I've been neglecting housework these past weeks as I race to finish up this semester. Certainly, if I used the time I spent procrastinating on chores, I would have both a clean home and time to complete my academic work. Still I procrastinate.
I've just - finally - scoured my stove. I've been meaning to do this for weeks; every time I've walked into the kitchen, the caked-on grease splatters, spill-overs and crumbs have drawn from my lips a sigh as despairing as a dirge. That stove has been taunting me, reminding me that I have not been on top of things, that I fail, that I have not been managing my time properly, that I have not been feeding myself properly, that I am undernourished and not only in terms of dinner.
I have so very much to do today. Deadlines have kaleidoscoped - they seem to have infinitely expanded. But just now I have finally scoured the stove. It sparkles, it shines, it practically sings. I feel more relaxed than I have in days. Finishing the dishes doesn't seem so daunting. Outlining one more chapter of Nietzsche? Peachy. 20 more pages of Beauvoir? I'll do more! Plato? Great-o. Grading? ugh. grating. (ok, this is going to annoy even myself now!)
The point being that I should realize by now just how important these seemingly trivial chores really are. Doing the dishes, folding the laundry, scouring the stove are such mindless, easy chores, none of which can really be done while also doing anything school-related. But when they are not done, they elicit such a sense of failure - "I can't even get my laundry folded! I am a miserable wretch!" every single time.
Clearly it is not enough to have sparkling moments academically. My stove must also sparkle. There's going to be a metaphor in here somewhere. probably something having to do with my character. probably having something to do with dark, unscoured corners of my ethical orientations which seem trivial and easily brushed aside. But then, I've got too much work to do to spend time fully exploring this ... ;-)
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Saturday, April 5, 2008
mirrors everywhere
It is humbling and a bit disconcerting to imagine yourself as others see you, particularly when the reflection is less than flattering. I am lately reminded of my snobbery and my pretension. In efforts to distance myself from particular behaviors and traits I find unattractive in my friends, I elevate myself to push them down and away. By so doing, I show myself just as pettily related to those behaviors and quite the antithesis of the cool, collected, superior being I wish to be.
Just yesterday I indulged in some eye-rolling and grumbling about an acquaintance who tries to engage conversations with those she considers intellectual superiors but social equals in - what seems to be - a plea for affirmation and validation. Just a few hours after this 'indulgence', having chatted with a professor while ever-so-slightly under the influence, I was uncomfortably reminded of my dismissal of this acquaintance. I genuinely like this professor and I enjoy conversations with him. Further, I miss having conversations with people who are not, strictly speaking, my peers; having left Beck's my day-to-day conversations and community have been more limited in range. However, looking back on the rather rambling, disjointed conversation I carried on, I wonder just to what extent I resembled the young woman of whom I was so indulgently scornful. Just how much petting and approbation was I looking for? How tedious was my nattering?
How do I go about reminding myself, continually, to be generous in my opinions and attitudes toward others? When I find myself puffing up, wanting to distance myself from an opinion, an attitude, a statement, a mode of comportment, how do I make myself relax, ease up, let go and exhale?
How do I remind myself to re-orient myself ethically toward the one I see, toward those I cannot see, toward the one next to me, to myself?
Just yesterday I indulged in some eye-rolling and grumbling about an acquaintance who tries to engage conversations with those she considers intellectual superiors but social equals in - what seems to be - a plea for affirmation and validation. Just a few hours after this 'indulgence', having chatted with a professor while ever-so-slightly under the influence, I was uncomfortably reminded of my dismissal of this acquaintance. I genuinely like this professor and I enjoy conversations with him. Further, I miss having conversations with people who are not, strictly speaking, my peers; having left Beck's my day-to-day conversations and community have been more limited in range. However, looking back on the rather rambling, disjointed conversation I carried on, I wonder just to what extent I resembled the young woman of whom I was so indulgently scornful. Just how much petting and approbation was I looking for? How tedious was my nattering?
How do I go about reminding myself, continually, to be generous in my opinions and attitudes toward others? When I find myself puffing up, wanting to distance myself from an opinion, an attitude, a statement, a mode of comportment, how do I make myself relax, ease up, let go and exhale?
How do I remind myself to re-orient myself ethically toward the one I see, toward those I cannot see, toward the one next to me, to myself?
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
I don't want you to feel ... X
I don't want you to feel guilty about
I don't want you to feel sad about
I don't want you to feel angry about
I don't want you to worry about
I don't want you to feel sorry for
These are (generally) well-intentioned sentiments, and I do not want to denigrate those good intentions.
But it doesn't really matter, does it? We really are blind, aren't we? Feeling around in the dark, denied access to everyone else's thoughts, feelings, meanings and intentions. How silly we are when we say "please don't feel/think X." As though our saying so could prevent or remove the feeling. As though we could actually intentionally change another person's perspective.
When 'you' say: please don't think that I think X about you, do you see what you're doing? No.
Ok. When I say: please don't think that I think X about you, I am acknowledging the possibility for you to think that I think X. By so saying, I have, actually, already thought X. But I don't like X and I see the harmfulness of X and so I don't want you to think I've thought X because if you thought I thought X then you would be hurt and you also might think less of me or love me a little less or ...
When I ask you to not feel a certain way, I acknowledge its possibility while refusing to accept what I admittedly think would be a reasonable response were X the case.
If I ask you to not think of me that I think of you in a way in which I don't think you want to be thought, could it possibly be true that I am actually revealing more of my own insecurities about what you think of me? I say: please don't think I'm angry with you. But am I not perhaps meaning: please don't be angry with me?
How foolish to ask people to not think things, as though the asking doesn't require the one to think the very thing you don't want her to think.
So when I worry that perhaps you will think X of me, or that you will feel Y toward me, perhaps I will do better to examine the ways in which you occasion a way of worrying about myself that I can only understand when I see myself in you. When I worry that you will think X about me, it may be more true that I worry that you will see X in me. When I worried that my lover was not making sufficient progress toward his degree, that worry had nothing to do with him. I saw myself in him reflected back to me and worried about myself through him and then mistakenly projected that worry and irritation onto him.
When I worry that, for example, you will think I'm selfish, I might be more honest if I said instead "I worry that I will find that I am selfish when I see myself reflected back to myself in you"
I don't want you to feel sad about
I don't want you to feel angry about
I don't want you to worry about
I don't want you to feel sorry for
These are (generally) well-intentioned sentiments, and I do not want to denigrate those good intentions.
But it doesn't really matter, does it? We really are blind, aren't we? Feeling around in the dark, denied access to everyone else's thoughts, feelings, meanings and intentions. How silly we are when we say "please don't feel/think X." As though our saying so could prevent or remove the feeling. As though we could actually intentionally change another person's perspective.
When 'you' say: please don't think that I think X about you, do you see what you're doing? No.
Ok. When I say: please don't think that I think X about you, I am acknowledging the possibility for you to think that I think X. By so saying, I have, actually, already thought X. But I don't like X and I see the harmfulness of X and so I don't want you to think I've thought X because if you thought I thought X then you would be hurt and you also might think less of me or love me a little less or ...
When I ask you to not feel a certain way, I acknowledge its possibility while refusing to accept what I admittedly think would be a reasonable response were X the case.
If I ask you to not think of me that I think of you in a way in which I don't think you want to be thought, could it possibly be true that I am actually revealing more of my own insecurities about what you think of me? I say: please don't think I'm angry with you. But am I not perhaps meaning: please don't be angry with me?
How foolish to ask people to not think things, as though the asking doesn't require the one to think the very thing you don't want her to think.
So when I worry that perhaps you will think X of me, or that you will feel Y toward me, perhaps I will do better to examine the ways in which you occasion a way of worrying about myself that I can only understand when I see myself in you. When I worry that you will think X about me, it may be more true that I worry that you will see X in me. When I worried that my lover was not making sufficient progress toward his degree, that worry had nothing to do with him. I saw myself in him reflected back to me and worried about myself through him and then mistakenly projected that worry and irritation onto him.
When I worry that, for example, you will think I'm selfish, I might be more honest if I said instead "I worry that I will find that I am selfish when I see myself reflected back to myself in you"
Sunday, March 30, 2008
love hopes all things and is not put to shame
The way Kierkegaard discusses the story of the prodigal son/expectant father (Luke 15) can leave a reader a bit stuck in the language which could lead the reader to forget Kierkegaard's larger point.
For Kierkegaard, we are the expectant father who waits and watches the distances, hoping against belief that his son will return. We are the father whose other son resents our longing for the prodigal. We are the father at whom our neighbors laugh and pity. In a "real" family (and not a metaphysical one), given a family, a father/parent raises up and knows the son/child intimately, often better than the child knows him/herself. A "real" parent has memories which remind her of her child even during long absences. A parent of a lost child closes her eyes and calls up an eye color, the curl in a lock of hair, the texture of a cheek.
If we are the expectant father waiting and watching for, for example, the Son, then we do not have such memory to remind us that we ever even had a Son. Indeed, we become a father to a Son we never raised up from infancy, with whom we were never pregnant. But this may be to become too connected to language.
For Kierkegaard, and for Christians, yes, there must be expectant waiting for the Son. But this is not the only Good for which we always wait. If the only Good we can recognize is a Son we've never seen, we may miss the Goods that reveal themselves in other ways.
If love hopes all things, then there can be no discrete content - no definite object - to the hoping. Hope is relating only to the expectation of something good. Can we be so arrogant to exhaustively know the manifestations of Goodness? If love also believes all things and is never deceived, then *all things* must be related to Goodness - we must believe them to be so. Love acknowledges that this action, word, event, relation, situation appears bad - even hateful - and persists in believing that there is a deeper love motivating it. If all things - even those that appear hateful - may be related to love, then in hoping, love hopes for a goodness which is ... everything.
To love then is to relate to the world, to existence, in a way that calls forth love continually. To love is to continually orient oneself toward hope and away from fear; toward belief and away from despair; toward goodness and away from self-pity. Further, it is to do this without any other promise, for itself and for no other wishing for reward. Love must always be its own reward and not a talisman against nihilism. Love must be an orientation and not a tool for achievement.
Love hopes all things - and wishes none of them concretely. For hope to be loving hope, it must be willing to accept everything and to continually will to orient itself toward what is as love.
For Kierkegaard, we are the expectant father who waits and watches the distances, hoping against belief that his son will return. We are the father whose other son resents our longing for the prodigal. We are the father at whom our neighbors laugh and pity. In a "real" family (and not a metaphysical one), given a family, a father/parent raises up and knows the son/child intimately, often better than the child knows him/herself. A "real" parent has memories which remind her of her child even during long absences. A parent of a lost child closes her eyes and calls up an eye color, the curl in a lock of hair, the texture of a cheek.
If we are the expectant father waiting and watching for, for example, the Son, then we do not have such memory to remind us that we ever even had a Son. Indeed, we become a father to a Son we never raised up from infancy, with whom we were never pregnant. But this may be to become too connected to language.
For Kierkegaard, and for Christians, yes, there must be expectant waiting for the Son. But this is not the only Good for which we always wait. If the only Good we can recognize is a Son we've never seen, we may miss the Goods that reveal themselves in other ways.
If love hopes all things, then there can be no discrete content - no definite object - to the hoping. Hope is relating only to the expectation of something good. Can we be so arrogant to exhaustively know the manifestations of Goodness? If love also believes all things and is never deceived, then *all things* must be related to Goodness - we must believe them to be so. Love acknowledges that this action, word, event, relation, situation appears bad - even hateful - and persists in believing that there is a deeper love motivating it. If all things - even those that appear hateful - may be related to love, then in hoping, love hopes for a goodness which is ... everything.
To love then is to relate to the world, to existence, in a way that calls forth love continually. To love is to continually orient oneself toward hope and away from fear; toward belief and away from despair; toward goodness and away from self-pity. Further, it is to do this without any other promise, for itself and for no other wishing for reward. Love must always be its own reward and not a talisman against nihilism. Love must be an orientation and not a tool for achievement.
Love hopes all things - and wishes none of them concretely. For hope to be loving hope, it must be willing to accept everything and to continually will to orient itself toward what is as love.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
the corrections. middlesex. brothers and sisters
i wish my family life appeared to me as a story as bittersweet and wonderful and disappointing and perfect as do these moving, strange, improbable, real fictions. family relationships seem to have such potential for definition. in particular, the parent-child relationship is deeply interesting to me. how strange it must be to have a child! i cannot even imagine what it must be like to birth yourself into the role of parent. to be that someone for a someone else. to love someone imperfectly and completely and to receive imperfect love in return.
i don't suppose we can ever really understand our parents until we have children ourselves. reproducing our families, we meet our parents again in our bodies and ourselves in our children.
i don't suppose we can ever really understand our parents until we have children ourselves. reproducing our families, we meet our parents again in our bodies and ourselves in our children.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
pantoum
this is not the end of the world
i will keep repeating myself
nothing is ever written in stone
there is still room and time for change
i will keep repeating myself
acting and speaking in ways i regret
there is still room and time for change
after all i'm not yet dead
acting and speaking in ways i regret
is not a death sentence
and after all i am not yet dead
and the same tree makes new leaves each year
regret is not a death sentence
nothing is ever written in stone
the same tree will make new leaves
and this is not the end of the world
i am falling in love with the pantoum. this is my third one. i am not yet very good. my poetry skills (such as they ever were) are a bit rusty. but the repetition keeps calling to me and this attempt shows why: my life seems to move in concentric circles. i repeat the same patterns over and over and over again. but each repetition carries a different weight; brings new meanings and significances. if i can begin to think of each repetition as progress, perhaps i can stop myself from despairing every time i find myself repeating behaviors and thought-processes i hate. spiraling outward, not in.
i will keep repeating myself
nothing is ever written in stone
there is still room and time for change
i will keep repeating myself
acting and speaking in ways i regret
there is still room and time for change
after all i'm not yet dead
acting and speaking in ways i regret
is not a death sentence
and after all i am not yet dead
and the same tree makes new leaves each year
regret is not a death sentence
nothing is ever written in stone
the same tree will make new leaves
and this is not the end of the world
i am falling in love with the pantoum. this is my third one. i am not yet very good. my poetry skills (such as they ever were) are a bit rusty. but the repetition keeps calling to me and this attempt shows why: my life seems to move in concentric circles. i repeat the same patterns over and over and over again. but each repetition carries a different weight; brings new meanings and significances. if i can begin to think of each repetition as progress, perhaps i can stop myself from despairing every time i find myself repeating behaviors and thought-processes i hate. spiraling outward, not in.
Monday, February 25, 2008
plato procrastination
oh to be heard!
oh to express!
these must be some of the sentiments driving the insane number of blogs out there. mine too. is this just as meaningful a 'community'?
i could share all kinds of neat things here. or i could pontificate majestically and often. what have you. what is interesting is that those are the sorts of things we used to share more with family, neighbors, customers, teachers, children. we get to craft our audiences now, culling from the population at large the most generous, receptive audience we can find.
- you make your own home-made laundry soap with sustainable, green ingredients??? omg, me too!!!! you are sooooooo cool!
- you are trying to save money by reusing things, not buying things and cultivating overall thriftiness??? wowowowow!!! awesomes!!!
- you love to shop for makeup far too often and spend too much money when rent is due and have to live on bread and yogurt sometimes because you simply had to have a new pair of boots????? *soulmates*
the point is that, though there are some variances within these little niche communities, and though finding people with the same goals and aims as you can be really validating and really, really important, it seems, perhaps, a bit lopsided. a bit off-balance. a bit like seeing the world through a kaleidoscope and exulting in the beautiful patterns 'of the world' when you've put them there yourself.
as a student in the academy, i have the privilege of doing whatever i want most of the time (within reason, we're not talking spur of the moment trips to prague). i can read what i like, write as often as i like, spend my days rolling around in theory theory theory. i have the leisure to volunteer, to spend time with friends, to take in (cheap) chicago culture. i have no kids, no husband, no family nearby to take up my time. only me and cat.
on the other hand, without appealing to the "real world" so often spoken of, i wonder if this does not make me - like most others in other such crafted communities - a bit like a bonsai tree, or like a hothouse plant. i seem to flourish. but just how well can i actually withstand opposition - wind, changes in temperature, drought, parasites? which plant is healthier: the lush hothouse plant or the smaller, ragged outdoor one? which plant is hardier: the sheltered plant or the interdependent one?
i can craft elegant sentences. i can logically connect them and construct a balanced, meaningful and beautiful paragraph. i can recognize failures in reasoning. i can connect such failures to larger patterns of thinking. but can i withstand opposition? where reason is not recognized as an authority, to what can i appeal? where the syllogism obscures, rather than corrects, understanding, how can i speak? where events defy ordering, how can i think?
i am well-prepared for a living of thinking. but for community? this is uncertain.
confronted with those who will not listen, can i make myself heard?
oh to express!
these must be some of the sentiments driving the insane number of blogs out there. mine too. is this just as meaningful a 'community'?
i could share all kinds of neat things here. or i could pontificate majestically and often. what have you. what is interesting is that those are the sorts of things we used to share more with family, neighbors, customers, teachers, children. we get to craft our audiences now, culling from the population at large the most generous, receptive audience we can find.
- you make your own home-made laundry soap with sustainable, green ingredients??? omg, me too!!!! you are sooooooo cool!
- you are trying to save money by reusing things, not buying things and cultivating overall thriftiness??? wowowowow!!! awesomes!!!
- you love to shop for makeup far too often and spend too much money when rent is due and have to live on bread and yogurt sometimes because you simply had to have a new pair of boots????? *soulmates*
the point is that, though there are some variances within these little niche communities, and though finding people with the same goals and aims as you can be really validating and really, really important, it seems, perhaps, a bit lopsided. a bit off-balance. a bit like seeing the world through a kaleidoscope and exulting in the beautiful patterns 'of the world' when you've put them there yourself.
as a student in the academy, i have the privilege of doing whatever i want most of the time (within reason, we're not talking spur of the moment trips to prague). i can read what i like, write as often as i like, spend my days rolling around in theory theory theory. i have the leisure to volunteer, to spend time with friends, to take in (cheap) chicago culture. i have no kids, no husband, no family nearby to take up my time. only me and cat.
on the other hand, without appealing to the "real world" so often spoken of, i wonder if this does not make me - like most others in other such crafted communities - a bit like a bonsai tree, or like a hothouse plant. i seem to flourish. but just how well can i actually withstand opposition - wind, changes in temperature, drought, parasites? which plant is healthier: the lush hothouse plant or the smaller, ragged outdoor one? which plant is hardier: the sheltered plant or the interdependent one?
i can craft elegant sentences. i can logically connect them and construct a balanced, meaningful and beautiful paragraph. i can recognize failures in reasoning. i can connect such failures to larger patterns of thinking. but can i withstand opposition? where reason is not recognized as an authority, to what can i appeal? where the syllogism obscures, rather than corrects, understanding, how can i speak? where events defy ordering, how can i think?
i am well-prepared for a living of thinking. but for community? this is uncertain.
confronted with those who will not listen, can i make myself heard?
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