On Being in Love
We will begin right here. I am concerned about a few things lately. Here are some of them: due to my utter inability to discuss the 'personal' most detail has been pushed to the side in favour of tactics of evasion. Certain points intrude with personality, but they make me worried: my armour has chinks that I don't often like to put forward. This might be better suited to a daylog, but I can't pinpoint the date...it's on-going. Besides which: I don't like the nature of the daylog; I prefer to occupy my own territories (I'm ruthless that way). Let's make a really big deal out of things. I do.
It's about how you land.
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THESE ARE MY CONCERNS
- All three programs
((mercury -- gemini -- apollo))
"If it's not gonna work right, we won't fly until it does work right." -Wally
Okay gentlemen. Let's begin. Check every thing in this thing a hundred times. Make sure that it is properly tested.
We're keeping him alive and safe.
(Hesitantly)...but I understand it.
Listen: To bring us (the power of a dream), seek it (seek what?).
(The power of the dream)
The dream of....
relax.
Realize the power of a dream
First Concern:
It begins simply: my growing indifference is (ironically enough) becoming something I'm worried about. Yes, that's right: I'm no longer indifferent about my indifference.
This is, of course, tied up quite inextricably with my utter inability to maintain sincerity (even "
privately") for more than a few minutes. This isn't just a fact of my writing and my
so-called 'academic' life: it seems to extend into all aspects of my thinking and living and talking and dying. I'm becoming so stony and rigid, even while I "maintain" (in every
etymological sense of that particular word) a variety of
colourful appearances.
The thing that bothers me is that I don't really know what I'm concerned about here. I mean, I
really don't think that there is much to anyone other than what they present to themselves or to others:: (we are what we present) :: but... at the same time, I have these almost ominous worries that I'm really missing out here: that I'm just kidding myself. I want to
yell something like: "this can't be it", but even while I
yellsomething like that, I'm always
undermining the 'reality' of it.
For instance
, I'll read something so moving by
Edmond Jabès (the subject of much thinking and conversation lately
, thanks to
frankdeluxe's new interest in him
) like
:
Silence envelops the city, with its buildings leaning on one another: gigantic boxes, from some of which light gleams through a haphazard opening, maybe from a blow.
He thinks of the various processions he has taken part in, parades, forced marches.
We fall into line and follow
We do not see the face of those in front, but we know it was once ours.
It is behind this face that we age, that we let time escape, that we take leave.
"I, for my part, belong to a generation without face," said Yukel.
They were the line and the failure.
So I'll read this, and (even beyond its simple and austere kind of beauty) that I feel faceless: that my generation (perhaps) is a generation without a face. But, then, or not then but even at the same time, I'll think that such seriousness is ridiculous. I haven't experienced anything like what Jabès talks about: my life is meaningless, probably, but not in the deep, almost full empty sense that Jabes gives to 'writing' or the 'desert'...
I can't in all seriousness have any serious feelings: I'm just a stupid kid who has read a little and thinks he's people.
I think that.
(This is the grain of my concern: that I'm sickened by my inability to think seriously, or live seriously, or live in any way other than enfolded in smug self-deprication...).
Smugness is the perfect word to refer to my mode of living.
Recently: two "events" occurred in my life which should have had some real impact on me. Instead, I assess them, react to them, assess my reaction, and then proceed to laugh at all previous steps (assess-react-assess), assess laugher, etc. etc. Ad nauseum.
I'm in a constant state of amusement.
We've discovered that nothing is "cool"
"Man"
((My life in quotation marks: six easy steps to committing suicide... ironically))
On Irony, and it's "Real" Effects
I'm really one or two
steps away from that.
Actually that would be too 'authentic' for me.
Concern #2
Abstract: This one is economic. I am, currently, unemployed. I've been so voluntarily for about 8 months or so: I quit my last job in order to "focus" more directly on school, and it paid off. Seemingly at least: my GPA increased, whether this was due to lack of distraction (re: crappy jobs) or increasing knowledge regarding the university game, is a completely different matter. I'm not making any strong claims. But now, mid way between my graduation and the next step to grad school, I find myself in an economic and temporal vacuum: I have no money and too much time. I don't dislike having too much time on my hands by any means, I'm not one to say things like "Idle hands are the devil's workshop" (and even if I did, I wouldn't necessarily disagree with their intended conclusions). Quite the contrary. But, my parents (with whom I currently reside) are very nice people. They uncomplainingly support my slacker lifestyle, and, now that I'm not really "studying" (if I ever did in a direct manner) my indolence is out in the open, flapping in the wind. They aren't really begrudging about this: I just feel like an asshole (and rightly so). So, given those facts, I've started to look for a job.
I like this
(That means: "I don't like this")
It isn't that I have an aversion to work (I do though) it's really the process involved with getting a job. Here at least, you have to type up a nice little resume and go around to the sorts of places that you want to work at and hand it in, all polite and nice and awesome andreally coolfun.
This wouldn't, in itself, be so terrible (I'm not an impolite person, and it can be nice to meet new people sometimes, though I often suffer a crippling disgust of precisely that). Its the paper.
The 'summary' of myself
(The resume) And, yes, I'm leaving off the accent. I don't know why, but I am. Don't complain to me.
What I don't like about the resume, oddly enough, is how obviously fake they must be. Everyone involved knows that the resume is, almost in its entirety, a fabrication: it's like a written hair-do; you try and do what makes you look the awesomest. But, in so doing, everyone inevitably makes themselves (and by everyone I mean me) look ridiculous and sycophantic. The contest is between the most sycophantic: the best resumers. ((This is just in the sort of jobs I'm applying in: it's differnt for other 'tougher' jobs that require actual skills and what not, it's also different, I've been informed, in Japan...)).
Writing things like "Excellent Organizational Skills" makes me sad.
Handing out a paper
with that written
on it to 20 different people
((whom I've never met....))
Summary of First Two Concerns:
(((I worry about authenticity, even though I relish the inauthenticity of ....)))
Are you concerned yet?
I'm doubtful.
CONCERN THE THIRD
This one is less 'personal' and more 'less personal' than the above more 'personal' concerns.
I'm worried about some of the editorial policies of E2. Well, perhaps I'm not worried so much as...well yes, I'm worried, but not really worried.
I just get worried about the minute little political structurings involved in editorial messaging sometimes: rather than suggestions, editorial interventions often take the form of demands or insults...
Dead signs in my eye
Get out of there.
(Blackened teeth)
waiting for help
will you stay?
we're burning
the exhaust
of living
check my poetrys yao
Actually forget it: my concerns are really petty: I would be the worst editor: and quite unfair...people are people, I shouldn't expect some rational editorial remove. Besides: these worries haven't really affected me personally, I've just witnessed some very good writers and people becoming dejected after the most minute editorial interventions begin to escalate into overblown, circus-sized drama festivals. Friction happens though.
Forget it.
E2 has some really excellent editors and gods, it is true.
You know who you are.
please try not to hurt yourself
(pants)
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--- NUMBER 4 ---
This one is theoretical.
But, due to my recent constitution, also somewhat personal (but not
too personal).
I'm worried about two things, though they're related: first is the consistent trend on E2 of softlinking the "Postmodernism: The Troll That Ate Academia" node to anything related to, say, continental philosophy. ((Nodes regarding Habermas, Nietzsche, Adorno and a wide variety of others get this softlink, despite their quite obviously non-postmodern content)). Its not the softlink insult that bothers me (I'm a big proponent of them: and I find them to be one of the most interesting and hilarious aspects of E2...). It is the theoretical 'stance' (if I can use such a grandiose term) behind it. The stance is one of dismissal.
Similarly, and this is not related directly to E2, is the trend in so-called 'post modern' philosophy (or even non-analytic philosophy) to utterly dismiss analytic, anglo-american philosophy.
You might guess that I'm worried about theoretical dismissal.
And...
You'd be 'correct' with such a guess.
I've often been guilty of this. And, interestingly enough, I've been guilty of both kinds: I've dismissed the 'flaky' postmodernist out of hand, only to realize (upon actually reading them) that they have something interesting, exciting, and troubling to say: if I can get through the jargon. I've also dismissed the 'boring, dry' analytic philosopher, only to realize that they, too, have a lot to offer: if I can get through the jargon.
I'M SICK OF PHILOSOPHY AS POLICE STATE
I find it troubling because both 'schools' (they aren't really schools at all, of course) are self-avowedly involved in investigating dogmatic stances: neither of them are interested in maintaining ignorance; yet both quite often do so in practice. Like my un-worry about E2 editorial practices, it appears as if there is a gap between actual practice (here: colloquia, personal attitudes, reading protocols, etc.) and theoretical stance (papers, articles, books, etc.). Now, I'm not one for perfectly matching up all aspects of one's life: but if we're serious about thinking through philosophical problems, we should (I think) attempt to approach them from as many angles as possible. Rather than becoming narrow specialists, we should (as Michel Serres both proposes and demonstrates) involve ourselves in the widest aspects of thinking, without glossing over the details and intricacies of those wider avenues.......
NO MUSIC PLAYS IN HOSPITALS
Just from personal experience, I've always found it helpful when I'm thinking about some minute problem about the philosophy of language (say Quine on radical translation or something like that) to move away, even briefly, from that minutiae, either to something grander (Heidegger or Plato on Being...) or something equally minute but of a radically different character: why Lyotard takes up Edmund Burke rather than Kant on the sublime...
(((((I know how pretentious that last paragraph sounds: it's unavoidable. The examples are extraordinarily pretentious sounding, but they probably let you know what I'm talking about a bit better, a neccessary evil. I'm coming to realize that pretention isn't just an automatic objection: sometimes pretention serves a purpose, perhaps its an intrinsic good, who knows?)))))
Not me.
I don't know if this is "nomad thought" (in the way that Deleuze thinks of it) but I like to think so. Rather than settling into one particularly static mode of thinking (analytic versus postmodern, modern vs. postmodern, anceint vs. contemporary, etc.) I like moving between all of them, constantly and quickly.
I'm not very good at it.
But, with practice, I'd like to think I could be.
I don't think we have to write Whig histories of philosophy in order to fit into particular 'camps' (though I'm often guilty of just that): we can write like Derrida and think like Davidson, if we want, or vice versa...we just have to find a way. Or we can just write how we write...
I mean.... let's not get hysterical here.
REALLY.
It's about a society falling...
And on the way down it keeps telling itself:
"So far so good..."
"So far so good..."
The way we live is the way we die