The Philosopher’s Attic

Thanks for your messages, guys. My back isn’t getting much better, I can only hold the pain down with the meds. Which means that I will take a train on Wednesday back to Switzerland (how I will get through 5 h of sitting on uncomfortable train seats is beyond me).

Other than that I don’t have much news. I read wilweathonDOTnet this morning and the meta-blogging is back to main-topic status. Seems that he went to msnbc for a coverage on celebrity blogging and was highly disappointed. What did he expect? I mean really. It’s not as if msnbc had a reputation for the ‘real story’ behind the media hype, no?
Anyway, Will reveals one basic truth about blogging (together with his friend Shane Nickerson): “I keep my blog because I want to write the way you do” Club. I am glad that ‘Salon’ picked him as a good example on how to blog as a celebrity, because his style and his writing are so close to reality that you have no trouble imagining him to be your next door neighbour instead of a famous writer and well known actor. (For those of you who are not experienced enough of the culture of the 90ies: he used to be one of the prodigies on ‘Star Trek: the Next Generation. But if you are in fact into this fandom, please, please spare me the discussion about the uniforms for outside missions and why they’re not matching each other according to rank or something…). Back to Will: His entries come straight from the heart and he doesn’t care if some of it appears to be either odd or silly. As a reader you never feel manipulated or manouvered which you easily feel with other blogs (also celebrity ones). So if you need a cheer up, you can be sure Will has something in store for you.

I’m coming back to Salon.com’s feature of celebrity blogs just for a second. As usual the piece is absolutely worth the read and it’s hilarious. But it starts with one of my most hated ideas about blogging: “For the people who write them, blogs are a means of self-expression first and foremost, but they also reinforce an individual’s sense of being part of a community. Even more important, they’re a rudimentary form of validation: I’m being read, therefore I am.”
I am cursed by the same recurring questions, right? I would certainly agree strongly with the first part of this assertation, but certainly not with the second part. (Btw: the ‘for those people’ at the beginning of this sentance makes it to the top list of my ‘things absolutely not to say if you don’t want to loose the reader). As someone who has spent a lot of time in the theories about personal identity, personality, individuality and all those terrific (sic!) ideas about the human self, I _know_ that a lot of your definition of the self depends on the object stance society takes towards us (thus making us an object, hence ‘object-stance’). But does that really compell me to be conscious about it all the time? Do I need to be read to keep on existing? I’ll cut this short now: no. The blog exists wether it is read or not. In fact I could keep a blog without ever reading back my own entries and not communicating the link to anybody. Does that mean that the Blog is dead? Unexisting? Unreal?

Let’s have a look at the French way of anwering this question. On the other side of the world there’s an event that calls itself: La fête de l’Internet (or Party of the Internet) and it’s funded by the French governement and the various offices of cultural advancements. That says it all, no? No? Really not?
Well, here’s what it’s about: creating links throughout the internet and celebrating its marvels. My first thought is that the best celebration is to use the internet accordingly instead of making a huge venture out of it. Nevermind.
On the frontpage another blogging apostle is ranting about THE experience. You don’t really get a name to go with that article and the web page of this ‘internet party’ is highly annoying to me. So they link to the initial page that this silly article was published on: here. (Proceed to this link at your own risk and please close your mouth before you continue to read… Thanks.) What the person says is basically this: blogging was a phenomenon until everybody decided to join in and now it’s a drag. But there will come the ‘cyber purge’ (aka the great metaphysical deluge sent from the ever watchful gods of the internet) and only the worthy blogs will survive. Only the good ones. The ones that deserve to survive.

Well. I don’t think I need to comment on that in any way. Everybody knows by now that I resent the normative judgements applied to the internet or its ways of expression. If you don’t by now: read the bloody banner on top of the page and START BLOGGING!

Today was a marvellous sunny day. But funnily enough, the humour of the people in the streets doesn’t quite match the nice spring weather. They’re either very stressed or simply bad tempered. I have no idea why that is… they’re unpleasant and quite hostile. So, I am exiting the bank and one man - about to enter said bank - holds the door for a woman just before me, but when I get out and I am not ever really past him he snaps an annoyed ‘thank you!’ at me… Hm.

Anyway… I am still trying to update my story, but hell, all this time in between has washed all sorts of plot bunnies to my doorstep. They’re all lining up here and asking me to sidestep my plotting again. What am I gonna do? Make them leave? Take them in?
If I am going with what I have in mind right now, some people are sooooo going to hate me. But since I already was called an ‘evil, evil person’ by a reviewer (for almost killing Lancelot… I could never, but well, the reviewer didn’t know that it really can’t get any worse.

Apart from the already moribund candidates for a killing I think I will have to bring back some amount of action to this story or else… well, let’s be honest: there is only so much Arthur brooding you can take before the whole general angst theme wears thin and you lose the compassion of the reader. I’ve lost a lot of momentum with this new chapter, mainly because I tried to figure out the next three chapters instead of simply writing out the next logical step.
But I’m sure I’ll get to an ending one way or another.

Too many Saxons, to many knights on the verge of death and no logical timing… I’m with the back up against the wall and that’s the problem with a story you publish chapter by chapter I guess. You can’t go back and write a door into the wall as Bernard Cornwell once advised in a foreword to Sharpe’s Sword. And by the way: yes, the door was crucial to the story… saved Sharpe from being really dead instead of just dying, AND it gave him the chance to be saved by his best friend and a mute nun… *ggg* Don’t worry. There will be no nuns in this story, but maybe I can find the door…

As I am sitting here - well, sitting wouldn't be exactly the right expression to picture my actual way of being in front of the pc at the moment - I am thinking back at the hassle I just had these last few weeks. The doubts about my work in general and quite particularly here… it has been a terrible drag. Emotionally as physically since my sleeping pattern took a bad turn.
I had my talk on wednesday and it went ok. Everybody thought it was brilliant, like I said. But I can't believe that really. It was ok. Nothing more. The handouts with all the quantitave tables and stuff impressed all of them. Of course. Thank you for everybody that held their fingers crossed for me. So, that dreaded deadline is done and I am off to the next one, as it is my nature. Articles, researching and writing… business as usual.
So the doubts have moved to the background once again, never quite leaving me. Of course I was told again that they are normal. And I guess they are, especially for me. Second nature in a way. But the doubt felt different this time. Not so much like a quick moment of faltering, of losing step or being supsended before the next moment. It felt more like a complete freeze up in front of the headlights. And I've started thinking about the next step after the PhD. Maybe for the first time, I am not sure of having the next step in me. Maybe there will not be any next step. Maybe I have come to the end of this path. To the end of the dragging. To the end of my wits. Who knows?

All I know is that I am tired all day, lying down all day because of my strained back that put me to bed since yesterday. I am not fit to go anywhere or do anything really and the meds are wearing me down of course. We'll see how the next days go… if it plays out as usual, I might need to get home and see the doc. But, since he does neither have Eugene Roe/Shane Taylor's looks nor that nice little preoccupied wrinkling on his forehead, I am not that tempted by a five hour train ride at the moment…

"So smile through your days…"
Music of the Moment: Leona Naess

I'm thinking of updating my Arthur story… since Stephane 'The Charmer' Lambiel won the first Swiss Gold Medal in Figure Skating since 57 years on the 'King Arthur' OST [damn, and I have not seen it... you can see his KA outfit in this last link and this wonderful smile of his.] I really should think about the next plot scheme. Stephane, this next chapter will be for you Dear!

Ich wünschte hier wäre jemand…
… hier unter den Weiten der endlosen Gedanken,
in den langen Seufzern der ewigen Stille,
der halb ausgesprochenen Wahrheit,
hier, in meiner eigenen Welt.

Ich kann die Bäume flüstern hören,
das Wasser in meinen Ohren singen
und das Blau des Himmels wird mich rufen.

Und doch ist da niemand.
Eine ungestorbene Stille,
ungefasste Wege und
verschwommenes Gesträuch.
Ein Schritt neben dem nächsten
und immernoch Leere.

The sky is immersed in a wonderful display of the variety of blue,
some left over cloudy speckles here and there,
and the sun sweetly greets the world
while the earth is soaked in an impression of dawn.

I am standing amog the still brownish trees of my heart,
and covet this sinlge wish.
The same one that made overcome this eternal winter of fears,
doubt, solitude and expectation.

I should send it off to the air,
let it join the lost birds,
or drop it to the earth to take root.

But dreams and wishes are not stable enough to be left in the world.

If I were a writer, I’d write up the most beautiful world for you.
If I was but a little stronger, things could be so different.
If I was just a little girl, you’d be able to take me by the hand.
If I had found the idea to keep you a little bit earlier.
If I was all different…

If you had found me years ago,
If you’d seen me in my worst dream,
If you had but one idea to build me,
If you could rid yourself from this image of me.

If we were all different.
We would certainly make the world tremble in its foundations,
rip away the masks, see through the acts and jump the last ship to eternity.

If we simply were not the cast outs we are.
We would build a new world for us.
A paradise of truth and sun.
A time lapse where the now has no more sense
than the passing of a cloud.
And when all the ‘what if’s, the ‘would’s and the ‘only’s
have dissipated amongst the last blades of grass,
I’ll get up at last and move back to the world.
Without you, but with one last laughter in my ear…
(for L.-)

For the first time since I am here I woke up this morning with the sun in my eyes. I have no idea why, since it’s not like we never had a clear morning or sunrise since November, but I guess it has something to do with the height of the sun or something. I felt warm and GOOD. Boy, have I missed this feeling. The last weeks can be easily summed up with all semantical variations of tired and exhausted. And I am glad. Because obviously it wasn’t my fault, but the general biochemical drop down of January/February dragged into March by the weather gods…
But of course I wouldn’t be ‘fretting-and-sadder-than-real-and-conflicted’ girl if I could have just have a nice 10 minute waking up moment with nothing to worry about. *ggg*
Well, the protocol is back. The count down. The ‘I still have to do X, then Y, then Z and then I have to go back to G, because I frigging forgot to mention H…’ ranting of my subconscious mind. It’s a monologue my mind does. Either when I am falling asleep, but haven’t managed to actually sleep or when I am slowly waking up (as opposed to my normal: HEY! I am awake and jump right out of bed!-Routine).
This is how it goes:
- exactly evaluating how many days and thus hours I have to meet the deadline (column one)
- exactly the amount of pages I still have to write (second column beside the time line, of course twice as long as the time column)
- bits and pieces of the actual talk or lines I want to include (of course this doesn’t make any sense since I forget them by the time I am in front of the PC)
- anticipated questions by the audience and various images of me, red faced, thinking up an appropriate answer

Don’t get me wrong, this is by no means your average ‘I am naked in front of the class having a talk’-dream or something along those lines. Really not. To me it seems that it is a necessary last-hours protocol counting down. The first time I really consciously can remember this happening was when I was 4 weeks before entering the finals and I still had 90 pages to write and I was to lame to get my stuff together.
Now on the other hand it’s three days before D-Day that my mind finally decided to send me the famous last ‘kick in the butt’. And this morning - with the sun in my back and a nice anticipation of the spring (cheers Frank, I wasn’t patient as you told me to be, but it came anyway) - I have the following to say to my subconscious mind:

WHAT THE HELL TOOK YOU SO LONG?!

*lol*

Addition:
OK. now that I have fully regained all functionality of my eyes after taking this shot, I can post the picture that illustrates this morning:

I changed the quote of the week and stole it from the signature of my dear friend Bart.

‘Try to look unimportant, they may be low on ammo.’
Infantry Journal

I did it to prepare for my talk next week which feels a bit like a D-Day to me: drop into enemy territory, surrounded by medievalists stacked up with ‘anachronism’ grenades and a fierce warrior look on their faces and try to make the best of the situation… thus ‘try to look unimportant’.
But actually, I am just kidding myself here, because whatever I do, whatever I say etc. I cannot seem to make myself look unimportant. A fellow student once told me years back that it was my stance, my demaneour and my charisma that would never allow me to go unnoticed. Although, of course, I look like a complete bonehead and like a self centred diva for quoting this here, it does hold some truth. It’s true, sometimes even in a discussion I get extremely uncomfortable at the fact that *snap* everybody turns around to look at me when I start making an observation in a seminar or in a discussion. I have never dealt good with that kind of attention, simply because I feel that I am putting myself under enough pressure without others adding to this by scrutinising me while talking or telling me ‘don’t worry, you will be brilliant… as usual’. Yeah, right.
Living with expectation is a difficult task and it’s different for everybody. For me the most difficult thing is the ‘fraud stance’. I sometimes catch myself thinking that people are just stupid believing that I am able do all the things they are expecting me to do and that it’s due to their incapacity to see me for the fraud I am. This is mainly linked to the fact that I never considered to do something that stands out of the crowd. I can see the “Yeeeeeeah… Suuuure.” on your faces out there. But it’s true. In fact I don’t even consider myself to be extremely smart or nice. I just try to see behind the obvious things. And the sad thing is that this is all it takes to stand out and ‘look important’… *sigh*