Lebensraum

G. has departed for Germany and I have a job interview tomorrow. I've been supplementing my academic reading with Woolf's Orlando. Still no fresh tea at the house, but maybe that will change soon.

I've been trying to cultivate what I call (to myself) "philosophical domesticity." Domesticity has a bad reputation as being bourgeoisie and boring--much better to be a 21st century beatnik and not clean up your dirty clothes--but the activities that go into maintaining one's living space have tremendous potential as a space in which to express one's values and draw nearer to attaining self-actualization. Granted, not everyone needs or wants this--good for you if you don't. But a house is the perfect place to implement aesthetic ideals or sustainable practices if these things are important to you. They are often impossible to fully realize in a space shared with more than one or two roommates. Of course, domesticity should always be a means, not an end. Space should serve a purpose, not exist for its own sake. That said, I think that many people could benefit from closer attention to their material existence, and its alignment (or non-alignment) with one's social identity.

If that was too stuffy, let me counter it by saying I'll be having a party in the near future if I get this job. Beer! I'll Facebook if it's a go.

Now-Titled Post

The past few weeks have been eventful. Finals, over. I moved into a house, started my summer job, quit it, and quite recently went to a party from which I'm still trying to recover. Three cups of yerba mate while sitting in bed reading didn't do it. Coffee next. I may be waking up all day.

We don't have internet at the house. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it enforce a different lifestyle than the one to which I've grown accustomed. I don't waste as much time looking at dumb things, going to digg, playing, God forbid, flash games--but I'm used to being plugged in. My social life is also inhibited, but the compensatory effect of having one's own place more than makes up for it. If anything, it might improve the blog; I'm thinking of drafting things at home, correcting them, then bringing them to the library to post [edit: yeah right]. That would be easier than just sitting here, trying to think of sentences like I'm doing right now.

Two novels: Murakami's After Dark and The Echo Maker by Richard Powers. I recommend both. In After Dark, Murakami works out of his usual POV. The protagonist (if there is one) isn't another variant on Toru Okada (which I guess was true for Kafka by the Shore as well, so maybe this marks a new trend). I didn't mind the similarities between characters in his earlier novels, but I think he handles the new territory well. I also found After Dark to be a lot more thematically coherent than his other books, though I'm a different reader than I was last year. Maybe being an English major has made me even better at seeing connections where there are none. Oh well: After Dark seems to be an extended meditation on the borders of the self, and on one's ever-renegotiated position within the various networks of power and influence that shape society. Darkness is the condition in which borders become permeable, in which we can grow closer to others or drift away, suffused with nothingness.

This idea of identity, its mutability and dependence on/ existence within others (reminiscent of Hofstadter's view in Le ton beau de Marot and, I hear, I am a Strange Loop) is also present in The Echo Maker, in which neurological disorders are portrayed as explicit manifestations of processes and structures that are already present in normal consciousness. I wonder if Powers's book might be a little longer than it needs to be, and I still haven't fully grasped the significance of his ecological theme (or maybe I have, and forgotten), but I still think it's worth the time. And the cover art is great.

I need to eat lunch now. I'll come back to this later and fix typos. If anyone wants to hang out while I'm still unemployed, please let me know. On the other hand, if you know anywhere that's hiring, feel free to pass that along as well.

[edited 5/29/08; title added, some adverbs eliminated, other changes]

While listening to Kid A, windows open, one shoe off

Spring's in full swing and summer's just around the corner. This bit of digital space has remained static as of late (admittedly it's not my first priority), but perhaps the ensuing relent of academic obligations will offer me both (1) thoughts worth sharing and (2) the time to share them. I suppose it's presumptuous of me to deign whether or not my own thoughts are worth sharing... and yet, we do demand a kind of quality control from any purveyor of information. If my judgments about my own thoughts are not taken to be the universal standard by which they are measured (and I am advocating no such thing), they are at least a useful tool for limiting the flow of information. See, was that digression even necessary? I leave it in as an example.

To continue--I have to say that the prospect of this summer, the idea of it, is tremendously exciting. I would say more exciting than anything in recent memory, but there was that trip last year. I'll be moving into a house (a house!) in a few weeks, with such an abundance of light and warmth as you wouldn't believe. Lots of places to read. My plans for the coming months are similar to the plans I make for every amorphous, as-yet-unfilled space of time that has ever loomed over or shimmered just out of reach of the present; cook more, read more, write more. A programme rarely carried out to completion, though I now have the consolation (?) that cooking will no longer be quite optional. This aspirational troika is matched by three other related but more specific targets: bake more, play more chess, get outside. Is this too much for one person to handle? Will my quest for self-actualization lead inevitably to disappointment? Tune in next month to find out! (Anyone looking for a baking/ chessing/ biking partner, etc, feel at liberty to contact me. I also know of a burgeoning summer book-club that promises to mix exclusivity with Greensboro-hipster aspirations. Scintillating! Inquire for details.)

[I was hungry last night. Really hungry. I started flipping through Paul Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice and I almost gnawed through the pages, I almost threw it or myself across the room. The bread looked so GOOD. No, it didn't just look good. That implies culinary desire, carnal desire, simple appetite. It looked beautiful. That bread looked beautiful. I want to bake, NOW.]

It has begun to rain.

Blogger is lonely

If you live where I do, so I decided to link to some people on LiveJournal. I don't like LiveJournal but its quite popular here, so, well, compromises.

Incidentally, The Satanic Verses is a very good book.

Fast Fast/ Guitar Hero

Today was the first time I rode my new bike in Greensboro. It was exciting. I rode up and down Spring Garden street, and through some neighborhoods. I know that there are parks to be found further out, but I'm not completely used to riding in traffic yet. The cars really whoosh by. Whoosh! Bang! I know three girls who have been hit by cars on bikes, maybe more. They're really tough, these girls. Amazons! They still ride their bikes with passion.

Guitar Hero is a popular game. It seems to have maintained its choke hold on college-age boys since last semester. It never looks fun to me, though if I played it I'd probably change my mind. I did watch that video that was posted on Digg of a small child beating the hardest level, and I knew enough about it to be impressed. I wonder if he could have been a child prodigy at anything else. I wonder if potential chess prodigies walked among the Native Americans, and if so, were there similar Native American games that they excelled at? They say that everyone is good at something, which is obviously a lie, but I wonder how many people are great at things but never get the chance to do them. Maybe I'd be great at making cheese.

Revenant

My first full day back in Greensboro for the spring semester. Classes start next monday. I had to spend most of the day going to required meetings, but I did have enough time to unpack. I also put a photo of myself on my Blogger profile in the hope that people who stumble here will admire my lush beard, my piercing eyes, and be properly motivated to make this a regular read. This plan is surely foolproof.

In the lull between classes and break, I've decided to slip in a book that is neither required reading for the curricula devised by my professors nor for the one I have imposed upon myself. It is Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson, and it is pure enjoyment. I'm a little less than halfway through. The speculative aspect is not particularly original, but that's hard to do. It is pulled off well, however, and the prose is some of the best I've read in science-fiction. I feel like Wilson's knack for description would take him far in literary fiction.

I do plan on finishing the Object posts. I have the photos ready for the next one, so its just a matter of typing it up.