One step at a time

It is a cliché, of course, but these phrases are clichés because they hold real meaning, just as some classical music, or any other genre of music, for example, is popular because it is well liked, or that there is something about it that attracts people's attention enough for it to become popular. Anyway, one step at a time, however unoriginal it may be, is the title of my current post.

We all have our difficulties and we all manage them, or not, in our own way. I am struggling to find my way, and that seems to be my way, but one step (or more) at a time, forwards, backwards and/or sideways (to the left and or to the right) I am taking steps to find my way. And today, late at night, I have agreed on a name for my next website, to be revealed just as soon as I decide whether to continue with this one, or create another one instead. 

Decisions, decisions and some would call this a middle class problem (I would agree) but, in the words of a phrase I definitely do not like, usually used by people with whom I have worked, "we are where we are" (which however betrays an Hegelian concept) I am not going to sabotage my 'progress' by feeling guilty, firstly, over the class status of a problem such as whether to have one or two websites and, secondly, whether I should be using a phrase that I have explicitly said I dislike however much I might console myself with its Hegelian undercurrents. 

For now, I am just pleased to have agreed a name for my next website and this is my one step, forwards, backwards and/or sideways, for the time being, which I hope will sustain me until my next one. 

Postscript: Reading a cover story in Culture by Dan Cairns, on Leonard Cohen, following the release of his latest album, which, for me, is one of the best albums to which I have ever listened to date, I am struck by Cohen's riposte to the suggestion that he is the "epitome of the tortured artist". Cohen is said to have said "There are human beings being tortured. Let us not trivialise the unspeakable horror by adding songwriting to that category". Indeed. 

Here I go again...

Just when I thought this blog might have been consigned to the scrap heap of history, I find myself, once again, looking it up, logging back in, and beginning to think that I may just have a career as an 'author' ahead of me!

So much has happened, that I do not know even know where to start. Other than I feel that I must again begin again...

So, short as this post might be, this is a signal, if only to me, that I may, just, be ready to start writing/thinking again....

Or even, heaven forbid, not even thinking, but just writing. And even writing about stuff that makes me feel if not happy then (in the words of someone I love very much) 'content',,,,

N.B. Should you be wondering, the post title is an allusion to the song by Whitesnake.

Staccato

It has been so long since I last posted anything to this site - I have become a Facebook addict - that 'staccato' is the only word that springs to mind now that I have decided to post something here again after so lengthy a break. I could easily have headed the post with the phrase 'DaCapo', another musical term. In keeping with my upbringing, though, I came across the phrase while I was working as a temp for a business in Kent that recycled car tyres - I am no inverted snob but it is entirely appropriate that I should have come across the term while working in a second hand car shop than through listening to an opera, for example - and I wouldn't want to mislead people into thinking that I know more about music than I actually do.

And why am I posting now? It is tiring to keep returning to the same theme - when do we ever really leave it anyway - but, to paraphrase Gillian Rose, I post now for the same reason that I am always compelled to post - facebook, twitter or here - in sickness and in health - so that "I may die forward into the intensified agon of living". Of course, my life is not so dramatic. It may have recurred but, anyone diagnosed with cancer, has got to expect that it will return (and progress) and diagnosed with cancer or not our 'life affair' is never in abeyance.

Unpacking my books

I have finally got round to unpacking my books. However, what used to be the one consolation in having to move so frequently in the past is now just an irritant. I used to be able to recall exactly when I bought a particular book, the circumstances that led me to buy it and where I bought the book from - and, more importantly, to enjoy recalling these minutiae as I unpacked them - but unpacking them now and they just annoy me. I have only read a small percentage of the books that I possess and, of those books that I have read, I only treasure a handful. So my question to myself is, why do I keep them all when they obviously distress me. I am afraid not just because I appear to have become 'a minimalist' - a term for which I have only had disdain in the past - but also because I might not ever have the time to read - or, more precisely, study - all the books that I haven't read but which I would like to and that seeing them stacked on bookshelves in front of me just reminds me how little time I might have.

It is so depressing.

Mortality

I have just finished reading an article that has argued that women should be more aware of the risks of dying of heart disease than of breast cancer - as the risks are higher - which, inevitably, has just left me petrified. If the risk of dying of heart disease is higher and I have been diagnosed with breast cancer then it follows that I am more likely to die of cancer than heart disease. Of course, I know that I, like everyone else, has got to die of something, and that I don't think I would want to die of heart disease either, but the truth is I'm terrified of dying at all.

Banter

While I was never particularly one for friendly banter while I was going through chemotherapy, I did have occasional chats with other patients – in the chemotherapy suite (how so welcoming ‘suite’ sounds but how so incongruous) and in the clinic while waiting to give blood. I realise now that I was too tired and often too miserable to really want to talk to anyone at the time. After a brief chat with a gentleman recently, though, while waiting for a blood test, I realise, on the one hand, how much I miss those chats that I did have, however occasional they may have been, while, on the other hand, just how relieved I am that I no longer have those opportunities.

Forgetfulness

Over more than a year ago - indeed the reason for me starting this blog in the first place - I decided that I would write a short review of each book that I had read in order to assist my memory and to force upon myself the discipline of writing - and, of course, to simply entertain myself. The idea came to me while I was reading a book, the name of which, unfortunately, I cannot remember. While I was reading, I was reminded of a wonderfully lively description of a train journey and yet I couldn't recall whether the description was from the book that I was currently reading at the time or from a different book altogether - and if it was from another book altogether, again, I could not recall the name of it.

Alzheimers runs in my family and I am - or was - fearful of it. Of course, I have more to fear now – and, as my mother has said, even if I did develop some form of dementia, selfish as it might seem, in the later stages of the disease, at least, I would not necessarily be aware of any loss of memory that I might experience anyway and that, instead, it would be more painful for the people around me than it perhaps might be for me – it might not be less painful – I do not know now and I perhaps might never know – even if I did develop alzheimers – but I am always open to doubt – I may very well be aware of the people around me and the pain it might be causing them – although I am conscious that it is presumptuous of me to think, in the first place that, firstly, that there would be anyone around who would care for me and, secondly, that I might be causing them any pain – but irrespective of whether or not I am or am not aware of the people around me and/or any pain I may or may not be causing alzheimers runs in the family and I may very well go on to develop it if I don’t die of cancer beforehand. Although, perhaps I should take consolation in the fact that there is no history of cancer in the family so that I am less likely to develop Alzheimers than I am of developing metastases – however little consolation that might be. After all, we all need to die of something anyway.

Johannes Climacus

How could I possibly have forgotten?! Johannes Climacus. A ladder that you may descend as well as ascend. I have written too much today and not said anything at all - I will quote directly from Johannes Climacus instead:

"Some years ago in the city of H there lived a young student by the name of Johannes Climacus, who had no desire whatsoever to become prominent in the world, inasmuch as, on the contrary, he enjoyed living a quiet, secluded life. Those who knew him tried to explain his inclosed nature...by supposing that he was...in love...In love he was, ardently in love - with thought, or, more accurately, with thinking...It was his delight to begin with a single thought and then, by way of coherent thinking, to climb step by step to a higher one...when he arrived at the higher thought it was an indescribable joy, a passionate pleasure, for him to plunge headfirst down into the same coherent thoughts until he reached the point from which he had proceeded...this did not always turn out according to his desire...if he was successful, he would be thrilled, could not sleep for joy, and for hours would continue making the same movement, for this up-and-down and down-and-up of thought was unparalleled joy. In those happy times, his step was light, almost floating; at other times, it was troubled and unsteady. As long as he labored to climb up, as long as coherent thinking had as yet not managed to make its way, he was oppressed, because he feared losing all those coherent thoughts he had finished but which as yet were not perfectly clear" (Kierkegaard, 1985, pp. 118-119).

Never mind their philosophies as a whole - never mind the risk of misunderstanding them by taking something out of context - never mind accuracy - this is beautiful.

Lexicography

I have an urge to read - and to write. It struck me this morning, though, that my desire to read might not be driven so much by a need to understand what I am reading - or even to simply enjoy a good book - but, rather, to encounter new vocabulary instead. I have just started to (re)read Foucault's Madness & Civilization, for instance, and while I initially began to religiously note the trajectory of his thought it occurred to me that I was more interested in the words that he was using to convey his thought rather than his thought itself. That is not quite true for I have an abiding – and I would say healthy - interest in ‘sanity’ ‘and’ ‘insanity’ – ever since reading "Will there really be a morning" by Frances Farmer, upon which I understand the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was based, and which I first tried to read when I was twelve, for instance - and my fascination with a concept referred to as 'auto pathology' that I encountered through an article published in the now ceased journal of Auto/Biography - I have more or less consciously - for whatever reason, reasonable or not - been interested in, both detached and immersed, the so called divide between madness and sanity. But this morning I was more interested in the particular words being used themselves rather than the thought - the derivation and pronunciation of, for example - and I was compelled to find my dictionary (I have been re-united with my books but not my bookcases so that they, unfortunately, are still packed, haphazardly, sadly, not even in boxes, but in carrier bags - sometimes I must succumb to self pity and declare my life tragic - which meant that I had to frantically look for my dictionary by rummaging through numerous plastic bags before I could find it) so that I could look up certain words. In particular, I was stalled by the word "autochthonous". It is a strange word. It looks strange. And it looks as though it should be unpronounceable. I am uneducated - as Ian Hunter would say, I have a PhD in stupidity - so that while to many others this may be an everyday word to me it is new - and I wanted to familiarise myself with it. And that, of course, was when I realised this morning that my interest is not necessarily in what Foucault has to say but in how he says it. Indeed, while I was looking for my dictionary I came across my copy of Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality, and while I remember these essays in particular for Nietzsche's description of the priestly and knightly caste, when I browsed it quickly in order that I might find reference to the two castes I was just overwhelmed with the frequent margin notes that I had made, which were not notes at all but definitions of particular words/phrases lifted perhaps straight from a dictonary. There would have been a time when I would never have thought I would have said this but I think a dictionary is one of the most enjoyable books that anyone could ever read. Not unlike 'Kierkegaard's' imaginary journeys with his father (in which of his numerous books I cannot recall at the moment), I am able to travel all over the place without leaving my seat - and I absolutely love it!

Shattered

Certainly nobody needs to know that I am exhausted but I need to acknowledge that I am. Fridays have always been my favorite day of the week - from the moment that we would go food shopping at Peacehaven when I was a child - nicely finished off with fish and chips from an excellent shop in Woodingdean on the return drive home - to getting ready to go out for a drink with friends whilst listening to music on the radio after a long week at work - I have always looked forward to Fridays. Now is no exception but whereas in the past I approached Friday evenings energetically now it seems that all I can do is just collapse. No doubt as I have aged I have become increasingly lethargic but tonight I am so exhausted that my whole body hurts and, predictably, I cannot help but panic at the thought that it is because of something more sinister than just the onset of old age.

Histrionics

I can't think of any other appropriate word with which to head this particular post but I was in theatre today - for very minor surgery - and I couldn't help but exaggerate it - the last occasion I was in a hosptital theatre - and on previous occasions too - was for very differnt reasons altogether and I couldn't help but be reminded of them - and get upset - never mind the reason why I was in theatre today. What I found most odd, though, was being in a theatre when I was conscious. I have had minor (day) surgery before, when I have just been treated under local anaesthetic, but today it just seemed as if I was more aware. The procedure was finished within 20 minutes but I have to admit to missing the affects of a general aneasthetic - I not only look forward to the sensation of being pumped with anesthetic but also the prospect of a good few hours sleep!

Against Innocence

I am currently reading the above book by Andrew Shanks. I have to say that the title irritates me a little - which may not necessarily be a bad thing - it may even be intentional - but, for me, Rose's thought is far more complex than just being 'against' anything - even innocence - however much she might proclaim that she is even more invested the more innocent she sounds. I am reminded of an essay in Judaism & Modernity where Rose prefaces it with several very short lines on innocence and guilt. Unfortunately, I am bereft of my books for the time being so I do not have it to hand to simply quote but I will definitely make an effort to look it up when I am reunited with them.

Whether or not I agree with the title, though, or even the content of the book itself, is immaterial for me at the moment - what is important for me is that I am reading again, however irregularly and that my passion and love for Hegel and Kierkegaard has been, or is being, however slowly, re-ignited. Even my passion for Hegel et al has been tested by recent events - when I might have expected it to have become stronger - but it is so exciting to feel my interest being reawakened again.

Notes from a diary (in no particular order)

Wednesday 21 January 2009

First time back at University Hospital since having my last dose of chemotherapy in October. I'm waiting for an appointment for a blood test, post chemotherapy - I was worried about my bilirubin levels a few months ago - they were high - not that I really know why I was worried because they were high - and I 'wanted' reassurance that the raised level was a cumulative effect of the toxins that they had been injecting into me since March, as the medics repeatedly told me it was, i.e. I wanted evidence. Now, of course, I am petrified that they will have the same difficulty in getting blood from me as they had when I was going through chemotherapry - apparently the drugs harden the veins making it increasingly awkward for blood to be taken. Strange perhaps that GR didn't ever mention it herself - I can't imagine she didn't ever experience the same trouble - certainly she wrote about chemotherapy but from what I recall she didn't appear to elaborate on the damage the drugs do to the veins and the consequent implications of that damage, such as the difficulty in taking blood and the anxiety beforehand in having to give blood, however 'routine' a test might be. I shall have to check when I return home.

The reason I am at the hospital, proper, though, is to see the consultant surgeon (I don't feel comfortable referring to him by his first name - it feels somewhat disrespectful. Of course, I wouldn't entertain calling the nurses by their surname - this GR did acknowledge!). It is perhaps ironic but this time last year I was anticipating surgery to remove the tumours and manically purchasing the final 'essentials' before I had my mastectomy while now I am seeing the consultant to discuss cosmetic surgery. This time, I am embarassed by it all all. Last year, while I desperately didn't want the surgery - whoever would _ I was just anxious that the treatment commence. Now, though, to be discussing tatoos etc seems a little frivolous, as if I am taking up valuable time.

Rothko exhibition

In receipt of a complimentary ticket, I took the opportunity to visit the Rothko exhibition at the Tate Modern on Saturday. I am a little sceptical of the meaning that his work is said to represent - a whole industry seems to have grown out of it - but I am fascinated with our fascination of it. What intrigued/upset me most of all, though, was that of all the books that were for sale in the shop there did not appear to be one that documented the history of the Tate Modern itself.

With the new year, 2008 is, hopefully, well and truly behind me. I do indeed still have regular appointments with the oncologist - and with the surgeon - but I have to let last year be what it was and attempt to accept it and live my life again. To paraphrase Gillian Rose, my life was, of course, never in abeyance but I was barely living it beforehand either so, this year, I must begin to recapture the self that I have somehow lost along the way over the years. And a good start for me is to resume my reading - and, possibly, writing. I am not a good writer - I have never tried - I have only written in the academic style - but irrespective of whether or not I can write I intend to try. I will start by completing the posts that I began several years ago but have not yet posted. I just need to be more disciplined.

As expected, I did indeed have chemotherapy. Whether or not it was my choice is another question altogether. But I had my last dose of IV chemotheraphy on 8 October and finshed the chemotherapy pills a week later. I am still on medication and plan to be for at least the next 5 years but I doubt I will be alive in my 50s. In the meantime, I want to make good use of whatever time I have left.

I have wondered to myself why I chose to post a paragraph or two from my PhD on the experience of recognition and misrecognition - and I can only conclude that I was trying to acknowledge to myself that I was deceiving myself - that, as much as I like to think that I have overcome this disease, there is still a real possiblity that it will return, if indeed it has really left at all. I can not help but think that I am going to die of this disease - and it scares the hell out of me.

The Comedy and Tragedy of Recognition and Misrecognition

Throughout her authorship Rose was at pains to develop a critical theory of society which neither exaggerated nor underestimated the power and powerlessness of the individuals who compose society to effect social change. Rose achieved this through Hegel's idea of recognition. Recognition, for Hegel, refers to the experience of misrecognition that consciousness undergoes and which Hegel's phenomenologies document. It is from out of the domination of practical reason that the experience of misrecognition, and its recognition, arises. Recognition shows how the lack of identity between both theoretical and practical reason and the natural world corresponds to real social relations. It refers to the experience of domination quickened by the affirmation of a relative identity which is itself induced by the concept of practical reason. Practical reason, or freedom, is a presupposition of modern bourgeois society which dominates theoretical reason in such a way that what is dominated remains hidden. The strength in Hegel's thought lies in his recognition of the domination of practical reason and the illusions it encourages. His phenomenologies document the experiences of natural consciousness which, unbeknownst to it, presupposes practical reason but which, in its experiences of itself, also recognises as presupposed. In this way a unity of theoretical and practical reason emerges which is not so much posited but which is recognised as an identity that already exists but about which we have to repeatedly learn.

TBC

Keep your mind in hell and despair not

It is not at all easy to say but, never able to take the line of least line resistance, I have no choice but to simply say that I have just very recently been diagonsed with invasive ductal carcinoma - it is not so easy to say things so straightforwardly! I am lucky in that this is the most common form of breast cancer. I am also fortuante to be told that I am "ER positive" (which logically means that I am both younger as well as older than I actually am) so that it should, at least, be able to be controlled, if not cured, by the now common drug, Tamoxifen. I am, of course, preparing for the worst - not quite The Will - although I have thought about what will become of my books - really forcing me to question my attachment to Hegel, Kierkegaard and Rose - but in fear that I might lose my hair - not much of it already anwyay - I went shopping for wigs today - even if my intention, intially was to just browse - and did in fact purchase one. It has been suggested to me that chemotherapy may not necessarily be necessary but this was the suggestion of a plastic surgeon and not an oncologist and, as much as I might be criticised for prejudging people, I always like to be prepared and anticipate that I will need chemotherapy and that I am, therefore, very likely to lose my hair. The only way in which I can accept this is to see it as a "fashion accessory"

Hegel's absolute relation to the absolute

"When we say of things that they are finite, we understand thereby that they not have a determinateness...but that...non-being constitutes their nature and being...They are, but the truth of this being is their end. The finite...ceases to be; and its ceasing to be is not merely a possiblity, so that it could be without ceasing to be, but the being as such of finite things is to have the germ of disease as their being-within-self: the hour of their birth is the hour of their death. The thought of the finitude of things brings this sadness with it...and in the singleness of such determination there is no longer left to things an affirmative being distinct from their destiny to perish" (Hegel, G. 1969, p. 129).

Ah, Hegel, how you have been mistreated. How could you have written this - and in the Science of Logic of all books - and still be accused of being a rationalist (as if, anyway, it was a term of abuse) and not also be a man of real feeling.

"the point is, whether in thinking of the finite one holds fast to the being of finitude and lets the transitoriness and the ceasing-to-be cease to be" (Hegel, G. 1969, p. 130).

an experiment

Fear and Trembling

Aporetic universalism

Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism has said that those who have lost their place in a community - politically or legally - can only articulate themselves in the private sphere and are at the mercy of friendship, sympathy and the "great and incalculable grace of love" which says "I want you to be". When I feel at a loss I to turn to my friends and those friends, who are sometimes also my enemies, are my books. Yet strangely, rather than encouraging me to withdraw further into myself - with the attendant danger of becoming Hegel's 'beautiful soul' - who is not beautiful at all - I find myself again.

TBC

Anomie

TBC

"Keep your mind in hell and despair not"

Several days ago, while I was looking for a notepad in which to write, I stumbled across an entry that I had written on a day in a June of over six years ago. For no particular reason that I can remember I read that I was feeling especially down. It occurred to me, as I was reading my observations, that, while now I very rarely sink to such depths, now instead I feel permanently low but without however recognising that I feel persistently misreable. And as I write this I am reminded of a very brief exchange I had with someone when I attempted to explain what it was - and, implicitly, why -I was intending to study by pursuing a PhD: the only answer I could give at the time was that I was intending to study Hegel's Unhappy Consciousness. As for 'why', I can only say that I had no choice. The answer was perhaps just as imcomprehensible to my inquisitor as the question was to me but not at all ironically it was noted that I had said this with a smile on my face: not a smug, knowing smile but a smile that arises out of pure happiness. The prospect of studying Hegel's Unhappy Consciousness filled me with a joy not unlike the joy I felt when I was first introduced to the psychological concept of cognitive dissonance - or the joy that I feel when I listen to a musical note that somehow sounds out of tune.

TBC