Lettin' go of 2008...

Superstition 2.0

Do you think it is possible to make an Email appear by looking into your mailbox like every 5 minutes?

Miscommunications 101

Interestingly enough, most people seem to interpret my indecisiveness about where and with whom I'll spend New Year's Eve as a lack of opportunities. Just to give you an example: my father went as far as inviting me to spend New Year's Eve with the family, meaning people I've hardly seen in the past couple of years, with whom I thus have no relationship of any kind and for whom I don't really care; least of all I care to spend New Year's Eve with any of them.

So, just for the record: My lack of enthusiasm for New Year's is simply what it is - a lack of enthusiasm whatsoever for celebrating this particular event. The only reason why I will ultimately drag my self (or myself) out to socialize on the 31st is because I know that if I'd do what I really feel like doing - namely, stay at home by myself -, I'd be completely drunk by 9pm and spend the rest of the evening listening to melancholic music, feeling terribly sorry for myself, and ultimately, around midnight, I'd start to pathetically drunk dial people I shouldn't really call.

Note to my future self

Tu mir bitte einen Gefallen, und wandere nächstes Jahr für die Zeit der Feiertage aus in ein Land, wo man weder die Bedeutung von Weihnachten noch von Neujahr kennt.

China ist ganz oben auf der Liste. China ist okay, dort nimmt man es zwar nicht so genau mit den Menschenrechten, dafür wird Neujahr erst irgendwann im Feber gefeiert, und man ist (hoffentlich!) zen-buddhistisch-taoistisch genug, um auf den ganzen christlich-kommerziellen Weihnachts-Klimbim zu verzichten. Wenn ich's mir recht überlege, hat Mao Weihnachten nicht abgeschafft, oder wie war das nochmal mit der Kulturrevolution? Als Alternative käme vielleicht Tasmanien in Frage, oder Dubai. Hja, Dubai ist gut, ein arabisches (sprich: nicht christliches) Märchenwunderland mit künstlichen millionen-dollar-schweren Inseln und 40 Grad im Schatten. Weihnachten am Strand unter Palmen und literweise Cocktails, das ließe sich eventuell ertragen.

In jedem Fall ist anything besser als diese Scheiß-Stadt mit diesem Scheiß-Weihnachts-Silvester-Glitter-Getue; diesem kollektiven Zwang zum Feiern und diesem Wir-sind-doch-alle-froh-und-besinnlich-Getaumel zwischen zwei Shopping-Trips. Argh, selbst wenn man prinzipiell gerne alleine ist, macht es einem dieser ganze verfluchte Scheiß wirklich schwer, Einsamkeit während der Feiertags-Jahreswechsel-Zeit irgendwie positiv zu besetzen. Ich fühle mich wie Scrooge, nur dass ich nicht von irgendwelchen verfluchten Geistern heimgesucht werde, und auch nicht heimgesucht werden will. Scheiße, sogar auf Arbeiten habe ich mehr Lust als auf diesen ganzen Mist.

In Summe: Auf Weihnachten und Neujahr wird nächstes Jahr GESCHISSEN. Amen.

Past, present and future

I've been keeping myself busy with thinking about luck, yet once again. (Although probably using an active phrase here is not quite accurate, and the passive form might be more appropriate: I've been kept busy; but that's another story.) More precisely, I've been wondering on the (grammatical) tense of luck, in other words: do we ever experience luck in the presence, or is it rather something we experience retroactively or prospectively, thinking "I was happy that moment, but I only realized that I was later on", or else: "I think/hope/know I'll be happy one day, under such and such circumstances, when this and that will happen". Maybe it is like in every (good) story, where most of the events gain their importance only in the light of things that follow, or in the light of things that went before. The presence of luck is thus something that is always divided, something experienced against the background of things that were or things to come.

On an even broader scope, you might ask yourself if we can ever really experience presence, or the present. The time span of the present is an instant, or rather: the blink of an eye (interestingly enough, German has a different word for instant: the look of an eye, instead of a blink). The funny or weird thing about the notion "blink of an eye" being that you cannot really experience it. Most of the time, our brain blanks out this precise moment - the blink - (and when you consciously concentrate on the blinking, you don't see anything during the blink, of course), constructing a treacherous continuity of consciousness and thus time, we perceive time as a flow rather than a succession of cut-into-pieces moments. Come to think about it, maybe photography is a more accurate "representation" of our life and ourselves after all, in comparison to movies (which is just the short version for moving images, thus moving instants). With all its constructedness, the capturing of one single, subjective, constricted moment might actually be the closet we can get to our perception of the present.

"... nous nes sommes pas assez subtils pour apercevoir l'écoulement probablement absolu du devenir; le permanent n'existe que grâce à nos organes grossiers qui résument et ramènent les choses à des plans communs, alors que rien n'existe sous cette frome. L'arbre est à chaque instant une chose neuve; nous affirmons la forme parce que nous ne saisissons pas la subtilité d'un mouvement absolu."

Friedrich Nietzsche

Ninth lesson of academic logic

Holidays for academics look like this:

You pack a suitcase with a third of the books you own or you've borrowed from the library along with your laptop, you drag them where ever you're headed to. Unpack books and laptop at your destination, and let them sit somewhere they can be easily seen. While never touching them once during your stay, they will sit there reminding you of all the work you should do or need to do, and thus create a constant, nagging level of bad conscience. Pack everything again at the end of your vacation, go back home and suffer from more bad conscience.

Conclusion: A "real" holiday is when you're sick, and even though you're sick, you'll have a bad conscience for not doing anything remotely connected to your research.

Was es ist

Die Banane krumm
und die Erde rund

Der Himmel blau
und der Schnee weiß

Die Nacht finster
und der Tag hell

Das Meer weit
und der Berg hoch

Die Worte treffend
(und) die Dinge da

Alles ist, was es ist,
wenn du bei mir bist.

'Tis the season to be jolly...

Did I mention I hate Christmas and the whole holiday season? I think it was invented by Christianity to torture people and make every sensible person over 6 years of age feel depressed and/or angry. Is there anybody out there who wants to go to a third-rate bar with me and get totally wasted on Christmas Eve ?

Let's call a spade a spade

Dear Alanis Morisette,

"meeting the man of my dreams, and then meeting his beautiful wife" isn't ironic, not even a little too ironic, it basically sucks - don't you think?

Truly yours

Down-to-earth.

Quotes of the day

Schlimm sind die Nachmittage. Zwischen vier und zehn habe ich den meisten Hunger. Ich schlafe lächelnd ein, weil ich weiß, morgen früh wird er ganz klein geworden sein. Morgens ist der Tod ein Säugling.

[...]

Außerdem: Was ist schon ein Park? Die Abwesenheit einer wirklichen Landschaft.

Terézia Mora Alle Tage

Machine Routine

Get up at 7.30 am. Brush your teeth. Shower. Drink one glass of multivitamin juice and make breakfast. Eat breakfast. Smoke a cigarette. Prepare lunch. Put in contact lenses and hair gel. Pick up newspaper on your way out. Take the subway to the office. Get coffee. Turn on computer and check mails. Read books while looking into your mails every 5 minutes and have a cigarette every hour. Eat lunch. Read some more. Take subway home. Have dinner in front TV. Do the dishes. Clean up bits and pieces lying around the appartment. Skype with or call a friend. Brush teeth and wash face. Go to bed around 11. Read a book. Sleep. Fuck up your emotional life and get into a total mess along the way.

Still not quite done with the Stoicism business

Dear Moirae,

it'd actually be quite helpful if you could give some advance warning for some of your doings, so I could somewhat prepare for the surprises you have up your sleeves. I'd really appreciate that, thanks!

Yours confused.

I have a dream

If anybody ever asked me to choreograph a music video (not that anyone ever will, but still, you wanna be prepared for those kinda things), I'd like to do a choreo to M.J.'s Smooth Criminal using only heads. A portrait of the dancer as a big head, so to speak.

Offbeat

The power of narration

You've wrapped me in;
wrapped me into your scintillantingly witty story.
Tied around your finger (the pinkie)
I was
delicately interwoven (while listening)
into the fabric of your words.
A letter
among others
or
maybe just a semicolon...


Du hast mich eingewickelt;
eingeblättert in deine funkelnde Geschichte.
Um den Finger gewickelt (den kleinen)
war ich
unbemerkt eingesponnen (zuhörend)
in das Netz deiner Worte
Ein Buchstabe
zwischen anderen
oder vielleicht
nur ein Strichpunkt...

Quote of the day

We name and talk of a problematic "transvestism," the desire to dress in the clothes of the other sex. We do not usually name and speak of the strong desire to dress in the clothes of one's own sex. [...] We name and speak of a troublesome "transsexualism," the feeling of being the other sex, the desire to inhabit the body of that other sex. We do not name and talk much about the feeling of being the same sex - the sex we think we are, the sex most of us desire to stay. But does not our feeling relatively comfortable with out sex, and our intense drive to maintain the integrity of our sex, indicate something that needs to be explained, as much as "transsexualism"?

Jonathan Katz The Invention of Heterosexuality

Why Marx was right

I have a project. A project not connected to my work, for a change. I want to make all (or most) of this year's Christmas presents myself (maybe like my mini-tribute to/against the financial crisis). Among other things, I started crocheting, believe it or not. After the first try outs where I almost got a heartattack because I was so annoyed that nothing worked out, internet provided me with a solution in the shape of a crocheting manual (which was like learning a new language again; all this new vocabulary like air loop, fix loop, tralalla). Now the monotonous movement of my fingers gives me a sense of enormous well-being (to speak with Blur), I feel strangely calm and satisfied.

In other words, I am starting to re-discover the pleasure of work made by my own hands. And I am secretly chuckling when thinking that of course all the people I give self-crocheted stuff to will have to wear it, no matter how odd they look.

Des homma scho so gern...

... Gender Studies studieren, und dann zum 200. Mal Sissy im Fernsehn schaun und gerührt sein. Hjaaaa, die Macht der Mythen und Medien...

I ask myself

When did I not become the person I could have become?

Epiphany

Im Rahmen der Möglichkeiten
sind wir ein hoffnungsloser Fall
...
Wir sind ein reichlich schlechter Scherz/
Unser Schmerz und unsre Wunden
sind unser größtes Kapital
Es ist als trügen wir
etwas in uns
das einer andern Welt
entsprungen ist
Kante Zombi

One moment, all of a sudden, pierces through; making you feel and/or realize, in a single and immediately lost (always already lost) instant, all the love you have to give, haphazardly and without aim.

Some people might just call that: being drunk.

Quote of the day

Das Gute an einer wechselvollen Jugend ist, sagte Konstantin eines Tages zur Fensterscheibe, dass uns jetzt praktisch nichts mehr passieren kann. Uns kann nichts mehr passieren, murmelte er in den Nebel. Das heißt, sagte er nach einer kleinen Pause, es kann uns alles passieren. Es passiert alles. Es wird alles passieren. Natürlich. Was möglich ist, passiert. Darum geht es nicht. Worum es geht, ist, dass uns, während uns das annähernd Nichtigste in unserer Existenz bedrohen kann, uns das annähernd Grausamste kaum mehr in der Seele zu erschüttern vermag.

Terézia Mora Alle Tage

I miss you girl

You said it, Siggi!

Human civilization rests upon two pillars, of which one is the control of natural forces and the other the restriction of our instincts. The ruler's throne rests upon fettered slaves. Among the instinctual component which are thus brought into service, the sexual instincts, in the narrow sense of the word, are conspicuous for their strength and savagery. Woe if they should be set loose! The throne would be overturned and the ruler trampled under foot.

Sigmund Freud The Resistance to Psychoanalysis

My motto for the next 2-3 years.

Abgeben statt aufgeben.

Fab's words of wisdom

Natürlich ist Sehnsucht eine Sucht wie jede andere auch. Fragt sich nur, ob es eine Sucht nach dem Sehnen oder eine Sucht nach dem Herbeigesehnten ist.

Poem of the day

Herbert Hindringer

Du sagst:
Es liegt am
schlechten Wetter oder
sogar drunter
die falsche
Himmelsrichtung
die macht dich
kalt
dies ist der
Weltnicht-
Brauchertag

If only I'd known...

...where to get that dummy from, I might have been able to save all the relationships I've had.

Do you read me?

Kaum etwas ist mir so zuwider wie der Terror der Verständlichkeit.

- Herbert Achternbusch

Plus d'un, comme moi sans doute, écrivent pour n'avoir plus de visage. Ne me demandez pas qui je suis et ne me dites pas de rester le même: c'est une morale d'état-civil; elle régit nos papiers. Qu'on nous laisse libres quand il s'agit d'écrire.

- Michel Foucault

I've been thinking a lot recently - and because of particular (you might also say: personal) circumstances - about communcation, or rather: about the failure of communication, more commonly known as: misunderstandings. Jacques Derrida's point, if I remember correctly, was: Dreadful as it might be, misunderstanding is not, as it were, an exception or mishap of communication, quite to the contrary, miscommunication is the rule. In the spirit of Paul Watzlawik one could say: You cannot not miscommunicate.

Just as one can read a text in innumerable different ways, never coming to a closure, to a definite, "true" meaning, there are innumerable different ways to understand an oral utterance. Usually, we assume that because oral communication is more determined in terms of context (deixis of the present situation being bound by particular material circumstances, presence of all the people participating in the communication, etc.), we actually understand what the other person is saying (and in case we don't, we can always ask: what do you mean?). In most cases we get away with that assumption quite well. That is, I believe, because we sort of learned the game of convention; because we don't start to question the meaning of every other banal, quotidian utterance, like for example "I'm going home" (If you look at toodlers' sometimes highly annoying and potentially endless chains of "why"-questions, you can see where trying to understand an utterance without the conventionality of communication can lead to. The "why"-question-game is of course, and this adds to the delight of children playing it, unanswerable, that is: never ending).

I think those conventions of communication (which, let's face it, make our life a whole lot easier) yield from us the (quite uncanny) fact that we don't really know another person; others are the Other. And because of that there is no way we can ever fully understand all the nuances of the meaning that a simple phrase like "I'm going home" has for a particular person at a particular time and place in a particular circumstance (let alone understand a person). What's more, even the person uttering the sentence doesn't grasp all its meanings: not only because an "author" has no control or right over the interpretation of his/her own words, but, even worse, because no one really ever knows himself/herself, and thus can never know all the possible meanings of what s/he was saying (just remember the Freudian slip, for instance; it's the unconscious talking us).

So why bother with this crap at all? Okay, we communicate without really understanding each other; why don't we just accept it and get on with our lives? Why try to make someone understand what you mean, why try to understand someone? Even more: Why worry about being understandable, about making yourself clear; why put so much effort in trying to put things the right way? (That's the big puzzle, for me.)

In the end, I have come up with two answers. First of all, it's a question of ethics or morality: We need to pretend we understand each other (and we need to pretend that we ourselves know what we mean when we talk), because you have to assume responsability for what you say. Language, then, is not simply this fluffy, conveniently transparent medium, but your words are part of you (and you do not merely express your identity with words), you have to take full responsability for them. Which, when you think of it, is quite an imposition; but even though, you probably won't get away by citing Derrida when you insult a police officer.

Secondly, we want to reach out to the Other, and we want to be touched by the Other, and that's because - pardon me if I'm being too banal or one-minded here - language, as Lacan would have it, tries to compensate for a lack: the corporeal feeling of symbiosis we lost and can never return to. And of course, where there is symbiosis, there is no misunderstanding, because there is no need for communication.

Oh and by the way

Public transport sucks: without being claustrophobic or generally misanthropist, I can imagine a lot better places to be than five metres underground, lumped together with a crowd of smelly, loud, annoying human beings (come to think of it: maybe the best argument against bearing children).
But anyway, I'm tryin' to make a difference for future generations... hope they'll appreciate it.

You were fit oh! but don't you just know it

Remember the days when you'd go out all weekend, gettin' hardly any sleep or any halfway 'healthy' drink or food, for that matter, and then you'd turn up in school on Mondays totally "rise and shine" to gossip about the latest excess?

Yeah, me neither...

I don't know about you, but my puberty sucked. I recently found my teenager-diary again, and, embarrassing as such a thing always is, it also struck me how unhappy I must have been. I mean, of course it's all about what now seem to me "baby"-problems, and of course every teenager sort of engulfs a certain mal de vivre (something to do with hormones, maybe).

I was overly irritable, overly self-conscious (well, I still am, though I like to think in a different, more grown-up way), angry at everyone for no particular reason, and I always felt that others had way more liberties than I had and were way better dressed than I was (in short: I was a pain in the ass). Plus: I grew up in the countryside; the latest bus would leave town at 9.30 pm (and that was the one I had to take since my mom was super strict), and of course the whole point was hangin' around in town as much and as long as possible. We would either spend all afternoon in cafés and then try to be home in a halfway decent state, or I would invent some ridiculous lie so I could sleep over at a friend's place who had a 'later' curfew (later meaning something like 11pm). It sucked to be a teenager, it sucked to be a teenager in Salzburg, it sucked to be my mother's teenage daughter, it sucked to be me.

But please, let's by all means glorify youth. What else is there to do.

Trotzdem: Jeden Tag mit vollem Einsatz spielen, als ob ob ob ist.

Vorbei, hast du gesagt, und ich habe dir zugehört, natürlich; natürlich, verstehe ich, natürlich. Geträumt, hätten wir, hast du gesagt, uns etwas herbeigesehnt; natürlich. Aber warum, frage ich mich, warum dieses Bedürfnis, nicht einfach nur Adieu zu sagen, sondern gleichzeitig auch zu urteilen darüber, was war; es abzustempeln: eine Art falsches Bewusstsein (wenn auch der Ausdruck nicht ganz stimmt, so passt er doch); kindliches Träumen, das wir doch nun endlich überwunden haben (sollten), jetzt, wo wir wieder in der Welt der Erwachsenen angekommen sind; du in deiner, und ich in meiner. Aus der Traum, es hat sich ausgeträumt. Vernünftig sein, wir wolln doch vernünftig sein, ja? Sei vernünftig, siehst du nicht? So und so. Natürlich; natürlich, ich verstehe.

Dir selbst treu bleiben müsstest du, hast du gesagt, und ich habe dir zugehört, natürlich; natürlich, verstehe ich, natürlich. Sich selbst treu bleiben, ja doch, und gleichzeitig denke ich: man kann sich selbst treu bleiben, so sehr und so lange, bis man sich schließlich selbst nicht mehr kennt, sich nicht mehr wieder erkennt, und, schlimmer noch, bis man sich vielleicht selbst nicht mehr mag. Ich habe Menschen gesehen, denke ich, die sich selbst treu geblieben sind, so sehr, dass die letzte Konsequenz dieser Selbsttreue, dieses Einschwörens auf sich selbst, die eigene Auslöschung war. Das ist nur konsequent, nicht wahr; wir wollen uns doch treu bleiben, wolln wir doch, ja wolln wir, natürlich. Natürlich, ich verstehe.

Warum sich also dagegen sträuben, gegen diese Worte, gegen dieses Ende? Dein gutes Recht ist es, natürlich. Natürlich: es ist dein gutes Recht. Und doch denke ich: was ist denn um Himmels Willen nur falsch daran, zu träumen, was falsch daran, sich etwas herbeizusehen? Wir kannten uns kaum; was hätten wir anderes tun sollen, als träumen? Uns selbst träumen, jeder für sich, und den anderen; und uns beide zusammen. Wir sahen uns kaum; was hätten wir anderes tun sollen, als uns sehnen? Nach dem anderen (den wir träumten), nach einer Zukunft, die wir ebenfalls träumten und die natürlich - natürlich! hörst du, natürlich! - (noch) nicht da war, (noch) nicht wirklich war, sondern ein Traum, eine Hoffnung, vermessen vielleicht, ja. Aber wann, sag es mir doch, wann 'ist' die Zukunft denn schon jemals wirklich? Und die Gegenwart? Und die Vergangenheit?

Und überhaupt: Was ist das schon, frage ich mich (weil ich dich nicht mehr fragen kann), was ist denn das schon, 'die Wirklichkeit', derentwillen ich jetzt nicht mehr träumen, mich nicht mehr sehnen soll? Wie eine leere Hülse (eine Worthülse, so sagt man doch) kommt es mir vor, dieses Wort da: Wirklichkeit; wie ein Haar im Mund zu einem sperrigen, unbequemen Balken geworden. Wer sind wir schon wirklich, jeder für sich (denn zusammen, so sagst du, waren wir doch nicht wirklich; nur träumend)? Als ob es nicht so wäre, dass ein Teil dieses geheimnisvollen Etwas, dem wir doch, bitte schön, treu zu bleiben haben, als ob dieses Selbst nicht zum überwiegenden Teil ein Traum wäre, eine Illusion, ein Ideal, ein Selbstbild. Und dem soll ich treu bleiben, im Namen eines vermeintlichen Realitätsprinzips? Warum? Warum soll ich mich nicht verlieren, verlieren im Träumen als eine andere in der Beziehung zu einem anderen, um mich dadurch, vielleicht, wiederzufinden? Was ist falsch daran, an einer anderen Person wachsen zu wollen; zum andern hin (ihn nur träumend erahnend, und dennoch: zum andern hin); auch auf die Gefahr hin, nicht zu wissen, wer man schließlich sein wird, und wer diese andere Person da 'wirklich' ist?

Nun gut. Egal. Vorbei, sagst du; ich nicke und gehe, später dann, taumelnd durch die winterlich kalte Stadt. Ja, habe ich genickt, obwohl ich eigentlich gar nichts verstanden habe; deine Worte ein weißes Rauschen an meinen glühend-roten Ohren. Tatsächlich aber hast du mich nicht gefragt, ob ich verstehe (nicht ein einziges Mal; nicht einmal 'Ich hoffe, du verstehst', hast du gesagt; nur Bescheid wissen sollte ich. Danke, ich weiß Bescheid; jetzt weiß ich Bescheid; darüber, wie es um dich steht. Und dass du eine Entscheidung getroffen hast; für uns beide, wie sich herausstellt). Also gut, ja. Verstehn tu ich es nicht, aber akzeptieren, nun, akzeptieren muss ich es wohl.

Quote of the day

"You were that last Sunday - you are this today. Mr Bast! I and my sister have talked you over. We wanted to help you; we also supposed you might help us. We did not have you here out of charity - which bores us - but because we hoped there would be a connection between last Sunday and other days. What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives? They have never entered into mine, but into yours, we thought - haven't we all to struggle against life's daily grayness, against pettiness, against mechanical cheerfulness, against suspicion? I struggle by remembering my friends; others I have know by remembering some place - some beloved place or tree - we thought you one of these."

E.M. Forster Howards End

Jenseits des Lustprinzips

The first mistake was to believe in romance. You know, that Hollywood-fairytale-kinda thing: violins a-playin', diffuser scrim, pastell colours, a tad of incredible coincidence bringing together two actors that were never meant to cruise in the same orbit.

The second mistake was to believe that romance actually happens in real life.

The third mistake was to believe that romance actually happens to you.

The last, and obviously biggest mistake was to believe that people behave the way you'd like them to behave and, more particularly, to believe people are the way you'd like them to be.

Conclusion: For heaven's sake woman, you're 28 years old. Fucking grow up and get over Cinderella already.

PS: Freud knew but oh too well why he chose a myth to explain the formation of our psyche.

Soundtrack:
Peter, Paul & Mary - Don't think twice, it's allright (in what seems to be the Asian Karaoke version)

Don't call me Seneca, after all

Okay, I've really tried this whole stoicism business; no, seriously, I have. But I just can't make it work. That might be because I lack the most basic ingredients, like patience for example. I can't even stand having to wait a minute for the loo. Hold on, that probably has got nothing to do with patience, but with self-control. Whatever.

Also, I'm back from the serotonin-loaded heights of my own fluffy-disneyworld happiness. Maybe it's like a certain someone (can't remember who; all these quotes in my head with no author to attribute them to): Luck compensates its shortness with intensity.

To sum things up, dear Barack Obama, sorry to have to say this but:

No, I can't!

Quote of the day

Diese Gegend hat mich kaputt gemacht. Und ich bleibe, bis man ihr das anmerkt.

Herbert Achternbusch

Eight lesson of academic logic

I don't know what's worse: having literally no private (that is: love) life at all, or having a complicated private (as in: love) life.

Conclusion 1: I wish I was a working robot today, 'cos then I'd be able to zoom out all my non-work-related emotions and thoughts.

Conclusion 2: Having an uncomplicated private (read: love) life is next to impossible. It's like Heisenberg's uncertainity principle.

Fab's words of psychoanalytical wisdom

Dear Siggi,

having a super-ego sucks big time, particularly if it is as well-developed as mine.

Yours neurotically.

Fairy tale

We all know, of course, that around midnight, Supergirl transforms back into a pumpkin: Waking up in the morning with a terrible hangover, she wonders whether she did really turn that frog into a prince or the other way around, where the hell she left her slipper, and while she gorges down 21 litres of water and 44 aspirins, she swears that she'll never drink or smoke ever again in her entire life.

Hobnobbing with good ol' Rene, yet again

I guess I should start taking care of myself again; or rather: taking care of my body. You know, basic stuff like: giving it enough time to rest and sleep; feeding it on a regular basis instead of almost starving it to death and then filling it with so much and so heavy food that it wants to puke everything out again; cutting back on the cigarettes and alcohol; maybe even a little exercise while I'm at it.

Nothing big, just simple things that might actually make me feel a little healthier. Nothing like fitness-mania, body-cult or whatever else Madonna thinks she's doing; just sort of being kind to my body. After all, it's the only one I have and am stuck with. Pals forever, so to speak, for better or worse, and until death do us part. So I guess it's entitled to a little care, that is, a little more than I'm doing for it these days, which basically resumes to giving it enough (some might say: unlikely amounts of) water and an occasional self-induced orgasm.

Forget Batman - Selbst ist die Frau!

Ha! Since the next days are gonna be hell, I'll simply have to transform into:

Check-list

Things I have to do in the next couple of days...

- Carry approximately 1023 books and files from my office to my appartment.
- Pack all my belongings into boxes, carry them down 5 floors. Drive 5 hours. Carry the boxes up to the 2nd floor, unpack everything (would you please remind me again why I am doing this?).
- Sleep little, drink and smoke a lot.
- Hug various people as if I were to never see them again.
- Try not to get a nervous breakdown.
- Read what Platon had to say about Mimesis.
- Make a good impression with my future landlady.
- Clean my appartment (even the fridge, even the tiny corners where only a toothbrush can reach...).
- Present a book I've just published together with others.
- Go to the Grako-Goodbye-Party and try not to get completely destroyed.

In sum: I'm happy if I survive the upcoming week.

Argumentation for living by yourself

How about this... Listening to whatever music you want to (and getting melancholic for no particular reason and without the need to justify yourself for it). Spontaneously inviting a friend over. Being non-communicative. Letting all the guards down. Masturbation. Not cleaning up. Retreating into an appartment that has almost become a part of yourself. Spending hours on the phone, in front of the computer or in front of the TV. Going to bed whenever you feel like it and getting up again to smoke a cigarette whenever you feel like it, even if it's the middle of the night. Reading in bed for hours on end. Not waiting for the bathroom.

But then again, as Freud so wisely put it: Das Ich ist nicht Herr im eigenen Haus.

Still struggling with Descartes

Das Problem ist natürlich, dass man seinen Körper nur bedingt kontrollieren kann. So wie jetzt gerade etwa: Wie ihm erklären, diesem störrischen, widerspenstigen Ding, dass es wohl gänzlich unmöglich - oder, wenn nicht gänzlich, so doch weitgehend; und wenn nicht unmöglich, so doch unverständlich -, dass es also weitgehend unverständlich ist, jemanden so zu vermissen. Warum also plötzlich denken: Zehn Anrufe am Tag sind, alles in allem betrachtet, vielleicht ja gar nicht so viel (wenn auch womöglich zu viel verlangt); oder, na gut, rein pragmatisch gesehen würde man sich mit, sagen wir, acht Anrufen zufrieden geben.

Das alles täuscht ihn - meinen Körper - natürlich überhaupt nicht. Anrufe sind ihm nicht genug; er verlangt nichts weniger als Anwesenheit. Also schließe ich die Augen, wie damals, als ich ein Kind war und glaubte, es würde ausreichen, mir etwas nur fest genug zu wünschen, um die Dinge so geschehen zu lassen, wie ich es mir vorstellte. Und wie ein Kind sitze ich da; ungläubig, ja fast zornig darüber, dass sich die Welt und sämtliche Raum-Zeit-Gesetze partout nicht meinem Willen beugen wollen; und ich also immer noch alleine hier bin, mit diesem meinem Körper in Aufruhr. Und keine Möglichkeit, ihn zu beruhigen, außer vielleicht diese: ihn vor der Tastatur meines Computers mit Schreiben zu beschäftigen (doch machen wir uns nichts vor: man kann einen Menschen genauso wenig herbeischreiben wie herbeiwünschen).

Das alles kann man zweifelsohne auch einfacher sagen; wobei 'einfach' wohl kaum das treffende Wort ist, denn einfach ist es wahrlich nicht, hier zu sitzen und zu fühlen und zu schreiben: Du fehlst mir.

Soundtrack:
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong - Dream a little dream of me

La possibilité d'une île

Le but, évidemment, serrait l'autosatisfaction. Devenir comme une plante qui se nourrit seulement de soi-même, sans besoin extérieur; ni materiel, ni emotionel. Devenir - soi-même; pour soi; avec soi; de soi-même - une île. Un mélange entre coeur Rousseauien et Diogène dans son tonneau quoi.

Bande son:
Sia - Breathe me

Reconsidering Descartes

If everything else fails, you've still got your body, of course, there at your disposal to use and misuse it in every possible way: drug it; feed it; cut it; arouse it; wash it; starve it; shape it; paint it; pierce it; neglect it; whatever you feel like. If you think about it, maybe this is why most of occidental-patriarchal philosophy and politics could so easily forget about the body (and particularly: their bodies). I am reminded (as usually) of Foucault, who said: The body is not the soul's prison (as Christian religion would have it); it is the soul (or the mind) that has imprisoned the body.

Liebesbrief.

Liebe Mietze,

ich find dich toll!
Willst du meine Freundin sein?

What could Sartre have said to the RAF?

I saw the highly advertised Baader-Meinhof-Komplex. It's huge here in Germany, everyone makes a big fuss about it; cinemas are sold out, apparently, a lot of German people want to go see it (and I am not quite sure whether that is a good or a bad thing). Well, can be said about Baader-Meinhof-Komplex? It's long. It's really long. It's like the fucking never-ending story. Try to condense roughly 15 years of German history, the history of '68, the history of leftist terrorism, and the biography of three people to fit the screens, and you end up with a really long movie. Its makers tried to tell it all, and, as is often the case, they wound up saying pretty little.

I think the movie makes some quite questionable hints towards Islamic terrorism today (you see a lot of Arab/Palestinian training camps, terrorists, and the likes). I think the movie focuses very much on people and blood rather than on motivations and political background. I think I won't ever be able to see Bruno Ganz wearing a suit and a tight hair-do again without being reminded of Adolf Hitler. I'm pretty fed up with Moritz Bleibtreu, because it seems to me that he has merely been playing himself in the last movies he did. I absolutely loved Martina Gedeck; but the actress playing Gudrun Ensslin was pretty dull and monotonous. Just to tell you: She was wearing the same make-up during all the movie (variations of smokey eyes); and, I'm sorry, but why anyone would bother to run around with smokey eyes in prison is a complete mystery to me.

In those long, very long 2 and a half hours (which felt more like 150 minutes), there was one rather interesting part (at least, in my opinion): The situation of imprisonment of the first generation (so all the big shots, Baader, Meinhof, Ensslin). They sit in jail trying to somewhat prepare for their trials, and, more importantly, they try not to go completely nuts. So what do they do? They start to tear each other appart; fighting and questioning each other. I was reminded of that very telling phrase from Sartre's Huis Clos: "L'enfer, c'est les autres".

The Celibate Life - Part II

One of the advantages of being a grown up woman living alone is that you can get up at 1 o'clock in the morning to roll a cigarette; sitting at my window overlooking the city I smoke and feel like a wolf howling at the moon.

Uh-la la

Jesus Christ, dear Susie Orbach, isn't that a bit over the top?

Fat has come to stand for need, greed, indulgence, wantonness, unruliness, a loss of control, an unstoppability. Fatness represents folds and folds of uncontrollable needs and the guilt associated with the satisfaction of such needs. Fat represents the exposure of need. The ability to make herself smaller and smaller ist the direct expression of the anorectic's success in controlling such needs and neediness.

Susie Orbach, Hunger strike; starving amidst plenty.

Call me Seneca

Stoicism [...] concerns the active relationship between cosmic determinism and human freedom, and the belief that it is virtuous to maintain a will (called prohairesis) that is in accord with nature. Because of this, the Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life, and they thought that the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how they behaved.

Stoicism teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions; the philosophy holds that becoming a clear and unbiased thinker allows one to understand the universal reason (logos). A primary aspect of Stoicism involves improving the individual’s ethical and moral well-being: "Virtue consists in a will which is in agreement with Nature."

I've been wondering lately. I've been wondering how come that one often thinks about how to prepare or cope with bad luck or tragedies, while one spends little time thinking about preparing for luck, for good fortune, for coping with the good things happening to you.

You try to behave more or less reasonably or pragmatic in your every day life; you don't go out spending all your pay on the first day to buy books, bags, or that very special sound system you've been thinking about for some time now. You try not to expect too much (maybe even pretending that you're somewhat modest), you don't want to get your hopes up, after all. You apply for a job and think you're probably not going to get it. You look for appartments and think you're probably not going to get one. You go out and think you're probably not going to meet anybody interesting (and if you do, you think that person probably won't be interested in you anyway; in other words: you're being modest again).

What then, if all of those things happen? Not little by little and one after another (making it easier for you to digest), but all at once, all at the same time, adding up to this huge emotional mess, to this uncanny feeling of: Can this really be happening to me? LIFE, do you really mean ME?

You turn around ten times a day, as if you could look yourself over the shoulder to make sure: it is really me, all of this is really happening to me. You wait for that particular phone call that will explain it all: Someone made a mistake, something has gone wrong, this was not really intended to happen this way, and in any case, it wasn't supposed to happen to you. You try to make sense of it: You start thinking that somehow - and for reasons quite incomprehensible to you -, you deserve all of this (even though there are so many people around you struggeling who 'deserve' happiness as much you do). You start thinking about God or some other supernatural power guarding you and making this happening for you, just for you: Your own little share of happiness all sorted out and prepared way back to be given to you right this moment, right in this minute when you least expected it (like a huge, cosmic surprise party).

I guess what I am trying to say is that happiness, just like unhappiness, strips you down to your bones in one second; and you stand there, lost like a stray dog on the highway not knowing where to turn to and what to do. But in the end, what the heck - it's just fucking amazing to sit here and say and feel and think (and ultimately even realize): I am happy.

Status update

Celebrity Death Match: Kay Scarpetta vs. Emma Bovary

I usually take something to read where ever I go, even if it's just for the 10 minutes tube ride to my office. It doesn't necessarily mean that I actually read whatever I take along, but I like the feeling of having something to read with me (maybe this is a very protestant/frugal kinda thing, in the sense that I am afraid to 'loose' time by simply travelling without doing something vaguely 'productive'). For reasons quite unclear to me - and for the first time since I don't know when -, I am now travelling without anything to read, except for work related stuff; and, as much as I love Foucault, he's not precisely my favourite bedtime-story-author. So I found myself in my dad's appartment, searching (more or less desperately) for a book. Since the highlight's of my dad's library basically resume to Dan Brown, John Grisham, Tom Clancy and the likes, I finally wound up with a Patricia Cornwell thriller.

Now let me be clear before I continue that I have nothing against Patricia Cornwell in particular and thriller or whodunnits in general. I am certainly not the kind of (literary) person who considers anything underneath, say, the quality of a James Joyce as rubbish and not worth reading; far from it. But Patricia Cornwell made me realize how - in lack of a better word - 'used' I am to a certain kind of style, to a certain way of dealing with language in a novel.

I think it was Umberto Eco who defined the difference between high literature and popular literature by a difference in explicitness and redundancy, i.e. popular literature gives the reader a lot of hints about how to interpret characters, situations, etc.pp.: The bad person is not only a bad person because of his/her character, but would, for example, smoke, drink a lot, have a dark complexion, and so on (which is something that, needless to say, one can also find in Hollywood movies). Hence, there is a sort of abundance of information, drawing strongly on connotations and popular notions/prejudices. Even more important, not only does the narrator draw on such fairly popular notions and associations, but they are also explained and made explicit in the narration, thus leaving little or hardly any space for the reader to make up his/her own interpretation. Patricia Cornwell, to give an example, would write something like (I am quoting out of memory here, so pardon me, Trish, if I am not getting it quite right):

I slamed the door behind me with a loud bang. I was really annoyed by this guy.

The two sentences are quite redundant, if you ask me: Purposly slamming the door usually connotes one is angry. Moreover, these sentences are preceded by a situation in which two people get into a discussion/fight, and thus it is pretty obvious already that the protagonist is angry. So you don't really need the explicit information I was really annoyed by this guy.

Looking at it from another point of view, Roland Barthes once described the abundancy of information and detail in a novel as realistic effect. The 'useless' detail helps to construct the plausibility of the story; by inserting descriptive details, the narrator is suggesting: Look, this fictitious world is really there, I can see every little detail of it. Let me show you the browness of the table, the humming noise of a fly going through the room, the cherry red colour of the maiden's cheek, and so on and so forth.

What particularly strikes me in the case of Patricia Cornwell - and 'popluar' whodunnits and thrillers in general - is the following: A crime or murder story is in itself quite complex (at least on the level of plot); it asks the reader to - more or less conscioulsy - make up his own conclusions while reading. So on the level of the plot, the narrator/writer has quite high expectations towards the ideal reader and his/her ability to detect hints and solve the mystery (I don't think I ever managed to 'solve' a murder in a book before the protagonist did). Why, then, does the writer take me by the hand like a four-year-old to say: Look, that person slammed the door, so she/he must be really angry. Though maybe it is precisely the fact that you have explicitness and abundancy on the level of (linguistic) form that enables the author to be more or less implicit on the level of content, i.e. the plot. Otherwise the reader might not be able (or willing) to read along at all.

In any case, I was reminded of an essay Proust wrote about Flaubert's style, arguing that he (Flaubert) is constructing certain kind of moods, characters, etc. without being very explicit or detailed in his writing (so more or less the contrary of dear Mrs. Cornwell). Here is what Proust says (or, more precisly, what I remember that Proust says): Flaubert would write a sentence like 'Emma Bovary walked to the fireplace.' - No one said that she was cold.

Absolute Groupie

Dear Roisin,

I love how you manage to graciously balance that UFO-like hat of yours while doing all those gorgeous dance moves.
Let me know when you're lonley or giving a dance class.

Yours fondly.

Bah-hu

I love this song.

Sorting out stuff also means finding good and forgotten stuff again

Das Letzte

Tipps zum Einschlafen gibt es viele, vom warmen Vollbad bis zum Schafezählen. Aber was ist mit dem, der wach bleiben will? Hier hat der Markt der guten Ratschläge bisher versagt. Wir haben allerdings ein Mittelchen gefunden, das wir an dieser Stelle zum Patent anmelden wollen.

Der Schlafscheue möge sich ein beliebiges Supermarktregal denken und aus den vorgefundenen Marken (Danone, Nivea, Sunlich, Hengstenberg) plausible Kombinationen von Vor- und Nachnamen bilden (zum Beispiel Danone Sunlicht, Nivea Hengstenberg). Das allein ist schon nicht einfach, aber erst der Anfang! Denn nun müssen wir versuchen, die junge Danone Sunlicht, brünett, üppig, hochgewachsen, mit dem passenden Mann zusammenzubringen. Das wird ja wohl kaum der kleinwüchsige Tchibo Snickers sein, auch wenn er als Profigolfer manch Mädchenherz gebrochen hat. Der Rallye-Fahrer Aldi Pampers wiederum ist schon mit Melitta Nuts liiert, und Ariel Warsteiner soll das Familienvermögen durch eine Ehe mit Campari Domestos, Erbin eines griechischen Großreeders, vermehren. Bleibt fürs Erste nur der fesche Twix Henkel, doch wird von ihm gemunkelt, eine Affäre mit der mondänen Ikea Hakle, geborene Feucht, zu unterhalten. Was Mars Hakle, ihr Mann, darüber denkt, müssen wir nun, mit wachsender Unruhe uns hin und her wälzend, erst überlegen. Wahrscheinlich, spekulieren wir, hat er selbst ein außereheliches Verhältnis, und zwar mit der aparten Camelia Sprüngli. Oder etwa nicht? Haben wir den Bericht in der Bunten vergessen, in dem von einer gewissen Vampyrette Holsten die Rede war?

An dieser Stelle dürfte selbst der Müdeste zugeben, dass an Schlaf nicht mehr zu denken ist. Vielmehr wird er seine feuchte Stirn mit dem Plumeau abtupfen, weil ihm soeben siedendheiß eingefallen ist, dass die Galeristin Camelia Sprüngli doch bekanntermaßen eine Beziehung mit dem japanischen Videokünstler Tempo Omo hat. Oder dient diese in der Presse absichtsvoll lancierte Beziehung nur zur Ablenkung von der sexuellen Orientierung Tempo Omos? Und dessen Liebhaber heißt in Wahrheit Eduscho Bahlsen? Dann aber kann Eduscho ("der General") Bahlsen kaum, wie Bild behauptet hatte, der Zukünftige von Vileda Sprite sein, was wiederum heißt, dass es eng wird auf dem Heiratsmarkt der Markenfamilien, wo sich schließlich noch Granola Landliebe, Juvena Frosch und die streng katholisch erzogene Zewa-Melitta Klosterfrau drängeln. Das heißt: Jetzt muss die Nachttischlampe an und eine ordentliche Liste geschrieben werden. Mit Schlaf ist jedenfalls endgültig FINIS.

Erschienen, in Die Zeit Nr.11

This is why the US housing crisis does not bother me

I guess one of the advantages of having lived in expensive cities ever since I moved out of my parent's home is that I am not completely freaked out by rents in Munich. Like why shouldn't I spend half my salary on a decent place?

News ticker

So apparently Sarah Palin got herself blessed against witchcraft by a pastor. For real.

I'm afraid not even witchcraft is of any help here.

Poem slice of the day

William Carlos Williams
The Ivy Crown

Romance has no part in it.
The business of love is
cruelty which,
by our wills,
we transform
to live together.

OMG

Sometimes, only vowels help:

aaaaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiauuuuhuhauhauhauhauahahahahahahhaahahahaahahahaiuiiihihihihhuiuiiiiiiiiiioooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooiiiiiiiiiiijeeieieieieieieieieieieieiieieieieieieiieie-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!

This MY fucking year, MY fucking life, MY fucking job!!!

Note to my self: I told you I was gonna get you out of this!

Update upon popuar request

Do not worry, dear reader, I'm still alive and kicking (which, needless to say, is next to miraculous). Though the doctor I called up after a night spent in utter desperation said I should really have my kidneys and my blood sugar tested once I'm back from my mini-vacation and job interview. Yes, you've read right: that's job interview as in JOB INTERVIEW. The stars are on my side again; 28 is MY year, life is beautiful, tralalala, la vie en rose and all the rest. You get the picture. In short: The world doesn't seem big enough for me today to not want to hug it.

This is what happens.

Hypochondriasis (or hypochondria, sometimes referred to as health phobia) refers to an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness. Often, hypochondria persists even after a physician has evaluated a person and reassured him/her that his/her concerns about symptoms do not have an underlying medical basis or, if there is a medical illness, the concerns are far in excess of what is appropriate for the level of disease. Many people suffering from this disorder focus on a particular symptom as the catalyst of their worrying, such as gastro-intestinal problems, palpitations, or muscle fatigue.

Cyberchondria is a colloquial term for hypochondria in individuals who have researched medical conditions on the Internet.

I am probably going to die within the next 24 hours because

1) my kidneys have a malfunction; or

2) I will fall into a diabetic coma; or

3) (most likely): both.

But at least I won't have to worry anymore about the appearance of black holes caused by particle accelerators (geez, and people ask me what my research is any good for?), the future of the German Socialist Party, what to wear for my prospective interview and whether or not my new hairstyle might interfere with looking serious at the interview.

Too bad though, I really would've liked to see the new Cohen Brother's movie.

The decline of Western civilisation...

The US gave the world music highlights such as the Pussycat Dolls. Germany answered back with Tokio Hotel. Let's call it a draw!
PS: Manga kid, you're not the only one who doesn't have any words to describe 'this'.

Poem of the day

Marina Zwetajewa: Gedicht

Bist fort: ich schneide
Das Brot mir nicht mehr.
Alles ist Kreide,
Was ich berührt.

... Warst, duftend heiß,
Mein Brot. Warst mein Schnee.
Und der Schnee ist nicht weiß,
Und das Brot tut weh.

Seventh lesson of academic logic

1. "If you want to enjoy something, do NOT organise it, just go!" (Domx, 2008)

2. You know what Team stands for? Toll Ein Anderer Macht's! (Great, someone else does it!)

3. If professors say: "I think we should do this and that..." What they really mean is: "I think you should do this and that...".

Conclusion: It's not about how much alcohol you drink, it's how fast you drink it that matters.

Haircut is a haircut is a haircut is a haircut

There are, obviously, a couple of (good) reasons to go to the hairdresser: utilitarian ones (you need a cut), aesthetic ones (you need a cut), or, sometimes, deeply psychological ones (you need a cut). Which just goes to say: a haircut is a haircut is a haircut, but sometimes it is also a so called break-up-haircut (so called by fashion-glam-women-magazines). That's the kind I got, and I actually got it twice - first, more moderate, then, more radical, and I have been wondering why ever since (and obviously this is not only about myself, since the phenomenon seems so widespread and culturally acknowledged that the fashion industry considers it to be a specific enough field to make money out of it by dedicating a magazine section to the topic).

Put very generally, getting a new haircut (as in: a different one from the one you had) more or less clearly, depending on its radicality, signals that something about you changed; thus it is a way of bringing your outer appearance in accordance with your inner feeling. The notion - or maybe need - of concordance of inner and outer appearance is not a very new idea: one of its most fierce spokesmen was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and his claim, though by no means a novelity in the 18th century, was remarkable mainly because he drastically applied it to himself.

The notion of inner and outer appearance having to concur in one way or another is then, in the 19th century, adapted, for example, into a difference of social and biological gender. (If you think the feminist sex-gender-divison of the 1970ies is something new, think again. You can find it all over the place in sexual pathology and sexual science starting from the 1850ies onwards. Though the originality of the feminist claim was - and to some extend still is - to dissociate the causal nexus between the two terms.) In the 19th century, a lot of scientific attention and effort was devoted to proving that there is a natural - and, more importantly: a normal - accordance between anatomical parts and social character (thereby digging its own grave, because if this accordance was as natural as scientists wanted to make everyone believe, then why all this brouhaha to prove something that is apparently simply 'there' anyway?).

One can find - but I am making this up as I go, so I might be wrong on this -, the idea of inner and outer appearance again in Lacan's concept of the mirror stage, this time turned into the division between the je and the moi: When the child recognizes itself in the mirror, it becomes aware of its own, separate existence. Thus, it is only when recognizing your outer appearance as your self (or yourself), you have become a subject according to Lacanian psychoanalysis. The joke being of course that you become a (as in: one) subject the instant you become a sort of split personality (je and moi) and can see yourself as an object, as an other. (Which is why Lacan's mirror stage is a very good illustriation of Rimbaud's sentence Je est un autre. And if I am not mistaken, some scientists do not accord self consciousness to primates precisely because they do not recognize their own reflection. The primates, that is, not the scientists.)

While all of this inner/outer appearance stuff somehow holds true for me (and probably a lot more deep unconscious shit I don't even have the slightest idea of), there is also, as I found out today, another dimension here: Cutting your hair is, of course, symbolically about cutting away your 'old' self, as in: 'the-in-the-relationship-from-which-you've-just-split-up-self'. But cutting your hair is also a way of turning a symbolic or emotional loss into a very concrete loss, i.e. the loss of hair. I was reminded of the very telling German idiomatic phrase 'Haare lassen', which means that when you go through a rough situation, you will (literally) 'loose hair'. So this haircut might be like an emotional chemotherapy.

And the morale of this little story is: There are different ways of dealing with a break-up. Some people go and get their hair cut. Others go and get fucking engaged to the first person they stumble across in the street.

Sixth lesson of academic logic

Rereading oneself with an eye on the criticisms incurred is a low-risk activity in which one is constantly at liberty to choose among a triumphant riposte ("I was entirely right"), a not less gratifying apology ("Yes, I was wrong, and I have the grace to admit it"), and a quite self-congratulatory spontaneous self-criticism ("I was wrong, no one else noticed, I am truly the best").

Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited

Conclusion: I can't wait until that fucking PhD is done so I can finally move on to the next level, i.e. narcisstic self-criticism (as opposed to the destructive self-criticism one faces during the PhD).

Heureka!

You know the proverb "Talk is cheap. Silence is golden."?
Psychoanalysis is its complete opposite.

Life's wisdom can be hidden just around the corner of a book

Ernest Rutherford, you said it man.
There is physics, then there is chemistry, which is a kind of physics, then there is stamp collecting.
Needless to say that Rutherford himself was a physicist, and a British subject.

Teenage Angst?

Session with my therapist today. Scares the shit out of me.
Recours à Foucault, comme d'habitude:
Il faut être soi-même bien piégé par cette ruse interne de l'aveu, pour prêter à la censure, à l'interdiction de dire et de penser, un rôle fondamental; il faut se faire une représentation bien inversée du pouvoir pour croire que nous parlent de liberté toutes ces voix qui, depuis tant de temps, dans notre civilisation, ressassent la formidable injonction d'avoir à dire ce qu'on est, ce qu'on a fait, ce dont on se souvient et ce qu'on a oublié, ce qu'on cache et ce qui se cache, ce à quoi on ne pense pas et ce qu'on ne pense ne pas penser.

Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité I

Sick in bed - The Soundtrack

Colleen - Sun against my eyes


KCO meets CocoRosie - Turn me on

Alleinherrschaft des Guten

Sometimes, only watching Maschek helps.

Great expectations are not always great expectations but might turn out to be great expectations in the end

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

So it has been a year since I went to NOISE in Bologna. For those of you who know me or who've been there as well or who've ever been to NOISE any time beforehand, you know how much those two weeks can change your life, and certainly my life has changed, or, at least, NOISE set off a couple of "chain reactions" (or maybe not chain reactions, because causality, as Siegfried J. Schmidt once put it, is a category of the human mind much more than a category of things or "reality". Anyway, I won't go there now...). So, of course, "anniversaries" like that are also moments where you look back; think back; 'feel' back; in the attempt to sort of judge or make sense of what happened to you or with you or through you in a particular period of your life.

Again, for those of you who know me (and for those of you who don't know me but read my blog; which I think are not a hell lotta people, but in my little head I often imagine some unknown, anonymous reader...), you know that this has been quite a rough year for me, to say the least; both on a private and a professional level. I wrote in one of my previous postings (Sketch of numbers) that 2008 is my purgatory, and to some extend, I still think it is/was.

But when talking to a friend of mine today, I realised one thing: I am so deeply, deeply grateful for this year too. Not only because I had this fancy jet-set scholarship that allowed me to travel around Europe and work on my PhD 24 hours per day, seven days a week (if I had wanted to). But mainly, obviously, because of the people I met and who've become my friends; people giving me the opportunity to sort of see myself again with new eyes; people who've - to make a very strong claim - allowed me to reinvent myself. Looking back, I realise how - despite all the shit that happened - privileged I am. I mean, after all, isn't it the most amazing thing to be able to change your life; considering there are so many people out there who - for whatever reasons, and even though they would like to - cannot change their lives? And isn't it amazing to actually change your life; considering there are so many people out there who - for whatever reasons, and even though they could - do not change their lives?

So, to sum things up, 2008 might be my purgatory. But what I forgot at the time I wrote that posting is: There are two ways out of purgatory. One is to hell. The other one is to heaven.

Mia mein Mia

One of the best things about Berlin.

Christmas in August

Dear Santa-EU,
here's my wish list for the book Christmas you so generously accorded to me:
- Michel Foucault: Dits et Ecrits, vol. I-IV. (which means that now I basically own everything he ever said or wrote [as far as it has been published. Still waiting for the fourth volume of The history of sexuality to appear]. I'm on my way to heaven - my bible is finally complete: gospels (History of sexuality I-III [both in French and in German], Discipline and Punish, Madness and civilization, The Order of Things); the new and the old testament (Archeology of knowledge [dito: in French and in German], The Order of discourse) and the psalms (all the posthumously published lectures, and now, finally!, Dits et Ecrits I-IV. Boy, I really am a Foucault-geek.)
- Gilles Deleuze: Foucault.
- Paul Ricoeur: Temps et Récit, vol. I-III.
- Judith Butler: Undoing Gender.
- John Searle: On Speech Acts.
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty: La Prose du Monde.
- Ian Hacking: Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory.
- Ian Hacking: The social construction of what?
- George Canguilhem: Essays in epistemology and history of science.

I'd be yours truly forever and a day (if you'd only let me),
Marie Curie

PS: In case you haven't noticed - books are my Manolo Blahniks.

Who the freak are you?

It took me about six and a half years to figure out the following thing: I am not made for a 'conventional' life, neither on a professional, nor on a private level; and, what's more: I might not even be interested in it.

Don't get me wrong: I am not saying that I am particularly proud of, and maybe not even particularly happy about this, and I am certainly not saying that I am the most unconventional, exceptional, different, or whatever person. I think that deep down in myself, I had (and to some extent still have) a longing for a somewhat conventional, settled, clear-cut life, and this more or less unconscious wish might be connected to the fact that I never really experienced such a thing (but in the end: who really has? Always remember Judy Butler: the norm is an ideal; a virtual, unattainable structure.). I am not trying to praise myself about this; honestly, there are a lot of moments where I wish(ed) I had a conventional life; you know, a regular, decently paid job, a reasonable amount of free time, being able to sleep at night, marriage, kids - you know, the whole programm.

Moreover, I am not convinced at all of the 'virtue' of unconventionality. I think a lot of people consider unconventionality as a form of moral superiority (what Norbert Bolz calls die Konformisten des Andersseins): If you're unconventional, you're special, which equals that you're 'better' than the so-called 'conventionals'. You're making a difference, you're being an individual (or individualistic); you're standing out of the crowd. (I won't go into all the details about the concept of individualism as truly modern and - as some thinkers say [guess who? yes! Foucault for example] - fundamentally ideological. Individualism is the oil that keeps you working like a proper little wheel in the wheelwork while in the meantime you think you're the most special person to have ever blessed this planet with its existence [remember The Matrix? Well, I believe individualism is more or less like the matrix but without the whole cyber stuff. Which is always why I think we needn't be so worried about genetic engeneering. Remember, after all, that the Nazis - next to their eugenic and racial concepts - inforced a totalitarian regime, you know, the whole symbolism of the 'leader' and his 'people', the organisations, the behavioural codes, the conventions with torch relays. Which is just to say: Genes are not everything. You have to tame life and coincidence as well.]).

Again: Don't get me wrong, I am certainly not trying to argue that we should all be nice and behave properly and not cause any troubles by crossing a red light; of course, social change might never happen without unconventionality. But I think there is a difference between being unconventional and being abnormal, and the difference for me is that you're unconventional by choice, and abnormal by necessity. Unconventionality is a luxury; abnormality is a curse. Unconventionality is a target group with profit potential; abnormality causes the state to spend a lot of tax money on hospitals, mental asylums and jails.

Welcome to the jungle

Welcome to the jungle
We've got fun'n'games
We got everything you want
Honey, we know the names
We are the people that can find
Whatever you may need
If you got the money, honey
We got your disease

In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it
bring you to your knees, knees
I wanna watch you bleed

Welcome to the jungle
We take it day by day
If you want it you're gonna bleed
But it's the price you pay
And you're a very sexy girl
That's very hard to please
You can taste the bright lights
But you won't get them for free
In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Feel my, my, my serpentine
I, I wanna hear you scream

Welcome to the jungle
It gets worse here everyday
Ya learn ta live like an animal
In the jungle where we play
If you got a hunger for what you see
You'll take it eventually
You can have anything you want
But you better not take it from me

In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it
bring you to your knees, knees
I wanna watch you bleed

And when you're high you never
Ever want to come down, YEAH!

You know where you are
You're in the jungle baby
You're gonna die

In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your knees, knees
In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Feel my, my, my serpentine
In the jungleWelcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your knees, knees
In the jungle
Welcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your
It's gonna bring you down-HA!




The outfits! The hairstyles! Vive les 90ies!

I'll try to

Okay, so appart from the fact that this song really touches me right down to the bone these days, I really love how it manages to strech out a more or less 30 second conversation to 3 min 21 secs. Very accurately noticing every gesture, even the tiniest one; registering the gazillion thoughts that go through your head within a few seconds, all the past and the future lost overwhelming you in the fraction of an instant; the ironic, yet somewhat slightly comforting use of proverbs ("there's plenty more fish in the sea").
Plus: I love the music video. The song is very closely depicting an encounter of two lovers parting; yet in the music video, you only see one person; the loneliness emphasized and exaggerated by the sheer emptiness of all the abandonned public places.
(I've always wanted to dedicate a song, so here it goes): This song goes out to all the broken hearts. Hang on in there; dry your eyes. I'll try to do the same.

The Dark Knight/Night

So I saw the highly commercialised and highly appraised new Batman movie. It's kinda hard to like a movie that has been so much in the celebrity headlines, surrounded by an armada of gossip, tragic stories/scandals (Heath Ledger's death and the rumours that he'll posthumously be awarded an Oscar; Christian Bale apparently beating up his mother and sis'; Morgan Freeman getting caught in a car accident with his long-time mistress - boy, I guess you could make another movie out of all these stories). But, fact is, I did really like it. And I think if anyone deserves a posthumous Oscar, Heath Ledger is the man (and I won't go into the pros and cons of the presumed quality or non-quality of Oscars at this point).

What I find most interesting about this movie and its "message", is how it debates the whole concept of "freaks". If you've read your Foucault (and those who know me know I haven't merely read Foucault, but consider it as my bible), one of the first associations that comes to your mind is that a society of "normals", the "everyday people", fundamentally need the abnormal and deviant, the freaks. The abnormal is the negative pattern in relation to which we define our "normalness". You know, the whole concept of the oppositions being constituted by each other, A is only A because it's not B, etc. (Saussure, Derrida, Butler, blablabla - you get the picture).

I think Foucault also said that in the modern western world, the abnormal are somewhat integrated in the society of normals; like a "fold" (I love when he writes about folds; one day I'll write a paper about the concept of fold with Foucault) - what he calls, if I remember correctly, heterotopies: If you're sick, you're going to the hospital; if you're a lunatic, you're going to the looney bin; if you're a criminal, you're going to jail. You're locked up, but you're locked up in institutions of the society. We wouldn't like to have people like the Joker (or Batman, for that matter), running around loose (and, obvioulsy, that's what the whole movie is about: capturing the Joker - and Batman to some extend as well -, in order to lock him up. Though why they want to put him in jail is sort of debatable. You could also send him to the looney bin.). But hospitals, mental asylums, and jails are sort of non-places: You're in the grip of society (at the utmost point of its control, actually), but also outside of "the normal life", outside of society. Those places are sign posts to the world of the "normals": if you don't behave like the others, you'll end up in a cell, and get dinner served at 5 pm. (Suzanna Kaysen has a lot to say about this in Girl, Interrupted. The following quote, for example, is very Foucauldian, I think: "It is easy to slip into a parallel universe. There are so many of them: worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying, perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside this world and resemble it, but are not in it.")

Let me also dilettantishly divage into the theory of psychoanalysis: One of the main concepts of psychonalysis is about creating a heterotopia within yourself, to speak in Foucauldian terms. The major developmental/cultural assignement is to create a space within yourself where you relegate all the agressive, psychotic, narcisstic, etc. impulses (what is considered "abnormal" and therefore not accepted by culture) into a mental space, the unconscious. A place that, even though it is within your mental landscape and rules a lot of your conscious life without you even noticing, is not accessible anymore, lost forever; a non-place. And should you have the unfavourable idea of regressing towards it, you'll end up in a mental asylum under heavy medication.

In ancient, mythical/religious times or cultures - to give one more example - , communities would select a person, a scaptegoat, that would symbolize all the evil and "abnormal", and kill him or her - sacrifice, as they say. (And maybe this is why the western world - and Christianity - is considered so 'civilized': We don't kill people anymore, we just look them up. Which is a form of social death anyway, to speak with Butler).

Coming back to the movie, here are a couple of things I found noticeable in regard to what I've just said: First of all, I think it becomes pretty clear that we need the freaks in order to feel our own "normalness"; and that works for both the fictional world of characters in the movie, as for the "real" audience watching it. Looking at the Joker, we (or I) tend to have the impulse "Thank god, I'm not like him". Not only in terms of "woa, he's just a psycho, and I'm normal, and I know how normal I am when I look at him", but also because you tend to feel sorry for him (at least, that's what I did). You know, deprived childhood, very literally "marked by life", all that sort of stuff. Secondly, it makes a statement (very banal, if you like, but still) that the line between being a "good" (read: normal) person, and being an outcast is actually pretty thin, if you think about it. (See the quote from Girl, Interrupted above: It is easy to slip into a parallel universe.) Thirdly, what I think is most striking, because we think about it so little: If you're a hero, you're abnormal as well. Batman does not live a "normal" life either (no girl, no friends, money galore). Batman is a freak just like the Joker is. And ultimately, he becomes a scapegoat - he becomes all that society wants him to be; the ultimate abject, the freak. The very last voice-over says something about him being the "dark knight"; him chosing not to be a hero, but a scapegoat, because a scapegoat is what Gotham needs, and its people need it more than a hero (which is a very interesting turn, I think. Maybe the superhero-function of our times is the freak, who, by his abject status can break all the rules, all the boundaries, thus paradoxically becoming a scapegoat. Think about the fascination and the fear we have of terrorists.)

And finally, I think there was (but I'm not sure since I saw the German version and not the original version), a very nice play of homophony about the title: At one point, the star attorney (who is the "white knight" through big parts of the movie) makes this speech defending Batman, comparing the fact that through Batman's actions things might have become worse to some extend (the Joker showing up, criminality getting worse and more fierce, etc.), with the night being at darkest before dawn. So, you know, Batman aka the dark knight symbolizes the absolute downfall, the darkest point of the night before things get better. You have to sacrifice a person in order to make things better; but that moment, when you sacrifice one life to save thousands of others, is the darkest moment.

Oh, and last reason why I loved that movie: Maggie Gyllenhaal. She's a hottie.

Das Ende

Wenn ich dieses Scheiß-Wochenende überstanden habe, dann schlage ich drei Kreuze.

Instead of drunk dialing or drunk messaging...

I never meant things to happen this way. I wanted to be serious about life; proper, clear-cut, sober, measured - reasonable, if you like.
I talked to a very dear friend of mine recently, and she said that she was curious about life, always asking for more, always asking why. I don't ask for more anymore (woa, what a line...); in the face of things happening to me, I've been asking myself for quite a few years now: Why? but in the sense of: why me? I never asked for anything other than a little slice of happiness; not a very big one, you know, just the bearable kind. Just the "oh, I'll have just a tiny, little serving more"-kinda type. Over time, and in the face of the things that happened to me, all I ask for now is to be left alone; not to be bothered anymore. I feel like I've enough to cope for as it is; so thanks - I don't need anymore of anything, really. Other maybe than the utmost piece of happiness; this time the boundary-less, unjustifiably big happiness-portion, all for myself and without conditions; without the ifs and buts, without back-doors.

And spare me with all the bullshit about self-pity and narcistic self-centeredness. Right now, I think I am entitled to a lot of self-pity. I'm sitting here with my Ipod on, and it doesn't even have a repeat function that allows me to hear my favourite song without having to press a button all the time; so I think I'm entitled to a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge amount of self-pity.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Mantra

People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.
People don't change. Assholes will be assholes, and they will always find some fool to hang around with. So get over it girl.

Fifth lesson of academic logic

Question: You know how you can tell that your life isn't really that exciting, tragic, or special?

Answer: When your analyst almost falls asleep during a session.

Conclusion 1: Learn to relativize. Your life is never that exciting, tragic or special as you think it is.

Conclusion 2: Learn story-telling. One aspect of creating suspense is whether or not you have an interesting story to tell in the first place, another (equally important, if not more important) aspect is the way you tell your story.