A day on the ...

Ugh. It‘s 11:10pm amd I‘m on the tram. This is becoming a way bad habit.

Today hasn‘t been a complete day on the roller coaster, but it‘s been close. A couple of genuinely complex files and few last minute developments on things that were problematic to begin with. I think I mentioned before that lately when I get stressed, I‘ve been biting my hands and fingers (weird or what?). I‘m looking at my hands now and reflecting that that the casual observer might think some time today I wss fighting off an attack by a medium sized dog. Another habit to break, especially since I think I‘ve inadvertently done it in front of a couple of people this week.

Aside from this, little to report. I took my dinner to the office today and had it there. More than anything else because I‘ve been getting tired of getting back to the house late-ish and heating up a meal and having someone say to me “hey, you‘re eating dinner at 10.00 in the evening“ (internal reply: “really? No shit. I was aware neither of the time nor my current activity. Thanks for clearing that up - you‘re a pal!“).

Ok, my stop. See you tomorrow.

Miserere Mei, Deus

Miserere mei, Deus. I‘ve been listening to Gregorio Allegri‘s setting if the 51st Psalm at the office this evening. Dunno, I just seem to be thinking about things tonight. Like how the deep black feeling of sin can produce something sublime - like the Miserere.  I suppose I‘m thinking a bit of the odd juxtapositions of vileness and beauty.

For instance: put one man in prison and you get Alfred Camilleri - in and out of gaol until he hit the jackpot with the rape and murder of two schoolgirls (now serving life without possibility of parole). Put another man behind bars and you get “To Althea, from prison“.

Make one woman a sex worker and you get Kayden Kross, writing about the world if porn with acuity and not a little humour. Make another one a working girl and she becomes Brittany Holberg (now on death row in Texas for stabbing a punter multiple times)

Put one man in a war and get Josef Mengele. Put another at the sharp end and he becomes Wilfred Owen (Dulce et Decorum Est is one of the most heart-rending poems ever written, in war or otherwise).

I‘d love to say it‘s because suffering can be redemptive, if you want it to be. But that just seems too glib, too easy. And maybe not explanatory. Consider Denis Prendergast, an inmate at the penal nightmare at Port Arthur. He was eventually hanged there for (literally) beating a guard‘s brains out. But before he died, he write an incredibly beautiful, tender letter to his lover.

The only thing I can seem to draw from this is the capacity of people to be sublime, and to be wicked, mean and self-destructive.

And maybe this is the working out of our nature: vile and poor clay, but stamped with the image if God.

Tuesday evening

This entry may come out bleaker than it‘s meant to. We‘ll see.

I had to reschedule my session with the psych this morning. Well, I didn‘t HAVE to. But I was too embarassed about not having been able to get in to see the doctor to get the necessary referral documents drawn (have arranged that appointment for Friday). As a result, I was at the office at 6:50am. I had one court appearance in the morning and then spent a lot of the rest of the day catching up on filework.

It was a borderline kind if day, as if it kept threatening to overwhelm me but not quite doing it. By the end I just wished the day would make it‘s frigging mind up and either destroy me or not. But it didn‘t and so I have no real sense of success or failure. This is not that good. My boss has been away for the last couple if days, and I‘m scheduled to review a number of files with her tomorrow. And honest to God: I just don‘t think I can ride the roller-coaster anymore.

For the love of God, when did I become so bloody gutless?

Come on. You just haven‘t tried hard enough you lazy, cowardly good for nothing shit.

God, look at that last sentence. I can‘t even hate myself and be believable
I can‘t be fair dinkum about anything.

Fuck me.

Later on

Well, it‘s 9:30pm, and I‘m on the tram again.

I don‘t know that my frame of mind is much different than it was earlier. Just more tired and that takes the edge off the abuse, I guess.

I just think I‘m a profoundly annoying person. I don‘t think I even rise to the level of being a bad person. Just tawdry, second-rate and ... annoying. The 70s decor of human beings.

Yay me.

A Habsburg Brain?

A quick update at lunchtime.  Although I might not post it till after work.  We'll see.

It's been a good morning for my head being erratic.  An old stuff-up is bringing itself to light again.  And I stuffed up in court this morning a bit as well (a point I should have taken and didn't).  I tried using the new ways of thinking I've learned from the head-shrinker to deal with this sort of thing, but the sneering voices inside my head kicked in with the pretty-well-unanswerable "Yeah, you would say that, it's a way to feel good without having earned it" and even the more reasonable voice chimed in with "surely that sort of forgiveness is too easy isn't it".

For the avoidance of doubt, I don't literally hear voices inside my head.  Schizophrenic I am not.  I say voices as a means of describing the different strands of thought.

Having nuked my own line of psychological defence, a bunch of other thoughts began to swarm through.  Among the highlights was the phrase "(You are a) Turd-filled husk".  There were other thoughts (some objectively worse) but that was the only one that was at all creative.

OK, time to make a cup of tea and pull myself together for the afternoon's work.  I just wish I knew whether I'm actually being not-normal or whether everyone feels like that and I'm just being melodramatic.

I guess I'm just a bit sick of my brain.  Like the Habsburg monarchs, it seems neither to learn anything nor forget anything.

I still got it.

So the photo is where I am as I start this post: the Bourke Street Mall. I‘m about two blocks from my usual stop because I needed to go to a supermarket in the CBD for some groceries.

It‘s been a big couple of days. Friday a bunch of people in my section got promoted, so Friday night drinks were especially festive. My last memory of the night is walking in the general direction of Collins Street. My next memory is waking up fully dressed on my bed at 5:30am. I have no idea how I got home.

Saturday I felt pretty ordinary for obvious reasons. I chugged 3 litres if water which rehydrated me, but even so... The first job of the day was to drive to Campbellfield to sell the swing for scrap. I was feeling genuinely awful when I got out there and decided it was because my stomach was close to empty, and the rice I had with me seemed too lacking in nutritional value to make it happier, so I made my way to Hungry Jacks (Burger King for my American readers). I‘ve been avoiding fast food lately, because money‘s been a bit tight, but this was effectively a medicinal Double Whopper. Hurray for rationalization. That duty done, I kind of figured I‘d earned some time off after running that trial this week, so I went back to the city and wandered the National Gallery for about an hour and a half, then went to the office and did some work from 6:00pm-11:30pm. Productive. Then back to the house.

I was pleased with myself for today. I got up at a respectable hour, did a load of laundry, ironed my shirts for the week and (best of all) got to skype with Mrs T. Then, to the office from about 12:30-6:30 and made significant progress, I think. After I left the office I picked up groceries as aforesaid. I‘ve often thought one of my few good qualities is that I can live on not much - essentially, that I can manage a weeks groceries on $25 or less. This evening I didn‘t quite manage that feat, but I got close. I still got it!

I‘m finishing this post in bed now. I‘d love to say I had some brilliant insight to share, but I don‘t. I just hope this is a good week.

See you tomorrow.

I was thinking. Or not.

It‘s been a blizzard of a day. Not climatically (although the weather was cool) but, a string of things not helped by my brain moving in a nauseating rush.  Kind of like a 747 trying to land when the pilot is completely wasted.

I've spent today working on files where I've either done something stupid or (worse) not done anything at all.  I also went to Court to hear judgment in that matter I've been in all week.  Not only did we lose, we lost a chunk on the costs point which we should have won.  Gripe.  And, I had case reviews on a lot of file where my performance has been singularly clueless.  There were a few good ones in there, where I've done well, but a lot where I just sat there and wanted to gouge my intestines out because I knew I'd let my employer down.  Again.

So it was a great day for my brain to be doing that "going weird" thing where part of me wants to vomit or do-something-but-I-know-not-what, and where I find myself biting my fingers or hands for some reason.  I don't know why I do that; at a guess to give the brain something else to focus on, but I'm not sure.  It's helped me acquire an odd callus on the side of my index finger so far.  Added to which I'd had a big failure in the wardrobe department this morning (a suit / shirt / tie combination that made me look like Charlie Chaplin, if Charlie Chaplin had been riding the short bus), and the skin on my face was in a really irritated, reddish condition that hurts and burns and has little acne and scabs on it.  By about midday/1:00ish I was really, really down, and feeling like the only thing in the world I could possibly be fit for was a middle-body segment in a real-life version of "The Human Centipede" (And if you don't know what I'm talking about, do not Google it: it's information you seriously don't want.  I haven't even seen The Human Centipede; I just read the summary on Wikipedia last night and still can't get rid of the mental images). But, whenever anyone said anything pleasant to me, my mind went capering like a mangy dog given a pat.  Really, it's a messed up frame of mind to spend the day in.

I left the office at 9:30 tonight - progress! - and came back here.  Dinner, shower, and in a few minutes, bed.  I got less messed up as the evening wore on, and now my brain just feels twitchy but done and tired.  Taking its restless rest in the soaking dew, to steal a good image from Aeschylus.

As much as I miss Mrs T and Grace and Rachel, I'm kind of glad they weren't here to see me up close like this.  I'm beginning to see how much extra burden this put on Mrs T from time to time.  Thank God I should have my shit sorted out by the time where back together.

OK, sleep seems like a good idea right now.  See you tomorrow.