Filed under: blah blah blah, blarg, good times, la famille, moral perfectionism, philosophizing, ridiculous, spiritual exercise, the future, thesis
it’s going to be a long night. ladies and gentleman, it looks like she might actually graduate.
katherine claims that when you’re this close to being done you have the right, nay the obligation to be downright silly. how’s this?
Lights! Camera! Attraction!
There is an important attraction that must exist between the exemplar and the follower. The exemplar provides a tangible representation of what one could be: the embodiment of positive possibility. “Perfectionism . . . requires the guidance or inspiration of an other, a figure both Nietzsche and Emerson call the true man. Nietzsche speaks of this figure as a teacher and as an exemplar.”[1] It is towards this actuality that one is attracted and it is towards this actuality that one can work; the attainable but truly unattainable self is actually before your hands, embodied by someone else. It is as if the exemplar has managed to traverse some of the metaphysical divides between the world that you envision and the world you inhabit. This seems nice and you want to ask them how they did this.
We might not be used to terming this impulse ‘attraction,’ but I know I asked for my grandma’s banana pudding the other day. I’m not ‘attracted’ to my grandmother, outstanding woman that she is, but she is the exemplar of All that is Banana Pudding Creation as far as I’m concerned. And in that I want one of her puddings but do not have one, I am very much attracted to her way of life: that way of life knows how to make delicious confections. “So, your initiating task is to find one to follow from whom you can learn what it is to follow an idea on your own behalf, to find the one you are.” Basically, I need to work out this attraction by asking my grandma for her banana pudding recipie and then this dream of vanilla wafer goodness can become a reality in my life, assembling this family favorite serving as the spiritual exercise to change myself into One Who Makes Amazing Banana Pudding. Of course, the banana pudding delight that I create will be my own, but hopefully if I don’t destroy everything, my whipped creamy goodness will exemplify my grandmother’s work, honoring her as an example as take steps towards creating my own Banana Pudding legacy and following.
So, I need an exemplar, someone to whose way of life I am attracted and finding them is the first step towards a morally perfectionist way of life. Still no clues as to how one goes about finding such a qualified, shining person though. I’m just lucky to be related to the Creator of Banana Pudding of Awesome.
i did not attempt to describe the Glory that is Juanita’s Banana Pudding in my thesis, nor will i do so here because it is Glorious and Triumphant Beyond All Describing.
i’ve been craving HARDCORE, this pudding have i. as the sanity slips away, the pudding lus, it increases. who would have thought? but do i have time to make it? no. do i even have time to call Jaynie and question her closely about it? no, i do not. that would be silly.
no sleep till Branson. no sleep till Branson.
all that is to say, i started ranting about The Banana Pudding of Majesty a couple of days ago. and no one responded. the were no joyous cries of, “oh good call. yea, make that.” or, “woot!” or even a “woot.” just, nothing. HAD THESE PEOPLE NEVER HEARD THE GOOD WORD? DID THEY NOT KNOW OF THE RHAPSODY OF TASTE? Oh Gawd please forgive me for not sharing this Gift and Wonder earlier.
one more thing: the earliest memory i have involving my grandma is from kindergarten. we were going through the alphabet day by day, each of us trying to come up with interesting, challenging, unknown words for the Letter of the Day. I was SO EXCITED for J Day: Juanita. what a beautiful name for a beautiful lady.
Banana Pudding, i will sing your praises. Banana Pudding, i will spread the knowledge to those Who Do Not Know. Soon, damnit, IF IT’S THE LAST THING I DO.
this two will pass. thesis, today is your day of reckoning.
We’ll do mushy later. So for now I just gotta say that I love you so much my head’s going to fly off. But more importantly, game on boyfriend.
– Abby Bartlett, West Wing Season 4
Filed under: blah blah blah, blarg, classy broad, mental health, not so good times, the future
it does not work. it’s probably my hard drive. boo.
so, then i start having one of those slow panic attacks. the kind that slinks up, throws it’s arms around you, covering you in germs of sadness that soon evolve into a virus complete with full-body shaking, fever, and coldcoldcold. only with panic. and anxiety. and uncertainty.
in related news, my thesis is due next tuesday. as in less than a week. as in ten days before i originally thought it was due. oh gawd.
all is not lost: andrew has his old window’s machine that will get me through the rest of my thesis writing. luckily, i have a real recent version of what i’ve done so far saved on the interwebs . i’ve basically lost the preface, a bunch of quotes and lots of time. hardwork.but you know me: change, major hiccups, CHAOS AND DISTRUCTION tend to put me in a tailspin.
oh, and did i mention that i have a physics exam thrusday morning? at like, 8:30 in the morning. then i have the second part of my grad school interview. hooray?
dear god, please make me a bird so i can fly far, far away. or at least graduate from college.
or at least give me clonazePAM, West Wing, and sleeping on the couch.
Maybe Andrew was right: the surviving on 6 hours of sleep, having a day instead of just an afternoon plan seems to be working out rather well. Look ma! Up before noon! Thesis here I come.
In other news, why are you being stoopid DVD player? Don’t you know that West Wing watching is not only crucial to my thesis but to my very well-being? Duh.
Filed under: blah blah blah, classy broad, hopeful, list, philosophizing, the future, thoughts
i need to read everything every written by Austin, Wittgenstein, and Derrida.
Filed under: blah blah blah, classy broad, creedo, philosophizing, quotes, spiritual exercise, thesis
“anything which exists in a proper condition is in equilibrium with everything else.”
– Bhikkhu Buddhadasa
“‘God is in the details.’ Hope, the conditions of possibility for preserving and enhancing what we can justifiably value, is in the details, and its realization demands our response to particular details.”
– James Gustafson
“Construed as creative action, knowledge is participatory rather than mimetic or representational action. It draws from the sources of life and ‘pays back’ to the common life the ‘dividend’ of an augmented, enlarged, more generous self.”
– Richard R. Niebuhr
“All these trivial illustrations are meant to put flesh on some abstract ideas about how the various things valued, by humans consciously or implicitly, and by nonhumans without the same conscious intention, are always in relation to each other.”
– James Gustafson
“Thus relational value theory is concerned with the great multi-dimensionality of value, which is not the multidimensionality of an abstract realm of essential values but rather the multidimensionality of beings in their relations to each other.”
– Richard R. Niebuhr
When Joel first meets Clementine, she asks for a piece of chicken and, before he answers, as she is picking at his plate, Joel tells her “And then you just took it—without waiting for an answer—so intimate like we were already lovers.”
– Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind from Reverse Shot
i’ve had that phrase running through my head for the last week. yup. sure have. turns out, with seemingly good reason.
(don’t even ask about my thesis. just don’t. it will make me a sad, sad panda.)
Filed under: blah blah blah, good times, i like boys, quotes, ridiculous, this one time
me: there is a significant drop in cute biker boys in our apartment tonight, lauren. i’m disappointed. last night: teaming with hot biker boys. tonight, sadly none.
punkin: mia, these things come in cycles.
Filed under: blah blah blah, good times, i like boys, not so good times, philosophizing, ridiculous, spiritual exercise, the future, thesis, this one time
[INTERLUDE]
When one sits down to write – to express truly amorphous feelings and words in the clearest, most poignantly cohesive way — there has to a be a centering of spirit. I won’t universalize this statement: it might not be that way for everyone, but it’s like that for me.
If I’m emotionally upset, psychically disturbed, or otherwise in a funk, I can’t do it. It’s as if, with those issues in way, I can’t see clearly to what I want to articulate. I can’t be honest enough with myself to speak the truth. Or at least, my efforts at honesty are only masking the fact that there’s something I’m not dealing with.
Imagine if you will, me writing these very words. Or more appropriately, the words you were reading before the argument train derailed and I trailed off into literary frustration, confusion and bad writing style.
What happened? I accidentally walked into a huge pit of metaphysical goop. What is the self? Oh well Mia, it’s not like people haven’t been able to figure that out since time eternal. I’m sure I can come up with an answer in the space of a few minutes and a page or two.
Guess what? I wasn’t able to do it. The more I thought about, the farther the answer I wanted, suspected or hoped was out there receded over the horizon of incomprehensibility.
You see, the main problem with goop, emotional, spiritual, metaphysical or otherwise is that it just sticks to your shoes. If you’re not careful, you’ll track it all over the damn house and then where will you be? Mopping up goo, that’s where.
So, here I am, knee high in goop and what do I do? Start walking around, all over God’s creation, making sure to get track goo down all the major hallways of my life.
Not only did I have no idea what the self is, but I didn’t know how to figure it out. And it’s not like that mattered because if I did figure it out (ha!), how could I be sure that the answer I came up with has any bearing on my overall project?
Now, when you realize you have no idea what to make of something as simple (?) as the self this can but you in a bit of an existential crisis. The fear becomes, if I can’t answer this what else do I not know? Or in the later states of almost dementia: do i really know anything?
now, this was the goo diaspora I found myself mired in: no idea what the self is, what i’m doing with myself, whether or not this project has merit, whether I’m worthy do execute said project, what i’m going to do with my future, does my boyfriend care, is it ever going to be spring, am i really graduating, am I getting fat, where will i live next year, WHY GOD WHY?
[insert 10 days of literary silence]
Now I can write. Existential crises avoided, unsatisfactory relationship terminated, Emerson consulted, future put off until it gets here, hallway cleared of goop, shoes changed, let’s talk about the self.
Inherently Ridiculous 