the way one looks at distant things

I don't know what I'm doing with myself these days. I am interviewing a lot. I am setting up interviews a lot. I am running around and knocking on doors. I am sitting outside of offices. If I am lucky, I am running into people I know while I am waiting. I am waiting to hear about last week's auditions. I am accidentally double-booking myself. I am trying to sort out my academic affiliation, my residence permit renewal, and the continuing ethical approval of my research, both here and in the US, all at the same time. I am always a networking fool. I am trying not to panic when other people tell me either that they want to read my work, or that they want to write something with me. I am working on a paper, off and on, when I am not wholly absorbed in quelling the anxiety I feel about writing this paper. I am juggling many balls at once. I am trying not to let other people get to me. I am trying to think semiotically. I am trying not to care what Žižek says about anything.

So here, for you and for me, another example of the beautiful things that can be done with language. These days, I have to believe in language, especially measured language. It may be the only way for me to make sense out of the sturm und drang of which my life seems to consist.

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills -
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn't always understand.

--Czesław Miłosz