<= 2005.03.04

2005.03.12 =>

intentionality

I don't know, not a great week. Yesterday in class I was actually feverish with stress, which is something new and amusing. My alimentary canal is all screwed up and I wake up in the middle of the night with acid gushing back up my gullet; last night I lay awake for a couple of hours because—get ready for this—I couldn't see the point of Kripke's theory of naming. Not healthy or sane, and as far the people who are actually read in the department—Frederic Jameson or Jane Gallop or Barbara Johnson or whoever—I just want to throw up my hands and say "That's a bad picture of the human mind!" or "That's not what language does!" or "You think you're going to solve social problems through literary analysis?" Yelling that in the classroom doesn't help anything, of course. It's sort of embarrassing how tightly my ego gets bound to this stuff, so I keep my gripes to myself and worry that I'm turning into some kind of anhedonic ogre.

I know, quit moaning and come up with something better yourself. It's as if I'm trying to do this with half my brain tied behind my back. I seem to have just discovered that a) what really interests me is philosophy of language, and b) I don't know anything about it. I'm scrambling to catch up, but Jesus, I just finished reading the major Wittgenstein works for the first time; I am a 26-year-old babe in arms. And there's this novel, which sometimes I complain about as well, but which right now seems like the only thing holding together my sense of self—it's one of the few things I can take any pleasure in. This summer, when it's finished, I will crawl into a hole, I will become a tree, I will not hate or hurt anything else.

 

in other news

But look, it's going to be all right. The other day I found this on the street:

Front

Rear

 

<= 2005.03.04

2005.03.12 =>

up (2005.03)