Sylvia's Journal

With axel gone I live a bit like I do when I am alone in a hotel room overseas, in near total freedom from having to adjust myself to others, at least in the evening and early morning. I can do whatever I want. When Tessa and Steve are not around or holed up across the driveway in their little camp, I eat standing up by the counter, whatever leftovers I can find or put together as a meal. I watch TV or sit in front of my computer. I read a little or, lately, I knit but I do it while doing something else which leads to mistakes. I have unraveled what I just knitted many times – it’s a complicated pattern, a lack of attention punished when stitches no longer line up – so I am not making much progress. It does not matter.

I stayed up late last night to see our shiny new president on the couch on the Tonight Show. The man just oozes confidence even though he is up to his neck in doo doo. He is one of those rare unflappable people. While everyone around him is busy trying to make him fit this or that tight model of leadership he is simply himself – a fully integrated person leading a congruent life, as Michael Thompson, author of a book by that name, would describe him.

Psychodynamically-oriented psychologists must have a field day watching the bonus drama unfold. I am intrigued to see the vehemence from ‘the American taxpayer’ – a group I do belong to – but it does not rile me as much. I have long ago accepted that the world is not fair and that money begets more money, and deficits create more deficits. Some twenty years ago when we were living on a shoestring budget I realized how expensive it was to be struggling like that: checks bounced and created fines which led to more bouncing and more fines. Our debt accumulation was steady and increasing by the month, a bit like the banks and AIG now. We were bailed out too, by a gracious donation from the estate of a friend who died – I am not sure we could have extracted ourselves from that mess on our own.

Did we celebrate the breaking of this cycle with a dinner out? I can’t remember but we probably did; and if we did, how different would that be from receiving a bonus that we had not really earned, spending someone else’s money on ourselves? Maybe it is all a matter of scale. It’s true that I can’t even begin to imagine what an income of several million annually would do to one’s outlook on life. Maybe it is like flying in the Concorde: high and fast while the world crawls along deep below.

I woke up with a searing headache, again, and not at all prepared to leave a dream that was all about being together with people at a very creative conference. I had several projects to show that, at some point, weren’t projects but silly and spontaneous acts that drew otherwise uncreative types into creating something with me: a story written in many voices, a balloon installation, a series of collections shown in/on a typical office credenza, requiring way too much explanation.

When rising water and fading daylight – in the dream – threatened my return journey home I reluctantly left the place and the people before its ending, annoyed with myself for not having written and recited my traditional conference poem. I think the annual OB teaching conference, one of my favorite events of the year, is beginning to appear in a far corner of my screen. But first there are some trips to faraway places; once more they are stacked like planes on a taxiway or lining up on final approach, waiting for clearance to take off or land. Once has cleared, that’s the one week trip to Ghana that starts tomorrow.