no, I don't post on here, Harper... but it's just an expulsion for thought...
so, without further adieu...
Dear ex-boyfriend of several times,
Do I still owe you an apology after all the others I made? I guess, after realization that it was a terrible mistake to date anyone seriously when I dated you. I was an emotional nutjob at that point, having possibly lost the thing I knew and had counted on, based my life around and always thought I would have. Loving someone else that I could never have. Dating you was a mistake, a huge one, not because of you, but because of me. You offered me your heart and soul and I needed someone to affirm me at that time, and you were the sacrificial lamb to my needs at that time.
It is not that I didn't appreciate that gift. It is why I loved you, because I knew you loved me unconditionally. I could do anything and get away with it. God knows that I did.
But, would it have worked out? Not in a million years. Your fatal flaw is your lack of belief in yourself, your refusal to be who you are and be the person you could be, instead you hide and pretend to be something else to live up to some outdated idea you hold of life. You have to grow beyond thirty, or eighteen, my dearest, or you might as well die at those ages. Living up to a past ideal that is no longer valid is the worst waste of a life. Better to live in the burbs and drive an SUV and have no awareness than to live a lie.
And, really, somewhere inside, I never doubt myself. I refuse. Why? Because of that love before you. Somewhere along our path of life we traveled together he gave me the ultimate belief that it would always be ok. That I can't stop and look down, that I must keep looking forward and find what it is I seek, and never stop until I do. I can't be with anyone who doubts themselves constantly. I need someone who can look forwards with me, and who can build something with me greater than both of ourselves. Perhaps I will never find this, but it is better to live alone and on the path I belong on than to compromise for someone who I can't share with, can't grow with. Someone who's trajectory is more like that of my own.
So, thank you for the emotional support you gave me. The rough spots I got through because of you. I wish it would not have taken so much from you with so little gain save a lifetime of wistful sighs for you.
-j.
so there it is, the awful confession that I used someone and wasn't even aware of it at the time. oh, the cruelties of turning thirty and realizing your mistakes.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Sunday, December 30, 2007
berlin
in honor of reading Herr Lehmann tonight...
Berlin. I always call it the ugliest of cities. Berlin's beauty isn't in its buildings, it isn't in any single Kiez, it isn't the wondrous and multiple bars, restaurants and perversions galore that abound there. It isn't the wonder of it's many amazing museums, its ruins from war, its rising from the ashes of war and a wall. It isn't for all of the wealth of literature that has poured from there. Berlin is. It lives, and breathes and says fuck it all. If a city ever had a personality in modern European culture, it's Berlin.
Built on a swamp. Home of thugs and dictators. Six stories, its many buildings, topped with antennas as far as the eye can see. The church bells ringing out in the morning. The clear, piercing winter sunlight, the gloomy endless grey of many days. The summer nights that are so short, and its days filled with its inhabitants swimming, drinking, biking, making the most out of its most glorious season. Odd little tucked away dance clubs/language learning center/volkskuchen run in an old apartment run by gay men and transsexuals from America. The Tajiki tea rooms with worn rugs, dim candlelight and the air of perfect romance. Speed and coke from ill-lit rooms on Oranienburgerstrasse, filled with hordes of backpackers looking for the next cheap exotic thrill. Hash in the basement bar with an unknown bartender. Late nights at bookstores with kooky smelly old hippies trying to make love to you for an unknown reason. Backyard barbeques to celebrate a graduation, with sentiments of bourgeois respectability disappearing with each drink. Foolish old women on the garish Ku'damm, looking at a whore whose time has passed. Watching films about the building of Brasilia in the Schwarzes Cafe at three am before visiting the Auslandersamt. Playing with children at Kollwitzplatz, running barefoot in the sand, pushing a little girl with a striped dress on a swing. Watching antifa kids scream righteous anger, as the cops follow them, hating the kids for believing in something impossible in Germany's rigidly respectable society. Eating falafel at four am on Rosenthaler Platz. The crazy woman on the U2. Dodging the kontrollers, trying to play the fool or run as fast as you can. Fireworks on the Oberbaumbruecke on New Year's Eve deafening and blinding you as you try to drink fast enough to stay warm. Breakfast of rolls, cheese, tomatoes and spread at the park of the lesser-spotted elephant. Buckets of cheap veggies at the closing of the Turkish market. Borscht at a cheap little Russian dive. Socialist realism at Treptower, shivering, knowing the marble came from Hitler's chancellory. Biking up the Prenzlauer Berg, down summer houses by the Spree, through the grounds of the Schloss Charlottenburg, through the Brandenburger Tor. Drinking with the working class old men at the Duncker 80. Being free. Loving life. Not giving a damn, for the trees are green, or will be again, and there is beer then and there is beer now. Making art, making love, fighting for something worthwhile. It's all there, somewhere.
One memory: on Greifswalderstrasse, by the Ernst Thaelmann memorial on the east side of the Thaelmann park. Stopping on my bike to look where I was. It was fall, and cool, but the trees were still green in the park. It was late in the afternoon, and the sunlight fell behind the trees, illuminating them, giving Thaelmann's memorial the proper tribute due a socialist martyr. Beyond, I could see the buildings in the park, the pool where I swam every week, the apartments and blocks beyond, where I lived. The cobblestone streets that I bumped on every day on my thin-wheeled bike. It was for that moment, my home, and I loved it, never as much before and never as much after. The wind blew my hair and I remembered I needed to meet someone at Mehringdamm. I gave one last look to the sight that gave me such pleasure, and then raced down to the Pope's revenge and beyond.
Berlin. I always call it the ugliest of cities. Berlin's beauty isn't in its buildings, it isn't in any single Kiez, it isn't the wondrous and multiple bars, restaurants and perversions galore that abound there. It isn't the wonder of it's many amazing museums, its ruins from war, its rising from the ashes of war and a wall. It isn't for all of the wealth of literature that has poured from there. Berlin is. It lives, and breathes and says fuck it all. If a city ever had a personality in modern European culture, it's Berlin.
Built on a swamp. Home of thugs and dictators. Six stories, its many buildings, topped with antennas as far as the eye can see. The church bells ringing out in the morning. The clear, piercing winter sunlight, the gloomy endless grey of many days. The summer nights that are so short, and its days filled with its inhabitants swimming, drinking, biking, making the most out of its most glorious season. Odd little tucked away dance clubs/language learning center/volkskuchen run in an old apartment run by gay men and transsexuals from America. The Tajiki tea rooms with worn rugs, dim candlelight and the air of perfect romance. Speed and coke from ill-lit rooms on Oranienburgerstrasse, filled with hordes of backpackers looking for the next cheap exotic thrill. Hash in the basement bar with an unknown bartender. Late nights at bookstores with kooky smelly old hippies trying to make love to you for an unknown reason. Backyard barbeques to celebrate a graduation, with sentiments of bourgeois respectability disappearing with each drink. Foolish old women on the garish Ku'damm, looking at a whore whose time has passed. Watching films about the building of Brasilia in the Schwarzes Cafe at three am before visiting the Auslandersamt. Playing with children at Kollwitzplatz, running barefoot in the sand, pushing a little girl with a striped dress on a swing. Watching antifa kids scream righteous anger, as the cops follow them, hating the kids for believing in something impossible in Germany's rigidly respectable society. Eating falafel at four am on Rosenthaler Platz. The crazy woman on the U2. Dodging the kontrollers, trying to play the fool or run as fast as you can. Fireworks on the Oberbaumbruecke on New Year's Eve deafening and blinding you as you try to drink fast enough to stay warm. Breakfast of rolls, cheese, tomatoes and spread at the park of the lesser-spotted elephant. Buckets of cheap veggies at the closing of the Turkish market. Borscht at a cheap little Russian dive. Socialist realism at Treptower, shivering, knowing the marble came from Hitler's chancellory. Biking up the Prenzlauer Berg, down summer houses by the Spree, through the grounds of the Schloss Charlottenburg, through the Brandenburger Tor. Drinking with the working class old men at the Duncker 80. Being free. Loving life. Not giving a damn, for the trees are green, or will be again, and there is beer then and there is beer now. Making art, making love, fighting for something worthwhile. It's all there, somewhere.
One memory: on Greifswalderstrasse, by the Ernst Thaelmann memorial on the east side of the Thaelmann park. Stopping on my bike to look where I was. It was fall, and cool, but the trees were still green in the park. It was late in the afternoon, and the sunlight fell behind the trees, illuminating them, giving Thaelmann's memorial the proper tribute due a socialist martyr. Beyond, I could see the buildings in the park, the pool where I swam every week, the apartments and blocks beyond, where I lived. The cobblestone streets that I bumped on every day on my thin-wheeled bike. It was for that moment, my home, and I loved it, never as much before and never as much after. The wind blew my hair and I remembered I needed to meet someone at Mehringdamm. I gave one last look to the sight that gave me such pleasure, and then raced down to the Pope's revenge and beyond.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
always a moment to think
i'm not really a political person. i have beliefs, but that doesn't make me political.
i do read the news voraciously. i have since i was a child. i've always had an awareness of the horrors of our world. i guess the internet is my favorite thing these days, since i can read news readily from foreign sources, the bbc, the guardian, spiegel, die welt... german and english sources anyway. occasionally will try and muddle through le monde, but my french is just awful.
hm... days of assassinations are always bad days somewhere in the world. in this case, it was a bad day in pakistan.
if there's ever a politician who gives any kind of hope of finding a solution that doesn't lead to bloodshed, there's always a fanatic to blow them away. i was 16 when yitzhak rabin died. i was buying a comic book and heard the radio report.
today, pakistan's best hope for stability was killed. maybe any kind of honest hope that that whole fucked up situation could be maybe tempered enough to take the bite out of the power of the madrassa-educated fanatics. out of the power of the greedy corrupt pakistani military. benazir bhutto was no great heroine - she was probably guilty of corruption, and wasn't really an effective leader. but a glimmer of hope is better than no hope.
so, another fucking country is condemned to years of civil unrest more, due to some asshole's bullet. it could have been musharraf who ordered her death or it could have been pakistan's equivalent of fundis that had her killed. who fucking knows.
of course, the best part is this isn't just some third-world hellhole nobody cares about. it has nuclear weapons (hurrah!) and a long-standing grudge against their very large and well-armed hindu neighbor with increasing religious fanaticism of its own. fuck, i feel like bismarck: he once said the great european war would be started by "some damned fool thing in the balkans." i wonder if some very nasty war of nuclear attrition will start because of some damned fool thing in south asia. someone will insult mohammed or allah or rama or shiva or whatever fucking name people give to their gods and prophets. i wonder if the bjp or the madrassa parties in india and pakistan respectively have enough sense not to start a fucking nuclear dick-waving contest. i wonder, really, if some of the states' vaunted cold-war leadership were still alive if they wouldn't give some credence to the fact that even krushchev had enough sense not to start a nuclear war. i would take a krushchev or a brezhnev over a religious fanatic holding a big red button with a mission from their own twisted version of a divine message.
there are worse things, virginia, than communism. religious fanaticism. an undereducated and angry populace. yep, those are pretty bad things.
i do read the news voraciously. i have since i was a child. i've always had an awareness of the horrors of our world. i guess the internet is my favorite thing these days, since i can read news readily from foreign sources, the bbc, the guardian, spiegel, die welt... german and english sources anyway. occasionally will try and muddle through le monde, but my french is just awful.
hm... days of assassinations are always bad days somewhere in the world. in this case, it was a bad day in pakistan.
if there's ever a politician who gives any kind of hope of finding a solution that doesn't lead to bloodshed, there's always a fanatic to blow them away. i was 16 when yitzhak rabin died. i was buying a comic book and heard the radio report.
today, pakistan's best hope for stability was killed. maybe any kind of honest hope that that whole fucked up situation could be maybe tempered enough to take the bite out of the power of the madrassa-educated fanatics. out of the power of the greedy corrupt pakistani military. benazir bhutto was no great heroine - she was probably guilty of corruption, and wasn't really an effective leader. but a glimmer of hope is better than no hope.
so, another fucking country is condemned to years of civil unrest more, due to some asshole's bullet. it could have been musharraf who ordered her death or it could have been pakistan's equivalent of fundis that had her killed. who fucking knows.
of course, the best part is this isn't just some third-world hellhole nobody cares about. it has nuclear weapons (hurrah!) and a long-standing grudge against their very large and well-armed hindu neighbor with increasing religious fanaticism of its own. fuck, i feel like bismarck: he once said the great european war would be started by "some damned fool thing in the balkans." i wonder if some very nasty war of nuclear attrition will start because of some damned fool thing in south asia. someone will insult mohammed or allah or rama or shiva or whatever fucking name people give to their gods and prophets. i wonder if the bjp or the madrassa parties in india and pakistan respectively have enough sense not to start a fucking nuclear dick-waving contest. i wonder, really, if some of the states' vaunted cold-war leadership were still alive if they wouldn't give some credence to the fact that even krushchev had enough sense not to start a nuclear war. i would take a krushchev or a brezhnev over a religious fanatic holding a big red button with a mission from their own twisted version of a divine message.
there are worse things, virginia, than communism. religious fanaticism. an undereducated and angry populace. yep, those are pretty bad things.
Monday, December 24, 2007
a break from the theme to a point
most of my rants on here are about men, women and relationships... to celebrate the special day, i'll rant on a related, but different topic. today's rant: the stupid family pressure of that most wonderful time of the year (I'm saying this as I drink a scotch, mind you, because my family fucking makes me want to kill something).
Um...
my brother informed me tonight that I'm self-righteous for not wanting kids and working on preserving something beyond my lifetime that isn't for "someone I love and who loves me". he also disapproves that i am involved in something that isn't a relationship and doing something that isn't a job to him.
um, fuck him. sorry i don't want to work 40 hours a week, drive an hour to work and back and have two kids and a stay-at-home wife (or i guess it would be husband in my case). god, how fucking boring.
maybe nothing will work out with the guy in the bay area. maybe i won't end up going into academia. but i won't do something if it doesn't make me happy. i'd rather be happy than trapped in a life that makes me miserable.
i hate being here right now. i hate christmas, i hate my family pretty much. no, i haven't outgrown loathing my family. they are screwed up, really, and they pretty much don't want me. they want someone who doesn't exist that is certainly not me. i don't go to church. i am not going to marry. i am not going to reproduce. they aren't supportive, they are obsessive about fixing me. there's nothing wrong with me.
the worst thing about approaching thirty is this sudden flash of memories and feelings i thought long buried in the past: really, i was pretty much the kid that fucked everything up. i was one mouth too much to feed, i was the kid my father really didn't want to have, the girl that my brothers didn't bother including into anything, the child that my mother pinned all of her own hopes and dreams on. all of my life growing up i loathed that combined misery of all of that, of how my mother thought that i should have "everything she didn't", of how my father really was pissed that my mother decided to have me, of how my brothers really didn't have room in their boys club for a sister who they would treat as an equal. if anyone ANYONE ever wonders why i am perpetually angry and want to have nothing to do with my relations, it is mostly because of that. having to raise one's self emotionally and mentally, having people either loathe you or want everything from you is not something a child should ever be subjected to. i went through the worst emotional shit in my life before i was eighteen years old. nothing even the worse shithead male has ever done to me can begin to equal that. there is still the fucking angry ten year old inside of me that hates my parents for never allowing me to have the luxury of a happy childhood, or an innocent one in any way. my family stole the first part of my life from me; the rest of it is mine to do with as i fucking please and they can kiss my ass. i live up to my standards, not theirs and their standards are stupid. retarded. bourgeois, christian southern bullshit. racist. immoral by their own standards (a homeless guy offends them, for fuck's sake). they think if someone's homeless, it's their own fault (wtf?).
literally, fuck them. next year, i'm going elsewhere for the joyous season.
Um...
my brother informed me tonight that I'm self-righteous for not wanting kids and working on preserving something beyond my lifetime that isn't for "someone I love and who loves me". he also disapproves that i am involved in something that isn't a relationship and doing something that isn't a job to him.
um, fuck him. sorry i don't want to work 40 hours a week, drive an hour to work and back and have two kids and a stay-at-home wife (or i guess it would be husband in my case). god, how fucking boring.
maybe nothing will work out with the guy in the bay area. maybe i won't end up going into academia. but i won't do something if it doesn't make me happy. i'd rather be happy than trapped in a life that makes me miserable.
i hate being here right now. i hate christmas, i hate my family pretty much. no, i haven't outgrown loathing my family. they are screwed up, really, and they pretty much don't want me. they want someone who doesn't exist that is certainly not me. i don't go to church. i am not going to marry. i am not going to reproduce. they aren't supportive, they are obsessive about fixing me. there's nothing wrong with me.
the worst thing about approaching thirty is this sudden flash of memories and feelings i thought long buried in the past: really, i was pretty much the kid that fucked everything up. i was one mouth too much to feed, i was the kid my father really didn't want to have, the girl that my brothers didn't bother including into anything, the child that my mother pinned all of her own hopes and dreams on. all of my life growing up i loathed that combined misery of all of that, of how my mother thought that i should have "everything she didn't", of how my father really was pissed that my mother decided to have me, of how my brothers really didn't have room in their boys club for a sister who they would treat as an equal. if anyone ANYONE ever wonders why i am perpetually angry and want to have nothing to do with my relations, it is mostly because of that. having to raise one's self emotionally and mentally, having people either loathe you or want everything from you is not something a child should ever be subjected to. i went through the worst emotional shit in my life before i was eighteen years old. nothing even the worse shithead male has ever done to me can begin to equal that. there is still the fucking angry ten year old inside of me that hates my parents for never allowing me to have the luxury of a happy childhood, or an innocent one in any way. my family stole the first part of my life from me; the rest of it is mine to do with as i fucking please and they can kiss my ass. i live up to my standards, not theirs and their standards are stupid. retarded. bourgeois, christian southern bullshit. racist. immoral by their own standards (a homeless guy offends them, for fuck's sake). they think if someone's homeless, it's their own fault (wtf?).
literally, fuck them. next year, i'm going elsewhere for the joyous season.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
playing the numbers
i studied math. number theory was NOT my favorite class. i like analysis, topology, even algebra. but number theory and discrete mathematics was ryan's great love.
the number 42: the answer to life, the universe and everything. value: 0 mod 2, 6, 7. also the number of people i have now had sex with. also the number of unread emails in my inbox (mostly random undeleted crap from linguistlist).
the number 35: biological clock ticking. my friend lizka sent me the following story today about love over the age of thirty: a late thirty-something woman's tale of woe
numbers of the form 4x10^1 + n, 0 less than or equal to n, 9 greater than or equal to n. the numbers at which men realize they need to marry and have children if they are going to do it.
numbers of the form 3x10^1 + n, 0 less than or equal to n, 9 greater than or equal to n. the age that women realize the same, but men no longer want them because the women are apparently less valuable once, a, equal to the woman's age, is greater than 29. also if b, equal to the man's age, is greater than 29, the point at which younger women are no longer interested in them unless they possess income.
love is maybe not a matter of business, but it is a matter of numbers. even if people are not subject to such rules, you still have to rely on the probabilities of fate to deal you a winning hand.
the number 42: the answer to life, the universe and everything. value: 0 mod 2, 6, 7. also the number of people i have now had sex with. also the number of unread emails in my inbox (mostly random undeleted crap from linguistlist).
the number 35: biological clock ticking. my friend lizka sent me the following story today about love over the age of thirty: a late thirty-something woman's tale of woe
numbers of the form 4x10^1 + n, 0 less than or equal to n, 9 greater than or equal to n. the numbers at which men realize they need to marry and have children if they are going to do it.
numbers of the form 3x10^1 + n, 0 less than or equal to n, 9 greater than or equal to n. the age that women realize the same, but men no longer want them because the women are apparently less valuable once, a, equal to the woman's age, is greater than 29. also if b, equal to the man's age, is greater than 29, the point at which younger women are no longer interested in them unless they possess income.
love is maybe not a matter of business, but it is a matter of numbers. even if people are not subject to such rules, you still have to rely on the probabilities of fate to deal you a winning hand.
Monday, December 17, 2007
post drnk
Not drnk now. Sobered up by sleeping it off at the house; my house (or Ryan's really) not Liz's.
I hated the men there aside from Ryan and Ham and her housemates. They were pugnacious retarded middle aged men who are really misogynistic. They were blaming women for their own lack of ability to make a relationship work. People, people: really, at a certain point, if you are in the reject pile at 40, its your own damned fault (there are a few exceptions: divorces don't make people rejects, especially if it was a long marriage, or the ending of another long-term relationship that is not formalized... but if you've spent the majority of your adult life single and are bitter therefore, then it is possibly your own damned fault).
Post baby-boomer Americans (and post 68-Europeans) are fucking stupid. While it is insanely true that they created a new potential for openness and honesty in relationships between men and women, they really blew it in making it just about selfish behavior. I am not waxing poetic about the good old days when I would be barefoot and pregnant (because that shit is also beyond the pale), I wish that somehow society would grow-up and develop standards in relationships that were more meaningful than the ones we have. We still have the bourgeois decadence of 'omg i must get married because i'm thirty and have a house and kids....' and the waffling between that and the 'it's good to get laid and have someone' mentality. I refuse to believe there isn't a third path somehow. A way for honest and sane relations between men and women (or men and men, women and women, such as it were, because I think that gay men and lesbians have to totally forge new trails in how their relationships work). Something that isn't bullshit clinging to society's standards of the white-picket fence or the selfish 'what am I getting out of this?' as our fucked-up legacy from the 60s and 70s.
And, maybe women in one way are the greater benefactors of our modern society than men. Women still have the things that have always made females in society functional (our ability to work together, empathy and the ability to endure almost anything and work hard for a long-term goal), but we now also have the things that gave men an advantage: access to education, ability to take care of ourselves, travel, work in any field. Women in American society are in the process of becoming the dominant gender. We are not only the hands that rock the cradle now, but we rock it alone more and more often, while working the jobs that keep the country going. We are more educated than men now (58% of college graduates are now women, not men). Politicians aren't necessarily catering to the dumbass stereotypical angry white males, but the angry women who have to work 8-12 hours a day and raise their kids alone.
It isn't that there is anything wrong with men. They are just used to getting by on the fact that they were once providers and breadwinners who never had to do so much as twiddle a fork under a tap in the house. We haven't gone back and revised the ego issue that men used to have because they were catered to as providers of cash for food and housing in past eras. Women don't need men anymore to provide. We who are of the straightish persuasion want relationships with men, but not with fucking assholes who hold themselves in some superior asinine way to us, while not even in the slightest our equal in terms of housework, education, intellect or ability to talk to another person and listen. For those friends of mine having sons right now, I hope they raise them to be strong, good people who don't have these fatal male sociological flaws. Really. We need to get over this Bronsonesque bullshit.
I hated the men there aside from Ryan and Ham and her housemates. They were pugnacious retarded middle aged men who are really misogynistic. They were blaming women for their own lack of ability to make a relationship work. People, people: really, at a certain point, if you are in the reject pile at 40, its your own damned fault (there are a few exceptions: divorces don't make people rejects, especially if it was a long marriage, or the ending of another long-term relationship that is not formalized... but if you've spent the majority of your adult life single and are bitter therefore, then it is possibly your own damned fault).
Post baby-boomer Americans (and post 68-Europeans) are fucking stupid. While it is insanely true that they created a new potential for openness and honesty in relationships between men and women, they really blew it in making it just about selfish behavior. I am not waxing poetic about the good old days when I would be barefoot and pregnant (because that shit is also beyond the pale), I wish that somehow society would grow-up and develop standards in relationships that were more meaningful than the ones we have. We still have the bourgeois decadence of 'omg i must get married because i'm thirty and have a house and kids....' and the waffling between that and the 'it's good to get laid and have someone' mentality. I refuse to believe there isn't a third path somehow. A way for honest and sane relations between men and women (or men and men, women and women, such as it were, because I think that gay men and lesbians have to totally forge new trails in how their relationships work). Something that isn't bullshit clinging to society's standards of the white-picket fence or the selfish 'what am I getting out of this?' as our fucked-up legacy from the 60s and 70s.
And, maybe women in one way are the greater benefactors of our modern society than men. Women still have the things that have always made females in society functional (our ability to work together, empathy and the ability to endure almost anything and work hard for a long-term goal), but we now also have the things that gave men an advantage: access to education, ability to take care of ourselves, travel, work in any field. Women in American society are in the process of becoming the dominant gender. We are not only the hands that rock the cradle now, but we rock it alone more and more often, while working the jobs that keep the country going. We are more educated than men now (58% of college graduates are now women, not men). Politicians aren't necessarily catering to the dumbass stereotypical angry white males, but the angry women who have to work 8-12 hours a day and raise their kids alone.
It isn't that there is anything wrong with men. They are just used to getting by on the fact that they were once providers and breadwinners who never had to do so much as twiddle a fork under a tap in the house. We haven't gone back and revised the ego issue that men used to have because they were catered to as providers of cash for food and housing in past eras. Women don't need men anymore to provide. We who are of the straightish persuasion want relationships with men, but not with fucking assholes who hold themselves in some superior asinine way to us, while not even in the slightest our equal in terms of housework, education, intellect or ability to talk to another person and listen. For those friends of mine having sons right now, I hope they raise them to be strong, good people who don't have these fatal male sociological flaws. Really. We need to get over this Bronsonesque bullshit.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
less on a conversation, more on reading...
specifically wittgenstein.
wittgenstein. my favorite twentieth-century philosopher (nietzsche being my favorite nineteenth century one for his sarcastic wit and intense classical education). he's the unknown man in twentieth century thinkers save for those with the proper background in either analytic philosophy, philosophy of language or love of all things fin de siecle vienna. i actually discovered wittgenstein in two ways: philosophical investigations i read parts of during my study of language thoughts beyond the typical linguistic vein (gah, damn chomsky and bloomfield) and then the tractatus when i was spending a great deal of my winter in vienna two years ago.
there is an elegance to wittgenstein, to his character, to his mind. there are very few thinkers or writers who i pick up i can so easily understand and appreciate their work (virginia woolf, tolstoy, homer are the only other ones that come to mind). his life was breathed on constantly by tragedy (three brothers committed suicide, people always seemed to commit suicide before he could meet them), knew or inspired some of the most famous/infamous of the twentieth century (he went to school with hitler, taught alan turing, influenced the prague circle, who included roman jakobson, leading to structuralism, early major theories of phonology in linguistics...). probably and most likely the most fascinating person who lived through the cursed and very interesting times of the twentieth century in central and western Europe.
i don't know if i'm right (this isn't a fucking academic treatise, so it doesn't matter if i am or not), but there were things he certainly seemed to think that i fundamentally agree with. the elegance of math and its basis, coupled with the necessity of logic and evidence alone in empirical sciences. the fact that language was the means of expression for other things, from the metaphysics he was weary of (gah, fuck modern metaphysics and, though may bob solomon rest in peace, his stuff too) to the investigations of the social sciences. he believed faith also belonged elsewhere. a man who believed in some creator, but didn't believe in fanaticism. a dogmatically honest and moralistic person who was rather anxious and horrible at dealing with others (he was apparently a bomb as a pre-secondary schoolteacher).
this is just a post about me raving about wittgenstein. really. he's my intellectual hero, if such a thing can exist. he also, probably, tying into the overall theme of this blog, is the basis for my ideal type of male.
wittgenstein. my favorite twentieth-century philosopher (nietzsche being my favorite nineteenth century one for his sarcastic wit and intense classical education). he's the unknown man in twentieth century thinkers save for those with the proper background in either analytic philosophy, philosophy of language or love of all things fin de siecle vienna. i actually discovered wittgenstein in two ways: philosophical investigations i read parts of during my study of language thoughts beyond the typical linguistic vein (gah, damn chomsky and bloomfield) and then the tractatus when i was spending a great deal of my winter in vienna two years ago.
there is an elegance to wittgenstein, to his character, to his mind. there are very few thinkers or writers who i pick up i can so easily understand and appreciate their work (virginia woolf, tolstoy, homer are the only other ones that come to mind). his life was breathed on constantly by tragedy (three brothers committed suicide, people always seemed to commit suicide before he could meet them), knew or inspired some of the most famous/infamous of the twentieth century (he went to school with hitler, taught alan turing, influenced the prague circle, who included roman jakobson, leading to structuralism, early major theories of phonology in linguistics...). probably and most likely the most fascinating person who lived through the cursed and very interesting times of the twentieth century in central and western Europe.
i don't know if i'm right (this isn't a fucking academic treatise, so it doesn't matter if i am or not), but there were things he certainly seemed to think that i fundamentally agree with. the elegance of math and its basis, coupled with the necessity of logic and evidence alone in empirical sciences. the fact that language was the means of expression for other things, from the metaphysics he was weary of (gah, fuck modern metaphysics and, though may bob solomon rest in peace, his stuff too) to the investigations of the social sciences. he believed faith also belonged elsewhere. a man who believed in some creator, but didn't believe in fanaticism. a dogmatically honest and moralistic person who was rather anxious and horrible at dealing with others (he was apparently a bomb as a pre-secondary schoolteacher).
this is just a post about me raving about wittgenstein. really. he's my intellectual hero, if such a thing can exist. he also, probably, tying into the overall theme of this blog, is the basis for my ideal type of male.
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