job market, lithium

san fran, cal, andy in for the win —

bro bro co. —

i am now worried that peter will not in fact get a job (post-doc); his field is so sickly narrow, like mine, that there are only about 5-6 positions he can even apply for in north america, and as of now it doesn't look good; he had planned to apply for the canadian/ontario variant of welfare but says he now will not do that, though i think he is probably quickly running out of money and i would have none to send him. i am not sure what will happen there, and i guess i can't really talk about it with him, because it would be upsetting and i would have nothing helpful to add; the colorado job is a bust, he won't apply for the harvard one because it's so unlikely, and rejections from elsewhere are in, i suspect; i could try to get him in at berklee — i think i probably could get him in actually — but i'm almost certain that he would decline that, on all counts.

the lithium level came in at .8 which means nothing will change, but i am most definitely craving approx 2,500 calories of orange juice every day, so there is some problem; the st e dr wrote for something called a 'cmp' which i think is like electrolytes and some other stuff i don't know about and probably don't believe in — but they were unable to do it in newton and i think somehow the lab at st elizabeth's has disappeared, so i don't know where to go.

the mania has always been the dangerous pole — my doctor insists that i would be dead without lithium, and i guess that would be true, though zyprexa put a pretty good lid on all things animate, but i also think, in any case, that the depression is not merely a bother but also itself quite dangerous. like, in the fall, when i fell terribly dark on the topomax i nearly bailed on the entire book project, i was going to withdraw it from publication, and it was only my mother who convinced me that i had to publish it for dave's sake, and that was undeniably true, and i did it. but now that i am feeling better, off the topomax and back on the lamictal, i see that the book is really high quality, it's very high quality, and the idea that i almost bailed on it at the final moment is sort of scary, but also just a profound index of how severely depressed and discolored i can become; it's sort of easy to feel that life is terrible and it is adequate to reality because my life indeed is terrible — but this is an example in which obviously the book is good and yet i found it to be utter crap, i wanted to bury it; i was all wrong there, but luckily i pulled out; i don't think i would ever kill myself — ever — i just don't think i could do it, but i do have that feeling that overcomes me that — it's difficult to describe — that suicide will somehow happen to me, like an accident, or being hit by a falling egg from the sky, that it would happen against my will; you know, how the existentialists make suicide out to be this grand agentic gesture; but in my nightmare it is just the opposite: it is forced on me, done to me, and perhaps that's how suicide ought to be considered: simply a force upon the object.

i think the best part of the book is the coda, and i think the best part of the coda is that it is written in the same voice as the rest of the book — somehow — with an entirely different agenda, that stands apart. i really think this is a very good piece of writing, and when my mother did her crap job of editing the book — terrible job, really, i had redo the whole thing — my mother reported that she burst into tears at the end of the book which, to her, was evidence that she basically understood the book. i think this is probably right. when i read the coda while not listening to music i have very little feeling there; but when i read while listening to music — anything dance — i tear up and basically unleash at: "The woman who tells the story of death makes love to loss." this is such an utterly fantastic line that i am tearing up just retyping it here on the fact sheet.

the smartest thing in the book is the discovery that there is more than one object in the universe but fewer than two objects in the universe. this is exactly true, and i'm surprised no one has bothered to point that out before me.

my favorite chapter is two; i don't like the pervert chapters very much — though i think they are necessary.

the grand flaw of the book is the order, sequence.

i think his name might be corey; i think he might be a pharmacy student — which would be truly bizarre, for me — he is very into trusting, long-term relationships, he likes cats and dogs, and his influential relationship is his grandmother. he also probably doesn't live in derry, nh, but he probably does have a dick that is bigger than expected given his height. but corey should know that my grandmother raised me, in part, after my father died, she was a librarian, worked until she was 80, and died at 93, a year after she fell while standing on her couch, in high heel shoes, in a dress, dusting an above glass stained window — and cracked her hip. her name was esther and she was much smarter than me; she was the sister to george, my paternal grandfather, who was brother to esther, my maternal grandmother. my grandmother was in fact much smarter than me.

i can no longer picture chris in my mind; i can no longer see his face or even really his body, i've got a bit of his gestures left, but they are fading. yeah, i now have no idea what his face looks like.

andy

i think i mentioned this on the fact sheet from months ago when i wrote about him but — i feel very strongly that i miss him. i felt this way about patrick i think but i don't think i ever felt this way about trevor; the eharmony conceit is very along the lines of jason, as is chris's body.

i'm a bit worried that when we are together i will still have this feeling of missing him. i'm going to bet that he didn't order a copy of my mom's book from amazon — i bet this is the case, which is fine, he'll have to acknowledge that to himself in this moment, which is ok — but i think when i give him his copy that he will really like it. i will have to tell joan that he goes to mass pharm — her father taught physics there for a long time. both corey and i are at trade schools. he will always make considerably more money than i do.