I'm back, or at least on my way back to the land of the here-and-now from that hazy, miasmatic state. Have a lot of backlogged and current coursework to do.

[This quote] about the thinking ideology of Ralph Waldo Emerson has me intrigued. I'd like to look more into Emerson's work. I must confess I've never really come across any of it before. I have vague notions of what people think of him -- transcendentalism, a God within everything, and an emphasis on beauty. Whether or not any of these really apply to him I'll have to see. (I latched on to this particular quote because of the "consistency" bit -- something on which I had [previously] commented and about which my friend Better Fangs :F? had e-mailed me. According to her, Emerson writes, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.")

(Thanks also to [Shyaku] for his kind words and astute observations about writing.)

So it's Friday afternoon / early evening. I'm sitting here at my desk. Still haven't written the paper that was due yesterday morning. All these issues I've been having with the work of literary criticism is weighing on my ability to write. But it might not be so bad after all. It's helped me decide to focus on what John Milton does to write into existence the life of a poet. Milton is an interesting example because he was seemingly so confident about what his calling in life was, to write an epic poem. Anyways, I'm looking at one of his earlier poems, [Lycidas], for how he imagines the poet, drawing on pastoral allegory to link the poet with pedgagogical implications and theological ideals.

Sometimes I feel so adolescent, wallowing in a strange existential angst. Luckily, when I can get myself to read, things come up that make me realize there are possible solutions to my quandry. For example, [this passage] I just came across might just get me past my critical impasse, my inability to think about the study of literature anymore and certainly my severe writer's block.

Sometimes it all just seems too much for words. And the thought of trying to write down these destructive, ego-deflating ideas -- voices ricocheting back and forth in my mind -- is more than daunting; it veers towards total mental and motivational paralysis. Even blogging, of late a source of release for getting down in writing some of my thoughts, no longer seems so effective a therapy. The form has its own limitations and expectations, something that is perhaps not as restrictive in a private paper journal without the insistence of publication. The dejection, hopelessness, of these past few days has made my weblog seem more a burden than a gift. At times I wondered whether I would even bother to return to posting.

But still, even as I compose these words off-line in my word processing program, I know that the prospect of posting these thoughts on my weblog is what gives me the impetus to tackle the ideas in writing. More than just giving material form to my unarticulated malaise, to see these words on-line will give them, give my thoughts, a sort of validity (social?) that I struggle to attain in all aspects of my life.

And this is in fact the simple explanation of my current depressed state. I am bound up in this sense of non-existence, yet again, a feeling of not-quite-invisibility these days, but of non-significance. While in the past I used to suffer away in loneliness, I now find myself trying to engage a public outside. But sadly, my attempts seem mostly failures, my presence in the world a mere shadow or minor annoyance to the harmony of friends and lives.

I am not sure what has precipitated this self-devaluation turned obsessive searching for outside validation. In part, it must be my recent forays into the business of initiating contact with people. And while I have not been generally rebuffed, I have neither been able to sustain communication with anyone. These attempts were perhaps spurred by my recent discussions with my friend Eric about our perceived difficulties with engaging friends and acquaintances in easygoing conversations and contact. It seems always an effort just to get someone to go to lunch with me, and I rarely get invited to lunch or dinner or a drink unless I happen to be around when people are planning something -- at which point I am invited seemingly as an afterthought -- hey why don’t you come along? But no one here has really yet called me up to hang out, to grab lunch, etc. And while Eric and I concluded our discussion with the observation that these things are self-reinforcing, positive feedback in either direction, I still feel that my attempts are never really reciprocated. I sit alone, in the end, while others form networks of friends outside my presence.

The point at which these matters seem to claw at me inwardly and cruelly, though is when I do tag along with other people’s plans, when I do try to join in on the fun. They smile, they insist I stay, but the sense I get sometimes is that I am an interloper, the guest who has stayed beyond his welcome. I am not claiming victimization or total innocence in the situations. I know I am a generally quiet presence. I get the feeling that these people are just uncomfortable with my silence. Do they think I am not enjoying myself, that I am burdened by their presence? But if so, why would I bother being there? Why, when people do invite me along to a bar or dinner, do I usually accept unless I had specific plans beforehand?

It’s the little things, the seemingly insignificant glances, gestures, words, that throw me off. At dinner last night, one woman’s talk of a party at her place, the general invitation to all at the table except with a careful avoidance of looking directly at me (though at everyone else), and at the end of dinner, a group photo, except I was quickly conscripted as the photo-taker, carefully written out of the documentation of the evening (though it would have been just as easy to grab someone at the next table or the waiter for a complete photo). And though the woman with the camera thanked me sincerely for taking the photo, she could not explain away that sleight-of-hand to disown me from the group of friends important enough to belong in her picture. I don’t want to be too hard on her because she is generally friendly, though definitely the one I know the least of the group last night. But I just think, if I were the one with the camera, I would be all too conscious of how someone might feel, being the only one left out of the picture. (And to her credit, the woman I am closest to in the group made some noise after I took the photo to get a picture just of me, but no one heeded those words.)

These examples might seem to more socially-experienced people paltry reasons for feeling disregarded (perhaps too strong a word -- merely unregarded, though I wonder really which is better). But there are a multitude of others, and it is the combined weight of them all. I feel that I am perhaps too “sensitive” to these acts, what people do or say. Maybe it’s my literary critic’s mind trying to make sense of the details, of possible intentions and feelings, of effects and interpretations. But the facts remain. My phone is silent. My e-mail inbox lonely. My contact with possible-maybe friends limited to classroom interaction. (And is this all really any different from my high school days, when I saw my so-called friends only during school? -- but at least then they called on the phone, and the reason I didn’t see them much outside of school until my senior year was because my parents were not keen on my being out in the world unsupervised, especially after dark.)

I want to be loved. I want to be well-regarded. I want to be thought-of. I want to be contacted. I want to be acknowledged as a presence in people’s lives. And though I do not want to be hated, thought of as an enemy, etc., even these realities would give me more validation than that of a cypher. I am tired of always merely existing as marginal. And yet I remain firmly committed to the importance of observation, silence, and the valid existence of those who don’t always make a splash, a noise. But how to be recognized without needing to draw attention, to be the center of talk? How to expand what people consider in interactions?

Do I matter? If I were to be plucked from this existence, erased from the world, would anyone notice? And if their memories were all altered to reflect a reality in which I never did exist, would anyone feel something, though undescribable, missing? Would anyone’s life be radically different?

I guess this is all a very self-centered, self-aggrandizing view of things. I want to be a part of people’s lives. I want to influence others, just as they influence me. I want to create a life out of this existence, together with other people. Is it even possible?

Am feeling trapped by the question of the relevance of my life pursuits, especially my decision to enter graduate school. Seems that every once in awhile this issue comes up. This time perhaps it also stems from my sense that some of the discussions I've had in one of my classes have been pointless pickings at irrelevant details. Why have we been assigned particular readings? What is the point of studying knowledge projects, knowledge formations? What does disciplinary study enable us to do? And while I think most people believe these are important questions always to ask, in practice there often seems to be a severe disjuncture between the asking of those questions and an all-encompassing critical attitude towards objects of study as the relevance of study. Dissecting arguments in articles, poking holes in others’ work, seems to be the point of reading in some classes. Often, students ignore the work that a particular article does do, so quick to assert their control over the material by seeing beyond it.

This is where at times I want to take a step away from the seemingly prevalent attitude of criticism (in the negative sense, finding what’s wrong with arguments, stances, perspectives, the world) and to embrace instead an idea of what works, what is good about what people do. The world obviously goes on, and society goes on, in many ways successfully. And while I’d be one of the last people to argue that things should be as they are, that the status-quo is good (or as one of the characters in Voltaire’s Candide believed, everything happens for the best), I would be completely devastated if I truly believed that every ideological move, every institutional instantiation of ideas, is inherently flawed, evil, or destructive. I want to rescue from the shattered idealism of an always-critical world the moments of hope and humanity that keep things going.

I don’t know if I really want to say this, but it seems to me like a lot of this taking for granted of what works in the world seems to me an indication of the particular material / economic privilege of people in academia. (I know I’m somewhat conflating criticism of arguments in articles and criticism of the way things are in the world, but I think the major thrust of the type of criticism I am thinking of is the same -- a need to find fault with objects of study that overrides examination of what works in those theories, institutions, policies, etc.) This is not necessarily to say that I have a more enlightened attitude towards acknowledging my privileges, but that what I see as an attempt to assert one’s importance in a discourse by attacking others’ work misses possibilities for collaborative work, for advancing theoretical investigations, for developing practical solutions to living injustices. There just seems to be such a large ideological blindspot in many theoretically well-informed scholars’ projects -- one in which substantive change can come from academic scholarship, but never sees the light of day because acknowledging particular points, institutional practices, or others’ work means dealing with the world on contingent bases, realizing that there is no absolute evil out there, no bugbear on which to pin the problems of our world…

Am feeling a bit nauseous.... ? Not sure if it's because I'm hungry or because the cereal and milk I had this morning is playing games with my stomach. Am afraid to eat my bagel and yogurt....

This morning my car was covered in frozen drops of water -- little bumps of ice dotting the entire outer surface. I had to pull hard on the handle to open the door, breaking the seal of ice with a satisfying crunch. It took about fifteen minutes to defrost the windshield and other windows of the car. Good thing I wasn't in a hurry. The roads were fine, though. I didn't come across any icy patches or even any indications that there might be icy areas.

. . .

In ["Tom Cruise and his gatekeeper"], Jeannette Wells examines Cruise and privacy, bringing up issues of control, right to know, image spin, and rumors. This section brought up the idea of privacy and secrecy as a way of manipulating things "behind the scenes":

Wells goes on to write about Cruise's reported pushing of ClearSound technology, a development of the Church of Scientology, in productions. When met with resistance, he supposedly worked to undermine the opponents' future work. So it seems like there is still at the core of reportorial revelation this idea that the light of truth will prevent underhanded dealings and correct past misdeeds. And what's not to like about such a vision? But what makes me uneasy about it is that there is some sort of truth or a generally agreed upon judgment of what is at stake. In the case of Cruise and his supposed manipulation of what studios use for sound technology, it seems quite clear that he is bad because he is trying to foist a particular, not-necessarily-best, technology on others. It becomes a question of competing interests.

But what about cases in which what is "hidden" is generally considered bad, immoral, hurtful, but not for reasons of interest of malicious intention? Take for example sexual orientation. Why is it that outing is such a dreaded act? To out someone means to destroy his or her career, life, image. But is the revelation of this "truth" a revelation of a person's ideological motivations, of their interest-based actions? Maybe, maybe not. But I think the point is that the moral judgments that restrict public understanding and discourse about sexuality make the revelation of homosexuality in celebrities or other public figures a particular act, one that is meant to hurt the figure's standing in public opinion. (Of course, you have people like Signorile who advocate the outing of public figures as a way of counteracting these intentions -- the reasoning being that once you show people that all sorts of people are gay, the shock and disgust will eventually fade?)

Am finally feeling much better. Only a slightest bit of chest congestion (go [Robitussin^®] go!) lingering. And I'm awake! I should be in bed now, but being awake is such a nice feeling after days of near-constant sleep.

Might not be able to get to campus tomorrow if the [ice storm] does materialize overnight. I guess I'll go to bed now and set my alarm for 6:15 am. Maybe the morning news (or a power outtage -- though I'd not like that at all) will tell me that getting around the Triangle will be impossible or at least not worth the effort. Don't know quite what to hope for here. Being trapped in icy conditions would be no fun, but getting to lounge around inside (with some heat, I hope) all day would be nice. G'night, little ones.

The thought of parents writing e-mail has got to be one of the funniest things. It must be the strange juxtaposition of the parents' summary of the day's events and the advice they always seem to want to give. And all in a written context that just seems foreign to communication with parents (at least with mine). [The Daily Dean's] post from a few days ago made me think of the e-mails I get from my dad. For example, shortly after the supposed winter storm of early December, he wrote:

Subject: storm

Heavy storm ?
Affecting anything ?

Can you tell he loves John Wayne?

And just a couple of weeks ago, he sent me this message:

we are leaving on 2/3/01 and coming back on 2/24/01.
have you left your Donald Duck T-shirt at home this time ?
it's my pajama mow.
happy new year !!

Hmmmm. There's something peculiar about the randomness of subject-matter in that message. The informative first line is followed by a rhetorical question about a t-shirt of mine that he then claims is his new sleepwear. And then the closing exclamation, wishes for a happy new year. I wonder what was going through his head when he composed the message. Did he ever have composition teachers grilling him about connective words and phrases, even flow of ideas, orderly progression?

["patience get a hold on me / tell me what the hell am i doing / i'm losing my sense of it / i'm tap tap tapping out what time i've got"]

Mostly asleep these past couple of days. Want to make those chocolate chip cookies, but don't have enough flour (could've tried whole wheat flour?) or fresh eggs. Ice cream, candy, yum yum.