is not a novel. You can’t skip all the way to the last page and see how it turns out because the last page is your own death. For those of us without any patience or proper sense of time, it’s a singular sort of frustration.

We’re so busy trying to get on to the next thing to get them all done and finish up the entire story that we forget to do whatever it is we’re doing now at every step along the way.

Gotta smell roses. Gotta smell some fucking roses.

is that you start to laugh at yourself a lot as you realize all the ways in which you’re a total dork. D’oh. 😉

A strange and remarkable class. I don’t quite know what to make of it yet. I was so preoccupied when I left that I got on the subway and came halfway home before realizing what I was doing. I suppose I’ll just read at home tonight, though it isn’t my favorite thing to do.

I really want to keep reading for this class, to the exclusion of all the others. That is, I suppose, indicative of something very worthwhile being here somewhere, either in the subject matter or in the instruction. Very strange. Very historical in an odd way. We were talking about Marx in the context of 19th century haunting parties and magic lanterns.

The insight of the night is of course something that is more clear to me now—that for Benjamin all mediative technologies are really simply facets of the core of mediation itself, which is none other than the negative space of urbanism. In something strangely reminiscent of Derrida, for Benjamin mediation is nothing less than the presupposition of the “empty” (yet to be “filled” in each instance) proximal encounter that population density by its nature implies. Mediation at its core is thus not a technological or instrumental process, but is a categorical allusion, a deconstruction of the lexicon of assumed mutual presence in urban being.

I like Benjamin. A lot. I’ve always loved the critical theory guys, but the more I read Benjamin the more I think he alone was really on to something prognostic, as opposed to merely proscriptive. It seems as though Benjamin’s new historical ethos points to postmodern epistemology as a kind of willfully (skillfully?) dishonest anthropology of mediative unreality (the negation of the negation, as it were), which is precisely what the study of any modern topic can be called if one engages in it at a sufficiently deep level and indeed the only way to arrive at a sustainable claim in this epoch of universal (dis)information in which empiricism has run amok and gotten lost in a saturated wilderness of paradoxes and dominating-yet-orphaned efficiencies.

It is I think the sort of praxis Horkheimer and Adorno were trying to engage in with Dialectic of Enlightenment, only Benjamin’s got it properly (and, perhaps just as important, consistently) theorized. Do I have a paper here?

—

Yeah, looking back, I don’t understand anything I just said. I suppose that’s why I rarely make academic posts. But this class inspires me.

—

Why am I smarter at some times than others? So often I feel as though I’m walking around with a cloud around my head and all the thoughts have left me forever. People ask me questions and I look at them blankly. I go to the bookstore and I can’t figure out what I’m looking for.

Then, every now and then, I have a night where I feel as though I need to add sixty pages and a hundred notes to the monograph I’m working on, only there’s no such project because of the aforementioned cloud that’s usually around.

This is definitely an age thing, I used to be able to pass any exam on any day of the month with a six pack in me and no sleep for a week. Now I need six weeks’ notice, four naps, and a breath mint. Bah.

But at least I look cooler now that I’m older, hahahaha. Okay, not funny.

—

During class I heard a mobile phone vibrating (i.e. it was on silent and someone was calling). The sound came from the back of the room, approximately where my stuff was laying. I was sure it was my phone and it was someone from the family calling. I was incredibly annoyed that they were calling again and again, since even though it was on vibrate it was a bit loud. I was making mental notes about telling them not to call back if I don’t answer since it probably means I’m in class. When class was over and I got back to my phone, it turned out that it hadn’t been my phone that was ringing after all and suddenly I was a little let down and disappointed for no reason. And when I realized as much, I felt a little idiotic as well.

A nice little evening story.

—

Okay, long post already. Probably a way of keeping myself from reading, now that I’m at home and don’t really want to. Final aside: recently I keep running into people on the subway. This didn’t happen all last semester. This week alone at varying times of evening I’ve run into three separate people on my floor at I-House and two people with whom I have a class—not just passing-by meeting, but turning around in a subway car and saying “Oh, hi, it’s you, I didn’t know you took this train!” and then making smalltalk for the duration. Strange. I wonder what the hell is going on.

I’m sitting here in economics because (of course) they have the gear: tables, couches, lots of space, etc. And of course they are utter bastards. I’ve been watching these people “socialize” for twenty minutes. Cut each other off, ignore each other, act insensitively and narcissistically and generally seem like assholes. Sure I can be self-important and sure I can be a bastard, but dammit I’m sensitive or at least self-aware while I do it. Or I look better while I do it. Or something. I’m positive I don’t come off like this. What is it about the culture of economics departments (and MBA programs, too) that makes people like this? It’s been that way at every university I’ve attended.

Nevermind, I suppose that was rhetorical and I don’t actually need an answer.

—

Meanwhile, I cannot for the life of me stop smiling like a fucking Cheshire cat.

Preposterous.

Lovely.

—

For a few minutes now I have been reflecting on how much happier I have been here than I was there. The farther east I go in this country, the more happy I become. I should absolutely never, ever, for any reason, go back to California, and I should avoid Utah except for in emergencies. Christ.

—

Blah, blah, my posting right now is clearly a way for me to postpone necessary acts of work.

If I had brought one of the cameras with me today, I would skip class and take the ferry to Ellis island, just because. Dammit I gotta carry these things with me at all times.

😉

—

I came back to the place last night in the wee hours and felt absolutely compelled to write something, yet I wasn’t (and am really still not) sure about words right now. Every now and then, without warning, life forgets itself and its usual (often infuriating) sense of discretion and it allows you for a brief moment to feel that what is happening to you, or that what you are doing, or that what you feel about someone—is right. It’s a little amazing. Yeah, the words are fighting me. Nevermind, some things are better left unwritten anyway. I just feel good this morning, no need for anything more articulate.

I gotta go to work.