still not asleep

(28-29)

Un degré plus bas et voici l'étrangeté : s'apercevoir que le monde est « épais », entrevoir à quel point une pierre est étrangère, nous est irréductible, avec quel intensité la nature, un paysage peut nous nier. Au fond de toute beauté gît quelque chose d'inhumain et ces collines, la douceur du ciel, ces dessins d'arbres, voici qu'à la minute même, ils perdent le sens illusoire dont nous les revêtions, désormais plus lointains qu'un paradis perdu. L'hostilité primitive du monde, à travers les millénaires, remonte vers nous. Pour une seconde, nous ne le comprenons plus puisque pendant des siècles nous n'avons compris en lui que les figures et les dessins que préalablement nous y mettions, puisque désormais les forces nous manquent pour user cet artifice. Le monde nous échappe puisqu'il redevient lui-même. Ces décors masqués par l'habitude redeviennent ce qu'ils sont. Ils s'éloignent de nous. De même qu'il est des jours où sous le visage familier d'une femme, on retrouve comme une étrangère celle qu'on avait aimée il y a des mois ou des années, peut-être allons-nous désirer même ce qui nous rend soudain si seuls. Mais le temps n'est pas encore venu. Une seule chose : cette épaisseur et cette étrangeté du monde, c'est l'absurde.



Go one step further and discover this oddity: to glimpse the world as "dense", to understand a stone as something foreign and irreductible to us, to grasp the intensity with which nature, a landscape can negate us. The inhuman lies at the core of all beauty, and as soon as we see these hills, the softness of the sky, the patterns on the trees, as such, the illusory meaning in which we've clothed them falls away, leaving them more remote than a paradise lost. the primordial hostility of the world rears up at at from across the millenia. For a moment, we fail to understand, since, for centuries, we've only understood the world in terms of drafts and diagrams that we had ourselves imposed. we find our trickery impotent. In its true form, the world escapes us. The scenery, hidden in the folds of our conventions and routine, reveals itself for that which it's always been. This background is distant and cold to us. All the same, on certain days we can fail to recognize a familiar face, even one that we've loved for months or years, so it's possible that we'll even come to desire the very thing that makes us alone. but that time hasn't yet come. This so called density, the foreignness of the world: that's the absurd.

that which flows and that which stays. it made the choice to form a standing wave.

there comes a point where out of body experiences aren't just a fanciful choice on my part. all i'm saying is you might do it too.

sara stayed here last night after ice cream and monty python's meaning of life. we didn't sleep much, and when i did i dreamed in french.

the morning was bad, but it could have been worse. in analysis, for the second time this semester, i found myself drawing a flatlining ekg instead of taking notes. with a minute left in class, it was pointed out that there was a glaring flaw in the proof being presented. ten minutes was taken to correct it. i was late to my meeting to talk about la peste.

but then, so was she. she said she was off her game. i didnt say that i was too. i'd finished the book. i could speak to it. i went home and ate some cereal and slept. run for your life came on to finish my nap. it's every song by the beatles in a row sped up eight times. it's a little over an hour long. nothing was bad after that. come to think of it, nothing was bad after analysis.

all day it was raining. each time i came outside it was raining harder. it felt good. i was listening to twelve fold chain on the way to topology and kristen was in front of me walking to the museum. she saw me when she turned her head to look both ways before crossing the street.

all day i was having trouble deciding which language to express myself in. it must have been partially gearing up for my meeting and dreaming in french and not having slept. mostly the space between my head and the world. this would become more marked later.

in topology, we talked about index and content. i just liked seeing content written on the board so many times.

like i say, it was raining harder when i got out of class. i listened to twelve fold chain again. i went to sara's to pick up an eye pencil to complete my thomas costume. we downloaded and watched the office. i left a little after five.

thomas and i got into costume and went to the math party. i wore thomas' undershirt and my favorite shirt of his. i took a popsicle box from the freezer as a prop and made a necklace out of paper clips. i cut a cross out of a notecard and drew jesus to make it a crucifix. i hooked it on the paper clip chain and tucked the whole business between my shirts. i drew extra body hair with the eye pencil, starting with sprouting neck hair and enhanced arms and thickened eyebrows. it's been a while since i've dressed up and it came off pretty well. thomas wore my '60 isn't usually this sexy' shirt and borrowed my red notebook, which i finished this week. the gold of his costume was how he acted like me. at kathan's party he'd do the flapping hands thing and got really excited when people i like walked in and said awkward things. it was nice to watch my work get done without having to do it. it was also a way of being separated from myself.

i was given occasion to be smug at the math party when profs nimersheim and ressler were talking about a route they like to bike out east of lancaster. it's a 14 mile course through fields and farms, and they were telling me about how nice it is. i told them that i knew that route. i do it on foot, though. i agreed that it's nice, at least.

it was raining even harder when i went from kathan's party to the arts house party. i tried calling rachel and my sister but they weren't there. i listened to twelve fold chain and found the people i knew at the party. i didn't stay long, though.

here's something

http://www.phinnweb.org/links/literature/borges/aleph.html

still not the thing

i'm agitated again, which makes it hard to work. to do anything, mostly.

today i woke up tired and ran tired. there wasn't very much blood making it up to my brain, so i didn't try and think too much. my heart didn't hurt very much. maybe it's getting back in shape. there are delays in scheduling in the medical profession but not in my life, so unless i die i'll probably get better before anyone can do anything about it. this is one way of being impatient.

i've been reading the zumdahl calculus book and surprising myself at how much of it i understand. it's true that i have forgotten almost everything i learned when i took the course, but it's also the case that i understand a lot of the important stuff, stuff that was too subtle for me, and in the end nonessential, the first time around. it's an interesting point of view shift to think of calculus as compact, having distinct boundaries that can be held in two hands.

tim sent out the dispatch submissions the other day and i just got down to reading them now. the main problem is that there aren't enough submissions. i know we can drum some more up, but it means that we'll probably have to print stuff that either isn't edited enough or isn't really worth printing. i'm saying only two of the articles we got have potential. one of them is potentially brilliant, though, so i'm excited about that. i sent a terse e-mail to tim saying i'd work on it.

finger on the pulse

there's a big idea in here somewhere.

the day wasn't so different than what i said, just substitute sara for black pyramid. it worked out better that way timing wise. i came and left for my run through the back door, so i it was only when i was leaving to go walk with sara that i found my package from amazon in the vestibule.

it was:
-algeria travel guide
-the night starts here (stars)
-population (the most serene republic)

i dont think i particularly need to specify why those are exciting.

but like i say. everything goes according to plan. i'm sleeping - more later (that big thing i said...yeah)

last night: inconsistent tenses

-rain (which, in the case of thomas, refers to the korean popstar)
-seven pounds of raw meat in the freezer (5 beef, 2 chicken. we'll have to get on that)
-splayed on the couch feeling good in a body, enough so that i didnt mind watching two and a half men (to be fair, it may well be the best thing on. i still can't really get my head around thomas watching it daily)
-shopping for the lock-in with rob, jacqui, dierdre and thomas. more rain, cramped back seat and aldi. we stop at the other room on the way home to drop the stuff off for tomorrow (today). urbi, katja and blake are watching blue velvet. i make fun of urbi for having burst in on my midterm today to tell me about her ipod. big hugs (blue lights!) all around.
-thomas and i doubt that we'll get anyone to play monopoly with us so we start a game. our calls pan out and rob, dierdre and mitch come over. we restart in the kitchen. the game and its trades are ridiculous, but satisfying, at least until the endgame when everyone is making desperate trades and it drags out. i go out by hitting two railroads and three house boardwalk on the same turn and go for a walk.
-i have missed calls from sara and katja. sara is asleep and says we'll talk tomorrow. urbi answers katja's phone and tells me to come over.
-blake and urbi and katja are painting each other in urbi's room. i let katja paint me and i draw her, but (mine at least) turns out not to be very serious. i say it feels weird, cause i usually only draw people who i'm in love with.
-on the way home i run into jacqui on the way to phi psi (next door). it makes a bookend evening for us (what with the shopping and all). katie leach is there too, and for some reason she's excited to talk to me (??). i show her my new shoes and say how i accidentally showed up to analysis today even though there was no class. when i get back inside the monopoly was still going on. i instantly don't feel bad at all for having done something else than sit and watch.
-just after midnight, the game gets called (where'd you get the pink 50s grandma?). i read la peste and sleep.

———

today is busy. i'm trying to run, go to market, stop by the black pyramid tent, go to movie and dinner with emily's family and end up at the lockin. i'm also kinda trying to see sara, but math (time, that is) isnt really with me there.

everything else, i forget.

something in french

how 'bout a two for one. that is, productivity and a playlist.

the playlist first:
1: seeing other people — belle & sebastian — if you're feeling sinister
2: the twist — metric — grow up and blow away
3: my moon my man — feist — the reminder
4: walking with a ghost — tegan and sara — so jealous
5: borderline — sufjan stevens — (rarities)
6: blankest year — nada surf — the weight is a gift
7: the sky opened wide like the tide — the blow — poor aim love songs
8: you're so hollywood — flickerstick — welcoming home the astronauts
9: lazy [zend avesta mix] — noir désir — one trip one noise
10: amsterdam — peter, bjorn and john — writer's block
11: a line allows progress, a circle does not—bright eyes—every day and every night
(link!)

i'm not saying it's done, but it's not in bad shape. the middle section (5-9) runs pretty nicely, but i might mess with the beginning. it's a little fluffy.

the productivity is specifically in reference to my two tasks for the semester, which is to say i went for a run.

i ended up getting lost in the topology midterm. in particular, i kept going from page to page and doing everything systematically and was the first done, but when i checked the time on the way home it was ten minutes after the normal end of class. it'd be nice if all the classes seemed to go that fast. i think i did fine but we'll see.

nothing particular is happening later, but i'm not too worried. i'm pretty adept at wasting time, and there are things to be done in the first place.

Dieu lui-même ne peut maintenant nous séparer

i am very conscious of my body, and it feels terribly good.

i forgot that my class was cancelled today. i went anyways, so i ended up having an hour and a half free. bonus time, stolen time. i went to the park and sat underneath the tree and read la peste. it was perfect, in that i got to exactly where i wanted to be in the reading and got inspired in a different way too. i was listening to bright eyes.

i ended up pitching trees as a metaphor for god. i like it, especially in that thomas doesnt think trees can love, but he likes god. trees capture the indifference of god insofar as there is evil in the world. and anyways, infinitude implies unconsciousness. god cares the way trees do: not by caring, but by being caring.

and how could god have a self anything like the way people do. a finite number of finite, in particular épuisable, people on the globe don't have any way to break down anything infinite. and so the blind atheist concludes that god is nothing, that this tree doesn't have a brain or heart, and thus cannot love.

and it's true that you can't walk up to a tree trunk and say "do you love me?" and it's also true that it does.

———

in other news, i'm doing good in school. the biggest things i have to worry about are getting a visa and running 26 miles. if i can do those, then i'll be in good shape. which is a funny thing to say seeing as i have the hardest midterm in 20 minutes. i'm saying it'll go well, now that i've calmed myself down.

maybe i'll post my playlist later, and maybe i'll go do something productive instead. that's all the choices i'm giving myself (for now).