I am getting somewhat better at treating myself decently, after 25 years of Reeducation-induced self-destruction. Part of it has to do with not saying I do not get enough done. In Reeducation: learning to deaden the self, so as not to function at such a high level (because Reeducation didn’t like it). Now: trying to hide from that pain enough to function at a high level of imagination, access to self, intellect. But in fact I need that destroyed portion of myself to be working, need to work from it. The only way to make that possible is not to speak so negatively, in all the ways I do this.
I have started to remember my dreams again. There is one about having treasure, in a way reminiscent of my old dream about barely making it through an occupied zone to a neutral country – one about a marvelous encounter – and one strange one about exploitative academic and real estate practices in California, that I need to think about.
I am going to open a document elsewhere for these old notes, and think about them.
NAPOLEON apparently said that in modernity the Black man cannot rise out of his misery (the structure of the modern world prevents it). I have to find this reference.
And on Cecilia — after the Haitian Revolution Spain decided to turn Cuba into the biggest sugar plantation in the world. In the 19th century Cuba was 43% enslaved, and 86% of the slave population had arrived after the British had abolished the slave trade. About prison construction: Spain in the 1765-1840 period turned peasants into labors by criminalization. This is material from Rey.
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Things I notice about me: I am far more activist than most people, more of a leader and less resentful of institutional service. I am less tolerant of drudgery and monotonous detail than most academics. I am less sedentary and a better listener. I like all aspects of academic jobs but in some instances do not feel it is safe to say so, and in others do not feel I am authorized.
I even had impostor syndrome in college. I believed the entire thing had been set up as an illusion. I had not really gotten in, I had not really gotten these grades, my parents and aunt had just set the whole thing up as an illusion to entertain me, indulge me, since I was not really a person.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 