pleasure reading

another day working in the mental health clinic, it's been pretty easy so far.

Currently reading Zoe Heller's "What was she thinking" and it's very good, sucked me in-- a study in the delusions which power can bring on. Sort of like a British _The Reader_ (by Bernhard Schlink, an excellent book also about power and history), except that in this situation, both the narrator and her subject are teachers. Part of the new move studying how some women actually handle power dynamics-- even the most well-intentioned seeming of them. Somehow it surprises everyone when they do the same things men have been lambasted for doing.

When I read _The Reader_, I think one thing it captured well is the power of being read to, the calming effects of coasting with someone else's voice, touching some sorts of primal and childhood instincts, of storytelling and so on. It is a sort of power of its own, the timbre of another human voice combined with texts from a different time. Can that power alone transcend other power dynamics? I don't know. I guess it depends on the individual.

I realized belatedly that I wore the same clothing to my job interview which I'd found to wear to Troms, and I don't think it was a coincidence. Such mixed feelings about that one. Toiling long and hard over a paper, but not really wanting to let any of my profs abroad read it; still could not trust others with my work much anymore, and no sense of privacy. The feeling that nothing would ever be good enough to escape being valued only for the ability to serve coffee when it all came down to it. The feeling that I needed to do something new and different, but feeling I needed to do endless reading to do it well. Wondering if it was trespassing in some unknown way to be writing about the author I was writing about. Nervousness because it was something I wanted, and an honor at the same time to go there. People were nice, got to know some. Had also there made the mistake of saying where I did my undergrad when talking to one guy, and of course: "oh, do you know _______? is one of the premiere experts on ________....." In that situation, in a far corner of the world, I said yes, and he buddied up to me and I felt weird about it, he was supportive of me and wanted help me with my work. But after that, knowing that he was so close with ___________, I simply could not fork my work over for discussion. Also, I made another mistake: sometimes when I want some sort of grounding, I used to look at the site of my undergrad place, and it would boost my confidence and further inspire me to know what a place it was and to identify with it. So the day before I needed to present my work, I did this, and made a terrible discovery which further demonstrated the incestuousness of academia, when people are hiring their own significant others in their own departments. It was like a blow to the stomach which knocked the wind out of me shortly before I was supposed to present, a discovery which underlined to me that the needs or boundaries or privacy or work of students is never really a factor, and that how hard one works is not a factor either, while it was such a surprise after having sat on a hiring committee and seeing all the vastly talented and accomplished individuals out there who seek such a plum. Perhaps more understated but more violent was the understanding of the pain my mom expressed when my dad lived temporarily with the woman with whom he'd had an affair. Like someone leads you on and dumps you for someone else, at the same time putting them exactly in your spot. At that point, I thought it might be a better idea to simply wander off northwards and disappear over a glacier to unknown parts, never to be seen or heard from again. I didn't do it, obviously, though it might have been the most graceful exuent from the situation. My paper wasn't totally ready; I was overwhelmed by all I felt I needed to accomplish in it and demoralized by the sense of exclusion and being slandered (witch hunts are still alive and well, but live under different terms such as "stalker"-- people set off alarm bells wherever they can to shift blame) which had haunted me since the end of my first year in grad school.

And that I felt I was supposed to compete with people with whom I did not want to compete but who had made so many choices about the situation for me, "in my own best interests," a phrase which is one of the most insulting I can think of. Let me speak for myself, I think. The same people often delude themselves into thinking they're "helping" or "being supportive" when they take the lives of others and grind them into theory or gossip, analyzing them to death-- does it really help the human condition to present papers about others' psychologies, especially without permission of the subject, and when one is not a licensed shrink and can barely handle civility in other circumstances? Who gains from that? Obviously, the presenter just furthers her or his own career, choosing to believe that it is "helping" another, no matter what basic human rights have been violated along the way, the condition of trust between the two, and taking no genuine emotional risk. Further, it's no gesture of "let me hear what you think, and here's what I think" it's designing and inflicting one version of reality at the expense of another, from a position of power. I sound bitter here, and I am bitter.

But I am also hopeful that there are many employments one might have which do do concrete work to better the state of life both now and for the future. That's all for now, just trying to clear myself of some junk... have not felt that my reading has been for "work" these days, and that in turn has made the experience of reading more enjoyable in some ways, and more fun to think about because I don't need to worry about how my thoughts subscribe to different agendas or not or force them to grow up some sort of trellis which becomes ever more narrow at the top.