It seems to me so far that the current reverb exercise, in which one reflects each day, intends to foster creative activity. The implicit assumption that one does not already appreciate sunsets and make things bores me a little. I feel asked to prove once again that I can do artistic things and enjoy walks … More On Creativity (A Contrarian View)
Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor, … More Joan Didion, “On Self-Respect”
Student: Do the Christs in Brazilian churches sport as much blood as the Christs in Mexican churches? Professor Zero: Yes. Student: That is amazing. Professor Zero: Why? Italian Christs have a great deal of blood as well. Bloodiness is a major characteristic of the Mediterranean and Mediterranean based Christ. Student: How marvelous! Professor Zero: It … More In Catholic Culture
It was a refusal of ventriloquism. One could say it was Didion’s “failure of nerves.” It also coincided, alas, with Reeducation’s distortions, Reeducation’s idea that nerves should fail. But far more fundamentally it was a refusal of ventriloquism. My attempt to interpret it as a “failure of nerves” in the sense of that senseless Reeducated … More Definitivamente
All literature is foreign somehow, and all foreign literature, or literature written in foreign languages, and literature from other eras, is more foreign. The feeling of being in a struggle with someone else for — you, over you. The feeling of having to explain yourself, again and again. The feeling of having to explain really … More And So
I have an advertiser at $200 per annum who reminds me that I cannot stop posting. This means each post, at one post a day, is worth approximately $0.55 USD. I feel like Virginia Woolf, commenting on the economy of a small college for women in Three Guineas, or like Thackeray and other writers who … More Bound to the Masthead, or, Honorarium Slavery
The honorary treasurer of the Rebuilding Fund had her eyes fixed on that. ‘What is the use of thinking how a college can be different,’ she seemed to say, ‘when it must be a place where students are taught to obtain appointments?’ ‘Dream your dreams,’ she seemed to add, turning, rather wearily, to the table … More Three Guineas
1 I do not now manage my time as I would like to, due to (a) my Reeducation related disability, (b) what my assigned schedule is, and (c) what customs are in this culture. And I tend to be flexible and relaxed, yet structured. But this culture expects almost complete flexibility, at least from women; … More Academic Mondays: Robert Boice?
Apparently these are: 1. Relatedness 2. Creativity 3. Rootedness 4. A sense of identity 5. A frame of reference It seems that items 1-3 are inalienable to me, but items 4-5 can be stolen. The reason for this is not actually bad — it is that cultural flexibility that enables me to adapt, it is … More Erich Fromm on Human Needs
In the past three weeks I have accomplished too little in terms of visible production. What have I been doing in this hot village? For it is so hot that I find it difficult even to watch whole films, read whole books, or listen to whole albums. I have been reading very short texts. In … More The Open Source Fallacy
coldhearted scientist وداد 