Sometimes, the most I can do is nothing.

As I have no god to plead to for mercy, I depend on human kindness and medicines. Once again, this fact leaves me dumbfounded most of the time. At night, I am woken by one or more of these: my rumbling intestines or bloated stomach, aching finger joints, dull throbbing sinusitis, the taste of bleeding gum tissue, my angry bladder, confusing thoughts, dreams too complicated and possibly too frightening to remember, a cackling bird, the binmen clanging the gates along the street, the tinny whirr from the headset of the newspaper delivery guy, gentle male snoring.

At night, my world goes through hard times, but I am only vaguely aware of it, while I carefully hold on to whatever remnants of dozing, sleepiness I can grasp, breathing slowly, relaxing my fingers and toes, anything to soften the full onslaught of whatever is out of tune, waiting to hit me, to push me over the cliff.

And then I wake and the daylight is soft and pink. The garden is wet with shiny dew, a flock of rose-ringed parakeets noisily breakfasting in the branches of the tall hornbeam.
I run my hand through a bowl of ripe greengages, each a sphere of sunlight and sweetness, testing for the softest, the most perfect one. All of summer is in that fruit, that shape, that colour, that taste. My daylight world is calm, I am in a safe, good place. Wonderful things are happening in my family. Love is all around.

Tomorrow, I will get up much earlier, to give myself time to prepare for a meeting to discuss my future as a working person, someone I want to remain but who I may no longer be and who the big important boss wants to be gone. I can already taste the bitter anger at the back of my throat when I think of facing him. But I know that this is not the way to do it. He has no power. I am protected, not only by labour laws but by being confident and alive.

That's the great challenge of my life, without promise of solution, the insight that I need all my strength to be weak. 

The full moon brought the strong easterly wind that will take down the colourful leaves and then we will enter that long period of grey and cold and damp and dark. Five months.

Silent slow mornings, carefully portioning my energy, so much I want to do, need to do, while the bed with its warm quilted cover beckons.

Manuscripts waiting for my attention on my desk, reports on kidney transplant failure rates in children, novel molecular genetic testing for very early diagnosis of dreadful diseases, starvation in Sudan, rebuilding lives in past-earthquake Mustang (NW Nepal). Have a guess which of these comes with a paycheque. Some days, the world is too big and my energy is too low.

I was reading recently how empathy research has shown that we are much more connected to others than we consciously are aware of. Not in a sense that we are all brothers and sisters, all that we-are-family crap, but on another level outside our control. And of course being the clever animals that we are, we have found ways to circumvent this. Like crawling back under my warm quilted bed cover.

Empathy isn’t just remembering to say that must really be hard—it’s figuring out how to bring difficulty into the light so it can be seen at all. Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see.

Leslie Jamison

My top boss, the smart one who zooms around the globe picking up awards and fat research funds, has done a big blunder. I saw it coming, I checked back with him in writing three times beforehand and still, he tried to blame it on me. Teenage tactics. Almost feel motherly here, but mostly I am mad, because who is now stuck with getting it sorted again? Three guesses. The big man himself is off to bigger and brighter fields, incommunicado as befits his important standing. Soon, he'll discover the cure to cancer or maybe MS or Alzheimer's or his bank account or all of it in one go. There is a lot that's wrong in scientific research and every time we get a new batch of junior assistants I want to sit them down and tell them about long hours, no weekends, very low pay and no recognition of all their efforts for years and years to come but usually, the stars in their eyes are already starting to shine back at me.

and the day was dragging on

I think I slightly messed up one of the bright young things today. He is so very keen sure of himself and already sees the shiny future of international conferences and prizes for his eventually outstanding research. If only. 

So there I had edited out all his "cirrhotics" and replaced it with "patients suffering from cirrhosis" and - to be generous - the odd "cirrhosis patient" and now he was all huffed because this messed up his word count. Oh dear. And my little lecture that medical expertise must always be about treating patients and not about treating diseases went in one ear and out the other. I offered to set his word count right again with a few changes elsewhere but he went off in a huff. 

And so the day dragged on and my phantom teeth started to ache and the stupid automatic blinds went up and down because the wind was blowing from all directions.

When I leave these days the sun is already way down behind the buildings in the west and when we turn the clocks at the end of this month it will be dark when I get on my bicycle. I am already excited about racing through the dark forest. Today it looked like this:

And tomorrow I will make a big pot of shufta just for the heck of it.

deep breath

It's done, in the end I raced through the paragraphs and after I did my final edit I felt pretty washed out, enough to take a day off from work. And although I tried to take it easy I found myself much too preoccupied, still. My head overflowing with the terminology of human rights abuse, land grabbing, right to water and denied access to land and livelihood, Monsanto crimes and farmer suicides and like a bright shining light in the middle of my doom and gloom mood the postman drops a battered postcard in my post box from Mustang where SC has been staying with her dedicated Nepali friends, a women's co-operative involved in the education of girls and women, income-generating measures, promotion of hygiene and health, and the cultivation of vegetables and medicinal plants in the upper regions of the Himalayas far away from the trekking tourists.

we are on the road to nowhere

Here I have been sitting hunched over the keyboard of my fancy new laptop for the best part of the day translating and editing an endless paper on human rights violations to indigenous communities at the hand of large multinational corporations (those with the shiny ads for the glamorous and easy life, gold jewellery, diamonds, oil, cars, the works, you name it) where one unimaginable cruelty is followed by yet another even more horrendous one. 

But here is the catch: when it becomes too much for my feeble imagination and when my neck and shoulders are all stiff, I can get up and make myself a lovely cup of (fair trade, organic) tea and walk around the garden for a bit and lie back in a deck chair and let the sun shine on my face. And I try and chase away all thoughts of how futile this all seems, how many years I have been reading and translating these reports from NGOs and all those dedicated human rights advocates. There is no end to inhumanity.

I don't get it. I mean, maybe I am seriously naïve or too detached from the real world. Some weeks ago I finished a translation of a lengthy scholarly essay on the traditions of giving, gift vs exchange paradigms etc. The author - university professor with a tight schedule of global lectures and conferences - wrote in depth about anti-utalitarian concepts and gift traditions in peasant communities and urban settings and so on. Very committed and detailed. 

Her research and with it my fee was funded by a generous gift from one of these philantropic billionaires, who is also a friend of the author. In a footnote, this gift has been praised as an example of some ancient human gift giving spirit, bla bla and bla.

Today, I get a request from the author for a taxable invoice, i.e. to set off against her personal income tax. No joke.

Well, you can stuff it!

this is not begging

It probably says a lot about my self-esteem and whatever else, but I find it really hard to sort of stand up for myself right now. Not that it ever was easier but  somehow these situations didn't come up that often before, I suppose there was no need, maybe because I avoided them, maybe because I simply moved and worked and lived in an environment where I had found my place - I really don't want to analyse this any further.

Fact is, right now there are two big issues I have to fight for. Ah gosh, no, fighting is not the term. I have to do something about it because if I don't I am a right old shit and will no doubt wake up some night(s) furious with myself for not having done it. And then I will try to small talk it out of my conscience and pretend it's nothing and it will get digested the wrong way by my body and I'll get grey hair all of a sudden or a paralyzed arm or somesuch psychosomatic reaction. 

Ok Ok Ok

I just wrote my boss a benign pushy email without too much condescending waffle and just a hint of a threat explaining to him that I will be taking all my holiday entitlements due to me for the time I was out sick (seven weeks, thank you sweet German labour legislation) sort of now unless he hands over cash instead - which he is well able to. So, no, this is not begging.

Actually, I don't want to have seven weeks holidays right now. I just got back to work after 76 weeks of idleness. If I had the money and the energy and health, obviously I'd be off exploring etc. but as it stands, I'd rather be at work.

And the other thing is sitting here on my desk, pages and pages of forms to fill out for my application to get reduced earning capacity pension. The stuff they want to know just blows me: Where did you reside on July 1st 1990? Why do they need to know that??? If I tell them the truth - I suppose I  must - and write  

behind the huge old Banyan tree, east coast, main island, paradise ...

                                                     

now what will they ask next?

blame it on tooth ache

Thanks to MTX, my gums are sore and open and hence the tooth ache has been coming and going, spreading to the upper jaw into the phantom pain I experienced four years ago after the great dentist disaster that stopped me from hiking in the Golden Triangle hills with S and instead catapulted me helter skelter into the oral surgery nightmare summer of 2007. It seems that life has dealt me this card again. 

But mercyfully my doctor agreed that this is one shit load too many and so my box of pills has two more additions: one to alleviate the inflamed gums and one to handle the phantom pain. I wish these monsters would act instantly but no, patience is what's called for. And I have run out of this kind of virtue so long ago.

Sleep is a rare and precious gift these nights, a fickle one though and last night I spent much time alternatingly making up dream scenarios in full aching wakefulness or concentrating on the soles of my feet whenever the drilling pain in my gummy upper jaws seemed to spin me out of control. Those dear soles of my feet, with all mental efforts available I made them tingle and glow for most of the night.

During the days I am irritable and cranky. Working was the highlight and I feel dead proud for sticking it out even on days when all I want to do is run and hide. My in-trays are all neatly stacked now and priorities settled and long overdues over and done. Before I lock up for the night, I glance back over my shoulder and, wow, does my desk look good!!

On the home office front, I have started an assigement for a feminist/sociologist crowd translating a long essay on subsistence and autonomy - really good stuff - which is starting to become really frustrating. Frustrating because the two women I deal with are a) computer illiterate whereby anything beyond typing is wonderland, b) scatterbrains, charming but grrr! and c) never on time. They are both older than me, honoured academics, well travelled and well connected in the global feminist ecology network but when I try to teach show them the wonders of editing in word, they smile and clap their hands as if we were in nursery school discovering the miracle of how the red Lego stones fit on top of the white ones - every time anew.

I am probably certainly absolutely unfair now and way off the mark, blame it on tooth ache.

Yes, let's blame it all on tooth ache. All. ALL.

work

There is this feeling of frailty, weakness, exhaustion hovering above my days and I am struggling with it, really hard, while at the same time showing off my professional and accomplished side during my afternoons at work, all smiles and efficiency. After three hours the latest, this frailty catches up with me and pins me down onto my chair with such power and determination that I am left there gagged and shaking. While my mind wants to get on with work and all the new ideas and plans, my body fails me so utterly.
Oh,  how I miss my energetic old self. I have quite some adjusting learning ahead of me. 

...our wounds and flaws are sure signs of our fundamental completeness. If speech is a finger pointing toward the unspoken, our sense of incompleteness, our fragile, tender vulnerability is a sure sign of our strength.

writes Saki Santorelli

quoting Rumi:
"Don't turn your head. Keep looking 
at the bandaged place . That's where
the Light enters you."

And that old grey-haired magician sings: There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in...

listening

It is not easy - in fact, it's pretty fucking difficult - after such a long absence. My in-tray looks like a laundry basket for a football team, I spent the last two days trying to sort out what is what and still not finished.

There is a little voice inside of me that whispers, you are safe, you are well, you are safe, you are well. And I strain to hear it even through the roaring and the shaking. My shoulders ache from all that effort.

At night when my mind wants to continue sorting through the in-tray, I try to concentrate, you are safe, you are well, you are safe, you are well, you are safe...

All that I need to manage is to somehow make it through 3-4 hours, Mo -Fr, AND get some work done.

paid labour

Nervous. From tomorrow on I have to manage at least three hours of regular work until the end of Jan. That means, Mo-Fr including commuting and the lot. What I have been doing for years and years and what I have been unable/not allowed to do for over 12 months now.

From 1st of Feb it's half day or the battle for disability pension.

My employer has built many bridges for me in all these months and more than once has it been suggested to me that there is no need to work "hard", that there are many others who spend half an hour here and there watering office plants and moving the blinds just right and still get paid.

I don't know what scares me more: finding out that I may not be able to work regularly even for a  few hours or the prospect of having to play a charade.

One week at a time. Tonight all I can see is a steep path uphill and I think I have to run it. through thick mud. With leaking boots. Carrying a load of heavy stones on my back. In freezing wind.

I could go on, melodramatics, my pet.

Three days at work now after over 12 months of sick leave.

There's a moment after about one hour when I feel the sky is falling and, no, this will not work and then I tell myself, you are stuck here, you have to get through this for a bit longer and whoops, another hour goes by and I have managed.

And after about three hours I drive home, on the radio some debate on whatever and then the forecast (blizzard) and I park the car and struggle with the cover (fucking snow) and pick up the complaining cat and open the front door and sit down on the stairs in the hall and watch my hands shaking and shaking.

And I lean back and listen to the roaring in my banjaxed ear and my bones are so so heavy and I wish someone would help me take off my boots and coat.

And I open the kitchen door and R is cooking and listening to the world service and his face is so tired and he leans over the counter chopping celery and I smile and ask him, how was your day.

another attempt

So tired, I feel like I have been walking through heavy snow all day. Aching and stiff. I am back at my office for 2-3 hours now, hiding behind my door, late afternoons. Great sense of achievement despite the spinning head. Difficult to avoid people but it's just too much, all this telling and retelling and explaining and over and over "you're looking great" when I am barely getting through. But at least I'm not getting worse. Amazing.

Really hard to pace myself.

Sunday

Like a surprise gift it has been such a beautiful late summer's day with a brisk, warm, southerly wind, lunch outside and deck chair reading.
I can hear the crane and the heron getting ready to leave for their warmer winter residences. Any day now their noisy formations will fill the sky.
My three short stints at work in my office last week fill me with hope. So what if I can only manage short periods? Driving there, sitting at my desk and working for 1, 2 hrs, driving home and crashing out. Maybe I can do this just as much as being bored at home, shuffling around like a demented housewife and crashing out then.
On Friday Prof S and Dr Z were there and full of sound medical advice and understanding. All are really supportive - so far - reasons to be cheerful. I straightened up and cleared out a lot of useless backlog. And I got a sense of autonomy, of doing something not for the sake of keeping myself distracted, occupied.


So, while I am not getting better, I am at least improving on my coping skills. Slowly.

my job

I made it to my office this morning, managed almost two hours, two really exhausting and frustrating hours talking to two of the four people replacing me. Nice women, one is trying her level best, no doubt about that, but she hasn't enough time and she shares my frustration because she has an idea what needs to be done. The other is flaky and not keen. She did almost nothing of the stuff I so carefully and painstakingly explained and detailed for her with screen shots and powerpoint slides. So the backload from her desk is overwhelming.
This really pissed me off and I felt like chucking it in on the spot. No way will I be well enough to straighten this up in time. This is not my responsibility, I know, except that I do feel that.

And I was exhausted when I got home. Too tired even to relax, aching to my bones. Scary, quite a bit.

Later on I went with R to the hardware store, the whole food shop and in the end we had dinner in the fish restaurant and a coffee at BaGo under the trees. And at some stage these words just came: I don't need to get back to that job. Anything is possible. I don't need this.
And R said, exactly, and we just moved on to the next subject.

Then again: I did it. There! Maybe there is a way? Work? One, two hours a day? My desk? My job?