With some effort — not inordinate effort, mind you, but some — I have put together a two year long speaker series for my other department. That is eight outside speakers a year, four per semester, for two years, for a program that has no budget of its own. I have done this for the … More On Getting By
In my foreign language class we have a thick textbook, a workbook, a lab manual, three websites, CDs, DVDs, PowerPoint slides, and videos. It is not yet clear to me how well these materials fit together or to what extent they repeat each other. It may take me more than this semester to learn. I … More The Textbook Industrial Complex, or, The Baroque Era
The best day so far in Madrid was Wednesday, when I did not do anything recommended (e.g. stand in line to get into the Prado). 8-11 Make coffee, put laundry on, study. 11-12 Hang up laundry and dress. 12 Have eyelashes dyed black (at Jean Louis David, for 20 euros). 12:30 Deal with blogs and … More On Not Following Recommendations
My friend and I discussed our problems with the Blackguard. I fear the Blackguard, if unchecked, can become our infernal wind. I do not want to feed that. Rather than discuss him further I am posting brief notes on the ideas we developed here. Problems we can solve as individuals: dealing with someone who wants … More Dat Blackguard
If I put lime on anything I am instantly transported to Latin America, where Reeducation does not reach me. I think I shall put lime on everything, every day, in addition to expanding myself through yoga. I have said it before but it is ever clearer to me how Reeducation insisted on the establishment of … More Lime
I must finish losing the “home identity” I acquired in Reeducation. With this identity I am abusable at home and at my home institution. This makes it really hard to concentrate in the places I spend most of my time because I am always looking over my shoulder for the next blow. I am loath … More An Anti-Fear Yoga. More Notes for That Anti-Procrastination Piece.
It was also the recrimination, which I had resisted so far but which Reeducation finally drummed into my pores, that made it so hard to work. A year or two later a friend mentioned that he was trying to stop “yelling at himself” and I realized it was what Reeducation had taught me to do. … More On Recrimination
Also in Reeducation, it was important to suffer so as to prove one could feel pain (pain being the only actually admissible feeling). One could not feel pain and do something about it — that would be “impulsive.” One had to feel pain and “grieve” it, lament and suffer. I had always found that to … More Sur la souffrance
I had a realization about how Reeducation worked and what it killed via a comments thread on a different post. I could write a coherent post about that if I had time, and the comment is really just a pre-note, the thoughts in it are not well worked out at all. For now I am … More On Transference
Reeducation deauthorized. “You are not authorized to be a successful person. The degree of power you wield in your own life is highly inappropriate in a person of your background.” “You must disempower yourself. You must recognize that your happiness and integrity is an illusion based on denial. You are not authorized to live as … More Reauthorization. Stomping on Dat Whiteman.
coldhearted scientist وداد 