Friday, May 25, 2007

its been a long time. i've been avoiding it, avoiding pretty much all writing actually. the semester is over. i've written one paper. i have to write one more by tuesday. i was supposed to work on it today, but i haven't yet. i had to go to a temp agency earlier to see if they could find me some work. they seemed pretty impressed with my office skills. i can type at 70 words per minute and i'm an excellent speller! i know i can type faster than that, but i didn't trim my finger nails before i went to the interview, which was stupid because i knew i would have to take a typing test, but also because you probably shoudln't go to an interview with fingernails that would make rupaul blush. they keyboard was different than the laptop that i'm used to, and it made me uncomfortable and scared. whenever i went to type an "e," a "3" would end up in there too...things like that would happen and piss me off. also, i always put two spaces after a period, and i didn't know if what i was reading did that or not, so after every sentence on the typing test i would put two spaces and then delete one. i'm really particular about some of the most insignificant things, and yet i can't work with a deadline in mind. its not until the deadline is so rapidly approaching that i absolutely have to sit down and write before i can even think about putting my thoughts on screen. i think about what i want to say before i actually sit down and type it out, so when i actually get to it, i can get through 2 or 3 pages in an hour. until i hit a snag and then i'm stuck for a while. this usually isn't a problem, but the paper that i have to get done by tuesday is kinda gonna suck, and i know it. for those who care, i'm gonna compare maurice merleau-ponty's "eye and mind" to meister eckhart's sermon called "jesus entered." the two are vaguely related, and according to wikipedia (via suzanne) eckhart "foreshadows the phenomenological understanding (i.e. Merleau-Ponty) that our lived world is lived in a pre-reflective manner." this is an ok foundation for a paper, but whether or not i can make eckhart really speak to merleau-ponty's concerns regarding painting and the "flesh" of the world is up in the air. i basically came up with the idea because both thinkers used the word "dehiscence," and both of them talk about deconceptualized universality...in so many words. dehiscence is defined as " the natural bursting open of capsules, fruits, anthers, etc., for the discharge of their contents." when you turn that into philosophy it means that your head explodes because you realize that everything you've ever known is false because you only know it in the context of you...at least that's what i think it means, and that's what my paper is going to be about. instead of writing one big paper on one big philosopher, i'm gonna write two small papers about two big philosophers who sorta talk about the same thing, and i'm only gonna use one cover page. that's what happens when you take a lecture class that ended up being a waste of time and you stopped doing the reading because the class never really got past the first reading assignment anyway, which was both the fault of the professor and the students. so, its gonna be an interesting weekend considering i need to re-read the materials i intend on using, write 15 or so pages about those materials, and go to a barbeque on sunday. i decided to blog about all this instead of working, and before i started blogging, i thought that tonight was really the most appropriate time to chip away at the iceburg in the freezer (incidentally, i did an excellent job, and our freezer has literally tripled in size because of my efforts). it probably isn't as clear as it should be, but i'm actually really depressed about the complete apathy i feel toward this paper, and life in general. i'm not jumping out of any windows or anything, but i'm certainly not doing any work to change the world, or myself, and i can't seem to force myself to get started on either. if this philosophy thing falls through though, at least i can look forward to a promising career as a temp.

this is the only paragraph break in this entire blog post. i hope you enjoy it.