aspirations.

One day, I hope I will be able to write like this:

"The long miseries and vanquished heroics of Troy inspired the world for millennia, though there is not much in the tale to offer comfort except the spectacle of futility on an epic scale. I am not sure we have at the moment any notion of comfort in that sense, of feeling burdens which come with being human in the world lifted by compassionate imagination. Our always greater eagerness to describe ourselves as sufferers makes us always less willing to identify with suffering as a fact of human life...This being human -- people have loved it through plague and famine and siege. And Dante, who knew the world about suffering, had a place in hell for people who were grave when they might have rejoiced." > Marilynne Robinson, "Facing Reality"

zeitfreude.

Grad school, I've decided, is one long subject convergence continuum. I've written about this before; about how there are constant strange subject convergences that occur again and again, somehow randomly and yet unsurprisingly. Case in point: a couple weeks ago during my office hours I had a long discussion with an undergrad and and my fellow TA about Hannah Arendt and Carl Schmitt. Neither of them had read Schmitt, and I was attempting to (badly) summarize The Concept of the Political and how it may (or may not) relate to Arendt. This was, by the way, the first time anyone has mentioned Schmitt since I started classes here.

Within the next week, in three separate classes, three different professors mentioned Schmitt and Arendt in the same sentence. Not exactly earth shattering; talking about Arendt and Schmitt in a political theory class is hardly off-topic, after all. It's not like all my professors suddenly became obsessed with Britney Spears, or the best way to clarify butter. But still, Arendt and Schmitt just happened to come up, in totally organic ways that had nothing to do with me. It was awesome; like I had somehow introduced the topic into the political theory universe, and it started to bounce around and into other people's brains and conversations, only to get repeated back to me within days. Totally ridiculous, I know, but...fun to imagine.

I mentioned to one of my fellow grad students that I think there should be a word for this kind of thing (prefereably some German noun that would be both fun to say and randomly capitalized, like Schadenfreude or Zeitgeist) and not only did he look at my like I was possibly insane, but he suggested that the word "coincidence" already had that covered. Coincidence! A coincidence is when you run into someone you know in the street, or you happen to own the same pair of shoes as the person sitting next to you; what I'm describing is academically cosmic. I don't think he quite got my point, though. And, unfortunately, I don't speak German, so someone else will have to come up with the appropriate word. I bet Arendt and Schmitt would know.

hipster projectors.

I found the hipsters in DC! They exist! And they were all at the Black Cat tonight, at the (totally amazing) Dirty Projectors show. There was much plaid and ironic facial hair! It was lovely.

Oh how I've missed you, my hipsters. You, and indie music, and organic 'artisan' food, and ripped skinny jeans, and glasses my mom wore in the 80s, and overpriced kitsch at flea markets, and pretentious beer, and bangs hanging in your eyes. I miss Brooklyn. I really miss Brooklyn, and I want to go home now, please.

Blech. Being a grownup sucks sometimes.

identity crisis, #312

I just spent the entire weekend with a bunch of conservatives. They were really very nice to me; they took me to a beautiful hotel, fed me great food and plied me with copious amounts of alcohol. I appreciate these things, but I'm not a conservative, and despite all the free alcohol I will never be one. I tried to keep my mouth shut, mostly, but I felt like a fraud. My drinks were being paid for, and didn't the people paying deserve to know that I disagree with them on, well, basically everything? Turns out that dissent in the face of overwhelming opposition is easier said than done, though, and aside from the occasional snide comment I refrained from outing myself. And now, I feel dirty.

But here's the real problem: in a room of liberals I often feel like a reactionary, and in a room of conservatives I feel like a revolutionary. It's almost like I have no actual political opinions at all.

old schoooool.

I Wish Undergrads Would Learn How to BE QUIET in the Library, Mix #4.

(And in honor of undergrads, all the songs on this list were songs I loved in college. MAJOR FLASHBACK. Also, the songs are arranged in rough chronological order, according to when I started listening to them. And, yes, yes, I should actually be writing a paper right now. Whatever.)

1. El Scorcho - Weezer
2. Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk (Reprise) - Rufus Wainwright
3. As Is - Ani DiFranco
4. Take Me Anywhere - Tegan and Sara
5. The Past and Pending - The Shins
6. Us - Regina Spektor
7. Such Great Heights - Postal Service
8. July, July - The Decembrists
9. Jesus, Etc - Wilco
10. With Arms Outstretched - Rilo Kiley
11. I'm A Cuckoo - Belle & Sebastian
12. Like Eating Glass - Bloc Party
13. Lloyd, I'm Ready to be Heartbroken - Camera Obscura
14. The Funeral - Band of Horses

my brain, a strange place.

I went to the symphony last night, and instead of actually listening to the Beethoven and Bartok being played, I thought about Hobbes' materialist philosophy. In my defense, I had spent several hours reading Hobbes, and thinking about how everything we do is merely a series of reactions to the physical world. So, as the older gentleman on my right dozed off, I tried to picture what sound waves look like, and how we hear them, and the amount of pleasure we derive from the experience. I considered explaining all this to the friends I was with, but then I realized that nobody actually wants to think about this stuff. Except me, maybe.

And if I actually derive pleasure from being in grad school (which is not necessarily the case) what would Hobbes say about that? I think he would say that I'm still living in the state of nature, and my passions are definitely not consistent with natural law.

Oy.

look, i wrote something...

and you can read it.

I suck at self-promotion.