is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Writing is Hard!
In class the other day it was paper-due day, and my students were all exhausted from writing all night, as is the way of students. Actually it is the way of many kinds of writers of all ages and depths and breadths of experience. I do not happen to be one of those writers. But I understand that most writers are that kind of writer.
In any case, they were all tired, and I had expected that to be the case, so I had prepared enough material to do most of the talking for our 1.5 hours class. At one point, however, one of my students nodded off a bit. So I called him by name, at which point he jolted upright and repeated word for word the sentence I had said just before I called him by name. And his tone was defensive, as if he was shocked and righteously indignant that I would question his commitment to listening to my every word. I laughed and kept lecturing. But, man, you just know he has been polishing that skill all his life, of being able to simulate paying attention while he�s actually sleeping.
It�s a much better skill than, upon waking, saying out loud whatever it is your dream-state might have been simulating!
Speaking of which, I woke up in a bad mood the other day, and nothing was going as planned, and then I couldn�t decide what to wear for teaching. It was indecision to the point of frenzied anger with myself, and so I wore a very nice floor-length skirt. It wasn�t gold-beaded or lace-embroidered or anything. Just a nice floor-length skirt, Betsey Johnson circa mid-90s, black with a large floral print that resembles sea anemones. Anyway, people always think you are dressed up when you wear a longish skirt. And it feels good to wear a longish skirt, but not because it looks dressed up. It feels good because of the swishiness of the fabric. Don�t ever wear a long skirt unless it has good swish!
My mood did improve, even before the attentive sleeping student made me laugh.
I am still listening to the Deathray CD, though I�ve had a couple of weeks of heavy workload without much time for music-listening. There are a bunch of new CDs recently released that I would love to buy and listen to, but I�m both low on cash and pressed for time, so it will have to wait. Anyway, now that I�ve listened to the Deathray CD over time, my favorite songs have shifted a bit. I�m currently more fixated on �Days Gone By,� whereas on first listening that song didn�t stick out much for me. I�m still really appreciating Dana�s voice in general. It kind of makes me want to say to him, �I may look like an American eagle, but really I�m French.�
Did you see Scott Baio on Arrested Development? He played a lawyer named Bob Loblaw. That show is so funny.
I had drinks on Wednesday with some fellow professors here at Haverford. Turns out there is a dive-y bar within walking distance from my house, and it also serves diner food! We had a very fun conversation wherein it was revealed that four out of five doctors really do like television a lot! The one in our party who isn�t so keen on TV is probably never going to go out with us again. But the rest of us had fun. And none of us has cable. This satisfied me, but was also disappointing, as many of them live in my building and I�d been hoping that someone around here would have HBO so I could see the new Ricky Gervais show called Extras.
But then I realized that I could have Linda TiVo it for me in New York!
Most of the buildings on campus are called something like Stokes Hall or Founders Hall or SomeKindOf Hall. However the philosophy department is in a building called Hall Building.
Tomorrow I wake up early and go to my faculty seminar for three hours, then I'm off to the airport to go to San Francisco for nine days! It's fall break here.
But it's not all fun and games. In the next two weeks I have to write a paper on Levinas and Nietzsche, to be presented at the meeting of SPEP in Salt Lake City. The paper is supposedly called ��Extravagant Honesty�: Nietzsche, Levinas, and the Accomplishments of Cruelty.� It�s a funny business, when one writes abstracts for papers one hasn�t written and then, like a year later, one has to write the paper. The title comes from this quotation from Beyond Good and Evil: "Every courageous thinker will recognize this in himself� He will say: 'there is something cruel in the inclination of my spirit'� Indeed, it would sound nicer if we were said, whispered, reputed to be distinguished not by cruelty but by 'extravagant honesty'�". Right now that's all I can say. I think it will be a good paper. But OH WHY MUST I? Writing is HARD! Thinking is HARD!
I have my own rituals of pacing and procrastinating and walking to and fro and then sitting very still and then circling round and round, and then once more from the top (but with feeling), before beginning. It�s peripathetic!
10:26 p.m. - October 06, 2005
Hypnagogia - 2011-06-11 04:03:32
So I actually really was paying attention. I may have inadvertently came off as defensive because I was trying really hard to pay attention through my headache. I hope it didn't offend you! I find it easier to concentrate through a headache by closing my eyes so the light stops drilling a hole into my frontal cortex. The saddest part of all of this tho, is that your ironic characterization of me wasn't all that ironic in reality. I kinda had and maybe still have a paranoid fear of missing something important at a lecture or in a reading.... Lol. P.S. I loved your class.
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js - 2012-10-06 15:37:40
Not offended at all. If anything, I'm concerned that you would still worry about it so many years later! I mostly just said your name to get your attention because it was a small class and so if anyone is maybe-sleeping everyone notices and then it is strange if the teacher doesn't address it. That's all. We all are tired sometimes (and I myself really do understand the headache-thing). (And I'm glad you liked the class!)
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