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Currently at Toronto Pearson: 10. High today: 18.
Put Chicago down on the list of American Cities Not Full of Crazy People. Although I didn't see a hell of a lot of it. It would take a long time to see a hell of a lot of it. It seems as if it's a lot like Toronto, but several times as big. (A few months ago, a friend of mine claimed that Toronto was as big as Chicago. Or maybe bigger. These things, I quickly realized, entirely depend on how and what you measure--but you just need to look back at downtown Chicago from around the bend of the water, and you can see, it's way the hell bigger than Toronto.) Saw a lot of rabbits, anyway. Walked around Wrigley, and wished I was in it. But that was just one of several wrong decisions, the first of which may have been wanting to go (that is, to go to what I was going for) in the first place.
It was some intensely uncomfortable experience ... but I knew it was going to be ... and was it self-fulfilling? And it improved toward the end, as these things always do--it's pretty predictable, apparently; on the second day, I resolve never to do it again, and on the third day, I'm not quite sure--but how much did that have to do with impending release? Anyway, I couldn't not try to go, at least once, and it has left me with a lot, but with hardly anything of what you're nominally supposed to go to these things for. Almost every paper I heard was, as far as I was concerned, practically gibberish. I just, a couple of hours ago, watched a BBC thing on HeideggerNazi--so much gibberish. But, well, everyone has to fill in the blanks in their own way, with what they've got. There are a lot of blanks. You could say it's almost all blanks. (But then there's the plain misunderstanding. No one who's read Being and Time thoughtfully could possibly think that Heidegger's Nazism could have anything to do with him extending his idea of authenticity to a people (though even Habermas thought something like that); a people doesn't have the Eigen for Eigentlichkeit. And no one who's read Being and Time at all could think that Heidegger says that modern life makes us anxious.)
One of the Eminent Heidegger Scholars at the beginning of the BBC thing said something about the wonder of Heidegger being that you read him and you realize that your thinking will never be the same and no one could have ever thought what he has thought before ... which is the kind of thing that people say, but which is, to me, so exactly and terribly wrong. If Heidegger was saying something radically unlike anything anyone else ever could have thought, well, it could hardly be true. But maybe I am just projecting. Most Heidegger scholars have always seemed to me to be making Heidegger out to be saying something much more difficult and obscure and foreign to ordinary experience than he really is--what he is really thinking is so very simple. It's so very simple that it can hardly be said. When you say it simply, you seem to say nothing. Die Sprache spricht. Es gibt Sein. The trick is not to lose sight of what's so simple because it's so simple. People think they're no different from computers because the difference between us and computers is so simple. But maybe I'm just a simpleton. Who knows.
So there was a lot of wondering, what is it that's wrong with me, anyway? It's certainly something to do with uncertainty--so unavoidably and persistently aware of uncertainty! It's also something to do with an aversion to faking. It's also something to do with paranoia. Which reminds me that I had been meaning, weeks ago, to say something about Plato and what sorts of things are driven by reason, thumos, and appetite. For a long time it's been one of my favourite little thoughts that a lot of what people read as greed is actually pride--a little thought that can be filled out with Plato, and Hegel. (Again: their virtue is that they're not saying anything that you never could've thought otherwise.) It's something I picked up on around highschool, about those greedy baseball players: it's hardly a damn thing to do with appetite; it's everything to do with status. (And how could you be an elite athlete unless you were driven by thumos, especially to the exclusion of appetite? You can't make it to the majors if you're driven by appetite!) Anyway, this social paranoia (uncertainty about what to do, unwillingness to fake my way through it, fear of being scorned for it, belief that others are looking to scorn), I've been thinking, since I read that book by Joshua Mitchell which is all about reason-thumos-appetite, is plainly thumos; it's the negative side of thumos, the slavish side (and what is it, anyway, that keeps it from sprouting ressentiment in me? That, at least, has something to do with the insistence of reason, doesn't it?)
Here's a few Facts, some of which are Interesting: the books in the DePaul University library are catalogued according to the Dewey Decimal System (whereas every other university library I've ever been in uses the Library of Congress system). The Washington Nationals this year became the first team in major league history not to score in the first three innings of each of their first ten games. They also went 0 for their first 30 at-bats with runners in scoring position. (Sign on pub across from Wrigley, advertising that day's game: CUBS vs GROSS NATIONALS PRODUCT.) Ah, and now I've forgotten the rest, which had to do with colours or numbers or some damn thing. Possibly birds. That's always a good guess.
Put Chicago down on the list of American Cities Not Full of Crazy People. Although I didn't see a hell of a lot of it. It would take a long time to see a hell of a lot of it. It seems as if it's a lot like Toronto, but several times as big. (A few months ago, a friend of mine claimed that Toronto was as big as Chicago. Or maybe bigger. These things, I quickly realized, entirely depend on how and what you measure--but you just need to look back at downtown Chicago from around the bend of the water, and you can see, it's way the hell bigger than Toronto.) Saw a lot of rabbits, anyway. Walked around Wrigley, and wished I was in it. But that was just one of several wrong decisions, the first of which may have been wanting to go (that is, to go to what I was going for) in the first place.
It was some intensely uncomfortable experience ... but I knew it was going to be ... and was it self-fulfilling? And it improved toward the end, as these things always do--it's pretty predictable, apparently; on the second day, I resolve never to do it again, and on the third day, I'm not quite sure--but how much did that have to do with impending release? Anyway, I couldn't not try to go, at least once, and it has left me with a lot, but with hardly anything of what you're nominally supposed to go to these things for. Almost every paper I heard was, as far as I was concerned, practically gibberish. I just, a couple of hours ago, watched a BBC thing on HeideggerNazi--so much gibberish. But, well, everyone has to fill in the blanks in their own way, with what they've got. There are a lot of blanks. You could say it's almost all blanks. (But then there's the plain misunderstanding. No one who's read Being and Time thoughtfully could possibly think that Heidegger's Nazism could have anything to do with him extending his idea of authenticity to a people (though even Habermas thought something like that); a people doesn't have the Eigen for Eigentlichkeit. And no one who's read Being and Time at all could think that Heidegger says that modern life makes us anxious.)
One of the Eminent Heidegger Scholars at the beginning of the BBC thing said something about the wonder of Heidegger being that you read him and you realize that your thinking will never be the same and no one could have ever thought what he has thought before ... which is the kind of thing that people say, but which is, to me, so exactly and terribly wrong. If Heidegger was saying something radically unlike anything anyone else ever could have thought, well, it could hardly be true. But maybe I am just projecting. Most Heidegger scholars have always seemed to me to be making Heidegger out to be saying something much more difficult and obscure and foreign to ordinary experience than he really is--what he is really thinking is so very simple. It's so very simple that it can hardly be said. When you say it simply, you seem to say nothing. Die Sprache spricht. Es gibt Sein. The trick is not to lose sight of what's so simple because it's so simple. People think they're no different from computers because the difference between us and computers is so simple. But maybe I'm just a simpleton. Who knows.
So there was a lot of wondering, what is it that's wrong with me, anyway? It's certainly something to do with uncertainty--so unavoidably and persistently aware of uncertainty! It's also something to do with an aversion to faking. It's also something to do with paranoia. Which reminds me that I had been meaning, weeks ago, to say something about Plato and what sorts of things are driven by reason, thumos, and appetite. For a long time it's been one of my favourite little thoughts that a lot of what people read as greed is actually pride--a little thought that can be filled out with Plato, and Hegel. (Again: their virtue is that they're not saying anything that you never could've thought otherwise.) It's something I picked up on around highschool, about those greedy baseball players: it's hardly a damn thing to do with appetite; it's everything to do with status. (And how could you be an elite athlete unless you were driven by thumos, especially to the exclusion of appetite? You can't make it to the majors if you're driven by appetite!) Anyway, this social paranoia (uncertainty about what to do, unwillingness to fake my way through it, fear of being scorned for it, belief that others are looking to scorn), I've been thinking, since I read that book by Joshua Mitchell which is all about reason-thumos-appetite, is plainly thumos; it's the negative side of thumos, the slavish side (and what is it, anyway, that keeps it from sprouting ressentiment in me? That, at least, has something to do with the insistence of reason, doesn't it?)
Here's a few Facts, some of which are Interesting: the books in the DePaul University library are catalogued according to the Dewey Decimal System (whereas every other university library I've ever been in uses the Library of Congress system). The Washington Nationals this year became the first team in major league history not to score in the first three innings of each of their first ten games. They also went 0 for their first 30 at-bats with runners in scoring position. (Sign on pub across from Wrigley, advertising that day's game: CUBS vs GROSS NATIONALS PRODUCT.) Ah, and now I've forgotten the rest, which had to do with colours or numbers or some damn thing. Possibly birds. That's always a good guess.
