I wrote this about six weeks ago and programmed it to come up today in case I still wanted to hear it. I cannot believe I actually wrote this so recently, but I did.
Here is a hilarious critique of The Artist’s Way. I agree in substance although at the moment the excessive coddling Cameron recommends could be a good antidote to several things. Still I resist reacquiring this book. I am using a form of her mind-clearing exercise most mornings though, and the concept of the “artist date” (mine consist largely of low pressure reading for non current research projects), and her list of things one needs. At some point I will have to stand in a bookstore and look at her actual chapters.
Anxiety. What is it? Fear of negative atmospheres because they are so disabling and we do not have strong enough antidotes in Maringouin. Knowledge that one is not protecting oneself from danger and harm as one should. That came from Reeducation which alleged you “feared change” if you questioned poor ideas.
I have claustrophobia and fear of suffocation, strangulation, silencing, and also of battering about the head and decapitation. The closer I get to campus the worse it gets, and I would feel safer at home if a road I can see from here did not lead directly to campus.
Fear of working and fear of not working. Fear of being run down with an axe and chopped in half if I truly succeed at work.
Being too depressed to think coherently and yet being told one is not yet self destructive or irrational enough to qualify for treatment. Being bored with all of this. One has to take charge of it oneself.
Before Reeducation I did not have these problems because I was in charge. You have to put yourself in charge even if that means some people tell you you have too much power in your life. Power, control and authority are much maligned but it is because the conservative want you to hand your legitimate power to them.
I will be much happier, and I will recognize myself much more easily, and life will feel less distorted if I finish at least some of my many projects. Finish before the fog closes in, which is what happens to them when I run across things that shut me down. In Reeducation we were not supposed to control such things, we were supposed to let them rip through and take over because they were allegedly the truth (and overcoming difficulty was denial), but that is ridiculous.
I think I should channel that gunslinger Vallejo or any other person and visualize myself mowing those axe-wielding people down — or learn to just see them as the ghosts they are.
I wonder if the claustrophobia is about keeping myself in a box, like a tree without enough space to stretch its roots out.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 