To God. No Job.

 

Transference, seems almost otherworldly to consider.  No one would consciously substitute a random person for someone they knew when they were young.  Wouldn’t the conscious mind see that, as rather obvious.  The section of reading for my older daughter’s history of psychology this week is on the concept of transference.  Freud forewarns that it is perfectly natural if patients fall in love with their therapists or suddenly hate them , effectively sand storm off. 

David Keightley is a mind I’d enjoy spending more time with.  “These Bones Shall Rise Again” is a selection of his writings on early China.  The actions of the hero, the depictions of these heroes in artwork, the way cultures stare down death, all of these matters are rather distinct in China, different than they were in Mycenean Greece.   Take death, please.  There is no “anguished cry” of Gilgamesh to God.  No Job.  Death is not “invented” in the Garden of Eden.  People don’t travel along the river Styx and visit the underworld, touring about with the likes of Virgil. 

 

I agreed to do some interviews this year for my alma mater, Wesleyan University.  This is in no way affected by the fact that my own daughter will be applying to many different universities, Wes perhaps included next year.  The interviews, chatting for an hour with bright young people (I insisted upon working with Chinese students, where I figured I’d add the most value) is something I truly do enjoy.  The write-up takes time though.  How do properly articulate what it is that you think about this person?  Today then, is the day for the write ups.

It took me most of the day to draft out one page summaries that I thought were presentable.  On line, I filled in the requisite boxes and number check boxes and then met an interface that wanted me to contribute up to two-hundred words max.  That’s about one-fifth of all that I had written.  I’d need to completely rework all of these essays.  The task I’d imagined was close to having settled the burden of, would continue on till at least tomorrow.   And that mean a lot of other work would also need to be delayed.

 

 

 

Sunday, 03/07/21