Dec 10: David Carlin, it's like you want to skip mourning and go straight to gratitude

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This is part of our yearly Advent Calendar, which publishes an essay a day each year during advent. Find the rest of this year's and previous years' calendars here. 

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it's like you want to skip mourning and go straight to gratitude

David Carlin

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1

she said, and I wanted to say—

—

but she said, as she always does,

that is the end of our time for today.

I noticed she had almost a laugh in her voice on the ‘skip’ line.

I wanted to say—

—

See I’ve forgotten now. It was going to be a kind of joke.

Maybe, like: Yes! And what’s wrong with that?

2

I’m leaving my job in two weeks.

My job I’ve been at for 19 years. The newish boss of my boss’s boss, when he arrived a couple of years ago, had the idea of paper bag lunches (they were for listening; to the staff). I went along to one and told him things used to be much better at the university in the old days, in some basic, simple ways. Like how the finance person was called Lyn, and she had her office just nearby, and you could stand at the door and say, I’ve lost the receipt, Lyn, and she’d roll her eyes and say, are you sure?!, and you’d say, I’ve looked everywhere, and she’d shake her head ruefully, because you’d done it again, and she’d say, well, you’re going to have to sign a Stat Dec, David, and you’d say, sorry, Lyn, but thanks!, and she’d say, oh the things I do. But now that’s all been stamped out, I told my boss’s boss’s boss, by which I mean human interactions—those itty bitty laughaday things—between the academics and the finance people, or the other administrators, because they’ve all been CENTRALISED, the latter, into a humming hive of efficiency on some other galaxy, far, far away, that you can only reach by RAISING A TICKET, and thereby initiating a tortuous exchange of emails filled with misconstruals, or by chatting with Lot the Bot. Because some genius consultant—

and he said—the boss of my boss’s boss—how long have you been working here?

and I said, about 16 years (because that was what it was then)

and he nodded his head slowly like that was a very big number and said, that’s a long time!

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and I thought: is it?

a long time, is it?

I’m leaving to become a freelance person again.

I’m leaving to become an independent writer and artist again.

I’m not retiring, except for tax and pension purposes, in which regard I’m definitely retiring. I’ve saved up enough to live on; between L and I, we’ve saved up enough, and inherited some (lucky us), and saved that too,

But apart from that, I’m transitioning to a new phase.

How lucky am I to be in this position? Of having this choice. (Very lucky.) 

4

I’m seeing it as a second chance. I’ve been reading a book from the local library, on second chances, and also on Shakespeare and Freud, by Adam Philips and Steven Greenblatt. I’m reading it because I heard a podcast of Torrey Peters giving a lecture about another book by Steven Greenblatt. His idea of strategic opacity had led her to thinking about how characters in novels (or anywhere) are more interesting if there’s something fundamentally unexplained about them. Because that’s what people in real life are like. You can’t understand why they do what they do, even though you try and try. Anyhow, I loved what Torrey was saying, because I’ve been working on a novel, which I’ve never tried to do before, because I thought for some reason I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t write fiction, I could only write nonfiction, I couldn’t make things up. Because how would you decide what to make up?, is how I used to think of it. Which is crazy, I know. But that’s why I needed this second chance. And the chance of thinking about it as a second chance only came about by chance. Because, inspired by Torrey, I looked up Steven Greenblatt in the library app (which I love almost more than life itself, now I’ve resolved to stop buying so many books), and they had the (Torrey)/Opacity/Greenblatt book, but they ALSO had the Philips/Second Chance/Greenblatt book. And I thought I’d read the second first.

Psychoanalysis, says Philips, offers the prospect of a second chance. There’s a way to redescribe the past to understand it differently, and thereby not be stuck in the same script, over and over (what Freud called repetition compulsion). But it is scary. Often, we prefer the scripts we are familiar with, because at least they are scripts, there is something prescribed for us, rather than the radical openness of the unwritten future, in which we would have to improvise.

I can see my life as a long struggle between the part of me that believes in second chances and the part of me that doesn’t. If you don’t believe in second chances, you are fatalistic, and stuck in cycles of despair or violence, which—despair and violence—are different versions of the same thing. In the very last pages of the Philips/Greenblatt book, Philips writes:  ‘In Shakespeare’s plays—as in most dramas, and all psychoanalytic treatments—the story begins with something going wrong; and in the Shakespearian tragedies…repair is pre-empted and displaced by revenge, revenge…seeming to be the alternative to, the refusal of, reparation. The escalation of violence preferred to the understanding of what might have prompted it, revenge always forecloses the possibility of new experience, of discovery. Should we choose revenge, then, which is always more of the same, or a second chance which is not?’  

5

It’s not like I’m leaving totally. I’m still going to be involved. I’m still going to have PhD supervisions. I’m still going to be involved in projects. Don’t think of it like I’m leaving, I tell my colleagues, I tell myself. I’m, like, just taking on a new position.

My friend, a novelist, said, why don’t you write fiction, David? But she also said, how are you going to feel about leaving, David? You’ve always loved structure.

As if she knew something I didn’t.

The David character in the novel has always loved structure. But now he wants to take a second chance. 

6

Thank goodness for local libraries. Let’s not bomb them or take away their funding.

7

At my going-away morning-tea—

—I’m thinking that sounds like mourning tea, she said—

I’m going to tell a story about how when I first arrived at the university

all those years ago

I was given an office at the end of a corridor on the top floor of a building

which was in fact temporary structures placed on the roof.

ATCO huts, we called them.

They are still there, like many temporary structures.

And I guess all structures are temporary in the long run.

But my office was special because it was off a side-corridor, and at the far end of my office was another door, which led out onto the roof.

The door was to provide access for maintenance people, and it had a small sign on it saying 

don’t otherwise use it,

but it wasn’t locked

and it was in the days before swipes, and before surveillance cameras,

and you could open it and look outside

where you could see that there were walkways leading across the roofs of this row of buildings on the city campus,

walkways which didn’t look exceptionally unsafe,

and you could go out there for walks

on the roof

sometimes

and discover all sorts of things.

Which, I’m going to say at the morning tea, I loved about this place:

that they gave you an office with an extra door

that led out onto the roof

and nobody stopped you going out there

even when you shouldn’t.

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mind you, I’ve lost my voice, so I might not be saying anything at the

mourning tea

I’ve lost my voice and haven’t been able to sleep.

She asked me: what do you think mourning is?

And I thought, well if I knew that—

but then I tried to think of an answer.

Since I like to say yes, rather than no, whenever possible.

I said, I think it’s about being sad, and loss, and separation; it’s about separating

from something that you’ve lost.

and then there was a bit in the conversation

that I can’t remember—

until she said: maybe that’s all part of it?

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David Carlin’s new braided memoir with Peta Murray, How to Dress for Old Age, is out in early 2026. His previous books include The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet (2019), co-written with Nicole Walker. Co-President of NonfictioNOW, he is based in Melbourne, Australia where he is a Professor at RMIT University. And makes ceramics.