Sometimes, I stop breathing. (Only for a few seconds.)

Sometimes, I stop breathing and I don't realize I've stopped until I've started again. I don't notice the stopping, and I don't notice the starting: what I notice is the fact that I suddenly feel better, less panicked, able to think more clearly. Only then do I think, "Oh, right, I forgot to breathe."

I got an email this evening from my boss, letting me know that the class numbers have changed enough that she's going to cut down on my teaching hours, from 21 to 15, ... and suddenly it is so much easier to get all of my lesson prep done.

A few weeks ago, D. pointed out that I never bought him presents, and that this wasn't fair because it meant he couldn't buy ME presents, and therefore, I ought to buy him something. (I pointed out that I do too give him presents, but instead of twice-weekly gourmet chocolate bars I tend to buy him cufflinks & cast iron Dutch ovens once every 3 months.) But I figured he was about due for another large-ish present, which is how I ended up on ABEbooks, buying him the first volume of the complete Bloom County, and in the process, buying myself $50 worth of used Shirley Jackson.

I got The Lottery, which I'd already read, and One Ordinary Day, which was things I mostly hadn't read, a French translation of The Sundial, which I think I read a very long time ago, and The Magic of Shirley Jackson, which I bought because it included a copy of The Bird's Nest, Jackson's multiple personalities novel.

(I say multiple personalities, although I know that's no longer the preferred term, because that's what it was when she wrote it.)

Paradoxically, it's the least crazy of all her novels. Natalie, Eleanor and Merricat are all crazy in a deeply realistic, deeply personal way; they were the anti-heroines that I identified with most strongly as a teenager. Elizabeth is a character, and I suspect -- though I can't be sure -- that the entire novel is a commentary on the tropes of multiple personality fiction. Most of the other MP fiction I've read is predicated on the idea that the individual is fragmented at the beginning, incomplete; and, after a journey of personal discovery with the help of a sympathetic and brilliant psychiatrist, they become a stronger/better/faster/harder version of themselves. It follows these tropes, but makes them absurd. It's a wickedly satirical book, and not nearly as harsh as her other novels.

Jackson's characters (in the 4 of 6 finished novels I've read) fall into two categories: the protagonist, who is a young, neurotic, imaginative, often sheltered or inexperienced young women; and the supporting characters, who are all unpleasantly sane, self-centered, short-sighted and manipulative. The Bird's Nest is notable in that while Elizabeth is the same type of person, she's not sympathetic; and while her Aunt Morgen and the psychiatrist are both short-sighted and self-centered, they're actually much more likable than Jackson's supporting characters usually are. (It's also worth noting that this is the only Jackson novel I've read which depicts a happy, if highly unconventional, romance. All the others seem to be conventional and unhappy.)

Many of her novels deal with the theme of "roles other people force on you", being put in a position where you are "the confidant" or "the crazy one" or "the supportive friend" and unable to break out of that box. Here's the most blatant treatment of it: her Aunt Morgen wants her to be Betsy, the wild child, and her psychiatrist wants her to be Beth, the sweet and lovable one, and absolutely no one wants her to be Bess (who, it is strongly implied, is her strongest and truest, if most disagreeable, personality). Elizabeth, the girl you meet at the beginning of the book, is completely lost 3/4 of the way in. But it's all right, she wasn't important to anyone anyways.

I have 5 short stories "in progress", and 2 novels "in progress", and 2-things-that-are-not-quite-novels (I would like them to be the starts of two novella series) "in progress". Unfortunately, "in progress" is a phrase which here mostly means "I wrote half a page and haven't touched them since."

I've been thinking about them, though. And I think it's time to take them seriously again. I can't stop working yet, but I've got to start writing soon, or put it away for good.

So today: 598 words.

( and a quote, under the text )

Quotes from things I'm currently reading:

"For the thirteenth-century French philosopher William of Auvergne, magic was a ' passion for knowing unnecessary things'."

"Although not afraid to make trouble, Arnald was never exactly an outcast. He became a professor of medicine at Montpellier, his services were sought by kings and popes, and at root his medicine was conventionally Galenic. On the other hand, Arnald suffered the inevitable accusation of being a sorcerer -- some say he tried to create a man from a pumpkin stuffed with chemical drugs, and in 1317 the Inquisition of Tarragona ordered that his books be burned."

"The Chinese alchemists made gold to benefit not their wealth but their health. They wanted to consume it. Because gold was apparently incorruptible -- it does not tarnish -- the alchemists believed that by imbibing its virtues they could prevent their own bodily decay and live forever. ... Conversely, the metallurgical philosopher's stone became conflated with a life-giving potion in the West; by this means, Albertus Magnus allegedly brought to life a bronze statue owned by Thomas Aquinas. (The animated statue proved to be an unruly servant and had to be kept in order with a hammer.) In Chinese tradition, the elixir could raise the dead."

[Paracelsus' explanation of demons]
"And that is why they crave the company of man, because they long for a soul they do not possess. If one of these creatures is able to court and marry a human, then it too acquires a soul through the holy sacrament of marriage.
....
Nymphs look more or less identical to men and women, and it is for this reason that marriage is not uncommon between a female nymph and a man. But it is not always a happy union. A nymph once married a nobleman from Staufenberg, who then rejected her a devil and took another wife. But the nymph turned up at his wedding ceremony and killed him by 'giving him the sign' through the ceiling. And justifiably so, Paracelsus argues, for this nonhuman creature would have no recourse to the justice of the magistrates."

all quotes from The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science by Philip Ball.

Dear Academic Auditor,

It is, in fact, wrong to say that we teachers should do more paperwork (and be more diligent about doing our paperwork) because "doctors and nurses write everything down, and I always say our profession should be as respected as theirs".

In the first place:
Paperwork =/= respect.

In the second place:
Doctors and nurses? Get paid more than we do.

In the third place:
Doctors (and nurses) have minions to write things down for them. Pretty sure you're not going to hire me any minions.

In the fourth place:
Doctors and nurses need to write things down because of a little thing known as "malpractice suits" and also "sometimes, sick people die". Doctors keep records with the understanding that if one of their patients dies, they may be called upon to prove that they followed accepted practice and didn't contribute to their patients' deaths. That is why they write everything down. We are not going to kill anyone through teaching, and we are also probably not going to get sued over our teaching. Ergo ... we don't need nearly the level of meticulous record-keeping that doctors do.

(In the fifth & sixth & seventh places, doctors are not trying to assess 15 patients simultaneously, and their methods of assessment are considerably more quantitative than ours, AND they are only assessing, not also trying to teach you how to do the things they are assessing.)

I don't mind paperwork. I do think it's a useful tool. What I mind is the fact that you expect us to do all of these paperwork without actually getting paid for any of it, and that you expect us to do an amount of paperwork that would be detrimental to our, y'know, ability to lesson plan.

But most of all, I mind that you subjected me to a shitty metaphor.

"[Hemingway] admired Conrad's literary philosophy and the way he summed up his aim -- 'scrupulous fidelity to the truth of my own sensations.' That was his starting point. But how do you convey that truth? Most people when they write, including most professional writers, tend to slip into seeing events through the eyes of others because they inherit stale expressions and combinations of words, threadbare metaphors, cliches and literary conceits. ... Hemingway had had the advantage of an excellent training on the Kansas City Star. Its successive editors had compiled a house-style book of 110 rules designed to force reporters to use plain, simple, direct and cliche-free English, and these rules were strictly enforced.

...He once defined the art of fiction ... as 'find what gave you the emotion; what the action was that gave you the excitement. Then write it down making it clear so that the reader can see it too.' All had to be done with brevity, economy, simplicity, strong verbs, short sentences, nothing superfluous or for effect. 'Prose is architecture,' he wrote, 'not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.' "

Today was my day off.

I:
-- cleaned my bedroom & the kitchen
-- made kale chips, poppy seed chicken salad, and carrots mattimeo
-- helped D. move a load of his stuff into the house
-- emailed my penpal
-- wrote 1k

-- and also, y'know, played Warcraft 3 for 2.5 hours and ate all of my housemate's chocolate-covered raisins when she was at yoga class. WHICH ARE ACCOMPLISHMENTS I AM EQUALLY PROUD OF.

I am almost 3/4 of the way through the thing I'm going to send my writing group. Unfortunately, we're meeting on Saturday and I had intended to give it to them, uh, yesterday. But I should be able to give it to them tomorrow? I hope?

Last night was the Hot Foods party, which is a yearly thing hosted by one of my friend's parents.

I've been going since 2009. In the past, my experience has been:

-- Show up. Feel overwhelmed by the noise/crowd and totally awkward.
-- Find one of two or three friends who I'm particularly comfortable with, and CLING TO THEM LIKE A LEECH for the rest of the party. Do not make eye contact or initiate conversation with strangers. Do not drink or eat anything, because assembling a plate of food is a monumentally stressful task.
-- At some point, retreat to my friend's bedroom with a book and hide there until it's time to go home.

This year was different. I mostly hung out with people who I knew a little bit, but not quite to the leechcling stage, and had nice conversations about quantum physics/human anatomy/the Problem With Chinese Characters. I met a couple of people I hadn't met before. I ate the food. I was there for 4 hours, and I managed not to go hide the entire time.

Back in October, I told my psychiatrist:

"I'm actually pretty functional at this point. I can hold down a job; I can maintain relationships. I get anxious a LOT, but I have all these coping mechanisms developed and I can get through it.

But I feel like I'm doing the bare minimum. I feel like other people are so much more capable than I. They get more done with their time and they enjoy themselves more. And maybe that's just how I function, or maybe it's the anxiety -- but either way, I'd like to find out."

Last night, I thought, "AHA! It WAS the anxiety."

It's a pleasant surprise that things have changed this much -- and this visibly -- in 4 months.

Onward and upward!

I'm really digging quinoa right now. So far, I've tried it in two dishes:

Zucchini with Quinoa stuffing , which we turned into a "primavera casserole" -- added mushrooms and kale and baked it all together.

Quinoa, sweet potato, mushroom, & kale stirfry

This is a trend I plan to continue.

R. knows a lot of songs -- well, he knows BITS of lots of songs. Sometimes he sings for us.

This morning, I put on "Gypsy Rover" while we were eating breakfast. Shortly after breakfast, he began singing it in the car.

After we got home, I put on a cd of The Beatles for him to listen to. He began singing along with "Eight Days A Week" ... although he only knew the bit that goes "eight days a week" and was happy to sing that over and over while the Beatles moved to the rest of the song.

Fiction:
Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories

From the intro:
"The best ghost stories don't have ghosts in them. At least you don't see the ghost. Instead you see only the result of his actions. Occasionally you can feel it brushing past you, or you are made aware of its presence by subtle means. ... If a story does permit a ghost to be seen, then he doesn't look like one. He looks like an ordinary person."

I picked this up mostly on a whim, but it earns points for having only three (out of 14) stories I'd read before -- one of those being my favorite horror story of all time ("Ringing the Changes") which I have never seen collected in an anthology before.

They are very, very good stories, although they all have the flavor of a certain culture -- it's almost entirely British authors, almost entirely from the first half of the twentieth century (with a certain cluster in the '50s.)

So far, my (new) favorites are "W.S.", by L.P. Hartley, and "The Ghost of a Hand", by LeFanu.

Non-fiction:
Medieval Islamic Medicine, Peter E. Pormann & Emilie Savage-Smith

"Medicine is a science from which one learns the states of the human body with respect to what is healthy and what is not, in order to preserve good health when it exists and restore it when it is lacking."-- Ibn Sina (d. 1037)

It's dense only the way a scholarly monograph, and somewhat hindered by the paucity of information -- though I think their habit of constantly mentioning how limited their resources are exacerbates the issue. The best parts are the excerpts from primary sources, and there aren't nearly enough of them.

I know enough about Islamic history and medieval medicine to follow their off-hand references, but I do wish there was more texture and depth to this book. I wanted something to immerse myself in, and there's just too much structure and very little inside.

(One of the more interesting bits -- to me, anyways -- is a tangential discussion about how Greek medical texts were translated into Arabic, and how the style of translation evolved over time. I crave more books on this subject.)

It's the end of the year, which means it's time for ...

The end of the year survey!

Links to previous years:
2004
2005
2006 doesn't exist.
2007
2008
2009
2010

( 2011 )

A few months ago, Gra sent me a backup he'd made of all the documents on my old computer; I finally got around to looking through it, and it's AMAZING. Holy bejesus. Some parts of it are straight up heartbreaking (the dream analysis paper I did for theories of personality), but most of it is delightful to rediscover.

There is a used bookstore a couple of blocks down from one of my ESL schools, and I've gotten in the habit of going in there every couple of weeks and buying mystery novels.

The problem is, I've run out of Agatha Christie. I've read all of them. I own most of them. Same with Dashiell Hammett, Dorothy Sayers, and a substantial chunk of Nero Wolfe. (And I've read a fair amount of Ellery Queen and Raymond Chandler, but I don't like them nearly as much as some of the others.)

So I've had to branch out. I've been trying out PD James, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, and Elizabeth Peters. Out of those, I like Ngaio Marsh the best. She manages to balance the psychology and the mystery element, and her detective is absurdly clever without being obnoxious. PD James does a good mystery, but there's something extraordinarily morose about her prose. Peters is fun, but so ridiculous I can't take her seriously. (And I think that's intentional on her part, considering the tropes she's playing with.)

Margery Allingham ... well, I think there's a reason why she hasn't retained her popularity like Sayers or Christie. Her plots are sort of melodramatic and meandering, focusing on the psychodrama of the characters so much that the mystery sort of gets solved as an afterthought. And her detective comes off like a less interesting version of Peter Wimsey.

I am alive! And feeling the urge to do a year-in-review post ... but there are still 8 days in the year (including my birthday) so I really ought to wait, at least a little bit.

I just have to say, though, that I'm really happy with my life. There's still room for improvement, but I'm in a good place, I'm surrounded by good people, and I'm figuring out what happens next.

I started Part-time Job #3 this week -- teaching ESL Tuesday and Thursday mornings, from 8:45 to 12. And I convinced Housemate Ian to (temporarily) trade half of his Wednesday shift for my Saturday half-shift. Which means that my work schedule has gone from four 3.5 hour days, one 11 hour day, and one 6 hour day, to one 3.5 hour day, two 6.5. hour days, one 9.5 hour day, and one 11 hour day -- usually split shifts, with 1 or 2 hours for lunch in between. I start work at 8 and finish at 6, or 7.

Paradoxically, I feel SO MUCH less like crap now than I did before. I went to Krav twice this week (the past couple of months I've gone to Krav once in two weeks, if that.) I went out for dinner with a friend last night & was out till 10:30. Granted, I don't do much at my house except sleep and there have been a couple of times I've literally forgotten to eat ... but I'd rather that than all of the Very Exciting anxiety/depression stuff that was happening, the past couple of weeks.

Apparently I just need to be busy enough that I don't have time to think.