On the Verbiage

Often the appeal of all these quirky indie flicks is that people in them find each other on the same page about the craziest and most specific things. What are the odds of this happening: I stand in front of my open window, sipping some sort of merlot, looking into the distance somewhat wistfully and somewhat short-sightedly, a passer by slows the pace because I'm playing "Holland, 1945" and says: "Have you heard, Neutral Milk Hotel have reunited for a tour?" and I say "Yeah, but only in the U.S. and Japan. Japan!" "Yeah, how fucked up is that?".

Coming out of the capitalist closet

This was the last straw. And this is the end. I've considered myself a sympathizer to the Marxist cause for quite some time. But now I know even better. The Frankfurt School perhaps speaks to me. And so does Althusser. The state of being terrified has always been crucial to my intellectual development. I was first truly terrified when we read Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (which I should re-read perhaps). And he terrified me into very important decisions. The minds have been closing ever since.

In other developments. Spring break, yay. I have just half-assed in six hours a fabulous paper on Shakespeare, delivered a presentation the preparation for which made my legs hurt physically, and have checked my weight which has reached 73 kilos (so much for the disenchantment with capitalism).

I have also re-read some Borges. Which I keep on doing. The more I learn about this world the richer his short stories become. Will it ever end? I hope so. Because I really want to learn to write like him. And not only in the gesture (easy) but also in the substance.

Oh, horror

I was reading Althusser's 'Ideology and Ideological Apparatuses', wondering, how was it not just a more specific (Marxist) reiteration of what 40 years earlier Heidegger called Das Man. Or how it is not a reiteration of what Foucault was writing roughly at the same time.. And if so how come he's become so influential? And how most of the second half of the 20th century philosophy is a variation on the same theme..  It is true, of course, that these people might have not been reading each other very carefully. But the horror part is that it had dawned on me how I am still very much at the very beginning of my (speculative-philosophical) journey. How I have finally learned to discern very broad brush strokes of thought and how I still am not able to see the nuances. I can only compare it to my knowledge in music. I can easily discern between big genres, but there is only a couple in which  I can claim some proficiency. I don't know much about the classical or jazz, but I can name them when I hear it. Some genres of rock, however, I can hair-split until all of us faint (and, not to be surprised, those sound the same to most of the people I know). But philosophy is so much more demanding in this respect, especially for an alcohol-impaired mind which had never been very effective about remembering things in the first place... When I'm done with philosophy I will focus on wine, coffee and cheeses.

Notes

I have been filling notebooks with certain things that come to my mind and which I would otherwise inevitably forget. Most of it becomes outdated rather quickly as I roll through more readings. But some of them seem to beat even me on re-read. From the red book: "8. Dutch dam connoisseurs". What? The yellow book: "41. Cloud, not timeline.", "76. Pirate philosopher.", "81. Change the venue!". But I like this one (whatever it means): "14. Underground, in the middle of a sentence, dusting off my old jacket, we sang".

Ze Vikend

Many a thing has happened! Well, it is finally warm so it is not as shitty to live anymore. One can travel through all the major cities in the Netherlands in one day. The Hague is such a pretty place. I can see now how Amsterdam got all the hipsters-potheads and how the Hague got all the decent people. And all the decent architecture. Here in Amsterdam all the modern builderly escapades look like they had been created by an army of deranged architects. In the Hague the modern and the old look as if they had been built by only one deranged architect. It is extremely pleasant and coherent. And they have access to the sea!

My bicycle was finally stolen. I am now quite free to claim a full Amsterdamite experience. And as a true amsterdamite I know that it is absolutely pointless to report it stolen. I will, instead, celebrate the good riddance and just get another one. Everyone, by the way, in anticipation of exactly this situation, rides ugly used bicycles in here. What is the source of new pretty ones is still a mystery to me.

I am going to Bruges in two weeks. There is a basilica there where they have a phial holding a cloth with Christ's blood. Allegedly. No one has ever opened it. And why would they. It would be a bit suicidal for tourism.

And I have finally made peace with the steep museum prices. Even at almost 20 eur per ticket the van Gogh exhibition is so full it is almost impossible to enjoy it. 

Delightfully Decadently

Tonight there is some special pleasure in sitting on a plastic chair (fuck you ikea couch, fuck you swivel chair) in the middle of my room, pigging out on belgian pralines and a 6.50 bottle of shitty merlot i bought an hour ago in a night store, and having to care about absolutely no one at least for a little while.

Paris Paris Paris

I did like Paris. Even though it made me feel slightly unsafe. It was also very dusty. But every day since I had left, my heart has been growing fonder. What is this? I really want to be back in Paris.

Les Lapins

I am not a parking lot gazer. But my window overlooks one, right behind a canal. It is mostly empty and full of shrubs. There is a big park nearby, probably that's why, as I have finally noticed today, the parking lot is full of rabbits. They are black and gray, exploring. It is still strange how they got there because the parking lot is surrounded by the water from all directions but one. The fourth direction belongs to AMOLF, a very prestigious research institute. Nanophotonics and physics of biomolecular systems. It is strange to realize that they are apparently a big deal: if they wanted to, these people could see what I have for lunch every day; our buildings face each other.

I Made My Day

I was going through my bank statement today. Perhaps I was a bit tipsy when I was transferring some money from my German to my Dutch account, so it came as a surprise to see the transfer on my bank statement today. But more so, to see a message to myself in the 'details' field: "kisses, boy".

Das Erste

Yesterday I stayed up long enough to witness a miracle of modern television. In that liminal hour between too late and too early, strange things begin happening on the TV. Most of the channels either stop broadcasting altogether and there are others which never stop. I discovered a third type, perfect for stoners, insomniacs, and anyone ready to have their mind blown. When Das Erste was done with their normal programming, one could witness a footage of a train going from Chur to Filisur (48km), as would be seen by a machinist of the train: just an endless railroad, bucolic landscapes, gentle hum of the engine, going and going and going. There is something absolutely fascinating about this useless redoubling. There is no story, there is no camera work, there is not even a time condensation to make it at least somehow different from reality. Just a footage of a train going and going, something one would barely be interested in watching were he an actual passenger on that train, consciously placed in the context of a medium which is a tool of escapism rather than a strange magnification of what is already out there anyway.

Trouvaille

The weather outside, whenever I am outside, only forced by necessity, naturally, makes me both want to give up on life and smash something really really hard. But my life is full of micro-events that happen in the confines of my gorgeous apartment and which, sometimes, are turned into events that are pretty macro, thanks to the internet.

Like the one when my mother found out that we have solid Polish roots and are eligible in time for, well, europeanization. 

I have lost my glasses and had managed to retrieve them a week later via sheer persistence, persistence, a something I'd never be famous for. 

I have spilled a glass of merlot over a 3000-pages anthology of cultural criticism, page 993, Heidegger's lecture on language, something that upset me first but now appears to be delightfully decadent.

I am slowly becoming some sort of an expert on Italian politics, which does not prevent me thinking that I might have voted for Grillo if I had a chance. The five star movement, by the way, reads very well together with Arendt's Elements and Origins of Totalitarianism.

Pecking at a thick crust of signifiers. 

TИAЯ

I was bookmarking my horribly composed reader for one of the classes. It had no table of contents and it was impossible to find anything in it. And to make it a perfectly OCD endeavor I decided that bookmarks have all to be on the same side and all be readable from one side. The problem is that the bookmarks were writable only on one of its surfaces. So, in order to make it all accord to the plan, I had to write on some of my semi-transparent articles in reverse. RAWLS had to become Z_IWAЯ etc. etc. What struck me is how quickly my brain adapted to the task. After an attempt or two my crooked reverse letters pored as if there was no reversal at all. I wonder why. It also made me regress somewhere deep into my childhood when that kind of behavior was to be overcome rather than mastered.

Tracy

This semester for me is a blast. I am taking linguistics, lit&cultural theory, politics of modernity and Shakespeare. My Shakespeare and Cultural Theory professor is a more fun version of Tracy. His unshakable staples are "Welcome, you are late", "Welcome, welcome, welcome" (no shit!), "There is much more to say", "Great point", "Absolutely" and he pulls his chair to the middle of the room, crosses his skinny legs and gestures with his hands. He might, in fact, be doing Tracy better than Tracy himself. Never ever has the hermeneutic circle sounded so seductive.

Carts and marts

Today I have seen some surprisingly effective contemporary art. Maybe because it seemed less of an exhibition venue and more of an artsy amusement park. "The Dark Universe". Before you enter, together with a brochure, one gets a warning note: "You are about to enter an exhibition with intense audio visual installations. These installations can trigger seizures with people who suffer from epilepsy." Dizzying strobes, tangible sounds, darkness and space. The kind of art that cares about its audience. And then I was looking at some Newmanns at Stedelijk and their size was clearly betraying a self-consciousness of a completely different kind.

Fridarrrrgg

Gosh why am I so exhausted and irritated? Especially considering the fact that February has been extremely goodnewsworthy, comfortable, and happy for me.
I am tempted to assume it is my nicotine withdrawal finally kicking in but it has been quite some time since I stopped. Too much coffee? Too little coffee? Books for my new term are too expensive (that might be it, over 250 euros in total)? The world and people in it do not conform to my expectations (it was raining horizontally two days ago; today it is horizontally snowing)? My skin is dry after a shower. It has been too many emails. Gosh I'm tired of emails. They disconnected my TV. My bike is a prisoner of the garage of which I don't have a key. Holy shit, at the beginning of the post I really was at a loss why I was so irritated, now it is crystal clear. More coffee it is then.

die Nachrichten

I have not seen a book in weeks. I have gained 6 kilos. I have lost motivation. My nose almost touches the screen when I am reading the news on my "11 computer. I can only read the news when I am eating oatmeal. I have become a better cook. Spotify has for some reason stopped playing advertisements. I might have forgotten how to walk. My mnemonic device for German conjugation in Dativ is "merman": dem der dem den. And "solar radiation! solar radiation!" for Genetiv: des, der, des, der. My brain is where random things thrive and where useful information comes to die.

Strange

Strange things are happening.

Smoking

There is only one good reason to quit smoking. If you are planning to stay alive for a while.

Academia is the only vocational choice that is awesomely compatible with getting old. Pick any other job - and you are just getting feebler and more useless. But in the academia age is an asset.

I have been smoking for at least 6 years on and off now. Somehow, my motivation to live always comes and goes. My motivation not to die in agony, however, comes a bit more often. And yet.

Smoking is the closest thing to an orgasm. They are entirely different, of course, but the experience of smoking, too, is difficult to describe, somewhat addictive, and somewhat pointless. And difficult to kick.

And yet. It has come to this that it is very difficult for me to imagine life without smoking. It's like "If I quit what am I gonna do?". What I am gonna do with all that free time, with all these freed up pauses between things, I'm not even sure what it is to live without an oral fixation anymore.

More importantly, is it even worth it? That requires some sort of a deep theoretical deliberation.

Pauses

An article in the New Yorker made me miss Paris. An evening stroll to the store made me miss all other evening strolls to the store when my head was full of ideas. I think in spasms and like all spasms they are barely controllable. If I am lucky, I get something from these mental explosions, I save it for later when it is all over and all is quiet again. But I am rarely lucky and what could have been the most exciting thing in the world yesterday becomes today as meaningless as anything else. And then there is nothing to do but wait: read halfheartedly, speak halfheartedly, and think halfheartedly. This is the time of looking backward. Reminiscing, trying to forget, trying to silence the voices, or voicing over what is normally kept in silence. This is also the time of looking forward; but without hope and right onto death. There is nothing that can be done to vindicate one's longevity, but even more so there is nothing that would justify one's premature departure.  It is a conspicuous waste of time which cannot be simply remedied by a willful act.

Dreams

Dreams are the worst. A bunch of nonsense tied into a loose narrative.

Last night was one of those. First, not only i couldn't sleep but neither could I think of anything remotely interesting or productive. And then this dream.

I had two girlfriends, both crazy jealous, both dressed in all black, hair also black, neither knows about the other. Never had I any fantasy remotely resembling any of this; one is plenty to handle but two! So one of them was super short for some reason and the other had attachment issues. The one with attachment issues had to 'habituate' herself to me by me stroking her lightly until she feels uncomfortable and tells me to stop. Ok I know where this one is coming from. I saw 'Hope Springs' before going to sleep where this was one of the 'sexercises' prescribed by Steve Carell the therapist to a long time married couple of Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones. As one of the reviewers said, "If you like watching movies where old people are trying to have sex this one is for you!" But where the second girl is coming from I have no idea. Tommy Lee Jones was very good in the movie though...

I really prefer lucid dreams, ones when the frontal lobe is not completely asleep and tells you what to think of all the mess that is going on in the dream. They also never feel like sleep. Once I even dreamt of nothing at all but my brain still managed to concoct a whole research theory based on the eight pages of Heidegger's exposition of anxiety in Being and Time. Or Bergson's Time and Free Will actually - there was a lot of stuff about managing the idea of duration and extension.