dramatic failures of self-understanding
Last summer I had a dream that a friend walked up to me, stood unusually close, placed a hand on my shoulder and said: “Matty, you’re a mess!” In the dream, I was at a party in front of my paternal grandparents’ place down by the Miramichi River—obviously a memory of my aunt’s wedding from 2019. Now, there’s no way this friend would ever find himself on the banks of the Miramichi in August, but dreams, of course, don’t care about that. My dreams are usually fairly transparent, and so this one was puzzling because at that time I felt very in control of my life, was not a mess at all.
I told my friend about my dream. My maternal grandmother (who died when I was five but who occupies an almost mythic status in my memory as the purveyor [I realized in my twenties] of endless snippets from the canon of English literature, and as a general redoubt of human wisdom in, let’s face it, a benighted age) told me that you must report it to people when you dream about them, because, in her view, dreams have a fairly standard set of meanings and, for reasons I no longer recall, it is important for people to know it. Anyway, he’s a puckish fellow, and sometimes when I’ll share what’s going on in my life, he’ll repeat the line. But it has not been true until now.
I have a maxim that grand evaluations of one’s life should not occur in the dark, hectic months of November and February. You want to quit your job or drop out of school? That’s fine, but you can wait until you’ve listened to the Sufjan Christmas album a few times or had Spring Break before you pull the trigger. But as the originator of the maxim, I feel that I am also free to disregard it.
Not to bury the lede too badly, but the good news here is that I am almost done a draft of my academic book—a study of three of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms as Socratic political philosophy. It’s going suspiciously well. I am losing myself in thinking and writing in a way I haven’t done since graduate school. I’ll set to work and not look at the clock—or my phone—until hours and dozens of iMessages later. This generous research leave has allowed me to focus, and, having repeatedly and very publicly announced that I will not be entering 2024 (and turning forty) before the book is finished, I’m traversing a narrow, ambiguous path between shame, desire, and the love of learning.1
The bad news is that the human cost of the venture is mounting. I am finally writing at a rate I have, for years, aspired to, but I cannot do anything else. I am abstracted, forgetful, spacey—not fit for life under telluric conditions. My list of deferred domestic and administrative tasks would be impressive if it weren’t so frightening. I can only continue to live by pretending that the month of January does not exist (which, strictly speaking, I suppose it doesn’t). I can manage just enough domestic work to keep the house clean-ish, and to make sure that everyone gets something to eat three times per day—but it’s touch and go. I’ve forgotten to pick up my long-suffering eldest daughter after school twice now (I mean, she’s got bus tickets, but I am sure it’s very hurtful!) Last week everyone in the house had some sort of stomach bug, and I absentminded cleaned toilets while running sentences over in my head. Anyway, warnings about this character of the intellectual life are coextensive with reflection on this life itself—ever since Thales fell down that well.
In my case I write all day long about Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms’ pillorying of the abstract character of speculative philosophy forgetting, once again, to call about the snow tires.
The inciting incident for this post was this morning’s realization, as I shovelled slush in the wan morning light, that not the first, but the second big snowstorm of the year had arrived in Fredericton, and I had not done anything to prepare for winter. Or for next semester. Or for the wedding we’re supposed to attend between Christmas and New Year’s. And I’m not going to do any of this right now because I’m still too lost in the pleasures of writing and thinking, and I know that when this term ends the spell is going to break. I guess I’m surprised by how difficult it has been for someone who is supposed to think, write, and teach for a living to get back to these pleasures. Maybe I shouldn’t be. But it does seems like, not long ago, we were more frank about the incompatibility of thinking and writing with bourgeois life, and, frankly, family life.2 Two observations:
(1) I have no answers here, except that had you asked me about all of this last year, I would have said: “of course,” while making a mental reservation for myself, someone who, after all, has four kids, tenure, and has remained a reasonably productive writer. But, as is often the case, I would have been wrong.
(2) As Kierkegaard’s Climacus observes, we do not like: distinctions, difficulties, and either/ors. This disinclination probably makes much of human life harder than it needs to be.
So, in conclusion, I’m a mess, but at least I’m going to be a mess with a completed manuscript.
There is a slightly less honest version of this story about myself which would, with
's Flaubert say that I haven’t written a book yet on principle. When a friend asked Flaubert where his book as a man in his thirties, Becca tells us he wrote: “May I die like a dog rather than hurry by a single second a sentence that isn’t ripe!” In my case, this is somewhat true. I was writing a book about Plato and Derrida when I took up my current job but, realizing I didn’t need a book for tenure here, gleefully broke my contract and undertook the long and questionable path of learning Danish so I could write about Kierkegaard instead. I have been taking my time on this book and doing it more or less the way I always dreamed I would write my first academic book. Of course it’s still going to be a sprint to the finish.(Here’s the great Flaubert piece, btw: https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/11/22/gustave-flaubert-letters-review/)
As one of my favourite 30 Rock episodes put it: Murphy Brown lied to us! More appositely, Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night, is about just this problem. (Incidentally, one of my professors gave me this book as a graduation present, and I only read it one phd and three kids later—oops!)