relentlesserudition

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Thanksgiving, 2005. Bywater. North Rampart and Montegut St. New Orleans

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i went to "mad at me" island expecting to find people i knew, something i understood. but when my boat landed, standing upon the shore were a million empty husks wearing my own face. every foot of the island was occupied, and everywhere i went, they watched me with contempt. they never spoke, never breathed. they simply watched. no matter how i grovelled and begged, snarled and cursed, tried to hide or kicked and hit, they simply stared. the hatred in their gaze was inescapable, but i could hardly return it, knowing that their doomed existence was of my own creation. knowing that the hatred was nobody's but my own. in the end i just wept, unable to stand the relentless gaze of my own infinite glare.

the guy who i accidentally cut off in traffic last week was there also

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Have been thinking of cross-registering at Harvard for their Russian internsive course this term. For five years, on and off, I have attempted—unsuccessfully—to get better at the language with duolingo. earlier this year, I even thrifted a home-study Russian textbook and then proceeded to relegate it to the prison of the bookshelf (whence it shall, no doubt, never emerge). So yeah, I think it’s time to accept that my brain is not made for self-paced learning—I simply cannot access the levels of motivation and perseverance required for this, and I also do not have any natural aptitude for new languages, which I’ve found that some people possess inordinate supplies of! (E.g., S taught himself two new languages as an adult). What this means is I must, once again, do what I always do when faced with an intractable problem: return to the classroom where structure, routine, and fear of failure will bully me into getting my shit together. 

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Winters, imminent and bygone

Small, sudden, somewhat surreal spell of coolness—though this is already fading. Merely a week after I was violently attacked by the heat, we woke up to an 11ºC morning. Over the next few days, we broke out our hoodies and fall jackets. But we're back to more seasonable weather today, which is expected to stay stable for the next week at least.

Completely unrelated: I’ve been wanting to go to NYC again to see central park in full foliage. The last (and my first) time there was in the dead of winter and bookending a rogue snowstorm; the trees were bare, but some streets were still decked with chistmas lights, and I fell a little stupidly in love with Manhattan—a somewhat controversial opinion to hold, I found out later. Idk if I ever shared pictures from this trip. Most, as here, are from my phone. I did carry my SLR and made some pictures, but its battery fell out in aforementioned snowstorm and for whatever reason, I haven't really picked it up since. Have also been procrastinating on editing the 700-odd photos that have been stuck in it for the past year. I’ll get it them when I get to them! Anyway:

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some good light this past week. brain quite tired lately—much to do and not enough time to do it in!

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Its crazy how many good books there are

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close-ups/far-offs/textures

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good, bright, summer things for the (online) record—

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a very uninspiring couple of days (two weeks?). some kind of mystery ennui has set in. the heat doesn't help. walked a little in 37ºC weather yesterday and was legitimately fucked UP for the rest of the day (thermoregulation? i do not know her!). but i suspect part of this listlessness could simply be boredom. the book project with the nice people is wrapping up (i've moved to an hourly arrangement with them, mostly project-managing till it goes to the press) and my current full-time research gig feels a little... dry. also grappling with some loss of clarity around my thesis, around post-graduation plans, around something i cared for a lot about over the last decade and worked on over the past year. the future, once again, feels unformed and vaporous and this is, naturally, unsettling.

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only a couple of weeks now to term time! how time flies, etc. i sorted out tuition things last week; life admin, as always, is a necessary evil. did i do much this summer? on good days, i'm like yes! i did! i went to the movies a bunch, and to several new places! i saw new things! read books! experienced joy! walks! sunshine! but on days like today: oof. what is life? what is meaning?

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it is now month 4 of physical therapy. i can do deadlifts now?! bend forward and touch the floor and so on?? me? with my formerly herniated discs? hewwo??? in many ways, i'm forging an unexpectedly new relationship with my body—and my mind! the mind, after all, is a big one when it comes to chronic pain. and also, re mind: talk therapy continues. slowly and comfortably. nothing paradigm shifting—but i hadn't expected it to be, not in this stage of my life at least. but it is a safe, productive space to noodle around my noggin, which is transformative in its own way, simply by virtue of being a thing i do for a little while every week. my therapist practices what is called acceptance and commitment therapy, but they're also currently undertaking a internal family systems certification—which i've heard promising things about!—so i'm looking forward to hearing more about that. potentially interesting. idk.

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i've eaten a LOT of ice cream this summer. relatedly, or perhaps not, i'm rounder and chonkier than i was last year (when i was deeply unhappy and not eating very much). some days, i dislike this. on other days—and this could just be the therapy talking—i look at myself and marvel at the softness and me-ness of me. it is what it is, y'know? it is both an objectively neutral and a bloody fantastic thing. some days, my need to justify my being this way or that melts away. i'm here: unproductive or whatever; grumpy and thermally unregulated; clueless about the future and my place in it—but also stubbornly and completely and unequivocally here. and for whatever reason, lately, this feels significant.

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you should realize that narrative is a method of making sense of things, not reality itself

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isolation the most goated coping mechanism i love talking to no one and losing my mind alone

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remember to eat all of the delicious summertime fruits you can before theyre no longer in season. my final message. goodbye

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Martha's Vineyard, the week before last. Overcast day, overhyped place.

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mary oliver, upstream

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enemies to lovers but it’s me and myself

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Consumable pseudo-cyclical time is spectacular time, both in the narrow sense as time spent consuming images and in the broader sense as image of the consumption of time. The time spent consuming images (images which in turn serve to publicize all the other commodities) is both the particular terrain where the spectacle's mechanisms are most fully implemented and the general goal that those mechanisms present, the focus and epitome of all particular consumptions. Thus, the time that modern society is constantly seeking to "save" . . . ends up being spent by the average American in watching television three to six hours a day. As for the social image of the consumption of time, it is exclusively dominated by leisure time and vacations - moments portrayed, like all spectacular commodities, at a distance and as desirable by definition. These commodified moments are explicitly presented as moments of real life whose cyclical return we are supposed to look forward to. But all that is really happening is that the spectacle is displaying and reproducing itself at a higher level of intensity. What is presented as true life turns out to be merely a more truly spectacular life.

Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle

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