*CAUTION: skip this entry; it's crap. This entry was supposed to eventually be about the aesthetic solution in Nausea, but I began it, left it for a week, came back to it for a day, then worked in a parallel document for a day. Now I'm back to this one, but I've come to terms with its ultimate derailment from the planned objective. I've left it as I wrote it (more or less) for the sake of maintaining the illusion of authenticity in the project and because I think it might be useful to me down the road, but I hope anyone reading will do so with that caveat in mind.
***
I like ideas. Perfect, abstract, illusory ideas. Actions are nice - they must count for more than ideas do, since actions exist in the extended world and ideas do not (try to point to an idea and you'll see what I mean). Despite that, actions lack the potential that ideas offer; the idea of the thing is ruined by its actual physical occurrence. It’s for that reason I’ll never do anything. This thesis, once finished, will be less than I imagined, less than I intended, because it will have been done. The importance of context in determining meaning makes it impossible that my work should ever mean as much as (or even what) I intend it to mean.
It’s enough to turn one off from the whole ruinous enterprise.
But the promise of imperfect communication is not reason enough to stop speaking. There's another drive warring with this fear...
***
I'm thinking in terms of autobiography now. If I am to tell
you the story of my life, it’s necessary that I superimpose these perfect, supra-existential ideas on the
actual happenings of my life so that you will not realize how wholly monotonous
living is, maybe so that I will not realize how monotonous it is. After all, really, all we've got to work with is one second's sensations and perceptions followed and by and buried under every subsequent second, without objective
differentiation between them.
I expect to live
as I have seen others live, or as I have heard them tell their lives. But they
are doing the same as me, making Events out of seconds, superimposing ideas
they learned from reading or from the oral tradition of recounting our
experiences. Consequently, I am forever waiting for something to happen,
something that will forcibly and definitively never take place.
And then there's the problem of cycling: I've spent six hours today trying to vamp myself up to start working, and, now that I have, I find myself re-reading the beginning of Nausea. Again. I feel like I'm pacing, wearing over the same ground time and time again, but slowly carving away at the project with the pounding of my feet. That's not a good metaphor - but there isn't a better one I can think of. Trams don't wear into the ground, rivers are too free and changing, and koi ponds don't erode because they're wrapped around the bottom with tarp. Pendulums don't even touch the earth. A boulder rolling in a valley might be a good example, except that the physics wouldn't work; the boulder would just stop.
So I'm pacing.
Structuring this enterprise is useless. I know myself well enough to see not that I can make plan after plan, but I'll never follow it. And trying to work in different locations is a useless endeavor. Even now, having taken everything I could shove in my carry-ons, I'm missing a binder of notes I need. Or the bookshelf to the left of my bed, which would also tell me the name of the man who had that theory of thought that mocks the Descartean picture of a man thinking of thinking (of thinking of thinking...).
This is not a mobile endeavor. I need a cave, with lots of space with comfy chairs and big smooth tables and no distractions. A thesis cave.
And better lighting, for the love of god.
I really could work on this project forever without making any discernible progress.
It's Ryle, by the way. Found the name in an old email.
I'd like to compare the English usage by Alexander of "event" with Sartre's Fremch, but, of course, I've left the French edition in my room in NY. Good.
It's probably just événement anyway...
This is not cause for concern. We will not let this affect progress. (Wait - what progress?)
***
I've just written the disclaimer at the top of this entry. I'm hoping that wading through this mess will be a one time thing, since now I'm aware that I can't start a post in one city and pick it up in the next without some serious repercussions for the continuity of thought. It does make me think, though, about the difference between journal-scope autobiography and frame-narrative scope autobiography: the amount of fictionlization necessary for cohesion rises exponentially as temporal distance from the experience grows. My "experience" in this metaphor is the initial reason for writing the post. Previous entries were "journal-scope," but this one is "frame-narrative scope." I didn't expect the time away to have had such a ruinous impact, so I could not compensate. The result is a frame narrative sized autobiography written with the fictionlizing habits of a journal writer. I think I'll stick to my journals.
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