Before Sunrise

While I was on holiday, the rest of the playwrights in the group finished Thus Spake Zarathustra and their various written responses, and next Tuesday we meet to mull over Nietzsche's life and argue over whether he ever really got laid (which will obviously be a pivotal moment in our theatrical intepretation).

I, however, am only up to part 3 of The Z-Man which means the bit where Zara praises winter, goes in hard with various townspeople and their silly other prophet related beliefs, and puts the boot into such things as involuntary bliss and mediocrity.

To these irritations I can't help wishing that Nietzsche had included things like Having One's Toddler Chuck A Tantrum That Lasts For Well Over One Hour and Husband's Uncanny Ability To Keep Reading Newspaper During Said Tantrum.

This last 'irritation' of C's was almost enough to see me collect up every philosophical text in the house and batter him about the head and shoulders in a blind rage, but (despite having lived here for over two years) we still don't have a reliable book cataloguing system in place and it would take me too long to amass such texts into anything solid enough to be capable of violence.

The exception to the book cataloguing disaster is (of course) my precious collection of Books Of My Childhood and frankly the energy I'd be forced to expend to draw blood with my paperback copies of (say) The Borrowers series just wouldn't be worth it.

In the land of the man with the ridiculous moustache I can report that the mountain motif is getting a steady workout, I've just read a gory bit about a shepherd with a snake caught in his mouth, there's some mad dwarf action, and I just know it's all going to end badly, what with it being so based on the writer's experiences and him dying insane and from syphilis. (Or was it a brain tumour? See, the getting laid question is important after all.)

Alain de Botton talks about Fred and his writings in The Consolations Of Philosophy which I started reading to help understand more about Nietzsche and have continued to read to learn more about myself. It may well be Philosophy Lite but it's all I can handle right now and frankly any insight, even if it's simply that drinking hemlock is a health hazard, is a bonus.

Alain de Botton's version of Nietzsche tells me (I still don't have a fucking clue what Zarathustra is saying) that all these difficulties are necessary, that we must keep climbing the mountain to achieve worthwhile happiness (as opposed to that lightweight involuntary bliss) and that we should allow that lofty inspirational joyous things can and mostly do develop from base moments and urges and actions.

So I try not to get depressed about having to go back to the beginning with my tv script draft, I try to see that it's ok to have failed to get it right so far, that in failing and starting again I am learning to get it right.

And I try not to give up on actually reading Zarathustra, being so far behind the others, and wishing I could fling it out the window and do some comfort reading instead.

And I try very hard not to get down about Tricky being so upset and out of sorts since our holiday return, his screaming and hitting and his furious face clawing (have I mentioned the furious face clawing? No? That would be because it upsets me then.) and just keep on doing the best I can with him, speaking calmly and putting him down when he claws or hits me and loving him with all my heart.

And that keeping on loving thing goes the same for his father too, even when we seem to be emotional strangers who happen to be sharing a bathroom sometimes, because we are after all, both climbing this particular mountain, this parenting mountain and I know how hard it is for me and therefore how hard it is for him too.

We both feel tired and old and angry at times, we both have disappointments and challenges in our work that knock us down, we both feel helpless and stupid and useless when Tricky cries for an hour and can't seem to be calmed.

We may not always understand each other, all the time, we may feel tired, old, angry and completely fucked in general but we're still climbing, together, and hey there's something in that.

And so often it's more.

And it's not all climbing, I keep reminding myself.

Sometimes it's stopping and breathing deep and admiring the view.