The Tower and The Moon

Let us not forget that good old Percy is on a jaunt through Hades: let us not forget. Obviously, it's easy on such a trip to confuse the particular for the universal, so to speak. Personal experiences around love and loss, intellectual incapacity, ignorance of entire fields of knowledge, etc. have been particulars, the universal encompasses that whole experience and is about "more" than that particular ride. By analogy, think of a man engulfed in flames who yet has a rusty dagger driven to the hilt into his heart. In spite of the more globally inconvenient issue of immolation, this pathetic figure is probably more focused on that dagger, at least for a while. Do I wax dramatical? 

Do you not know me but at all?

A brief chat with a friend of mine this morning was an opportunity to stand a little distance away from the conundrums and pains of the intimacy with and end of U as I knew U and recall that there is a "larger" trip going on that began back before I started this fuckin' blog. (Which was Monday, March 6th, 2017- so, only a little over two years ago). 

Ulmus ulmus ulmus! It can't all be about Ulmus! How unfair that is anyway, right? Of course this is what we tend to do when we're in pain- find someone to blame. It is crystal clear to me that I am responsible for what I have been feeling. I like that ownership and I welcome it, because it means I am more at home in all of it. 

There have been some encouraging changes over the past few months. I am still crazy paranoid and jealous, but now I at least have the distance to be able to say to myself, wow dude, that is batshit. This additional perspective, even though rudimentary, is extremely helpful. You'd think it would be demoralizing or something but in fact it's a moment of freedom for me to recognize, wow, I have gone off the rails. This very middle of the night, I awoke and the first thought I was aware of having was "I bet she slept with that guy when she was in Santa Fe." It just flashed into my mind, unbidden. And though I think it is untrue and more than that I want to be fully detached to the degree that I honestly do not give a fuck even if it is true, all of the emotional sequelae were there as if it were just a plain fact, and that has been one form of the batshitedness. 

This is along the lines of the Moon time in life, when all is uncertainty, fear, darkness, mystery, when fantasies and delusions seem just as real as anything if not even surreal, more real. 

In the midst of all of this, I have to muster my intellectual sharpness to do my best in the dissertation writing, and I do believe that has been the biggest challenge of this passage- that it is bad timing, so to speak, coinciding with a purely intellectual exercise. Stark contrast with the roiling emotional life. Sometimes a welcome antidote, but usually just a true challenge. 

Here's a couple things that I have learned though that crystallized only recently for me and that I may well forget, who knows. 

1. The failure of my long term partnerships in the past has been at least partly, if not largely, due to my lack of commitment, lack of choice. I pretended to be committed and to have made the decision. I never truly wanted to, nor did I. I always had one foot out the door and an exit strategy. I know now with certainty that one of the features of a successful longer term partnership is to unequivocally, flat out, wholeheartedly CHOOSE the other person. I like the thought that I may well apply this the next time. 

2. You can't bullshit your way to a science PhD. I have tried to cut corners in some ways on the dissertation analysis, mostly in tiny little picayune stupid ways that seemed insignificant to me, but my committee members disagree. Cross every motherfucking t, dot every godforsaken i, button down every transparent thing and do it in the fewest number of words possible. That is the big challenge now and something I have never tried to do in life, ever. 

So, the trip through Hades has its benefits, as painful as the causes may be.