I've spent most of my life hiding my mental illness from public view, more or less. That's no longer possible. I guess I'm more fragile than I wanted to believe. Today I will begin taking Geodon (ziprasidone) for the treatment of schizophrenia and manic depression. The common side effects should not be as debilitating as with earlier antipsychotic medications. I'm a little worried, but on the bright side I should have an easier time getting through some books I recently picked up:
- The Life of the Mind, Vols I (Thinking) and II (Willing), by Hannah Arendt,
- The Primordial Metaphor, by Ernesto Grassi, and
- Monad and Thou: Phenomenological Ontology of Human Being, by Hiroshi Kojima.
Reading Kojima will mean revisiting themes I've been exploring for many years, roughly centered around the problem of describing the intersubjective constitution of the lifeworld. Is this the sort of work one ever truly finishes? Or should want to finish? Who knows. A couple of months from now maybe I'll have something to say about it.
4 Comments:
From an Antipodean:
well, you're still reading much more than i ever will.
We were just visiting Montreal and are now in Brighton UK. We've been living in OZ for 20yrs and felt like a move.
I just perused my sister in law's bks and picked out 'The Leopard' (Guiseppe di Lampedusa).
Hoping to get to Sicily in a wk or 2.
I have often been tempted by chemical treatment for depression and have so far resisted...But I do use alcohol and nicotine.
Maybe one day we should find a way of writing 'off-line' - or maybe it doesn't matter.
Dr p
Hi, Paul. Hope you're enjoying your travels. Sicily sounds good this time of year. We were recently a stone's throw from Garibaldi on the Oregon coast. Small world, huh?
I am no prince. I've had the luxury of avoiding treatment, but my condition has worsened, and circumstances have left me vulnerable. When I'm manic I start in on dozens of books. More and more I cannot finish them. They weigh on me, all the unfinished projects. Because I really do have a schematic way of orchestrating diverse intellectual pursuits, the futility of any single endeavor becomes cosmic, and vice versa. Oh well.
If you email me at fidotheyak@yahoo.com I can give you a mailing address.
I am in process of reading Hannah Arendt's Life of the Mind, currently in the 2nd chapter. It's an excellent read but one needs to have become familiar with Heidegger's terminology and syntax and studied some ancient greek grammar to fully appreciate it.
Http:nekkidass.blogspot.com/
Hi, Nekkid. I'm starting with Grassi now, haven't yet got to Life of the Mind. But Grassi is good humanism and a good fix if you need more thinking about the being of beings and such.
And since you're doing the whole ancient Greek thing, maybe sometime you can enlighten me about phusei. I don't feel like I can read Aristotle's Metaphysics until I get through that those first few sentences, and I'm just not sure what he means by phusei, not really.
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