At Christmas we'd all wake up early. Well, somewhat early. The idea of early is a variable sort of thing for any two human beings. So, yeah, early for it being the kind of day when you weren't really required to be up at any particular time. I think I settled on 8:30 A.M. or so, which was late for some people's standards but fairly early for a person who'd been up past midnight trying to get a dark mage to case blaze on a group of griffins.
This year I'm celebrating by buying an ugly Christmas sweater. Truthfully, I've no earthly clue why I suggest things like this. I am a self-conscious person. I am shy. I do not enjoy groups of people that I don't know, do know, or perhaps could know. I really only loosen up a bit when I drink, but that's not the sort of thing that we do at work here in the United States. I drank two quick glasses of wine at our wedding reception before going around to talk to all the guests. I think it went swimmingly.
Anyhow, my sweater arrives, and it's pretty clear that it's a women's sweater, but I can't send the damn thing back because it already cost me 20 bucks or so. So now I have the added self-consciousness of actually wearing, not only an awful sweater, but a women's one. This can only turn out well. I'm likely to start hyperventilating on the way to work. I'm probably best found next Thursday near a dumpster where I'll be lighting my new sweater ablaze.
I suppose it's like this for most people. Lord knows I've been in enough conversations with grad school type folks to talk about the gaze of the other, be they woman, black, white, transgendered, or a precocious zebra. You know, the point is, we care about being watched. Which is, of course, kind of odd. I don't actually capital C care what most people think of me when I'm walking down the street. I'm not worried about them in the slightest. In fact, were it not for society I could just as easily shove them all out of the way or steal their groceries and dogs. In a certain way it just is a reminder of a constant theme in my life, which is, people think about you a lot less than you think. Most likely because they, like you, are too worried about themselves. This is not to say that we all should start wearing garish sweater vests every day, though I'd be suggest it's a good idea for all next Thursday.
We sort of admire and revile people who seem to "not care." We've been trying to sort out this whole fitting in thing since we first discovered that we were individual self in a world run amok with other selves. And you start to try and figure out early how to go about becoming a part of group without completely subsuming your individuality. This is apparent as we grow older in things like code switching during speech, something I do unconsciously.
Anyhow, it's tough. It's hard to set about being an individual and making radical choices, when you're well aware that lots and lots of other people are making similar decisions and perceiving themselves as individual as well. Go to college and you're just like everyone else, drop out and you are too. There's just not a whole lot left out there for your average American type person, and this creates either a low level unhappiness, or remains below the level of consciousness and allows a person to sort of cruise through life. I generally switch between the two depending on the weather. This is all just a long apologetic for a bad sweater that merely reinforces the point about being self-conscious. That's it, I'm shaving a line back into the back of my head and getting my lip pierced. Shi- already been done. I'll probably just stick with what I've got going then.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Quoting from Thomas Lynch
On toilets
"The thing about the new toilet is that it removes the evidence in such a hurry. The flush toilet, more than any single invention, has civilized us in a way that religion and law could never accomplish."
On the death of a child when a gravestone was pushed off an overpass and into the vehicle she was in.
"A: It was the Hand of God. God woke up one Friday the 13th and said, "I want Stephanie!"
B: It wasn't the Hand of God. God knew it, got word of it..but didn't lift a hand because he knows how much we've come to count on the Laws of Nature--gravity and object in motion and at rest--so he doesn't fiddle with the random or deliberate outcomes."
Or C: The Devil did it. If faith supports the existence of Goodness, then it supports the probability of evil.
OR D: None of the above. Shit happens. That's Life, get over it, get on with it.
Or maybe E: All of the above. Mysteries--like decades of the rosary--glorious and sorrowful mysteries."
On poetry and women
"But if women in their twenties will trade favor for poems and warm to the easy duty of the muses, by thirty they grow wary and by forty regard it as an invasion of privacy and politically incorrect. They won't be muses. They've their own version of the story. But she was twenty then."
On Language
"Some days I'm sure of God, some day's I'm not. Most days I side with the French oddsmaker, Blaise Pascal...And of all God's gifts, the best one is language--the power to name and proclaim and identify, to fashion from the noisy void our lexicon for birds of the air..for contempt and affection, pleasure and pain, beauty and order and their absences."
Thomas A Kempis
"Write, read, sing, sigh, keep silence, pray, bear thy crosses manfully; eternal life is worthy of all these, and greater combats."
Lynch on death...he's an undertaker
"There seems to be, in my lifetime, an inverse relationship between the size of the TV screen and the space we allow for the dead in our lives and landscapes. With the pyramids representing one end of the continuum, and the memorial pendant...representing the other."
On, you know, death:
"But this other impulse--to memorialize, to commemorate, to record has a more subtle motive...We need our witness and archivist to say we lived, we died, we made this difference. Where death means nothing, life is meaningless...The cairns and stone piles, the life stories drawn on cave walls, the monuments and graveyards, one and all, are the traces left of the species before us--a space they've staked out in granite and bronze...We visit them. We trace the shapes of their names and dates with our fingers. We say the little epitaphs out loud." The dead always outnumber the living. "We try to reassemble their lives from the stingy details, and the exercise teaches us something about how to live."
"The thing about the new toilet is that it removes the evidence in such a hurry. The flush toilet, more than any single invention, has civilized us in a way that religion and law could never accomplish."
On the death of a child when a gravestone was pushed off an overpass and into the vehicle she was in.
"A: It was the Hand of God. God woke up one Friday the 13th and said, "I want Stephanie!"
B: It wasn't the Hand of God. God knew it, got word of it..but didn't lift a hand because he knows how much we've come to count on the Laws of Nature--gravity and object in motion and at rest--so he doesn't fiddle with the random or deliberate outcomes."
Or C: The Devil did it. If faith supports the existence of Goodness, then it supports the probability of evil.
OR D: None of the above. Shit happens. That's Life, get over it, get on with it.
Or maybe E: All of the above. Mysteries--like decades of the rosary--glorious and sorrowful mysteries."
On poetry and women
"But if women in their twenties will trade favor for poems and warm to the easy duty of the muses, by thirty they grow wary and by forty regard it as an invasion of privacy and politically incorrect. They won't be muses. They've their own version of the story. But she was twenty then."
On Language
"Some days I'm sure of God, some day's I'm not. Most days I side with the French oddsmaker, Blaise Pascal...And of all God's gifts, the best one is language--the power to name and proclaim and identify, to fashion from the noisy void our lexicon for birds of the air..for contempt and affection, pleasure and pain, beauty and order and their absences."
Thomas A Kempis
"Write, read, sing, sigh, keep silence, pray, bear thy crosses manfully; eternal life is worthy of all these, and greater combats."
Lynch on death...he's an undertaker
"There seems to be, in my lifetime, an inverse relationship between the size of the TV screen and the space we allow for the dead in our lives and landscapes. With the pyramids representing one end of the continuum, and the memorial pendant...representing the other."
On, you know, death:
"But this other impulse--to memorialize, to commemorate, to record has a more subtle motive...We need our witness and archivist to say we lived, we died, we made this difference. Where death means nothing, life is meaningless...The cairns and stone piles, the life stories drawn on cave walls, the monuments and graveyards, one and all, are the traces left of the species before us--a space they've staked out in granite and bronze...We visit them. We trace the shapes of their names and dates with our fingers. We say the little epitaphs out loud." The dead always outnumber the living. "We try to reassemble their lives from the stingy details, and the exercise teaches us something about how to live."
Monday, November 28, 2011
Walking or Eddie Money builds a two car garage in my heart
I want you to engage in an imaginative exercise with me. That exercise is the lat pull down, first. Okay, I suppose that's not entirely where I was headed. Imagine you write sentences periodically. Imagine that you string them together into paragraphs and sometimes write about light and clouds and use metaphors to try and make significant points. Now imagine that your child has taken his/her first steps. Got that. Write away my good friends!
Okay, that done, I can move on to more pressing concerns. I'm a reasonable person. I think that's fair to say. And, like any reasonable person, of either gender mind you, when you are kicking it in the evening, child asleep, television shows concluded after much whinging about the not so subtle plot points of network television shows, and you get to thinking, how can I close out this evening in style? What comes to mind? Probably chocolate. Zing. And now I'm writing a Kathy cartoon.
Anyhow, if you're a kick as- type person you're probably going to put on some Eddie Money. (You could also reasonably put on A Land Down Under by men at work or Money for Nothing/Lionel Richie). Anything else, and it's probably time to stop living in the present and realize that the 1980's would kick you in the as- ten times over if they were still around.
So yeah, now, dear friends, just try and imagine the reaction of your spouse, sig. other, friend, cat, pet fish, stylish rug, when you put this song on? How is your rug reacting? Your rug is probably dancing and enjoying life, your spouse is thanking their lucky stars that you were ever born. They are praising the miracle of life that is Take me Home Tonight.
And that's why when S walked up to me and said, "What's that? Are you on some weird eighties trip?" that a little part of me died inside. Okay, a big part. A large part of me died inside where Eddie Money used to have a condo, a car, and some ladies with big hair. Was it hurtful? I don't think I can connote how hurtful it was. It was like being punched in the face by a forklift. And that's an understatement.
Needless to say, minutes later, as we were cleaning up in the kitchen I noticed S humming a song to herself, and I knew that perhaps there was some hope for us in the future. Perhaps the sun would come up tomorrow, and maybe Eddie Money could add on to that place in my heart, maybe put in a two car garage, because I think he's here to stay.
Okay, that done, I can move on to more pressing concerns. I'm a reasonable person. I think that's fair to say. And, like any reasonable person, of either gender mind you, when you are kicking it in the evening, child asleep, television shows concluded after much whinging about the not so subtle plot points of network television shows, and you get to thinking, how can I close out this evening in style? What comes to mind? Probably chocolate. Zing. And now I'm writing a Kathy cartoon.
Anyhow, if you're a kick as- type person you're probably going to put on some Eddie Money. (You could also reasonably put on A Land Down Under by men at work or Money for Nothing/Lionel Richie). Anything else, and it's probably time to stop living in the present and realize that the 1980's would kick you in the as- ten times over if they were still around.
So yeah, now, dear friends, just try and imagine the reaction of your spouse, sig. other, friend, cat, pet fish, stylish rug, when you put this song on? How is your rug reacting? Your rug is probably dancing and enjoying life, your spouse is thanking their lucky stars that you were ever born. They are praising the miracle of life that is Take me Home Tonight.
And that's why when S walked up to me and said, "What's that? Are you on some weird eighties trip?" that a little part of me died inside. Okay, a big part. A large part of me died inside where Eddie Money used to have a condo, a car, and some ladies with big hair. Was it hurtful? I don't think I can connote how hurtful it was. It was like being punched in the face by a forklift. And that's an understatement.
Needless to say, minutes later, as we were cleaning up in the kitchen I noticed S humming a song to herself, and I knew that perhaps there was some hope for us in the future. Perhaps the sun would come up tomorrow, and maybe Eddie Money could add on to that place in my heart, maybe put in a two car garage, because I think he's here to stay.
Friday, November 11, 2011
The astronomer
It was two years after his wife’s death that William decided to throw away all his old things and move into a smaller house, where he could meet with his children and grandchildren without faltering up the stairs. His heart gave him trouble now, beat rapidly when he was doing the most trifling things. No, it did not suit him well, getting old. He remembered being much younger, and staying awake from sunset to near sunrise, traveling across the known world with his telescope. Of late, he no longer had to remind himself that he was old as he had in his fifties. No. The ache in his knees and sciatica were constant companions now. They would see him through his final years.
It was nearing dusk when William finally reached the attic. Neither he nor Caroline had been up the ladder in fifteen years. She, out of her failing health, and he, because he was too busy dispensing medical advice to young men, or medical service to families in need. He had nearly forgotten that the attic existed. The sunlight in the attic was pale, and fell in thin strips across the dusty floor. The attic was rectangular, and had a low sloping roof that caused William to stoop as he searched through old chests and blankets, throwing things that he wanted to keep in a haphazard pile.
He came across a small metallic bike, his first, a bike that he’d ridden down Cross Street fifty years ago with his now dead mother clapping her hands in delight. The contrast between the vivid memory and the fact that he could not remember precisely what his mother looked like when she died, nearly brought tears to his eyes. But now he was behaving as a fool, a doddering old fool. These were the sorts of thoughts that were entertained by idle hands, by idle minds.
The light in the room was near gone, a memory now like everything else. William sat down on an old chest, and wrapped himself in an afghan sewn by Caroline years ago that he’d not known that he’d been missing until now. She had always claimed that the afghan, which he used for years to keep his feet warm, had been sewn improperly, and she’d point to the fringe and nod disapprovingly. Then, one winter, when he’d gone to retrieve the blanket, it had been missing, and Caroline said she may have accidentally given it away. He could see now that she had not given the thing away. She had gotten the best of him again.
As he rose slowly, trying not to disturb the palpitations of his old heart, he noticed that the seam of his pants was caught in the chest’s lock. Not wanting to tear them, William leaned down and opened the catch on the chest, releasing the seam of his pants, and, after a moment’s pause, he opened the top of the chest and peered inside. The sun had given way, and if he had been peering through the small dormer windows William would have seen the moon standing resolutely above the ash trees that lined the street.
The top of the chest had an old sketch book, brown and torn. On the title page, in spidery scrawl he read, “To William, from S.” The book contained sketches of the dusty old acacia trees that had lined the street of his childhood. He saw that towards the back of the book the sketches changed from those of landscapes, trees, mountains, to pictures of the stars. He had drawn the North Star, and a detailed picture of the canals that lined the moon, including the small mast of the ship that he’d seen sailing down them so many winters ago.
The light was pitiful, and William knew that he should go downstairs and light a candle or he was likely to break his neck descending the ladder. He pulled the sketch book close to his face, removing his spectacles and taking in all that he had once known. On the last page he had scrawled a silhouette of a girl, a small waif of a thing, no more than a teenager. The girl was hunched over a telescope, her wraith thin right arm adjusting the magnification of the lens, while with her left she appeared to be guiding it across the sky, making a sweep.
Outside, the light had drained from the sky. And William, almost crying again now, for no particular reason, pulled the afghan to him and lay down. In his dream, he was young again. And he was walking along the surface of the moon hand in hand with a woman who was not quite Caroline. It was everything that he had seen as a young man, shades of silver so delicately parsed that he asked the woman at his side if she would weave him a blanket made from the threads of silver. The woman laughed, and passed a hand across her face. “I don’t think it would amount to much,” she said, taking his hand, and leading him down the silver path, towards the dark waters that ran the length of the moon.
When he awoke it was to the pain in his back and legs. If his body had not willed him up; he would have stayed in that dream for eternity. He was old and sentimental. The two were often wedded, but he could see now that the wedding was not kind. With this thought fresh in his mind he leaned down to put back the sketch book that had brought back so many memories. But upon reaching in, he noticed a metallic gleam, barely illuminated by soft moonlight. His hands felt young for a second time as he pulled the telescope out of the old chest and stood it up against the wall.
He worked in the dark, but he found that his hands, which had been dormant so long remembered the curves of the scope as it were an old lover. He assembled it all in under a half hour and stood it up against the far wall, at the foot of the small window. The construction complete, his age sat heavy on him again. His heart knocked against his rib cage, causing him to grasp the window pane to steady himself. He was almost through.
He could not be sure that the lens still worked. In truth, Scarlett had always been best at adjusting them properly. Or, at least, he had liked to think so. He took a deep breath, gathering his strength, and bent to look through the lens. He swept it to the left just slightly, angling the scope and tilting the lens to try and get a better look at the moon. After a few moments he could see the cavern like shapes that dotted the crust of the moon, and he grew excited, not even bothering to check the rapid beating of his heart. He stared for twenty minutes, and then three hours, waiting for some small ship’s mast, or a light in the sky to reveal to him their presence.
After five hours, his back no longer aching, but bent in such a way that he knew he could not straighten it without the aid of a doctor, he realized that he had been away too long that the people that he had known or seen so long ago were dead or gone. A brief snow started up outside, coating the street and the bare limbs of trees in a sheen of white. It was a perfect night for a viewing. His legs burned now, with the weight of all the standing, and he knelt down at the foot of the telescope, his back half-bent. Perhaps, he thought, he had made a mistake all those years ago, age be damned.
It was nearing dusk when William finally reached the attic. Neither he nor Caroline had been up the ladder in fifteen years. She, out of her failing health, and he, because he was too busy dispensing medical advice to young men, or medical service to families in need. He had nearly forgotten that the attic existed. The sunlight in the attic was pale, and fell in thin strips across the dusty floor. The attic was rectangular, and had a low sloping roof that caused William to stoop as he searched through old chests and blankets, throwing things that he wanted to keep in a haphazard pile.
He came across a small metallic bike, his first, a bike that he’d ridden down Cross Street fifty years ago with his now dead mother clapping her hands in delight. The contrast between the vivid memory and the fact that he could not remember precisely what his mother looked like when she died, nearly brought tears to his eyes. But now he was behaving as a fool, a doddering old fool. These were the sorts of thoughts that were entertained by idle hands, by idle minds.
The light in the room was near gone, a memory now like everything else. William sat down on an old chest, and wrapped himself in an afghan sewn by Caroline years ago that he’d not known that he’d been missing until now. She had always claimed that the afghan, which he used for years to keep his feet warm, had been sewn improperly, and she’d point to the fringe and nod disapprovingly. Then, one winter, when he’d gone to retrieve the blanket, it had been missing, and Caroline said she may have accidentally given it away. He could see now that she had not given the thing away. She had gotten the best of him again.
As he rose slowly, trying not to disturb the palpitations of his old heart, he noticed that the seam of his pants was caught in the chest’s lock. Not wanting to tear them, William leaned down and opened the catch on the chest, releasing the seam of his pants, and, after a moment’s pause, he opened the top of the chest and peered inside. The sun had given way, and if he had been peering through the small dormer windows William would have seen the moon standing resolutely above the ash trees that lined the street.
The top of the chest had an old sketch book, brown and torn. On the title page, in spidery scrawl he read, “To William, from S.” The book contained sketches of the dusty old acacia trees that had lined the street of his childhood. He saw that towards the back of the book the sketches changed from those of landscapes, trees, mountains, to pictures of the stars. He had drawn the North Star, and a detailed picture of the canals that lined the moon, including the small mast of the ship that he’d seen sailing down them so many winters ago.
The light was pitiful, and William knew that he should go downstairs and light a candle or he was likely to break his neck descending the ladder. He pulled the sketch book close to his face, removing his spectacles and taking in all that he had once known. On the last page he had scrawled a silhouette of a girl, a small waif of a thing, no more than a teenager. The girl was hunched over a telescope, her wraith thin right arm adjusting the magnification of the lens, while with her left she appeared to be guiding it across the sky, making a sweep.
Outside, the light had drained from the sky. And William, almost crying again now, for no particular reason, pulled the afghan to him and lay down. In his dream, he was young again. And he was walking along the surface of the moon hand in hand with a woman who was not quite Caroline. It was everything that he had seen as a young man, shades of silver so delicately parsed that he asked the woman at his side if she would weave him a blanket made from the threads of silver. The woman laughed, and passed a hand across her face. “I don’t think it would amount to much,” she said, taking his hand, and leading him down the silver path, towards the dark waters that ran the length of the moon.
When he awoke it was to the pain in his back and legs. If his body had not willed him up; he would have stayed in that dream for eternity. He was old and sentimental. The two were often wedded, but he could see now that the wedding was not kind. With this thought fresh in his mind he leaned down to put back the sketch book that had brought back so many memories. But upon reaching in, he noticed a metallic gleam, barely illuminated by soft moonlight. His hands felt young for a second time as he pulled the telescope out of the old chest and stood it up against the wall.
He worked in the dark, but he found that his hands, which had been dormant so long remembered the curves of the scope as it were an old lover. He assembled it all in under a half hour and stood it up against the far wall, at the foot of the small window. The construction complete, his age sat heavy on him again. His heart knocked against his rib cage, causing him to grasp the window pane to steady himself. He was almost through.
He could not be sure that the lens still worked. In truth, Scarlett had always been best at adjusting them properly. Or, at least, he had liked to think so. He took a deep breath, gathering his strength, and bent to look through the lens. He swept it to the left just slightly, angling the scope and tilting the lens to try and get a better look at the moon. After a few moments he could see the cavern like shapes that dotted the crust of the moon, and he grew excited, not even bothering to check the rapid beating of his heart. He stared for twenty minutes, and then three hours, waiting for some small ship’s mast, or a light in the sky to reveal to him their presence.
After five hours, his back no longer aching, but bent in such a way that he knew he could not straighten it without the aid of a doctor, he realized that he had been away too long that the people that he had known or seen so long ago were dead or gone. A brief snow started up outside, coating the street and the bare limbs of trees in a sheen of white. It was a perfect night for a viewing. His legs burned now, with the weight of all the standing, and he knelt down at the foot of the telescope, his back half-bent. Perhaps, he thought, he had made a mistake all those years ago, age be damned.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Let us now quote famous men
For starters, I don't mean famous in the way of Kim Kardashian or the octo mom. I mean the more quaint kind of famous that one attains when they are credited with inventing the essay. Certainly, like you, I find the invention of a passe writing style to be of little use when I'm flipping through an US weekly. However, on occasion I find time to sit down and survey the world as it appeared during the 16th century to a frenchman.
I've just put lil s down for a nap. Unfortunately, the guys who are fixing our gutters have chosen to show up concurrently. The upshot of which is a lot of hammer pounding on the gutters just above lil s's bedroom window. Consequently, in lieu of sleeping, she is now yelling at the ceiling. The timing was not impeccable.
From "The Wage Slave's Glossary"
Alienation-"Marxist theory explains that alienation is a systematic result of wage slavery. Deprived of the opportunity to conceive of destinies, deciders of their own action, and owners/users of the value created by their work, (I had to pause briefly to exchange a check with the guys who were resloping the back gutter. I thought about engaging him in a conversation about alienation but decided it was probably not the time) workers in a capitalist social order are alienated from: the work which they produce; from working itself (which, in a factory setting, tends to be an interminable sequence of repetitive, trivial((first paren. is theirs, pause briefly to calm insanely screaming child. Now the thread is totally broken, and I'm realizing I should spend less time on work alienation, and instead, create a glossary of my own for raising kids. Firstly, I tried to talk Marx with her, but she was busy pointing at her blanket and pacifier on the floor. She also smelled like she'd been up to something, which is what happened yesterday. I'm not sure if the first term in my glossary should be inpoopsniac or napbomb-The act whereby a child, about to go down for a wonderful nap, poops themselves awake. I'm not sure dad's have time for Montaigne.)) and meaningless motions; from themselves as producers; and from each other."
The world is sort of a crazy place example 1: A person can stand in front of a mirror and wonder if there is too much going on with the inclusion of a scarf, while a couple of hundred miles away another person can be coming to terms with the death of a loved one, or the discovery of something tragic, Penn St., and yet, the first person is not struck down with a bolt of lightning or floored by this intuition but can actively wonder again, if too much is going on with the scarf.
I recently took a month off from weightlifting after re-injuring my elbow in a pull-ups accident. The accident being that I am no longer supposed to do pull-ups. Anyhow, like any intelligent person, after taking a month off from weightlifting, I decided to introduce a new regimen. Consequently, and I knew this was going to be the case when I could feel the workout immediately, I've been discovering new and painful muscles in my body, and I'm trying to find out if it's possible to move without actually moving any of those muscles. It's difficult. (Anyhow, this whole working out after a long time off bit just makes me resent even deeper those folks on facebook who post things like, "Seven mile run, wooo!" I don't actually resent these people's accomplishments, but rather, their celebration of them. If I had ever taken a seven mile run in my life I'm fairly certain I'd finish it by calculating where it fell in the top ten worst decisions of my life. Can't we all just be honest and say that exercise, though invigorating, usually kind of sucks? (((I've now finished my evening workout and after claiming that I was "feeling really good" I'm now realizing that the slight stiffness in my lower back is a fairly good indicator that I won't be able to get out of bed. Woooo! Working out!))).
Wait, this post was supposed to be about Montaigne. Let's just give him a listen.
I like this guy:
"...these are my humors and opinions; I offer them as what I believe, not what is to be believed. I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me. I have no authority to be believed, nor do I want it, feeling myself too ill-instructed to instruct others."
Ah, humility.
This is taken from his essay "On the Education of Children"
"Let his conscience and his virtue shine forth in his speech, and be guided only by reason. Let him be made to understand that to confess the flaw he discovers in his own argument, though it is still unnoticed except by himself, is an act of judgment and sincerity, which are the principal qualities he seeks; that obstinacy and contention are vulgar qualities, seen most often in the meanest of souls; that to change his mind and correct himself, to give up the bad side at the height of his ardor, are rare, strong and philosophical qualities."
Ah, humility. And, I live in Washington D.C. Michele, what is this, change your opinion after careful consideration. My opinion is law! This is why we hate the French. Go back to the sixteenth century and take your
I've just put lil s down for a nap. Unfortunately, the guys who are fixing our gutters have chosen to show up concurrently. The upshot of which is a lot of hammer pounding on the gutters just above lil s's bedroom window. Consequently, in lieu of sleeping, she is now yelling at the ceiling. The timing was not impeccable.
From "The Wage Slave's Glossary"
Alienation-"Marxist theory explains that alienation is a systematic result of wage slavery. Deprived of the opportunity to conceive of destinies, deciders of their own action, and owners/users of the value created by their work, (I had to pause briefly to exchange a check with the guys who were resloping the back gutter. I thought about engaging him in a conversation about alienation but decided it was probably not the time) workers in a capitalist social order are alienated from: the work which they produce; from working itself (which, in a factory setting, tends to be an interminable sequence of repetitive, trivial((first paren. is theirs, pause briefly to calm insanely screaming child. Now the thread is totally broken, and I'm realizing I should spend less time on work alienation, and instead, create a glossary of my own for raising kids. Firstly, I tried to talk Marx with her, but she was busy pointing at her blanket and pacifier on the floor. She also smelled like she'd been up to something, which is what happened yesterday. I'm not sure if the first term in my glossary should be inpoopsniac or napbomb-The act whereby a child, about to go down for a wonderful nap, poops themselves awake. I'm not sure dad's have time for Montaigne.)) and meaningless motions; from themselves as producers; and from each other."
The world is sort of a crazy place example 1: A person can stand in front of a mirror and wonder if there is too much going on with the inclusion of a scarf, while a couple of hundred miles away another person can be coming to terms with the death of a loved one, or the discovery of something tragic, Penn St., and yet, the first person is not struck down with a bolt of lightning or floored by this intuition but can actively wonder again, if too much is going on with the scarf.
I recently took a month off from weightlifting after re-injuring my elbow in a pull-ups accident. The accident being that I am no longer supposed to do pull-ups. Anyhow, like any intelligent person, after taking a month off from weightlifting, I decided to introduce a new regimen. Consequently, and I knew this was going to be the case when I could feel the workout immediately, I've been discovering new and painful muscles in my body, and I'm trying to find out if it's possible to move without actually moving any of those muscles. It's difficult. (Anyhow, this whole working out after a long time off bit just makes me resent even deeper those folks on facebook who post things like, "Seven mile run, wooo!" I don't actually resent these people's accomplishments, but rather, their celebration of them. If I had ever taken a seven mile run in my life I'm fairly certain I'd finish it by calculating where it fell in the top ten worst decisions of my life. Can't we all just be honest and say that exercise, though invigorating, usually kind of sucks? (((I've now finished my evening workout and after claiming that I was "feeling really good" I'm now realizing that the slight stiffness in my lower back is a fairly good indicator that I won't be able to get out of bed. Woooo! Working out!))).
Wait, this post was supposed to be about Montaigne. Let's just give him a listen.
I like this guy:
"...these are my humors and opinions; I offer them as what I believe, not what is to be believed. I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me. I have no authority to be believed, nor do I want it, feeling myself too ill-instructed to instruct others."
Ah, humility.
This is taken from his essay "On the Education of Children"
"Let his conscience and his virtue shine forth in his speech, and be guided only by reason. Let him be made to understand that to confess the flaw he discovers in his own argument, though it is still unnoticed except by himself, is an act of judgment and sincerity, which are the principal qualities he seeks; that obstinacy and contention are vulgar qualities, seen most often in the meanest of souls; that to change his mind and correct himself, to give up the bad side at the height of his ardor, are rare, strong and philosophical qualities."
Ah, humility. And, I live in Washington D.C. Michele, what is this, change your opinion after careful consideration. My opinion is law! This is why we hate the French. Go back to the sixteenth century and take your
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Tuesdays with Sadie
7:45 A.M.-She's chosen a glorious time to wake up. We celebrate by going downstairs and playing a game of peek a boo with a blanket. For the record, I accidentally typed, peek a poo, which is also a game that you get to play often when you have a child.
8:15-8:42-Breakfast. Most of breakfast is fine, perhaps a bit easier than it used to be. However, when she gets bored, she puts her hand at the back of her head and pulls at her hair. Cute trick right? looking like a mad scientist and all, except that her hands are generally covered in cottage cheese, yogurt, mashed up bread with peanut butter on it etc., which makes it a little less charming. And then, to top the damn thing off, as I'm pulling it out of her hair she's learning that it's good to pull on her hair, which just reinforces the vicious cycle of cottage cheese hair.
At some point during breakfast the cottage cheese also spilled all over the floor and dirtied up the fridge. The real nasty part of which was cleaning it up from a certain spot on our floor where I remember the gray matter of a mouse being splattered a few months earlier, and this question keeps running through my mind that S asked the morning of, "Did you clean it up?" And I'm now racking my brain/mentally vomiting and wondering, "Did I clean it up?" The moral to the story is, always clean your floors.
9:15-10:40-She takes a nap. That means I'm free to get everything done that I can't when she's awake. However, this just winds up making nap time a whirlwind tour of cleaning, laundry, etc. and a kind of, what am I doing with my life vs. what should I be doing with my life on steroids. I read some Montaigne called, "On Education," which I'd recommend to anyone. Note: maybe not women as in Montaigne's day they weren't highly valued. His name is Michele though.
1040-3:15-A variety of tasks. I feed her lunch, welcome the guy who is fixing the heater into the house, play peek a boo and two rounds of peek a poo. I tell her how wonderful it is when she holds up whatever object she's currently got hold of, blocks, books, square felt toy, and looks at me expectantly/excitedly. The guy who's servicing the heater is down there for like an hour, but he says there were not problems. I suspect that he was taking a nap.
Later, I start the diapers, stare depressedly at the wreck of a living room and try to snap off a blog post. She's got longer hair these days, and it's either a bit wavy, or it's just what happens when you apply enough cottage cheese to your hair. She's also got five teeth that are displayed in her happy little smile/the occasional time that I'm sitting on the couch and she sees my toes, which she takes as free license to chomp away, and, as it turns out, teeth hurt.
We play catch with a ball for a while, and I'm not sure if she throws like a girl or like a baby. She takes my cell phone when S calls and holds it up to me excitedly before briefly eating it, and, upon being discouraged, she starts crying, which means that it's nap time. I read her brown bear, brown bear for roughly the one thousandth time while she shoves my hand aside, so she can turn to the last page with all the animals listed. S went to the library and picked up ten new books, but lil s still finds her way to Brown Bear, probably because she wants me to go insane. It's working.
8:15-8:42-Breakfast. Most of breakfast is fine, perhaps a bit easier than it used to be. However, when she gets bored, she puts her hand at the back of her head and pulls at her hair. Cute trick right? looking like a mad scientist and all, except that her hands are generally covered in cottage cheese, yogurt, mashed up bread with peanut butter on it etc., which makes it a little less charming. And then, to top the damn thing off, as I'm pulling it out of her hair she's learning that it's good to pull on her hair, which just reinforces the vicious cycle of cottage cheese hair.
At some point during breakfast the cottage cheese also spilled all over the floor and dirtied up the fridge. The real nasty part of which was cleaning it up from a certain spot on our floor where I remember the gray matter of a mouse being splattered a few months earlier, and this question keeps running through my mind that S asked the morning of, "Did you clean it up?" And I'm now racking my brain/mentally vomiting and wondering, "Did I clean it up?" The moral to the story is, always clean your floors.
9:15-10:40-She takes a nap. That means I'm free to get everything done that I can't when she's awake. However, this just winds up making nap time a whirlwind tour of cleaning, laundry, etc. and a kind of, what am I doing with my life vs. what should I be doing with my life on steroids. I read some Montaigne called, "On Education," which I'd recommend to anyone. Note: maybe not women as in Montaigne's day they weren't highly valued. His name is Michele though.
1040-3:15-A variety of tasks. I feed her lunch, welcome the guy who is fixing the heater into the house, play peek a boo and two rounds of peek a poo. I tell her how wonderful it is when she holds up whatever object she's currently got hold of, blocks, books, square felt toy, and looks at me expectantly/excitedly. The guy who's servicing the heater is down there for like an hour, but he says there were not problems. I suspect that he was taking a nap.
Later, I start the diapers, stare depressedly at the wreck of a living room and try to snap off a blog post. She's got longer hair these days, and it's either a bit wavy, or it's just what happens when you apply enough cottage cheese to your hair. She's also got five teeth that are displayed in her happy little smile/the occasional time that I'm sitting on the couch and she sees my toes, which she takes as free license to chomp away, and, as it turns out, teeth hurt.
We play catch with a ball for a while, and I'm not sure if she throws like a girl or like a baby. She takes my cell phone when S calls and holds it up to me excitedly before briefly eating it, and, upon being discouraged, she starts crying, which means that it's nap time. I read her brown bear, brown bear for roughly the one thousandth time while she shoves my hand aside, so she can turn to the last page with all the animals listed. S went to the library and picked up ten new books, but lil s still finds her way to Brown Bear, probably because she wants me to go insane. It's working.
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