coldhearted scientist وداد

It is the weekend, and we have found an interesting song. 18 July 1936 was the first day of the Spanish Civil War.

There is a short 1938 film about it starring Juan Beigbeder, Raimundo Fernández Cuesta, Francisco Franco, Manuel Augusto García Viñolas, José Millán Astray, and Ramón Serrano Súñer, that I would like to see.

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The real sin of Reeducation was learning to weaken oneself. If one does not do that, then one can do almost anything with almost nothing, I am convinced.

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“You are not real and your perceptions are flawed,” intimated the R thing, whereupon I became paralyzed and tried to call that “procrastination.” That, once more, is why I claim that “procrastination” is not a matter of discipline or time management but of believing one is real and that one’s intuitions may have value.

The first step out of Reeducation is to believe in oneself. The first step out of “procrastination” was to treat oneself well — better, not worse, and with more care, not more discipline. I had not simply lost the power or will to concentrate. I was blinking fast, breathing like a rabbit, and looking for somewhere to jump, as my location was now most unsafe.

I think this is the problem some of our students have and I would like to impart confidence, not put the “fear of God” in them. A friend says I am too idealistic, and he may be right — they may not be configured as I am at all, at all.

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I have been told I panic when really I just am ust breaking down from the pain and making the error of trying to come to a consensus about stopping it.  I have been told I panic when really I am just terribly frustrated to be held up so long waiting for approval so that I can at last move ahead. I do tend to ask for moral support from quarters whence it is unlikely to come — even if it should. I am still learning to stop that.

“I fear extreme violence from the authorities as a probable consequence of asserting myself normally or of individuating,” was what I kept telling Reeducation on why I had come. More than two years later I realized this was precisely what Reeducation refused to consider — it was just something I liked to say when “panicked.”

Once I called some people for moral support for not going to a conference. It was going to be a long trip to a sad city in winter for the sake of three interviews for jobs I did not want and my session, which could easily have been run by my co-chair. I was so tired of everything, and I so wanted to stop putting energy in the wrong places, stop procrastinating about starting my life.

They insisted I go. I knew they thought they were doing me a favor, getting me over a “panic,” and I felt guilty that I did not appreciate it. But I had so wanted moral support for doing something else. On that I only got silence or resistance, and I was not strong enough in myself.

Then there was my infamous X, whom I felt guilty leaving because he said I was all he had. I kept saying that if he wanted me to stay out of pity, he would have to behave better so that dealing with him would be less unpleasant. He thought this was, again, groundless “panic.”

But none of this is panic, it is just a slight break in my capacity to bear pain. It is a lot safer for people to call that panic and allege it is groundless. “No, I am not drunk, we are having a nice dinner and we are so lucky to have it.”

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Everything was always said to have been because of not having obeyed perfectly enough. This, however, is when I do actually suffer panic: when being asked to follow destructive orders. One pays a very great price for obeying too well.

I am actually panicked  about the coming academic year, which will offer that Blackguard many chances to try to gain access to me. Like all the dangerous people I have known before, he asks for pity and gives destructive orders. The way to counteract this, I foresee, is to think of myself as having very great powers and many rights.

Actually, I am so much more powerful than those who give destructive orders. This is what I do not realize. Nor do I realize I owe them nothing.

Axé.