Belabored Behavior

From the short story I'm working on:

His curly, dark bangs fell in front of his eyes and he wrote the words across the bottom of the page in an elegant, sweeping script. He dressed like a boy from a century ago. His trousers were the color of cold fireplace ashes. His shoes were of a simple, leather oxford style and suspenders left a trace beneath his scratchy wool cardigan. His shirt was not gingham but it made one think of the word. The frames of his glasses here heavy, round and wire. Literature majors sometimes called him “that young Dickensian” and he heard this sometimes with pleasure. He packed his leather folio and tucked it beneath a willowy arm on his way down the stairs and out into the April chill. He swung his free arm into his peacoat, and reached into a pocket, feeling at a bag of tobacco and an elaborate cellular phone.

Reflexion On Leisure And Making

So, there's this paper I'm supposed to be writing right now. Actually, I was supposed to write it last week. It was due...last week. The prompt is really bad. Like, REALLY bad. The prompt is two pages single spaced. The paper its for is only supposed to be 5 or 6 pages double spaced. Seriously. So bad!

I keep trying to write this paper. I open up Word and read the prompt and re-read the text... and I just can't do it. I might just have to let this one go. I'm not so sure the prof will even grade it at this point, which I don't care that much about, though I'd hate to get a bullshit "B" in this class over something this dumb.

And the way I keep trying not to justify all of this is that the week before I left for Chicago, I busted my ass and presented a chapter in his class and did a REALLY good job. People were interested and asking good questions. I knew the material about as well as is possible, considering I haven't actually finished the book before. I'm supposed to do like 4 more of these papers and I just hate the thought. So...

I'm thinking about asking him to let me teach the class every other Chapter instead of writing anymore of these bullshit papers. I'll write him a term paper, and enjoy life more and get teaching experience. And if I'm not bragging to much, the whole class will benefit, cuz he's not very good at presenting the information. Though he certainly knows it very well, he gets a little carried away and doesn't spend enuff time putting it together for everyone.

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Besides that fact, I REALLY love teaching philosophy. The reason I love studying philosophy is so that I can explain it well to people who might benefit from the ideas. I mean, I love teaching per se, but my questions always seem to lead back to the philosophical, to the high unities of the theoretical. This is not some disinterested pursuit of knowledge though. For whatever reasons, its a kind of existential dynamism. A kind of personality structure, or something.

One of my former North Park profs suggested that if I get my PHD in Chicago or if I don't get in anywhere my first go at PHD programs, I could teach Dialogue at NPU with a Masters. That's sort of horrifying and also sort of exciting. It would be quite the crucible to hone my teaching skills in and returning to that place so soon after leaving would have a weird, 80's sitcom feel to it. On the other hand, I could probably have a full load as an adjunct and its a community that I already care about and sort of understand.

Its a thought, anyways.

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I really love good, truthful storytelling too. It moves me in a really deep, wonderful way. I find such joy in it. And though I'm still doing the theoretical work of figuring out exactly why, it seems important in a really inescapable way. In an immense and weighty way.

Will it be enough for me to do philosophy about story-telling? I think probably not...
I think I need to participate in excellent storytelling where possible. and I want to do it in a way that doesn't give up on mass-culture. I want to have milchian faith in the story as politically efficacious.

Though I'm unsettled by academia's solipsism, I do believe that scholarship can be a kind of storytelling. Argument as weaving a narrative of how the world is. But I'd want to write books read by more than specialists. I want to write clear, helpful books for the lay-person.

Especially Christian lay-people. However, I might have to become a better Christian first...

It helps to think of studying as "filling up" for the sake of a richer "pouring out" later on. "5 or 6 years of strenuous study," Dostoevsky says.

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I am a talented (if not virtuous) writer.
I should write.
I am a talented (if not experienced) actor.
Should I act?
Am I a talented musician?
Not especially. Can I work to become a capable one? I haven't yet.
(I worry this desire to be a musician is a kind of artistic "pleonexia.")

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The Milch exercises work. I need to exercise the faith to DO them!

(I worry my desire to be a musician is a kind of "pleonexia" for artistry

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I got a new tattoo on a whim. This is really my first tattoo I got for purely aesthetic reasons. I got it cuz I like how it looks. Its kind of my ode to fall. We're gonna do autumnal colors today. It hurts hurts HURTS to tattoo your ribs, side-tummy and hip. I dunno what my sister was thinking getting her first one there. There is ibuprofen in my future.

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I've been spending money like a dumb-tard. Its time to clench that shit down when I get back to Boston. Eating in. Brewing my own coffee. Coming up w/ fun, free shit to do. I intend to spend money on groceries and cover-charges and that is ALL! I need to expand my cooking horizons anyways. and get to baking! and dancing!!

Also, I would like to lose my gut by summer. Cuz it'd be really nice to, for one summer of my life (and back-hair be damned) have a torso worth exposing to the world. I'll probably never do it again, but just this once.
Plus, the new tattoo is totally incentive.

Godspeed.

Keep On Doing What You're Doing.

I can, very often, conceive of how one would engage some task excellently. Unfortunately, the comprehensiveness of that conception is often enough to scare me off of actually pursuing it. Who has the time? Who has the patience? Who has the resources?

Conversely, and with likewise misfortune, a task which I have no earthly idea how to approach is rarely completed. Indeed, even begun!

And though I do spend a lot of time on facebook, I actually spend a remarkable amount of time...well, you know; doing things.

What sorts of things? I'm glad you asked.

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The Smart Set is the tentative name for the new music project I'm embarking on with my boy, Johnny B. We're aiming for a 5 song e.p. in the next few months. Songs that tell stories, basically. Attempts at humanizing our concepts through lyric and melody.

Our first task is to address commerce as a motivating principle of personal identity. Here goes...

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Accompanying the above is an attempt to work out a theoretical apparatus for how narrative is pragmatically more persuasive than "pure" argument in human life and especially human life together or what we vulgarly call "politics." I've hinted at it here before, but what is fundamentally necessary for action is faith. The mimetic (imitative, in a sense) nature of narration and the faith required to engage a narrative premise more closely access the sort of being that chooses its actions for reasons. The reasons are not always explicit and almost never simple or direct, but can be communicated in a holistic and felt way through the tactics of fictive persuasion, which are multiple and simultaneous.

In Milchian/Kierkegaardian terms, I'm going to work out the dialectical calculus as a means of releasing the movement of Spirit in my overly-reflective mind.

Hopefully that will help me write what God has for me to write.

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Lurking out there is a script I will finish before May. I will, I will, I will!

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Quasi-officially, I'm working on Blondel's thesis from 1893, Action, as well as Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and a whole host of hermeneutical approaches to theology with Fred Lawrence, a Lonerganian who teaches at BC. Also, reading through the Republic over a couple of weeks w/ friends to prep 2nd year-ers for Comps.

Gotta try to get some scholarships for next year as well. This place is wildly expensive.



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Other little projects?:
- start making my own fancy coffee at home
- get my apartment likewise fancy.
- finish off the last tid-bit of credit card debt.
- get another (big) tattoo
- don't fuck it up w/ a girl
- TBA

Godspeed, everybody.