DEAR DIARY...
It occurred to me, apropos of nothing very much, that first African-American President-in-Training, Colin Powell, must be toying with the idea of jumping ship. With Bush’s credibility ratings going south of Reagan’s at their lowest, he’s keeping increasingly infected company. Rumsfeldt’s due for pasture soon so he can go fish in a lake until he drops. But surely Powell has high hopes…
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An interesting conversation with Mario last night at Flick & Jon’s party. He said that when his son Joel’s night time waking & crying became intolerable at the age of 11 months, in sheer despair Averill & he left him to cry. The two of them sat in the living room staring miserably at the floor for about 10 minutes & then suddenly the crying stopped. Convinced that Joel had died of anguish, they rushed into his room & found him curled up foetally, fast asleep. From that night on his sleeping became entirely regular.
Not a punitive or systems-bound parent, Mario felt that it was an appropriate response to Joel’s behaviour patterns at the time. Because of Reuben’s eccentric sleep regime – two hours on, 30 minutes off - Em & I are exhausted. If I sit for longer than 3 minutes anywhere I drop off. In fact, I keep drifting towards catatonia here at the keyboard now.
What preoccupies me in the face of this counsel of despair is Reuben’s emotional constitution at 11 months. Whilst he can respond to language to a limited extent, he can’t use it. Words are symbolic sounds made by others that he receives passively. They have no objective meaning for him because he can’t think verbally. So does he have any capacity to retain in any substantive sense recollection of his emotional experience? When he cries uncontrollably & seems to express utter desolation, it’s impossible not to identify emotionally. But that’s because we can articulate our emotions to ourselves, both during the process of feeling them & then in our imagination after the event. If this is not possible in the pre-cognitive stages then arguably for the baby all sensations are fleeting &, beyond the experience itself, no trace remains.
Seductively convincing as he lies asleep in his cot in the next room. But the moment he awakes & cries I shall be beside him…
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As I drove back along the winding lane after visiting my mother in her nursing home this morning something flickered in the tail of my vision. I glanced in the mirror & saw a small tawny owl sitting on top of the sign announcing the name of the next village. I turned the car around & drove back up the road. It sat there shifting its wings in a sort of testy shrugging motion & peering balefully out of round, fierce eyes. It looked distinctly confused, even slightly embarrassed at being abroad whilst the sun was still up. It occurred to me as I drove away that maybe, as we sleepwalk, birds might sleepfly…
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School begins again tomorrow after an eight-week break. Like stepping into a cold & turbulent tide in flood, I’ll be surrounded once again by all those tumultuous lives. All their fears & hopes & uncertainties – the moments of noisy joy & the longer episodes of existential agony. In this school in which the usual barriers between teachers & students are largely absent, we are so much more accessible to them & exposed to the clamour of their lives. Exhausting & enervating, but, like the turbulent tide in flood, bracing too.
1:07:04 AM 
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