coldhearted scientist وداد

As we know, I have taken the opportunity of the new Bak’tun to consider that we have a dawning of sorts, and to consider that it is as though the Twins had been resurrected and we were all back from Xibalba. This means that the blog topics have shifted from can I speak? and how did I get here? to what shall we do now? This means I am to be much more as I was in the old days, before I got so burdened. The blog is still allowed to speak about the past but only in a practical sense; doubt and wondering and self criticism, e.g. why did you not just, are no longer allowed. How should the sowing be, and the dawning? In the new era we will recognize poison more easily, and drink less of it.

*

This morning I woke up thinking there was virtually no way to have avoided getting so burdened. The reason, in Reeducation, I wanted to leave this profession was that I had a realization I could not really handle alone and rather than get help with it, got beaten up with it. I think I was smart to decide then that it was time to go to to law school. The bridge of moral support I was walking on, so to speak, really had crumbled and I knew, although people would not believe me, that without serious repair it was not realistic to project when, if ever, I would again be able to write about literature. On the other hand, jumping fields to my truer interest, I could have rebounded like the man with seven-league boots. I should have gone to school in Louisiana, because this would have been affordable. I never wanted to because I thought I needed a new place to rebound, because the New Orleans schools are private which only leaves the Baton Rouge schools, and because the programs I really need for what I want to do are in Austin when not Michigan and Cambridge. However, I may have finally rebounded and I could, conceivably, consider Louisiana now.

*

I woke up thinking my project is far too broad, and needs to be cut down. To see how to do that, I need to put more time into it. I have two new courses to teach in the spring, both out of field, and a service course. I want to put enough time into each thing so as to be comfortable enough to then be able to sit back and see where to cut it down. People are always talking about doing imperfect work to save time but I would prefer to save time by specializing more.

(A difference between myself and the apparent majority is that I have no problem with people who specialize, and I do not think specialization leads to narrowness. Look at this book outline which is much more tightly focused than mine but hardly narrow.)

*

I woke up thinking of how two ceramics teachers in a row have told me I do not try hard enough. They are right; I have encoded those courses as recreational and I was taught that in recreation you should not truly try. The teachers say I do not need to put in more time, I just need to come in less tired and believe more seriously in my projects while I am doing them.

Academics, on the other hand, preach about the importance of imperfect products: start before you are ready, declare things finished when they are half baked, pass the hard work on to your reviewers and editors and so on, and I cannot respect this; it is the attitude which caused me to lose interest in the profession, actually. Part of the reason I want to go into law is that I do not just want to play for survival — I want to play to win.

I decided to apply the ceramic teachers’ recommendations to everything from now on.

*

I want to be in law school but I cannot. Part of the reason I want to do it is how it would make me feel. I would be autonomous and free. I would be allowed to use all my intellectual powers and I would bend them in the direction I thought best. It would be sunny and I would feel physically strong.

I decided to do what I could to simulate these sensations now. It is a sunny day. I made café con leche and put on boots with springy soles, and an amulet from Pisac. I thought about hiking out to the point.

*

You have to keep channelling your strongest self. In Reeducation it was the opposite: you had to contact your weakest points and “being honest,” “admit” that these were the “real you.” Everything else was a mere “coping mechanism” or “defense,” or was a form of “denial.”

*

I think we were always underestimated. There are advantages to this in a way, as the secret self remains inviolate and can still flower. It is 13.0.0.0.0 and I am channelling the person I had become. Now I am thinking about the Popol Vuh and classes and about how my project is going to fall into place if I look at it slightly aslant. If I stop trying to work in a straight line and begin thinking about it as a new way of organizing my files.

Axé.