - it will end badly.
However, this is a blog and not a classics course (I hear readers saying 'really? she finally figured that out?') so I am going to ignore the fact that thesis comes from τίθημι and stick with thesisizing. This is not only because I have forgotten how to form the infinitive with -mi verbs but also because τίθημι has caused me many sleepless hours with its tricky ways and resemblances to ἵημι, the only verb more annoying than τίθημι.
Here endeth the rant.
However, this is a blog and not a classics course (I hear readers saying 'really? she finally figured that out?') so I am going to ignore the fact that thesis comes from τίθημι and stick with thesisizing. This is not only because I have forgotten how to form the infinitive with -mi verbs but also because τίθημι has caused me many sleepless hours with its tricky ways and resemblances to ἵημι, the only verb more annoying than τίθημι.
Here endeth the rant.
13 February 2009
Thesisizing
Hmm. . . I should look up the original Greek for thesis and make the verb form that way but I'll save that fascinating information for the next post.
I'm in thesis-land for the weekend. I'm writing my thesis on the non-fiction works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Most people know her from her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," which is far and away the best piece of fiction she ever wrote, but hardly anybody reads her non-fiction anymore. I'm interested in placing her in the Pragmatist tradition alongside Dewey, James, DuBois and company. She is often claimed as a sociologist but she called herself a philosopher and due to her total lack of quoted statistics, I am inclined to think that she designated herself correctly. Those sociologists: they claim Durkheim and DuBois and Weber and almost any philosopher from 1850 on who wrote about social philosophy. Very naughty of them to poach so.
Gilman's major non-fiction work is "Women and Economics." In this book she puts forward the still startling idea that women have a right to specialized labor outside the home. A right, not a privilege. She supported universal kindergarten, early childhood education, and daycare. She, having been deprived of it herself, said that women must have the same opportunities for formal education as men and then the same employment prospects. She very strongly emphasized the importance of the nature of the work over the amount of pay.
Gilman thought it immoral that anyone should have to do work that they were not suited for because they needed more money. She thought it immoral that women were kept in the home to cater to the needs of its habituants exclusively, conducting endless undifferentiated labor (i.e. switching from cleaning to mending to teaching to cooking and back and forth all the day long.) Women, she thought, had as much right to be a part of the world, voting and working, as men did because they were human also. Too much emphasis had been placed on sex characteristics rather than human characteristics and we had forgotten that women were human before they were women.
This resulted in an excess of romanticism, poor female physiology, prostitution, disease (venereal) and the immolation of half of the world's abilities on the altar of the idea of home. To replace what Gilman considered to be an archaic idea of the home, she proposed the construction of apartment buildings with communal gardens, day care centers, exercise centers, restaurants and apartments with no kitchens. She thought that the kitchenless home would be a healthier place, freeing women from the labor of preparing food or having to fix two dinners, one for children and one for the husband, and also make the home easier to clean. Everyone must have a room of his or her own: privacy was essential to humanity and women, in particular, had been too long denied any such sanctuary.
Gilman was sufficiently well known in her time that several such apartment buildings were actually constructed and a few still exist in the Northeast. Her ideas were similar to those of Melusina Fay Peirce, a philosopher in her own right married to Charles S. Peirce the pragmatist philosopher, but she was more radical in that she suggested that women should be allowed to have the same kinds of work as men while Peirce took women out of the home to work co-operatively but also to work at women's labor (sewing, cooking and so on.)* Both put forward the idea of sharing the labor of the household communally in order to save expense and women's time.
I could go on and on, which I suppose means that I have done my research and that is a good, but I shall stop here for now and in the next post or so I'm going to dig in to the problem of work with reference to Gilman, having been inspired by this post of Kate's on the Agonies and the Ecstasies.
*See "Co-operative Housekeeping," Peirce, Mrs. Charles S. It's out of print but can be found on Google books. A fascinating read.
08 February 2009
Keeping My Hand In
I was doing so well at posting regularly and now...
My only excuse is having been busier than I have been in a year. This is not going to be much of a post; I'm just trying to keep my hand in and not get to far off the habit of posting.
It has been quite a week. After the disaster that was last weekend and Tuesday (panic attack, then hungover on klonopin, then waking up dizzy and ill for no apparent reason on Tuesday and missing classes) I realized that something had to go. I'm glad that I tried to do all of the things I was trying to do but I can't quite do them all. Wednesday night I sat down and tried to decide what to drop. I have to keep all my silly general education courses because otherwise I can't graduate. I'm not going to drop church choir because we're about to get into the Lent and then Easter time of year - the really interesting music time of year - and I wasn't willing to let go of Spanish and the social justice committee. I can't stop working at the gallery. Working there just about saved my life this summer and gave me enough confidence to go back to school; besides, I'm involved in so many worthwhile projects there that it feels immoral to walk away.
There remained only one option. I added up all the hours I spent on non-school things and all the hours I spent on Greek and found that while I spend approximately eleven hours on church and the gallery, I spend seven hours doing homework for Greek and three hours in the actual class. If I dropped Greek, I would cut the amount of time I spent on non-essential school things in half.
So now, sadly, I am no longer studying Homer. I am sorry about it but all of the sudden I felt a thousand times better and I know it was the right thing to do. No sense in running myself into the ground, even for Homer.
It's hard for me to make these decisions. I don't like to let people down so I usually postpone it until I can't do anything at all anymore so that I won't have to feel guilty about it. Of course, this is not the best way to handle things nor does it really stop me from feeling guilty. On the one hand, I have no problem admitting that I have bipolar disorder and that it stops me from being able to do things I want to do sometimes. On the other, I have a hard time accepting this in a day to day fashion. Discerning what it is that I'm doing now that will have a bad effect in the future and then following through by choosing not to carry on doing it anyway is not easy for me. I'm pleased that I've done it this time.
My only excuse is having been busier than I have been in a year. This is not going to be much of a post; I'm just trying to keep my hand in and not get to far off the habit of posting.
It has been quite a week. After the disaster that was last weekend and Tuesday (panic attack, then hungover on klonopin, then waking up dizzy and ill for no apparent reason on Tuesday and missing classes) I realized that something had to go. I'm glad that I tried to do all of the things I was trying to do but I can't quite do them all. Wednesday night I sat down and tried to decide what to drop. I have to keep all my silly general education courses because otherwise I can't graduate. I'm not going to drop church choir because we're about to get into the Lent and then Easter time of year - the really interesting music time of year - and I wasn't willing to let go of Spanish and the social justice committee. I can't stop working at the gallery. Working there just about saved my life this summer and gave me enough confidence to go back to school; besides, I'm involved in so many worthwhile projects there that it feels immoral to walk away.
There remained only one option. I added up all the hours I spent on non-school things and all the hours I spent on Greek and found that while I spend approximately eleven hours on church and the gallery, I spend seven hours doing homework for Greek and three hours in the actual class. If I dropped Greek, I would cut the amount of time I spent on non-essential school things in half.
So now, sadly, I am no longer studying Homer. I am sorry about it but all of the sudden I felt a thousand times better and I know it was the right thing to do. No sense in running myself into the ground, even for Homer.
It's hard for me to make these decisions. I don't like to let people down so I usually postpone it until I can't do anything at all anymore so that I won't have to feel guilty about it. Of course, this is not the best way to handle things nor does it really stop me from feeling guilty. On the one hand, I have no problem admitting that I have bipolar disorder and that it stops me from being able to do things I want to do sometimes. On the other, I have a hard time accepting this in a day to day fashion. Discerning what it is that I'm doing now that will have a bad effect in the future and then following through by choosing not to carry on doing it anyway is not easy for me. I'm pleased that I've done it this time.
04 February 2009
Snow Day
We have a snow day today, which is lovely. So far this semester we've had quite a bit of snow but we've only had late-start days, which are annoying on account of then no one can remember when classes start and end and so on. Everything runs late and bumps into whatever else you have to do: in my case, doctor's appointments and church. All the people with children, and we have quite a few students with children, have their difficulties multiplied as their children's school will have a snow day when we have a late start day and so on. You can imagine the chaos.I am enjoying mine by drinking many cups of tea and working on the conference paper and the senior thesis and memorizing the first seven lines of the Iliad.
μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε,
πολλὰς δ᾽ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν
ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν
οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλή,
ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε
Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.*
(I'm really surprised it stayed in Greek)
As of Friday, I will already be a quarter of the way through the semester. I can hardly believe it. Soon it will be spring break and I'll get to drag out the sundresses from under the bed. By the time spring break comes, I'll be waiting for acceptance/rejection letters from grad schools. I will have finished my thesis and be preparing a presentation form of it. I'll be waiting to hear from two other conferences.
Thinking about this is nice but then my mind pops back to today and I think, how will I ever squeeze out enough time to do all that? It's a good question. I can't even find the energy or concentration to clean up the house.
Then again I can think back five weeks and remember how overwhelmed I was at the mere idea of going to school. I was sure I'd give up in the second week. I was very down from having been at my parents and couldn't keep up with some extremely basic things, too embarrassing to detail here. Now I am at least more or less on top of the day to day homework and I look presentable on a daily basis, something I would not have been able to forsee myself doing. Perhaps I'm in the same boat now, unable to see how I will do what I need to do but about to do it all the same.
I hope so.
*copied and pasted from the Perseus Project
31 January 2009
Work Avoidance
I thought that the biggest obstacle I would have going back to school would be the depression part of the bipolarnesses. I was completely wrong, at least so far. It's the anxiety that gives me the most trouble.
Case in point: the fact that I am writing a post instead of getting on with the Greek. As soon as I pick up a piece of homework I become extremely anxious that I'm going to do the wrong homework or do the right homework badly or not be able to finish it all or that my feeling that the medication has made me less intelligent is about to prove itself to be true.
It turns out that it's a good thing that most of my classes are very early in the morning as I simply don't have time to wake up enough to become too anxious to go if I have to leave the house at 7.20 am to get the bus.
Taking the bus is itself a strategy to foil the anxiety. The university is only about a mile and a half away from my apartment but since I live in urban Appalachia, it is a very uphill and downhill and up a very steep hill kind of walk to get home. So, if I take the bus instead of driving it is much harder for me to change my mind and leave or go off campus between classes and fail to come back. This works because, being urban Appalachia, our buses come only once an hour and the routes run in circles rather than back and forth with the result that while going to university takes about seven minutes, coming home on the bus takes at least a half hour. It's faster to walk, which is what I do, but all those hills make me less eager to leave.
So far I haven't been anxious in classes, which is fantastic. This also makes me think that the anxiety will ebb as the semester goes on. It is, as is usual for me, the transitions between doing one thing and doing another that throw me. I quite understand the ancient obsession with Hermes and Mercury; the same sort of anxiety surrounding states of change has led to me attaching my St. Christopher medal to the inside of my school bag so that I can't forget to bring it with me and holding on to it when I feel particularly worried. It helps, even if he isn't officially a saint anymore.
Maybe I should strand myself at the library today. Either way, it's time for me to stop working on this and go look up sixteen more verbs that will all mean anger, death, plague or destruction. If the vocabularies of a language say anything about the people who spoke them, then the Greeks were very concerned with war and spirit and death. The same would make the Romans extremely passive aggressive for saying 'amabo te' for please: 'amabo te' means 'I will love you.' Can you imagine? Sometimes it would work better than our 'please'; if you were hanging from a cliff begging for help, it sounds stronger. But in everyday life? 'Would you please pass the butter' becomes 'Pass the butter and I will love you,' with the implication to my ears that a failure to pass the butter would result in the alienation of affection. Then again, this could just be a reflection of their much stronger sense of duties towards others. I wonder.
See how easy it is for me to distract myself? Off I go, now, truly this time.
30 January 2009
Hellinismania
School is starting to settle down. I'm getting used to getting up early and having a schedule and showing up on time and sleeping at night. I still haven't gotten over the way everything feels different. There I am, same campus, same people, often the same classrooms and I'm not filled with rage and I can see clearly and the air is breathable and people are friendly. Too strange. The difference between my memory and the current reality is startling.
This isn't going to be too much of a post but I don't want to get out of the habit, so here goes. I'm doing frantic research to put together a paper for a conference and I want to write about madness in ancient society. I've found one good source, which should lead to others and then thirty minutes on JStor should furnish a few appropriate articles but I cannot decide what the focus of the paper should be.
I have decided to concentrate on Hellenistic philosophers (Cynics/Stoics) because they have the more easily accessible views on madness. They divide it into several kinds. There's melancholia, where a person is mad in emotions but still able to reason; mania, where a person is mad in emotions and cannot reason; bestial insanity, where the capability to reason and feel appropriate emotions (the Hellenistics are fixated on appropriate emotion) is entirely lost on account of continual emotional stress; temporary madness, which is the result of wine or drugs and temporary madness that is the result of strong emotions such as love or anger. For all that their main tenet of virtue is to have, indeed, to chose the correct emotions and desires, they make no moral matter of madness. A person overcome by melancholia is not giving in to a vice but suffering from the bodily ill of too much black bile. (black=melan, choler=bile)
Those suffering from bestial madness are seen as being outside the bounds of vice, that is, their actions are so far removed from reasonable and are so violent that they constitute something more like an illness than a vice because they cannot be said to choose their behavior or emotions. They cannot reason and thus they cannot be said to be vicious because they are unable to choose virtue. This is why it is called bestial, by the way; because they can no more reason than a beast can.
I cannot, though, decide what it is that the paper should be about. Should it be the links between Hellenistic theoretical models of madness and modern theoretical models of madness? Should I contrast them with some other philosophical school? If so, who? Should I drag Hellenistic medicine into it?
I do really hope that someone out there is actually reading these posts. No one comments, even if I ask. Despite that, I'm going to ask again: any ideas? Anything from the brief explication pique your interest? Please suggest me a thesis statement!
18 January 2009
Knitted Together
Before I had my diagnosis, I always thought that the euthymia that I experienced was the Holy Spirit. Even though I will use the technical term now, I still think it's the Holy Spirit. I don't mean that in a delusional, I think I'm the second coming way; I mean that it feels like the Holy Spirit.
I do strongly believe that mental illness has a physiological basis. I have no doubt that the extraordinary mood swings I experience have their root in a neurological defect. However, I also believe that God is everywhere, which means that there is no reason that He can't be in illness as well as health.
It seems a little perverse to me sometimes that a very, very good mood could be a symptom of illness but the way it comes on does seem to suggest that something has been triggered in the brain. I can feel it happen and it comes on the way the effects of a drug come. One minute I'll be sitting there feeling nothing out of the ordinary and fifteen minutes later I'll be filled with a luminescing joy that has come from no discernible place and that will not go away nor change in degree. It just is.
It's not strong enough to be called hypomania but it's not an ordinary state either. It might last a day, or it might last a month. It's a wonderful feeling.
The advantage of knowing Greek is that one can parse all these psychological/psychiatric terms. Euthymia comes from 'eu' meaning good, lucky, happy. The -thymia part comes from 'thumos' meaning spirit, heart. Euthymia is closer to 'high spirits' than 'good mood.' So it seems not incompatible to me that euthymia could be an experience of the Holy Spirit. By suffering are we made holy and by the Holy Spirit, Christ's own first gift to the faithful, is not called the eternal comforter as a joke. (Although it does conjure up the image of an enormous fluffy duvet sometimes.) Euthymia does feel like God's peace and comfort and a kind of earthly compensation for the rest of it.
It's not an accident that I have bipolar disorder. I wouldn't have chosen it but that doesn't mean that I have to experience it as a meaningless invasion of what would otherwise be a more ordinary life. I don't always know what exactly to do with it but it is mine to do something with. It is part of me, in my inmost self, and though it has a pathology (laws or order (logos) of suffering (pathos)), it takes its form from me and not mine from its.
We had Psalm 139 in church today - one of the really lovely ones - and it put me in mind of all this. And really, am I not, are we not all, marvellously made that even an illness can bring me joy?
Domine, probasti
1 LORD, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;you discern my thoughts from afar.
2 You trace my journeys and my resting-places *
and are acquainted with all my ways.
3 Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, *
but you, O LORD, know it altogether.
4 You press upon me behind and before *
and lay your hand upon me.
5 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; *
it is so high that I cannot attain to it.
6 Where can I go then from your Spirit? *
where can I flee from your presence?
7 If I climb up to heaven, you are there; *
if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.
8 If I take the wings of the morning *
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
9 Even there your hand will lead me *
and your right hand hold me fast.
10 If I say, "Surely the darkness will cover me, *
and the light around me turn to night,"
11 Darkness is not dark to you;the night is as bright as the day; *
darkness and light to you are both alike.
12 For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
13 I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
14 My body was not hidden from you, *
while I was being made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth.
15 Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;all of them were written in your book; *
they were fashioned day by day,when as yet there was none of them.
16 How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *
how great is the sum of them!
17 If I were to count them, they would be more in number than the sand; *
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.
I do strongly believe that mental illness has a physiological basis. I have no doubt that the extraordinary mood swings I experience have their root in a neurological defect. However, I also believe that God is everywhere, which means that there is no reason that He can't be in illness as well as health.
It seems a little perverse to me sometimes that a very, very good mood could be a symptom of illness but the way it comes on does seem to suggest that something has been triggered in the brain. I can feel it happen and it comes on the way the effects of a drug come. One minute I'll be sitting there feeling nothing out of the ordinary and fifteen minutes later I'll be filled with a luminescing joy that has come from no discernible place and that will not go away nor change in degree. It just is.
It's not strong enough to be called hypomania but it's not an ordinary state either. It might last a day, or it might last a month. It's a wonderful feeling.
The advantage of knowing Greek is that one can parse all these psychological/psychiatric terms. Euthymia comes from 'eu' meaning good, lucky, happy. The -thymia part comes from 'thumos' meaning spirit, heart. Euthymia is closer to 'high spirits' than 'good mood.' So it seems not incompatible to me that euthymia could be an experience of the Holy Spirit. By suffering are we made holy and by the Holy Spirit, Christ's own first gift to the faithful, is not called the eternal comforter as a joke. (Although it does conjure up the image of an enormous fluffy duvet sometimes.) Euthymia does feel like God's peace and comfort and a kind of earthly compensation for the rest of it.
It's not an accident that I have bipolar disorder. I wouldn't have chosen it but that doesn't mean that I have to experience it as a meaningless invasion of what would otherwise be a more ordinary life. I don't always know what exactly to do with it but it is mine to do something with. It is part of me, in my inmost self, and though it has a pathology (laws or order (logos) of suffering (pathos)), it takes its form from me and not mine from its.
We had Psalm 139 in church today - one of the really lovely ones - and it put me in mind of all this. And really, am I not, are we not all, marvellously made that even an illness can bring me joy?
Domine, probasti
1 LORD, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;you discern my thoughts from afar.
2 You trace my journeys and my resting-places *
and are acquainted with all my ways.
3 Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, *
but you, O LORD, know it altogether.
4 You press upon me behind and before *
and lay your hand upon me.
5 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; *
it is so high that I cannot attain to it.
6 Where can I go then from your Spirit? *
where can I flee from your presence?
7 If I climb up to heaven, you are there; *
if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.
8 If I take the wings of the morning *
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
9 Even there your hand will lead me *
and your right hand hold me fast.
10 If I say, "Surely the darkness will cover me, *
and the light around me turn to night,"
11 Darkness is not dark to you;the night is as bright as the day; *
darkness and light to you are both alike.
12 For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
13 I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
14 My body was not hidden from you, *
while I was being made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth.
15 Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;all of them were written in your book; *
they were fashioned day by day,when as yet there was none of them.
16 How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *
how great is the sum of them!
17 If I were to count them, they would be more in number than the sand; *
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.
anyqueensway
Does anyone else remember when the Queen of Hearts tells Alice (in the book of course) that "all ways around here are [her] ways"? Thinking about that used to make me smile whenever I'd go to or through Queensway, a neighborhood in London. I miss it. London: not Queensway. It's hard to miss Queensway. Or the Central Line, for that matter.
Well, friends, I think I might have a touch of the euthymia. I was speaking to my ex on the phone earlier and she asked me had I been drinking? what had I been doing?
I haven't done anything but wash the dishes, said I, except that I came back in the living room and found two mugs and a plate and thought, oh well, I'll just do them tomorrow.
But you're making me laugh, says she. What's going on?
Oh dear. What a regular ball of sunshine I must have been being!*
I should probably crack on with the Greek homework. Nothing mixes better with an effervescence than Greek and I've got 42 lines of Homer to tran and scan. (Like the abbreviation? See, you can tell I'm so cool that I'm part of the app. crit. crowd. {which is an extremely dorky form of cool wherein classics students show off by referring to the apparatus criticus [critical apparatus - it explains variations and misreadings of other texts and manuscripts and helps with weird verb forms] as the app. crit.})
Needless to say, this is a variety of cool not recognised in the general taxonomy.
I am, however, very excited to be following the same educational syllabus as St. Augustine, which is probably not a form of excitement recognised in the general taxonomy. But then, I'm an anomataxic girl at heart, really.
Ah, the nonsense. But at least I found my Carmex this evening. Can't have been a total loss, then.
*(Ah, the past perfect participle. Nothing could make me happier, except for the timely use of the future perfect.)
Well, friends, I think I might have a touch of the euthymia. I was speaking to my ex on the phone earlier and she asked me had I been drinking? what had I been doing?
I haven't done anything but wash the dishes, said I, except that I came back in the living room and found two mugs and a plate and thought, oh well, I'll just do them tomorrow.
But you're making me laugh, says she. What's going on?
Oh dear. What a regular ball of sunshine I must have been being!*
I should probably crack on with the Greek homework. Nothing mixes better with an effervescence than Greek and I've got 42 lines of Homer to tran and scan. (Like the abbreviation? See, you can tell I'm so cool that I'm part of the app. crit. crowd. {which is an extremely dorky form of cool wherein classics students show off by referring to the apparatus criticus [critical apparatus - it explains variations and misreadings of other texts and manuscripts and helps with weird verb forms] as the app. crit.})
Needless to say, this is a variety of cool not recognised in the general taxonomy.
I am, however, very excited to be following the same educational syllabus as St. Augustine, which is probably not a form of excitement recognised in the general taxonomy. But then, I'm an anomataxic girl at heart, really.
Ah, the nonsense. But at least I found my Carmex this evening. Can't have been a total loss, then.
*(Ah, the past perfect participle. Nothing could make me happier, except for the timely use of the future perfect.)
12 January 2009
Symptom, Sin, Circumstance or Psychology: I lost the thread on the way out of the labyrinth.
I have been having a great deal of trouble with motivation lately. I can't seem to get past it and I'm not sure where it's coming from.
I first taught myself back in 2002 to like cleaning my house, which was a big leap for me. That was the same year that I started looking after my eating habits. Then in 2004 I finally got a handle on keeping my clothes tidy. I got television watching under control in 1999. I have long had good spending habits. I developed the discipline to finish sewing and knitting projects somewhere along the way, I think in 2004, maybe 2002. Perhaps it just took a couple of years for it to really take hold. I learned how to talk to people, that is to overcome my shyness - I still come off all wrong sometimes, in 1998 and again in 2003 and again in 2006. I made a good habit of timely bill paying in 2003. I learned how to keep up with schoolwork in 2005. I seem to be developing a new understanding of how to give and receive help as I write, which feels like the only thing I have going at the moment.
Everything else seems to have slipped out of control. I have piles of unsorted clothes on my closet floor. I have two outstanding bills. The television seems to have taken me over. I have one unfinished sewing project and one unfinished knitting project. I've gone all shy again and my spending habits need reform for the first time I can remember. I haven't been able to properly keep up with the housekeeping for a good six months now. I cannot keep up with the schoolwork nor feed myself properly.
It took me a long time to develop good habits, which is a bit embarrassing. Some of that is due to never having been prepared to look out for myself once I no longer lived at home. Some of it is due to the disproportionate anxiety due to the bipolar. There are assorted secondary reasons for it as well. But bit by bit I pushed myself past it.
Now I seem to have lost it all and that is very discouraging.
Part of the current problem is that I'm not sure what has brought it on. One possibility is that I need an additional 100mgs of Lamictal. Another is that my routine is so loosely scheduled that I can't use my time effectively because it feels like there will always be time tomorrow - acres of time in front of me. The possibility that worries me most is the dreaded akedia. (Also known as accedie and accedia but I have done too much Greek to bear with the badly pronounced Latinate form of the word: it grates.)
I've had some rather flummoxing moods lately, the kind I look back and fret about. It's odd, though, because I am by and large on an even keel. I have been since September 6. (I know the date because I keep somewhat meticulous track of these things. That was the first day I felt well since October 2006.) Now the eveness has lasted more than three months and I am beginning to trust that it will stick around. So where has this deep lack of motivation come from? Why do I abandon all these good habits now when I was able to keep them up while I was severely ill?
If I were to tell my case worker or therapist about this they would immediately be on my case, saying that I should go to the hospital. But I'm not ill, not in a way that a hospital can help. Going to the hospital when I did is one of the best decisions I have ever made: it helped me to find appropriate medication quickly; it got me away from friends who didn't understand what depression is and were doing their level best (one of them, anyway, whom I was sharing an apartment with at the time) to make me feel incredibly guilty for not being able to behave as they wished I would; it kept my family at a distance; it stopped me having to do things like cook my own meals; it cured my insomnia for a good five months; and it gave me a chance to be around a whole bunch of people who were going through the same problems, so that I no longer felt as weird and isolated. But there's no opportunity for sustained counselling there. It's not the appropriate place for me to get to the bottom of whatever it is that has demotivated me.
This is the difficulty with the psychiatry/psychology part of things: they read everything as a symptom and automatically assume that the sufferer is having an irrational reaction to external circumstance, an attitude that has been shown to be distinctly unhelpful in several well conducted studies over the past sixty-odd years. It seems more likely to me that the cause lies in some psychological difficulty that would require some time for discernment or in some reaction to external circumstance, neither of which would be solved by playing around with medication.
If only I could figure out how to start figuring this out! Any ideas?
I first taught myself back in 2002 to like cleaning my house, which was a big leap for me. That was the same year that I started looking after my eating habits. Then in 2004 I finally got a handle on keeping my clothes tidy. I got television watching under control in 1999. I have long had good spending habits. I developed the discipline to finish sewing and knitting projects somewhere along the way, I think in 2004, maybe 2002. Perhaps it just took a couple of years for it to really take hold. I learned how to talk to people, that is to overcome my shyness - I still come off all wrong sometimes, in 1998 and again in 2003 and again in 2006. I made a good habit of timely bill paying in 2003. I learned how to keep up with schoolwork in 2005. I seem to be developing a new understanding of how to give and receive help as I write, which feels like the only thing I have going at the moment.
Everything else seems to have slipped out of control. I have piles of unsorted clothes on my closet floor. I have two outstanding bills. The television seems to have taken me over. I have one unfinished sewing project and one unfinished knitting project. I've gone all shy again and my spending habits need reform for the first time I can remember. I haven't been able to properly keep up with the housekeeping for a good six months now. I cannot keep up with the schoolwork nor feed myself properly.
It took me a long time to develop good habits, which is a bit embarrassing. Some of that is due to never having been prepared to look out for myself once I no longer lived at home. Some of it is due to the disproportionate anxiety due to the bipolar. There are assorted secondary reasons for it as well. But bit by bit I pushed myself past it.
Now I seem to have lost it all and that is very discouraging.
Part of the current problem is that I'm not sure what has brought it on. One possibility is that I need an additional 100mgs of Lamictal. Another is that my routine is so loosely scheduled that I can't use my time effectively because it feels like there will always be time tomorrow - acres of time in front of me. The possibility that worries me most is the dreaded akedia. (Also known as accedie and accedia but I have done too much Greek to bear with the badly pronounced Latinate form of the word: it grates.)
I've had some rather flummoxing moods lately, the kind I look back and fret about. It's odd, though, because I am by and large on an even keel. I have been since September 6. (I know the date because I keep somewhat meticulous track of these things. That was the first day I felt well since October 2006.) Now the eveness has lasted more than three months and I am beginning to trust that it will stick around. So where has this deep lack of motivation come from? Why do I abandon all these good habits now when I was able to keep them up while I was severely ill?
If I were to tell my case worker or therapist about this they would immediately be on my case, saying that I should go to the hospital. But I'm not ill, not in a way that a hospital can help. Going to the hospital when I did is one of the best decisions I have ever made: it helped me to find appropriate medication quickly; it got me away from friends who didn't understand what depression is and were doing their level best (one of them, anyway, whom I was sharing an apartment with at the time) to make me feel incredibly guilty for not being able to behave as they wished I would; it kept my family at a distance; it stopped me having to do things like cook my own meals; it cured my insomnia for a good five months; and it gave me a chance to be around a whole bunch of people who were going through the same problems, so that I no longer felt as weird and isolated. But there's no opportunity for sustained counselling there. It's not the appropriate place for me to get to the bottom of whatever it is that has demotivated me.
This is the difficulty with the psychiatry/psychology part of things: they read everything as a symptom and automatically assume that the sufferer is having an irrational reaction to external circumstance, an attitude that has been shown to be distinctly unhelpful in several well conducted studies over the past sixty-odd years. It seems more likely to me that the cause lies in some psychological difficulty that would require some time for discernment or in some reaction to external circumstance, neither of which would be solved by playing around with medication.
If only I could figure out how to start figuring this out! Any ideas?
09 January 2009
Never again would birdsong be the same
I’ve been reading a rather interesting book: Mad, Bad and Sad, which was written by Lisa Appignanesi. The book is concerned with the evolution of psychology as a science and its relationship to women and vice versa. I haven’t finished it yet, so I can make no comment on the book as a whole but I was enchanted to learn that Virginia Woolf complained of hearing “birds singing Greek choruses, King Edward using foul language in the garden.”
I’m not so sure about King Edward (VII presumably?) but I really like the thought of hearing the birds singing Greek choruses. Obviously, that would be one thing if they were singing the Orestaia, but quite another if they were singing the chorus introducing Phaedra or the one about longing for escape from Hippolytus. I think that I would find those ones quite comforting.
But then perhaps I am a little odd in that.
(121-140)
There is a rock that drips, they say, with Ocean’s water,
where water is drawn up in pitchers
from its flowing cliffs:
there was a friend of mine soaking
russet robes
in the pure waters of the river,
stretching them across the warm backs
of the rocks in the kind sun: here
came first to me news of my mistress;
keeping her distressed body upon a bed of sickness
inside the house, fine cloth
covering her golden head:
I hear that it is now three days
that her mouth is unfed
and from Demeter’s
grain she has kept her pure body,
wishing, from a secret suffering,
to run aground at the terrible shore of death.
own translation
I’m not so sure about King Edward (VII presumably?) but I really like the thought of hearing the birds singing Greek choruses. Obviously, that would be one thing if they were singing the Orestaia, but quite another if they were singing the chorus introducing Phaedra or the one about longing for escape from Hippolytus. I think that I would find those ones quite comforting.
But then perhaps I am a little odd in that.
(732-751)
Would that I were hid within the hollows of a mountain,
there would a god fledge me into a bird
among the winged flocks:
that I might soar over
the sea waves
of the Adrian shore
and over the waters of Eridanos,
where in the dark-gleaming swell
wretched maidens,
lamenting Phaeton,
let tears fall
from bright amber eyes.
That I might reach journey’s end at the apple-planted shore
of the Hesperides, the singers, where the sea lord
of the red-dark shallows
gives no farther passage to sailors,
where strikes the awful boundary
of the firmament, which Atlas holds:
and divine springs flow
by the place Zeus lay,
where, bestowing gifts,
most sacred Earth
increases the blessings of the gods.
(121-140)There is a rock that drips, they say, with Ocean’s water,
where water is drawn up in pitchers
from its flowing cliffs:
there was a friend of mine soaking
russet robes
in the pure waters of the river,
stretching them across the warm backs
of the rocks in the kind sun: here
came first to me news of my mistress;
keeping her distressed body upon a bed of sickness
inside the house, fine cloth
covering her golden head:
I hear that it is now three days
that her mouth is unfed
and from Demeter’s
grain she has kept her pure body,
wishing, from a secret suffering,
to run aground at the terrible shore of death.
own translation
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