04/05/25
When my head hurts like this I’m always so tempted to give up. Most days I do.
I’ve been staring at the same page for hours, enough to forget what it was I wanted to say and why I wanted to say it. Philosophy papers have a way of obscuring the initial inspiration, but day three is too soon to give up on a newly made commitment.
In hopes of being inspired, I’ve been watching chef’s table legends. First day was Jamie Oliver, then José Andrés. Left each episode wanting to do something but unable to know what I could do.
Both stories have a familiar pattern. A hero’s call to adventure, and both take it on. A show, a restaurant, or a travel offer, and then things snowball from there. Both are the kind of people who seize opportunities, who (seem to) have tremendous vitality, who can keep tirelessly pursuing the next thing. I admire it greatly.
A life with books is not quite the same thing. Writing is a craft, but the way the philosophers do it, it is a rather useless craft. I struggle to see what a call to adventure could be for a modern day philosopher. But maybe no “hero” knows what the adventure will be. And many heroes have skills that are ill-fitted for the task, who nonetheless rise up to the occasion.
The trick seems to be to focus on what you have to do in that moment, and do it well. I still think of the Murakami quote from the Wind Up Bird Chronicle, an old favorite.
“The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there's no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness.”
It seems simple, if you can know when you are supposed to do something or another. Rather elusive advice.
But then again, I am in a Ph.D. program, so maybe it’s not so hard to know what I’m supposed to do for the next few years.
03/05/25
The earth is a sphere. This is the somewhat elusive platitude that Kant keeps turning to when discussing the relations between people of different nations. “Nature has enclosed them all together together within limits (by the spherical shape of the place they live in, a globus terraqueus.)”
It’s almost a silly point. The earth is a sphere, so we have certain rights. We have the right to “visit all regions of the world”, “to try to establish community with all”. A right that others have to respect. A right for which other nations have to open their doors. The connection, at first, seems tenuous. To draw something so demanding from something so superficial, accidental. The earth is a sphere. So what?
But maybe the point is precisely expressed by “the earth is a sphere” being a platitude. If each nation inhabited a nearby but disparate planet, then it would seem obvious that we all had a right to our planet above all, or that others would have to ask us before they visited. The point is that being born onto a sphere means you can theoretically go anywhere on it. The burden of justification has shifted. The nations that impose their borders have to do the explaining.
“Originally no one had more right than another to be on a place on the earth.” This is what the sphere means. The right to visit, “to present oneself to society, belongs to all human beings by virtue of the right of possession in common of the earth’s surface on which, as a sphere, they cannot disperse infinitely but must finally put up with being near one another.”
02/05/25
- here is a new (old) beginning
The bench where I sit overlooks the park from a distance. I get a little slice of it between the buildings and the traffic signs. A quiet road in between, disturbed only by the bus that comes every half an hour, like clockwork.
I can still smell the bread the bakery makes early in the morning, as it slowly gives its place to the smell of fresh brewed coffee. Customers trickle in, then eventually form a line. Sometimes the line extends around the corner. People hesitantly standing in front of the bench. We avoid eye contact. I look down at my book.
Some mornings I’m frustrated by the words I read. It feels like we should be better at saying what we mean by now. Like we shouldn’t need the same rigid words. It feels like you should be able to read my mind, from my actions at least. You should be able to understand what I would think from what you already know. An advanced prediction tool, to suggest to me the next natural thought before I would have to formulate it for myself. Sometimes it feels like we will never get better at understanding each other.
I don’t know why words can never replace music, photos, paintings. Even tastes and smells. To put something down in words feels like a violence against the complexity, the free-flow of meaning. Poetry might be the only form that gets close to the freedom.
But there is an optimism too. I have to tell you everything when I write. It is not like a facial expression in a painting whose story you can, and even have to, fill in on your own. If you are already the careful, imaginative attender, maybe you don’t need me. If you’re not, maybe I can show you something you wouldn’t have seen on your own. I can introduce you to new realities. I can make you a better attender.
And I have to be better, too. I can’t rely on the ambiguity to add the depth. It has to come from me, from the words I put on the page. I have to fill it all in. And, ideally, I have to fill it all in not just with me. This is the thing I struggle with the most. It feels like I understand others, but evidently not enough to write them realistically. It is all a work in progress--my imagination and yours. We learn by doing. Through bad writing.
things I like
1. when people try to explain why they like something
2. dedications on park benches
3. nutella on fresh bread
4. crying from laughter
5. plants being resurrected from what seemed like the end
6. valentine’s day cards for friends
7. unexpected turkish song in an uber
8. being embarrassingly bad at a sport, but still trying
9. the smell of fresh ground coffee
10. when someone knows the names of flowers and trees
11. people owning up to their guilty pleasures
12. making a playlist for someone
13. dogs who jump on you to be pet
14. good stationery stores
15. unexpected narrow streets with no cars
16. trees on sidewalks that hover over the road
17. people who are a little scared of ghosts
18. becoming a “regular” at some establishment
19. enthusiastic greetings, even for strangers
20. sleepovers!
21. seeing an old friend’s new life
22. friends from different stages meeting each other
23. morning cartoons
24. people who believe in their craft
25. colorful houses, outfits
26. the farmers market
27. watching someone else’s screen on a plane