A Single Page

The first paper at the University of Chicago, assigned Wednesday afternoon by Miller, was akin to the thoughts emerging from the id and filtered through the superego so the ego can make them nice, shiny, and sensible. Write a single, double-spaced page tracking Freud's argument that there are multiple sexual instincts (very important, btw, because if there was only one instinct it would imply a normal form of sexuality which would make so much of the world perverse and mentally "wrong," which is anathema to Freud and should be to anyone) by taking one of the perversions and relating the multiple components and motive forces Freud argues they have. Do not summarize, embellish, or go point-by-point but stick to the text. This assignment will not be graded.

5:00 p.m., Wednesday: I start taking notes

6:30: break to eat Peter's linguine and veggie meatballs with this really sweet tomato sauce...many thanks on my end to my roomie, whose excellence with my favorite food fueled my efforts to finish this. In return, I helped him as best as I could since, we being in the same precept group, we're not supposed to know who wrote what paper.

7:15: resume compiling notes, finish, write a first draft and make my analytic exposition fit on a single page

9:15: break to do the dishes and watch an unexpected fireworks show with Peter and Karen

10:15: reread paper and realize I was writing about multiple perversions and not just one, but that's why I took so many notes! Fairly easily rewrite paper to focus on one very-well explained perversion.

12:20 a.m., Thursday: go to bed

8:00: following workout and breakfast, an hour of revisions and refining the language, continually readjusting to keep it in one page

10:00: after excellent meeting with Professor Keenleyside (whom I sat next to at the English luncheon way back during Campus Days), I retreat to the Regenstein, where many fellow MAPHers already are in the act of final typing and printing. Read over paper again, feel great, until a casual remark from a colleague whose name escaped me at the moment (and stil ldoes) about parsing makes me read it one more time and figure out that one, the entire final paragraph is needless, and two, a final structural overhaul will result in both a more logical and less summarized paper! Diligent, finger-flying acts of copying, pasting, changing words, and spell-checking ensue, but all from a state of calm. It's like when I was falling behind in the Verbal GRE and took a deep breath, mentally muscled through, and earned a 730 which made me feel so damn good.

11:20: print out twelve copies, only one of which bears my name

11:37: turn in the paper 23 minutes before the deadline

1:00 p.m.: having been suddenly recalled to the apartment right after submission when AT&T sends a man to hook up the Internet (which really works! Wired and in the loop, to use Anna Neher's favorite phrase!), I proceed to spill my drink in the lecture hall while balancing my lunch container on the desk and trying to retrieve my seatmate's coffee cup, and then spill that as well. Needless to say, my mind was almost useless for the rest of the day.

But the lessons learned from this single page are going to serve me well. I discovered that all my stresses vanished in the face of working on a difficult problem, and I took great pleasure in trying many solutions before finally making something work! And in the future, when I cannot waste an entire evening, I shall make sure I immediately plunge into a brief but focused activity to keep my mind sharp...reading a good book, for instance.

The rest of my life...I sunk into a small depression Wednesday afternoon stemming from a sudden fear of my worthiness in the program and my own psychological blocks...thinking I upset the world, and not wanting others to pay special attention to me even though when I need help or am clearly suffering emotional pain I require attention, and holding those I respect in way-too-high regard. But I was out almost as soon as I fell in! Very rare and very good. It helped to have a great advisory meeting, a long talk with the MAPH mentors, and two brief but crucial talks with Abigail which ended with both of us understanding the other a lot better while keeping the mutual good feelings which have been there since our first meeting...I'm lucky to be with her. Also helped to discover Chicago radio and its excellence after listening to George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, an album which will soon get a blog post of its own...maybe this weekend after I've written my first graded paper, a paper apparently very few do well on. All I can say is, I didn't come here to do something easy. (And last night, four very tired souls--myself, Peter, Erik, and Ashley--watched the Twilight Zone where a horribly overacting William Shatner becomes obsessed with a penny fortune-telling machine in the Ohio countryside...just what we needed.)

Two final thoughts today: Marc moved into Ohio State yesterday, and I have wished him well enough in private that he doesn't need another good thought from me in public, so no flowery language here...but we're on parallel paths and it strikes me very hard.

And a few notable names passed away this week, but the one I want to acknowledge is Henry Gibson. Actor of sterling comic timing, clever poet and lyricist, did everything from Laugh-In to Wedding Crashers (as the priest whom Vince Vaughan nearly terrifies with his monologuing), but I'll always remember him for two very different roles. One, the voice of Wilbur in the original Charlotte's Web...a bit of artistry where Wilbur's gentleness, loyalty, and longing all were as deeply felt as in the book. Two, Haven Hamilton in Nashville, the most vain and uncompromising man ever to get a stranglehold on the limelight...and once seen in his lip-smacking worst and final, stunningly noble best, never forgotten.

"If the doctor says you're through, keep a-goin'!

He's a human just like you! Keep a-goin'!"

"Who's the piano player? Frog? He plays like a frog...why couldn't we get Pig?"