Genuine Flim Flam

Blah blah blah. I just want to babble. I have been sick the last couple of days and that has been difficult. I went to Portland for Halloween and that was a lot of fun. Saw some friends, went to a big party with lots of costumes. Fun to be at a big party. But then I got sicker. I knew I was getting sick when I decided to go on the trip. Didn’t want to bale out on the trip. Wanted to go and just do it. So I went and I just did it. It was good. I’m glad I did it. But it sucks because I took the day off work yesterday and so lost some money, but gained some rest.

Ate some food tonight. That was nice. Drinking some orange juice right now. That is nice too. Been pulling quotations from The Principles of Art still. I’m on page like 230 so I only have 100 pages or so to pull quotations from. Then I’ll be good to go on the writing for the most part. But the writing is still going to be very challenging. Who knows when or if I’ll get this writing project done. I’m pretty sure I’ll get it done. But it is just slow going because I’m tired after work, and I like going out and drinking with friends, and I have been sick. But I’m on the up and up. What isn’t on the up and up?

In other news, I’m getting the internet. I haven’t had the internet since I moved into this new apartment at the beginning of October. Will be very interesting to have the internet again. I’ve grown accustomed to just reading or being out and about or writing into word documents. Now I’ll be able to write directly into blogs again. But I may continue to write in word documents to minimize my distractibility. Sure do feel tired.

Apart from my big essay I’m working on I have two smaller essays that I feel curious about writing.

One is on the word ‘essay’ as a verb. Foucault compares it to the word assay, and I think David Shields does as well. But essay as a verb in the sense of an attempt, an exploration, a setting out into the unknown, an exercise in thought. That is very much how I have come to embrace my writing on this blog. I’m exploring the caverns of my own mind. I rarely know what I will find when I set out on an essay. But I always find something new. Something I think I already thought, but that I think much more clearly after the essay has been completed.

The other essay I’m thinking about writing is very vague in my mind right now. The general issue I want to tackle is the relationship between compassion and the intellect. I had an interaction with someone who seemed awfully sour. They seemed quite unfriendly and I didn’t like it. This could be said about so many of my interactions. How unfortunate that is. People just aren’t very friendly it seems. Customers, I mean. They just throw their money at me. Whisper whisper whisper, crazy crazy crazy. That is what it can be like. But in either case, I had an interaction with someone who seemed like a bookish type. They seemed like they read and should perhaps be thoughtful or friendly. So I started reflecting on the humanities crowd, people who have studied english or history or other humanities. I started wondering how friendly these people were, or if there is also some pretension in those crowds, or some arrogance. In any case, I just feel like education and intellectual work doesn’t lead to a compassionate point of view enough. But to me those are essential and connected things. I think that my intellectual work has (hopefully) made me more empathic and compassionate. I realize that as I write about these people who upset me at my job I am not being empathic or compassionate, but I’m trying right now. But it can be so frustrating. I’ve got to start killing them with kindness. Because people are so irritating sometimes. People just don’t look at me or anything. They just breeze right by me and continue their lives. The service industry just seems hard and cold. But sometimes it can be very warm. Customers can be very warm sometimes. And co-workers are often very warm.

Oh well. Now I’m just upsetting myself. I just don’t like it when people speak to me in certain ways. I’m very sensitive.