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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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Sunday, September 14
To be poerfectly honest, I never intended to use this blog for my personal issues and feelings. I never saw the purpose of expressing such things to anyone else but myself. Things have changed. And I can say that things are changing in many other ways as well.
It is hard for me to think about anything else than what I have been feeling these past few weeks, and this gets progressively worse when I listen to Schubert--as I am now. But that is neither here nor there, as it were. Rather, I think that I have been disrupted; I feel that the inner peace that I once could claim sole ownership of has been corrupted. I think liking this woman that I've been seeing these past few weeks is getting to me in a way that I really do not like. I do not like my insecure feelings; I do not like this exposure; I do not like being in this position. We both said that we liked one another and we'd see where things go--but now I am of the opinion that this is not worth it and I'd like to simply get abck to my work. Then again, that has been leading me nowhere with respect to happiness.
This may all sound confusing, but I never like that period after claiming you both like one another--the uncertainty, the slight awkwardness with the fear of further rejection ratcheted up even more. I think that I need a palliative for all of this. I wish I had listed more closely to Ovid and his prescriptions for curing the pain of emotional attachment through nipping it in the bud. No, I decided to brave the course, and now it seems I have led myself into the dark abyss of emotional turmoil and infinite unrest.
Shame on what I have done! I hate myself for going against my own ethics. I am so dissapointed in myself and need to regroup now before this sinks into an even lower state of affairs.
Michael was existentially meandering at 9:35 PM \\
Wednesday, September 10
Now I see that dealing with lonliness is a fine situation for me. I think that my life will need to be concerned with my work and my life projects. I think that I was mistaken about what I said in my last post to the extent that I was being misled about my feelings. Not that I was being misled by her, but I was being misled by my own feelings. I think that this needs to change. I think that this is something that I need to change with respect with to my perspective. I think I need to see that I should be focused on my work at the expense of my own capacity for happiness and self-sufficiency.
This ought not to mean anything else than I will need to rethink my recent actiities and feelings. Most of all a woman who I have been seeing in a weird way for some time. I need to reverse these tendencies and reverse what I have been feeling. Where to turn? To The Master, but also to Ovid's verse. I think that this is something I need to do and I can try to bring quietude to my tempestuous existence and bring solitude to a life of misery and irrevocable despair.
Michael was existentially meandering at 2:06 AM \\
Sunday, September 7
A woman I have known for some time is one of the most wonderful things that has ever happened to me. She is so sweet and smart; she is intelligent and charming; she is beautiful; she is so interested in things. These past few weeks we have spent a lot of time together but I am still so confused about her and what I should do. I took her to the Logos salon--a monthly thing my magazine throws here in Manhattan--and she was a big hit. Not only did she like everyone there, but all the people close to me really liked her and thought she was awesome, which she is.
Tonight she called me and was out with this guy she says she is not in to. She called me about a half an hour ago and said she missed me. I think she was drinking and I am not sure what that means in this regard, but I felt the same way. I did miss her all day. We were together Friday and Saturday night and we ha da wonderful time. On Saturday, when I dropped her off, we kissed a couple of times and she snuggled next to me before leaving the cart and I kissed her on her head. It was so wonderful, it was bliss.
But is this drunken stupor? I think, as much as I would hate to admit this, that this is the case. She is escaping and sees me as an easy target. I am so depressed and upset that I am not attractive enough and good enough for her. I am upset with who I am--that I am so awkward and repulsive that I cannot engage her. I require solitude from now on. I need to be alone. I cannot deal with this kind of life.
I suppose that some of us find ourselves in this situation. Those of us that are so repulsive and unattractive to women that we have no choice but to be alone, and be bitter.
Michael was existentially meandering at 7:36 PM \\
Thursday, September 4
Are we all mad? Have we been led astray by ignorance and by hedonistic vice? Is the atomization of social life almost total in its affliction of anything valuable in human existence. Have we simply lost the ability to attain any kind of organic community in political and social life without sacrificing individuality and autonomy? Have we simply lost the vision of the Enlightenment to achieve the ultimate goal of social and political life: The descent of the city of god unto the city of men?
I can answer with the affirmative for all of the above. And, the more that I think about it, the more I realize that personal neuroses and "issues" are intimately bound up with our state of social alienation and cultural decay.
What gets me most aggravated is that the this discourse of cultural erosion and the flattening out of moral and social values in modernity is something over which the political right has somehow gained a monopoly. We ought not to forget that the very impetus of thinkers like Marx and Nietzsche was the very realization of what I too have listed above. We should remember that the very imeptus of philosophy and of social criticism has always been the improvement of the present state of society, both institutionally and morally.
I think that this is something that those that consider themselves "leftist" outght to be thinking about. They ought to be thinking less about narrow issues of protest and dissent and more about the political and cultural traiditions and values that the forefathers of their various movements sought to realize. There needs to be more of an enlightenment about the aspects of the Enlightenment that are so ignorantly and quite naively rejected.
So where so we go from here? I would prefer Plato's "Philebus" but there is no one left to turn to for a conversation.
Michael was existentially meandering at 10:53 AM \\
Wednesday, September 3
Reflecting on the reality of the external world may be something reserved for philosophers and artists--although in a different vain. But I have come to realize that the ignorance we have about the inner thoughts and feelings of others is among the most problematic issues that anyone can face in one's life. I am thihking about this in a very concrete sense: in the sense that I am largely insensitive--and therefore largely unable--to comprehend the actions of others in somewhat cloe or intimate situations.
Now, I am referring to the recent events with a good woman friend that I have been aquainted with for some time now. I think that if I were able to know what she thought and felt--even in a confused and complex way--I would be much better at understanding how I should act and feel toward her. I am unable to manage this, however, because our pathetic human brains are very limited in their capacity for peering into another's thoughts. Be this as it may, I am unable to truly understand how I am to interact with women and this has become a confusing reality. The again, there are other issues at stake.
I have been thinking that philosophy--although no cure for severe personal ills--is still someting that can porovide us with a much broader speculative capacity and therefore a much larger frame of personal and intellectual reference. True, art serves a similar function, but the real conceptual core of reality can be obtained only through philosophy--i.e., through conceptual thought.
This is T. W. Adorno's great insight in his Negative Dialectics. Indeed, the problem's with this brilliant work are many, but it cannot be said that it is lacking in its philosphical advice. Perhaps I should remember the core lesson from this tome in its first line: "Philosophy persists because the possibility for its realization was missed." How true, indeed.
Michael was existentially meandering at 10:47 AM \\
Tuesday, September 2
I wish so much that I could simply live a life with a good degree of calm and solitude. I no longer have any desire for anxiety, competition, despair, depression, self-doubt, worry and any other negative emotion that I have been living with for the past few years. I can see now that others live a life that is more laid back, more open to free time. I cannot say that I want to have nothing to do, but I do want to have more control over things.
My big question is whether or not this is something one can have in modernity. One is forced with the need in moder life to create something in order to escape the morass of this banal existence. I feel forced to create, to humanize myself through creation--intellectual, artistic, philosophical--it really does not matter. Whatever the case may be, I truly need some freedom from what I have created for myself. Let's see if I am able to achieve.
Michael was existentially meandering at 12:31 PM \\
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