is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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BUSY! But not too busy for you!
BUSY! But not too busy for you!
My mom's here right now, and I have lectures to write, and I also need to finish writing a critique of a colleague's paper for presenting at a conference on Friday, and I'm leaving town on Thursday, and I also have to read a bunch of stuff for the first meeting of the seminar which is the reason for my two-year's funding, on Wednesday. In addition I have to read a bunch of articles, one paper, and one short book, for discussing at the conference on Friday. And I should also start to get ready for teaching Kant the following week since there's not much time for class-prepping next weekend.
So I am BUSY. But not too busy for you, my friend. Nor for my mom. Here's why (stated in the language of Rousseau, from Emile):
"Every attachment is a sign of insufficiency. If each of us had no need of others, he would hardly think of uniting himself with them. Thus from our very infirmity comes our frail happiness."
Isn't that lovely? Tzetvan Todorov wrote a whole (also lovely) book about that passage. And then Rousseau adds:
"I do not conceive how someone who needs nothing can love anything. I do not conceive how someone who loves nothing can be happy."
Today my mom and I took the train to downtown Philadelphia (aka Center City) and looked at some art. I was excited to see the new Vik Muniz exhibit at the Academy of Fine Arts. But the exhibit was very small and somehow very uninspiring. I have found his work really moving and amazing at various moments over the past five years or so. I wrote a big long article about it in h2so4 (I just looked and ascertained that it was written in 1999, when I was a wee slip of a girl, and, even though I've just linked to it, I'm afraid to re-read it myself to see what I think.), an article that the artist even found on the WORLD WIDE WEB. And then he wrote to thank me for writing it! But if I had never heard of him and saw only this small room full of his works, I would have walked away not getting anything out of it. And that's what happened to my mom. It made me appreciate the art of displaying art.
But we ate very well today. I made Belgian Waffles with maple syrup and blueberries for breakfast. That might sound like too much. As if you should only have one or the other�maple syrup or blueberries�and not both. But believe me, if you combine them, the blueberries affect you aromatically, as if they were inhaled through the nose instead of eaten, and then the maple syrup and waffles do their thing at the same time. So what you have is synaesthetic breakfast. And who doesn't want that?
Then, after some art-viewing and some walking-around, we went to the upscale diner in Center City called Jones because I wanted one of their excellent salads. But it was Sunday Brunch so, even though we could have had salads, we both ended up getting omelettes with TATER TOTS. And then we had peach sherbet. Now I must flee to prep tomorrow's class. Mom is reading the Sunday NYT Magazine. I just said to her, in mom-voice, "Honey, do you have enough light?" She laughed. I turned the lamp on anyway.
6:51 p.m. - September 18, 2005
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