for Zeke Pfeifer.

There is a new jazz bar/lounge called the Hip Kitty in the new part of the Village in Claremont. Will and EP and I decided to get dressed up classy and go to the wine bar that Elliot is quite the regular at. So we did, and it was lovely. We had a nice Cabernet Sauvignon. but then we decided to hit up the jazz lounge. Thankfully we were in nice enough attire for the 'hip' joint. They played some nice jazz, Will was slightly unimpressed. I enjoyed listening to the live music, because it's certainly not something I do every day. The highlight: the woman from the table next to us getting up and singing. A couple traditional songs and then an improvised one that included her pointing at me and singing something to the effect of "I see you there, drinking your wine, you lookin damn good, I want to meet your mama and your poppa" it was, pretty much hilarious. And then we went to Pub and sketched it up as alums. I mean, basically a typical Wednesday night. more adventures to come, with better descriptions when I'm not so "just woke up from a late night"

Ought Implies Can

It's beautiful here. Sunny and quite warm. And the hot tub has been working well in the evenings.

I'm also really tired because I'm baptism by fire-ing my way back into running. That's ok though. I also like thinking again. Like, thinking about school, and the stuff that I studied and in general and I just miss thinking. I like thinking, arguably much more so than doing. Which, if you ask me, thinking IS doing. It's quite active. And so is speech. But, that's not something I really feel needs to be discussed right now.

I've had a couple conversations with friends recently about practicality vs. idealism. And, they are really difficult to reconcile. And, I think, my current thought is somewhere along the lines, well let me define terms (for this post and undertaking, obv.)

idealism--slow, takes time, endeavors to be responsible (can we use the word justified? or is that too loaded?), is stereotyped as overlooking possibilities of concrete tangible change.

pragmatism--head buried in 'real' world, endeavors to employ solutions, often works quickly, attempts to alleviate concrete tangible problems, measures success by numbers (traditionally)

so, you can see my bias in my definitions. But, really, I guess the way I've attempted to reconcile the two are to take the bits of pragmatism that I like and subsume them into idealism. The parts of pragmatism I don't like, I argue against and try to simply throw away, or at least minimize their influence.

i guess it boils down to responsibility. which, i sometimes get lost with, because I think you as an agent should be responsible for everything. This gets metaphysically sticky, but I think, if you run enough circles around with it, you can still settle on "be responsible for everything". But sometimes I get lost when I try to find whence the responsibility comes.

So there's two things. And I sort of addressed them in my thesis, but. This is why I like the difference between ethics and ethical theory, because, the two things are:

What should you do? and What is should?

I don't want to go overboard with What is Should? but a thought came to me just now that I want to get down. I was reminded of Morality and Religion, a course I took sophomore year I believe from a senile old professor. I hated the course. But one motto that was hammered into my head was 'ought implies can'. Ought, obviously, being the same as should. Well, I would like to disagree. I think that's bullshit. You can definitely OUGHT to have done something even if you COULDN"T have done it. Logically and coherently, it doesn't make sense. But I don't care. i think we normally displace the responsibility to an irresponsible and non-agency possessing entity, like the world, the way things works, the universe, God, or some other third party, by saying in situations when you SHOULD of done something but COULDN'T, if things were different I COULD have done this, the this being, what you SHOULD have done.

Don't know where I really want to go with that, but I think you can have the burden of responsibility regardless of whether you have power. Yes, that's where I want to go. Responsibility and Power are NOT necessarily strolling hand in hand in the garden of Western Myth. Can we say Spiderman? With great power comes great responsibility, I mean, maybe, but great responsibility is upon those with or without power. We are all responsible. and for everything.

So perhaps at the moment, I haven't found whence this responsibility comes, but I find it everywhere and always. and I find myself called to obey. but that brings up the whole question of obedience. Must I always be obedient? Well, i suppose you could say, that at the same time that I find myself always held responsible, I am never responsible. And this supports my previous point. I CANNOT be responsible, absolutely cannot. and YET, I AM (under the burden to be) responsible. So, I always disobey.

This leaves the question whether I SHOULD strive to obey. because I can still always disobey and never try to obey, I can neuter the call of responsibility by simply not addressing it. But I suppose this is what ethics is. Ethics is striving to obey the call of responsibility.

Ok, let me get back on track. I've been through that circle a million times. but this is why I remain in favor of idealism. Because, striving to obey is ethical, that is what it means to be ethical and so, pragmatism, as I see it, is less- or in- ethical because it sacrifices the responsibility in order to implement solutions. This I think is what bothers me about pragmatism (not in a philosophical sense, but in the activist, stop talking start doing! type sense).

I realize what this means, and I am ok with it. And I realize why I'm ok with it and I'm ok with that. At least I'm pretty sure.

City of Angels.

So. I'm back. And well, it feels good to be back. And for the first while I thought I wasn't really jet lagged. But, I think maybe I am. Well, actually I can't tell because I think I still am which is close to a week, so I think that's ridiculous. I'm not jet lagged, I think, I'm just not quite....exactly.

It's been an intense jump back into socializing on a regular basis. And it's actually a REALLY good thing that most people have jobs and school during the day because I'm so easily overstimulated with people and socialness and whatnot that I kind of just check out. I feel bad for some people whom I've simply shut down on. I've definitely had a few conversations that I just couldn't finish and I sort of just stopped talking and looked off in the distance in a daze. True story. It's been really difficult to focus on a group conversation for a long period of time. Which, really is kinda funny. That your social skills can go out of practice. Isn't it interesting how much we adapt? So, it's been fun for others to adjust to me and well, I'm not sure if I've really tried to adjust back? Maybe?

I haven't quite reached real social interaction though. Like with my friends. It's strange...I think I still view my friends as far away people that I know and love and now that they're here, when they move act and say things, they make me laugh and feel good because it corresponds closely with my memory of them, but they've remained flat 'characters' I haven't been able to see them as dynamic people again, like, you know? They still feel like constructs in my mind.

So it's nice that I can still be alone most of the day. Because I'm much more comfortable by myself with nothing to do than with other people with stuff to do. So that's how I think I'm jetlagged. But also. My brain has just not been working. I can't think clearly, I can't plan accurately, and I can't remember ANYthing, but that's not something that new.

I got back into driving on the right hand side of the road pretty well though. Sometimes I still want to turn into the left lane, but I think I have it under control. What else is new?

Oh. This is embarrassing but makes sense. Somehow. Well, ok, I started watching TV because my good friend Willy Leer was on it. Running. And so I watched the National Indoor Championships, but then, since EP was over I ended up watching TV with the joker for 11 hours. Yeah. 11 hours of TV watching. Annnnnnnnnd...I think I'm done. Because we made sure it was 11 hours of complete shit TV. Ending, of course, with Paradise Hotel 2 on a channel I didn't know existed: Fox Reality. So I made some guacamole and we had corn chips and Domino's Pizza and watched shit TV for way too long. America, Fuck Yeah. Haven't done that.......well ever really. but I think my insatiable desire for shitty food and TV has been sated. Hah.

The weather also, has been cold, overcast, and raining. In LA. Which, well. whatever, I'm cool with it. And actually, winter is beautiful in LA, absolutely beautiful. I missed LA SO much and it has not disappointed. I went for a run and hacked up both my lungs, the reason for which I am going to ascribe to the shitty air and not my severe lack of that elusive state of being called "shape".

I bought my first suit. And it makes me look damn good. But whatevs.

Sigh, I don't know what more to say. I. I'm just really enjoying being young. haha, and the theme for this year really has been shaking my head and laughing. What is one supposed to do? Life is ridiculous. And being human is kinda fun. I think it's pretty clear that I'm pretty happy.

Departing...

Tuesday February 19, 2008

So I’m sitting here in a hostel. A shitty one. And it’s my last day to kill before heading to the airport tomorrow. And Crosby, had rightly called me out on being whiny about somehow, wanting a desk job when I was frolicking around a kick ass country. How did that happen? Well, I went back and looked at my whining. And ah, hah. You’d think I’d have learned by now. It had been overcast and rainy that week. So, all my excitement about coming home and rushing headlong to February 20th and my airplane, has culminated in my extremely cold feet this morning. Perhaps it was, in the words of my esteemed friend Audrey, “a moment of clarity”. Well, it probably was, because this feeling first hit last night when, yes I again went out to dinner by myself. And enjoyed a couple glasses of wine (first a nice Italian Pinot Grigio and for dessert a slightly cough syrupy Gerwurztraminer) and then, strolled around in the dark. I had returned to the hostel with the intention of going to bed. But, I was the only one out of my three roommates to be back and after checking the clock, decided 9:30pm was a tad early to turn it in, especially when I’d have three other people come in and think, what the hell is up with this dude?

So I put on a fleece to guard against the frustratingly cold summer night in Christchurch. And I strolled along the river bank (backslash, man-made canal, vomit.) and tossed lightly the idea of going to another bar for another glass of wine before simply letting it drop. I was tipsy enough after two and decided to just wander. Well I came upon the Cathedral square. A large well maintained cathedral (how old could it be?) in the center of the city and decided to climb up the pedestal of a large statue opposed to the large Church doors by about 100 meters. Standing just to the left of the large red doors was an older man with tall legs in dark slacks and a white shirt rolled up to the elbows. His small black vest hanging loosely open across his front. There, amidst (admittedly surprising) Monday night traffic through the square (the drunken Brits, the strolling Japanese and the chilled Kiwis briskly walking home from a late night at work), this old man was playing church hymnals on presumably a recorder. Not having played a recorder since the third grade with Mrs. Cole and never playing more than silly dittys, my opinion of the recorder was quite poor. But the sound of church hymnals on a cool night in front of a giant cathedral lit up dramatically with that nighttime lighting that brings out the best accents of ancient architecture, had an almost forlorn tone, the tiny recorder trying to fill up so much space. So I sat at the base of the statue and put my chin on my hands and listened to the old man play. After a hymn or two, just as I was getting into it, he dejectedly threw his recorder into his large case against the coins and pulled out a cigarette. Lighting up, he pulled out his mobile phone and began pacing back and forth across the large red doors, the stop and go of a one-sided conversation muffled and rebounded across the square to my ears. It made me wonder, was this man a banker, a shopkeeper, a retiree? Was this his wife calling, frustrated by his hobby of spending weekday nights playing church hymnals in front of the cathedral? A regular roundabout argument calling him home? Was this an old friend beckoning him to the pub? Whoever it was and for whatever reason they were calling, I was chilly and didn’t want linger for nothing. I decided to wait it out though. So I stayed put and let my attention wander elsewhere on the square. There were two men playing guitars on the far side of the square that I could just make out now against the silence of the recorder. Contemporary songs on an arguably contemporary instrument. It didn’t fit the mood for me, here in this square. And then, my focus was called to right in front of me. Where a tipsy Japanese businessman in gray suit had stopped perhaps 20 ft in front of me and pulled out his large camera. I lazily stared at him as he looked at me through his large lens. Annoyed I turned my head to the couple who had walked by the statue and taken perch on a nearby bench with a bottle of wine. She was in a short blue skirt, she must be freezing, I thought. The man had a heavy jacket on and dark pants. The lighting from the cathedral dimly illuminated them and perhaps the romanticism of the night warmed that woman’s legs. The businessman shifted 6 paces to the left of me and refocused his lens. This time at least, pointing the lens up at the large statue whose feet I was occupying. I thought about moving so he could have an unobstructed photo opportunity. But bugger it, I thought, I was here first, and it’s one in a million of this man’s photographs, plus, it’s not even that cool of a statue. Some old European so-and-so with the ruffled garb of dressing like a peacock. By now, the older man had put away his phone and flicked his cigarette at the church door step, not bothering to smother it out. Well, I thought, it’s not love of the Church that brings this man out to whistle hymns at a late hour on a Monday. But I was glad to have the recorder back. And I listened to two or three more hymns before deciding it was late enough to go to bed, and while I was quite enjoying the scene, I knew, if I lingered too long, it would all be ruined. So I got up and meandered diagonally across the square. Feeling in my pockets for any coins I could toss to the man. None. And as I reached the edge of the square, I could faintly hear a recorder rendition of Paul Simon’s Can you feel the love tonight, slow and melancholy. I laughed under my breath and thought. Perfect.

So I woke this morning, hoping to get a nice sunny last day to pass out in the large central botanical gardens (Christchurch’s nickname is the Garden City). The weather forecast was for a fine day, but alas, I’ve woken to overcast skies. God. Damn. It. So I’ve decided to write instead and perhaps fiddle around with some errands until the sky decides to cooperate. So like I said, I had a moment of clarity in which I saw the normalcy of ‘home’. And it freaked me out. (obviously, duh, right? Didn’t you know this was coming?) Why the hell would I want to plan and try to avoid things like this? So I’ve got cold feet and now I don’t want to leave AND I’m fine with that. It’s hard I think, to imagine what home is like. I’ve been away for so long (far longer than the calendar would show). So now, I’m not sure I’m ready. There’s nothing really left here for me, but I’m not sure I’m ready to go home. Sure, I am for some things, but the normalcy, I’m not sure I’m ready for that. What happens if I get bored? What happens if it’s all the same? But wasn’t this what I was craving not more than a week ago? So I know it will all be good. And it’s of course normal to have some apprehension before another large change like this. There, flagged, duly noted, check. I’m apprehensive about returning after really, living in another world for 7 months. Of course, I’ll miss New Zealand. I already miss the people I’ve met here. And I miss Ireland, correction, the people I met in Ireland. But what am I going to do? Stay in New Zealand forever? Milk it for all it’s worth? I mean, I did. So, let’s go home.

I'm continuing this after I get home.


I got more stories.

Shut up Head!

So, I'm really tired and don't feel like blogging, but I'm afraid I'll forget the things I've been thinking about this evening if I wait til morning. Plus, Happy Valentine's Day from the future.

I FINALLY finished What is Literature? by Jean-Paul Sartre. As you may recall, if you've been sticking with this blog from way back when, I started this book, forever ago. Well, it was hard for me to read post college because the French are extremely esoteric or at least the translators are. So their books are often way more difficult to read while fatigued than the Germans, at least that's been my experience and that seems to fit with the cultural stereotypes as well.

To be honest, I only read 3/4 of the book because the last quarter is specifically addressed to the French writer in 1947, which, happens to be nowhere near me, so I decided to skip it, even though, yeah yeah, I probably could've learned something from it. Well shit, I'm in bed and the book is across the room, so perhaps detailed reactions etc will have to wait for another post. But as you also may recall, I really enjoyed the first half of the book where Sartre has this great distinction between poetry and prose and the use of words and language etc. For everybody's sake, I think I'll make a brief outline for this post, to help me stay on track.

1) Sartre's use of words (ok I just got distracted re-reading old posts to see if I've discussed this before) I think I promised to, but never did. My theory on my own use of words and why I always misunderstand/am misunderstood.

2) my growth as a writer eerily paralleling the historical progression of literature Sartre outlines in the third quarter of his book. (this will have to wait until I have the book in my hands as opposed to across the room)

3) thoughts on community size, as it relates to government, literature and cultural saturation, the need to categorize and therefore classify people (the myth of a classless society), how this all ties in with ethics (prompted by thoughts of 1, 2, many).

I think those three will be good enough for now. There were more, but I have Alzheimer's and what I've remembered is enough to make me not feel bad for letting it all go.

Ok, Numero Uno:

Recall from my previous quotations of Sartre about the difference in language use between prose and poetry. Gross summarization, Prose=words used as signs Poetry=words used as objects/sounds

Ok, well I often get in vociferous arguments with friends, family, and strangers that often are entirely due to the fact that we aren't using language the same way. This started most noticeably in high school where I could almost universally get defeated in debate over some technicality or inconsistency in my argument. This was the main thing that has made me skeptical of a life in law. While I've improved my ability to argue, I can tell I still have that weakness and continue to use words in the same way I did in high school.

My theory, is that as an extremely sensitive (not romantic, just sensitive) person, I tend to use words, certainly as Sartre says they are used in prose (or in normal conversation for that matter) as signs. However, while most people's word use acts as sign pointing to the commonly agreed objects, like bike referring to the object with two wheels and a handlebar. I find my own word use tends to refer more to an emotional state I've associated with the word. (No wonder I'm impossible to understand, right?) Now this isn't completely crazy, here me out. I think being sensitive also means you have a fairly well established ability to empathize. So, my word use often refers to not purely MY emotional state but a more general 'agreed' or common emotional state. Should I clarify emotional state?

By emotional state I mean, your feelings, perceptions, associations, psychological relationship to whichever object, the word normally refers. So for example, a normal person would use the word bike to refer to the two-wheeled machine, and would use the word bike when trying to communicate about the two-wheeled machine. With me? Pretty straightforward.

The difference I perceive in my own word use, is that sometimes I will use a word, like bike, to not necessarily communicate any thing to do with a two-wheeled machine, but instead to communicate fondness for a recreation, nostalgic childhood affiliation, or general unattached affection. Do you see how all of those things can be tied into the word 'bike'? So, I catch myself (this is NOT on purpose) using bike in a situation that has nothing to do with bikes, because I'm not talking about wheeled objects, I'm talking about childhood affiliation. (does this mean I speak with an even further removed metaphorical language? weird). Anyway, I catch myself doing this a lot and most of the time, it confuses people. I don't know why I do it, I think it is because I do see words as colored with feelings, emotions, and so many more things than the object.

Actually, I think everyone does this, but perhaps just not to this extreme. Like for example, think of when you get angry with someone and intentionally try to hurt them with your words. You can a) call them names b) bring up shameful or stupid things in the past c) threaten them with some sort of punishment but what are you really doing? Do you actually think that this person is an anus? Does it make ANY sense in an argument to dig up unrelated past events? and are you really never going to talk to them again? Obviously, none of these things are true, and obviously in this situation you are using your words metaphorically. But you can see how those words are not acting to refer to the objects that they 'actually' mean, you're using them to evoke a feeling in the other person. You're calling them an asshole, not necessarily because they are one, but being one makes one feel bad (you hope, to have the intended effect). Is this making any sense?

Ok, well, I sort of communicate in this manner all the time. And, for all the confusion and misunderstanding, I kind of really like using words that way. I'm aware of it and I'm not gonna stop. Words refer to feelings, not things. The only reason, this mode of communication SORT OF works, is because of empathy and the sensitivity to shared feeling associations to certain words. Like, I'm sensitive to the fact that you look fondly on riding a bicycle as a child, and so can select bicycle as the word to communicate nostalgic happiness. Haha, I feel like I'm admitting I'm crazy.

Wow, that tired me out more than I thought. Well we're skipping two anyway.

Numero Tres:

I'm not sure I have the energy for numero tres. So this might just be little notes to remind me what to fill in later.

New Zealand is small and easy to govern. There aren't any "greats" in literature like there were in the past several centuries, I attribute this to everyone becoming a writer (literacy a bad thing? haha, kidding) just like Walter Benjamin talks about in Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction about how the cheap camera made everyone a photographer, or the photograph made everyone an artist, or whatever. I can't remember exactly, but it was this democratization of art, that suddenly saturated the world of art. And Benjamin's conclusions/opinions aside (I don't really know for sure what they are, he's tricksy), I'm opposed to this. Is this because I'm in a pseudo-aristocracy (oh shit, that was supposed to be explained in numero dos, but we skipped it, so try to re-read this post after next post, please). But, the general feeling I have of this day and age of literature, art, and yes, even academia, is this overwhelming feeling of lost, and lostness, and an inescapable milieu. Yes, Sartre, being situated is ok and inescapable, and yes, Sartre, the adolescent writer writes to escape his milieu, but what happens when everything you write ALWAYS shoves your milieu right back in your face and that milieu is such god awful mediocrity!? There's a craving for direction, but nobody can decide on a direction and we still have a sizable constituency arguing against the possibility of a responsible direction. What the hell?

How am I supposed to write? Who am I supposed to write to? To write is to commit to at least the idea that you can make a difference (he says that somewhere early on) but in such a saturated market of writers, how the hell does one go about making a difference? Especially when you have to wade through tons of shit to find a half-decent contemporary book out there. Perhaps, it's all there and I just dislike the current style. hah. But seriously, I think there's just too much, too much everything, choice in jeans, writers trying to do their thing, too many people.

Whoa, I guess this is ethically dangerous, but I have to pursue it. Doesn't a society get too big? Like, can you reach a critical mass of independent minds/voters that can actively and responsibly participate in governing themselves? I suppose that's why we graduated to elected democracy, but are we getting too big for that? I mean it worked in the past when you only had an elite ruling class, bourgeoisie, aristocracy, what have you, governing and any one else in the 'society' was just labor or consumer or whatever. (it worked, not that it worked well, or ethically) but what I mean is that government could operate because those who were included in running it was small, the unethical part was that it governed more than just those responsible for governing. So is most of our political structure overblown? Do we need to downsize? But what of community, it doesn't change the literary saturation that bothered me to begin with. There is no escaping the global community and the like. And I suppose, I can't argue for limited literacy (although, its happening whether any argues for it or not).

I guess what I'm really asking is, where is the intellectual elite? Everyone has become "elite" in their little "specialization" which pretty much negates any elitism, it's just fragmentation then...and as an independent mind (heh, I hope?) I cringe at this realization, but I'm longing for some leadership. Which, I think affirms/confirms my idea that we're just really lost. So I kinda forget how this related to limiting community size, in order to maintain ethics and how it would somehow improve the literary condition...

I just realize that I don't know enough to get us out of this mess and so I'm looking for help and I don't want to despair at the thought that nobody knows how to get us out of this mess. (they don't need to know they know either, they just need to do what they do and have it be it)


this is a pretty long heavy post for having been so tired, so I think I'll just hit it and quit.

Oh but actually just kidding. In honor of Valentine's Day, I will reproduce my favorite Valentine's Day poem that I came across a few years back and still delights me to no end:

It's so nice
to wake up in the morning,
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more.

What Just Happened?

So I stumbled across (unsure of how to appropriately categorize while maintaining anonymity)'s blog and spent hours, literally, catching up and reading all the comments. So, I'm quite fatigued, but since the read was oh so stimulating and my hosts made me watch "The Nativity Story" (in February?!) my mind is at least partially working, so why not blog.

We all know, or at least some of you know, that I simply cannot watch movies (films) like The Nativity Story. I refused to see Passion of Christ and The Da Vinci Code. Mainly because I have an open enough eye to get upset over themes, motifs, ways of representation etc but not enough perception or ?self-grounding? to be able to do much other than spin my wheels. Which, pretty much just ends up leaving me upset and frustrated at myself and the world. I try to limit it to at least one at a time. because otherwise I have a hard time refusing ice cream. and lets be honest, with my biases, if I'm not running regularly, I need to be refusing ice cream.

I'm still waiting on a good book. I have a large to-read list, obviously, but really no access to books. In this small conservative town the library is open for four hours three times a week over the middle of the day. I haven't even bothered to check out their selection. A term I particularly like that I came across while reading this blog was DIY spirituality. yes, I like it. Because, it so quaintly contains most of the people I've come across in New Zealand. And I'd be rude to say it's annoying, but it is fun to see such a direct relation between the cornucopia of DIY projects I've been helping all of these people with, and the DIY attitude they seem to let spill over into every aspect of their lives, including spirituality. I just realized, it's been a long time since I've been around some good ol' fashioned Catholics, not the new we're gonna thump our doctrines as insanely as fundamentalist Protestants. Perhaps it'd be nice. I gave myself credit while I was in Takaka, because in circling the main triangular block of the town several times in the rain upon arriving there, looking for my hostel, I noticed a nice looking Catholic Church. I think I entertained the notion of going to Mass, for exactly that, entertainment. So I didn't go, but I give myself credit for considering.

And I guess while I'm in a Religious Mood and we're talking Catholicism. I'm thinking now, of the one Catholic tradition, that I have a helpless affinity for: Eucharistic Adoration. Perhaps, it's because this ritual is so unbelievably blatantly pagan or what, but its just so strongly religious in ALL the myriad meanings definitions innuendos and EVERYTHING. the all inclusive religious term, Eucharistic Adoration is EXACTLY that. I love it.

For those of you who aren't Catholic (or Protestant but attended Catholic school) or for those of you who are Catholic but still don't know what Eucharistic Adoration is, I'll give a brief, lay Catholic's explanation.

The Eucharist (this is backstory) is consecrated and transubstantiated (actually transformed into) the body and blood of Jesus Christ (it was unleavened bread and cheap wine). Normally, the Eucharist is consumed by parishioners during the celebration of the Liturgy, i.e. Mass. but this special ritual is when the host, the body of Jesus Christ, is placed in this display case (monstrance) (not from monster, but latin-french whatever, of monstrare or montrer respectively, meaning "to show", think demonstrate) which is often gilded in gold, solar in theme and all shiny pretty and sparkly. It is placed on an altar in either the main church or off on a side shoot place, where basically, you just go a look at it for extended periods of time. You adore the Eucharist, duh. It's placed in the center of the solar theme, surrounded in gold and if you've got a creative Church group, probably has fancy lighting. Good Catholics probably pray the Rosary while adoring the Eucharist, but I like to just go sit there and look at the thing. Then I try to go on astral journeys and eagerly rush out of the room after an hour or so and think about what just happened. Did I mention, you adore the Eucharist whilst kneeling? Well, you do.

So I miss that. I haven't adored a shiny piece of gold in a submissive position lately, and I think, people need to do that every so often, at least I do.

(i got caught up over that last sentence on how to order the clauses "a shiny piece of gold" and "in a submissive position lately" because I thought it sounded confusing, as to which noun the prepositional clause referred, I or gold. but then I realized that a shiny piece of gold can't be submissive, so obviously the prepositional phrase is referring to me. Problem solved)


to be perfectly honest, i don't really know why all this Catholic stuff came up, oh, well i guess I did watch the nativity story tonight. And then spent hours reading a Jewish woman's blog. So nevermind, scratch that, I do know why it came up.

I get frustrated often with how much I don't know, and I actually feel a bit deceived (am I surprised?) by I'm not sure whom, the big amorphous S.? (society) oooooo, or wait, popular science? , actually I'm not sure whence this comes, but isn't there an assumption that knowledge is discovered? Its one of those phenomena that I'm cognizant of most of the time, but still submit to emotionally/psychologically, (wait, did I just define addiction?) Sorry this thought got SO lost. Let's start over and be straightforward and simple.

I feel deceived when I feel like I'm learning less and less the more I learn. is that clear? it doesn't seem quite fair. And yet, I know its (t)rue? or SHOULD? be true, that I learn less the more I learn, but something I still catch myself emotionally/psychologically submitting to, is this belief that the more I learn, the more I should know.

It brings me back to my love of my first book on the blog reading list. Voltaire's Bastards. Saul's big ticket point, in my opinion, is the big ticket, i.e. most important, is the co-opting of discourse (god damn it, he even talks about how we succumb to it ourselves as critics and academicians, and i friggin just typed co-opting discourse). His big ticket point, is that in this day and age of ideological Reason, Rationality and Science, that we no longer have the words, or mental space in which to stand opposed to the reigning norm. There isn't any way to say No! or This is Wrong! to the ideology of Reason, Rationality and Science. And we saw a little of that same dynamic with the Bush Administration. The attitude and 'discourse' of the Bush administration was very much the logical extreme of a broader Western dynamic: namely the lack of oppositional language. Instead of With Us or Against Us, Good vs. Evil, we instead have a polarization of Rational vs. Irrational, Reasonable vs Unreasonable and Science vs. Magic/Religion/Belief/Superstition (enlightenment vs medievalism) substitute your own favorite buzz word. And what's ridiculous further, is that we've associated those terms on the left side with Modern, which STILL, is equated with Good. And so, the big ticket point, was that there's no acceptable space for us to say NO! to something that may be Reasonable and Rational, but also downright Ridiculous, (well actually, things like ridiculousity are actually things I support), so let's change Ridiculous to Unethical. that's better.

Sheesh, I need to go back to school...
...or to bed, actually.


I hope you all enjoy reading this post as much as I'm enjoying the thought of you all reading this post.