I keep thinking about Seymour Glass. That story is stuck in my head and it won't get unstuck. Right when I thought that I had finally figured out why he would kill himself for being too happy, it turns out that I had it all wrong...

I read some of the interpretations of the story on the internet. Seymour was clearly unhappy - having been in World War II had a deep impact on him - after the discharge, he spent some time in a hospital for psychiatric evaluation - a condition that is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder. After the war, he was having a hard time readjusting to the life in the U.S., which was becoming more and more materialistic. The bananafish is to symbolize greed - these fish, looking like any ordinary fish, swim into a banana hole, where they consume large number of bananas. "I've seen a bananafish eat as many as seventy-eight bananas..." They get so big that they get stuck in the hole and eventually die of banana fever.

And here's where I'm stumped - although this is more of an indicative of my ignorance about depression and PTSD, than anything else... If you're unhappy, there is always something you can do about it. It's being happy that you can do nothing about...

Even if you're scarred by the horrors of the world, you live through it out of spite - to prove that despite all that, human will for life and goodness prevails... You just don't give up like that, calmly and methodically...

***

If I were to document at least a portion of this trip, here is how it would go:

• I travel like a prissy American girl. 
• Despite carrying with me copious amounts of reading materials and math textbooks, and having made lofty plans to get a lot of work done during my layovers, I managed to do absolutely nothing, killing huge chunks of time by listening to music and completely zoning out. It was oddly comforting...
• Speaking of comforting - there is nothing more comforting than the sight of a ham and cheese sandwich that I had in a nondescript eatery near my hotel in Covilha shortly upon my arrival. After bad airplane food, skipped breakfast and the granola bar that I had on the train from Lisbon to here, this piece of fresh baguette stuffed with slices of ham and Swiss cheese was nothing but a slice of heaven itself...
• Four in the morning, local time: "Your green dot is on! I'm jet lagged and hungry and looking for people with green dots to talk to, since it is too early to go look for food. Indulge me please, otherwise I'll have to talk to my uncle." "Not your uncle! What time is it there?" Conversations with Flenner are a delight! 
• I still cannot shake off Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Banana Fish." For the longest time that story bothered me. It was one of Salinger's stories that I read only once, right after reading "Raise the Roof Beam High, Carpenters." Somehow, during all these years, I had the story wrong - in my mind, those two had merged, and I thought that Seymour  killed himself because he was too happy, whereas, in fact, Seymour was too happy to show up to his own wedding. All this time, that's what I thought went on in the story, and all this time I couldn't figure out why one would kill oneself because one is too happy. But then, a couple of weeks ago, I caught myself thinking "I'm so happy I could die..." and "If I were to die today, I would die happy..." And I immediately thought of Seymour Glass - I thought, "Aha, I finally know why!" And then, on Saturday, I reread the story, and it was not at all how I remembered it, for Seymour was clearly far from being happy...
• This place is a bloody good place to feel existential about things...

Covilha

I'm in Covilha, Portugal, still in a pleasant shock that despite my complete lack of direction and any sense of orientation, I managed to bring myself, all in one piece and without any adventures to this middle of nowhere place. I am finally on my own, for the first time in the longest time, in a very unfamiliar place, far removed from everything that I know. And yet, I have never been at more ease with myself and this new place. This feeling of calm, quiet confidence, the awareness of  how easily I move in space, occupy this new space, fit in without fitting in. Like the cliche - wherever you go, there you are...

***
I decided to ditch the conference and spend my time soaking in this solitude. I never have a chance to be alone anymore, despite the fact that there are very few things that I like more than being on my own. Likewise, there are only a few things that compare to being alone in a quiet, quaint and unfamiliar place.

***
I think I'm going through something, although I am not quite sure what. I have been feeling this mixture of ennui and longing, my usual precursors of existential crises of sorts. Now I have to figure out where it's coming from and what exactly has brought this on...

***
This place, of all the places in the world, is a bloody good place to feel existential about things.

***
Curiously though, unlike my previous crises of this sort, this one hasn't completely consumed me (at least not yet). It is as if there is a part of me that watches it unfold as an objective specter, with all of the amusement and "Are you fucking kidding me? Not this again!" look on her face.

***
I'm not sure what it is about this place that brings about this strongest, almost overwhelming feeling of longing, even though what exactly it is that I am longing for is not at all clear to me.

***

I cannot account for the last five years. Sure, I can enumerate the events that took place during this time, like getting a job, quitting running, getting engaged, getting married, buying a house, going to Rome, publishing a paper, getting a cat, etc.

But besides these events, everything else is a blur. I cannot account for either my mental or emotional states, mostly because I do not think I was aware of these states, or of myself as much... It is easy to lose this awareness when one is busy thinking about unmeasurable sets, or convergence of recursive sequences... They leave little time or desire to think about anything else, existential or otherwise...

"Mathematical truths are 'trivial' - they are true only in a trivial, purely formal sense of 'true' (i.e. namely by definition or by derivation from arbitrarily posited axioms, rules of operation, and primitive definitions)."

Donald Crosby
The Specter of the Absurd