To be or not to be coherent is the question. I wonder, I wonder, how things would change if I would change. Words words words. Reimagining but not reawakening. Feeling different but staying the same. Brand new shoes for same old me.
I rebel with my hair. It is the one thing about me that says, "Yes, but not quite." It's slightly fuschia. I thought it was magenta, but no, it's fuschia I've decided. I've thought long and hard and hard and long and I've decided. "Not good enough," I keep coming back to. Nothing I do, nothing I can. Long and hard, hard and long. "86% of all women do not mention small penis size for fear of hurting their lover's pride." Something like that. "Yes, but not quite."
Tall and thin and fair and blonde. It's not fair. "Women are better liars than men are." No shit. They're also prettier, and sometimes they get pregnant. Time to mortalize this too, too solid flesh. Food for the worms. The joy of the worm. It's just so far beyond what I'm willing to say.
Rising and falling... there's a lot of that going around. Rising above falling in love. Nice. How does it happen? How does it work? What do you say when you've reached the top? Because I've forgotten. Now I'm the Zen master. So much so that I've forgotten where I stand. I am Zeno the Stoic and I am Marcus Aurelius. I have surrendered to the world, as they did.
I desire or do I? Do I see the generative act as corrupt? Do I want it just the same? Maybe I want it to corrupt me. Maybe I'd like some syphillus. Nietzsche was a virgin until a few years before he died. He contracted syphillus from a prostitute his first and only time at the plate. Then he got hit by a horse-drawn carriage or something, and fainted, and spent what was left of his life in and out of a coma, and never made another contribution to anything. My hero. What a way to go. Kant died a virgin. Loser.
Of course it's screwed up, obviously. But it doesn't change a goddamn thing, because it's true, all is true. Long hair, short hair, it's always been the same. Streaks and highlights, hitting streaks and highlight reels, blondes, brunettes, and redheads, blue eyes and brown eyes, the whole motherfucking genome is a big fucking joke. Pussywhips and ball-and-chains. All is narcissism, I feel it in my bones.
All this talk about Jesus makes me want to talk about Jesus too. There's no way we'd still be having Christianity if all we had to go on were the Gospels. They're contradictory, they make roughly zero doctrinal claims (exceptions admitted for the establishment baptism and possibly the Holy Communion), and the Gospel of John is just no damn good (anyone with a brain can tell it was written by someone with a strong background in Hellenistic - probably Stoic - philosophy). We would not be having a Church today if it weren't for that bigot, St. Paul. Problem is, Paul's letters give a picture of Christianity that is sort of lopsided relative to Jesus' own teachings. It makes sense - all Jesus had to do was stir up some trouble to get the ball rolling. Paul had to actually make sure the whole thing didn't self-destruct. I've been reading for a while about folks arguing that Jesus was not "just a dynamic ethics professor," but take a look at the Gospels, and you won't see a whole lot more than that. Face it: whether or not all those miracles actually occurred, we're talking about the Roman world here - people would have made them up. But mostly, what you see Jesus doing in the Gospels is praying and proselytizing not a religion, but a peculiar kind of social justice. He hangs out with tax collectors and prostitutes, he tells the rich they probably aren't getting into heaven, the people love him so much he actually has to flee from them every now and then. He tells people to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That's pretty deep. But face it, it's all good ideas, but you can't make a religion out of it.
So enter Paul. Paul is proselytizing a religion, not a social code, and that distinction is crucial. In the early Church in Asia Minor and Europe, every ritual was linked directly to Paul's preaching. I'm not entirely convinced that Jesus' "Do this in remembrance of me" was meant to be an establishment of a ritual. He could easily have wanted to link his memory to something everyday, namely, eating and drinking. Paul's take on it was that it was a ritual, the Holy Communion, and that's the interpretation that has stuck. So why ritual, Paul? Why?
Because it keeps the rabble in line.
It's the heaven mythology that gets in the way. Most people are unprepared to behave ethically without th epromise of a reward or the fear of punishment. Paul gave them both. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus uses the sufficiently vague phrase "the kingdom of God" in place of "heaven," and the references he makes which are usually translated as "hell" are actually to "Gehenna," a very specific place, the garbage dump outside Jerusalem. It seems only a small leap to suppose that one is said to be a citizen of "the kingdom of God" by virtue of living in accordance with His statutes, which, one must assume, make up the teachings of Jesus. Paul's writings, on the other hand, to the extent that they are not in the same spirit as Jesus' own teachings, can, I think, be more or less circumspectly rejected.
¶ listening: "Black" - Pearl Jam, "Weathered" - Creed, "Untitled" - Fuel, "A Pirate Looks At Forty" - Jimmy Buffett, "Drift and Die" - Puddle of Mudd, "Hideaway" - Fuel, "I Am One" - The Smashing Pumpkins
¶ comments:
Here's an interesting little dream about a lack of phallic self-esteem: So I open my closet, and there's all these boxes of penis enhancement pills, and I decide, what the hell, let's give these motherfuckers a try. But then I open one of the boxes, and find that the pills are too big to fit into my mouth. Then I woke up. Ugh... I am inadequate in so many ways.
¶ comments:
This is an update. If you didn't read the other thing I posted today, scroll on down and read it first. It's not like it matters, but it'll help you keep things straight.
I have to turn my Philosophy Grader timesheets in on Thursday afternoons, so after I posted that last thing, I headed over that way. I admit that in my heart, I hoped I would meet Katie along the way, but I didn't. Doesn't matter. I spent the walk over there examining my experience and trying to figure out exactly what it was that stopped me from taking any initiative whatsoever. Here's what I got from phenomenology: I feel really guilty that I can have feelings for someone without them knowing it. It makes me feel like some kind of stalker. I have this belief, this very serious belief, that I would be doing her psychological harm just by asking her out on a date. Like she would run and scream or freeze in terror. Like she would call the cops and I'd have to explain to them how "No, really, I just wanted to take her to see a play." So I suppose, in addition to a mild to moderate fear of rejection, I also have a fear of doing genuine harm just by revealing that I'd like to get to know her better.
It's an abyssmal excuse. I know. So I'm externalizing it, in hopes that seeing it "out there" rather than "in here" will help me see how foolish it is.
Here's something else. On the way over to Coates, that girl who stared at me and Sean that one day on our way over to McDonald's after Logic was present. She's pretty weird. She was wearing a yellow raincoat, and she had this big, wide grin, and she was coming up to me like she wanted a hug. She looks familiar, but I can't place her. But then she passed me by like I wasn't even there. There's something about the way she seems to be familiar with me. It's not the way a person would be familiar - it's more like some malevolent entity who knows all your secrets, like an externalization of internal demons. If Sean hadn't seen her that one day, I might think I was hallucinating her. I think she works fo Greenpeace, because they were out in force earlier today asking me if I "had time for Greenpeace," and they were all wearing stupid yellow raincoats.
¶ comments:
No, seriously, I'm asking. There's a play showing at the Baton Rouge Woman's Club through Sunday called Proof. There's 8pm showings Thursday though Saturday, and 2pm matinees on Saturday amd Sunday. I have to see it for PHIL-1001, maybe.
I extend my invitation to you, faithful readers, because I am a huge, motherfucking pansy.
Which is sad, because I was really on top of it today. My intelligence, my wit, they were all in top form. At one point, I had the whole seminar laughing uproariously when I called Wolfram's most spectacularly anticlimactic denouement "pretty lame." I established parallels between Homer's Odyssey and Wolfram's Parzival, how the "wondrous beds" in the two works differ in the same ways that the poets' conceptions of love do. I might also add that I had great hair. I rocked. I simply rocked. I wasn't lame, or stupid, or in any way bad at all.
And that makes it all the more difficult to explain why I didn't approach Katie after class. But I'll tell you why. I arrived before she did, but the side of the table which I prefer to occupy was completely full, so I dutifully marched to the other side. On my left was a girl whose philosophy tests I grade and on my right was an empty chair. Several people entered, but no one took that seat beside me. Then Katie came in, and she didn't take it either - she went and sat at the opposite end of the table from me. Inexplicably, this absolutely blew my confidence in approaching her. Did it matter that her seating decision was perfectly reasonable, considering that the seat she chose was closer to the door through which she had entered? It did not. Did it matter that I knocked the ball out of the park a couple of times in discussion? It did not. Did confidence in my great hair pull me through? It should have, but it did not. No, I decided at that exact moment, before anything had happened at all, that today was not the right day for asking Katie to go see a play.
I just don't make any sense. I hoped and hoped that we would reach the door at the same time when class ended, and that somehow, miraculously, that would cause me to grow some balls. But I reached the door first and headed dutifully down the stairs. I put my hands in my pockets, and allowed my head to sink in shame, and walked alone.
¶ comments:
Well now, OK. Today started off pretty slow. I did nothing for a while, then did a little finishing-type work on my Ancient Israel takehome test. Once I was satisfied with that, I did nothing again for a while. I thought about going down to the post office on Bluebonnet to get my passport paperwork started, but, after checking out the fees and learning that they were upwards of $150 for a first time applicant, I decided to put it off a little longer. That way I'd be able to pay off my $1500 deposit on the trip.
At 2:30 I had an appointment over at Arts & Sciences for the purpose of getting my science sequence take care of. My PAWS degree audit didn't like BIOL-1503 as a replacement for BIOL-1202 and BIOL-1209, despite the fact that it should count. A&S counselor lady took care of it. Also, I finally got around to declaring my minors, Classical Civilization, History, and Philosophy. Good for me. Perhaps most exciting, I found out that HNRS-1101 and HNRS-2002 constitute a valid history sequence, so that's two less classes I have to worry about to complete that minor. With the free hours that's picking up for me, I've decided to throw a Political Science minor into the mix. Because I'm insane.
Also, because I get psyched about this kind of thing, I'm pleased to announce that the course listings for Fall 2004 are up. I've already got my schedule figured out. This is it:
ENGL-3024 - Criticism
ENGL-4148 - Studies in Shakespeare
HIST-4001 - Greece of the City-State
PHIL-4920 - Presocratic Philosophy
POLI-2051 - American Government
POLI-4081 - History of Political Thought: Plato to More
If that doesn't excite you, I just don't know what will.
¶ reading: Language, Proof, and Logic - Barwise & Etchemendy, Parzival - Wolfram von Eschenbach
¶ listening: "Outshined" - Soundgarden, "Welcome To The Jungle" - Guns 'n' Roses, "Jane Says" - Jane's Addiction, Holier Than Thou" - Metallica, "Habib" - Lit
¶ comments:
Today I am very sad. I worry. I rhyme. It doesn't help. I sit. I called Stirling - he wasn't home. I thought of calling Sean - maybe to do something tonight - but it's Tuesday, so he has to go be all Catholic tonight. Probably. I don't bother to ask because I don't want to be a bother. I did call him. I asked him for Blake's number. Then I called Blake, and he didn't answer. Blake owes me a drink, becase I let him come over to my dorm and look at porn. I could drink tonight like a fucking alcoholic, because I'm sad.
Maybe it's good that Blake didn't answer.
I played Yahoo chess today. I suck. But other people suck more than I do, so it's cool.
I feel that somewhere deep down, I have the capacity to love a lot. For better or worse, I think I feel things more strongly than is normal. I'd prefer not to, so if I'm wrong, well, good then. I feel so hard that I feel things that aren't even there.
I ache. It's weak, it's weak, I know, but everything is a torment. Tomorrow is another day, I know, I know, I know. And it always gets better, except when it doesn't, and then it just takes a little longer. A little more work. I know.
Because there are good things and good times, and those count for something, because they have to, and it's just the in-between times that suck. I wish I could take the public out of public interactions. I only care about one person at a time.
As you all know, I am vulnerable. I am easy to defeat. Easy to send packing. Easy to get rid of. Say the word - I never have to look any of you in the eye again. So I worry. Because for me, every bit of self-concept that I've earned is on the line with every social interaction. So maybe I could just keep quiet. But that way madness lies. A reflective silence is a good one, but silence can't be an end in itself - it needs something to look back to. The silence of death reflects life, the silence of lovers reflects their love. In short, silence has to be earned, it has to be deserved, it has to be sought out. So I can't fail, I can't wait, I have to succeed. So I have to try.
I hate trying.
Maybe all I want is somebody to stand by me when I feel like this. That's a lot to ask. I really fucking suck right now.
¶ comments:
My hair is a little purple right now, but mostly it's just dark red. It's pretty short as well, but it should be cool by Thursday. I badly need to be sexy on Thursday. So badly that I pulled out the razor (the one with the blade and where you use the cream) just to practice in case I felt like it would help on Wednesday night. I'm so lame.
It's all about Freud-girl now. I have surrendered my fight to convince myself that I was interested in multiple girls. Maybe I used to be, but I'm not now.
Freud-girl's name is Katie, which might prove to be awkward - but probably not, since I'm a pansy. We talked for a while on Thursday. She had fallen behind in the reading of Parzival, and I caught her up. To the extent that one can tell after talking with someone for very few minutes, I'd say that she's smart, pretty, and nice.
I need to go see a play called Proof sometime between Thursday and Sunday. Dr. Cogburn is requiring it for his PHIL-1001 class. They have to write a paper on it, and I haven't asked yet if I'm grading that or not. I have an ulterior motive for not asking. You see, if (impossibly) I get the guts, I may ask Katie if she'd like to go along. The whole thing gives me a great opening for letting her know a juicy and respectable tidbit of information, namely that I've been asked to grade papers in a philosophy class. It's slightly impressive, I think. Right? Whatever. Also, the play's being put on at a venue with the non-intimidating-for-a-first-date name "The Woman's Club." It's downtown, maybe five or so minutes from campus.
If I believed in fate, I would say that it is conspiring to make things look like I have a shot. I will certainly blow it. I swear to God, I will blow it all to hell.
¶ reading: Parzival - Wolfram von Eschenbach, Language, Proof, and Logic - Barwise & Etchemendy
¶ listening: "Fell In Love With A Girl" - The White Stripes, "21st Century Digital Boy" - Bad Religion, "Folk Jam" - Pavement, "The Brightest Bulb Has Burned Out / Screws Fall Out" - Less Than Jake, "Only God Knows Why" - Kid Rock
¶ comments:
Today I did a little survey to help the cause of the social sciences. They had this online survey to figure out what dorm life is like. I have like a 1:1000 shot of winning a $20 gift certificate to the LSU Bookstore for my participation. Rocknroll.
Goddamn. Eveythingissofuckinglame. Or is it just me? I got back my rough draft in critical strategies. My professor doesn't think "phenomenology" is a word. She writes, "Don't you mean 'phenomenon' here? Check your dictionary." Eat it bitch:
phe-nom-e-nol-o-gy: 1) A philosophy or method of inquiry based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in human consciousness and not of anything independent of human consciousness. 2) A movement based on this, originated about 1905 by Edmund Husserl.
I really hate it when people don't think I know what I'm talking about. I'm glad I bought that dictionary.
Work was also lame, and History of Israel was pretty boring, since today was Student Reports day. Arthurian Lit was interesting but bland.
I should take a fucking vow of silence. I talk entirely too much.
¶ reading: "The Mousetrap" - Gallagher & Greenblatt, A History of Ancient Israel and judah - Miller & Hayes, The Book of I Kings, Parzival - Wolfram von Eschenbach
¶ comments:
Reality TV always puts me in a blogging state of mind.
I don't know what Stirling's talking about. Apparently, I've "given up the college poon." I have an idea of what that means, but no idea what would make him think that, nor what it's relevance would be at the moment anyway.
"Fuck."
Never mind. Sean and I critiqued The Sixth Sense after Logic today. We tend to critique movies long after it ceases to matter what anybody thinks of them - often after they've left the collective consciousness altogether.
"Gobble. Snarf. Snap."
Never mind. There's this girl... never mind.
"Fuck."
¶ reading: Parzival - Wolfram von Eschenbach, "Peri Ton Musterion" - Andocides, Roman Realities - Finley Hooper
¶ watching: My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance, Average Joe 2: Hawaii¶ comments:
I just got done writing an exceptional little paper entitled "The New Critic and the Phenomenology of the Poet in Action." I was awesome. I am running on all however-many cylinders. I simply rock.
I can't help myself - here's a snippet:
Both implicitly and explicitly, works of New Criticism seem to presuppose a particular sort of experience undergone by the poet in the act of composing. From critic to critic, the description varies, as does the degree of explicitness, but in general, there is an underlying assumption that inherent in the act of literary creation is a transcendence of the poet's ego. Perhaps this state of affairs is to be expected. After all, the New Critic is generally not very interested in the author, but would rather delve into the impersonal realm of poetic form and structure, and what way better to validate this focus than by claiming that a work, in its very inception, is above the petty realm of surety?
Still, I would suggest that any critic is overstepping his bounds to ascribe any particular quality to the act of writing. In particular, one would expect the New Critic to abstain from this practice, since for him it is the product - not its production - that ostensibly matters most. Yet time and again we see the transcendence thesis called upon in New Critical essays.
Damn. Don't I rock? I really do.
It was a shitty day outside today. I proctored the PHIL-1001 test this morning. That was alright. Some of the kids were sort of dumb, but I've already told half of you about that, and the other half probably doesn't much care.
I meant to write a paper tonigt compring how Kenneth Burke and R. P. Blackmore describe the role of a poet in creating his work, but I didn't get around to it. I did get around to writing my paper on Yvain for Arthurian Lit, so good for me. It's a little lame - I had good insights, but I didn't present them as well as they really deserved to be presented. I've gone a full semester without writing a really rigorous interpretive paper, so it was worth getting back in the hang of it again. I expect I'll be back to normal by the next one.
The day today. It's possible that Lacey dropped Critical Strategies, which would be a boon. There's this other relatively annoying pseudo-intellectual guy in there, who talks through his nose and likes black ski caps and Sartre. I really dislike him. He's always talking down at everybody. If I talked, I could talk down to everybody too, and probably better than he does. But I am painfully polite.
This is kinda neat. I'm the only person in my History of Israel class that the professor doesn't know by name and face yet. I've sat in the same place everyday in that class, but he still looks bewilderedly around the room everytime he calls my name for the role. Today he said to me after I raised my hand, "You're pretty reserved, aren't you?" I nodded. "Well, that's alright," he said. He seems like a really good guy.
I could really use some new shoes. Mine fill up with water everytime it rains. I had a little time between History and Arthurian Lit, so I came back to the dorm and put on flip-flops. It was slippery, wet, cold fun.
There's this really cute girl in Arthurian Lit. She's blond, so I find the whole thing terribly unexpected. I haven't mentioned it til now because I tend to deny that blond girls are attractive. But today she said something I don't think I'll ever forget: "People think Freud is all about having sex with your mom... but it's so much more than that." I dig.
She is painfully tall and thin. So tall and thin that even though her breasts are really not very big at all, they make her look top-heavy.
Anyway, later in the seminar, I dropped in a passing remark about Perceval's overdeveloped superego. That got a smile.
Don't have to worry about that happening again.
¶ reading: A History of Ancient Israel and Judah - Miller & Hayes, 2 Kings, Perceval, or the Story of the Grail - Chretien de Troyes
I think by now I've mentioned to the two of you who read this thing that I'm seriously considering law school after graduation. I went to the "Honors College Prestigious Scholarships" talk last Thursday night, and learned, as I expected, that it wouldn't really be all that productive for me to apply for a Rhodes/Marshall/Truman-type scholarship. Oh well.
So I've been reading about law school admissions and all that stuff. I also took an online practice LSAT from Princeton review. It was surprisingly difficult. I scored a 163. The scale runs from 120 to 180. According to Princeton Review, "a score of 160 or above will put you in an elite group," so that was nice. I'm not plannins to take the thing until October, though, so that should give me some time to raise my score a little bit. I can probably get it up to 170, which is the average LSAT score for people who get into Harvard Law.
Speaking of which, I don't expect to go away for law school. It's so expensive even in-state that going out of state is completely beyond my means.
Whatever. Today I called home and talked to my Mom about all this. I'm not sure what prompted me to do that - she doesn't know anything about law school. I kind of felt bad though, like aimless sort of, and I thought maybe talking to somebody would help. She was proud of me - really, really proud of me. Not just about studying law, but just in general, like she just wanted me to know how proud she was. She evn said - she may not have meant it, but she said that I was a good person. It doesn't happen very often that someone just tells you you're a good person halfway out of the blue.
It made me feel nice. Maybe it shouldn't have, she's just my mom, but it made me feel nice.
¶ reading: Vagueness - Timothy Williamson, Yvain, or the Knight with the Lion - Chretien de Troyes
¶ watching: King of the Hill, Oliver Beene, The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle¶ comments:
Today is one of the days wherein I intend to tell you about a dream rather than my day itself. I trust this will be entertaining, since the dream contains not only a phallic symbol, but an actual phallus. Here we go.
I'm going to start with a part that I don't quite remeber fully. Robyn and I were in a play together, and we were very bad actors. We stood in front of a refrigerator and shared some bad dialog. Then we went camping. But while we were on our theatrical camping trip, three real black bears attacked. They had karate skillz. It was sort of Matrix-y.
OK, that's the part that doesn't make sense. From here on out, it's better.
Robyn and I escaped from the bears, and headed to Scotlandville. We went to a drama class and sat down beside Sean. There were about a hundred people in there. It looked a lot like the room where Sean and I have Logic, only turned around to face the other direction. Anyway, the drama teacher announced that our next production would be The Music Man. We listened to some of the songs from it, and in my head there were marching bands and big brass instruments. After class, Sean and I walked out to lunch - he said how much the songs sucked, and I defended them, which is exactly what would have happened in real life.
Now it gets weirder.
I met up with Blake and Gabe outside. I tried to speak to them, but my speech was garbled. I couldn't figure out why. I reached into my mouth with my right hand, and pulled on my tongue. But it didn't come out, so I groped around a little longer, until I found something stuck between my upper left gum and my cheek. I pulled it out. It was a finger. It was at this point that I looked down and realized that I was missing the index finger on my left hand.
I held onto it. There may have been intervening episodes, but the next thing I remember is walking through the door at home. I talked to Lauren at the door, but soon felt an overwhelming urge to get away from her and get rid of my finger. I went to the hall bathroom, thinking to flush it down the toilet, but the toilet was all opened up, like a plumber was working on it (actually, in my dream, I remember remembering that I had seen the toilet opened up earlier, which leads me to believe that a lot of stuff happened which I've forgotten). Anyway, I ran as fast as I could to the bathroom attached to my parents' room. Without even looking, I tossed the finger into the toilet and pulled the handle to flush. But it didn't. It made a very weak sound, like it was trying, but couldn't muster the force to fluch. I looked down. There were feces floating in the water. And it was not my finger down there - it was my penis. And it was crawling like a fat slug, trying to get out of there. I pulled the flush knob twice more, and mercifully, it finally worked.
Now is the time wen I can tell I began to wake up, because I started having some rational thoughts. First, I tried to snatch my penis back before it disappeared, but the toilet bowl seemed to get deceptively deep, so much so that I couldn't reach the bottom, even with my arm fully extended. Then I thought about the irony of my penis ending up with all those feces despite my ardent heterosexuality. Then I thought about how hard it would be to play guitar without a left index finger. Then, for the first time, I realized that I had no idea why my finger had come off in the first place, how it could be that I had played guitar just fine a day earlier, and now was confronted with the loss of my finger/penis. Confronted with that kind of logic, I was obligated to wake up.
And so I did.
¶ reading: "Kategoria Phonou Kata Tou Legontos Amunasthai" - Antiphon, Sense and Sensibilia - J. L. Austin, The Early History of Rome - Livy
¶ watching: American Idol, My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance, Average Joe 2: Hawaii¶ comments:
Damn man. I have been sick like a motherfucker. Must be from all that thinking about girls. I really thought I had the flu or a while. I couldn't sleep at all Thursday night, so at 4:30 Friday morning I tossed some books into my booksack and walked out to my truck in the rain and drove home to rest somewhere without the danger of infecting the entire dorm.
It is not a very bright idea to drive home in the rain at 4:30 AM, while sick and without a decent night's sleep. Somehow I made it. I made some soup, took some Benadryl, and that knocked me out pretty effectively.
I had some pretty wild fevr dreams. There weren't any pictures, or even any sensations really. Instead, there were disconnected assertions that somehow seemed to form a coherent argument at the time. They were mostly concerned with early Rome. I've never experienced anything quite like that.
I awoke around 9 AM and watched Zack and Kelly get married on the Saved by the Bell wedding in Vegas special. Is it just me, or does Screech get ever lamer as the series wears on? I tried to read for a while, but found that I couldn't consistently focus on objects much smaller than the living room TV. I went back to sleep. Later, Dad got off work early and brought me some chili and a frostee from Wendy's. That was pretty damn alright.
I watched TV the rest of the night. Saturday I felt somewhat better. The rest of the family went to Mississippi for the day to visit my great uncle in the hospital. I was able to read, so I did.
This morning marked a significant improvement in my condition. The fever wass gone completely, I could breathe fairly consistently, and my throat was only slightly raw as opposed inflamed and very nearly closed. Around noon, I packed my books up, and my new anti-racism guitar (named Rahab, after the famous Canaanite prostitute of Jericho, who was spared by the Israelites for her help in the sack of the city - racial harmony at its very best!) and headed to the dorm. I've pretty much caught up on my reading for tomorrow, and I only have a little bit of writing I need to do before Tuesday, so I'd say I'm in pretty good shape.
¶ reading: The Problems of Philosophy - Bertrand Russell, The Early History of Rome - Livy, Vagueness: A Reader - Keefe & Smith, Vagueness - Timothy Williamson
¶ listening: "Dope Nose" - Weezer, "Evenflow" - Pearl Jam, "Latest Disaster" - Stroke 9, "Speak, See, Remember" - Pavement, "Walking Contradiction" - Green Day, "Whir" - The Smashing Pumpkins
