Drunk on God.

8.00 am: A communion. 8.40 am: Onto the steps, road, School, office, and my desk. This is my last day for undergraduate teaching before the Easter holiday. I made preparations, with King Crimson’s Red in the background. I’d bought this album forty-five years ago, when it came out in 1974. Not a year has passed when this record has remained unplayed. The title track is at one and the same time exhilarating, terrifying, and majestic, and sealed my lifelong love affair with the Gibson Les Paul Custom Deluxe guitar (in black, of course).

9.00 am: Adminy stuff: student extensions, registers, postgraduate applications, and emails on myriad subjects. 10.00 am: Personal Tutorial surgery. No takers. Admin instead.

11.30 am: Painting tutorials. My objectives, today, were to ensure that my charge: 1. knew what they must expect of themselves over the holiday period; 2. could manage competing priorities, as we headed towards the finishing line; and 3. were being realistic. I so wanted to play my guitar, right then. Perhaps I should buy a cheap office guitar and practise amp for such desperate occasions. (In the background: Terry Riley’s A Rainbow in Curved Air. It’s sedate ecstasy was congruent with my state of mind and soul.

There were a few absentees due to illness today. And I really needed to touch base with all of them before they go down next week. In the afternoon, I enlisted one of our students with Autism to help another student generate titles for their work. Effective. The former has a poetic intelligence, and can see not only to the essence of things but also associations between things.

Some principles and observations derived from today’s reflections:

• On the one hand, society makes too little of moral integrity. On the other hand, it comes down like a ton of bricks on those who exhibit a lack of it.
• Avoid those who would deliberately corrupt your morals and unseat your good intent.
• What can you do through what you do for the betterment of others?
• The past is irrevocable. It can be remembered and reinterpreted, but it can’t be revised or revisited.
• A painting can bear only so much.
• You don’t need to understand the truth of it … yet.
• Honour your obligations, loyalties, and debt to others above your own interests, pleasures, and determinations. Better to sacrifice your wellbeing than integrity.
• A little bit of panic can be productive.
• Self-denial is one of the greatest hallmarks of discipline and maturity.
• T: ‘Don’t ask me to choose between options for you. Your choices reflect a great deal about your judgement and discernment. I don’t wish to shortcut this revelation.’

5.30 pm: Homeward.

7.30 pm: Studiology. I’m asked: ‘Wouldn’t you sometimes like to take a weekday-night off?’ ‘Often’, I reply. But that would have consequences. And I’m always considering the consequences, right down the line. I’d rather bear the burden now than face the fallout later. It’s the same for every aspect of my life. ‘Deny yourself.’ On with ‘God Breathed’.