Writing Is Now Baseball

Part of writing now is learning to accept that I can't simply impose order on this damned mess in a single, bold stroke the way I did a decade ago (can I have been sick that long?). I need to be patient (I hate that pun) while I plod my way toward coherence. It makes me sick, but that's how this works now and nothing will change it. Writing is a slow boring of hard boards needing passion and perspective. The charismatic version of this was way more fun.

Baseball. Writing is baseball. It's about grinding it out patiently across the long season.

I Finally Get It

The brain damage has left me with three core problems:

1. I have difficulty sorting because I have trouble holding multiple items in my brain at one time and manipulating them. I suck at filing.
   
   
2. I have difficulty suppressing intense emotion. This was apparently something I used to be able to do very selectively.
   
   
3. I suffer from chronic fatigue that’s akin to living like someone in their sixties or seventies. Moreover both sorting and dealing with strong emotion are the things that greatly exacerbate this fatigue. This probably has to do with "rewiring" the brain does to get around the damage. Ironically, moving heavy boxes is less fatiguing for me now than filing or cleaning. Anything is less fatiguing than intense emotion.
   

The first two skills are the foundation of all disciplined work. Having the last defect sure doesn’t help get my job done.

When I’m thinking up new ideas, I get emotionally overstimulated. The stuff I dream up excites me a great deal. Talal Amin described the charismatic inspiration of shamen and artists this way:

Johann Sulzer, a theorist of the fine arts, wrote in more general terms: “All artists of any genius claim that from time to time they experience a state of extraordinary psychic intensity which makes work unusually easy, images arising without great effort and the best ideas flowing in such profusion as if they were the gift of some higher power. This is without doubt what is called inspiration. If an artist experiences this condition, his object appears to him in an unusual light; his genius, as if guided by a divine power, invents without effort, shaping his invention in the most suitable form without strain; the finest ideas and images occur unbidden in floods to the inspired poet; the orator judges with the greatest acumen, feels with the greatest intensity, and the strongest and most vividly expressive words rise to his tongue.” Such statements, Flaherty argues, are strongly reminiscent of accounts of shamanism—in this case of a shaman described not skeptically but in wonderment. They employ the idea of inspiration metaphorically—as control of an “instrument” from outside the person, or as a “gift” from a “higher power.” But these remain metaphors, covering an inability to explain a this-worldly phenomenon in natural terms.

Sorting through the flood of inspired ideas pouring into my skull and rapidly organizing them would be difficult enough in my state. I can't rapidly organize anything anymore. But feeling that intense passion, literally ecstasy, makes it even more difficult for me to sort. I overheat emotionally and have to slow down and process more slowly. Moreover, I don’t really feel ecstasy anymore. I feel panic. I feel a very strong reflexive immediacy to write, as if slowing the thinking down will makes me forget the connections my imagination has made between objects. To some extent that is actually true. There are ideas that one might not imagine again if one doesn’t latch on to them immediately. So what was once ecstasy is now pure choking.

Nonetheless, slowing down and handling the flood of inspiration through patient note-taking about what I’m imagining over several passes over months is a viable way of handling this. Once I detach emotionally from what I've imagined (which takes a few weeks), I can sort through the mad intuitive drivel for the real gems. It’s slow, but I do eventually “get there.” I can still do this work.

But I nonetheless can’t absorb the input from my imagination rapidly enough to proceed the way I used to before. That ecstatic, charismatic feeling of “channeling divine inspiration” is something I’m never going to feel again. I will never be able to sort rapidly enough to select which relationships to accept and which to reject as inspiration floods my brain, let alone handle the flood of emotion this creates. The emotion exhausts me well before I can achieve the sorting task. That is what the disability has cost me.

But using my brain to rapidly sort the deluge of inspiration that would flood my mind was the work process with which I most identified myself. Losing this gift has entailed losing what I valued most about myself as a person. I don’t need to mourn it anymore, because I’ve been mourning it for years now. But finally being able to articulate it has finally allowed me to let it go and move forward.

A Move Toward Substance?

I've been known to actually write about something on occasion. I'm not there yet, but let's see what we can do about slowly reasserting that reputation. There are no developed ideas here yet, but at least it's not Skywalker-style whining about my sad, sad shoulder routine!

Ten Weeks Until Football

Kirk has already gotten our fantasy league going. I doubt I'm going to be any better prepared this year than I was for the last three. Still, it's a good ritual. I've been trying to get Kirk to blog about football. He's considering it in a lukewarm sort of way. That's actually progress. Kirk is renowned for his unique stubbornness. Has been since we were kids. Damn, that was a long, long time ago.

The Packers have a totally revamped defense this year. That will be interesting. Maybe we won't have any more losses by four points or less. That would be nifty. There have been no significant changes to the offensive line. Anyone who knows me, knows that I obsess about the O-line all year long. I have since 2005 and will continue to until the line is re-established. I believe in fundamentals. Clearly McCarthy believes that the line is fine and that the Pack was just unlucky with injuries last year. Well, this is the year that we see if he's the offensive genius they say he is. If the line coheres early, we know we're going somewhere. If not, I'm prepared to call the whole cut-blocking scheme a failure. I admit it. I place my trust in big, beefy motherfuckers. Size is everything. You know. Like the Cowboys and the Saints had last year. Mobility, shmobility. I like BIG, BEEFY FUCKERS. Always have. And I never liked the Broncos and their cut-blocking scheme anyway. Anyone who knows me remembers exactly why.

If Favre shows up as a Viking, I'm hoping the new defense will pummel him into a greasy, purple spot on the astroturf of the Metrodome. I really don't know why the Vikings want him. Historically, Favre has always sucked in the Metrodome.

Procrastination

I'm realizing procrastination is a major problem with me. Before MS, it was never a problem because I would just suppress the "I don't feel like it" emotion and work my ass off. I can't suppress the emotion anymore. So how do I find ways around feeling the damned feeling?

There have been two methods I've had some luck with. The first is having another, stronger emotion to balance the "I don't feel like it" or "I'm scared of it and don't want to acknowledge the fear" feeling that's blocking me. Creating structures that generate the counterbalancing emotion helps. For letters of recommendation, I make the student have an interview with me, where I learn enough about his or her goals that I can write a good letter. Then I make them pick up the letter from me in person, so if I fuck up, I have to face the student. That's usually enough to keep me in line. The other, new method that seems to work is to set aside a time for the task every single day. It's working for getting to the gym. Forcing myself to track the progress on the research block helped for a long while. The problem is that when I fell off the wagon, I had a lot of trouble getting back on. That was always the problem with working out. Making working out a daily event seems to have solved it. Doing the same with writing might help.

Divine Economy

The art in being truly human is living with a consciousness that we are neither animal nor god, but live constantly on the frontier between the two. It is difficult to live without savagery or hubris, but learning to do so is the soul of what makes being human a beautiful thing. Keeping this awareness has been difficult for me. I have always cast my eyes toward the heavens. I need reminders that I am creature.

A human emulates God’s power most clearly in our feats of discipline. It is discipline that creates power and discipline that confers identity. Discipline is the wellspring of our God-given gift of naming. It is in my capacity to be disciplined that my subjectivity has been damaged. I used to believe that choosing not to be disciplined was willing to not be like God, nothing more than the contemptible will to be animal, a prisoner of the senses. I would never have chosen this.

Such is God’s economy that, in my curious illness, I have all that I need to remember. I will never be disciplined again, at least nothing on the same order. This for me is essentially the same thing. Unlike the animal that was never meant to be self-disciplined and could never understand this, I understand fully what is entailed in this loss. I also understand what I have gained because of this loss.

It is hard to understand how something can be both so bitter and so sweet. Such is the economy of God.

Strategic Epiphany

Okay, I think I’m beginning to see a new level to learning to prepare applications again. My problem has been that I am focused on preparing a successful round. I want to get out about 6-8 applications, because the more shots you take, the better your success rate is likely to be. That’s stupid.

I have been aware of two immediate problems: First, my new learning speed has been compromised by the disease. I don’t calculate permutations nearly as quickly and as effectively as I used to. I used to subconsciously make the calculations in my head. Well, my short term recall deficit prevents me from making effective decision trees in my head. The only way I can deal now is to physically make a decision tree so that I don’t have to try to keep the diagram in my head while I think about it.

Second, all human beings make decisions on the basis of emotion, not reason. What a rational process is supposed to do is help you figure out which conflicting emotion to suppress. Reason (going step by step through the decision tree) doesn’t make the decision for us, even if those of us who can deploy this strategy quickly feel as if it does. Reasoned analysis simply changes how you feel about the decision you are making in a useful way. But if I feel very strongly about the wrong decision, I can’t suppress the need to decide that way anymore, because I can’t suppress strong emotions outright anymore. Going through the decision tree, even if it’s written down, isn’t necessarily helpful because I can’t suppress strong rival emotions effectively. I make bad decisions and I know they are bad decisions, but often, until the emotional dilemma is resolved somehow, I still make the bad decision knowing the decision is bad because I can’t help myself.

This morning, I am aware of a third problem. My systematic problem is often not my conscious feelings. It’s the underlying identity-forming assumptions that I adopted at, say, the age of twelve or sixteen that are fucking me up so badly. I need to discard core parts of my identity (again!). The truth is that I’ve always hated incrementalism. Always. I mean what can be more insipid than crawling at a slow and steady pace? What could be less satisfying? What could better represent the rankly inferior? I can’t think of any aesthetic way of living that isn’t fundamentally immoral that I have despised more. It all goes back to that stupid story of the tortoise or the hare. I’ve never bought it’s idiotic moral—steady by slow wins the race. Indeed, it’s a stupid moral. Steady but slow may help you finish the race, but you’re going to lose the race to steady but fast every fucking time! Let’s get real. It’s not a dominant strategy.

Well, I am slow now. Indeed, I saw a cognitive therapist named Annette Coangelo and she, very brilliantly made two points absolutely clear to me. The first is that I still have extraordinary abilities and can pretty much still do everything I used to be able to. The second is that I am going to do everything that I used to do far more slowly than I used to. I can make any journey. I’m just never going to win the race. Many years ago, my friend Faedah Totah gave me the text of a poem by Cavafy called “Ithaca.” I’ve always loved the poem, but this morning, I’m thinking more clearly than usual, and its point has been driven home to me clearly. The journey is meant to be savored and one cannot savor something quickly. A journey is not the same thing as a race and God means for me to take a journey, not run a race. God has reason in the lessons he has given me. As much as I’ve hated the course, what I’ve learned has been worth the suffering. Not every course can be fun. Life takes discipline and discipline is rarely fun. Not until you’ve mastered the discipline, anyway. Then it can get really fun, because you get the job done.

I still have a problem, however. Winning the race was one of the things that made it possible for me to provide the steady performance in the journey. I loved beating the other guy (get your mind out of the gutter, that wasn’t what I was talking about, even if your smutty insinuation is completely true). I also loved the fast aspect of my steady but fast strategy. I got off on watching what I was building grow before my very eyes. It kept me motivated. The most dejecting thing about the MS experience has been living through failure after failure as I keep fucking things up.

Which brings us to the point of the whole post. I need to learn from Ted Thompson. Two years ago, the Packers went 4-12. We started the next season by losing 26-0 to the Bears. We were rebuilding. Rebuilding hurts. Well, in a lot of ways I’m rebuilding, but I haven’t realized it. To be honest, I’ve responded a lot like Brett Favre has over the past two years. I’ve completely freaked out about the loss of identity involved in my brain damage, and ever since, because I can’t live with losing, I’ve been throwing stupid interceptions. My ability to organize has been seriously compromised, just as the Packers offensive line was seriously compromised in 2005 when Marco Rivera and Mike Wahle left the Packers offensive line. Mike Flanagan but it bluntly when he said that you can’t replace guys like that. You just move on. You don’t fix the old system. You abandon it and rebuild. And rebuilding hurts. Rebuilding means losing 26-0 to the Bears but, maybe, if you’re doing it right, going 8-8 for the season. Sure, it’s nothing to write home about, but it’s better than losing 4-12 for the season and it’s the trend that matters.

I’m currently organizing my second upper-division course. What I’ve noticed is that it is much easier than organizing the first upper-division course was. When it comes to organization, I don’t have much forward vision anymore. It’s frustrating that I don’t seem to anticipate what my problems will be the way that I used to, nor do I adapt as quickly as I used to. I learn more from hindsight now than I do from foresight. That hurts. Marx said of the revolutionary of the 19^th century:

On the other hand, proletarian revolutions, like those of the nineteenth century, criticize themselves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltriness of their first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again, more gigantic before them, and recoil again and again from the indefinite prodigiousness of their own aims, until a situation has been created which makes all turning back impossible, and the contradictions themselves cry out:

Hic Rhodus, hic salta
Hier ist die Rose, hier tanze!

I’ve always wanted work to feel like that. And it did! Yeah, true, I may have often wound up much more often like the revolutionary of the eighteenth century—

Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, storm swiftly from success to success, their dramatic effects outdo each other, men and things seem set in sparkling brilliants, ecstasy is the everyday spirit, but they are short-lived. Soon they have attained their zenith, and a long crapulent depression seizes society before it learns soberly to assimilate the results of its storm-and-stress period.

—but what the fuck did I care? I loved working because working was a charismatic high and I loved being high on work. It was better than any chemical. If I had to weather a hangover in the morning, so what? I’d partied all night and that was all I cared about. I had the stamina for it back then. It was a fun lifestyle. I liked living that way and I liked myself for the life I lead. There’s a reason this has hurt so much.

Well, building a football team isn’t like that. Sure it takes passion. But it also takes perspective. It takes patience and quiet work in the face of all the bullshit that everyone is throwing at you. Ted Thompson hasn’t given a shit about what anyone has said about his strategy. He doesn’t run around justifying himself to people. People get pissy and ask why he didn’t pick up any new offensive players over the off-season and he replies, “Yeah, kinda strange that I didn’t do that, isn’t it? It’s not my usual approach.” Favre throws a hissy fit, and Thompson just quietly papers over the glaring breach. Last week, when asked about the failed trade, Favre said

Favre said. “I think Randy’s doing what I thought he would do. I mean, I’m not surprised. They throw it up to him in triple coverage and he catches it. I mean, he’s done that I don’t know how many times against us. Could he be doing that for us? Sure he could.

“But what our guys are doing is outstanding. A different style of play, but outstanding. What we ask our guys to do, we probably wouldn’t ask Randy to do and vice-versa. But we’re having a lot of success here right now, we hope it continues, and a big part of that is because of our receivers.”

This is a different style of play for me. It will have to lack dramatic effects and sparkling brilliants. I have to learn slowly now. So I’ll do the application that matters the most this term and realize there will be a lot of emotional stuff I’ll have to cope with. I’ll learn from that. As I start getting the hang of it, I’ll be able to add more on. I’ll get a feel and a rhythm for the work again and I’ll eventually learn how to do rounds of applications, just as I learned how to design a course. Yeah, it will probably be a losing season. But I’ve got to suck before I get better, because I’m learning this from scratch. I can’t replace the skills that were integral to the old system. I need to learn a new system. Rebuilding hurts, but I can do this.

But not tonight. Tonight is the Packers-Cowboys game. I couldn’t be more pumped.

Eye of the Storm

I woke up this morning with a deep feeling of gratitude. I slept for twelve hours last night, roughly from 8:30 pm to 8:30 am. I was exhausted. Last week kicked my ass and next week will kick my ass. But this is my little moment at the eye of the storm. I woke up, and although the kitchen is a wreck, I managed to throw together a bowl of cereal and some espresso. Craig is off to a meeting and I have time and space for quiet reflection before I force myself up off the couch and go take a shower. The house is quiet. The older I get, the more I love silence.

I never thought I would cherish simplicity, but I begin to. A few years back, my brother and his then-fiancée came to visit Craig and me. I took them to the Seattle Art Museum so that my sister-in-law could have a smattering of culture to brighten her trip. In one of the rooms of the museum there was a whole Japanese tea house. I do not know how it is that the Japanese learned so much about aesthetics, but I was deeply moved by the teahouse. It was constructed in such a way so that looking at it produced calmness and serenity. The photographs of tea houses I find on the web really don’t have the same effect. The aesthetics of a photograph are rarely the same as the aesthetics of viewing something live, especially when the object is three-dimensional. But I would like to return to that teahouse and discover its secret. The artist clearly possesses techniques that I don’t understand. Those are the techniques I require in my life.

The aesthetics of my life used to be the aesthetics of momentum. As the narrative was about constant, directed, creative change, the present didn’t really count for much. The pleasure of an aesthetic of momentum is watching the present dissolve like wax thrown into boiling fat. My life moves much more slowly now and the present counts for so much more. Indeed, from an aesthetic viewpoint, the present is everything now. There is still change in my life, but the change is slow and incremental. From an emotional perspective, the future seems so far away now. When I could move quickly, I could see the change before my eyes. Now, I can really only discover change, and only when I look backward and think about the past is a precise way. Life changes in small increments. I no longer exist at an emotional frontier where the present dissolves into the future. The present seems to drag on for all eternity, much as it did when I was a child. I see the changes only by use of historical technique. This, then, is the aesthetic of plodding. As a child, I viewed this as a jail sentence, something to be escaped through ingenuity. Apparently, that was the wrong answer. Kobayashi Maru. I clearly missed the point of the exercise.

My therapist Micheal used to tell me that I most focus on being the tortoise, not the hare. He and I derived such different morals from that fable. Micheal derived “slow by steady wins the race.” My response was, “The rabbit lost because he was lazy. Fuck slow but steady. Just keep working.” Well, whatever the correct interpretation of the hare’s behavior, like it or not, I am now the tortoise, not the hare. I must live in the present in a world where the transformative effects of my labor are not readily apparent. I need the aesthetics of the Japanese tea ceremony. Perhaps one of the reasons I have never been able to “capture the moment” in writing is because I have never lived in the moment. I think it is time that I learn how.