Hell is Other People

Perhaps.

Last night went to the theatre to see a movie. "A Girl Cut in Two" or "La Fille coupée en deux" as our brother is France would call it. Directer by Chabrol. It was good. Not great. Over commercialised, I would say. Nouvelle Vague should leave you asking question, of yourself the characters and the reality of the film and the reality of reality. The good ones do. The play of absense is a little more center for Nouvell Vague, at least in my mind. It is in the absense of detail or the too-muchness of detail that we get sucked into the film itself. Because I know options exist, options plural, it is in the play of these possibilities that I get lost. If I am told every conclusion it is no fun. See Aurerbach's Mimisis for more on this idea. So went the movie. As my friend said, Chabrol is no Godard.

What made the film slightly more aggrevating was not the movie itself but the people at the theatre. Let me elucidate. The threatre is small. It is in a converted storefront, the building perhaps built in the 1920s. It is a very quaint place. Seating only 30, it harks back to old time picure show. Felt curtains of rich red drape the walls. A single attendant, no doubt a film student somewhere the single attendant. As my friend and I walk in, we are greeted by a group of seven or so, later middle-aged people. Loud, perhaps a bit drunk, they ask for our names and introduce themselves. We comply. They continue to ramble amongst themselves and attempt to bring us into their conversation. "Are you sure you want to go to this movie?" What an idiotic question, why else would we be hear I think? "You sure you want to sit in front of us?" Again with the questions that have been answered by the reality of the situation. Of course, as beings possessing free will or acting under the illusion of it we have made a decision if decisions can be made to sit in front of you.

Yet they continue to ramble. Bastards. The most talkative woman of the bunch informs us that her friend "Andrew" has written a book and acted in Hollywood. I turn around; sitting with a well groomed salt and pepper beard and a white turtleneck, is a mna in his late fifties. The illustrious Andrew chimes in "My book is in its second eddition." The drunken woman continues talking about Andrew's personal history, nothing I wish to hear. I cannot stand these people. I wish I would have said that my dissertation is in paperback and that you can pick it up at Barnes and Noble. It has a pretty cover so idiots like you might pick it up. I didn't. Of course that isn't true. There is really not a lot worse, relatively, than the pseudo-intellectual hob-knob. The people in some kind of film club that go to movies simply because they have subtitles. They can't talk about the film after they see it. At least anything beyond simply plot summary. They give people who enjoy film a bad name, and they deter the enjoyment of those same people while they are in the theatre.

Just like the Oprah book club, these people think they are in the know, some kind of avante guard party of culture, where in reality they destroy it. It reminds me of a poster I saw once, with a familiar phrase" Culture is Dead" written on a burning book. Spawned from the kitsch that has become culture, these people are the same. These are the people who read a book because of the Oprah approved sticker, who buy the books with pretty covers to stack their bookshelves. They might memorize the plots from sparknotes and have a few witty things to say about each book, but nothing beyond that. I have been to parties with these people. You ask a question, they give you the "themes and motifs" section of sparknotes. Same with film. They see what they are "supposed" to see. They have a list. A line by line of all the directors they are supposed to see. Have they read Cahiers du Cinema? Puzzled looks, the response.

Am I a snob. No. I plead ignorance. I know I have not seen everything, I don't know all the histories, I have only a small understanding of French. To paraphrase Socrates, I can only know I know nothing. These people are the worst kind of ignorance. They think they know (only what they are told) and spout their "knowledge" at every oppertunity. It is like culture zombies. They are the vestige of the living dead, the undead, culture between both living and dying but not either. Culture isn't dead, it is un-dead. A more powerful gesture, and it is these folks who embody the un-dead spirit. Walking (reading, viewing, talking) aimlessly with only dead facts that they continue to try to bring to life with no conscious thought behind them, attempting to assimiliate more to their collective and horrifying the people who know what is going on.

It is a shame you can't shoot them or hit them with a board like they do in the movies.

Tools of Tools

Thoreau once wrote "Men have become tools of their tools." I agree. We have become so accustomed to computers and modern luxery that we might forget who is the master of our machines. I encountered this when my hard drive failed. It was a sad day. I cried. Not really, but seriously. No just kidding. It was terrible though. Luckily it was reparable (thank God!), and under warranty (hooray!) but it though a monkey wrench as the saying goes into my schedule. I had planned on doing quite a bit of writing. Well I had to go old school, way old school. Pencil and paper. I enjoyed it, it has been a great while since I have written something formal on paper. I have my notebooks for my various thoughts/ideas/musings, but very rarely do I write any sort of extended tract. It was refreshing and somehow reminds me of worthless biographic narrative. I am kidding, it is very powerful to be able to know your own narrative.

When I was a child I learned how to read quickly. It just happens. I read every book I could get my hands on. I remeber in 1st grade I would rush through my work so I could pull out a book and read. I got bored in second grade that I spend that year devouring book series. When they showed us the school library, how the dewey decimal system works, how the card catalogue (the real card catalogue, not the fancy electronic stuff of nowadays) works. I was amazed. So many books. Of course my elementary school was a bit impoverished. We had children bused in from housing projects and underfunded (as a great deal of the education system is always) so our library was not ideal; however, for me it was like a dream world. I loved flight and space. I guess everyone wants to be an astronaut at some point, maybe not, but I did. I read everybook in the astronomy section. Then I moved to biography, the best fiction as Wilde said...maybe not him...don't remember, but they seemed just really boring. They were heavily edited and just the old triumph stories. Not that I don't mind them, but I read the newspaper by this time and realised people lose as much as they win. So I soon tried to read all the "grey" books. The books at the 12th grade reading level. There were not too many.

I finally went to the principal and started to ask him what to read. He gave me a list of books, most had one something. The first one was Majorie Kinnan Rawlings' The Yearling. I loved it. The written was fun. The story had dark turns, was bittersweet and touching. Thus began the literature years. But also at this time I recived an encylopedia, the young learners edition. Slightly outdated (USSR and East Germany, Zaire, etc), but I would try to re and re-read a volume each day. I love history.

In 8-9th grade transition I was introduced to philosophy. How? The internet of course. I enjoyed quotes. Witticism are great and handy when in a verbal argument or just conversation. The king of wit, or one among them, Voltaire interested me. I memorised a great deal of quotes and then I thought, why not read his books? Well I did. Next came all this nice little aphorisms. The man writing them, Nietzsche had a rich, albeit somewhat synical humour. Okay, I'll read him. Upon reading the both of them, both of whom I loved, I realised I needed a better background for all the people they were talking about. Thus came Descartes, then Plato, then Aristotle--basically a self lead history of philosophy course.

My writing soon spawned after those readings. I began to see people and the world in a different light. The characters of lit and the problems of philosophy seemed to fill not just by readings but my world. I had to write. I had to see how the characters I read were for the most part real. The interactions real. Thus writing. Journals and notebooks upon notebooks. A practice I still continue. Write and read.

Thus my education continues, it must always continue. History, philosophy, literature. Those three summarize but not totalise my academic career. Education/ Knowledge is always something to come (a venir) like democracy it is a state of being, not an end goal. It never really arrives, it is always deffered but it is this impossbility that allows for education to continue.

There you go. Life story in a nutshell. I kid, I am deeper than my readings, but it explains a great deal.

We'll Always Have Paris

Everyone has to love Casablanca, right. Humphrey Bogart and his nice dark antihero film noir roles. It is one of my favourite movies of all times. I mean, he gives up his passes for the love of his life, so that she will survive with her lover (the leader of the resistance) . Good story. Emblematic of the US's lack of understanding about Nazi Germany and the Vichy. But that is a story of a different sort. A very psychoanalytic one, and I am sure you (wouldn't it be great if you were plural?) are tired of it.

There is a line in that movie, from where I grab the title of this post. I write because I read an article by Roger Cohen of the International Herald Tribune/ NY Times, because they are virtually the same, right? In it he details how Paris has become so globalized, so packaged and deaescetizied that it is not longer the city he fell in love with early in his career. That Paris has somehow slipped away, even though he always knew that it would remain for him. That the world of blackberries and cosmetics and neat little packages would somehow eat away from Paris' allure never encountered him, until he went to Cuba.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/07/opinion/edcohen.php

Havana without many TVs and Cellphones, and all the amenities that we have grown so accustom of, have somehow allowed Havana to retain its 1950s getaway charm, though at a great price (read embargo). Somehow the aesthetic has remained.

Now I am not an expert on these kinds of things and shall try to to appear as one, but this scenario reminds me of what the German Jewish mystic Walter Benjamin wrote about how art will be used in the age of what he termed "Mechanical Reproduction." He lived in Paris and even wrote "The Arcades Project," a kind of philosophic "Paris Je T'aime." He killed himself and burned all his books because he thought Hilter was after him. Shame. But, in the essay(Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction") he postulates that Nazism/Totalitarianism will attempt to celebrate the aesthetic, to make the aesthetic more aesthetic , beauty is X. Love is X. Monet's works are simply beautiful, beyond reproach, etc, etc. This is how they will attempt to remain in power, to assure their power base. Communists on the other hand (did I mention Benjamin was a Marxist) would attempt to make art more attainable, to make art political in itself. Look at all the soviet worker art. The powerful propaganda and depictions, the kitschy artwork that we all get. Art can contain a political message and the goal of politising the people. He also speaks of aura and the concept of the original work, but again that is another story.

To add another layer, we have Jacques Ranciere, who postulates that art takes on the political message of the age. That for the Ancient Greeks art was utility, the figures on the Grecian Urns, the Temples, etc. Then it moved to Stained Glass for the feudal ages. Glass could depict the message of God above Kings, Kings above men, while communicating Biblical and hierarchical structure. The to capitalism, where the world turned art into art about art. The Romantics and the like wrote poems about poems, the "Ode to the Grecian Urn" by Keats often cited. But what of globalism, of this new phase. What of postmodernism if such a thing exists and we are in it? Well, I might postulate that we are in Cohen's predicament. Art has become completely deaestheticised to the point that the kitschy tourism stops and postcards are the artwork of the age. Where Paris, of old is losing itself to the Paris of the post cards, where in globalism history is not quite as important. You once needed the art to make a new art about the art, but let's move even further, to the point where we forget the art of old, where we move to a history without a history to a beyond history that is not history. Perhaps politics can have no place without a history, but art can. Art among the only ways to usher in and maintain this new ideal.

Even the notion of the postcard implies this disjointness from time and history. The postcard is emblematic because the picture on the front, the purchase of the postcard and its location always arrive too late to the receiver, they never arrive at the right place, thus nothing arrives at the right place. The letter never arrives. What does it say when the aesthetic, the political message of the aesthetic never arrives?

But places like Cuba still exist, and as long as they do, we are reminded of the past. Of a a place where the history lives. But what is a living history, perhaps history as a performance act is what we need, of what we try to abandon as all our models of economic progress attempt to survive by a gradient, by inequality.

Welcome to progress(?).



As a sidenote, I am writing a great deal because I am a)bored, b) sick. Those things mixed together coupled with lots of cold medicine result in a flurry of writing activity, at the expense of other duties, unfortunately, but alls the better.

Limited, Inc.

This blog title of course refers to the book by my hero, Jacques Derrida. A little history. I was drawn into Derrida when a professor of mine gave me a booklist for a class he was teaching and a project that he invited me to participate in. I could not join his project, sadly, because of other commitments. I did decide I wanted to read the booklist which he gave me. The first name on the list was Jacques Derrida. I never really had heard of him, I knew he was a philosophic "bad boy," rejected by most people. However, this was my heavy Nietzsche phase, so I went out and bought one of his books. Acts of Literature. Wonderful expose, I absolutely loved it from page 1 to the next. The books he read in his youth were those I had read in my youth. His blurring of distinctions, questioning the question itself. The framing, all things needed to be examined, nothing could be taken for granted. How the frame became a part of the picture and thus always same.

I enjoyed it to say the least. The major thing I loved about Derrida and still love is that he is a reader. Some philosophers, even most, will take a abstract "tool" into a problem or a text and just apply this tool, make it fit. Unfortunately, Zizek is very guilty of using Lacan and Hegel like this which is why Derrida and he didn't get along...among other reasons. But, Derrida read the text, he found his terms in the text. Dissemination and Plato's Pharmakon gave his Plato's Pharmacy, the Pharmakon, dissemination--all stories from Plato, the Phaedrus, Phaedo, etc. The to differance all of his readings of Levinas and Heidegger, of Celan and Valery. His works were not just dead tools ,they were readings, good, deep critical readings that generated the texts that followed.

Nothing is worse than a topographical reading. It is anathema to me. It kills me. To make the story a parable about the life of the author. Or to attack the text as a journey though the woods like a New Critic. Perhaps we never even know the meaning we impart into a text when we write it or speak it. The author dies with the birth of the text, thus the birth of the reader and reading says Barthes. Topographical readings imprison the text, they disallow it to live to fall into existence, to be born. But far worse, if a topographical readings just gives text one meaning and thus disallows future reading, the whole creative process dies with it.

Read. Seek to understand. Read all the words, the texts and their subtexts, the language and the metalanguages.

Why Can't a Man Stand Alone (?)

The title of this post is of course a reference to the song by Elvis Costello on his "All This Useless Beauty" album. The title of course could be a response to Romanticism/ Aestheticism. Either way, it is a good album and the question raises an interesting question.

Why can't a man stand alone?
Must he be burdened by all that he's taught to consider his own?
His skin and his station, his kin and his crown, his flag and his nation
They just weigh him down
You know pride is a sin that we tend to forgive
But it gets hard to live
When you don't have the love in her heart to begin with
Why can't a man stand alone?

So, what does that mean? Why the question( among many?) raised is if man, human kind can stand alone. Each person in-itself or/and for-itself. You might recognize those terms. They are phenomenological in nature. I do not recall, but they might be put forth by Husserl...or maybe Merleu-Ponty. Regardless of this small fact, can these terms really exist? I would argue no, the terms these two require are false. We can never exist purely for ourself, by ourself, in need of only ourself. I tried for a long time, to say oh I don't care what they say, I'll do what I want. I don't need them, etc, etc. Teenage angst encapsulated. However, upon examining these little rants, you can easily see that:
1) the Traumatic event that occurred to cause these feelings were not in-itself or for-itself. The conditions necessary for these comments to be made were with me interacting with others. With me amongst the others can I only experience this. We cannot exist only for ourselves, we need this interact, this interaction gives us being. Our being with is our co-dependence. "Co-" think about that for a moment, both the "co" the latin for "with" the dash, the phallus in the space, the void too speaks, they touch, it is both the difference and the touching of "co" and "dependence."

2) This entire blogging project requires us, or beckons us to communicate amongst and with others. If we wished to be a solipsism, we would not write on a public forum. We may not even write, or even speak for that manner. There would be no reason to do so really. It would also be impossible. If we were to live of solely ourself, what language would we speak? We always speak the language of the other. We are always other to ourselves, and thus the same in our radical alterity to others and ourselves. Think about this, "poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility," sayeth Wordsworth. How does that exist without experiencing and becoming, being other?

In the end everything is contiguous, not continuous. Difference, differance still exists. To deny it would be ludacris. Now I am tired, thus I depart.

Why can't a baby sleep at night and dream of the time to come
And never fear the world outside the touch of someone very near
Why can't a man stand up?
Why can't a man stand up?
Why can't a man stand alone?

People are Strange

Yes, this is a reference to The Doors. Both the band and a reference to how Jean-Luc Nancy uses it. It was cold outside. Not too cold, but freezing nonetheless. I might be coming down with a cold, which is bad. That means a great deal of green tea and reading. I can't say I can complain at/for that.

But to something Other. I cannot sleep. I stayed outside all day then went to a friends house. I was there until maybe 3AM the witching hour they call it, something to do with the opposite of when Christ died. I don't know about all of that, but I do know I can make myself scared, but more often I expect something to happen, and it always seems to happen.

The problem with people is that you never know them until you live with them. I am a pretty laid back person, but I like some space now and again...and for people to respect the communal areas. Like I said, I left and of course my one roomate brings back some rather facil lady. I am no puritan, but rather a more Romantic in nature. Perhaps of the brand of people who think Milton was right when he said, "Sensual pleasing of the body AND pleasant conversation." Where both need to be there. Well, my id driven roomates don't feel too keen on the latter and not that it bother me, because life is too care to worry about their actions, but I do wish they wouldn't take up the living room. I mean, they have rooms. So I wonder in at 3, all the lights off and in a flash I see ass crack and fleeing bodies. Not so funny for them, I know. Somewhat funny for me. People put themselves in the oddest situations, but the issue arises with the fact that I wake up early. Normally 6 or so to make the coffee, cook breakfast--and here are two bodies downstairs, in-between me and my coffee, taking up the largest room in our apartment. Whatever right?

So is the soap opera of my life. My roomates and my mutual friend is now dating the love of my roomates life and we all hung out this evening, one person was friendly with the girl that he was talking less than kind things about the entire week before, another was reconnecting with the girl he broke up with and cursed out nearly weekly for a year. I do not know.

People just need each other. People must need to feel some kind of closeness. I don't know why though, I really don't. I just wish they could let me make my coffee....And I left my Neruda downstairs and I dare not go get it.

Alas.

A Personal Rant

I get tired of writing intellectual bull. Is it really intellectual? Can you ever really make positive statements? When I say this is X, is it not true that it is X because it is not Y, and then you exclude Y, which invites and necessitates a new reading of what X is and what Y is and what the reading in the first place means, but what it can't quite say is the problem, so all you do is develop a series of differences without positive statements, always an infinite departure without a return in sight (or even possible). Welcome to my mind. Of course it could be said that everything is in this system of differences, we are all seemingly bound and linked by language, I mean think of the word link, link to chain, so our communication is our link, our language a link to the other, thus our chain to the other, for we are never ourselves because we possess some divine connection, we are ourselves because we are not you, thus my self is constituted by my otherness to you, so you constitute me, but at the same time I am bound up in you, so we never are solipisms in any way at all. Just a web, a net, a sea of signifiers.

Sorry, that is what I do--everyday.

Not that I don't enjoy it.

But, you really have to take a break from it every now and then, at least look back on it with some sort of skepticism. No system of thought is ever complete. I don't know if anything can ever be a totality.

Oh, so yeah...the problem with people is that we need people. I know this isn't anything novel, it may be cynical to some extent, but it seems problems arise when we have to depend on people. Granted we need this dependence, we are social, we long for something always, this extra desire that exists. Nearly every conflict, every piece of literature, every love story--all seem to center around the issue/the condition of the glance, the experience of the other, of meeting someone and how that communication goes, how it is broken, how you leave, to link to the previous post--the duet. I love the song, a lot a lot. I don't why exactly, I used to sing the duet with my sister, but I haven't done that in a long time. But back to the concept of the duet. Who listens? We all speak with the hope that someone listens. We all blog with the hope that someone reads it. That is this messianic promise that we all hope for, that almost preconditions our speaking/writing and even is embedded in our reading. This seems to be echoed in the duet. Call and response, but there seems to be a break. Is Dean-o listening to the female lead. Is the fact that I don't know the female lead is the issue? Is the song phallologocentric because the voice of the female is echoed, it is disembodied and denied a true presence? Notice how the volume level changes, even the idea of the echo reminds me of Echo from mythology. She (notice the gender) could never complete her own sentences, she had to echo the others. Perhaps this is a love story between Echo and Narcissus. I might just be reading too far into it though.

So this turned not into a personal rant. Perhaps I meant it as a joke. Like Zizek does (look out Mr Kirsch).

Baby, It's Cold Outside

I absolutely adore that song. For some reason. Duets are pleasant, especially with Dean Martin. And the Elf version was quite funny.

It actually isn't that cold though. However, this relates to several dreams which I would like to explore.

My first dream was an episode of the Office [American (per)version]. Michael and Dwight pulled a prank on Jim. They called the police and has his home searched. How they managed this, I do not know. But these coppers brought in his nightstand and home desk and started riffling through the drawers and showing all of his stuff to the rest of the office. It was embarassing as they found the traditional man stuff etc.

I think this may explore the concepts of stereotypes and secrets. The setting of the office is peculiar, I am unsure of how this fits in to everything. I watch the show only because it reminds me of my work experience, so perhaps it relates to me and working/employment, or the plans thereof. Now the idea of both the prank and the secret material possessions both center around the idea of a secret, those who know and those who are kept outside. This can be related to everything. Interesting how I use a deception to uncover secrets...but that is espionage in its finest.

My second dream was of me going to Everest. I would love to climb Everest. I do not think I will though, just based on time and money, perhaps something smaller, but to the dream, I was going climbing. I was in a boat in the Everglades when I got the call that I was going to go climbing. I do not know why I was in the Everglades, but when I returned to my apartment, I begin to pack for my journey and I found that I didn't have anywhere near the proper clothing. I only had my wind resistant jacket and a sweater. My mom called and asked if I wanted by down jacket and I kept thinking about how i could layer these clothes. I then pulled out my pack and realised that for an everest climb it had far too low a capacity and my sleeping bag wasn't rated low enough the conditions. At that point I realised it was a dream and started to lucid dream, which is no fun....

To this one, I cannot comment on really. Just an example of how my logical faculties tend to distort my thoughts. Not really distort, just overpower any sort of creative activities. The motif of a journey is fascinating especially the diametric change in the local, from the florida Everglades to the tallest peak on Earth. However, I think it mainly had to do with the fact that I left my window open and my room was virtually freezing that made me think of Everest. However, there is a classic relationship between this. Zizek would say that I constructed the dream so that I didn't have to face the reality of a cold room, that I created the dream, the journey motif of going to Everest and searching for clothing so that I didn't have to face the trauma of awakening to a room that was virtually frozen by the subfreezing temperatures of the night air. This is possibly. Lacan would say that in the awakening I found some kind of ethical responsibility of memory, that I would awake to reality and bring with it some kind of repetitive strife, but still a more real view of reality.

It just shows how far you can take this stuff, but if you don't apply it to everything then you can't apply it at all. If you say that dream X is significant for y reasons, then dream z should be just as important for a reasons. If nay, then you create some kind of hierarchy, privileging the one of the other and then that system is both often wrong and subject to myriad of abuses. It is called art critics. I kid, but do I really. The problem with satire is you never know when it starts or stops.

Read an interview on Kate Winslet. Very interesting, we need more people like here. Grounded, moderately intelligent, rolls her own cigarettes, eats, opinionated, good actress. Hopefully our generation will continue to see an influx of smart people who take on public life...but we need a Zizek too, perhaps another public intellectual that is just all around great(artist, actor, philosopher, writer(of fiction too?), funny, up on current topics)...like a Tina Fey rolled in with a Zizek rolled in with a JS Foer. That would be neat. And if it turned out to be a woman, I would marry her. Seriously.

Enjoy Symptom

In economic strife, I love all the little attempts to assuage this new trauma. If trauma is the inability to comprehend what one witness and the repetition of this event through dreams and other acts...in the current economic crisis, we need a trauma triage.

We never seem to grasp what passes before us. We always miss it. Because of this we mindlessly use words to try to figure it out, try to luckily hit the right sequence of words to discover for ourself the right narration so that we can build a monument and forget about it.

Funny isn't it? We are always trying to forget these events. Allow the truest history, the history that defies narration, to pass into narration to allow us to forget it. We have monuments so that we don't have to remember. Build a monument for the World Trade Center, so the memories i have of my teacher cursing and pulling down the radio fade into some sort of physical manifestation of the glass tower. Make a monument to World War II so that I don't have to think about the sacrifice. Make a monument, or just a ton of commercial movies, about the Holocaust so I don't have to have that trauma passed to me.

The problem is, when you whack a mole, another comes up. All these attempts to forget, cause a new remembering in another place. If truth is not forgetting, aletheia, then what is a culture that wishes to forget everything?

So how to forget an economic tragedy? How did we forget the old ones. Time, monuments, cliche photos, books. It is easier to read Steinbeck than to experience depression, or talk to a relative. The untold stories, where the madness and the history resist narration are exactly those traumas that can't be expressed. But we need them. They constitute our being, our ethics, our memory.

Work Pays America

The New Deal polciy, WPA, the work progress administration, was one of the most fascinating enterprises in the course of American history.  Entering into a time when the finanicial crisis is worsening, when the stock market seems on the edge of collapse, as banks fail and countries seem to teeter on the edge of collapse, I am reminded of the Great Depression.

Not the black days and the sad photos, but rather the memories of my relatives, those who experienced those dark days, but still proud days.  My father's side of the family were farmers; they experienced the hurt of the great depression, but the farm was self sustaining and they were able to take care of themselves.

My mother's side of the family, however, experienced the worst of it.  My great grandfather owned a grocery store.  That was a big deal back then.  He had five children, a driver, a house servant and a cook.  All within this nice little compound in the downtown of the city.  He was a generous man, always giving to those in need, extending credit to those who needed it.  However, the day before that fteful market crash he made a deposit.  All the cash in the store.  The next day, it was gone.  Nothing had been spared, they went from socialites to paupers.  They were forced to move, fire the servants, sell the cars to those who could afford them and moce to the wrong side of the tracks.  My grandfather used to talk about how everything changed.  As a young child he didn't understand why his nanny left, why the driver was gone, why his nice clothes soon gave way to those made in the home.  My great grandfather worked all sorts of odd jobs, just to put food on the table.  He worked though.  Being a once proud store owner never stopped his work ethic.  He worked as if he owned everything he worked on, as though it were to be sold in his shop.  My proud greatgrandmother, not to be outdone by her husband took over the entiriy of domestic duties, from the standard child raising to laudry to sewing and repairs.  They pulled through.

My other gread grandfather was a railroad man.  My grandmother has all kinds of stories of them moving with the railroad across the country.  Depression hit.  They fired the railwaymen.  My great grandfather went from being an engineer to building dams with the WPA.  My grandmother found work as soon as she was legally able to work, or when a shop presented itself.

The amazing thing, the thing that makes me most proud is that we are proud.  Not proud to the point of hubris, but always proud in what we do, not too proud to do something.

Perhaps that is what we need.  To be proud for the jobs that we afre never too proud to perform.  The Depression allowed for so many things, that we Americans never realised we had.  Art and music soared as New Deal policies commissioned arts and plays.  The sad tired look of the stock broker, never disapeared, for the past always drives us forward, but instead those once too proud to dirty their hands, had to do it.  

Sitting here in a room full of books, on a lap top wearing too nice clothes and an overpriced jacket, I wonder how we will respond.  If our government will institute a new WPA a new way to bring us forward into history.

How People View The World

Traditional woman with a submissive nature - 22

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This is super dumb, but I'm giving it a try; because, hey, I may actually get lucky and find exactly what I want! Who knows? 
I'm a 22 yr. old finishing up undergrad in Dec. I am very old-fashioned and have traditional views on life, relationships, etc. I don't believe in the women's lib nonsense. My belief is that men and women have certain roles--men are rulers, protectors and providers; women are to be caretakers and submit to their spouse. Period. A lot of men and women have deviated from this, and it's sad. It's also the reason why the divorce rate has skyrocketed and the American family system failing; so maybe I'll find what I'm looking for on here. 
I appreciate MEN! Dominate manly men--one who understands their place and a woman's place.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Found that personal add.  It really makes me laugh.  How far have we come!(?)  Fifth wave feminism is so sad.  It is funny how the traditional master-slave dialectic still keeps cropping up.  I think Nietzsche allowed for the possibility of a female ubermansch.  But who am I to know?  The irony is that this is the same kind of desire for submission that allowed for the apple to be plucked from eden.  The fruit was for sex.  As Lacan says, the woman is complete in herself, she is full and can experience jouissance without a man.  As Iraguray writes, this sex which is not one, she is two, but complete in her emptiness.  Man must surrender the phallus to experience the same jouisannce of woman in herself, but she experiences a 1+ with the man.  Think about it.  

Here he have a personal add that is so focused on the phallus that any relationship she may have will never be of herself.  She is denying herself of what she already has.  Also the denial of the phallus is denied thus denying the man jouissance as well.  Ironic, no?  This is what happens when people don't view themselves as complete.  When we begin to privilege one half of the binary over the other.  We get these highly structural relationship ships with marginalization and "slaves" to continue with Hegel/Nietzsche dialectic.

So a woman's place then is that of the man, but in this person's model it is something less.  Why would you do that?  You can read about some pyschosis, maybe the traditional hetero male ownership paradigm is still too strong, but here you can see how the desries of these men have becvome the desires of the woman, how they have been constituted by them.

Oh well.

weekends

why do weekends end and start the way they do?

It was an odd question but I thought you would understand.

Something to be said about all the traces, then?

Who gives a fuck about an oxford comma? The trace then is what? What is there and what is not there, the word always haunting the word that is present, exerting its influence, though it is not really present...bourne evokes born, but it isn't born, though born is still there, we say it without saying it, it is said, but not brought into presence, thus the to be but not yet come is more powerful, or at least allows for the temporal space for it to be.

Noise complaints, fights, obnoxious kids, lots of cigarette smoke, random people who look like they came off of a street or wrestling match stumble in, the odd homo eroticism that guys tend to display in the presence of women to impress them?, the neighbours to whom you speak only on weekends and don't remember you during the week, and the funniest part of it all...the clean-up and the pot of coffee at 830 the next morning.

Life and its ironies

Life never ceases to be coincidental/ ironic.

It seems I keep running into people, or better put, I cross paths with people in ways that I don't expect to ever meet (again). Funny how that has been working, at least as of late. It is quite comic of late. I would list the incidents, but I don't want to, for now.

Also funny/ ironic, I can see all the angles except when it comes to me. I can see everything, I see everyone's intentions, I see the moves, except my own. I am so naive it is comic. Yet, I can't seem to regret it, no matter what people tell me. Haha.

Lil wayne is a post modern poet. He doesn't collapse into binaries. He doesn't fall into the classic, money or bitches, he prefers to fuck bitches AND get money.

Asa Nisi Masa

So I should have been studying last night, and I was, well half-heartedly, when I got the grand idea to watch Fellini's 8 1/2 instead. Materials science really sucks and you can only glean so much and my roommates were out at the "library" so I had access to the downstairs TV which is rare.

It was a marvel of modern cinema. Loved it. It was so oddly haunting/ sad it affected my dreams. Last night I dreamt that I was going to get A Lover's Discourse by Barthes from McClures and I was on my bike...the sky was really gray to the point that it seemed that everything was in grayscale...all the colours were really washed out...downright depressing really. SO I rode down there and everything was closed. Beyond being closed, there were no people, it was deserted, a ghost down. Perhaps a subconscious personal interpretation of the movie? I dunno, these things just happen.

I liked Luisa best. Her character. It exuded something, some fuzzy meaning that I couldn't quite capture with words but I know is there. Barthes had a work for this...like a secondary meaning that is implied but not completely presented. Guido was really kind of vile, but there still is some ID with him as well. To not love. Such a horrible thing.

Speaking of love, writing was the topic of my last Chemical Engineering class. He gave us an article by Tom Friedman. Prof asked who knew who Friedman was. I immediately said "op-ed writer for the NY Times, wrote World is Flat, Lexus and Olive Branch, Letters from Beirut to Lebanon, and he has a new book coming out tomorrow..." and then he asked who has read him...only my hand was raised.

The funny part. He asked us to analyze the article (about global warming of course). He asked his style. Poeple started throughing out the ethos, "I liked it", "it was silly", "informative"...the classics. The prof obviously was frustrated with these answers so I decided to chime in with "It is highly rhetoric driven with the first paragraph speaking to the classical nostalgic lore of nature's beauty attempting make an emotional connection with the reader while use the facts to establish some authority for his message, though they are highly rhetorical within themselves.Can you explain that? I did not want to explain it, but I did. Everyone looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language.

Then he asked who reads the NY Times.
Their Answers
-liberals
-people who hold power and influence
-literate people

He then said, well it is viewed as the newspaper of note for the us by the world, this is how we get represented.

Then we talked about technical writing. Apparently the writing we do in history, literature and art is not focused on clarity and uses too high of diction...etc i will type my notes at one point.

I started to get bored so I pull out my book and started to read (thanks Freddy Dostoevsky).

It makes me sick to be in a room with this gross disdain on the language that we use. People really need to read some stuff occasionally and stop playing all these video games and such.

Makes me sad is all.

Pompous Bastard

I hate to post too many blogs in a row, entries or whatever. Just seems like I do nothing but write these bloody things. Irony of that is, I have not done anything. I had to write a paper...and for some reason I was able to draw Heidegger and Lacan into it, so it expanded rapidly. However, it had to be only one page and unfortunately I can't pull a derrida and write in erasure, so there was quite the trimming.

To the source of the title of this entry. I often wonder how I come off to people. Not that I really care, I just find the whole thing interesting. I do little social experiments all the time, just to see what will happen, to glean some deeper understanding about people, because they are rather interesting. Well, not all of them.

I like to have my things. I forgot my camera. It is driving me crazy. It is an old 1978 cannon slr with several lens which i just love. the funny thing is, i take pictures but i don't develop them. maybe i need to do something about that, but hey what's the hurry. I wake up early and take walks around. I love to watch the sunrise, so I am always up for it. It is my time to think, reflect, and the lighting is always so wonderful--if you can catch it. i have only been using black and white film of late. i like the graininess that you can get. i took some pictures without a light sensor and it produced some fun results...so much more organic, the nature of the absense of the photo.

I also did not bring up my stereo. Now that is killing me. I have a decent stereo i got from a friend of a friend for a favour kind of deal and I love it. I plug in my turntable, throw on a vinyl and drop that needle and it is pure joy, whatever the mood. Yes I listen to vinyls. You can't beat them, they have such a warm quality, and the philosophical aspect of having an analogue recording that represents the "photo" of the sound is just too good to pass up. I also have this thing where i see colors with sound...so it adds another layer to the party.

See the funny thing is, if you tel that to people...I listen to old jazz vinyls, i have a virtually antique camera, that i wake to watch the sunrise each morn--they look at you like you are full of (sh)it. I may be on many other things, but I don't have to generate a persona, a character for everyone. The funny thing about higher education is that it is supposed to embrace this sort of individuality, but whatever, it may not. Case and point, the ire directed at a fella who did not wear orange to the bloody football game...talk about the mass, the directed gaze, the danger of such things, ick.

My obsession cannot be sated for journals. I collect them, actually i write in them, preferably moleskine, they came out with soft cover pocket size journals that are wonderful too because you can actually put them in your pocket without breaking your back. Due to my latest picasso binge, my journal is filled with picasso and picasso inspired drawings/sketchs/pastels, so i am looking to purchase another. apparently muji has this one with a circle in the center of each page representing time, so it is a planner that allows for space. unfortunately, they don't believe in direct online sales from japan, and you can only get them at the MoMA and from some brit company who charges nearly four pounds for the thing. that cannot do.

but anyways, it does make me wonder, all of this, perception is reality but then what is real? how does perception change you? in theory none at all, but if we are so impressed by the other, who do we become? interesting thought though, our projection is dictated by the other, but at the same time our same projection is interpreted and reprojected on us. I know this isn't the most lucid musing, but think about it.

Dylan and friends

I went out and bought books. This bloody school thing can be so boring, so I fill the void with good reading and good music and good movies. The problem is that this void of which i speak is it actually doesn't represent the time void, as in here, I don't have the time associated with the huge educational void. Thus I spend hours in the lab, bored out of my mind, but I still must be there. I am in class nearly 28 hours a week. This is outside of homework and the effin' unit ops and pchem lab (though I did smuggle my copy of Image Music Text into the lab.


Before the football game I was reading notes from an underground. I feel you, ole Freddy. Too much identification I presume. I dislike attending football games. I think I could spend the eight hours of my life spent on tailgating and standing up for something more meaningful. Perhaps riding my dirtbike or motorcycle. I don't like to watch games anymore...well maybe soccer (the other football). There is just so much more text in soccer than football. Massive overhyped, lionized he-men running around into each other with the parade of flesh, both male and female provided for our entertainment with kitschy music to match and drunken fans. Bleh.

Don't get me wrong, I played football all through high school and was pretty decent...until my knee got destroyed. It's over though, I did it, experienced it, made friends, learned my physical limits, blah blah blah. I would much rather be doing something to deepen the experience of my life. Motorcycle ride into the mountains, hiking, reading, just taking a walk...writing.


I am excited about my new project. Borne out of Milton's writing and cultivated by my general boredom and disdain for this place it finally sprung to life. Sitting here reading, writing and listening to Mr Dylan, I am excited. Hooray for that. Can't wait for my Borges to come.

sadly relating

okay so i normally don't write in my current state but i feel i must.

i met the neighbors finally. well, i met them for the second time and this time seemed to stick more than the prior where they were blasted outside of their minds.

i met them regardless and was invited into a world of which i am not familiar. the civil war has apparently not ended, "our beer is your beer" mentality, they have a tap on their back poach and loose women circulate freely. i hate to say it like that, but sadly it is true.

i hate to say it, but i really think i was meant to be a doctor. i am too altrusistic to be real sometimes. one girl punch some guy in the face. i saw that she had an ice bag on her wrist, so when she came to the tap i inquired. i had had several gin and tonics with the intention of retiring early to notes from an underground...well i asked about her wrist and she seemed to be looking for real help. i sprung into action...not sexual.

i asked if i could examine her wrist. the answer was yes. I asked about the accident, testing of course for collier's one of the most common fractures. i have nearly broken every bone in the wrist so i was searching for all. i felt the bones for any omnipresent fractures...none...i them felt the phalanges, the fingers for fractures. she had complete mobility of her hand, fingers etc. i then asked her if it would be okay if i splinted her arm because it appeared to be a sprain and she needed to rest it especially while she was drunk.

i kept telling her that it would be dorky, but in her best interest. i then whipped out my knife and cut a cereal box...honey nut oats and fashioned a splint with a thumb brace. we looked for tape and could fine none in the apartment so we then went to another aprtment. by this time of course me leaving with her was interpreted as more than hmm altruistic, which in the modern world is a credit to me...?

but i found athletic tape and i made her a cast/ splint which turned out well and ironically was a hit at the party. funny how that works. it was a chore making sure this girl kept it on...casts such, this i know with my many breaks...



another girl was near to death as i had ever seen and i had to watch her...funny how this all works out. her boyfriend kept getting pissed that people were trying to help her. funny how that male ownership paradigm doesn't include care...i mean if she were his property, why wasn't he the one helping her instead of fending off potential suitors who were trying to make sure she woke up before she died or choked on her own vomit.


such it is life. the scenes were near almost famous to the extreme....it was oddly scary.

queerly funny how apt i am to being accepted to the community of the heavy drinkers and southern radicals though my views lay contrary...

Female Objectification

I am writing a great deal. Do you know why? Would you like to? Well, you're watching my words, so I'll assume you do.

I am writing because I am bored. Again. Chemical engineering is a death trap for the inquisitive mind. At least the undergrad sector of it. Is that not ironic? That a science course primarily based on experimentation and research can be so dull. Maybe it is just me. It is quite possible.

Observations of the other humans:

It would be nice if we lived in a world where humans would stop referring to each other like pieces of meat. Maybe this goes towards my gender than anything else. People are people, not bodies (though some mind seem deviod of a mind) they still deserve to be treated with respect, at least some. Is it vulgar organic materialism, I dunno.

Example:

Went to a mexican restaurant with some friends. We had a very attractive waitress, to whom my friends attempted to flirt very heavily. I will admit she was pretty, but my defining characteristics of the lass went far beyond her buxom anatomy. She was left handed, had moderately good diction and grammar with a remarkably neutral accent, though it had undertones of Tennessee/Kentucky/Northern North Carolina. No doubt my friends did not recognize these traits and instead opted to discuss here more obvious features, often resulting in awkward run in with said waitress when she walked in on their conversations.

What to make of this? She deserves more respect than .

It is a shame that we live in a world where we not only profile, but we view each other as objects. Mulvey and Cixous (and Freud) could step in here I know, but lets go with Milton. Pleasure of the body is only one half of the equation. It is difficult to have a conversation with an object.

I know this isn't the most thought provoking. I don't offer theories on why this objectification occurs. Maybe because our society doesn't place as much emphasis on talking as it once did. A good conversation is not a myth. They can happen. People do read good books and watch good movies and maybe even listen to good music--granted not in a disney movie kind of way. Organic materialism I will call it...male ownership model, envy, castration anxiety...I do not know that that is the solution to the question, but it may have something to do with it. College lifestyle doesn't help either.

Drives me crazy is all

Tuscan Sun

I do not know why I like Under The Tuscan Sun. It isn't by any means extraordinary, but I feel compelled to watch it when it comes on the tele. It is even a lifetime movie for gosh sake. I can't stand Sandra Oh, it is a bit of a characterature, the acting isn't great, direction either.

Regardless of these less attractive facts, I still enjoy it. The idea of fate is nice, in some ways. Derrida always talked around this point, that we are fated...but we never know it because we never make our own decisions. Good point to some extent, difficult to, eh prove. But to the movie, the idea that one can just escape it all, that if you bury yourself, you might end up covered by the lady bugs for which you were previous looking. That is attractive, at least to me. I also liked the colours, the Felini references and the architecture/ landscape.

The message is still most striking. Life is tough we can get too drawn into it to the point we forget what we want or even worse we think we know exactly what we want. Take Vicky Cristina Barcelona as an example. Life has the ability to be finicky and at the same time beckons for a plan. How to mediate between the two? Can there be a medium, is there one? Assuming that a question presupposes its answer, then there is an answer, but I do not have it. Maybe it is hiding in plain sight.

I made the comment that the french have a unique way of taking a step back and seeing things for what they are. You see it in philosophy, poetry, literature. This is not to say it is completely a gift of the french, but rather they exemplify it. When I made the comment, a rather overweighted clemson trademark clad lad said "that what makes them so weird and backward." I not knowing what he exactly meant by the comment, prod further..."oh so you read rimbaud andBaudelaire, you find them odd...how about voltaire's wit...second to whom ayn rand? How about Maupassant and Moliere?" The response returned was "voltaire was weird." Sometimes responses are not even deserved.

But the essense of that little paragraph was to say that it isn't easy and far from common to step back, take a breath and view. Sometimes people get too worried about living---that they don't.

What kind of fuckery is this?

Funny dream about who the title refers. I was at work and doing something and went into the office and Amy Winehouse walks by me. I turn to the person next to me and say, oh my thats Amy Winehouse.

She walked back and I got my picture with her and started to talk to her. I was expecting her to be really coked out, but she wasn't. She was quite intelligible and nice.

Odd.

The Morrissey Effect

It creates a real problem after you have taken a class taught by Dr. Morrissey. Why? Take several of his classes and find out.

Now, I will tell you why...making the assumption that you didn't take my advice.

Part of it is his style. "What'd ya think?" Perfect in the simple elegance. Everyone always jumps to pathos...why...because it is easy. I felt this, I thought that, I didn't like the tone...etc. He writes it up on the board. You soon realise how silly such comments are. You make a stupid comment, an illogical statement--he will take you down to Chinatown if you know what I mean. Every comment made must be thought out and intelligent, otherwise it get destroyed by intellect.

The cultural references, the jokes, the sly comments, the quick references. Just brilliance. He is confrontational, but above all brilliant.

Meeting with him was like two lions eying each other for the pride. Each word spoken had an academic spearhead, and each time there was a retort and counter. It was amazing. You do not often get that.

Confrontational, brilliant, multitude of references, everything meaningful, beautiful discussion, class collective experience.

The issue is when you go into another class.

The vocabulary of the amazing readings is gone (Lacan, Derrida, Milton, Foucault, Badiou, Ranciere, Zizek, etc). You can't talk about it. Most teachers aren't as smart or well read, but if they are they don't throw it at ya and exude it like Morrissey.

The students also become bothersome. Speaking on romantic poetry, reading a critical work on it actually...fun, a fellow asks what the purpose of language is. Well that isn't a huge question, is it? I toss out language games of Wittgenstien, but no one knows what I am talking about. I toss in generative grammar when a fellow asks why/ how people communicate. I also explain the Lacanian topic of the autre, how we must speak in the language of the other for understanding, how we never speak in our own language, but that is not understood. I toss out the idea of play and Derrida's ideas of multiplicity. I chastise for phonocentrism of one guy...but oh no, none of it sinks in, most sad.

Then a girl says, well we all have different opinions. Exactly..that is romanticism, I experience things differently. We embody it. It is a reading, it is the current mode of reading/ production....we value our individuality. And of course we get the obligatory religion question...bleh.

I talk to the prof after class....Hartman was discussing the Mirror Stage wasn't he? Why yes, why didn't you bring that up in class. I got the feeling no one would have no what I was talking about. Hmm, yeah you're right, well some how bring it up next class. If man is full of infinite possibilities then it will take him enterity to fully know himself. That was the idea. The separation of the self...the self conscious and the subconscious...hmmm. No one reads freud or lacan anymore it seems.

What can you do?

continued

understanding terror networks---a m ust read for anyone who thinks they know anything about terrorist...they are smart, middle class, educated people who found Islam (their version) later in life...except for the maghreb...strong family connections, strong friend networks, families....very interesting. They also don't seem to be delusional...creates a very interesting dilemma to say the least...it isnt the disenfranchised shia in Lebanon anymore....

Steve Coll gets some of his facts wrong

I think Zizek said that the issue with physcoanalysist or the modern society is that we use our terms on ourselves...the skinheads talk about built up latent hostility, the fluxuating social class positions..etc...all this self diagnosis...they tern the terms against the people who invented and use them...so the same goes with Al Quaeda...it is fascinating that bin laden and zawahirii can talk about america becoming too greedy and the government closing down on free speech and such....

Bleh

I like direct leaders. Strong leaders. If you don't take charge, speak up, fight, I do not like you. This is my experience with my work even more this year. I have come to the conclusion that some people with view skills take high leadership positions simply by chance and being at the right place at the right time. I cannot stand it. I often am a facilitaror of problem solving events and I see it all the time. Communication is essential.


This summer I had grand ambitions to read all this continental philosophy. I had a list with dates of when I would be finished...Heidegger, Lacan, Derrida, Zizek, Baudrillard, Badiou, Althusser etc....but it didn't work out as planned as life sometimes does.

I read 45% of Being and Time by Heidegger...it was rough
I read Parallax View by Zizek and it nearly melted my brain and old Dr. Morrissey admitted he was asking the same questions I was(great...)
I read a little Derrida and some trashy fiction

The issue is that you must discuss this stuff. It requires you to bounce these thoughts around.

Somehow I started on a tangent and started to read all I could about the Middle East...something less complicated than continental philosophy. That statement can be taken at several meanings.

I read...
Taliban by Rashdi--Brilliant book, a must read. Details a great deal of the issues and history in Afghanistan. Published pre 9/11

See No Evil by Baer--Scarily interesting

Sleeping with the Devil by Baer--One of my favourite books now upon reading

History and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa--Not very good, neo-colonialist garbage that didn't give any insight

The World is Flat--Not Middle East per say but it relates. I thought it was boring and pedantic because I knew that stuff already. If you stay current you do not need to read his books to be honest. I found it funny that he thinks that all American kiddies should be scientists and engineers...coming from a career journalist with degrees in middle east studies and an MA from Oxford in PPE. Yeah Tom, you try engineering.

The Shia Revival by Nasr--learned a great deal about the Shia/Sunni split and it affects the world. Interesting point, the ayatollah's Iran was kind of Plato's Republic in way

The Looming Towers by Lawrence--Very fascinating...never knew about Al-jihad and Qtub.

Geography of Biblical Lands by Kent--neat maps

Terrorism & Democracy by Turner--Makes me dislike Pres Carter even more. Very interesting to see how the frm DCI saw things

on the list

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001-By Coll

The Al-Queda Reader

Understand Terror Networks by Sageman


Should give me some moderate insight.

quotes

"They go on for me," he said. "I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don't expect to be a great communicator, I don't expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need."-mccain in IHT

poetry

This is actually a letter I wrote, but I think I aught to share, not that anyone reads this crap...but I thought it was interesting.....

As you probably know "poesis" in the original greek means "to create." The idea is that, at least for your disciple Plato, that poetry is dangerous because it isn't grounded in the real, not in reality. Poetry creates for itself new truths. These truths can control men and therefore are dangerous to the republic, in plato's model.

But the idea is that poetry creates by outlining something never seen before in the real, it is a poesis that draws some figure in the essence of reality and presents itself as truth, a truth, something present but not visible until it is outlined by poetry. For me, poetry is that act. It is a verb, it requires action. It is a constant creation, a birth of something new from the void of the now. The writing of the poem, the reading of the poem, each act is an act of creation.

So what is poetry, the question seems to remain unanswered, but perhaps it is a question in itself. Poetry is seeing what was before unseen and "creating it" by bringing it to the light of day, to the eyes and hearts and minds of others, maybe even the self. Great poems show us what there could be, what there is if you look for it, they aren't documentaries. They are the play on the surface of reality. Yet they go much deeper. They are the essence of truth living that is attempted to be captured by the poem.

Poetry for me isn't just a couplet or a sonnet, poetry is the act of reading the text and thus reading the word. It is the freedom of the word to play, to shift, to dance. Of seeing something new or even seeing the object in its entirety, beyond the superficial. Music has a poetry to it, the gaps in sound, the dissonance of some notes make it beautiful, it creates in the "void of presence". Food can be poetic, the explosion of flavours off the pallet makes us understand the beauty and enjoyment in the simplest of acts. For example again, the poetry of the human body. For me, one of the most beautiful forms is that of the human body. Dancing is a moving poetry of that form. The human body with all its shapes realised, seen for what they are is beauty and poetry.

Again in the human figure, the way you say something, your accent, the way you toss your hair, your smile, the twinkling of the eye, the glance back, each act maybe just an act, but then there is a poetic subtext that you can see only when you take a step back.

Poetry in literature and the word itself is just as strong. However poetry doesn't draw a box around something, because it is a creation it is always transient, wild as the wind, shifting in shape as the eyes and ears and hands of a new person touch it and experience it.

Poetry makes life worth living. It allows us, if only for a second to free ourselves from the banality of life, the repetition and boredom that overcomes us with such a monotonous existence. It doesn't ask us for our production numbers or rebuke us for poor performance. It celebrates our mere existence. It perhaps makes our existence seem like something wonderful, unique, yet at the same time it allows us to see the continuous human experience-- that project we are all born into as members of our race, yet it slips out of sight as we get into the monotony of each day. It awakens us to the wonder of our own existence. So often we lead our lives for other people, we become slaves to them, we becomes tools, items, objects. But poetry, the great paradox, allows us to live for a moment for ourselves, to discover the wonder of our existence, but at the same time awaken and enliven us to the bonds that hold men together. We all are a group of individuals, this planet is filled with so many facets, counting would be impossible and it is that collective experience that is awoken in poetry. Our collective individuality. The uniqueness of being. The experience of uniqueness.

I don't know if that satisfies your question. There is so much to say, that could and can be said about this topic, but those are my current thoughts. Let me know how you feel? What do you think?

Tyres

I work at Michelin as a lean manufacturing consultant kind of thing. It is an interesting job. I started out as a maintenance guy working my hands, building, fabricating and the like. The next year I began a sort of lean manufacturing assassin. I was intensely trained in all the tools, read al the books and then dropped into a problem area in the plant. I would then go in and act like a fixer, I would make the problem go away. I would do what it took to make it happen, to get the desired results. It was interesting to say the least, but I got the reputation of being a hardass, as not taking no for an answer, but at the same time a reputation among the upper level management as a fixer, a guy who can get things done.

Well upon my return this year to Michelin, I was assigned expanded duty, given an office, a computer a phone and asked to be the fixer again, but this time for the entire plant, all the time. Instead of an assassin I became a kind of green beret. I knew the tools, I could do it when it was needed, I have gotten dirty before, but now I was dropped into areas and now I just train them so they can take care of their own business. I give them the tools and lead them, but they have to pull the trigger so to speak.

Management is an interesting occupation. You don't learn how to do it in school. Get in the real world and everyone will tell you that. You have to be smart and charismatic and by shear power of will you can get things done, or through reliance on the procedure. More to come on that.

I have learned you must lead from the front. There is no other option. You can have commands issued from a desk, but you must have someone out on the floor with the people to implement the orders successfully. Part of being a leader is being confident in person. You need to speak loudly and clearly, but at the same time actually listen to others. You need to dress the part as well. I remember several summers ago i was doing an industrial engineering study for a problem solving event and a forklift was riding with his forks in the air and I flagged him down and yelled at him, me a student, but I was confident, right and dressed the part and carried byself as such. You are what you appear to be.

I have read several books. That was an understatement. That was cocky. But among them were several which have been rather erudite and have application to the real world. Gemba Kaizen, The Prince, The Art of War, and Leadership Through People Skills have bee most sage in their wisdom. The Art of War is not entirely about war. Written in the warring states period by sun tzu, it offers amazing advice on how to win and be successful. Key point, know yourself and know your enemy, but also never go into a battle you cannot win. Everyone knows Machiavelli, but I doubt many read it. Key point, when one cannot be both loved and feared, be feared. But at the same time he says that one can never be hated by the people otherwise no matter what happens the princedom will fall apart, think about it. Go to Gemba, if there is a problem go to where it happens and figure it out rapidly, don't reinvent the wheel, don't over study, grab the low hanging fruit and implement action immediately, make it work.

Know how to hold your cards. People have a tendency to say too much to impress people. You have to know how to lead and get what you want. Remember success isn't just going to happen because you want it to, you cant talk it into existence, you have to know how the system works, know the people who can help you and never throw all your cards on the table too early. Transparency is a good thing, but sometimes if you don't seem like it's important and give all the details then they aren't going to help you succeed.


That's all I got.

Americana

So I felt this overwhelming feeling of being of being proud to be an American, not like the song though. I was listening to Aaron Copland and watching "When Man Left the Earth" and I thought about how much we did do, it made me happy. The odd thing is, when I was thinking of America from the outside in, the idea of regionalisms began to disappear and the country as a whole, a people began to emerge. We have done a great deal in our 250 years of existence. 250 years is a cosmic blink, not even a blink, but we have done a great deal. Just a quick thought.

Happy June

I am tired at the moment so I shall make this brief. I have difficulty writing "think"...for some reason I seem to write "thing"...odd.

Electrocuted myself making a repair on an extension cord that was still plugged in to the socket. This was a learning experience. I was sitting on the ground, perspiring because it was a hot day and I was three hours into doing yardwork when I touched the hot contacts with my sweaty hands and zap....it felt like i lost control of my body....I threw the knife out of my hands, I jerked backed screaming...it felt like there was another voice in my head, like someone turned on a television and I was just watching because i had no control. It felt as though thousands of bees were stinging me all over my body. Definitely not the most pleasant of experiences. Safety first kids, safety first.h

give me a reason

saw PS I Love You.
-Overall really really sad. I don't know how much was lost from the book, hopefully the setting. The Hillary Swank character made a cite of Tennessee Williams, I believe the actual saying goes, "if we are all lonely, we might as well be lonely together" good point. The movie just is sad. She finds someone who is absolutely perfect for her, completes her, if you believe in the puzzle piece idea, but then she is torn from him. Granted I believe that women are empowered and equal in all aspects to men, but this is something different. it isnt that she needed gerry(gerard?) it is that she wanted him, that things were enhanced, i dont know i have a slight headache...but the movie made me sad still despite the hope of the irish billy at the end...just sad....


nothing is new, everything is old, maybe eliot that bastard was right, nothing can be created or destroyed, we ut energy into rearranging...more to come

gaze

when jonny g took a picture of the crowd (us) at charlotte, he broke the fourth wall, he became the unseen voyeur to many, he turned our voyeuristic gaze on ourself, we were forced to both feel ourselves revealed and the ourselves watched. This is highly rare in a concert, where all eyes watch one group, often theband or performer, but when they watch you, they break your gaze and force you to lose that little pleasure that you are the one in the tower, instead you must force yourself to realise that they are voyeuristically watching you

On Research

One quick note.

In my experience, there are two types of research. When given an experiment with unexpected results...one asks why didn't I get the desired product. The second asks why did I get what I got. The difference is more than just semantics, it is methodology/ philosophy. One is result driven, the other is process driven. I prefer the latter, engineering in general prefers the former.

a Rambing of sorts

I am an arrogant bastard who has "translation" as his native tongue. If we, the ubiquitous we, were to attribute my prose models to any event/s, it would be due mainly to the fact that I have been readings translations of French, German, Spanish and Russian since maybe 6th grade, with very few native english speaking prose models in between. That is why. Toss in some joyce and beckett with that and you have stream of consciousness, abrupt with lots of prepositional phrases and oddly/miss placed modifiers and phrases. That is me.

I am listening to Portishead's Glorybox...the one in NCY with a live orchestra. Over and over again I listen to it. I know not why. I just like it. All around it is a great song. Her sensuous voice, the beat mixing with the orchestra. It is droning, yet mysterious, purple would be the colour of this song, the prevalent colour actually. That is why it is so intoxicating, it is dark, yet sensuous, beth gibbon's voice, the gravitas of it. It strikes me. The visual information is awesome too, she enters with her vibrant red hair, unkempt, unruly, smoking a cigarette, it burning down in between her figures as she wails into the microphone, the crowd quiet, hanging on to each note..she puffs away in between these amazing vocalizations of emotions and ideas which you can paint yet cannot see. My favourite moment, she finishes the song, turns and takes a final drag of her cigarette, perfect for the lyrics of the song.

This is the purpose of the blog. Is there ever a purpose. Yes, maybe not. Everything exists. That is the essence of this blog actually. I think that the deep thoughts are often tautologies and the obvious, but they are the obvious which we have difficulty seeing/ knowing/ understanding. I have been reading Heidegger, Being and Time, and his first argument is that daesin, being there is the essence of being and that a question presupposes an answer. Perhaps the being of being is an unanswerable question because the definition is constantly in flux. But by asking the question we ask it in a way that we can understand the answer that was presupposed the moment of the asking. Daesin, being there, is so difficult to uncover because it is so near, it is everywhere, it structures our being and understanding and this is precisely why we cannot understand it. Okay. I agree.

I was listening to my Amnesiac album. I love it, probably in my top five favourite albums, all time. The cover is a book. Reminds me of of Fahrenheit 451. I never noticed that it was a book until today. I never paid attention to the visual rhetoric. That is the brilliant thing about radiohead, they actually pay attention to everything, and are well read. Amnesiac eh? Here comes the state the obvious. Amnesiacs are labeled as such because they forget part of their life. They forget what they experienced, learned etc and can only remember the present, in some cases at least. The interesting thing is the usage. Amnesiacs are labeled by society. How can those that lose memories know that they lost them. Lost memory in society is the issue. They ask you your name, your home, etc, it is the society that creates amnesia. Think about that.

But this reminds me of altheia. The re-remembering. Perhaps we are all re-remembering something, which of course presupposes that we all have something to forget, which is the problem because we are forgetting all the time. Despite all our efforts, they in turn allow us this forgetting, the internet, google, books, they all allow us to lose our memory....but maybe it is in the re-remembering you get the meaning, or learn something lasting. Is that not it? We all are looking for something meaningful, and perhaps the things that are, are so because we re-remember them, we lose them while maintaining some sort of trace, and upon reopening, upon becoming an amnesiac and re-remembering we find it meaningful, we understand it. This is where I would talk about the problem of our existence and the reason why we have meaning, because we have death. You only stand to gain something by having a life, a life requires a beginning as well as an end, no play in an infinite field says morrissey paraphrasing derrida.

In short, we are all amnesiacs because we forget and re-remember, and we are all products of some social construction that allows us to know that we are in fact amnesiacs. If we can wake up, or when we wake up, I don't know. Perhaps we are all living in a glasshouse that we can never escape because we don't know where the walls are. we lead our lives with the illusion that allows us freedom, but in reality there are walls, there are always walls. That is another issue, by saying that there is a wall you presuppose that there is something outside on the other side of the wall, this is the issue, what if we reach a point where we can't fathom our own being, which we have, we can't fathom our own universe because of this issue. You can't define the system that structures and binds/bounds your world because you don't have the capacity to say what is outside of the system. You can't draw that box simply because all you see and know is the paper.

My Writing

Michael, it has suddenly dawned on me that you are not a native speaker of English. I hope that is the case. I never would have guessed from your speech in class. If are, you’ve got some fundamental problems with grammar, punctuation, etc. I usually understand what you are trying to say, but I’m going to stop nit-picking in the hope that you will try to understand the previous comments and implement them in your writing--Dr. Spede

kaizen as a form of marxism?

Kaizen--continuous improvement. Only value-adding processes, managers are there to support the workers and create policy for continual improvement. Maintain and improve. Update the standards. Go to the place were the work is being done. But:

One of the guiding ideas is that we can manage processes. We can control processes, not the people. Does that sound familiar. It should. Read processes as "modes of production." We can't control the people (through politics) but we can control the processes (modes of production). Thus we can manage the people through control of the processes.


Think about it.

I am changing my major.

Dreams

I tend to have dreams of me discussing/ working out theories and ideas with people. These dreams have included:

Paul Dirac---worked out his delta function completely on my own

Jacques Lacan--talked about freudian theory/ the autre etc...oddly enough I often view things in a strongly Lacanian light...

The Foer Brothers--all of them...read How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin, and after the dream I read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and then Everything is Illuminated...and some articles by Josh...odd

Alain Badiou--I was reading his book, Being and Event...and well I dreamed about meeting him and we discussed his set theory...the matheme vs poem etc...very interesting.

Oh and then i had a dream that I bought a book by Paul Celan and some other unnamed poet from a mafioso sumo wrestler-esque book shoppe owner....

Here Fishy, Fishy

So Dr. Stnaley Fish really doesn't like Continental Philosophy. Sad for him. He really doesn't like Derrida. That is a crime. This is someone who reads Derrida for fun...kicks and giggles. So I responded. He somewhat tried to address my points in his recent blog. They were:

As Derrida said, you can never escape the epoch which
 you can outline.
It seems you outline both deconstruction in America
and the enlightenment,
thus we are forever linked to both. Both “agendas”(your word) tied to our 
speech and our writing.

Perhaps this is just another example of the
Resistance to Theory which
de Man spoke of 40 years ago (what progress we have made).
This is a blatant
refusal to read the text. Despite your own unique brand of
Barthes meets Close readings,
you refuse to read the text
(which intrinsically has a
beautiful multiplicity). The construction of a
web blog on a virtual newspaper site,
if one were to read its text, would show how the flow of
information is changing as well as
offer commentary on the “give it to me now”
aspect of the modern reader.

In other words, the message of
deconstruction still hold true. 
Deconstruction itself confirms
 the hyperpolitcality of texts and affirms
our place within the
“singular of experience.”
I guess you don’t want to keep the “secret.”

— Posted by MD


Our dependence on structure seems to
be the common resistance to Deconstruction.
Deconstruction does not allow itself to “draw a box”
around it. 

Another point, Derrida
 himself questioned the Yale School of Deconstruction,
so perhaps our ideas of
 deconstruction(as it evolved in
the stone halls of
American institutions) should be questioned.
After this, maybe deconstruction
proper to Derrida and the French school should
be investigated.

— Posted by MD



Mr Fish is a critic, the gamut of
the deconstructions are theorists.
There is a large difference beyond
semantics here. Critics read to determine
aesthetic value. Theorist read for
 the play for the operations behind the work.
Fish is a critic.

If you read deconstructionist
(how I loath the word, for it in itself is empty)
 works,
you will realise how science
is actually embedded. As
Baudrillard says, we are in
 a genetic age.
Electrons must spin up
and down at once, photons can be two places at once,
current investigations into
string theory and a unified
TOE. How does this conflict with theories 
about language and readings of text.
We have begun to see not everything
exists in terms of artificial absolutes.
 Read Wittgenstein(an engineer), 
Read Godel(especially his Incompleteness)
and Seth Lloyd’s Programming the
Universe. Modern theory seems
to be moving together
in ways we wish not precisely because
lines are beginning to blur and assault the structures
which we use to define ourselves.

— Posted by MD

Funny to think I got a respected public intellectual figure to respond to me...

The Godfather

Went to my friend's cousin's oyster roast over the weekend. This said cousin is marrying into the publishing dynasty, McGraw Hill. Well, I had to go see the scion of a controller of knowledge. He rolls up in a gold Cadillac, immediately 4 huge, black, umbrellas open and shield the opening door from the rain. He emerges to be seated in his wheelchair. He is rolled, posse in tow, to the table. Dressed in a hunter green suit and cashmere sweater, dapper to the extreme. He meets the family, gives them his blessing with his hands in a pope-esque fashion and eats his pre shucked oysters. Interesting.

Coupled with being the only non-family member with no relation or friendships with the groom or bride, I was the awkward friend who ate a load of oysters and piped in with random comments. Interesting, the Connecticut people did not know how to shuck oysters and thus refrained. Perhaps it was their $750 designer jeans, silk sports coats or maybe it was those $300-500 shoes that they didn't want to injure...I do not know, but more oysters for us.

The reason I hate Faulkner is this...his stories are the stories of my family. I respect his works, his writing style, his mastery, but I hate the stories. My family is deep south decadence, falling deeper as the pages of history are turned. Mayflower to now. Ask about this, I'll write more(actualy a great story).

Saffron Robes

Saw three buddhist monks today eating lunch. In traditional saffron robes and less monk-conventional red polar fleece jackets, they sat with that ethereal inner calm and peaceful demeanor, the kind that you can see, feel even as they slowly drank their hot tea. What calm, you could feel the lack of worry, anxiety was cleared from their air, their aura.

Read an article about book snobbery. It made me laugh to say the least...we all do it. I do at least...I mean it is moderately important...books, music, art, food...those little nuisances.

Serendipity

It's those conversation that just happen, sometimes with a stranger that are the most fruitful and wonderful. Yesterday, I went down to McClures. I knew that they had a book I wanted...Althusser, the philosopher who is as my friend says is "batshitcrazy." I knew I would need to read Althusser for my research and pursuing critical work on the pied noir..my heros. I knew it would be an akward checkout, for the book was titled "Lenin and Philosophy."

I took it to Mr. McClure and he immediatly asked, "What's ya maja." Chemical Engineering..."my man!...what class"...I knew this would happen...I am writing a thesis on the pied noir, Camus, Derrida and I figured I need to read Althusser as well...maybe he won't ask anymore..."What's ya thesis" The position of the outsider, they as french algerian jews in algeria in their youth, off to be educated in paris at the ecole excluding camus, but they still constituted this realm of not belonging, the other embodied and it reflects in their writing..."well have you read Axel's Castle? he says that the writer, the author embodies a position as an outsida, that's why they write"...well I am not aquainted with that work, but I have heard about that and it seems to be a very modern point, or at least a romantic one, that they are in a unique position to "know" but the pied noir were a product to some extent of their social environ and how they took this youth experience and how they took on the french discipline and modified it, made new truths, that what interests me..."well if ya find something, you might have a place in publishing books"...I hope so...

We then discussed Camus as a writer, a journalist and a philosopher vs Satre, the philosophy or anti philosophy of Derrida, the transition of the world from Newtonian deterministic causality to the genetic/ quantum engineering. The phone rang he asked for my name and it ended. Over too soon. That was fun. That is what makes life interesting, those little conversations about the things that matter, that are exciting. I am a dork, yes, but thats what I love, that's my yearning.

Reign Over Me
Love the scooter. Acting was odd, it was serious then it got kind of glib, it just almost didn't work but it worked out.

Breathless
Classic Godard. Extremely existential, but had a lot of true points. I would watch it, just for the experience.

Two Days in Paris
One of my new favourites. I love culture clash, French, francoamerican women and the commentary on American society and the consistent Godard references. It was hilarious. Don't feed the cat foie gras...hah. Definately worth a watch or two.

Annie Hall
Yeah, I watched this with my art class, seen it before but it deserves a place on the list. Woody's character is awesome...and familiar....

End with some quotes from a book I finished this morning. EII by JSF, so poignant, the dialogue so real, but hyper real..but moments of crystal truth.

"Brod's realisation was that the world was not for her...she would never be happy and honest at the same time"

"Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does"

"Why are the painful things always electromagnets"

"I don't know. I was just too afraid. I knew I wasn't supposed to ask, so I didn't"
"Perhaps she was desiring you to ask"

"JEWS HAVE SIX SENSES: Touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing...memory."



There are others, but that is all I want to type at this point.

Country Road, Take Me Home

Whenever West Virginia U. performs well in athletics, I am reminded of the two (separate weeks) I was in that armpit of the world. It is also the birthplace of several nicknames.

My high school football coach decided that we needed to run a west coast spread offense and West Virginia's in exactitude. What do we do? We go to football camp up there. The offense only, primarily the offensive linemen and our running backs and quarterback. Now after the long ride up there in a van with my o-line coach and 4 of my teammates, we reached the famous (hah) WVU campus after rounds of music trivia which I beasted them all in. There we met Rich Rod and his minion from hell, Rick Trickett(now with FSU).

Coach Trickett was by far the meanest, most foul mouthed, hard-nosed football coach I had ever met. He served two tours in vietnam as a Marine Corps Captain, won several purple hearts and had a Bronze Star. A war hero to say the least. He stood at an impressive 5'6", but he was lean, had the look of a hungry wolf about him. Even more terrifying electric blue eyes, steely in their gaze, he could see into your soul, or so we thought.

Now being from Dutch Fork we have a certain swagger. We know we are good, we know we are smarted than you, we are just better than you. That translated poorly, especially when we were viewed as "southerners," but we could compete. They put our starting o-line in the group personally coached by Trickett. This included all the major prospects..the big guys..the 6'6" Florida mammoth and the two 6'5" 300+lb brothers from Morgantown. Our line was big, but lean, and me, I was a baby in the group, but I could hold my own. Technique had always been my saving grace. I have a quick first step and worked hard to be the best, even when my physical gifts failed me. I knew angles, how to place my hands, I could beat you off the line and could probably block you though I was the smallest one out there. But I made an easy target for Trickett.

When we rotated our second string into the main group, I went down to the other coach with the "normal" kids. Well it seems my replacement had down very poorly and I heart a yell, "Get that fuckin' fuzzy headed kid back up here," bellowed that short angry man...well my coach then responded, "Dewey get up here, now." I ran and was greeted by trickett grabbing a handful of my curly hair and yelling in my face "Fuckin' fuzzy, show him how to run it" I ran it. Fuckin' Fuzzy...a gross departure from my nickname then and now, the only name I seem to respond to, Dewey, bestowed on me by one of favourite coaches when I went into full body cramps but refused to sit out. Now I had fuckin' fuzzy.

Well it didn't stop. Trickett decided that he was going to break me. I always did something wrong, at least in his eyes. I was told that I was a fuckin' piece of shiot. Garbage. That he would stick his foot so far up my ass that I would need to go to the hospital to pull hit out. He slapped me with his hat(the metal part...stang a bit, but never show pain). I didn't allow any of this verbal abuse get to me; I was there to learn. He tore down my technique, told me I was slow, and I just asked, "Tell me what I need to do...Teach me." Well it never stopped, but I learned, got better. The verbal attacks got even more furious. Finally at the end of the week, I shook his hand and told him I couldn't wait till next year, smiling. He later told one of my coaches that he threw everything in his book at me and I didn't break. That hasn't happened before.

I nearly got in a fight with someone up there as well. I roomed with a random West Virginian, I think his name was Ike, not like the president though. His parents brought him sea food everynight. He had a shaved head and weighed nigh over 320lb, but we talked about pick-up trucks at night, something I know a good deal about with my jacked up 85 Toyota. Well, one evening as I was talking to my mom on the phone, the guy next door came in. He heard me tell my mother I loved her. He then proceeded to walk in and said he could "kick my ass." I wasn't in the mood to put up with it. I told him "Go ahead, do it, you want to do it in here or out in the hall" He was probably about 6'2" 220lb, lean, olive complection and also was being recruited to play linebacker at WVU and Maryland. I shouldn't have pressed him. I pressed him. "Lets do this, quick talking" I said. "Are you crazy kid, I am being recruited by here and Maryland, I would destroy you," He yelled. "Let's fuckin' do this then, destroy me, you afraid of me, you talk a lot and don't seem to want to fight, I am being recruited by Miami and OSU so lets just settle this now." It wasn't exactly a lie, more an untruth. I had received academic information from Miami and Ohio State...recruiting is recruiting right? "Man you don't want this, I will destroy" He repeated, realising the growing crowd. "Listen, we do this now, I am coming over there, I am going to hurt you, you won't get back up, you won't play college ball anywhere, you will be a bloody mess when they find you, so quit talking because it is going down now," I responded knwoing that that would probably end his threats. It did, he said, "forget you" and walked out of my room. I was glad. I did not want to fight that kid because he probably could have injured me, but I could have got a few good ones in...but I knew he wouldn't fight...it was just the fact that he picked on me to show how masculine he was, but he was afraid.

Well, we decided to go up there again. He was there; I was there. So it began again. He continued his abuse, verbal and physical..kicks and hits, I asked questions and gave answers. "We have eighteen inch splits(gap between the linemen) because that isthe size of your pecker. SIR." Well, one night old rick came to talk to me. He heard that I was smart, so we started talking about what I was going to do in life, what were my interests. He encouraged me to continue with my research (I had a two year research project going on at that time).

Our nice talk was an intelligence gathering operation. He now had more information to lambast me with. "Fuckin' Dewey (we told him my real nickname this time) I wouldn't walk over anything you built you fuckin' engineer." I was going into civil engineering you dumbass I thought, but I didn't say that. More about these bridges I was apparently going to built that would collapse, but my favourite insult..."I hear they call you the jack-off king of South Carolina" said Trickett, "Yes sir, that's what they call me," I rang back. That caught him off guard. The old man laughed as he repeated my answer...I smirked in my small victory.

Later he proceed to try to box me (as in boxing) he started the throw some jabs at me..I stood there and he told me to play along. I said, "Yes, sir" and began to tack my defensive position. Little did he know that I knew a bit about boxing and had been doing boxing training exercises...I put my hands up and he tried to through a jab hook combo, I ducked and dodged the hook and hank a left jab to a right hook and stopped my fist outside his jaw...he stopped and said thats enough. He knew I would have knocked him out cold. We finally had some measure of understanding for each other. Beneath my cool demeanor, I knew a decent bit. Not as much as he, but I knew when it was time to stand up for myself. It's never personal until someone makes it personal with me. I never lost my temper with him, I was there to learn and he finally figured out that he couldn't effect me with his banter or abuse.

He wished me a good senior year and told me he expected me to do something great, to invent something and never forget about him and all the things I learned. I told him thanks and we shook hands and that was that. I thought about playing ball somewhere and even considered going to West Point (planned on it) until a chance play in the second game of my senior year...the first offensive play..14:52 on the clock and then a body into my knee, I knew something was wrong. It didn't hurt, it just felt wrong, like something was gone. I walked gingerly to the huddle. I got into my stance, but something was wrong, it felt as though my lower leg had slid forward when I got down (well I didn't know it at the time...but it did). I played that play and ran off to the sideline. It was one of my principles to never stop play for any of my injuries...I had played an entire game(and season) with an untreated broken wrist, crawled off the field after a high ankle sprain, but something was odd this time. I got it checked out and I told them what I felt,a long night with lots of ice and an MRI later, my PCL was torn...off, they only see it in serious car accidents. No surgery to fix it.

I rehabbed. It hurt. I only got through it because I knew I could play again, I put up with Trickett, I could conquer anything. We lost in the playoffs on a bad snap the game before I was allowed to come back. Football ended early.'

West Virginia thought me that life doesn't wait on you. You have to take what it gives you. It isn't personal, it's just the way it is. It is cold and hard, but you learn, and eventually you get to a point where you can do what you want, you just have to be ready for it..know it's there, but you can take, no matter what, what is thrown at you, no matter how shitty, how awful, you can pull through it.