Friendster has a thousand a one problems, and I’ve ditched it except to post this. MySpace.com is much less problematic, and more versatile.
Anyway…my site is at:
http://www.myspace.com/laude_sion
Goodbye!
8:32 AM
So I had a horrific argument with my professor in class last night. It lasted for about a half an hour. Funny thing was…I realized I was wrong this morning! Tee-hee-hee! Although, I must say I wasn’t alone in my confusion…but two wrongs don’t make a right. Yes, yes..very dramatic last…I don’t care to get into it any more than that. I must now radically revise my paper, but hopefully this won’t be too time consuming.
Again, I was invited out to dinner afterwards, and again I declined. I would have gone this time, except that I was in too pissy a mood.
And I’ve taken up my Spanish studies, again. Quite enjoyable. I’ve been reading Neruda’s La Rosa Separada, his poetry from his trip to Easter Island. I need to get down the seven compound tenses, but Spanish makes this rather easy. The seven simple tenses of HABER correspond directly to the compound tenses, and you just add the past participle, which is always either ado or ido to the stem, depending on if it ends with AR or ER/IR. Simple enough, I just need to work on the seven simple tenses of HABER, and commit them to memory. There’s not exactly time for that at the moment, but come August 5th…I’ll have lots of time before class starts. Well…20 days. But I can get down the 14 tenses in 20 days. I need to work more on production, though. I can understand far better than I can produce. This is great for listening and reading, terrible for speaking. But in translating, comes SOME production, however..I really need to be writing and speaking. The writing part is fine. No one objects…it’s a solitary event. But the speaking…I’d have no one to talk to but myself. I speak so painfully slow that the listener has forgotten the beginning of the sentence by the time I get to the end. I guess I’ll be talking a lot to myself then! Maybe if I tried to force myself to think it Spanish it would help. That would be an interesting experience…to block out every English word my mind wants to reify or contemplate. I doubt it’s possible, but if so…I know I wouldn’t do much thinking! Perhaps it will slow my mind down. Who knows. Eh..I’m doing it now. It works. I just can’t think much. 
1:13AM
Well…I’m a long way from completing my Caputo/Gadamer paper, but I wrote 18 pages of it this evening, and have a section and a half to go. I’m signifcantly pleased with the progress I made this evening. I was getting scared, as my week as been so engrossed in social engagements, which I usually tend to enjoy, and yet loathe the concept as it will deter me from my studies. But this week, I managed to get a lot done and fulfill the time requests that were asked of me, so as I enjoyed fulfilling the requests, and still got much work done I feel good about it all.
Thursday Ronit, Edward, Sophia, and I went for our inspection of the Ebell. I loved it, as did they, and Edward put down a deposit, and reserved our wedding date there. So, we’re to be married on Saturday July 15, 2006. Now I have to get myself in gear, and get my catholic papers in order nad book our retreat, or we won’t be able to have the blessing of my Church, which is important to me, but somewhat aggrevating at the same time that they are so pedantic about it.
Friday night our Gadamer class met at the Getty. Ronit came over, and we arrived at the Getty two hours early. We saw a few exhibits. I had to hit up my favorite room, the European Paintings from 1840-1900. Our discussion was led by Dr. Cameron and an artist from the Getty regarding Rembrant’s self-portrait as Paul. Ronit enjoyed the conversation and I was glad. Gadamer has an amazing approach to art, and this was a very practical application of making his intentions clear. She also got to meet my fellow students, and seemed to like them very much. We will, perhaps, have a party at her house after term papers are finished. I’ll see how it strikes everyone.
Then there was Saturday, which was Sofia’s birthday. We had a wonderful time, and got away with drinking too much with no consequent hangover. I mostly talked to her Aunt Veronica and Uncle Mario, whom I like very much.
And then there was today. No time for Mass. It was my sister’s birthday, and the pre-preparations took up the morning, and the birthday the afternoon and early evening. We were celebrating hers as well as two of my cousins. My brother and I managed to get in a fight with my father, over two citations my sister picked up the other night for possession of tobacco and petty theft (by letting kids into a movie theater)…now I would have got my ass kicked if it were me and my father was like he was when I was growing up. Now, he all cuddly with my sister. C’est la vie! Anyway… the fight bothered him immensely, and my mother…who was a bit nutty, jumped on him, which was the straw that broke the camel’s back. My dad went into the silent anger mode, eventually absolved my brother and I, and his wrath towards my mother did not abait until 10 o’clock this evening. That was fatiguing.
So I took a nap after the party…woke..began my Gadmer work, wrote my 18 pages, and now it’s 1:27, and I’d like to do something to celebrate my progress, but everything is closed and everyone’s asleep…oh well..Maybe in the morning I will finish the rough draft and treat myself to something…a book perhaps.
Well…I’m off like a prom dress…
I was thinking, again, today about the geneology of corruption. Perhaps, this is what has led me to take up Fons Vitae again…to which I added an additional six pages today, and have just about filled out the first chapter, most painfully. I hate setting stages…
Anyway…I was thinking of Tolkien’s Silmarrilon, as I just completed reading the book again. When the demi-gods, the Valar, were first formed, one rose amongst them whose interest diverged from all the others: he called himself Melkor, but was eventually labeled Morgoth. Melkor had an affinity for pure power. Again, means without ends. There was nothing in his pursuit of power, save more power. Unlike the mortals, he did not face death. He was, like Dionysius, a god of chaos. Chaos for chaos’ sake. In the topology for evil there seems to be such a sort. Although this is rare. Evil, amongst humans, seems more along the lines of "Because I want to…" not "Because I CAN." We have a believed end in our evil actions; to hurt. to control. to conquer. etc.
What interests me more that Melkor/Morgoth is Sauron. Now, Tolkien tells us that Sauron was CREATED by Melkor, much like how the dwarves were created before their time. Sauron was made a leutenant of Melkor. Fashioned in evil, as he was, there was something more human about him than any of the other creations of middle-earth. He suffered the pains of conscience. 3 times in the Silmarrilon, Sauron fells repentence.
I thought about this for a long time. Why should any corrupted being feel remorse? What were the conditions that led from a shift of one existence sphere to another? Something so dramatic must have happened to Sauron that he actually was about the pledge his allegiance to the Valar, but it was only his fear of their punishment (as cruelty was all he knew under Melkor) that stopped him.
Sauron assumed, however momentarily, the possibility of forgiveness, and the revelation of his atrocities. But eventually he lost faith in the possibility, and the notion that his atrocities were, in fact, atrocious. He went back to the Worship of Melkor, and convinced Numenor to build a temple of sacrifice for Morgoth.
Is it a confusion of what is truly sublime? Of course, this is a fictional myth we speak of, but nonetheless…do we seek the sublime, and cast our search to the wind of capricious one-sided experiences that convince us something is ALL this way or ALL that way?For with Sauron it was happenstance that he creator should be Melkor…he had a heart to have good, but never experienced it. By the time he did…it was too late. He had an unshakeable conviction, worldview. There was dialogue with otherness, to test his notions of power, sublimity, etc.
I can’t fathom this mind. I recall Himmler’s justification of the holocaust as ‘an act of sublimity which this age cannot grasp." His appeal was to the aesthetics of genius, that had judged the beauty of such massive massacre as an incarnation of sublimity itself. What was sublimity then? Power over another. Why should this definition suffice, and how could one TRULY believe it…go home and kiss their wife and children…love them? Dr. Goebbels, the same. These uncritical, bifurcated men…I can’t fathom, partially constructed with love of what they want, desire for what they lack, and hatred for what cannot be controlled. Do they not see the framentation of themselves? Is THAT man’s ruination?
Is it because when he sees he is a wretch, he is so many more things than a wretch that he can busy himself, in fact, blind himself to himself, in all that which is not the wretch that lies within him, including the capacity to invert the concept of wretch, with some neologism which suggests to him a virtue?
Perhaps this explanation suits a particular kind of evil man. I’m sure evil is more elusive than I can fathom, define, or diagnose. Sinister artwork; my vaguest and therefore most appropriate definition of evil.
Artwork. For it is entirely aesthetic in its construction, lest it lack craft, skill, cultivation, and ultimately be accidental as opposed to deliberate, which does not seem a just component of evil. The concept of malice is almsot anamistic itself, going all the way back to the account in Genesis where God cautioned Cain not to let evil POUNCE upon him, for it stalks like an animal.
Are we all PREY, then, to evil, and there is nothing essentiall evil in us? If that be so, how can we be blamed for the victimization of OURSELVES when preyed upon by evil. I must reject this description. We would not be suspeptible, lest there was some form of identification between the evil and ourselves by which we saw some intelligibility in it, and assimilated it into our beings.
No. If you ask me. I am devil and divinity. Chaos and order. Light and darkness. Sincereity and fraudulant. Loving and hateful. This is man. Evil must be proportionate to good, and on a continuum of acts from depraved to pious. Here I fall back to Aquinas yet again. Evil has no being. It is a depravation of the good. All fine and good, and that tells me nothing of why we chose deprivation. It must be the khora of man’s being itself, in that man must progress in time, must commit himself to actions, bear the curse of his memory, and the stamp of his essence as the totality of prior actions…always with the good or bad before him, and the potential to sort himself and cultivate himself around one notion or another. Why one does either or refuses…must be as unique as the individual himself, and I can go no further.
It was wrong, then, to ask why Sauron did not seek reconciliation. It must be wrong to ask this question of any other than myself. The two questions before my mind, "What do I know of the good?" and "Am I aligning my actions in accordance with this good?" I can go no further than this solipsistic view, so far as experiential induction is concerned. What truth lies beyong the subjective answering of these questions is not demonstrable. But I can talk about MY kind of evil, and my experience of the good. I guess that is the heart of Alexander’s ’situation’ in Fons Vitae…he has MY experience, no universality. I can only offer others a glimpse, and see if they find recognition in both the account of the dilemma and its solution.
12:37PM
I just woke up about a half hour ago…having stayed up until 6 AM, working on my paper. Bad habits, I’m forming. I usually get tired around 10 or 11, but I feel such a strong compulsion to get work done that I fight it, until it passes and I get a second wind, which usually lasts until around 5am. So I wake each day sluggish. And it now takes two cups of coffee (hoorah for Peet’s!), and three cigarettes until i can claim that I’m ‘awake.’
Last night I finished the structure of my outline, with an assemblege of Caputo’s claims, Gadamer’s actual quotes, and my mediation of the two contents. I broke these down into 6 general categories of critique which Caputo employs. I’m rather pleased with the structure, as it is no longer the blob of objections it was before, but a logical procession through Caputo’s themes. Having accomplished this, I wrote the introductory paragraph, which itself took up a whole page. Therein lies the problem. We are not to exceed 20 pages, as this is to be presented at a conference, and not for a journal. Yet my notes alone are 20 pages, and I spent a whole apge just ’setting the stage’. May the gods of brevity descend upon me!
As to my German studies, I have stopped them completely, and vow not to touch them again. I will take the proficiency exam when it comes, but I refuse to worry an ounce more about it. I’m comfortable enough in my Oxford German Dictionary, and my own current competency.
And, by surprise, I felt a compulsion, after having made a significant push in the paper, to take up Fons Vitae again. I found it most enjoyable to come back to, and have nearly finished the first chapter, with extended revisions of what I’d already written. There is a more formative account of Alexander’s current nihilism, relative to his mother’s illness. Yet, I’m not quite content with the way I have presented it. I’d rather let the events speak for the transformation itself, rather than have the narrator explain, or present the events and end in a brief explanation. At the moment, it is just a contrast between dispositions towards hope amongst Anastasia and Alexander. Perhaps, I’ll go a little further back into the past to where the mother was first taken ill. But I wanted to do my best to let the walk home from school explain everything, and interrupt this event as little as possible. Perhaps I’ll construct a recollection on the walk home, being less disruptive to the event, which will introduce Judith’s beginnings of illness. But I don’t want to go too far. I don’t want to explain WHY Judith is getting sick, just that she is. No one is to know the cause, until the final remedy is found at the end. Anyway…it was nice to get back to…and my reward for working on my paper will be getting to finish the first chapter. I also must construct my poem in Latin for the 4th chapter…egads…that’ll take forever.
Well…it’s back to Gadamer.
So being the retard that I am, I wanted my copy of The Half Blood Prince (for which I’d been eagerly waiting for months, upon its formally announced release date) at Midnight July 16th. I traveled to 2 Borders and 1 Barnes and Noble with Ronit, only to find at least 300 people in line at each store. I’m not that eager, or perhaps I’m not that patient…so I simply bought it on Sunday instead.
I finished it Sunday night, this particular installment being short in comparison to the last two (672 pages). It’s a tranisitional piece, which is somewhat of a "let-down", for the great war I’ve been waiting for between Lord Voldemort and the Order of Phoenix doesn’t happen at all. It is mostly a revelation of Voldemort’s past, from his grandfather to parents to his days as an orphan, Dumbledore’s mentorship of the young Tom Riddle until he leaves Hogwarts at 15 with a band calling themselves the Death Eaters, and Riddle assuming the title of Lord Voldemort.
Through the pensieve, however, we are treated to many interesting scenes following Voldemort up to the age of 25, and many gaps are filled in under Rowling’s critique of racial/class sumprecy, as we see the corruption of a boy because of his ferver for ‘pure bloods,’ the race of wizards who are have no ‘muggle blood’ within them.
Rowling accomplishes much, besides mere entertainment in this critique, as she relates it between hate and love, showing the power over hate through love. She she also points to the cost of siding with love. Dumbledore’s greatest successes, and Potter’s as well, were only achieved through the love they believe in. Yet…as Rowling notes at the end of the book, the fight against hatred…the fight against evil is always a loosing battle, as there will always be more hatred…more evil. It is a world with no eschatological pull of history. There will be no singularity, where history ends in the vanquishing of evil for the triumph of good. Even the "prophesies" are merely prompts, and are only made true by persons acting on them, rather than any determinism or weight in the prophesy itself. Such is Rowling’s account of human freedom.
The message seems to lack a little, however, when it comes to motivational weight. If love is an ever-loosing prospect, but constitutes a good, yet all the good in humanity never has an endpoint…it is a means with no end, and equivalent to its antithesis, evil, in that there is no ultimate significance in which one choses. It is simply a matter of which camp one endorses. This notion is re-informed by the mere existence and perpetuation on the Slytherins. Why have an entire school of Hogwarts dedicated to the tradition of supremecy and hatred? My only guess is that the wizarding community (of course, Rowling may not be even thinking of these issues), places such weight on the existential choice between good and evil, that they allow one to formulate oneself within the tradition of evil. Seems odd, though, especially given that there is the sorting hat which PLACES one in such a camp. It’s a confused message, but then, this is a ‘children’s book.’
The question to me, in light of Dumbledore’s death, is that if love and hate are endless means, and love is an ever-losing prospect..isn’t this an affirmation that hate is stronger than love, which is contradictory to the message of the book? Rowling’s world offers us no realm by which good or evil are ultimately denounced or endorsed…it’s simply an existential affiliation, and those on one side detest those on the other for infringing upon their praxis of either hate or love.
It becomes a trial, then, to love in the face of hate…but Rowling gives us no answer as to why take up the trial save our psychic/emotive disposition towards love. I think this is a point she needs to make much more clear. Granted, the average reader is perobably not considering it from this standpoint, but it remains a philosophic question in the Potter corpus. It is easier to hate than to love. Yet, Rowling affirms we should love, regardless of its consequences (Dumbledore’s death, the death of Potter’s father and mother, Sirius’ death…everyone seems to die FOR loving almost as a punishment). She assumes a deontological stance on love, and yet…never provides the deontos nor logos of love. What is that thing we are risking so much for, besides the vacuous signifier ‘love,’ and what is that duty? We needn’t ethical egoism…it doesn’t have to be that we must love because it means our personal aims. But, given the non-eschatological affirmations of history, she makes it difficult in seeing a point to loving or hating, inadvertently, by critiquing hatred and affirming the radical autonomy of humanity.
Other than this, of course, I love the series and eagerly await Book 7, where the real adventures will begin again, with Harry leaving Hogwarts to track down the 4 remaining horcruxes. I was also delighted to be treated to the history of Voldemort in more full detail. It will be interesting to see how she handles the Hald-Blood Prince, Snape (I guessed that one early…usually her plot riddles are difficult to decipher, but the moment the Potions textbook appeared it seemed obvious who the owner was) and his promise to the Malfoy’s and supposed allegiance to the Order of Phoenix. For it does appear that he did kill Dumbledore, but I can easily see the account being undermined, as appearance is all there was, and perhaps in Book 7 we will receive a radically different account of Dumbledore’s death by Snape himself, in which he was not responsible. Or…it is as the text reads, and he has gone back to the Death Eaters…we will have to wait and see…
Anyway..my two cents on the book…it’s a wonderful experience to give oneself to that world, not as escapism, but to come back to our world with a little bit of that otherness from Hogwarts and lessons that can be learned from the Potter saga.
The next treat seems an anxious 4 months until The Goblet of Fire is released in theaters. Hope they don’t botch it too much. Azkaban had moments that didn’t even make sense in the movie, because they edited so much for time. For instance, Harry’s Patronus is in the shape of his father, and yet it’s an animal. Never explained in the film. How the hell does he know it’s his father? Shoddy director. But he’s been sacked, so we’ll see what happens with 4.
8:08 PM.
I just finished my dinner, after retruning from class. It was exhausting; the class, that is. Dr. Cameron skipped many important concepts in the prior lectures, only to return to all of them now. My head was swimming. Gadamer’s only way to save his notion of ‘contemporaneity’ is to oft for the non-theological. This is understandable, as timelessness always employs a concept we can never experience unless there was some sort of transcendence of the ’sacred’ time, the eternal time,’ as some sort of ‘domain’ in which the object could ‘rest’ when it is not present.
It’s not just a problem for secular history, but religious as well, unless the religion presupposed a radical finitude with no infinite whatsoever. One must appeal to a revelation from God of such a world of timelessness, and one could do nothing but attempt to defend the warrantability of believing in the revelation’s truth. Not exactly the route a historian wants to take. Neither the religious, for that matter. Augustine’s historical dualism turns human history into meaninglessness except inasmuch as it participates in sacred history, yet this is not the revelation of Christian faith. Salvivic history is worked out within the finitude of an existential participant’s life, and the for and against between sacred and finite becomes an unbridgeable gap, unless it is strictly collapsed, either in the sacred taking over the finite (predestination), or in the finite taking over the sacred (allowing no transcendence of the Sacred to emerge within this dichotomy).
This is not particularly problematic to monotheism at all, its really a matter of abandoning yet another of Augustine’s mistakes. So long as we understand history in terms of the finitude of our understanding, and a human construction, which seems impossible to deny…there is nothing sacred about history essentially, and the sacred can still exist. It is a question of how the sacred relates to history, but not how ’sacred history’ functions. This would be unknowable. How the sacred relates to history would be knowable, however, by how in own historicity, we encounter the sacred. It is, essentially, no different than the problem of ‘other persons’ or ‘other minds’. It is only the solipcist who can find this response unsatisfactory as a methodological starting point.
Anyway…I’ve gotten totally off track, as this is not what Gadamer was intending at all. Yet, I must spend a good deal of time reflecting on both Gadamer and Heidegger’s radical finitude and its relation to self and Being. I have no definite opinions on the matter, but an initial ‘bad taste’ has been left in my mouth and I need to find out why. Is the problem with me or these two? I have a feeling, however, we will find that, to affirm any notion of being will unavoidably necessitate their dreaded onto-theo-logical discourse of a metaphysics of presence. This seems to bother Gadmer less than Heidegger. Yet how to affirm persistent BEINGS without ontology? And how can one have ontology without a metaphysic of presence? The Truth of Art with Gadamer is contingent upon such ‘presentation.’ Presentation of what? He writes with too many referrents to not commit himself to a metaphysics, regardless of how disseminating selves are. There is still something there to disseminate.
Anyway…the class was good but tiring. Extremely tiring. I’m drinking coffee to try and keep me up for the next few hours. I still have no idea what to write my term paper on at this point. I thought of Kearney’s misunderstanding of Gadamer’s approach…but it’s futile, as is engaging the Gadamer-Derrida debate. Postmods are too narrow-minded to listen. No dialogue is taking place. For all their praise of otherness…they never shut up to hear it.
I am thinking now more along the lines of Kierkegaard’s theory of repetition in relation to Gadamer’s ‘festival time’, or perhaps a comparative analysis on Gadamer’s appropriation of Kierkegaard’s concept on contemporaneity. I’m not sure, but I know I have to start writing the paper on the 21st, in ten days.
Let us see, what else? There was my atrocious behavior towards Ronit on the 4th of July, which I don’t particularly care to get into. But it is another sign of my wretchedness, the capacity to be wicked. The reality of evil embodied. I’ve dwelt on the concept a lot lately in relation to myself. It’s something not to be forgotten, but its not something a person can beat herself over the head about forever and ever. One must trust in the co-operation of a sanctifying grace. I’m working on the cultivation of virtue. My sweet Ronit just naturallly has it, but God, how I have to struggle just to be what I’d call a ‘decent’ human being. It’s so much easier to indulge in the imperfections of humanity than to develope the techne of of which the heart is transformed. One of my favorite antiphons: "Create in me a new heart…’ But I have freedom and resist. Why? I’m not sure. I only cause myself and others to suffer by refusing grace. Why refuse it then? Perhaps because it’s the easiest thing to do? I think it is spiritual laziness more than anything else…an unattentiveness to the soul’s condition, an apathy, an inherent hatred for the sacred in its normative demands in relation to an inherent disposition to emminate divinity. What a piece of work is man! Noble in reason? Yes, but what does that avail him without the wisdom of love. Hamlet could not definitely decide for or against righteousness either. His intellect fed his melencholia to immobility. We offer excuses. This is the curse of philosophy. Not to say it has no blessing. It is a double-edged sword. But I’ve never had a space in my heart for decision making, per se. I’ve always been disposed to calculations…how does one even dare to suggest such a mode of action with respect to the gratuity of love? What profanation! I am a wretch. I will be ‘I’ no more. Grant me new skins for Your wine. What I have is old, tattered, jaded, worn, unreceptive and molding with death. Create in me a new heart. That is, destroy the one I call my own. And let me not perish, but replace what has been broken by Your holy gift of destruction that I may rise from my own ashes, like the Phoenix, soaring closer to You; not for my sake, but for the sake of the world in which I infect like some pestilence. If not, destroy me completely that I may no longer hurt this world and these people that are so dear to me.
Well, on a more positive note, I finished AS I LAY DYING today, and started FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS. AS I LAY DYING was amazing, and the best phenomenology of the familial periphery of death I’ve ever encountered. It actually reminded me a lot of my grandfather’s death. But Faulkner is a fantastic story-teller. I thoroughly enjoyed how the chapters unfolded the narrative from a multiplicity of over-lapping perceptions and recollections of the different characters. The beauty of its temporal progression reminded me of the opening of a flower into a full blossom. The finale both comic and tragic, marking the absurd end to an absurd journey was like the sun rising on a hill-side of flowers. It had the feel of the final root note, reverberated throughout an entire orchestra to conclude a symphony; the key confirmed, the audience satisfied and exhausted by ecstacy. I love the book dearly, and will let it grow on me more and more. So much human frailty in it as well. Faulkner is defintely a genius. I’m sorry I’ve neglected him for so long.
Anyway..time to wrap this up. I’m too tired.
5:00AM
I just woke up from a very strange dream in which many of the people I grew up with were all in these swank movie theatre for some film. It was pre-show and the lights were up. In fact, I believe it was the theatre for LA’s Film festival where we saw Promedio Rojo, Gabe’s friend’s movie. The strange part was that the audience was full of old people I’d known from High School, Junior High, Elementary School…all grown up…some married…some with children.
I conversed with many of them and it was pleasant enough, but then each conversation would turn sour. They would all eventually turn to the subject of how I’d hurt them one way or another. They didn’t want to do any violence towards me, but they all managed to point out that my words and actions had lasting effects. I ended up feeling like a total piece of shit, and then I woke up. Guilty conscience, I guess. So now I’ve been sitting here meditating on what a shit I’ve been throughout my life, and how the tiniest things we do (from our perspective) can end up being the biggest things we do when it comes to effecting others. It sucks you can’t take words back…I need to be more careful with my words.
On a positive note, throughout my recent business lately, I managed to finish Our Mutual Friend by Dickens last night. What a ride that book was! Murder mystery, love story, social commentary, and a host of so many characters that are all so enjoyable! It’s not my favorite Dickens, I’m still holding to Bleak House with A Tale of Two Cities at a close second, but it was a great book nonetheless. So satisfying. I haven’t had a satisfying ending in a long time. Dickens is very predictable in this respect (usually…), but he delivers the goods so well. Just when you think everything’s gone to ruin for the Boffins…he lets you stir in the consequences of material greed, only to undermine the whole affair as a hoax.
And the sensitivity towards Judaism and more explicitly the life of a Jew in England is treated very well. In fact, I found the treatment more realistic than Joyce’s message. In ULYSSES, we are politically challanged to accept the Irish Jew via the Irish consciousness of their identity in Catholicism, and the fact that Jesus himself was a Jew. Bloom points this out and almost gets beaten for it. Joyce eventually crowns him pope and makes him the new messiah. This is a very confrontational method, and I don’t condemn it…but it’s all too fantastic, and manges to offend the ardent Irish Catholic instead of speak to them. Although many Irish Catholics NEED that wake up call.
Anyway, for Dickens, in Our Mutual Friend, we are slowly exposed to the Jewish community through a variance of English opinions about the Jew. The reader doesn’t find herself challenged…the reader finds the 19th century London anti-semitism placed before her like a foil character of her own self. Am I that anti-semite? Am I THIS anti-semite? There are many to encounter. Do I fall in line with Lizzy Hexam, who sees the virtue of their faith and industriousness through their marginalization. Am I like Jenny Wren, confused about how the Jew responds in this state of Diaspora, not always making the right choices but not always done through their "Jewishness" but a socio-economic situation that we’ve imposed on the people? Or am I like Eugene and Fledgeby, simply and naively accepting all the old stereotypes without question and perpetuating them?
All these moral questions arise, and the whol time the reader never feels the sensation that they are receiving a sermon…for we are not. Thes are all just characters of comparison.
But the romantic’s needs are met…the social/moral phlosopher’s…the murder-mystery buff’s…this book has so much to offer, and quite entertains. I’m happy and sad to have finished it, but glad that I finally got around to reading it. So many of the classics have turned out to be a disappointment, but Dostoevsky and Dickens never really let me down (excepting Great Expectations and The Idiot).
Well now, it’s back to War and Peace, which I should have finished by the end of this month. Thank God I took French just last semester!
Sidenote: The PT CRUISER affair. Of course, the design was awkward and the public’s sense of fashion so finicky…PT CRUISERS are going for a ridiculously low rate at the moment, and I’ve gotten many dealerships into bidding wars. But it look like it should all come to a close either today, before I go to school, or tomorrow. 12,995.00 for a brand new automatic with air. Couldn’t ask for a better deal given the car’s rank. I’ve very lucky they overproduced these things. I read a consumer report that list that actual manufacter’s cost of the car at over 13,000. They’re actually taking a loss on each one they sell. I figured that’s just a line they throw out, but in this case its true. No one wants the car anymore, and the 2006’s are coming out soon. Oh well…my gain. I’ve never owned a new car before. Always used. It’s be nice to have a car that somehow hasn’t fucked up before you ever even got a chance to take care of it. It feels like it would give me more incentive to take better care of my car.
10:32 AM
It feels like ages since I’ve written anything here. I’ve been lost in a world of Gadamer, and the aesthetics of genius, Bildung, Sitzenlebenes, etc… This summer course only meet 11 times, and we cover 100 pages of Truth and Method a week. The class itself is nice, very informal and puts a lot of trust on the student’s potential to grasp the text. We’re not really being taught at this point. We are being directed towards materials, and the seminars are used to flush out problems we are having regarding these materials. It’s an interesting approach…one totally foreign to me. They give us so much freedom and so little structure…it’s very tempting to be irresponsible. It demands a lot of self-dedication to truly engage the material. I can easily see people of less motivation dropping out of the program. I wonder how often this happens?
Another strange thing is that our papers are graded in accordance with their potential to be published, either in jounrla or for conferences, depending on the assigned length. For me, this puts an odd marketing concern. For instance, I am now conscious of a future audience for the paper and it infringes upon my topic. Thankfully, there are so many different societies and journal to present to the infringement is somewhat superficial, but I find myself asking, "Am I writing to phenomenologists, deconstructionists, critical realists, etc.?"
Anyway…I came up with a paper topic that could be presented amongst many different societies. I sent my proposal to Dr. Cameron for review. I want to take up Derrida’s false messianism and pseudo-religion of "The Impossible" through the lens of Gadamer’s notion of the finitude of knowledge and horizons of understanding, thus de-mythologizing "The Impossible" as a series of impossibles, some which can be made possible, others not…but denying the existence of one totalizing notion of "The Impossible" which we must accept. Derrida’s Viens! and Oui! Oui! truly disturbs me, as such blind openness must accept every other and never differenciate between potentially dangerous others and harmless or good others. We must embrace the Nazis as well as the saints. I can’t have that, and it certainly constitutes no religion, just irresponsibility.
But the students are very nice, and seem committed to a pleasing degree. I haven’t encoutnered any arrogance yet, which is a pleasant surprise. A few of them go out to dinner after each meeting; they always invite me and I always decline. I hope they don’t take it personally. I’m just busy enough with my studies and my life as it is. I’m not looking to complicate it more with more social relations…which I typically view as pleasant, but always at one point or another, place temporal impositions on one’s life. In essence, friends take time. I have Ronit, my best friend and love, and what time the world doesn’t suck away from me I’d like to give to her.
Speaking of which, I need to make time to go to St. Lawrence to pick up some documents for our marriage. We can’t get our disparity of cult and form petitions rolling until I prove that I’ve been baptized and confirmed, and have our "marriage encounter" retreat. That’ll be a hoot! Actually, the retreat center is nice. And a retreat in itself is a pleasant experience. But the talks seem ludicrous to me. They’ll attempt their apologetics against birth control, appeal to the ‘openness to life’, and then teach you the worst form of birth control: the rhythm method. Paradoxical. And our one great advocate for moral and sexual advancement, theologically, Fr. Curran, was excommunicated by the GREAT Pope Benedict. Oh, the problems I have with Ratzinger. Well, we’ve had ‘anti-popes’ before…maybe we have another on our hands?
And my mother has gotten no better. I shouldn’t say that, exactly, but her progress isn’t nearly as progressive as either her doctor or myself had hoped it would be. They have added a new medication, and we’ll see how that goes. But she’s seriously driving me nuts. I’ve never seen someone with true mania before. She has fits and so much rage. She’s confused and can’t concentrate. She carries around a notebook that she writes everything in so she won’t forget. She takes notes when you talk to her. She’s paranoid, and insists our phones are ‘bugged’ by my brother, and he has microphones in the house. Consequently, she’s only using her cellphone now for telephone conversations. I have the mask of the mother I loved for 27 years, but behind the mask is a person I’ve never known before.
Sometimes she screams at us, throws things around. She never stops talking, and what she does talk about never makes any sense. She comes into my room about 20 times a day, mumbles or yells something, then leaves. Occasionally she breaks down crying when she realizes what’s going on. It’s terrible. More terrible is that while I pity her, I also find her loathesome. I don’t like the person she’s become, and as temporary as it may be…I can’t be around this person. I need more patience and compassion, but the illness does not just effect her. She has cast a certain insanity over the entire household. Everyone is on edge because she is on edge, and spreads her paranoia and anger from room to room. Everything is so extreme with her right now…everything an absolute crisis…it’s just too much stress for outsiders to try and combat. One looses sympathy when one has been emotionally drained, and that happened weeks ago.
Well..there. I’ve written it down. Confessed in some way. Perhaps I’ll feel a bit better now. The worst part is that no outsider can grasp what is happening to this family internally. And every outsider has the expectation that things should run just as they did before, but they can’t…not right now. And I hate that my old social obligations are still binding upon me, when my emotional plate is full of dealing with our family life. I have nothing left for anyone, not even myself. I’m busy making sure my sister doesn’t bear the brunt of my mother’s illness, and that my father is coping all right, and that my mother never goes too far. After that, there are my academic obligations, which require much time, and after that…my capacities to think and feel are exhausted.
But I tell myself it’s all temporary, of which I’m sure it is. Nonetheless, this temporary situation is quite fatiging, and the episodes I’ve witnesses have far-reaching effects that will go on long after my mother’s manic bout is over.
Well…I should stop complaining now. Seek out the good, and appreciate what is present to appreciate. I just wish everyone would cut me a little slack, but it seems they don’t. Come do this…come do that…I’ve been pushed to Quoheleth’s position: vanity of vanities. I don’t really want to do anything. Every day I stare into the face of insanity, with it’s missing organs and emphasyma, morbid obesity, sleep apneia, and so many more ailments…and I think "That’s my mother!" It makes me stop caring about things, or difficult to care.
On that postive note…I think I’ll conclude. If I loose friends, I loose them. I’ve lost them before over this issue. They think me negligent, but there’s just so much of me, and my mother’s always absorbed such large portions of it through her quite tragic life. C’est la vie. Je ne comprend pas la vie. Aujourd’hui, je deteste ma vie. Salut!
As always…the time: 11:57 PM. I’m exhausted from an hour run with my pulse at 160 the whole time. Glad I was able to do it…but I feel like a squeezed spunge. This evening I had a nice time with Ronit. This afternoon I re-arranged my room in preparation for the coming school year. I felt it had some sort of spatio-deficiency in the economy of exposition. If that makes any sense. Either it did, or my OCD’s got the better of me. But people were complaining that it was too cramped.
So much has happened since last I wrote…my mother went psychotic, but is getting better now, Ronit passed a part of her CSET, and that’s one less to worry about…I go to interview next week to teach adult confirmation class. Oh…toning down for the layman. Should one? Really? I ran into this Armenian Orthodox kid at a bar a few months back, and we discussed this for a long time. The doctrinal complexity of Romanism versus the laity’s faith. They ARE so incongruous. But it almost feels like a conspiracy to not lay all the cards out on the table. If someone can’t understand a concept…then keep explaining…I don’t think it’s enough, as a teacher, to simply say, "This is beyond your comprehension, so I won’t give you the opportunity to comprehend it." At least, I’ll never teach like that. We’ll discuss doctrinal development. Hermeneutical problems relative to Scripture…the Second Vatican counsel makes this clear…that we must admit these, and back off our claims to ultimacy…get back to the notion of the faithful pilgram. If what was written there does not stand, I could not be a Catholic. But the theologian is not just one who speaks from the Church, but also speaks of the Church. With this obligation he/she has the obligation to scrutinize and criticize the Church as well. To compromise this, amongst theologian OR layman, is to compromise the entire notion of the mystical body of Christ, upon which the Church lays its foundation. Ask us to surrender this capacity for self-reflection as an entity of the Church, and therefore the Church, in part, and you ask us to give up the integrity of the Church.
But the true Church does not rest within the walls of Romanism anyway. The true Church are those who follow the logos, knowingly or not. Each is called to walk in their own way, as St. Paul notes. There can be no claims to supremecy. People too often assume that’s what papal infallibility amounts to. The doctrine’s dreadfully misunderstood, and I wish it was never written because of it. It’s only been used twice anyway.
Anyway…I would be overjoyed to educate, in an ecumenical manner, our Sacramental faith to adults. The Sacraments. Such an amazing concept, true or not. Sometimes the aestheticism of it all enamours me…the beauty irrespective of truth. Not to say I reject the truth of any of our 7. My life as a Catholic is defined by these Sacraments and what they bespeak and ask of us. I couldn’t be a Catholic if I didn’t except them. I’d feel like I was committing Sartre’s notion of ‘bad faith’.
Opiate…surely it is. I so welcome the charge. "I bring you peace…my peace I give to you." How could it not be opiatic? How is loving and giving of oneself not such a tremendous sense of divine communion that one is not stupified by the experience? How does mercy not quiet the tongue? There is stupifaction. But this is a one-sided view of the ecstatic state of religiosity. Then follows the the recovery…in postmodern terminology…the TOUT AUTRE shatters ourselves and the horizons of our expectations..it transcends US, cancels US. We come back from this annihilation (or union?..it seems both) and the alterity places a demand on us. We must listen…seek out…follow the mystery, lest we do violence to the TOUT AUTRE. Here, I agree with Derrida. Marx couldn’t have been more wrong to focus on the praxis of religiosity as an opiate. The opiate was the TOUT AUTRE. The praxis was the reflective living out of that experience of the wholly other, which couldn’t be further from complacency.
Well..I guess I’ve found my common ground with Derrida and Caputo! We carry the same messianism, only from different epistemic positions, but it is the same experience we speak of…the hermeneutic of suspicion, St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul, are we out of it? Are we out of it? Only when we welcome the Other, and are no more ourselves. So are we ever really out of it? No. We are forever thristing in the desert, except when we are more than ourselves, in communion woth the TOUT AUTRE. This notion, for me, as a Catholic, is, of course, symbolized (not as a sign but symbol…sacrament) in the Eucharist, to which I could adore all day if the world would let me. Eucharistic adoration is the adoration of the ultimate mystery of alterity and immanence. It is the worship of the apocalypse of all horizons, the singularity of reconciled profanity and the unblemished sublime.
