But at least she's here. For the first couple of months co-habiting with Figaro I just ignored myself reproductively besides being pissed off when we had to be careful, but yesterday I reached the point of being madly delighted that the Red Dragon had finally attacked, even though it was followed within minutes with the feeling that I was a racehorse with terminal colic.
So that gave me a good reason to go home early, and in a burst of clarity and precious, precious fucking time (Is it a feature of being happy, that time seems like the dearest thing in the world? Or just of having a stupid full time job? Or a combination?) I put together the template of a letter for promoters, and most of the proposal itself. The letter should start going out today, but after some tweaking I'm going to send the proposal for vetting elsewhere - not as though it matters so much, since I can't send it out until someone agrees to promote me.
And if no one does, why, then I've got a great excuse to just be a normal whack job instead of an academic one. There's probably more money in it, after all. I want this opportunity quite a lot - but at the same time, I feel like either fork this thing takes can be appealing.
Going to work this morning is not.
Oh well.
venerdì, novembre 03, 2006
giovedì, novembre 02, 2006
Developing a tolerance
Most of last night's analysis was about internal problems, but Monsieur did make a point of general interest late in the session after I launched into a minor tirade about how annoyed I am people complain about being single when it's so easy - no worries about hurting feelings, no worries about over-reacting to minor annoyances, no questionable sense of dependency, et cetera. His answer could have gone straight on a Hallmark card: being in relationships helps secular Westerners improve their comprehension of the human condition. Okay, maybe it would need a little editting but nonetheless I found the idea cloyingly icky.
But then he pointed out that the annoyances to which our lovers subject us, which we can't walk away from because of our emotional attachment, force us to confront ourselves by witnessing our reactions, and force us to ask questions about our lovers because we care enough to want to understand. The difficulties of romantic or reproductive relationships translate into better comprehension of the self and the human condition. That means single people get to skip lots of annoyance but by so doing skip parts of the learning process, since the second they're annoyed they can withdraw from the situation instead of asking questions about how it came to be.
Other relationships that may have picked up the learning-through-annoyance slack, like with the church, extended family, or community groups, have eroded in modern secular society to the degree that people don't learn from them the way they used to, since it's so much easier (thank god!) to walk away from them now. And so, people who want to learn about themselves and their race want to be in relationships.
It makes sense, I guess. When I think back on being single, it seemed like a pleasant but fairly boring tropical holiday with too much lying down on the beach and not enough trekking through a savage jungle full of hallucinogenic plants, mysterious ziggurats, and silly monkeys. That's not bad, but it's not good either. So I'll try to stop complaining about people who complain about being single. No promises, though.
But then he pointed out that the annoyances to which our lovers subject us, which we can't walk away from because of our emotional attachment, force us to confront ourselves by witnessing our reactions, and force us to ask questions about our lovers because we care enough to want to understand. The difficulties of romantic or reproductive relationships translate into better comprehension of the self and the human condition. That means single people get to skip lots of annoyance but by so doing skip parts of the learning process, since the second they're annoyed they can withdraw from the situation instead of asking questions about how it came to be.
Other relationships that may have picked up the learning-through-annoyance slack, like with the church, extended family, or community groups, have eroded in modern secular society to the degree that people don't learn from them the way they used to, since it's so much easier (thank god!) to walk away from them now. And so, people who want to learn about themselves and their race want to be in relationships.
It makes sense, I guess. When I think back on being single, it seemed like a pleasant but fairly boring tropical holiday with too much lying down on the beach and not enough trekking through a savage jungle full of hallucinogenic plants, mysterious ziggurats, and silly monkeys. That's not bad, but it's not good either. So I'll try to stop complaining about people who complain about being single. No promises, though.
mercoledì, novembre 01, 2006
I can't even tell you
I'm so unsettled, it feels like I hardly have a stomach. Not in a bad way, I don't think. As of yesterday, I've had to face the very real possibility I have no nemesis. It may radically change my world view. If he isn't evil incarnate, maybe Hannah Arendt was even righter than I thought she was about that banality thing, and the evil comes facelessly in the social and institutional machine.
Next, I'm going to promote a specific brand. Harmony Milk. Probably only available in Ontario. It's organic, but since it comes in cute little bottles that you can return for a substantial refund it works out to be slightly cheaper than normal milk. It reminds me of the milk my grandparents used to get delivered to their door every morning - in the pint bottles, fresh and unpasteurized so the fatty creamy stuff floats to the top and makes your cereal or even a cunt of a Nescafe into a little piece of heaven. Mmmmm. Anyways, as long as Ontario retains its absurd pasteurization laws, Harmony is the tastiest cow milk out there and underprices goat milk by $1.57. After refund.
Figaro and I have been trying to eat organic food, which isn't the easiest thing to do because we're broke. I dropped out of the Food Share programme because our drop-off point, at least, was plagued by incompetence and only delivers every other week, if that. That made things harder because they're cheap. There are other organic food-share programmes but in all honesty I like food shopping too much to pay that little extra for them.
I love food shopping. I could do it professionally. And not just in chi-chi places full of pretty things like Pusateri's, either. I'll get a thrill from the lousiest, grimiest No Frills in the city, which is good because that's the one across the road from us. Probably because of my starving peasant background, it's so damn exciting to see all that food from all over the province and the world. And then deciding which bits of it I'm going to buy, prepare and eat - sheer joy. Not to mention the shelving choices that face you with surreal little surprises. I thought I had to go seven or eight blocks to buy Marmite, for example, but it turns out No Frills stocks it in the baking section next to the bread-yeast products.
Now that the organic farmer's market is gone for the winter (it was an exercise in country hippies ripping city hippes off, but I wanted to encourage the brand) organic food shopping is slightly more difficult than normal food shopping because the pricing patterns are absurd. At the organic shop just up the street, some food items are well cheaper than in the shop in Kensington that has other items well cheaper. Produce is especially expensive at the shop here, which sucks because we eat alot of it. And then Dominion underprices them both on organic bananas, which, however, tend to be too green for me. Not to mention they're almost the only organic stock that Dominion carries, besides a carrots-and-kale corner I visit more out of duty than love.
Next, I'm going to promote a specific brand. Harmony Milk. Probably only available in Ontario. It's organic, but since it comes in cute little bottles that you can return for a substantial refund it works out to be slightly cheaper than normal milk. It reminds me of the milk my grandparents used to get delivered to their door every morning - in the pint bottles, fresh and unpasteurized so the fatty creamy stuff floats to the top and makes your cereal or even a cunt of a Nescafe into a little piece of heaven. Mmmmm. Anyways, as long as Ontario retains its absurd pasteurization laws, Harmony is the tastiest cow milk out there and underprices goat milk by $1.57. After refund.
Figaro and I have been trying to eat organic food, which isn't the easiest thing to do because we're broke. I dropped out of the Food Share programme because our drop-off point, at least, was plagued by incompetence and only delivers every other week, if that. That made things harder because they're cheap. There are other organic food-share programmes but in all honesty I like food shopping too much to pay that little extra for them.
I love food shopping. I could do it professionally. And not just in chi-chi places full of pretty things like Pusateri's, either. I'll get a thrill from the lousiest, grimiest No Frills in the city, which is good because that's the one across the road from us. Probably because of my starving peasant background, it's so damn exciting to see all that food from all over the province and the world. And then deciding which bits of it I'm going to buy, prepare and eat - sheer joy. Not to mention the shelving choices that face you with surreal little surprises. I thought I had to go seven or eight blocks to buy Marmite, for example, but it turns out No Frills stocks it in the baking section next to the bread-yeast products.
Now that the organic farmer's market is gone for the winter (it was an exercise in country hippies ripping city hippes off, but I wanted to encourage the brand) organic food shopping is slightly more difficult than normal food shopping because the pricing patterns are absurd. At the organic shop just up the street, some food items are well cheaper than in the shop in Kensington that has other items well cheaper. Produce is especially expensive at the shop here, which sucks because we eat alot of it. And then Dominion underprices them both on organic bananas, which, however, tend to be too green for me. Not to mention they're almost the only organic stock that Dominion carries, besides a carrots-and-kale corner I visit more out of duty than love.
martedì, ottobre 31, 2006
Wendell . . . I'm not content.
I've started assistant-editing the culture section of Blogcritics.org under a semi-sobriquet that looks more and more like a sobriquet for 'pussy' the more I look at it. It gives me something to do in the afternoons at work when I'm tired of emailing other bored office workers about how bored we are, and it teaches me things about editing, electronic publishing and how weird people think.
Also, my analyst told me ages ago, when I was voicing discontent with my company's mandate, that I should play little games to make it more fun for me until I was ready to quit. So for awhile, every day I'd put words into my articles no one in my industry could reasonably be expected to know, like 'pullulate' or 'pyroclastic,' and wait for my editor to bring it up with me. That stopped being fun when he never did. So now every week I'm looking at one of the nasty advertising things I have to write about for work and then writing something nasty about it on Blogcritics.
The truth is I want anything I can call preparation for a new job. I want a new job so bad, and I can't really leave this one yet, because I want to save some money and then look for work in an E.U. country Figaro's teaching license is recognized in and where I can get some good fucking baking, warmer fucking winters and prettiness, or save some money and start a doctoral programme in such a country if that's how the cookie crumbles. And because I want to have enough time in my present role to brag on a resume that I'm not a big fat quitter. Now you know the base discontent frying the ass of Mistress La Spliffe.
I've hated my company's mandate since I started working for it, but I liked the conditions and the substance of my work, which is researching and writing: two of my favourite non-putting-things-into-me activities. But hating the mandate has slowly extended to hating going to the office in the morning, and hating staying there.
Ah, it's a naughty world.
Also, my analyst told me ages ago, when I was voicing discontent with my company's mandate, that I should play little games to make it more fun for me until I was ready to quit. So for awhile, every day I'd put words into my articles no one in my industry could reasonably be expected to know, like 'pullulate' or 'pyroclastic,' and wait for my editor to bring it up with me. That stopped being fun when he never did. So now every week I'm looking at one of the nasty advertising things I have to write about for work and then writing something nasty about it on Blogcritics.
The truth is I want anything I can call preparation for a new job. I want a new job so bad, and I can't really leave this one yet, because I want to save some money and then look for work in an E.U. country Figaro's teaching license is recognized in and where I can get some good fucking baking, warmer fucking winters and prettiness, or save some money and start a doctoral programme in such a country if that's how the cookie crumbles. And because I want to have enough time in my present role to brag on a resume that I'm not a big fat quitter. Now you know the base discontent frying the ass of Mistress La Spliffe.
I've hated my company's mandate since I started working for it, but I liked the conditions and the substance of my work, which is researching and writing: two of my favourite non-putting-things-into-me activities. But hating the mandate has slowly extended to hating going to the office in the morning, and hating staying there.
Ah, it's a naughty world.
lunedì, ottobre 30, 2006
News flash from mon cerveau
When I lived in Paris, people called it a "déclic", and I have never found a word to satisfy in English. Revelation? Of course fucking not. I'm not St. Paul collapsing into Carravaggio-ey light and starting to think nasty things about women. Realization? No, what has happened is more fundamental than the sudden memory of having an extra chocolate chip cookie shoved into the back of the lunchbox. A jumbly welter of rubbish has been charging about my head, kaleidoscope-like, for months, and sometime last night the kaleidoscope clicked into a shape that I can read like a text. Those clever French call that a déclic, and it is a phenomenom so central to how I live that I do think there should be a word for it in my first language.
Anyways, it wasn't about anything really fit to print about here - it was regarding the doctoral proposal - I just wanted to whine for awhile about how we don't have a word for déclic. If I'm wrong, and we do have such a word, please tell me. And yes, "moment of clarity" is too long. And too, somehow, fey. I want something foxy, quick, and clean - like déclic.
Something which aided in my déclic was the writing of Hannah Arendt, which has the effect of pulling my brain flat and steam-ironing it. On Violence is so nice - probably not so known now because it seems dated, an appearance whose fault would lie at the doors of the people who'd think it was dated. If anything I find the appendices more interesting than the body, whose subject revolves around the self-evident if ignored fact that power and violence are two extremely different things and that violence becomes an extremely attractive tool to people who feel their power is slipping away (On Violence came out in the very late 60s or very early 70s; it seemed to be inspired by perceptions of violence in the various student and civil rights movements as well as the response to them.) In the appendices she's free to wander for a few paragraphs about whatever, and oof - the indirect conclusions she comes to about consumer culture. . . my point is, I wish she was alive and in charge of the universe.
Have a good week, suckers. . .
Anyways, it wasn't about anything really fit to print about here - it was regarding the doctoral proposal - I just wanted to whine for awhile about how we don't have a word for déclic. If I'm wrong, and we do have such a word, please tell me. And yes, "moment of clarity" is too long. And too, somehow, fey. I want something foxy, quick, and clean - like déclic.
Something which aided in my déclic was the writing of Hannah Arendt, which has the effect of pulling my brain flat and steam-ironing it. On Violence is so nice - probably not so known now because it seems dated, an appearance whose fault would lie at the doors of the people who'd think it was dated. If anything I find the appendices more interesting than the body, whose subject revolves around the self-evident if ignored fact that power and violence are two extremely different things and that violence becomes an extremely attractive tool to people who feel their power is slipping away (On Violence came out in the very late 60s or very early 70s; it seemed to be inspired by perceptions of violence in the various student and civil rights movements as well as the response to them.) In the appendices she's free to wander for a few paragraphs about whatever, and oof - the indirect conclusions she comes to about consumer culture. . . my point is, I wish she was alive and in charge of the universe.
Have a good week, suckers. . .
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