annafdd

It's so GOOD to feel healthy. Of course I'm still convalescing and taking my pennicilling faithfully every six hours - she's been too good to me to betray and dump her so soon! - but I haven't had fever in two days, and this after having woken up in a sweat Monday with 38.2.

I have even started eating again, and consequently gaining rapidly back all those nice kilos I had shed. I think right now is a bit too early to go running, despite the temperature being very kind.

I drove myself to the conunselling lesson though, which was good because now I'm back home and tired, and I don't think I'll be able to get around to write up my learning journal AND my essay on how Dexter perfectly illustrate Rogerian self-actualization with added notes on how the first season exemplifies the difference between goal-focused CBT therapy as applied by Harry and freudian analysis as applied by the Ice-Truck Killer and, yes, indeed, Rogerian self-actualization.

But I guess I will. (Since I am not at all familiar with the formal essay format in UK education, maybe I should just to be able to push it to my academic friends and ask them it this is anything like what I should produce. I am a little scared by the requirement of keeping my first essay under 2,000 words. Gosh).

I am really missing Anna tonight because I kept mumbling to myself "this has obvious correlates in Buddhism" (indeed, Carl Roger's three core requisites for a successful therapy are empathy (compassion), unconditional positive regard (loving-kindness) and genuiness (open-heartedness), all perfectly good Buddhist ideas.)

Part of my fellow students were really upset by Roger's idea of self-actualization was a baby. They protested that a baby is not self-aware enough, has not acquired language and cannot do or express anything, so how can it fulfill any potential?

To me, the idea was obviously fun and had a degree of truth in it: a contented, well-cared for baby is indeed closer to a state of being sufficient to itself than it will ever be in life; and I was reminded of the many entreaties of Taoist teachers that the accomplished Taoist is a baby; as well as the search for ignorance in Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness nusuth philosophy (obviously close to taoism as well).

There are of course many reasons why Rogers' image of the perfectly self-actualized baby is faulty: it presupposes a healthy, loved, cared for, happy baby. It also ignores that a baby is not a static thing but an increasingly accellerating process of quest and probing and seeking and processing, so a self-actualizing little machine more than a pinnacle of self-actualization - but maybe that was what Rogers meant.

"America is hurt when you are hurt" heard sometime on BBC24 by somebody who clearly Did Not Have A Clue. The only one who got hurt was one of the bombers, dear. There's plenty of other directions to send you sympathy if you have a surfeit of it.

"The US is going to increase the number of US marshals on flights as a response to events in London." You got to laugh. I don't really need to unpick this one, do I?

Also, the book I am reading suggests that an excess of empathy is a mark of depression. Very likely. I have to say that no matter how evil this sad moron was, I feel sorry for anybody dying slowly and very, very painfully of extensive burns after having spectacularly failed to die heroically. May you find some redemption and comfort in your pain, brother.

(on the other hand, it seems to be pretty well established experimentally that compassion is good for your mood, so I am getting a trifle irritated with Kramer's "Against Depression")

BTW - Prayer for the day has a Buddhist monk named Alison Murdoch this week. We want more buddhists in our Obligatory Religion Programming! And have I said how annoyed I am that when I drive to work on Sunday the only thing I get to listen to is "something understood"?

1. Refraining from harming living beings/practising loving kindness
2. Refraining from taking the non-given/practising generosity
3. Refraining from committing sexual misconduct/practising contentment
4. Refraining from false speech/practising truthful communication
5. Refraining from intoxicants/practising mindfulness.

Sigh. Well, I eat meat, and I must say with lots of pleasure. I don't (nor would I) hurt living beings directly, but, well. I TRIED to become a vegetarian. I just love meat too much.

The only other precept I am sort of failing is the fifth, but hey, I live in England. And my resistance to alcohol has, I am happy to say, increased to the point where a couple of pints are more of a social grease than an intoxicant.

Next time I will not take the nr. 6 bus just because it arrives before n 98. My feet are frozen and I had a moment in the winding backways when I started sobbing uncontrollably for very nebolous reasons. I blame the Chumbawamba. And that little black cloud, doggedly following my heart around, scuttling away when I glower at it but raining quickly on it when I am not looking.

I am trying very hard to save myself with a quick-and-dirty Short Course in Practical Buddhism. I am embarrassed at the thought that people might mistake me for a New Agey kind of person. Today I was browsing the books in the religion section and happened upon one of the many little books written by the Dalai Lama.

I like the Dalai Lama. He has disappointed me only a couple of times - well, really, one. But buddhism seems to have this attitude to love that is not so much disapproval as a rolling of the eyes, a polite laugh and a sigh. They have a point, but I have a hard time letting go of the need. The fact that it's a need in itself should signal that it's not a completely good thing. But, yes, sometimes I feel like I'm at crossroad, and I could go there and become a softly smiling happy asexual kind of person, and I could go there and have pain and grief and little leaps of the heart. The choice seems easy, but it isn't, and it is probably fake anyway. There must be a way to take the pain as part of the package, and have no regrets, and no bitterness.

I can't say I have many regrets. I would take happiness over not-pain. I would certainly take happiness, even short lived, over the little black cloud sneaking over my heart when I'm not looking.

The fact is, no matter how hard I try to win that equanimous state of not-need, it's been swept away like a bunch of lies every time love came around. Maybe it would be wiser to be more cautious, and colder, but if it happens again, I'm pretty sure I won't be able to be.

One of Chumbawamba's drat songs is about Emma Goldman. I remember Angela Carter using a passionate quote from her to close her book on Sade, a quote about love. I thought, I would so love to call my daughter Emma, and then realized how many times I've had thoughts like that - I'll call her Livia like my gran, I'll call him Mario like my grandfather - but there will be no children for me.

My feet are much warmer. I've taken two valiums and I'm going to sleep.

As I write, nobody knows quite for sure how the elections will go. I went and bought my beer but I foolishly ate a big frittata with canned artichokes before I went out and I feel very sick and beer doesn't seem wise just now.

I also realized I didn't take my antidepressant this morning, and I took it now. Today is not a day to quit.

The thing is, this is the second election in a country I care about, full of wise, decent, well-informed people, that goes against all reason. In a sense America was better, because at least you could make sense of it. People might have despicable ideas about abortion and gays, but they are ideas. Italy is far more disheartening because there wasn't even the excuse of emotionally charged propaganda. No, in Italy people voted not only for an amoral thief, liar and crook. They voted for an obviously, patently, blindingly incompetent administration, which had managed in the mere space of five years to lay such a waste to the country that even the so-called moneyed elites were overwhelmingly (and with a touch of panic) against him. They voted for an administration who impoverished them, undermined their future, made their country the comic relief of international diplomacy (this when things were at their best), increased crime, encouraged widespread lawlessness in the form of tax evasion, book cooking, generalized fraud at the expense of small investors, and so on and so forth.

This is not being pissed off because the popular vote didn't agree with me. This has nothing to do with being conservative or liberal - the whole spectrum of political thought in Italy was aghast at Berlusconi, including quite a lot of people who had voted him last time around. This is a question of people voting for him "because he has made Italy strong and respected in the world". I kid you not - it's right there in this Guardian article. Now anybody who can honestly believe that - and about half my fellow Italians did - is living in a cosy, comfortable, nice little world full of fluffy ponies and hopping bunnies in cheery shades of pink and lime green, and should be monitored every time they cross the road. Berlusconi might yet lose the election, but the fact that outcome is so close is in itself enough to flop down and take a stiff drink.

This is not so much a reflection on the fact that democracy, when not joined with a healthy media and some pretty solid checks and balances, is downright dangerous. (Democracy has shown this, ruthlessly, over and over lately, not only in America but in Palestine and in Iran, at least. And there were neither omnipresent trash TVs nor electronic voting machines there.) This more like a moment when you reflect on our chances as a species and feel somewhat pessimistic.

I would like to have a baby. Now that I live in England, I could. It is possible in England (as it is not in Italy) to have a child with artificial insemination even if you're single. I have thought about it seriously. But then I take a look at the long-period prospect of this world, and I can't face the idea of bringing a new life into it. There is also the fact that, whether depression is a matter of genetics or upbringing, there is a strong chance that any offspring of mine would have it, and I have enough understanding of the condition not to want to risk it.

But more generally, I have re-thought my opinion on abortion in these last few days. I have always thought that it was a painful decision, something that I, personally, would have a lot of trouble doing. Because deep down, I started from the assumption that no matter what, being alive is better than not being alive.

Right now I don't think so. There are a lot of happy people in the world, happy even in the face of great tragedy and suffering. But there is something, in the contemplation of mankind hurtling happily toward more oppression, more intolerance, more ignorance, more poverty, more wars, more cruelty, more violence, and eventually the point of no return of environmental disaster, that makes me question the intrinsic goodness of being alive.

Perhaps the fact is that I am becoming more and more Buddhist by the hour. Once upon a time I had problems with the buddhist idea that attachment to life is negative. It suddenly makes a lot of sense. I guess this is why I am also trying to cultivate a feeling of - that's hard to explain - I try to hang on to a feeling of affection for my fellow humans despite their depressing ignorance, intolerance, lack of charity, and general, although not universal nor constant, meanness. I am in sore need of 24h Buddhist hotline right this moment, though. I could certainly use some spiritual help.

Tomorrow, I think I'll need some powerful consoling. Since I can't buy a new iPod because I sense the imminent release of a new model and I don't want to get screwed on this on top of everything else, I need some other kind of retail therapy. Hmm. I think a high dose of Miyazaki and the first Ice Age might be appropriate.