My flight from Dusseldorf was canceled...

.



My flight from Dusseldorf was canceled. We all got on the plane, they announced that the second engine didn't work, and then we all got off again. By the time I got to Amsterdam I had already missed my connecting flight back to Montreal. I am now stranded at the Van Der Valk Hotel Schiphol A4 for one night. The fact that it has the letters "A4" at the end of the hotels name makes me feel like I'm staying on a sheet of paper. (A not altogether unpleasant sensation.) I am reading When Spring Comes: Awakenings In Clinical Psychoanalysis by M. Masud R. Khan. It is a book I stumbled upon in a book store back in Melbourne and bought because I suddenly remembered I had read another book by him when I was a teenager and was fascinated by the way he would directly interfere in the lives of his psychoanalytic patients. Before that I had no idea any such thing was possible. I remember finding his actions brilliantly surprising, maybe even leading to some of my own more unconventional choices in life, blurring the boundaries between living and work in ways that don't always feel socially acceptable. In his introduction, M. Masud R. Khan says the original title of his book was Transgression: Passions, Pain and Solitude but he changed it because he found "that the dominant theme was rather that of 'awakening' - the acknowledgement and acceptance of those acts of transgression which invariably arise, in all areas of relating, from any attempt to satisfy needs, desires and demands." When I read this earlier on the plane I suspected one of his considerations might have been that When Spring Comes feels considerably more upbeat and marketable than Passions, Pain and Solitude. I am also working on a new book and can't decide whether I should call it Artists Are Self-Absorbed or Polyamorous Love Song. The first title might be more accurate but I think the second one feels more energizing (at least to me.) I want my book to have an energizing title but I don't want to make decisions, or for that matter compromises, based on faulty logic or fears in and around the books eventual reception. I'm genuinely not sure how I will make up my mind.



.