Um - well, it dont seem all that unusual to me. I mean, you know a person enough to care about that person one way or another, it seems to me you can’t really avoid having an opinion on that person. And by extension, an opinion on who they are, what they do, and how they relate to you. I mean, what else would one do?
It is a numb world. It is not like being numb in the dark, or being numb in the cold, but like being numb in the wind. The wind beats against the skin, and you can feel the air striking your body, but that sensation produces no reaction in the mind. It is like standing lost in a foreign city, but it is the lostness that comes from not knowing where you are going rather than not knowing how to get there. It is like having a high fever while carrying on business among crowds of people. It is like taking a walk while in the last stage of sleep deprivation. Sensation without reaction, observation without comprehension, thought without object, past without meaning, life without direction, world without end.
The Bell and Cat
At last, I have fulfilled my ambition of last year: to learn the lindy whip and the charleston. My ambition for next year: learn to sail. (We had a most entertaining adventure with that this Saturday. "Beth, do you know the Coast Guard’s number?")
I think I begin to understand the term "starving college student". Most college students aren’t actually starving, of course - even for the least-nourished there’s usually some recourse. But college students do have their own hunger. It’s a matter of having - perhaps for the first time in your life - to feed yourself for an extended period of time. (Understand that here I speak of off-campus students; those on full meal plans are slightly different). And while one is a student, one’s living quarters do not necessarily qualify as a household - one lives almost as one would in a dorm, with the exception of having to supply your own utilies and food. Strange fits of luxury - going out to eat - blend with strange fits of asceticism - going without meals for an extended period of time. All kinds of things can contribute to the hunger of the college student. One might have been too lazy to go to the grocery store. One might have forgotten. One might not have had enough time to eat. Or enough money.
I was thinking, after reading Kerne’s bloglet. Kerne describes himself as honest, to the point of tactlessness on occasion. It occured to me for the first time, really, how very easily - how automatically - I lie. It’s almost always for the purpose of saving face, and any time I perceive a situation in which I might lose face by the truth, I lie without thinking. It’s not even a deliberate action, although I may reflect on it later. I hardly pause to think: Should I do this? Is it right to tell this untruth? I dont know which is worse - to have better instincts, and deliberately go against them, or to lack better instincts altogether?
The instinctive lying doesn’t kick in for every situation - or, I suspect, for every person. As far as I can discern, it’s a manifestation of the dichotomy between world and self, of the unconscious presupposition that the world is a complex game or series of ordeals which one must complete alone. That the only reality one has any obligation to is that of the mind
‘When in doubt, practice your paradigms.
Translation for this evening: The age carries all things; a long time knows how to change
name and shape and nature and also fortune.
After reading "The Jewel in the Crown", a story set during the last days of the British raj, and watching a documentary on the civil rights movement during the 50s in America
It’s not the hate that’s the frightening part. There’s something universal and indiscriminate about simple hatred. It’s the same hatred that you find in the kindergarten - the hatred that you feel when someone different or foreign intrudes upon the structure of your world. The truly frightening thing is the lack of hate. The frightening thing is a whole society able to treat another race as subhuman, without particular rancor or malice except that which is taken for granted. Anyone can nerve themselves into a war mentality - us against them. It’s horrid, but it’s human. But to live in relative peace, and to be able to hold such thoughts with a tranquil mind - that is disturbing.
And Ozy is being homeschooled! This has made my whole week!
