dimanche 7 décembre 2003

Still in the ... confessional (mode) Once my system had enough paracetamol and other heavy cold crushers in it to get along to the Canteen for a lunch where Sam spoiled me, I found the courage to tell the Wildcat of the physical aspect of the week. This was that, by Thursday, I was making almost a dozen long visits a day to the toilet. Yup. It's almost as if the past seven months of slow diagnosis and the beginnings of treatment for the Condition had never happened. When I remarked that I felt relatively "sane" today for the first time since Monday, my true love bluntly responded that I sounded it. I found that as uncharitable (on the face of it) as an observation from an esteemed colleague that I'd shifted down into "second gear" for most of the week, until I realised that both comments were true. The Wildcat is less hopeful than me that if I ask the "psychosomatic shrink", Dr. G, tomorrow, whether we could speed up the consultation rate considerably to get to the root of all this as swiftly as possible, it will get me very much further. "Do you really need other people to tell you what you already know in your heart?" she asked. Once I'd admitted that the physical symptoms were back, the Wildcat thought this one of the very first things I should have said rather than among the last, most reluctantly drawn out of me. While the return of those symptoms with a vengeance within just days of my going back to work really disturbs me, I responded that I was now trying to get to cause, rather than effect. The Wildcat, who has a wisdom all her own, now suggests that the downside of my often commended empathy with others is a dangerous taking on of their burdens too. Oh dear. There's even more to talk about with Dr. G. tomorrow than I'd already feared... ...because the Wildcat's right. Whether what she said sounds like something out of Paulo Coelho ('The Alchemist' & Co.) or not! There are some very uncomfortable things I know in my heart. A career change at this time in my life is a most alarming prospect. But short of a better solution for all concerned, it's one I may yet have to accept... ...and that, I think I've known for several months now. This is just the first time I've really "declared it out loud". 7:23:12 PM  link   your views? [] On 'Fu' or the Return (recalcitrant entry on that 'terrible truth') [Update (08.12.2003): This entry is moving to a new page, linked below. As it was, it's too long for newsreader feeds, and slow connections.] Howwwwll! By Friday, your correspondent was really struggling to breathe, work and keep his sense of absurdity and jest as a week back in the Factory drew to a close. I spent yesterday in bed with a high fever, a gluey yellowish mess in the upper chest and a migraine which had begun in earnest three nights earlier in the Métro -- trying not to be aroused by 'phone calls on the edges of fitful sleep. That noise was sometimes the Wildcat: she who remains adored despite treating my nerves and heartstrings like high-tuned piano wire with a semi-pledge to come to Paris for the weekend, then a change of dithered mind. Not a good week. To be realistic, even had the Wildcat come, after all these months, I've scarcely been in fit shape to receive her. Today, I'm not sure it's the full 'flu after all, though this year's "epidemic" is now in Paris itself after laying low the Kid and her mum for some days as it seems to have swept in from the west. Last Sunday night, I consulted the 'I Ching' about going back to work, feeling in need of interaction with the ancient "book of changes" that would be my replacement for the Bible on 'Desert Island Discs'. (The Loyal 4 ¾ may know that translations of the 'I Ching' have been much studied friends of mine for decades, that I have no problem at all reconciling the way it "works" with our modern "scientific" ways of seeing.) The first hexagramme (I used the more traditional three-coin method) was no surprise at all: 'Fou' or 'Fu' signifies "Return", "renaissance" and a "turning point", and is, as noted by Richard Wilhelm in his masterly edition (linked in English), associated with this month of the winter solstice. The second, given the single "line of change" the coins indicated, was 'Yi' or 'I', signifying, among other things, "Taking Nourishment", associated with the mouth and with brain or spiritual "food" as well. So far, so good and so lucid. The "oddity" came in a first look at the detail (more). 1:19:46 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.