And I am sitting in my apartment, watching Ghostbusters and eating Maggie Moo's ice cream right out of the container. Life is good.
In case you were wondering, these last few weeks have been chock-full of revelations and relaxations. Below is a list of some of those moments.
1) I think Not-blogging/Blogging may really affect my writing. I have been reading lots (preparing for the book chapter and the conference paper), but I have not written a thing in weeks. If writing is dinner, then blogging is like a good, cold martini--gets the mouth and mind ready for the meal.
2) Vermont is everything it's cracked up to be.
3) Ordering a coffee and a sidecar really does make one feel like Auntie Mame.
4) I am looking forward to school starting in the fall--I will bring you a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils.
5) The hotdogs at Shea Stadium are better than the hotdogs at Yankee.
6) I seem to have misplaced my DVD of Eddie Izzard's "Dressed to Kill"--which is fucking tragic.
7) When somebody brings me flowers, my day always gets better.
8) Howard Frank Mosher, a guy who writes about the Kingdom (also known as the
northern part of VT--where my daddy is from), is awesome. I just read two of his books, "Marie Blythe" and "Northern Borders," and I cannot recommend them highly enough.
9) I think "When You are Engulfed in Flames" is my new favorite David Sedaris book. As a collection, it is pretty much stellar.
10) Wall-e is lovely. And I think it was the result of a drunken dare. Over sidecars and coffee on some Saturday night, some random said to the Pixar folks, "I'll bet you cannot make an adorable, touching, beautiful movie starring a robot. That doesn't speak. Whose sidekick is a cockroach. Seriously."
11) This is for E!: I've been thinking about your voicemail message the other day, and here's what I think. I think memory works in a reactive manner... Like, the same way that skin does--two functions:
a) Separation: in the process of creating a self, a collection of memories and recollections, memory works to separate things out from other things--creating and keeping the self intact and whole (most of the time). Which also might be why people with memory issues are so at-a-loss in the symbolic order.
b) Protection: the separation of self from other, through specific memories and (sometime) imaginative re-collecting, keeps the dangerous, self-splitting stuff out. Like skin, memory builds up around the soft, tender parts and becomes a kind of barrier--not completely impenetrable but better than being always-already-open--to the vicissitudes of world.
12) The view from the top of the Met is incomparable. You should see it. Call me, and I'll meet you there.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
College Football in a Whole New Light
This (warning, these pictures are dis-turbing) site has re-done a bunch of Anti-Meth ads to relate to college football. The Alabama one is my favorite, but U-Dub (kinda rapey) is a close second.
Vocabulary Test
Can a woman who refers to other women as "fat girls" still be a feminist, or is she just an asshole?
My vote = Asshole. Or postfeminist. I get those two confused.
My vote = Asshole. Or postfeminist. I get those two confused.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The Hermeneutic of Superstition
Would be a great band name. I think it might also work as a philosophy for life.
So, I'm watching "Dawn of the Dead," like ya do, and I start thinking about my phone. My ring is Stevie Wonder's "Superstition," and people (well, Steve and E!) sometimes tease me about the message I'm sending when I answer every call with a superstitious wink. But... like casuistry (the application of general, ethical reasoning to particular situations--or--the recognition and application of contingency), superstition (depending on the source, mostly definitions of superstition read something like this: overly zealous and irrational beliefs, especially having to do with religion--emphasis on lack of thought and irrationality) has gotten a bad rap--mainly because of its reliance, it seems, on things outside classical reason.
But it's interesting to think about the outside-rational significance of little moments, the strange connections between our thoughts, our actions, and the particular events that make up our lives.
One example: today I was talking with a friend about the therapeutic effects of teaching. He had been thinking about a certain recent crisis in his life, and, on the day in question, class discussion just happened to include that exact situation as a theoretical point, a way to analyze and explore the topic of the day. As he was teaching the class, he said, he had to pause a couple of times--keeping the theoretical discussion and the actual situation separate in his head was more challenging a task than he had thought it would be. And that wasn't such a bad thing, he said. It kind of helped him understand the theory and the moment more clearly. The hermeneutic of superstition, in this case, allowed for a clarifying dip into both theory and practice.
Another example? A couple of weeks ago, I went to an AA meeting with my sister. It's called an "open source" meeting. Most AA meetings are closed, designed to increase and accentuate the feeling of safety-in-community for which AA is so lauded. But open speaker sessions welcome any and every person interested in learning more about the warp and woof of addiction. Anyway, the speaker that day was this cool lady, probably in her forties, talking about her life pre-, during, and post-realization that she is an alcoholic. Coincidentally, earlier that day, my sister and I had just been talking about some of the topics the speaker addressed (the differences between social and addictive drinking, the various definitions of "party" and "problem," the difficulties of "hanging out" in a culture so centered on mind-altering substances). The speaker's story, like many of the stories one hears from and about addiction, revolved around loss and redemption, failure and success--as well as the issues my sister and I had been talking about earlier.
These stories, these moments of clarity, are reasonable, at times. They are often, after the fact, easily designated as instances of rationality and enlightenment. But the mechanisms of the connections, the links between moments of clarity and our interpretation/reception of those moments, is not always a rational, causal thing. Sometimes, it's a mystery, and mystery--as much as it gets suspicioned and ogled and sliced out of our enlightened, reasonable world--can be a situation-saver... keeping us, perched as we are on the edge of the abyss, sane... mostly.
So, I'm watching "Dawn of the Dead," like ya do, and I start thinking about my phone. My ring is Stevie Wonder's "Superstition," and people (well, Steve and E!) sometimes tease me about the message I'm sending when I answer every call with a superstitious wink. But... like casuistry (the application of general, ethical reasoning to particular situations--or--the recognition and application of contingency), superstition (depending on the source, mostly definitions of superstition read something like this: overly zealous and irrational beliefs, especially having to do with religion--emphasis on lack of thought and irrationality) has gotten a bad rap--mainly because of its reliance, it seems, on things outside classical reason.
But it's interesting to think about the outside-rational significance of little moments, the strange connections between our thoughts, our actions, and the particular events that make up our lives.
One example: today I was talking with a friend about the therapeutic effects of teaching. He had been thinking about a certain recent crisis in his life, and, on the day in question, class discussion just happened to include that exact situation as a theoretical point, a way to analyze and explore the topic of the day. As he was teaching the class, he said, he had to pause a couple of times--keeping the theoretical discussion and the actual situation separate in his head was more challenging a task than he had thought it would be. And that wasn't such a bad thing, he said. It kind of helped him understand the theory and the moment more clearly. The hermeneutic of superstition, in this case, allowed for a clarifying dip into both theory and practice.
Another example? A couple of weeks ago, I went to an AA meeting with my sister. It's called an "open source" meeting. Most AA meetings are closed, designed to increase and accentuate the feeling of safety-in-community for which AA is so lauded. But open speaker sessions welcome any and every person interested in learning more about the warp and woof of addiction. Anyway, the speaker that day was this cool lady, probably in her forties, talking about her life pre-, during, and post-realization that she is an alcoholic. Coincidentally, earlier that day, my sister and I had just been talking about some of the topics the speaker addressed (the differences between social and addictive drinking, the various definitions of "party" and "problem," the difficulties of "hanging out" in a culture so centered on mind-altering substances). The speaker's story, like many of the stories one hears from and about addiction, revolved around loss and redemption, failure and success--as well as the issues my sister and I had been talking about earlier.
These stories, these moments of clarity, are reasonable, at times. They are often, after the fact, easily designated as instances of rationality and enlightenment. But the mechanisms of the connections, the links between moments of clarity and our interpretation/reception of those moments, is not always a rational, causal thing. Sometimes, it's a mystery, and mystery--as much as it gets suspicioned and ogled and sliced out of our enlightened, reasonable world--can be a situation-saver... keeping us, perched as we are on the edge of the abyss, sane... mostly.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
I do not want to be in high school again
But I would kill for my high school butt.
My sister and I were looking through old pictures this morning (bad idea, captain), and now I am sort of melancholy. Not because I want to go back in time--that would be weird, and, honestly, if I could go back in time, I would go back to see Cleopatra and Caesar, or F Scott Fitzgerald, or the defeat of the Spanish Armada... Why spend all that cosmic energy to go back fifteen years?
That said, I do miss the girl I was ten, twelve, fifteen years ago. She had heart, and she was brave. I have a more diplomatic face now (I've been practicing, so I'm not quite as unhinged in argument), but I am pretty sure I've lost heart over these last few years. I guess that happens.
And now for something completely different:
My sister and I were looking through old pictures this morning (bad idea, captain), and now I am sort of melancholy. Not because I want to go back in time--that would be weird, and, honestly, if I could go back in time, I would go back to see Cleopatra and Caesar, or F Scott Fitzgerald, or the defeat of the Spanish Armada... Why spend all that cosmic energy to go back fifteen years?
That said, I do miss the girl I was ten, twelve, fifteen years ago. She had heart, and she was brave. I have a more diplomatic face now (I've been practicing, so I'm not quite as unhinged in argument), but I am pretty sure I've lost heart over these last few years. I guess that happens.
And now for something completely different:
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