productive night

I dreamt last night about some sort of sea monster/subterranean machine - not sure which it was. Perhaps it kept changing. Perhaps it was both. It seemed that I - and one other person - were trying to sufficiently disable the monster/machine so that it wouldn't do damage to anyone, but we didn't know how to do this. It was clear, however, that if the machine was unleashed, it would have a cataclysmic effect.

At one point you left to go above ground. You had people with you, as did I. It wasn't clear whether you left to try to disable the machine from above, or whether you simply escaped.

I tried to get in contact with you when it became evident that I could not stop the machine myself. I needed help and you were the only one who knew as much about it as I did. You didn't respond to my message - you sent it back: it came back unopened and rejected. I was so stunned by your rejection of my call that I didn't move away from the machine in time and was wounded. I kept trying to disable the machine but it continued to gain strength while I weakened. Finally I lost consciousness and woke up.

I still don't know what happened to the machine.

The dream was so vivid and this is a poor representation of it. It woke me up around 3am and I thought to write down what I remembered.

For someone who finds suspense-filled thriller-type movies very stressful, I do have the strangest dreams. Afterwards, however, I found myself thinking about my dissertation (when reflecting on your dissertation is soothing, you know the dream was stressful). I wrote those notes down as well.

My dissertation will take ethics for its topic, and one of the facets of ethical reflection on which I want to focus is the willingness to frame a situation as dilemmatic. This seems to be a crucial, fundamental ethical attitude which does not receive sufficient or thorough discussion. There isn't a situation for ethics until the situation is seen as dilemmatic and requires ethical response. If this is the case, how is it that some situations are seen as requiring ethical response by some people and not by others? I feared for a few minutes at about 3:30 this morning that I was still going to have to revert to a discussion of ethics as the development of procedures that can enforce for others the framing of a situation as dilemmatic.

I hope - but am not yet sure - and left my notes on this problem and on my dream at home (I am writing from my memory now) - that part of the solution (if solution will be the right word) will be found in a willingness for commitment and relationship. A situation becomes an ethical one for me because I have made it mine, because I have attached myself to it and because I have committed to it - become responsible to and for it. From that initial attachment, I can seek out means for criticism in order to develop an evaluative appreciation for the situation that can avoid narcissistic subjectivism.

Becoming an excellent person, ethically speaking, will involve seeking out more and ever more situations to which to attach oneself, becoming increasingly committed, taking on more responsibilities, seeking out new, more, deeper opportunities for response.

research is sometimes too much fun

just lovely:

"If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I."

I should get a proper notebook in which to record all of the lovely things I've already found and which I am certain to find.

lonely

but sometimes life is charming. no, really.

highlights:
- the coffee studio makes hot chocolate with nutella. file under "why didn't I think of that??" and "oh, my, this is tasty!"

- breathing. so good. particularly when paired with vocal warm-ups (as in, at the same time). dizzy but a rush.

- oh, and, as much as i hate to admit it: push-ups. kind of a rush.

- i did type up a timeline that has me graduating in December 2011. i think this should change - it doesn't leave any room for teaching. hm. i could teach in spring of 2012 maybe.

- my voice teacher thinks i am "a whole universe" unto myself. of course. who wouldn't say that??

- my brother comes home next month! now ... as i was saying, HI!!!

- neti pot, herbal tea, ear drops, real facial tissues (so long, single-ply toilet paper!) and deliciously scented moisturizer = feeling better. take that cold!

Will try to read/write something so that I have something to say to my dissertation director this afternoon.

busy work

It occurred to me yesterday that I hadn't done a single minute of dissertation work in over a week. Determined to remedy that situation, I rolled up my sleeves, pulled on a pair of comfortable pants and nubby socks and ... did dishes, cooked lunch/dinner for the week and cleaned out my closet. *sigh*
I stuffed 2.5 trash bags full of clothes and shoes I've been saving for lord knows what reason - including all those jeans that *sniff* just don't fit any longer (okay, I kept 3 pair that are still too snug, but that's a lot better than ... er ... 10 ... ok ... 13).
Then I housed my summer shoes in cunning little plastic containers that I can stack on a high shelf in my closet.
Stuffed all my magazines and still-to-be-read issues of TLS in canvas boxes cheaply purchased at Walgreens (this was very important)
Set up a "workstation" underneath my coffee table with the littlest of the canvas boxes - I now have notebooks, writing utensils, my cuticle nippers (I'm obsessed. I admit it), hand cream, emery boards. I just need a giant package of post-its to make my workstation complete.

I am in the process of trying to procure a new bookshelf to make my space even more efficient - and to keep Cat (who may have to be renamed C. K. Dexter Haven. Because, doggone it, either I'm gonna sock him or he's gonna sock me.) from jumping to the top of the current bookshelf every time I open a book.
Then, once I sell my table and get rid of my old loveseat, then, I will be prepared to do dissertation work. Really.

One day I'll look back on all this and think of myself as ridiculously spoiled and wildly self-indulgent. Right now, it feels entirely necessary

Dearly Beloved

At the wedding, the pastor read from and expounded upon 1 Corinthians 13. Love always trusts. Always hopes. Love endures. In his exposition, the pastor treated the passage as a text for marriage counseling. “Debbie, ‘love always trusts’ means that you always look for the most loving, most positive way of interpreting Doug’s behavior. When he’s late, rather than becoming irritated and angry and possibly even jealous, think, ‘he’s probably gone to buy me flowers’”

My first thought was “How simplistic! It’s one thing to love deeply, another to make oneself into a doormat, a fool!” And then I heard my own thoughts and was ashamed. Love believes all things and is never deceived. Love hopes all things and is not put to shame. Love requires complete vulnerability all of the time, forever. Love means being willing to never harden oneself against the beloved. Love loves the beloved even when it is unclear just how to go about doing so.

Love means not – ever – scolding my mother
Love means endless patience, no matter how infuriating she is
Love means pretending to be cheerful
Love means pretending to love her

It is so much work. And it is lonely. Extremely lonely. Once cannot very well call up a friend and say “Had the worst time of it pretending to love my mother today.”

We missed the reception. My mother felt unwell. My sister and I were, for various reasons, unable to drive. We missed the reception.

My aunt called my mother and accused her of ruining every family event, of having planned to avoid the reception, of lying about her health; she said she wished my mother had never been born into their family; she said she was sick of having to put up with my mother and was finished with her.

Love means it doesn’t matter whether I am loved. It doesn’t matter whether I am happy. I don’t get to count myself. Even if no one loves me, I have to love my mother (for example).

Love means becoming an eternal wellspring for the beloved, even if/when there is no one who can or will do the same for me.

How I wish, though, that there were a shoulder somewhere in this world with my name on it!

a love letter

Dear Jenny Boully,

I love you. That is not true.

love, k

Dear Jenny Boully,

I love your words. No, this is not quite it.

love, k

Dear Jenny Boully,

I love the way you compose with words. I love what you compose with words. I read you and I do indeed fall in love ... only not with you. No, not with you. I fall in love with a cloudy November sky, a precise shade of blue, a pair of brown eyes. You confirm all my suspicions. Make me very uncomfortable. And I did laugh out loud last night, on the sofa, startling Cat.

When will you write again?

Longingly yours,

k

An invention is a new composition, configuration, device, or process

"Do all that you know, and try all that you don’t:
 Not a chance must be wasted to-day!"

"acceleration is the change in velocity over time"

"I could leave my life. I could change completely. Is it time?"

"It would be wrong. It would be wrong because the promise told would never be the promise given"

"Momentum is a conserved quantity, meaning that the total momentum of any closed system (one not affected by external forces) cannot change. This law is also true in special relativity."

"thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

"So what should I say?
When?
When I love someone.
You should say it"

"Theoretically, there will be no death, only an exchange of energy in what is likely to be another dimension"

"Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string. "

"holds that time is neither an event nor a thing, and thus is not itself measurable nor can it be travelled."

"Think you there was, or might be, such a man
As this I dream'd of?"

"This is because entropy represents the "potential for disorder" in a system"

"If I had had faith, I would have married Regine"

"The former, Chronos, refers to numeric, or chronological, time. The latter, Kairos, literally "the right or opportune moment," relates specifically to metaphysical or Divine time."

"When you said we would read this book together, I assumed you meant it"

"Eternity was in our lips and eyes, Bliss in our brows' bent; none our parts so poor But was a race of heaven"

"an impulse is defined as the integral of a force with respect to time."

"In winter or summer, ’twas always the same—
 You could never meet either alone."

"Numerous studies have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be of emotional events*, which are likely to be recalled more often and with more clarity and detail than neutral events. "

*may or may not correspond to any empirical data