Living life?

We all have some kind of romantic notion of what our future holds. At least at some point in our life we do. We all have the capacity to change the world. A few of us may seem to realise our own potential earlier and strive towards it, others may squander it on the seeming vices of life. Other might just decide to take a path, not less noble by any means, but a path which takes them on a course with the mundane. We all do it. Especially on a blog community where it seems we all have a soul that seeks to expand, even perhaps to escape the confines of this reality. Always with a foot in a door to a place we all hope to glimpse, yet never quite reach. The author, the artist, the romantic lover, the poet, the adventurer, the dare devil…all these archetypes which seem to be beckons for those souls who realise that an end, perhaps even THE END lurks behind each corner. We know it is there. We see it in the faces of friends and loves, we feel it in a handshake or an embrace, we hear it when the birds fly away for the winter. It is there. Perhaps it is something unique to those who pay attention and can become the writers and artists that they are cursed with this awareness, yet this awareness comes with a power. To live, to live fully and to be self full, beyond some kind of fast food religious experience, the possibility to enjoy life in its entirety. Each moment is captured by a memory that knows that it is failing, that it has only one chance itself to catch a fleeting moment, when even the mechanism of memory is itself an enterprise that knows its own end, forgetting. But it is through this experiencing that we can live to know it. Each moment is all the more powerful, enchanting. To live is a wonderful thing.

All too often my friends and roommates seek to find entertainment through drinking themselves into oblivion, to lose themselves to alcohol just to seek some weird reprieve from reality and just mindlessly chase loose women. I cannot say that I am innocent by any means, but still—it seems a waste to life, to oneself to just try to escape it all.

Life is just there. Always beckoning to dance, it sits and continually presents us with itself. We can try to avoid it, to seek routine, to seek distraction, to seek some voiding factor, yet it is always there even when we try to ignore it, it will find us.

I meant to write about having to fix my toilet after it flooded my bathroom. Not a pleasant sight to see an inch of water in one’s second story bathroom, but I handled it deftly. I am among the world’s most reluctant engineers, but I really can fix things when the need be. An attribute gained from my father no doubt. He never lets anything leave the house that he has not attempted to fix. From cars (which also broke down, but he and I repaired it) to toys (he once reconstructed and super-glued one of my sister’s porcelain dolls) to jewelry to electronics…no system is too complex to be challenged and repaired. I learned as well when I was a mechanic one summer, if you look at a machine or a system, no matter how complicated it may be, it was made by man and should be looked at like any other machine from a wristwatch to a three story manufacturing process. No reason to be intimidated.

I also found my super oversized glasses. I may try to wear them now, since being ironic is the cool think to do.

A Motorcycle ride

I took a hiatus from writing. It seems that when life appears to be good, I stop writing. A travesty I should say. During those times, I do let myself appear in more pictures, which is a bit odd. I hate to write but I allow myself to be photographed. Reverse when I feel the reverse. I love to take photographs though, unconditionally.

I was riding my motorcycle the other day, a long very much needed ride, when about 23 miles into my journey, I lost my odometer and my speedometer. When I ride I just follow the road, each time taking a new and unexplored path. Here I was now, in the middle of a road without any signs of life, scenery I had never experienced, headed away from my home without any guage of how fast I was going except the wind in my face and the rpms of the bike. I suddenly realised that this was perfectly analogous to life. We are always speeding away from some origin, never really knowing how far we have gone or how fast we are going. We just drive and drive without knowing exactly how much gasoline is left in the tank, all the while debating when it is time to turn back, to find a pit stop, to quit...but the open road and unseen sights beckon us to go further. Even then we wonder which side roads to take and which roads to continue down.

I road and explored for several more hours, each minute feeling a bit uneasy, yet the same time oddly free. I rarely saw any other human, and just hummed down the road as fast I could at time, and at other times a nice leisurely pace. I saw creeks and rivers, abandoned towns and forests. Each moment I seemed to be navigating through a new and unexplored world, each memory I had to hold as I knew the fuel in the tank was running lower and lower. I eventually turned back, just in time to get home before dark, with all but fumes remaining of my once full gas tank.

Just like life.

An Update

All is well. Such a pleasant thing to say, that it. I can't sleep though. I came home for mothers day to see the family and such. Always a pleasant experience, well most of the time.

Ever wonder about the nature of memories? Notice, when you tell a story over and over again that it becomes your own, to the point that you create memories that support it. Does it matter if it really happened when you repeat it to another? For you it happen, or maybe you know the truth is wrapped in the story you tell but you cannot separate it out. For Lacan and Caruth, memory is a source of an ethics of sorts. Now because of this, what is the responsibility of memories that are a bit twisted by the story that fits them.

I ran into an attorney who reads Baudrillard. It was a wonderful experience.

Meeting and Philosophy

I feel lonely. I do not know why. Today it just hit me, very strongly. I was putting some things away and reorganizing my bookshelf and then it hit me. Like a freight train or a ton of bricks. I realised that time does pass, that people move away and you might never see them again. People you love, even people you dislike. They role in and out of your life before you realise you love them and miss them. How strange that really is.

Went to one of my mentor's houses for dinner. It really was wonderful. He has a wall filled with books. a library, but those are the books he doesn't really like...the good ones are in his office. He and his wife absolutely love each other and love their kids. The kids are all highly intelligent and love chess. The food was good, the drink was exquisite. The port was delicious. However, the amazing thing happened later. Here we were speaking of dealing with the implications of a finite life, about good illusions and bad illusions, as had sat there with his two year old son in his lap. It was amazing to think about.

Freud and Books

Three words create the title. The first a name, a proper name. What then to evoke a proper name? In naming, in the proper name there is a death of sorts, but also a remembrance, an ethics of memory in the proper name that is only possible through death. Next word, a coordinating conjunction. Useful and necessary, but why here, why not any other conjunction. To decide it to limit, is to shut out possibilities, but then it is necessary, no? Finally books. That is to come.


That first paragraph was just my Derrida-esque evaluation of the artificiality of titles. Kidding, but seriously.

Went to my favourite bookstore yesterday. It is my favourite simply because it is within walking distance and the people are great. An old building with oddly tudor-style archetecture. Very out of place in my town. Rows and rowds of shelves housing books there is, everything jam packed on the shelves. I walk in, and the first thing I hear is Bob Dylan on an old radio. Sitting at the nesk, one of the owners of the door, the sign out front baring his name. He is a wiry oild man, late 50s or early 60s perhaps. The colour draining from the tips of his black hair, creating a crown-like effect on his head. He was speaking to a patron of the stoor. The man translated books from German, or so he says. Mr MClure bag nto indulge him, then started to talk about music. First Ray Charles, then to New Orleans style jazz...but then the conversation of which I was privy took a turn. Mr. McClure brought up the fact that we forget so easily our past, that the racial tensions of the 1960s is not dead, but rather forgotten under the auspice of every street named after Martin Luther King, every high school, every award. They don't remind us, they force us to forget the tension that is our past. The thought of John Kennedy, a war hero, battle harden, having to call the Gov'ner of Alabama to get him to allow a single black girl into a public school, his voice trembling in terror, that is what is forgotten. What is forgotton is the need that many black americans felt, to arm themselves against hatred and terror wrecked by felow citizens. How soon we forget.

I bought The Imposible by Georges Bataille. Brilliant book.

T.I. seems to be acting symptomatically on his new album. Why? How? What do you mean? Acting symptomatically because of the trauma of his early life. The song, "Dead and Gone" seems to demonstrate this point very well. On the track he seems to want to kill off his "old" self, to represent a break with the past and thus acreate a new idenitty for which the issues of the old self are not a problem. This is simply a method of cooping. He cannot come to terms with the past and thus create a new me which is exempt from the past. The abuses of the past didn't occur to this new me, that was the old me. This break with the self is a near schizophrenia of sorts. How can we come to terms with our idenity if we seek to create a new one each time something bad happens?

Witty Title

I should be reading. Always something left to read. The world around me is completely inauthentic. Not really, well just a little. More importantly, is that I am living an inauthentic life for some reason. I just can't get out of it.


I remeber one time, I went to the low country. Down to the poor parts near the coast, where they still speak a creole kind of gullah. It is a poetry of sorts, just to listen to them speak. Because they are an insular type, I hate the ubiqiutous they. The people who live in that region are wary of strangers, especially tourists. I don't blame them. Most people point and take photos like they are at some kind of living history or a zoo. I decided I wanted to get close to these people. I took my camera and printed up some made up creditials. I told them I was from National Geographic and I was a photojournalist. I was doing a story about coastal US cultures. That worked well. I told them I was there to find out about their culture and their history, how and why they do things. It was fun. They were accepting of me.

I think that is part of the problem. Some people think hoping right in the middle of another culture is some sort of novelty experience. To be the token, if you will. That isn't the way at all. There is no respect in that. There isn't an ethics. But to learn, to experience as one might, from and through the eyes of another, while maintaining that respect, never making a mockery of it. I don't think people realise that very often. When you jokingly become that strange token bystander you are making a mockery of people. You are invading their life, their culture, their dreams as though you are some god-like deity that can just drop in. Have a good time, laugh it off later.

I know exactly why this bothers me, but I shan't go into it futher.

To steal from Derrida

"If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy."-Richard Yates


Always begin with a quote, or maybe a poem, that way you can frame everything you plan to write in words that are not your own. But in the end, whose words are their own. I was wondering while driving, yes driving, I hate to have to do it, but we can't be picky, just falling into our own reality. ion has been written. We as humans experience a great deal of things. With the mass market and media we "see" more than before. Hence the culture of the 20th and 21st cave been shown everything, from the Holocaust up to the cure for diseases once thought unthinkable, wars, peace, scandals. That being said, it takes words to fit those actions. That is where the art is.

I hat Atlanta. I love it. We have a love hate relationship. The city is so aesthetically unappealing it is funny. Went to a Shakespeare dinner theatre. It was interesting to say the least. Polonius and I made eye-contact and I did one of my awkward facial expressions and made him react. It was fun. However, despite the silly cast and subpar performance.

The real show, the stagee, if you will lay in the street itself. In the city. Cities breathe, you know. Outside of the theatre, in a back alley there was 10-15 homeless people. Half of them drinking 40s (cheap malt liquor). Some of them working as window cleaners for an extorted buck. Half of them asking for change, inquiring about the show and asking for charity, a car ride. Then seeing the drug deals and the hand offs, that is the interesting thing. The theatre crowd mixing with the drug dealers. Now that is life if I have ever heard of it. There is a poetry in that. The poetry of the world, the streets, the word, a strange mix, I will admit, but it is real. Very real. More real than the people who never see it.

Just to say hello

So here goes one for fun. Always busy. Only time to write is now. I love to be spontaneous. Planned spontaneaity if that is possible and not too oxymoronic. Have a schedule enough to get everything done but still have the time and ability to go out and just something.

For instance, last Sunday night, I was painfully bored. I do not know why, perhaps way too much reading. I had the idea to go chase the sun, so I did. I hopped in my car, which I have not driven for some time now and just took off west. While going down the highway, the sun leading my way, I spotted a road. Freshly paved, the asphalt still dark, but eerily secluded. It called to me, it cried to me. I obliged it. I road for some time and when it opened up I was in the middle of a road that split a horse farm. Acres and acres of rolling hills dotted with horses and quaint fences. It was beautiful. Granted I could not share what I saw with anyone--windows down and music blaring, it was wonderful. Much the same, I went walkabout Saturday. No one was around so I just took off walking. I went to the book store and browsed then I kept going. Just taking everything in.

I enjoy that. A good deal actually. That and buying people silly gifts that are so practical that eventually they can't live with out them. But that is the ultimate gift isn't it. Tryannical almost. For some reason I always feel that I am just a dot on people's lives and that I will fade away from memory. I don't know why I think that, but I do regardless.

Crushed

Crushed by work. At least it snowed. It is incredibly comic for me to watch people where I live react to the slightest bit of snow. I am used to operating is less than ideal condition, but in the southern united states people seem to just go crazy when snow falls. People cancel everything at first sign of winter precipitation. People decide that ill equipped cars are good enough to drive in the ice, of course until they get stuck or slide down a hill.

Oh well, people will learn. Or they won't. Either way, it is entertaining once a year.

It Has Been Too Long

Greetings,

I have been crushed by work as of late, as you might has guessed by my (present/haunting) absence. I love it. School is wearing me down, but I have finally found something that I enjoy and am recognized for my skill. That area perhaps is critical theory and perhaps is philosophy. I am taking a seminar on Heidegger's Being and Time and virtually set up a tutorial with one professor. Another tutorial with another professor that centers more on Derrida and that strain of teaching, if we may call it that. All great thinkers. It has taken me years to get to this point, but when it comes you just have to take it by the horns.

That and life is going well as well. Outside of all the drama, I have found someone that will do crosswords with me, will cook with me, with do Ken-Kens with me (A fabulous new math/logic puzzle in the NY Times), will watch my silly movies and come with me when I go on whims. It is most pleasant. And rare. I wish I had more time for it all, but you make time. That is the thing I don't think people get though. You have to make time for people, for the important things in life. I can learn equations and formulas, I can memorise with the best of them, but it is those moments of "ah ha" when you figured out some thought problem, or perhaps even more germane but still puissant--noticing the wrinkles around a mouth that smiles too much and the light freckles on the top of the cheeks. Those gazes, what Derrida and Nancy would say was the stroking gaze, not the striking one. Those moments of infinite closeness and separation in just looking someon in the eyes. They mean something. I do not know what. I don't want to know what. That is the one precious thing that Heidegger never let on to his readers--authentic being in the world, the moment when we make ontological decisions instead of following das Man--but it is what those decisions are that he never mentions. If he were to say them then Herr Heidegger would become das Man, the antithesis of his wishes.

I love it.

I love have pages of readings, each title a seminal work...the Agamben, the Nancy, the Heidegger, the Derrida, the Deleuze, the Spivak, Foucault, Butler, Austen, Zizek, Robespierre, Rousseau, Kant, Hardt, Schmitt, Lacan, Blanchot, Benjamin, Weber...I love it.

I love the paradox of my being. Whitman said that he was full of multitudes, he was a large man. Ethics bowl presenter and a reader of Heidegger. I love those parallax.

To conclude. Everything is well.