is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Are You Flirting With Me?
Are You Flirting With Me?
The paper presentation went well. I concentrated on the “temporalities of interruption” that we can find in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Levinas’ Otherwise Than Being. For both thinkers, there is an ethical import involved in realizing one’s passivity with regard to linear time. Both thinkers “solve” the problem of how we become responsible for pasts we can’t change and things we never did by describing interacting temporalities. For both, a non-linear temporality interacts with a linear temporality in which it cannot really participate but on which it nevertheless has important effects. So I showed the way in which these (very complicated) temporalities work in the two books in question, and then made an argument for why interruption is the ethical situation. Interruption of what we would have thought. And, often, interruption of what we would have wanted. It went over well, and I got some great questions. My friend J, whom I mentioned being so happy to see when I last wrote, has in common with me a love of Zarathustra and the eternal recurrence, so it was great to have him there. We’ve argued about this before. We don’t exactly agree. During the question session he asked me a really hard question that I could only partly answer. He bit me on my Achilles heel a little bit. But in a good way. It’s too bad he lives in Beirut, because it is more fun arguing with him in person than over email. Even when he tries to bite my heel in public.
He showed me lots of beautiful photos of his rooftop terraced Mediterranean view apartment in Beirut and then invited me to visit. I thought maybe he was totally flirting with me until I heard him invite everyone else we know. Ha. I guess if I lived in Beirut I’d want to up the odds of actually getting some visitors too.
I did have the strangest and most interesting moment of flirtation, if that’s what it was, during the conference, however. I had gone to watch a panel on Levinas and saw three interesting papers. During the question session I offered a different way of looking at something that one of the guys had argued, and he took it as a hostile comment, and then decided we had just stated polar opposites when, to my mind, we hadn’t. (This is not the flirting part, nor the flirting guy.) (I was vindicated later that day when a guy from the audience walked up and told me how excellent my question was and that he was sorry the guy couldn’t “hear” it.) (I thought of saying to the conflict-guy, “well, I’ll take the egg if you really prefer the chicken,” that’s how much there really should have been a conversation rather than a conflict.) But no matter. Anyway, one of the other guys from the panel, whose paper was good and whom I had been meaning to talk to but sometimes-I-just-can’t-deal-with-approaching-strangers, plus I just left after the end of the session rather than introducing myself because of the being-perceived-as-hostile thing…. So, yeah, that guy, the other panel participant, at one moment two days later, when I was waiting in line to buy some iced green tea, that guy walked up to me to say hi. But he didn’t tap me on the shoulder, or say “hi,” or step up next to me to get my attention. Instead I became aware he was near me because he clasped my right arm just above the elbow with his hand, lightly but very purposefully, and just stood there looking at me for a minute. And for some reason that wasn’t weird? Finally, he said, “how are you today?” And that wasn’t strange either? I said I was fine. We talked a bit. He lives in New York. I said I live in Philadelphia and escape to New York fairly often, we could meet and talk philosophy. He said yes, let’s do that. I went off to my panel and never ran into him again.
The architecture of this particular Marriott was bad for people-finding. Last year in Memphis I constantly saw everyone all the time. Here I didn’t once see a number of people whom I know were actually there.
Anyway, I had a number of really amazing moments-with-people at SPEP this year! Perhaps this is the fulfillment of the outrageously good horoscope for the month of October that Evany sent me earlier in the month (she and I share a star sign). Apparently both of us were going to have the most romantically charged and professionally/creatively white hot month we’ve had in years! A week ago we were IMing about how we felt RIPPED OFF in that regard. We’ve both been tortured by our own writing lately (though, man, that recent Evany-diary entry she wrote made me laugh so hard, and for quite a long time, harder than when I was actually there while it happened!). So yes, I’ve been tortured by writing, to the point of anxious dread, as well as sadsick with dating doubts. But my time in Salt Lake City really was exceptional.
Also very lovely because, as I always do, I shared a room with GAYLE, who is fabulous. Not only is she one of the most beautiful women you’ll ever see, but she is smart and funny and kind and good. Her paper was excellent. We had fun at our traditional Jill-and-Gayle-only dinner. Then we got separated last night due to my having ended up in a hotel room full of guys drinking whiskey and then taking a cab to a party somewhere, while she had a tremendously unfulfilling evening of awkward social graces, topped off by some satisfying drinks at a bar. So, yeah, I went to a party with five guys, and then when we got there all we did all evening was talk to each other. Ha! J even said, I’ll bet that somewhere in this house is some clique-ish group of people from some other year of the Collegium, talking only to each other, and feeling like there’s nothing better than that! Or something like that. I think he may have mentioned alternate universes or something, too. He was drinking PBR. M hadn’t come to my paper presentation and so he made me explain to him how I could claim something like “eternal recurrence is passivity in Nietzsche’s philosophy of will.” So I did. Then I watched T and H play various weird man-strength games. J and I kept trying to guess which song was playing on the stereo and then checking the itunes listing when we couldn’t. Then I went back to the room, packed, Gayle got home, we talked about our evenings, I slept for three hours, and now I’m on an airplane again.
I only brought two pairs of shoes to SPEP this year, the robin’s-egg-blue knee-high suede boots and the red fornarina maryjane heels. Apparently people in Salt Lake city don’t get much exposure to excellent footwear, because no matter which pair I had on, everywhere I went people were staring at my feet.
And now, a note from my Dad (regarding a recent entry on enthusiasm in which I quoted him):
“It was open G and open E that I spent my time raving about! Open D was there, but less prominent. Not that the actual tuning would matter to anyone other than musicians…. But, I simply must: Open G well known tunes: Honky Tonk Women, Brown Sugar, Start Me Up. Open E: Street Fightin' Man, Jumpin' Jack Flash. From the days when the Stones really were the greatest rock and roll band in the world.”
8:12 p.m. - October 24, 2005
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