临时抱佛脚 [22 Dec 2009|02:27pm] shutupmoveon should be working last minute on jojo's take home (ah, my neveu paper went well, if only i hadn't turned it in late! but it would not have been written otherwise - story of my life) but i just need to write down for a second to remember how beautiful cold honey dissolving into tea is - a hard lump of a spoonful, from my jar of dark buckwheat honey, from the thursday farmers' market, then crystallized, now liquefying in hot orange tea. the little crystals like a sand dune, then a wave - so lovely to make tea in a glass mug, really (dead poet - from the night that i walked 60 blocks down broadway with v and her anthropologist friends) looking at the little currents of liquids mixing. things have a life of their own. tea now cloudy sweet and smelling very good indeed. hooray for finals being over, hoorui, just almost, and so much to look forward to and DO this wintry christmas break. also, this morning, lovely brunchtime coffee (three, in fact, and a sopresatta sandwich) with r and s and a at the pastry shop - giraffes and rabbits and soft soft sweaters and ireland, mauritius, beijing - i want to travel too, but no matter, someone is coming a long way to see me, very soon! i almost don't believe this is happening, a year after something else i almost didn't believe happened. how can it already have been a year! one whole year since venice, my train to vienna, his christmas dinner, and fiore. 02 comment

le rêve de d'alembert [18 Dec 2009|09:20pm] shutupmoveon D’Alembert : Je suis donc tel, parce qu’il a fallu que je fusse tel. Changez le tout, vous me changez nécessairement ; mais le tout change sans cesse… L’homme n’est qu’un effet commun, le monstre qu’un effet rare ; tous les deux également naturels, également nécessaires, également dans l’ordre universel et général… Et qu’est-ce qu’il y a d’étonnant à cela ? … Tous les êtres circulent les uns dans les autres, par conséquent toutes les espèces, … Tout est en un flux perpétuel… Tout animal est plus ou moins homme ; tout minéral est plus ou moins plante ; toute plante et plus ou moins animal. Il n’y a rien de précis en nature… Le ruban du père Castel… Oui, père Castel, c’est votre ruban et ce n’est que cela. Toute chose est plus ou moins une chose quelconque, plus ou moins terre, plus ou moins eau, plus ou moins air, plus ou moins feu ; plus ou moins d’un règne ou d’un autre… donc rien n’est de l’essence d’un être particulier… Non, sans doute, puisqu’il n’y a aucune qualité dont aucun être ne soit participant… et que c’est le rapport plus ou moins grand de cette qualité qui nous la fait attribuer à un être exclusivement à un autre… Et vous parlez d’individus ; répondez-moi. Y a-t-il un atome en nature rigoureusement semblable à un autre atome ? … Non… Ne convenez-vous pas que tout tient en nature et qu’il est impossible qu’il y ait un vide dans la chaîne ? Que voulez-vous donc dire avec vos individus ? Il n’y en a point, non, il n’y en a point… Il n’y a qu’un seul grand individu, c’est le tout. Dans ce tout, comme dans une machine, dans un animal quelconque, il y a une partie que vous appellerez telle ou telle ; mais quand vous donnerez le nom d’individu à cette partie du tout, c’est par un concept aussi faux que si, dans un oiseau, vous donniez le nom d’individu à l’aile, à une plume de l’aile… Et vous parlez d’essence, pauvres philosophes ! laissez là vos essences. Voyez la masse générale, ou si, pour l’embrasser, vous avez l’imagination trop étroite, voyez votre première origine et votre fin dernière… O Architas ! vous qui avez mesuré le globe, qu’êtes vous ? un peu de cendre… Qu’est-ce qu’un être ? La somme d’un certain nombre de tendances… Est-ce que je puis être autres chose qu’une tendance ? ... non, je vais à un terme… Et les espèces ?... Les espèces ne sont que des tendances à un terme commun qui leur est propre… et la vie ? une suite d’actions et de réactions… Vivant, j’agis et je réagis en masse… mort, j’agis et je réagis en molécules… Je ne meurs donc point ? … Non, sans doute, je ne meurs point en ce sens, ni moi, ni quoi que ce soit.. Naître, vivre et passer, c’est changer de formes.. Et qu’importe une forme ou une autre ? Chaque forme a le bonheur et le malheur qui lui est propre. Depuis éléphant jusqu’au puceron… depuis le puceron jusqu’à la molécule sensible et vivante, l’origine de tout, pas un point dans la nature entière qui ne souffre ou qui ne jouisse. (94-5) i find diderot so playful and intriguing, and his brand of materialist philosophy is very seductive.. i think there is something in the infinity and mutability of existence that appeals to me, though i do believe that every individu is unique. ah, it's amazing how much better diderot is the second time. the first is just like wtf and the second is like oh and the third is like okay, hmm. back to jojo's takehome final - writing about sade, rousseau and diderot! ah, but i am not making any sense just blathering about isaiah berlin's misguided universalism - i hope this will lui plaît - she of the bright blue eyes and magical leg-twine technique i am ignoring tomorrow, until midnight, when i will get a drink, if i finish, ah, what a cruel conditional ): 01 comment

chewing my wind-chapped lip will give me more of an overbite = bad [16 Dec 2009|09:04pm] shutupmoveon watching my tea get darker, vanilla and jasmine in a jar that used to hold pasta sauce, but i forget which kind. marinara maybe. yes actually the label is still on the jar, silly me. vodka. sauce. there is a strange unpleasant smell that lurks around my room and refuses to leave and it goes by the name of TAKE-HOME FINAL. despite my rude stares this one isn't really going anywhere until i do more than stare. but ah, writing is hard when you have little to say. and the feeling that i have enough time to finish it and prepare for the francophone exam on monday is quickly departing. and then there is colette and her beasts to write about. colette et les bêtes. la belle et la bete. i watched the cocteau one last friday with y and k. how lovely. va où je vais, le magnifique, va, va, va! i have been saying that all week. last night i was talking to l about sade and she was not happy about the way la philosophie dans le boudoir ended - i guess i was tactless, as i so often am - laughing off mme de mistival's fate as though it was a joke. why did i even tell her about it? why is it that je recours à rire? bad franglais not a valid reason. i thought about l's reaction a lot last night. l has certain principles than i seem to have long forgotten. she says there is evil in the world. and i agree. which is why it is even more important to laugh off the stuff that isn't real. qu'est-ce que je suis prête à donner? funny that i remember writing that on sisowath quay, in the summer, and i think about it again upon reading rousseau's rêveries. i am running out of space in my beautiful florentine journal, with the marbled edges and the fleur-de-lys. what am i to do. i cannot order one from florence and maybe am not meant to. i must find a new york journal for the coming year. i am eating sesame semolina bread with sundried tomato chicken salad for dinner, and then maybe i will have more pineapple, or a pear, or those kiwis that have been sitting in my fridge for a while? no more italian food for awhile, after tonight, since i am asking people to pisticci on saturday for my birthday. i cannot believe i am turning twenty-two on saturday. actually i don't know what twenty-two is supposed to feel like but i don't think i feel twenty-two at any rate, i am still so often scared and homely and bookish and i dress like a four-year-old in colourful frocks all the time. aah. i am still not used to a three-syllable age. but im sure at the very least it will be a nice dinner on saturday and it will be so fun to watch my friends meet each other they are all so different and great. perhaps i will spend the afternoon in a museum. and pretend to be frank o'hara light clarity avocado salad in the morning that is such a beautiful poem about contentment i think i will make that my poem for the year ahead so many books to read during break, during/after f's arrival (excited, yes, very) and s says, of my list, it's very canonical, i wrote out a whole bunch of books and WHY ARE THEY ALL MALE WRITERS? oh dear i betray myself, i do o where is my punctuation come back you little lost sheep time to look at dolmancé o no no rmo does not like this (thumbsdown) comment

selon maurice goudeket [16 Dec 2009|01:34am] shutupmoveon le difficile, ce n'est pas de donner, c'est de ne pas tout donner comment

sunday feelings are as real as monday's facts [15 Dec 2009|03:05am] shutupmoveon i just read adam gopnik's angels and ages, and though it gets very warm and fuzzy towards the end, i think he's right. or at least, i want to believe he's right. he highlights so many great things about the liberal imagination, about a horizontal conception of life, and a particular awareness of time that he attributes to darwin and lincoln but he really makes his own. and his own prose is so lovely. ah, braincrush... ( angels and ages ) comment

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