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Editor of Logos, an online journal of society and culture.
Lives in New Jersey.
Won't eat frozen vegetables.
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Friday, April 25
I think that, perhaps, I spoke a bit too soon yesterday. I had somewhat of a hard time with one of my female friends today, and I must admit that women cause me more grief than anything else. I do not think that this at all counters the things that I said in this blog yesterday, but I need to see that things are not all that wonderful.
Now, the question is, how much of these problems are generated by me. One could apprach this statistically. I really only have problems with her, and no one else. This may lead one to believe that it is all her fault, but I know this is not the case. Rather, one needs to approach this dialectically. I have noticed--upon examining my feelings about her and especially when we are in some kind of conflict--that she simply thinks in a way completely different from me. Personally, I do not feel that it is a productive method of thinking about the world, but I am willing to bracket that for the time being. No, I think that she simply changes the parameters of discussion to such an extent that my own methods of reason and logic do not seem to make sense to her.
Now, this could be coupled with my approach, which is relatively rational and quite indifferent to personal affairs and biases. She is very wrapped up in the personal and in her identity which makes it difficult to attain clear thinking. This notwithstanding, it causes me great emotional stress. I really like her, but she is often cold and removed, even though I do not think that she really feels that way--but how can one be sure? So, I am forced to be equally so; this causes arguments and misunderstandings. I really do not like this, and--even though I really have deep feelings for her--there is no way to let her know because she is so resistent and cannot see me for who I really am. She has constructed an image of me in her head, and she does not depart from it.
Well, I can say that it has all become almost like theater. I mean, it happens, and then it happens again. I must say it does a job on my emoitonal stability, and sometimes my bouts of depression are set off by our arguments, or sometimes when I think about her. Oh well, I suppose that women have this effect on men. I also suppose that I am deeply interlocked with her in a very strange way. I do not think I can adequately express it here--then again, no one cares but me after all.
Michael was existentially meandering at 4:15 PM \\
Thursday, April 24
There is one thing that anyone must admit, that to attain any degree of happiness in this world which is truly worth something, it must be something useful to others. I mean useful here in only one sense: that it expand the horizons of experience and knowledge of yourself as well as others. Teaching does this for me; painting for another; writing for another.
I have found that it is this that makes me happy--whether I teach others or myself. These past two days have been nice. Even though I was very sick on Wednesday and was home with the flu, I was able to read, think and then meet some students and discuss ideas and see new avenues of thought. I have also seen that the journal I edit, Logos, is something of increasing value to others, and this is something that makes me very happy as of late.
I cannot say that this is something I tend to feel all of the time. After all, when I am sick, I tend not to see the values of these things. I do not feel the way I do now. This intrigues me to no end: how one can be so different in feeling and outlook. I feel grounded now; even though things are not ideal, I know I can persevere and make something of myself. I know I can do good things for other people, and I see that there are (some) people that value me. I wonder why this is sometimes, but at other times, I see no reason to investigate this problematic--right now seems one of those times.
So, what about this turn of events? I see that I have many new, very good book projects ahead of me, and I also see that in the long run, I will in every way work my hardest to increase this discourse and the intercourse that is public reason. I also suppose that I have overcome these silly feelings that I have had for some time about several women I have been thinking about and about whom I had complex feelings. I think that women are really something else. I am so used to seeing them as an "other"; as something that is defined against my interests, but I see that this is not the case. I see that they really can make me happy. I don't know, perhaps this is simply delusional, but I now have a couple of good female friends, and I do not see them as sexual objects, nor as objects of a relationship. I see them simply as good human beings, and this has made me think as of late--because of their extreme differences--about the wonderful things that they think and feel. How different they are from men and how truly smart and sensitive they can be. It is really one of the great tragedies of world history that the other half of humanity has been oppressed and silenced for so long.
These women I know are really quite special, and I now consider myself so lucky to know them. I really think that they are made of better stuff than me: their personal perseverence in face of many of my tiresome, quite abhorrent personal qualities, is something to be commended in itself. But there is something more: I feel like I am in Marvell's garden, discovering the truth of femininity for the first time. They are the most beautiful and powerful of creatures, and it has been so long since I was intimate with a woman that the memories--which are so immediate and delicate--have come rushing back to me like a flood. I recall every sense of being there, scent, touch, everything. Do you remember those great lines from Marvell, dear reader?
What wond'rous Life in this I lead!
Ripe Apples drop about my head;
The Luscious Clusters of the Vine
Upon my Mouth do crush their Wine;
The Nectaren, and curious Peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling Melons, as I pass,
Insanr'd with Flow'rs, I fall on Grass.
You know the rest, but these lines pulsed through my veins today upon this complex emotional realization--their metaphorical connotations hardly lost on my senses. They are so beautiful and wonderous, these women, they truly have become the focus of my attention.
Michael was existentially meandering at 11:08 PM \\
Monday, April 21
Dear reader, do you know what Lemnius said about music?
Musica est mentis medicina maestae.
[Music is the great cure for melancholy.]
I have to admit that for so long I have agreed with this phrase. As a very young child, I was always transfixed by music, of all kinds. I would sit at home for hours after coming home from school and sit in front of the stereo my parents owned and listen in pure rapture.
Now, it has become my only avenue for emotional stability. I believe that all of us require music to one extent or another; the difference with me is simply that it has been for so long an absolute requirement of my day. This morning, I listened to the opening of Bach's "Erfeute Zeit im neuen Bunde," a wonderful, powerful piece. Then, I moved on to the opening chorus of his "Wachet auf! Ruft uns die Stimme" with its brilliant setting of Luther's chorale and its slow, but dleiberate, rising figure in the soprano line while the lower registers perform serpentine variations on that simple theme. The rise of the chorale is symbolic: the soul's rise to heaven is inscribed metaphorically, in sound, and conjoins with the listener in real time. Music has this ability; unlike painting and sculpture it is dynamic. But, unlike poetry and prose, it is not as intellectual. It requires us to act on a different emotional-cognitive level. It has no concreteness, and, in this way, it is superior to the more sensitive sentiments of our being. Indeed, every art form has its different function with respect to human sensibilities--I agree, after all, with Lessing's argument in hisLaocoon--but music elevates the soul and gives it more dignity than any other I can imagine experiencing.
I suppose that, for me, this has become my way of holding on to sanity. I think that it is my connection to what is most perfect, to the crystalline ideal of human emotional perfection. I have become so utterly lost in Bach's genius, his artistry, his religious ecstasy, that I can scarecely imagine not spending eternity in his exclusive company.
The mundane operations of this world, so disenchanted, so alienated, no longer holds any interest for me. I have sunk so low in the world. I am no longer equipped to be here. I yearn to experience what I hear. I recall Whitman's verse composed after attending the opera in New York more than a century ago:
I orbit the sun wider than Neptune
I dip into the ocean's deep waters
Whatever the interpretation, I think that I can never leave it. I know that today I am depressed, but I have grown sick of this weekend of depression. I need ot fight it now and get back to some semblance of normalcy. It is always like this, and forever shall be. But at least my struggles do not go unaided--at least there is a soundtrack.
Michael was existentially meandering at 11:08 AM \\
Sunday, April 20
I have become so depressed again. I have increasingly seen that there are few avenues out from this pathetic morass, and I have also begun to see that my most typical methods of control and emotional management no longer seem to work. It seems to me that to be in one's late 20s is difficult for anyone, but, for me, there seems to be a sense of ontological insecurity that has become so intense I am unable to truly work through simple issues with any degree of simplicity. Instead, I have needed to devote so much energy toward managing some sense of stability that it stands in the way of my work and other duties. I also hurt others who have fooled themselves into thinking that by paying attention to my state that they are actually thinking about me and not there own sense of self and the guilt that they may feel resulting from stoic resignation. Indeed, this says something for their superior moral character, but this is superior only when compared with the "herd" and is clearly not something genuine and authentic.
I cannot say that there are any truly overt reasons for these bouts with depression. I have had them on and off since I was about 14. But there is a sense that contemplating one's pathetic place in this world has much to do with such a situation. I exist in a state of pure dissonance. I have become rootless. Those things that once gave me enthusiasm, now are nothing but pure grey, their contents emptied and the hollowed receptacles that remain are defunct.
Solutions are not easy to come by. I must say that I have changed my mind on many things. My resolve for a solution is more immediate now then ever. Why ought one to endure such suffering? Even more, why ought one to endure it when one is not truly valued? Kant tells us that suicide goes against the categorical imperative. He gives us an example of a man contemplating suicice in his "Foundations for the Metaphysics of Morals." He says that there is no ethical justification for killing onself since you ought only to perform an act that you think should become a universal law of nature and society.
Well, I can respond to Kant in only one way: I do wish that those who feel the way I do would find their satisfaction through death. I have become so infatuated with this idea: the idea of my death. I think about it almost every moment. I am so relieved to be able to say this into the blank, nameless nebulousness which is the internet!
So, I was reading Pliny the other morning, and came accross the following, wonderful passage which shows us how the silly, ignorant, naive moralism concerning the prohibition on suicide is nothing but a creation of the moral ignorance of Judeo-Christian religions (even though in neither the Old nor New Testaments is there a single prohibition against it). I quote Pliny at length and give a suitable rendering into English from his Historia Naturalis, book 28, ch. 1:
Vitam quidem non adeo expetendam censemus, ut quoque modo trahenda sit. Quisquis es talis, aeque moriere, etiam cum obscoenus vixeris, aut nefandus. Quapropter hoc primum quisque in remediis animi sui habeat: ex omnibus bonis, quae homini tribuit natura, nullum melius esse tempestiva morte: idque in ea optimum, quod illam sibi quisque praestare poterit.
Which can be rendered as follows:
We are of the opinion that one should not love life so much so as to prolong it at any cost. Whoever you may be, you who desire this will still, in the end, die even though you may have lived a good or vicious and criminal life. Therefore, may everyone above all keep as a remedy for his soul that fact that--of all the blessings conferred by nature on man--none is better than an opportune death; and the best thing is that everyone can procure for himself such a death.
He then goes on to say:
Namque nec sibi potest mortem consciscire, si velit, quod homini dedit optimum in tantis vitae poenis.
Which ought to be rendered thusly:
Yet with so much suffering in life, such a death is the best gift he (God) has granted to man.
Now, all of this said, I can say that I feel somewhat better. I think that Pliny's wisdom has been sorrowfully lost; thankfully, however, not on me.
Michael was existentially meandering at 1:47 PM \\
Thursday, April 17
I have attained an odd sense of equilibrium, clarity and balance. For some time now, I have been off-center, emotionally blurred. I have been a slave to the most confused of emotions, obfuscating my thoughts, fragmenting my very sense of being. I have now seen what Spinoza must really have meant by the term "Of Human Bondage." In his Ethics, Spinoza tells us that the extent to which we are driven by our emotions at the expense of reason is the extent to which we are in a state of "human bondage." Many know of the term from W. Somerset Maugham's novel, but the real insight here is philosophical, not aesthetic. It means that our freedom is at stake. The only way to be free is to have the ability to think about what one is feeling and not allow emotion to guide us, but only that of reason.
Ok, say what you will. This means we are to be robots; this means that cold, calculating reason (as Marx calls it in the Manifesto) is to take the place of warmth and feeling, and that we are, somehow, to surrender our humanity to the passionless maxims of reason. I do not think that this is the case. I think that there is a sense that the less self-consciousness we possess, the more we will be unable to see that the roots of our (destructive) emotions are not at all justified. The less self-consciousness we possess, the less likely we will be able to comprehend and solve the emotional storms that hover over us. This is not a priviledging of intellect over emotion. No, it is merely a matter of understanding.
Now, what is self-consciousness? This is complex, but mean it in Hegelian terms. Hegel says that we attain self-consciousness only by interacting with an object of knowledge. He says that we perceive it (stage one); then we see ourselves as different from it and "desire" it in the sense that we want to know what it is (stage two, or consciousness); then, by interacting with that object of knowledge and then understanding it, we achieve self-consciousness.
Now, this is what I mean when I say I have achieved some sense of equilibrium. I have really grown these past two days, seeing that some emotions I believed meant one thing, in fact do not and they are the product of something else. These issues arise when I think about women; they arise when I meet a woman that is nice, attractive and, for some reason, has the inclincation to talk with me and continue to contact me for further meetings and discussions. Although this phenomenon is, at present, beyond explaining with any degree of intellectual rigor, let alone any degree of common sense, I cannot say that the emotional consequences of it sometimes are not quite difficult to deal with. I still have the emotions about a very nice, quite wonderful woman I've just met who seems interested in interacting with me (?), but I see what they are, truly. I see now that they are "instinctual" and internally created by myself, and are not a real reaction to her as a person. This realization was something else, I must say, and now, I can enjoy the next couple of days of emotional equilibrium before I slide back into despair.
Michael was existentially meandering at 12:53 PM \\
Thursday, April 10
I have been thinking about lunch dates. They are terribly impractical, and I have to say that I feel awkward participating in them. I should clarify. I was out today with someone talking and, awkwardly, eating and it is really something quite embarassing. You need to strategize: while she is talking, you should be taking as many bites as possible--with the obvious caveat that too many in a short period of time would be rude and positively disgusting--in order to maximze as much as possible the time when you will be able to talk without spluttering morsels of food all over the place and looking like some kind of beast. Then again, while you speak, the other needs to do exactly the same, realizing that, if this were not to happen, one could be at lunch for eternity, at least in theory.
Abolish the lunch date, and I think that--for the most part--my pathetic existence may be able to improve even the slightest iota over its present, repulsive state.
Michael was existentially meandering at 3:45 PM \\
Tuesday, April 8
There is no pharmakon erota.
Make me bitter
Spun from the secret thread
on which the dew you were thinking slid down to the jugs
guarded by words that no one's heart found their way.
I looked for your eye when you opened it
count the bitter almonds
count me in:
From the depths of drowning
I glimpse the elixer
its chalice encrusted in billowing clouds
Poured forth from its innards,
it spills around me
like the presense of your warmth
you make me bitter
there is no pharmakon erota.
Michael was existentially meandering at 10:37 AM \\
Thursday, April 3
By some odd compulsion, I have decided to record a brief entry in this quasi-daily record of thoughts and reflections. But first, a note about the blog's confusing title. The more literate among you will no doubt have noticed that Cheerful Science is a play, or retranslation, of Nietzche's The Gay Science (Die Froeliche Wissenschaft) a book that espouses a way of looking at the world that is totally your own, and completely in the employ of personal pleasure and joy. Now, this means that we all seek to be happy and to give free play to our senses, our irrational desires. We seek to break free from the constrictions of everyday life, of work, extended obligations, dogmatic moral inclinations, customs, and, most importantly, reason. Reason, that thing which essentially ensnares us within a world alienated from bliss, controls us through binding our desires and passions, and controls through its cold logic. This is the great tension, for those of you who sufficiently think and feel at the same time.
This is something on my mind at all times. I can never resolve this tension, and it will only be through bursting these ties asunder that any real sense of freedom will be obtained. I await that time, when I can enter my Byzantium. There is a wonderful Bach Canata that ends with a poignant, yet beautiful line: "Hier ist angst, dort Herrlichkeit!"
Michael was existentially meandering at 4:58 PM \\
Wednesday, April 2
Goethe says somewhere that we should talk less and draw more. I am inclined to agree, although since my skills at drawing are lacking any degree of skill, perhaps writing will suffice. I've decided to make this Blog an investigation of my daily thoughts and existential realities. An ostensibly boring enterprise, you might say? Perhaps, but I think there is some common, universal sense that we all have about our lives, our experiences in our modern, urban, deracinated existence; and I do not want to emphasize the negative, but, rather, explore it.
Anyway, such is the purpose of my daily ramblings, and in my own prosaic way, i will evoke a poetic turn on Milton: what in me is dark, illumine / what is low, raise and support: That, to the height of this great argument, I may assert eternal providence, and justify the ways of men, to men.
Michael was existentially meandering at 11:06 AM \\
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