This past Friday and Saturday night, you would have found me sitting at my new study spot at the dining table, dutifully reading through my philosophy texts.
Sort of.
I am horrible at focusing on one activity, which is why I was on AIM and chatting with Danny.
The past two evenings have been quite enjoyable because on either night, one of us was hopped up on caffeine, thus spurring the other on into the wee hours of the morning.
I’m currently trembling from four lovely cups of coffee. Four cups loaded with sugar.
Mmm, diabetes.
We chat about many things, great and small. Mostly silly. Sometimes serious. And more often than not, we are in accord.
Isn’t that swell?
—–
I’ve been isolating myself behind my headphones. I claim it helps me study, but quite frankly, I have been feeling rather autonomous. When I am out and about, I long to be at home, left to my own devices.
What I miss most, I suppose, is the time to just float around in my own head. There is a bunch of stuff in there that needs sorting and filing.
Interjection: You see, a problem with headphones, especially the sort that boast noise reduction, is the fact that I have no idea how loud my noises are. I have the sniffles, and I have a feeling I am being grossly obnoxious.
My brain tends to slow down when I leave it unexamined for too long. This was quite noticeable during my Nature of Religious Experience class earlier this week. I could barely follow my professor, and that rarely happens. At the moment, all I can recall from the last lecture is “robot monkey arm.”
Fascinating, yes, but not the point of the lecture.
Therefore, I am brushing up on my mental jumping jacks, not least of which is puttering around on this old blog here, regurgitating whatever I’ve consumed today.
For my Islamic Mysticism class, I read an excerpt from Michel Foucault’s “Writing the Self.” There are so many juicy little tidbits, but I would likely bore people to death by recounting every single one. So here are a couple of things in particular that I think pertain specifically to what I am doing now.
“To write is thus to ‘show oneself,’ make oneself seen, make one’s face appear before the other.”
And, from Seneca again:
“The fitness of the fighter is maintained by sparring; an accompanist stimulates the play of the musician. The wise man similarly needs to keep his virtues alive; thus, a stimulant himself, he also receives stimulus from another wise man.”
The latter bit is sort of a call for you people to engage in something with me, but eh, that’s a ton of wishful thinking on my part.
Anyway, seeing as the clock says 2:37 a.m., and my caffeine rush is fizzling rapidly, I think this is as good a point as any to stop rambling.
Goodnight.
Jaena Rae 