And we keep talking. I tell them about the stress of searching for a job, the deflation of rejection. The Foundation Doktor details the chemical levels in the brain. She is talking in three-character acronyms. 5-HT (AKA Serotonin). She sees her grandfather fidget with the now almost completely healed scab on his head. Though only three months into her job as a doctor, she is already bored with unnecessary medical chat. She perhaps imagines him heading off into a ramble about 5FU or his health more generally and heads this off.
After her account of the effect of antidepressants and talking therapies on the same pathways in the brain I mention the self-help dimension of my GANTOB Book, the sometimes difficult circumstances of my korrespondents, the personal details of my life I shared in return. TFD tells us about transference and countertransference. She launches into an explanation, and I find myself lost in the detail.
I started off part 2 of this trilogy with a piece on “death of the author”. I have been planning to return to the topic, but I cannot remember the details. That is one of the perils of Kreative Tyranny, and the obligation to post 400 words each day, regardless of everything else that is going on. I like hearing about the lives of my regular korrespondents. I enjoy hearing their ideas about the development of the book, or responses to the pamphlets, blogs or messages. I recount this to my coffee time companions and TFD reaches for her phone again, types in a few words, and holds up a meme with the following words printed in cursive script:
“’The more they don’t want me,’ said Nurse Matilda, ‘the more they must need me. When my children don’t want me, but do need me: then I must stay. When they no longer need me, but they do want me: then I have to go.’”
(From Nurse Matilda by Christianna Brand, 1964)
This is a story that I remember reading to my own children, from around the time of the film adaptation (AKA Nanny McPhee). I read them all three books.
I like the idea that I channel Nurse Matilda. But then I recall the unnecessarily long dream sequence at the end of the series, and ever-changing names of seemingly infinite children, and I am brought back to The JAMs’ 2023: A trilogy with a groan.
The Foundation Doktor asks how I’d define need.
GANTOB
9 November 2023
Don’t forget to enter The Foundation Doktor’s competition to win a unique piece of art by GANTOB (inadvertently using TFD’s bootlegged text of an imagined Curt Finks story).
And send in your completed blog ideas for a chance to win the book of this blog.
GANTOB blog 