Thursday before Christmas. Suddenly I am feeling so deeply tired. I woke at 1:30, read, dosed, and got up at 3:30. I even dreamt about my neuroscience project which is not a good thing. In fact it is an indication that the left brain is taking over. So I wandered around, sat in my easy-boy chair and tried to calm down. I remember being on holiday on some Greek island and feeling so relaxed. But I can’t seem to unwind right now. My GP has asked me to record my blood pressure but I keep forgetting. It was very high during my last years in the NHS but dropped dramatically when I retired. It’s quite high again so I’ll have to increase my meds. No problem.
I was the first through the door at Waitrose when it opened at 8:00. By 8:45, when I was driving out of the car park, there was a queue developing up the road. I popped into St Albans Hospital for a blood test, and whilst waiting for my number to be called I read the following in a recent TLS
It is not a conventional dates/people/events diary, nor is it a thoughts-in-progress journal, or even a commonplace book. It is just random stuff that pops into [his] head, jotted down. He has here perfected a tone of Pooterish complacency
Oh dear, self-importance, mundanity, unimaginative. The trivia of my life. I was discussing Knausgård’s My Struggle with a friend. Her reaction to the book was unprintable. Five volumes of personal trivia. I suppose the difference is that my trivia is potentially of interest to the people I’m close to. My trip to Waitrose, my musings in the blood queue, …
I’ve finally made peace with The Return. Yes it’s full of the boasting trivia of a privileged son of a wealthy paterfamilias. But chapter 6 is entitled Poems. Talking of the time when his brother discovered that [the author’s] father was also in one of Gaddafi’s hellhole prisons, he says
Perhaps on hearing his brother’s voice, Uncle Mahmoud’s response was like that of Dante when, descending into the depth of hell, the poet come upon Ciacco, a man he had known in the life before but who was now completely unrecognisable, and tells him –
The anguish you endure
Perhaps effaces whatever memory I had,
Making it seem I have not seen you before;
But tell me who you are , assigned to so sad a station as punishment – if any is more
Agony, none is so repellent
And it seemed that Hisham Matar is moving back and forth between narrative events and the emotional memories they evoke. If so, then he is my man.
Knausgård’s error was two fold. One, he apparently did not reflect on the events of his life. And two, he published them. I suppose he could claim that he became a publishing phenomenon. Bit like Damien Hirst in the art world. Tedious personality and no content.
I’ve not read The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz but I’ve heard so many references to it. “The unexamined life is not worth living” is apparently something that Socrates said, not that I have read anything by him either. I am a very un-read person. But I examine things, I mull over them, as if that is my true nature. It would help if I was more interested in action and doing something about what I mull over, but in some very deep sense I doubt the possibility of informed action. Life is the product of unintended consequences.
Off to cook some chicken. Waitrose was a nightmare, and the worst thing was that my 15% off offer expired three days ago.