Covid Diaries: stagnation and memorial

It's time for a covid update. (For my "covid diaries," see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here, here;  here; and here.) I am now in my tenth month of my illness and partial sick-leave. Under Dutch law my salary is cut now. It's a pay-cut of 30%. (That's starts after nine full months and runs until the end of the second year of medical leave.) Because I formally work part-time, the cut will be about half of that. In the middle of November, my occupational physician will give guidelines to my department and me what to expect from me second semester. I continue to be pleased with reaping the fruits of past generations' activism. 

First, the good news: I am physically quite mobile. I try to walk about 8-10 kilometers a day. And there are no signs of untriggered fatigue. 

Second, in light of the occupational physician's guidance my department reduced my teaching load and made sure that the seminar style course I would teach -- a course on Utopia/Dystopia I have taught several times before -- would have capped enrollment of 16 students. The other section of the class is taught by another instructor, who is formally also my back-up in case I can't do my duties. The students are aware of my condition, and have been very understanding and empathetic. 

The course meets once a week week for three hour sessions (with two breaks). After five sessions, I have not needed to ask for back-up. I have very fine students, who clearly enjoy being back in live circumstances. They always show up early, come to class well prepared, and diligently followed masking guidelines. (After group consultation, we have dropped these now.)

Because of my cognitive limitations -- more about that below --, I come to class better prepared, and have adjusted my teaching style. I prep more, improvise less, and teach with much lower energy level (less joking) and with more in-class assignments. Rather than relying on charisma and instinct, I now teach from a more vulnerable place. 

The previous paragraph is a bit mysterious, so let me come to the point: unfortunately, my recovery is stagnating. The lectures themselves are -- despite breaks, good organization (with group assignments, etc.)--, completed by the skin of my teeth. Usually I collapse somewhere during the second hour of class, when I have to withdraw for a while. (I then put them to work.) More important, after class I usually need 36-48 hours (!) to recover: I have headaches, sleep badly, and not infrequent nausea. This did not happen once (after the third lecture). Because I prepare class on Mondays and Tuesdays (and grade/comment on the students' weekly writing assignments), I don't really get around to do much else. I read a lot (de facto mainly feminist theory because I am still scheduled to teach in Spring). Because my family is in London, I live alone in Amsterdam and mostly chill. (I will spend two weeks in October with them.) I limit my modest social life to week-ends and Mondays. 

In a broader sense, I can't really handle more than 45-90 minutes of social interaction, and certainly not in a context of multiple stimuli at once (so zoom and cafes are worse, etc.) I didn't realize I was this limited in my social ability during the summer because I actually had a very quiet life in London with lockdowns.

De facto all this means that I can hardly do research during teaching periods, and that I am very reluctant to go to meetings and committees. I had to withdraw from all my supervision and admin duties, including work on a big grant that I am PI on (and in which I will now effectively be a bystander). Because I am 2nd/3rd author on some projects, and my pipeline was pretty full, proofs drop by regularly. So whatever 'research' I do is completing work I have done. But the projects I started over the summer have now come to a standstill despite my low teaching load. I don't expect to do new research until class ends. 

In November I will receive quite a bit more specialist medical attention in London and Amsterdam, and the occupational physician and I have been looking for therapeutic interventions that can make me more resilient cognitively. Unfortunately, the one promising practice we found only has a spot open in January. 

On Tuesday I met my occupational physician and my chair (a few hours apart). Both are wise and supportive. Even so, by the end of the day, I was aware that I should not expect much from myself the remainder of this academic year. And because of the sense of stagnation, I am less optimistic I will recover fully in the fullness of time.

While I was talking to my Chair (and sealing decisions about my department and grant duties etc.), I suddenly realized that I was disassociating from the ambitions that had characterized my professional identity. I spent the last ten years writing (near) daily these digressions (and scholarship), which also were a means of self-therapy and grounding. And while I always had periods of relative quiet, I lived from one (missed) deadline to the next. I know and understand that person quite intimately, but it's clear I don't quite identify with him. During the past weeks there were a number of occasions where he would have written an editorial or started a new paper. I even didn't write a few polemical digressions because I knew I could not be around for the possible push back.

Because of the rain, I stayed in the office a bit longer than I intended after the meeting with the Chair. So, when I left the building the area was quiet, and I could enjoy the Autumn colors (see above). And following the Sunset, I took a slightly different route home. (Rather than cycling, I use my walks to and from the office as part of my daily exercise.) And after five minutes I suddenly found myself face to face with the new Holocaust memorial designed by Liebeskind. It was so quiet that I decided to walk down a few steps and enter it.

It mostly consists of walls with unadorned bricks with the names, birth-dates, and ages when murdered of all 102,000 Dutch Jews, Roma, and Sinti. There are some mirrors, but the overall atmosphere is quite (fittingly) austere. Because my paternal grandpa, grandma, and dad arrived in 1939 and survived the war at Westerbork, and because my maternal grandpa arrived in 1938 and, after a period of imprisonment (the Dutch were no kinder then to refugees than now) soon left for the States; I knew there would be no family names on these walls. And when I thought about it, as I went into the quiet maze, I assumed that I would experience the kind of awe I had at the granite, Vietnam memorial in DC. Besides, I thought, I was too self-absorbed with my own troubles to feel much.

But as I walked and saw the family names of whole clans wiped out, I frequently recognized the distinctive surnames of my classmates of my Jewish day school, the last names of my dad's and mom's bridge-partners, the familiar family names of the officers of the synagogues, Zionist movements, the Jewish weekly, and what my academic self would call the civil society of Dutch Jewry. I was struck by the fact that most of my childhood was immersed in a world where almost every one I knew had uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, and grandparents on these walls. (I was reminded of this, of course, by their updates on social media these past few weeks since the opening of the memorial.) 

I knew I was crying, when I bumped into another visitor. I felt a bit guilty because I was not mourning anyone in particular on that wall. More likely, I was mourning my past academic persona or, perhaps, my childhood.  

It took the Netherlands 75 years to build a proper memorial to its own citizens. Enough time, I thought bitterly, for all the collaborators and sly opportunists who profited from the killing and looting to die. I write these words not on Tuesday but now (Friday) just after I read a summary written by the Dutch judiciary about its own judges who between 2010-2019 in 16,753 cases (impacting almost 35,000 parents) mistakenly and cravingly sided with the government against mostly poor and frequently darker-skinned fellow citizens who were generally unfairly treated as fraudsters by tax authorities and backed up by the judiciary and the council of state. Only one court showed any independent judgment.

The judiciary report's main recommendation is to encourage judges to show more empathy for citizens.* That judges will continue to act primarily as functionaries of state authority rather than as impartial (ahh) judges is not likely to change without systemic change. I regret I lack the energy to write that editorial.

The next day (Wednesday), we explored Book 1 of Utopia with its great debates over the proper functioning of the rule of law and the kinds of aspirations and opportunities experts might have in truth-telling to rulers and people alike. During the discussions I thought about, but didn't mention the walls with their rows of names just a few hundred yards away. I wondered if my silence was a kind of cowardice. But my restraint was rewarded because when we talked about the three (non-Utopia) fictitious countries  -- the Polylerits, the Achorians, and  the Macarians -- that Raphael Hythloday describes, one of my student groups noticed (in their discussion) that they represent a stylized discussion of the proper functioning of the three elements of the trias politicas: the rational ordering of the law of the Polyterits, the independent judgment of the people of the Achorians against the tendency toward conquest of the sovereign, and the self-limitation of the functions of the sovereign by the Macarians. And despite the temptation toward self-pity, I felt lucky and grateful that I keep learning from my students. 

 

*In fairness, there are other recommendations some of which might tilt the balance a bit more in favor of citizens.

Comments

[AJatDuke]

This is a very thoughtful and moving set of reflections, Eric, thank you for sharing it with us. We wish you good health in all future endeavors.

[Stephen Mumford]

Thanks for sharing your experience.

[Gail Sunray]

Thank you Eric for your observations and sharing. I am so impressed with your resilience. May you continue to heal in body and spirit.