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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, May 23
This is my last day for a while at this wretched daytime job of mine and I have to admit I am not in the least bit sad about it. I'm going to Berlin on Tuesday for the next three weeks. I am a Humboldt Fellow at Humboldt University and will spend my days hanging out in seminars and my evenings at salons and parties. It will be such a change from the norm--well, not really.
Anyway, I have not written in this blog for the best of reasons: I have had little to say. Not that I have not been thinking and feeling, but I have been so indifferent yet comfortable that it is really amazing. I don't know, I sometimes long for those days of depressive desparation, the way it brings you up close to your humanity, your sense of self, your very essence. Then again, those episodes plunge me into extreme despair, perhaps the grass is simply always greener somewhere else.
No great insights gained from my morning readings, no pithy thoughts from my mundane daily observations. Simply me, and existence. Such a barren world it is.
Auf wiedersehen...
Michael was existentially meandering at 9:21 AM \\
Friday, May 9
I have often been fond of saying, in the manner of Theocritus, that there is no "cure for love." It may be true, after all, that there is no absolute cure. No remedy for the pain and suffering felt from the passion for an other. No, what I have found is that it is not a cure in the sense that Theocritus, in his orginial, Greek terminology, implies, an "elixer" a "pharmakon." Rather it is more in the realm of technique.
As individuals, we all develop and evolve. We transform, transmogrify. We change as the result of a sometimes delicate, sometimes violent dialectic between intuition and expeience on the one hand and fact and circumstance on the other. I have found that there is a remedy for love, and it is all in the timing. Yes, the timing. You see, I have realized that love, in its most impulsive and its most delicate forms, is nothing more than the slow building up of perceptions, thoughts, and the feelings that we attach to them. I see now that it is nothing more than the accumulation of perceived gestures, facial expressions, and the harmonic subtelties of the voice. When you speak with a woman that is somehow and in some way emotionally engaged with you--this does not mean that she "likes" or loves you necessarily, simply that she is interested in you in some level beyond the instrumental--you cannot help but see these things, to realize them and begin to put them together in your mind. You can hardly resist constructing an emotional nexus wherein you relate at a deeper level. You begin to see her--even though you may not have before--as profoundly attractive and your emotional ignorance of her begins to work itself up into passion.
Now, here I have described the mechanism of love. I sometimes find it silly that certain things I read many years ago and which had little significance for me then, now return to reveal great expanses of wisdom. Such is the unknown poem by Ovid, written after his more (in)famous Artis Amatoriae (the Art of Love). The poem is significantly shorter, but more profound, indeed, and is called Remedia Amoris (the Remedies of Love). I will quote only a few lines here for your reading pleasure:
Principiis obsta; sero medecina paratur,
Cum mala per longas convaluere moras.
Sed propera, nec te venturas differ in horas;
Qui no est hodie, cris minus aptus erit;
Verba dat omnis amor, reperitque alimenta morando;
Optima vindictae proxima quaeque dies.
Flumina pauca vides de magnis fontibus orta:
Plurima collectis multiplicantur aquis.
[Resist beginnings. Too late is the medicine prepared
when the disease has gained strength by long delay.
Yes, and be quick about it, do not wait on the coming hours.
He who is not ready today will be less so tomorrow.
All love decieves and feeds off this delaying.
Next day seems ever the best for your deliverance.
Few rivers do you see that are born of mighty springs.
Most are increased by gathering waters.]
And then:
Interea tacitae serpunt in viscera flammae,
Et mala radices altius arbor agit.
[Meanwhile, secret flames creep into our innermost being,
and the evil tree drives its roots deeper down.]
The art of being timely is itself a medicine (Temporis ars medecina fere est); you must catch yourself and beware. I have found this to be the case. I have been dealing with a woman for some weeks now, and I have been so very able to stave off these feelings. I am so aware, I am so timely in the art of practicing Ovid's art. You see, the odd thing is, I was simply reading this this morning willy-nilly. Reading Latin verse is something I do each morning, and Greek prose in the evening. To read these lines was such a moral tonic!
Yes, I know, where then can love come from? That is another issue entirely. For now, I am simply content to combat its fierce assaults. I must kep busy, must continue to work. As Ovid says:
Adfluit incautis insidiosus Amor.
[Insidious love glides into defenseless hearts.]
Michael was existentially meandering at 10:20 AM \\
Sunday, May 4
When the sun is out, one thinks and feels differently. This may seem obviouis, and so be it, but for me things have been in such equilibrium I can scarcely believe it. Why, I ask myself, have things been so, "ok"? Well, for one thing, I have stopped worrying about where my life is headed. I think that from now on the best approach is to let things simply happen and keep close to one's conscience.
No doubt, dear reader, you recall that great line from the immortal Florentine:
Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti.
Well, I have never cared what others think about me and my ideas, I will--as Marx did--let science and conscience be my guide. As for other things, well, school will be over soon, my book will be out in the summer, and I am going away to Berlin (paradise compared to this place) for a few weeks to get away. Let's see what happens.
Also, my female friend from work returns tomorrow. I don't know, I guess when she's not around, I realize how much I miss her. She doesn't care about that though. I think I come off as nasty when she's around, but I don't mean it against her, specifically. I need to try to change that--she's very special to me.
I'm listening to Berlioz now, and I have to say that Berlioz and a beautiful spring evening are absolutely inseparable.
Michael was existentially meandering at 7:02 PM \\
Thursday, May 1
Things have been cool, things have been nice. I cannot explain why or how. Actually, I've been busy with my job, and this has meant less time to sit around pondering my pathetic life. Also, things are ending with school and my students are really great. I've been teaching Hegel--one of the real greats in human thought and history--and they're getting him. They're getting him in the sense that they see the world around them is inverted and fucked up. I'm glad.
Michael was existentially meandering at 10:27 PM \\
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