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I've been in an early morning wake up sleep cycle all this week. This morning I "slept in" opening my eyes officially around twenty after two. Before that, I tossed and turned for about an hour or so, mostly mentally composing a letter of appreciation to D for all the good work she has done. All the really really good work and for honoring me with her friendship. Stuff like that. Compose. Edit. Rewrite. Edit. etc.
Then I came on into work (yawn!) and did some research on using Palm Pilots in mental health. We have a few, thanks to a generous donation, and I think it would be good to optimise them as a tool for our mental health case managers. Next up will be a little research on integrating wired and wireless networks and sharing DSL access. Then get back to the real work.
I had beers with a friend last night with him telling me about the new love in his life. He seems happy, contented. I hope things work out. Myself, I'm just a little anxious about the grand-kids going away for the weekend (or that's the plan) and being productive enough today and through the weekend.
I'm also a little bit anxious about my upcoming session with T next Wednesday. Not that there's anything major going on, it's just that I'm having some trouble getting a handle on certain thoughts and feelings (or are they all thoughts about feelings?) that have been cycling around in my head since the other night. Reich. Sexual energy. Transference. Reassurance. Attention. Roles. Body armor. Breathe in. Don't forget to exhale. Why some things turn me on and others don't.
Questions from my cosmos of one. But nothing coherent yet. That's the problem. It's like having an itch you can't scratch.
20 April 2001
Yesterday morning I was saddened to read in the New York Times about the death of the director Michael Ritchie. Back in late 1970's and early 1980's - when I was a regular patron of the Berkeley Public Library - I had a speaking acquaintance with his mother, who worked in the Arts and Music Department. I remember seeing "Smile", probably at the funky - but fun - old Rialto which used to be just above 6th Street on Gilman.
On to other things. In spite of brief excursions elsewhere, these pages have clearly evolved to become a journal of my therapy. I don't quite know what to make of it. Sometime soon I plan to go through and delete most of the early pages...or put them in the archives. A little spurt of organising initiative. When I have time.
I believe that T and I had a productive session last night. She surprised me by checking in with me the way she did at the end of our session, by calling me back into her office when I was already on my way towards the stairs. I appreciated it. I felt more than a little manic, likely from being up so early in the morning, having consumed small but ample doses of caffeine throughout the day, and the fact that I had talked my little head off almost nonstop (it seemed) for a good 40 minutes or so.
I also appreciated her feedback from our previous week's session. I am glad that she's willing to talk with me about the mechanics of our relationship. It's helpful to me as I process things...and yesterday I was feeling the need to process stuff. A conversation with J the other evening (me needing reassurance here in the adult wisdom arena). D's impending departure (a sense of imminent loss and my usual uncertainty about maintaining friendship mixed in with my happiness for her - don't you just hate those conflicting emotions!). A little salt. A little pepper.
And...some good stuff in recent postings on BookNotes.
19 April 2001
Is this post-tax time blues or pre-therapy introspection, but sometimes, like right now, I feel trapped in the middle of things.
I'm looking forward to tomorrow night to check in with T. I'm also looking forward to getting a whole bunch of work done over the next few days and getting some resolution on several pressing work issues.
I still feel trapped in the middle. But the middle of what?
I may go see "Josie and the Pussycats" tonight with the grand-daughter. Unless she and her brother go visit the mom. J really wants to see her mom during her week off from school. I'm sure P does too, but J is bearing the psychic burden most heavily - IMHO.
17 April 2001
I had a productive session with T last night. We agreed that we would try beginning our sessions by checking in with our bodies, watching the breath, seeing what comes up and starting the conversation from that place. I surprises me but I feel very comfortable with this approach. In bed this morning, half asleep, half awake, thinking about last night, it occurred to me that this may be her strategy to deal with my tendency to be too much in my mind. Hmmmmm...as if I needed encouragement to go out of my mind...
I do usually process "my stuff" more through the intellect than through being in touch with my feelings. I value our work together because she challenges me to be specific...when, left to my own devices, I would seek comfort in vast fields of generalities. Oh me Oh mi Oh...back to work.
12 April 2001
Okay, tonight I go spend "my" 50 minutes with T and unlike the last two weeks, I'm not blue...but I do feel a certain level of anxiety. It started coming on yesterday, like a case of psychic sniffles, and today it feels more like a light head cold. Of course, I'm sure it's not all about me and therapy tonight. I seem to have a great deal of work either currently on my desk or looming large just off shore of my attention...like a tsunami...On a more peaceful note (whew!!! breathe in...breathe out), last Sunday's New York Times had a wonderful piece on James Turrel's "skyspace" at Roden Crater in Arizona. Suffused with light we go forth into the day...
And now I really want to go see Roden Crater for myself...
11 April 2001
I'm suddenly finding myself having a bit of anxiety around tomorrow's therapy session. I feel compelled to tell T about my sense of how things went in our last meeting (badly I thought), and I'm uncomfortable with the compulsion. We'll see what happens...yet I can't help but wonder what direction or directions tomorrow night's session will take. Likely I'll also try to articulate the feelings that the movie "Before Night Falls" brought up for me (see below). Hmmmm...mental note...Has she seen the film or read the book? Meanwhile I'm remembering that I forgot to ask a good friend about how his therapy went yesterday. And I've been switching back and forth in my reading between "Before Night Falls" and "Psychoanalysis and Feminism". In other news...work is very busy...very busy indeed. More anxiety there.
10 April 2001
Last night in the City, I was happy to go with DK and see "Before Night Falls". I'd like to see it again, it was that rewarding an experience. Not least, it made me reflect on my own experience of coming out late in life and what that's meant to me in terms of my own guilt, shame, and sense of loss. Guilt and shame for being unpresent in the struggles that queer folk have had over the time of my adulthood, stretching from 1969 to the present. A sense of loss by my not having a deep rootedness in a queer community - the textured layers of friendships and connections that all of my queer friends seem to have, most of them at least a decade younger than I.
I saw the richness of having such a community in the life of Reinaldo Arenas very clearly in the telling of "Before Night Falls" as well as the fragility of such communities in the face of prejudicial violence, political expediency and revolutionary fervor.
I'm glad I saw it and glad I saw it with DK.
7 April 2001
Spent my allotted 50 minutes with T last night and left feeling that I had somehow bored her or frustrated her for the last half of our time together. Of course I could be mistaken but I wouldn't think that it's an unusual thing to happen...though likely very unusual for a therapist to admit it at least to the client...patient...person...that they're seeing.
We spent the first part of our time last night talking about my blueness, how I've come to the realisation that in that blue space I am more in touch with my introspective self...more in touch - present - with my feelings about things.
The last half, which I realised almost immediately after walking out of her office into the Oakland night, was mostly about me not being present, neither with her or myself. My instinctual response is to blame myself or to think that I had wasted the evening...then again, which self am i blaming? Which self is that?
"When you boil rice, regard the cooking pot as your own head. When you wash rice, know that the water is your own life..... If this is not clear to you, it is because your thinking runs around like a wild horse and your feeling jumps about like a monkey in a forest. When you let the monkey and horse step back and reflect upon themselves, the oneness of all things is realised naturally..." - Dogen Zenji
5 April 2001
Perhaps I'm getting too much sleep. For some reason or the other I'm feeling a little bit blue today. I'm still sore from my pratfall at b's house the other night and the continuing pandering to the wealthy and well-place by George W and company is making me...pissed off. My addiction to reading the New York Times in the morning doesn't help. This morning came the news that Bush et al are proposing a decrease of some 86 percent in federal dollars going to assist the uninsured obtain health care...and Paul Krugman on the Times Op-Ed pages had a piece on figures that show that at least half of Bush's proposed tax cut would go to the wealthiest one percent of the citizenry.
Thank you HAL. May I have that stress pill now.
4 April 2001
So this month starts without the availability of the U.C.Theatre as a movie going destination. MIR has fallen into the Pacific Ocean. And George W. and his cohorts are in charge of the machinery of national gooberment, er, goverment. What's wrong with this picture?
Well, if you believe that women should not have control over their own bodies or that pristine wilderness should be sacrificed for short-term profits or that widening the gap between rich and poor is good for the economy or...if that's what you believe then likely nothing's wrong.
Okay...the first rant of April is out of the way.
I finally finished John Brunner's "The Shockwave Rider" and I am now reading his "Stand on Zanzibar". I am in search mode for a second book to be reading, and if I can find a copy of Stephen Batchelor's "Alone With Others", will likely settle on that. Meanwhile, S and I are hooking up today and taking J and P to see "Spy Kids" at Jack London Cinemas. Then I really, really have to get some work done.
"And to close on, the Dept of Small Consolations. Some troubledome just figured out that if you allow for every codder and shiggy and appleofmyeye a space one foot by two you could stand us all on the six hundred forty square mile surface of the island of Zanzibar. ToDAY third MAY twenty-TEN come aGAIN!" -John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar"
Finally, Happy Thoughts Today, One April Zero One, to TLC.
1 April 2001
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