Negative Capacity, Integrating Humanity

Outside the castle of my body stretches the spectrum of humanity, a discordant valley populated with some pretty terrible people committing heinous acts each day. The black poison of their values threatens to discolour every tree in that valley. 

Inside my torso, from the keep of my heart to the rampart of my stomach, lives the integration of colleagues and friends, people who might at worse be more annoying than poisonous. Rather than seek to reject the siege of the world's problems, I have tried to accept parts of these people into my keep, to give them a room that contains a manifestation of who they are.

I am building a manifested integration of people past and present who I might have disliked. Inside various rooms of a marbled palace they sit, agitated and provocative as they might be, seeking attention, demanding recognition. Although visually perfect replicas inside me, the real person exists outside me, independent and sentient. The version inside is really my experience and perception of that person, with my prejudices, biases and limitations. The limited information I have based upon the often sharp and painful interactions forms a version of them that is real to me. 

Let me take for example an old English teacher who was fairly rude and anti-intellectual in my old school. His behaviour upset and angered me in a way I would not do to others. He denigrated my appearance in a public forum and undermined my work by group email. Yet by integrating him into my psyche, two things happen: 

a) I sympathise with whom he must be, a man who seems unhappily married, conducting affairs and insulting colleagues. These are not happy acts. 

b) I see myself somehow committing those same acts, with negative repercussions that damage myself and attack others. They are not beyond my moral limitations.   

These two effects are unpleasant to me. However, they are effects they are forced onto me whether I accept them or not. They also give me some sympathy for the self-serving perspective of people, of the protective heuristics people like this man and his friends employ to survive the world. 

The integration is protective. The man hopefully does not 'poison' other elements of me, but rather exists to make my interaction with people like him in the world easier. I hope he will not seem so alien and threatening to me when I meet him, or his ilk, again in the muddy recesses of the valley. 

Parents, colleagues: so many folks have seemed threatening to me. Let me see if it is possible to integrate them all, and still maintain the essential and nourishing elements I admire. 

In all of this is the need to breathe diaphragmatically, to let energy flow into whoever that manifestation might be. 

Integration: my own energy and narrative

A week of teaching has gone by. 

I managed my energy levels well, breathing well most of the time. 

As I teach more, I see different types of lessons: the teacher led inspiration, the collaborative research, the close-reading intensity, the meta essay-writing experience...

The rhythm of planning and living them seems skilled. 

I am a positive force. 

__________________

Each Sunday I reflect on the week just gone. It is easy I think to let things slide. 

Starting a new year

Breathing should be enough: appreciate the present, of being alive and ready to live with my students next week. 

I emailed two people who normally trigger me. Instead I find myself integrating them into my psyche, finding a place for them in the mansion of my mind, a comfortable room that becomes as large as they desire. I can pay them attention as they need. But they do not need to control my reactions to the outside world. 

The past week I have felt the ire and anxiety of past parts, developmentally childish and instinctual, urging to beat my chest and pursure conversation and more with an undue intensity. This week I talked to those parts, urging the 'Big S' to be the face to the world, speaking with wiley guile. 

People like my father or liquid do not desire the passionate parts of me to communicate. My parts will rise, sure as a scripted rebellion, but they will not be the ones at the controls, signing the decrees. 

Last year I was tired in my nervous system. This year be calmer. 

___________

This morning I woke up feeling tired. The morning swim was tough with the water cold, its harsh embrace never comforting. My stomach and body are tense, grabbing my breath, making relaxation flow a little less strongly. 

Perhaps this is how I have always felt when starting a new year. Speak with calm breath and power. 

__________

I am into my third day of teaching of this new year. Am I tired? I must be. 

My dreams are vivid, with one day of particularly erotic dreams, and another day of dreams concerning huge lads from my youth. The violence I suffered in my childhood is unintegrated. I cannot know why some boys attacked me, and nor will I ever know because I possess only a partial picture. 

That those tormentors see themselves as bad people is unlikely. Instead their actions are self-serving, supplicants to our king ego, deigning only to protect ourselves... 

In my dreams, the whiny and scared voices, defensive and snide, celebrated the victory of attacking a small boy. I need to integrate that voice, with its limitations, into the mansion of my mind. 

Last night I struggled with tedium in the evening. I struggled with breathing. 

 

Let's speak about reality

In my head I have been teaching for twenty years. I phrase it 'almost twenty years'. 

Of exam classes I have 13 years' experience.

I feel I am an expert at KS5 classes, with years of credible experience behind me.

I have, in reality, taught three Year 13 classes ;-) This will be my fourth. 

This is a year of something new. Of balance in teaching, of realising how I might have been in the past. 

This year already I have spoken with a deeper breathes than before. Yesterday in the dentist I breathed purple into my stomach, ushering a healing aura into my chest and stomach, relieving the pain of my cleaning. 

I am slightly less earnest than usual. I do not want to tire myself. I have still attended every session... 

Being with people infuses me with energy, stirring up the unmanifested essence that resides within me. Whether it forms anxiety or excitement is unclear and uncertain.  

A day before 2021/22

I am due to start work again tomorrow, although I never really left. It is a journey through a winding valley, an academic pilgrimage I take each year, passing many varied and curious interests before meeting testing ends.  

Breathing better is my ambition this year, as is sleeping well to recover each day. I am 36 inches on the waist, and about 71-72kg. I am about 6 stone above ideal weight for being healthy. The person I could nurture needs disipline to carve him out of the lazy fat that protects my ego. 

Yesterday I ate well but consumed about 4-5 biscuits near the end of the day. Still, I recorded this on my app.  

I start each day with a phone check and looking at media. Is this how my day is best started? With Volound complaining, that spicy waste of stimulation? 

Each day is a mini year, with a similar rhythm. I start my days reasonably, with 'bacon' (although I have stopped 'bacon'...)

_________________

I have so much, and I enjoy the comfort of no commute and little job pressure. But I do not feel happy or satisfied. I need to be healthier. Without being healthier, my body does not feel happy. The head cannot dial in emotions that are crushed out my body.  

I think losing weight will help me breathe better. It is perhaps the best thing I can do. 

I remember that the earnest child resisted those habits of the pack, of smoking, overeating etc. The cost of separation and loneliness almost cleaned him out emotionally. At some point he engaged in those dirty habits, but he was not seized by them, did not prize or respect them. 

_________________

Like Brian says, changing the inner landscape leads to outer behaviour. But can I integrate the less ideal elements of my past and nature into an authentic whole? The adult element that interacts with the wide world is hardly 'ideal' too, needing to be both wilely and wise to function. I have a family of emotions, many negative and unhelpful, that experience the world as it arrives around me. 

I think the discipline I seek is, fortunately, part of my nature. I can put my head down and push pomodoros as I need. 

Doing things that I do not 'want' to do will make for better days ahead. 

Can I control 'what I want'? I am able to do what I 'want', but what do I want? 

Seek those who might influence you. 

Planning, Planting, Pantsing

Three days remain until the new school year begins. 

My stomach feels constrained by the fat around it, pressing my breath from my lungs. My eyes feel tired from too much screen time, aching from satisfying internet marketing groups. I am overconsuming media and undercreating and underappreciating my hobbies. 

I have many hobbies, but perhaps too many. My plate is overloaded with rich food but what I do eat, I scoff, leaving no time to enjoy. 

I have a finite number of hobbies: 

a) Music

b) Reading

c) Gaming

d) Painting

I have a finite number of demands: 

a) School planning

b) School marking

c) MA completion

I have a small number of nourishing elements: 

a) Brawn

b) Balance

c) Breaking Bread

d) Books

e) Blooming

___________________

This holiday (and indeed a bit before) I relaxed the rules of my pomodoros. A pomodoro should be: 

a) Concentrating on one distinct task. 

b) No breaking for doom scrolling or media. 

c) Consumption of social media should be regulated on relax/rest periods. 

By jumping from task to task I find myself sadly led by the frantic youngster who will redouble his efforts. He lives inside me, manifested by cultural scripts, speaking frantically and arduously, eating the spaces between words. He will be here forever, created by the influences around me that I can not control. I do not want: 

a) to let him control me. 

b) to destroy him. 

Instead of letting this frantic child decide how I will act in the wider world, the 'adult element' of me should step up. A continual discipline regulates my interaction with the wider world, building low fences to separate the different nourished plots of action. Passion still grows in my life, unfettered in its inclination to overgrow into other plots. Drinking and socialising can leak into other days while a lack of brawn and blooming eats into my energy stores. 

What does this adult seem like? He is: 

a) On my side. 

b) Starkly true. 

c) Fallible and aware of it. 

d) Aware that being calm and responding with rhythm helps. 

What should happen to the child of passion inside me? They must live inside, finding expression in ways beyond language. They do not need to lead when I feel unsettled. 

The adult of me, the sociopathic outside element is calculating, compassionate and aware. His actions are wilely. He is the best friend to many, and appreciated by bosses and colleagues alike. 

Sitting with more pomodoros seems to be me to be a route into the new year. I cannot think my way into wellness. 

Spoilers

I want to read more spoilers. 

I want to embrace that one day I will die, and that to appreciate the patterns that emerge when a book is considered as a structure. 

Can I appreciate the patterns of my life. 

Yesterday I spoke to many people, watering the seeds of thought and love that seem to wither in the garden of my head. A garden tames the wild vitality of nature, setting careful fences to contain the thrusting growth of wildflowers, of unspoken . This balance appeals to me. 

_________

It is Monday now. I have struggled with: 

a) Reading the work I once did. 

b) Integrating unideal characteristics of others around me. 

c) Over the past 4-5 days I have found it hard to breath deeply. This in turn leads to other issues. 

_________

It is Tuesday now. Yesterday saw me tend the grove of music, seeking a new plant for amongst the most ancient of my fields. I trekked Manila in search of a new guitar, considering what pickups I wanted. travelling Manila and in the end servicing my Mexican strat. I watched many videos on music and guitars, 

My childhood feelings about music are tied in the social connections they suggest. The quietness of now means that no live music will occur for years yet. In the meantime, it is a hobby that I can play with again without the pressured expectations of youth. 

I am looking forward to starting my job again next week. With that in mind, I want to breathe again. I want to walk and be. 

Sit and be. 

_________

It is Wednesday. The job awaits next week. I am beginning to join again the world of: 

a) Podcasts. 

b) Music. 

c) Books. 

We can choose some of the influences around us. This does not need to be Coal Chamber and Lord of the Flies any more. 

I can also read some of my past writing and integrate it.