On the Eve of the Feast of the Incarnation

I can't wait to be a parent. I mean...I CAN wait, but I'm excited to be a parent. Knowing the reality of new life in such a concrete, intimate way would make the Incarnation explode off the page. I am frequently made speechless by the thought of God condescending to our world as "that guy, over there." As fully grown, jewish guy-over-there.

But God-as-infant is still so abstract. and God-as-infant loved in the way a mother and father love a baby? Mysterious and not in a good, awful religious way. God as a tiny little ball of tears and poop and need? Unfathomable in the truest sense.

Incidentally, I'm also excited to be married, to enter into the fullness of Christ's unity with the Church. If man and woman become "as one flesh," how much more does a Church-body become the body of Christ!?

It sounds so phony-pious, but I live to be struck by the beauty of Incarnation and (re)Incarnation. It makes the banality and the boredom and the pain fit into the world more gently.

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I'm feeling, for the first time since I left home to go study, like I'm not at home at home. I've spent enough time in a different community with different concerns and different influences that I don't make so much sense here. I find myself standing around quietly while everyone else goes about their way of being in their world. When I do pipe in, its either to make a wise crack or to rant briefly about something I find particularly interesting. The latter gets blank stares or replies that show little understanding of what I'm driving at.

I've told people often that the reason people who engage in philosophy are fundamentally confused. When you get really good at argument, you find yourself arguing with yourself in such a way that every position is either equally valid or equally ludicrous. The staunch and the intense intellectual positions are put forward w/ such force because they cover...or, lets say, accommodate an underlying suspicion that they are completely baseless.

That fundamental confusion is an odd thing. It leads us, in our weaker moments (which are most of them) to want everyone to share our confusion. So, there is this impulse to dismantle the self-certainty of most people, which we take for thoughtlessness. Largely, because it is thoughtlessness, most of the time.

At root, we think "They sound so sure, but I know that if you lean on any position w/ a little intellect, it fucking crumbles. How dare they enjoy their false certainty!"

Its ugly when that impulse, already dubious, gets turned on ones home community. Its an un-enviable posture.

- - - - -


Behold, the glory of God become man, that we may know we are love and never be alone.

Merry Christmas.

Happy Holy-Days from the big CA

Six hour flights can be nine hour flights. All you have to do is fly north of Michigan and Wisconsin in order to get from New York's JFK to Oakland, making a stop in Salt Lake City to refuel. Its easy.

Four hour lay-overs are still four hour lay-overs. They are little less when you can spend too much money and get a massage in the airport. That's very helpful.

and when some indie looking girl from the area asks for you phone number. "So, are you in New York regularly?"

Sorry sweetheart, I'm really not.

- - - - -

No more dialogue to report. She's just stopped returning calls. One more phone call in a few weeks and then the number gets deleted. For my sanity, primarily.

and then we hope I don't run into her at some fucking bar.

and I'm still SO disappointed. *sigh*

Text message last night. There's another guy. Not surprised. Glad to know. Fairly bummed.

- - - - -

This weekend I: Helped my parents move. Fired a .50 cal rifle. Watched a documentary about old people singing new(ish) songs. Played lazer tag. Went bar hopping. Bought really skinny, scott weiland style slacks. Went to church without spending much time in church. Talked about Boston and the people its full of. Found out I got straight A's in my first semester at BC.

- - - - -

No pictures in this entry. The internet connection I'm on is precluding it. Updates might be few and far between for a week or two.

Snowboarding tomorrow. I'm scared of how out of shape I am...

In 30 minutes, I face all of my Hegel anxieties:
My paper isn't good/what he's looking for/right about anything. I don't really know this text because I didn't really read that much of it. I suck at reading real philosophy.

An hour after that, I get to face all my Kant anxieties. They are fewer:
I didn't care about this as much as I should have.

Then we're in get-the-heck-outa-dodge mode. Put a movie on. Clean. Pack. Clean. Listen to David Milch. Clean. Pack. Clean.

- - - - -

4 people. 2 Bedroom apartment. 2 Weeks.

There are other arrangements I'd prefer:

- - - - -

"Even a fool gets to be young once."

The Further Away Solution

Turn and be healed
Let him who stole no longer steal
Oh Israel, Surrender to Jehovah, Israel.

- - - - -

Bob: But I'm not hungry

Don: It makes no earthly difference in the world. You know how many nutritive benefits they got in coffee? Zero. Not one thing. The stuff eats you up. You can't live on coffee, Bobby. (And I've told you this before.) You cannot live on cigarettes. You may feel good, you may feel fine, but somethings getting overworked. And you are going to pay for it. Now, what do you see me eat when I come in here everyday?

Bob: Coffee.

Don:Come on, Bob, don't fuck with me. I drink a little coffee...but what do I eat?

Bob: Yogurt.

Don: Why?

Bob: Because its good for you.

Don: You're goddamn right. And it wouldn't kill you to take a vitamin.

Has names, such as enemies.

The sun has been streaming light in through my windows all day, different angle by different angle, until the golden yellow wash is only a hue across the shades and the dirty window screens. At one point I took a walk to escape its deceptive illumination, stopping only for coffee and to realize I wasn't going anywhere in particular. I know exactly what I should be doing and that's precisely what I would never do on a day like today.

Studying the Transcendental Dialectic is fine as long as no one in authority is saying you should. Moreover, I won't be cleaning today. Ancillary writing projects have been opened, stared at and closed repeatedly. "I made lunch," is the day's accomplishment.

She hasn't called me.

Neither has she.

The songs I hear are more complicated than sad.

- - - - -


"I'm not much, but I'm all I think about."

- - - - -

There is, in the tragic, the humanization of the despicable. If sin is just the transgression of a rule, and Original Sin means we must transgress the rule(s), then tragedy is the human condition. There is only the interminable dissonance of moral demand and human action. The Law and the people, fundamentally at odds.

Grace, more than the erasure of the atomized transgression of a rule, might be the meta-melody harmonizing the melody of The Law and the melody of human life under a new, fuller tune. An orchestration of the diverse and polymorphous forms of human moral destitution.

All good deeds contain in them no purity of motive.

Every misdeed is, at root, a pursuit of our only pure motive.

Gnosticism was never a satisfying option.

"The reconciling yes...is the determinate being of an 'I' expanded into duality." G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, Chapter six, Paragraph 671.

- - - - -

"Alive With The Glory Of Love," Say Anything (Thanks, John B)


Even the least sophisticated (and marginally obscene) sexual expression, can, by the principles of its association to a context, be found to contain the loftiest of human truths.

- - - - -

The Derridians in my life (thanks again, John B) have convinced me; I'm so over the (fancifully nostalgic) obsession with purity. Lets find the redemptive harmonization of life, in its fullness, instead.

Anti-Hegel, Anti-Ugg, Anti-Zombie

The fundamental crazy is what makes it all possible. These felt experiences of my own motivational systems, prior to thought or theory, are limiting in the sort of way that creates possibilities. Opens up vistas of happenings (as received) and doings (as offered). But these are my limitations, too. The extraneous limitations, taken into myself like a foreign substance as a super-ego'd voice, are what hinder. The standards that are not my own messy boundaries are the ones that I cannot conceive of meeting spontaneously, and so I "tactically" scheme my way to their satisfaction.



But unfortunately, I can't really do that because if I'm motivated by the projected idea of what "they" want, I never do anything. The utter paralysis of perfectionism claws its way through my motivation and cripples the fibers of its muscle.



So, we need to listen to the crazy that tells me what I can and might like to do. and to the God who harmonizes my crazy with the totality of possibility in His world and through His strength. Work can be prayer, and prayer oughtn't be work.

- - - - -

"You aren't a worrying person are you?" she asked, more seriously than expected. "No, not usually." I replied. Was I lying?

Later:
"I must sound SO lazy! I'm really not. I work very hard. I just like to shut my brain off sometimes." She said, correcting the impression. "Maybe you can show me how to do that..." I joked. Maybe.
"Does that big brain never turn off?"
"No, not really. Always running on something."
"Well, a TV will help with that."

I'm rambling from the caffeine and David Mamet wasn't as interesting tonight as previously. Will Bob ever get Teach coffee? Who knows!

- - - - -


and not an ugg boot, a Northface fleece or an over-exposed ass cheek in sight. Thanks, Sartorialist.

- - - - -

Got zombie problems?

Not anymore you don't!

Heaven and Hell

*update* S'more Pop-tarts are WAY better than Chocolate Fudge Pop-tarts. I mean, WAY better. *update*

Further obligatory end-o-semester stuff-to-do run down:
- Final Kant synopsis: Done
- Hermeneutics of Fiction paper and presentation: Done
- Hegel Presentation: Done
- Hegel and Fichte paper: still reading and need to start WRITING! It's due friday

Also:
- Kant written exam: should probably study.
- Hegel Oral exam: likely won't study.

- - - - -

She'd open her eyes and I'd be staring, but in a nice way. "What're you thinking about?" she wanted to know. "That I'm glad you're here. I wondered when you might be," I confessed. "What are YOU thinking about?" I wondered next. "Nothing..." she muttered sleepily, "I'm glad I'm here too."

The train rattled by for the first time in hours, ringing its bell for the pedestrians who keep their iPods at a reasonable volume.

- - - - -

"Were you in the shit?"

"...yeah, I was in the shit."

Pass me another double-mint oreo and let's feel more guilty about the N-word. Or less. I'm not sure.

- - - - -

Someone convince me to write a play about Schelling and his shenanigans. It'd be good, I bet. Home-wreckers and those in complicity make good drama.

- - - - -

For all who care:

Leave Boston on Wed. morning, the 17th of Dec.
Leave the Bay Area on Dec. 31st and arrive in Chicago around midnight. happy new year.
Leave Chicago on Jan. 7th for New York.
Head back to Boston from New York on Jan 11th.

Godspeed.

en la lluvia me prometistes tu sangre

All I want right now, other than to eat cookies for breakfast, is to take the longest, hottest shower ever known to man. I need this. Spiritually and existentially, this shower was supposed to cleanse a mess of the worlds sins against me. 4am bed-time and late-night upset-sister phone call and a crew of we-make-secrets-not-friends dance partners and lingering-mystery-text-message (which is not even to mention how much beer I had spilled on me last night). And I woke up at 9, which does not qualify as "sleeping in" for a 4am bed time. And I woke up w/ the by-product of my protestant up-bringing, which is mystery-guilt-about-nothing-in-particular.

And my hair is SO greasy.

And now, lyrics by The Mars Volta:
sutured contusion/ beyond the anthills of the dawning of this plague / said I've lost my way / even if / this cul de sac would pay / to reach inside a vault whatever be the cost / sterling clear / blackened ice

And now, the rest of my story:
So, I crawl out of bed, a meek tremble of a sarcophagus form, and gather my clothes for the day and examine the unruliness of my eye-brows on the mirror. Flip the dial. Switch the shower switch. Glare at myself in the mirror, wondering who this person is, who is/was a lossless cd recording of myself. Touch the flow.

COLD. Not chilling tap-water cold, but just flacid-heat-source cold. Dull back-yard pool cold.

Bring-me-hot-water-or-your-life dial to 11. Something that quite entirely unlike warmth. I can't shower in this shit.

Now I'm moping about it on the internet. Waiting. Wanting.

In Conclusion, Ladies and Jelly-Spoons, More Lyrics by The Mars Volta:
Spilling from morgue lancet / Caressed your fontanelle / I've sworn to kill every last one / Every last one / Panic in the shakes of the wounded / Panic in the worms / Onto the floor / And out of your mouth

Humble Thyself, Oh Spirit

Hegel was such a good protestant. He recognizes that communities make moral rules for themselves and they are un-reflectively certain about what those rules are and how to apply them. "That's just how we do things around here," after all. It's just obvious. And some people are just going to do whatever they want anyways, and then talk a good game, appealing to the communities rules in their speech alone.

And others are going to look at those 'evil' people and say, "hey, you're breaking the rules! and worse, you're appealing to the rules to try to say that you aren't!" The problem is, the people making that judgment are so concerned with their own moral purity that they only ever talk about the rules anyways. They never do anything, good or bad, for fear of sullying their morally pristine souls. Their 'beautiful souls.'

So, the 'evil' person looks at the judging person and sees the they aren't that different from themselves. They are just another person hoping that talking about morality is the same as actually being moral. So, they confess to the judging person;

"yeah, I'm evil and hypocritical...just like you."

and it turns out that the only way out of this little conflict is for each person to be humble and recognize that they are only an aspect of the Truth, the Truth that resides in communities. In doing so, they can forgive the other and be reconciled to them. and then the spirit of the community can be itself in a truly human way.

But the answer is humility and forgiveness.

Hegel isn't wrong about that.

In other news, girls at Boston College need to figure out that those weird heavy leggings/stretch pants things are not to be worn as outerwear. Under a skirt: fine. Even a really, really short skirt or a long, crotch-covering t-shirt is better than full-on youthful ass exposure. I'm trying to learn here!

Skinny jeans tucked into these new-fangled, wellington-style fitted galoshes; ADORIBLE. I approve. w/ a trench coat and knit scarf? EXCELLENT.

And for fuck's sake, let's not let the sweat-pants leave the gym or the apartment, plz? Either gender, really.

I'd like to, at this point, thank the internet for easing procrastination so elegantly. Kant and Girard and Fichte are justifiably ignored at the moment, and its all thanks to you! Keep up the good work, World Wide Web!

Also, (speaking of distractions) I got a new David Milch lecture, except this one is on DVD. I haven't watched all of it yet, but I'm excited to digest more of his excellence. I also got a wicked awesome CD by Bring Me The Horizon. They might really hate women, but they are really good at metal. Good thing most of the lyrics aren't at all intelligible. Otherwise I'd feel dirty.

That'll do for now. I'm taking someone cute to see them light up the Christmas tree downtown after class tonight. There will be hot chocolate involved. God help me, there will be hot chocolate.

*update* Date got canceled. Baking cookies cures disappointment paralysis. I hope. *update*