Sorry but I have to do this

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarhghghggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarhggggggggggggggrhgaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrgrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tell me where did my motivation and enthusiasm go? Not so long ago, there was something I wanted from/in this whole stupid (academic) world, even though it exploits highly educated women!! Now I started dreaming that I was offered a well-paid job at Boston Consulting and ACCEPTED it! What happened?
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarhghghggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarhggggggggggggggrhgaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrgrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[PS: Free advice from the ocean of wisdom I have gained during my life so far: Don't try to write an application when you're totally unmotivated. NOT RECOMMENDABLE at all. Just the word "motivation letter" makes me want to bang my head against the wall or lie down on the office floor screaming and kicking. On top of everything else, I still have that weird cough which means that even cigarettes don't taste good. Not even the smallest pleasure granted to me today.]

Ode to Hmpf

(Symphony for a human voice, 3 soloists, chorus, computer keyboard, calculator, water glass, wood, tin foil, CD player, office utensils, two bed sheets and a beer bottle)
Today, I felt like the Netherlands most of the time [Chorus: low mumbles of disbelief]. This unlikely comparison came from the fact that everything about me seemed below sea level today: my motivation for work, for life, for sports, for doing anything that requires even the slightest effort. Not even my usual back up plans for low motivation (doing work related emails [hesitant tapping on computer keyboard], cleaning my office [muffled sounds of utensils being shuffled around], organizing my travels in the near future [somewhat more enthusiastic tapping on computer keyboard]) seemed to help today [Chorus: slightly spoken "o-h-os"]). I have to write yet ANOTHER application for a scholarship [Chorus: angry "oh no!!"] - the 7th this year (so during this very young year of 2008, I've written an average of 1.75 applications per month, how about that?? [wild tapping on calculator]). I just had the most annoying and stressful two weeks ever, which included a presentation at our graduate college, during which my supervisor, of all people, cross fired my project [Chorus: hissing and "ts,ts"] - suggesting that, which is worst of all, Foucault is not a genius (like I think he is), but a questionable theorist to follow when it comes to the history of sexuality [Chorus: laughter of slight, sceptical disbelief]. (I know, it's ridiculous.)
I was also supposed to go to my second rowing class (I nearly drowned during first class last week [Chorus: shocked "oh no!!"], but although the day started with sunshine it had begun to drizzle [light splashing around of water], so I really didn't feel like going at all [Chorus: emphatical sounds of agreement]. The consequence of this being, of course, that the others (in case they attend the class) would be way ahead of me and probably ready to enter the Olympic rowing team by the time I go again next week (but who cares? since clearly, participating in the Olympics might cause all sort of problems for my political conscience [Chorus: hesitant discussions in the background about China and the unlikely way of the Olympic flame around the world, preferably in French]).
On top of everything else, I have a bad cough since last Friday [Soloist 1: dry cough, with no snot coming up] so in the past nights I've slept very badly [sound of bedsheets being tossed around], waking up coughing [Soloist 1: dry cough, with no snot coming up] at such unlikely times as 5am without really being able to go back to sleep again. Hmpf. [Chorus: Hmpf.]
But then, a miracle happen [Chorus: curious and relieved "AAaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!"]. I finally wound up going to rowing class, and we got in our boat [Chorus: uncoordinated and chaotic movement, feet tapping against wood, water splashing], I was in the first postion [Soloist 2: "Of course!"] and I started with my slush, eeeeeeeek, swish, ploufff/ slush, eeeeeeeeek, swish, ploufff [sound of water being stirred, wood tapping against water] and the others tuned in [somewhat more chaotic and multiple sounds of of water being stirred, wood tapping against water] and, what can I tell you? It was fantastic! [CD player tunning in with "Halleluja!!!! Halleluja!!!!"]
So now I'm back to being Austria again, the strange yet beautiful country of high mountains and deep lakes and incestuous relationships [CD player tunning in with "The Hills are alive..."], and I think that on top of a cold beer [sound of a beer bottle plopping open] I deserve a baci [Soloist 3: smack of a kiss] - no, not an Italian kiss [Chorus: pityful "Ooooooooooooooh!"] but an Italian sweet [sound of tin foil being unwrapped].

Poem of the day.

Kurt Schwitters
An Anna Blume

Oh Du, Geliebte meiner 27 Sinne, ich liebe Dir!
Du, Deiner; Dich Dir, ich Dir, Du mir, - - - - wir?
Das gehört beiläufig nicht hierher!

Wer bist Du , ungezähltes Frauenzimmer, Du bist, bist Du?
Die Leute sagen, Du wärest.
Laß sie sagen, sie wissen nicht, wie der Kirchturm steht.

Du trägst den Hut auf Deinen Füßen und wanderst auf die
Hände,
auf den Händen wanderst Du.

Halloh, Deine roten Kleider, in weiße Falten zersägst,
Rot liebe ich, Anna Blume, rot liebe ich Dir.
Du, Deiner, Dich Dir, ich Dir, Du mir, - - - - - wir?
Das gehört beiläufig in die kalte Glut!
Anna Blume, rote Anna Blume, wie sagen die Leute?

Preisfrage:
1.) Anna Blume hat ein Vogel,
2.) Anna Blume ist rot.
3.) Welche Farbe hat der Vogel.

Blau ist die Farbe Deines gelben Haares,
Rot ist die Farbe Deines grünen Vogels.
Du schlichtes Mädchen im Alltagskleid,
Du liebes grünes Tier, ich liebe Dir!
Du Deiner Dich Dir, ich Dir, Du mir, - - - - wir!
Das gehört beiläufig in die - - - Glutenkiste.

Anna Blume, Anna, A - - - - N - - - -N- - - - -A!
Ich träufle Deinen Namen.
Dein Name tropft wie weiches Rindertalg.

Weißt Du es Anna, weißt Du es schon,
Man kann Dich auch von hinten lesen.
Und Du, Du Herrlichste von allen,
Du bist von hinten und von vorne:
A - - - - - - N - - - - - N - - - - - -A.
Rindertalg träufelt STREICHELN über meinen Rücken.
Anna Blume,
Du tropfes Tier,
Ich - - - - - - - liebe - - - - - - - Dir!

Those were the days... Part II

Will dir das absolut Spekulative aller Ethik nicht in den Kopf, so mache eine Reise um die Welt. Du wirst nachher Bergson und Spinonza lesen wie... wie wenn du einen Besuch in einem Heim für Schwachsinnige machen würdest.
Walter Serner

Sich in lauter Lagen begeben, wo man keine Scheintugenden haben darf, wo man vielmehr, wie der Seiltänzer auf dem Seile, entweder stürzt oder steht – oder davonkommt…
Friedrich Nietzsche

Kann ein Esel tragisch sein? – Dass man unter einer Last zugrunde geht, die man weder tragen, noch abwerfen kann? … Der Fall des Philosophen.
Friedrich Nietzsche

I am rediscovering the beauty of aphorisms. Both content- and formwise (but, as we all know of course, the content is the form and vice versa). Maybe because I cannot seem to concentrate on anything longer than a page these days. Maybe it is because of their lacony, their sharpness, their cynism - which matches my mood (at present and more generally. I think cynism and irony are/should be the virtues of any intellectual). Maybe it is because of their shortness: something I could never do. Maybe it is because an aphorism somehow doesn't belong to anyone or anything: subjective truth and essential wisdom, between literature and philosophy and even medicine. Yes, medicine. Remember "life is short, art is long, etc."? That's from good old Hippocrates. Then again, probably at that time, you were philosopher, doctor, mathematician and whatever else all at the same time (so writing aphorisms was kinda like writing a prescription for a patient. Wow, imagine a world where prescriptions were aphorisms!). No division between the humanities and the "hard" sciences. No need to try to find third-party funds for your research. It was heaven. If you were a white rich man, that is. Oh well, so much for the good old days.

Whatever...

Last night
she said...

Menuett

Sometimes verbal communication is just too much for me. I just spent two days in constant company of people, hence in constant need to keep up some sort of communication going, and I feel like it's drained me of all my energy. Of course it doesn't help that it was a somehow work related company/meeting, so you end up talking to people you don't really know, saying things you might not really mean or find important, and listening to things that are not really important to you right now, or maybe things that you know better or maybe just plain superficial, uninteresting stuff. Even worse: you might wind up listening to things people say to you because THEY think those things might be important or relevant or interesting to you (when you really couldn't care less), thinking they're doing you a favour and sort of "building a bridge" of communication for you. I guess it's just a problem of small talk.
Maybe this is why I like dancing so much. I like dancing when I go out, I like dancing all by myself, I like dancing classes, I like dancing with another person, even a stranger. No words. Just movement. For me, it is some sort of communication, a way to express my feelings with my body in a much different way than words could. Then of course, it is a sort of communication that not everybody is able to "read"; insofar as I think it is a very sexualized sort of communcation, and you hardly find a person who is willing to dance just for the sake of dancing, for the sake of the encounter of two bodies moving to sound. (Maybe that is a very idealized version of what dancing could/should be).
Then again, when you think of it, small talk might just be a verbal way of dancing together. Both of the partners know the moves, the steps. They know which way they're supposed to go, which way is totally inappropriate and wrong (farting is a no go, for example). So maybe small talk is just a "ballet of verbal superficiality".

Skipping stone

I don't know
if I can do this alone
oh after our sweet love is flown
I've been running
I've been skipping like a stone
and I don't know
if I
I can do this alone

The Teardrop Treatise

Not so long ago, I made the experience that crying in public is considered something very strange (to say the least). It makes people uneasy when they see a stranger crying, especially when there is no apparent reason (granted, a lot of people get uneasy even when they see a person that is dear to them crying).
A couple of months ago I was sitting in a train and I was sad, so I cried. I think that I have two categories of crying (so if you like, this is sort of my ontology of crying that does have its subcategories and variations): 1. eruptive sobs - what Christophe Grangé once described in a novel (I believe it was "Les rivières pourpres) as "crying as if one is vomiting"; 2. silent rain - tears quietly and calmly rolling down my face.
On the occasion of that particular train ride, I was doing the latter of the two (trying not to disturb my fellow travellers). I could see how the other passengers in the compartment grew more and more unsettled. One woman had the courtesy (or boldness) to ask me if everything was allright (what a question, I mean, come on, when someone is crying it's pretty obvious that nothing's allright), upon which I (graciously) shook my head, splashing sparks of salt water on my shirt (have you ever asked yourself why tears are salty? Is it because we once came from the sea?). The others just kept looking (the kind of look that is pretending not to look) at me from time to time with growing bewilderment.
So, what is it then that makes people uncomfortable in the face of another person crying in public? Does crying generally make people feel uncomfortable? Is it because one cannot make sense of it, because one doesn't know why the other person is sad; whereas when there is an apparent reason - injury, fear, etc. - crying (even in public) is somewhat justified or explainable? Is it because people feel like - not knowing you - they can't do anything to help you? Do they feel annoyed? Disgusted? Is it a problem of disrupting the division between what you do (or are supposed to do) in private and what you do (or are supposed to do) in public? Is it because crying is considered to be a sort of loss of self-control, the loss of your public "persona", which is even worse when there is no apparent reason for it? Is it because crying is a bodily private matter - like peeing?
Apparently, we loose an average of about 80 litres of tears during a lifetime (though I don't know if that number includes the "tiny-animal-in-your-eye" sort of crying as well). Can you imagine? 80 litres! But then again, a regular size bathtub holds about 140-175 litres of water (or whatever you wanna put in there), so considering you don't even fill up a bathtub with your tears, the frequently used song line "cry me a river" is somewhat exaggerated, if you ask me. "Cry me half a bathtub" is more or less the best any average person could do.

Mourir d'un oeil

Je ne voudrais pas crever
et je ne veux pas qu'on me dise
combien de kilomètres à pied
il me reste à marcher
je ne veux pas qu'on s'epuise
à tout m'expliquer
laissez moi des surprises
laissez moi rêver

Je ne voudrais pas crever
mais comme c'est des choses qui arrivent
je veux danser souvent avec le diable de l'été
et m'enivrer d'un rire
et m'enivrer d'un rien
je veux passer la vie
à naître qu'un matin

La vie ne fait pas semblant
c'est un va c'est un vien que j'etends
un tango sur la valse du vent
la vie ne fait pas semblant

Je ne veux pas crever
mais mon amour je voudrais
que l'on s'éternise
dans un bain de juillet
qu'on se saoule de nous
en s'offrant des "je t'aime"
que nos corps s'épousent
et qu'ils s'en oublient même

Que l'on pende à son cou
la mort et ses valises
qu'on l'a foute dans un trou
le temps qu'on s'éternise
dans un baiser de lune
qui n'appartient qu'à nous
mon amour je voudrais
t'ammèner jusqu'au bout

La vie ne fait pas semblant
c'est un va c'est un vien que j'etends
un tango sur la valse du vent
la vie ne fait pas semblant

Et puisqu'un jour ou l'autre
on tombra dans l'oreille
d'un vieux bonhomme sourd
qui ferra la sourde oreille
je vais souvent ce rêve
pour me faire semblant
celui de mourir d'un oeil
une fois en passant

La vie ne fait pas semblant
c'est un va c'est un vien que j'etends
un tango sur la valse du vent
la vie ne fait pas semblant

Lalala lalala lalala
Tadala dalalalal
un tango sur la valse du vent
la vie ne fait pas semblant

Mourir d'un oeil
je voudrais être sur
le dos d'un aigle
pouvoir t'endendre encore

Family business

My brother is coming to Frankfurt on Tuesday for a conference, and he actually sent me an Email to ask whether we could meet. It was kind of a surprise (to say the least), and I am really really happy and excited about it. Last time we saw was... hm. I guess it was Christmas 2006. And last time we had any contact was about a year ago, I guess. So it's been a long time. And me moving away was not, I think, the main reason for not keeping in touch. I don't know. Sometime during our young adult age, I think my brother came to look at me as being kind of - hysterical, that word just keeps popping up in my head. Though he never said anything of the like. It's just the way he looks at me, and his reactions to the things I do, the decisions I make about my life, the paths I choose to go, all that seems kind of bewildering to him. We used to be very close. I mean of course we would fight a lot, but growing up, I was really hanging out with him and his friends most of the time. I guess I was what one would call a tomboy.
And at one point, it was more or less when I was going through puberty and he wasn't (I think he had his kind of puberty as rebellion kind of thing only in his early twenties), I had a strong need to des-identify myself with him. A strong feeling of repulsion, of annoyance about him. I thought he was boring and all that sort of stuff. And I guess when I was ready to "go back" to our relationship again, he had moved on. And since then it seems that he has never been that interested again in having a friendship with me. So I lost him. Or I lost our closeness. And it still makes me sad. I miss him. Terribly at times. But it seems that he has his own life now, and I don't seem to be an important or big part of it, and he doesn't want me to be.
So I'm glad that he wants to see me next week. I hope it is not because he has some "big" thing to announce (like his wife being pregnant or something), but just because he wants to see me.

Small pleasures - revisited

Drinking a cold beer while reading Miranda July's short stories - one of the very scarce, and just the more precious moments of delight I have today...

I will survive....! will I?

Right now, this day, I feel just totally freaked out and overwhelmed by all the demands coming at me: deadlines (the very few I do have seem to be all in the next two weeks); meetings; lectures; presentations; CfP; blablabla. I hope that sacrificing my private life, my free time, my young adulthood and my nerves is really worth all this trouble. Somebody better offer me a PhD position some time soon or I'll go nuts. Or move to Island on a surrealist sheep farm and knit rhizomic sweaters (which probably equals being nuts anyways).

Sentence of the day.

Blaise Pascal, who I feel very much connected to because of the strangeness of his first name, once said:
"Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne pas savoir demeurer en repos, dans une chambre."
So in honour of you, dear Blaise, I'm off to embrace human unhappiness.

Those were the days...

1968 - 2008...

Argh!

You know what's really annoying? When you spend all evening out with people and you come home to brush your teeth and realize you have a nice, very green piece of basil stuck between your front teeth.

Homeward bound

I'm sitting in front of my computer (yes, it's working perfectly fine again after the near breakdown on Sunday), and I have so many thoughts going through my mind I don't know where to start. I've been thinking a lot these days about my life: about the things that make me happy and the things that would make me happy, about the things that make me sad, about the things that worry me (needless to say, the latter two seem to have taken a lot of space in my thoughts). Right now, I have no idea where I will be a year from today. I have no idea where, why, how, with whom, for what reason. When I think back, if someone had told me last year that I would be sitting in an appartment in Frankfurt just as I am today, and in the situations - private and professional - I am in today, I would've probably said: no way. But the situation was different last year. Although I had just finished my studies. I don't know why. Sometimes I think I want to change too many things at once.
I feel like I have no home in the world, no other than maybe the 168cm of my own body and the galaxy of imagination and memory in my head. I'm not particularly a "home bound" person, I mean, I deliberately chose to leave my childhood home right after school, and I've been moving ever since. But the difference is that back then, I was still moving away from something. From home. Now I feel like I'm just moving. Nothing to return back to. Well, that's not quite true, of course, but it does sometimes feel that way...
Interesting thing is this: I never thought I would be so attached to places. When I think of the house I grew up in (which was sold a couple of years ago), I get quite sentimental. I really miss that house. I really miss returning there, the feeling of knowing every goddamn corner: The scratches on the wooden doorpost of my father's office where each year my brother and I would be measured, standing rigid and straight and breathless, pressing our backbones against the hard wood. The staircases layered with the hundred, nay, thousand times I ran down up and down, often times getting an annoyed yell from my father. The colour and pattern of the big carpet in the living room, into which after a couple of years the marks of the furniture had engraved themselves. The darkness of the brown bathroom tiles. The weird kind of back-room space behind my parent's bed that hid piles and piles of carton boxes with I don't know how many things in them. The blue bedspread of my parent's bed. The identical, light wooden IKEA furniture my brother and I had in our rooms, and how it felt when I used to press my hot body against the cool wood of the bed in the summer.
I think it was Cicero who taught the art of memorizing by imagining houses: by gradually moving through a house and placing the things one should remember (a list of numbers, a text, etc.) in a particular place, you were supposed to be able to recall an endless number and the most complicate kind of things. As if the visual, three-dimensional imagination was to enhance the sharpness of your memory. Maybe this is why I am attachted to places after all, these days.

Rousseau and me

I almost had a nervous breakdown yesterday evening 'cos my laptop shut itself down and didn't start again. For almost an hour, I tried to make it work again, using all sorts of totally useless techniques (begging, threatening, praying, you name it). Tired out by the effort and the panic, I went to bed, and, needless to say, slept horribly just to wake up at 6.30 am and almost run straight out of bed to my laptop (I guess you could call it a run if my appartment was that big). And, surprisingly, it worked again. Made some weird noises and took about five times as long as it usually does, but it functions again.
While desperately trying to sleep and calm myself down, I started thinking about why this mishap made me so anxious. After all, it's just a stupid machine, and I have most of my files secured on an external hard drive anyway (all files except, of course, a presentation I have to do tomorrow and which I wrote on my laptop, and not on my office computer, which I use mostly for my work stuff these days). I was trying to persuade myself with all kinds of arguments why this wasn't such a big deal: it's an old laptop anyway, I have copies of all the pics and the music I downloaded, it might work again the next morning - you get the picture.
By the second hour of tossing around in my bed, I got mad at myself for letting such a thing worry me. I thought about stoicism and how their exercises consist in making you indifferent to exactly those kind of stupid situations. I also remembered an episode that Rousseau tells in his autobiography: He is anxiously awaiting a letter of some sort, a very important letter for him, and when it finally arrives, he nearly freaks out by excitement. But that's when good old Rousseau says to himself: I shouldn't let such a thing get me so excited and anxious, either way, it doesn't matter. So he doesn't open the letter, but instead puts it on his desk, spends the day and evening doing whatever he is usually doing, sleeps sound as a pound just to get up in the morning, well rested. He finds the letter sitting on his desk, opens it very quietly and finds that it has a positive response to whatever he was waiting for. Geez, Jean-Jacques, I guess should learn from you. But then I might just well be a freekin' nut-case as you were.

Private parts

In spring 2004 I developed a passion, almost an obsession, for two things: climbing on mountains and masturbation. I was still living and studying in Innsbruck at that time, which is a city surrounded by amazingly high mountains. And when I say surrounded, I don't mean that you can see them from afar, I mean that whereever you turn and look, you see mountains and they are so close that you can actually not tell where they start and the city ends. I began climbing them like mad, sometimes getting up very early in the morning to do a quick one hour ascendency and come back just in time to go to classes. I was intoxicated by the sheer, breath-taking effort, the sweat literally pooring down my body, the feeling of my muscles being sore even days after. Keeping to only three or four different routes, I entered into a competition with myself, trying to beat myself, while doing it just for the pleasure of doing it, keeping my eyes and my mind to the path before me, hardly ever looking up to take in the view. Completely sucked in by this useless exercise that consists in killing yourself to get up to the peek, just to turn around and take the same way down again; no direction, no goal other than pure physical movement. I was alone. I was alone with my body. And with the mountain.
I discovered masturbation that same summer, in an almost unbearably hot night in Southern France and while/because of reading a Paul Auster novel (so should you ever read this, Mr Auster, thank you so much). When I say that I discovered masturbation, I don't mean that I rediscovered it in the sense that I came back to something I had forgotten or not done for quite a while. I mean that I had my first self-induced orgasm when I was 24, and it was a pleasure so strong and fierce that my immediate reaction afterwards was to literally explode into a laughter. It was a laughter not only of delight, but of simple disbelief: I just couldn't believe that something like that was possible, freely available to myself whereever and whenever I wanted to. And I couldn't believe that I had lived so long without it. I felt like I had a lot of things to catch up with. I started masturbating like I climbed on mountains: almost methodically diving into this forlon, physical pleasure that had no direction or goal or use except this one: my body. Or rather: if there was a goal at all, it was climax - and I still chuckle at the unintended way in which both these activities, albeit in different ways, are about reaching the peek. I wonder if Sir Edmund Hillary has a similar story to tell.

Measure your life in love...

Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand
Six Hundred Minutes
Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand
Moments So Dear
Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand
Six Hundred Minutes
How Do You Measure - Measure A Year?
In Daylights - In Sunsets
In Midnights - In Cups Of Coffee
In Inches - In Miles
In Laughter - In Strife

In - Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand
Six Hundred Minutes
How Do You Measure
A Year In The Life

How About Love?
How About Love?
How About Love?
Measure In Love

Seasons Of Love
Seasons Of Love

Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand
Six Hundred Minutes
Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand
Journeys To Plan

Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand
Six Hundred Minutes
How Do You Measure The Life
Of A Woman Or A Man?

In Truths That She Learned
Or In Times That He Cried
In Bridges He Burned
Or The Way That She Died

It's Time Now - To Sing Out
Tho' The Story Never Ends
Let's Celebrate
Remember A Year In The Life Of Friends

Remember The Love
Remember The Love
Remember The Love
Measure In Love

Measure, Measure Your Life In Love

Seasons Of Love...
Seasons Of Love

Mirror. Stage. Mirror stage. Mirror stages.

mirror
c.1225, from O.Fr. mireor "a reflecting glass," earlier miradoir (11c.), from mirer "look at," from V.L. *mirare, from L. mirari "to wonder at, admire" (see miracle). Fig. usage is attested from c.1300. The verb. meaning "to reflect" is first attested 1820 in Keats's "Lamia." Used in divination since classical and biblical times; mirrors in modern England are the subject of at least 14 known superstitions, according to folklorists. Belief that breaking one brings bad luck is attested from 1777.

stage (n.)
c.1300, "story of a building, raised floor for exhibitions," from O.Fr. estage "a story or floor of a building, stage for performance," from V.L. *staticum "a place for standing," from L. statum, pp. of stare "to stand" (see stet). Meaning "platform for presentation of a play" is attested from 1548; generalized for "profession of an actor" from 1589. Sense of "period of development or time in life" first recorded 1608, probably from M.E. sense of "degree or step on the 'ladder' of virtue, 'wheel' of fortune, etc.," in parable illustrations and morality plays. The verb meaning "to put (a play) on the stage" first recorded 1879; general sense of "to mount" (a comeback, etc.) is attested from 1924. Stage-coach is 1658, from the sense of "division of a journey without stopping for rest" (1603). Stage mother is from 1919. Stage-Door Johnny "young man who frequents stage doors seeking the company of actresses, chorus girls, etc." is attested from 1912. Stage-struck is from 1813; earlier stage-smitten (1682). Stage-whisper first attested 1865.

The mirror stage was the subject of Jacques Lacan's first official contribution to psychoanalytic theory (Fourteenth International Psychoanalytical Congress at Marienbad in 1936). He described it in "The Mirror Stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience", the first of his Écrits. In the early fifties, he no longer considers it as a moment in the life of the infant, but as representing a permanent structure of subjectivity, the paradigm of the Imaginary order: it is a phase in which the subject is permanently caught and captivated by his own image.



There are days when I look in the mirror and I stand, highly irritated and somewhat in awe before the fact that the image reflected there is me. A total feeling of de-identification with my self, my image, my body, my history, my story, my life. That's how I feel today: I just can't believe I'm myself.

Oh it's such a perfect day

Sometimes, there are days where everything seems to fall into place like the pieces of a puzzle. It's not about solving any riddles or big questions of life, it just seems that everything you do and everything that happens to you is somehow, well, connected or put into (a somewhat right) place. Today was like that. Getting up in the morning, the daily routine carried out with a little more care and attention and carefullness than usually. Feeling special and dressing especially for no particular reason. Beautiful weather, one of those first days of spring were you can feel your body taking in the light and the warmth and the air and those soft, pastel colours of spring like a dry sponge filling up with liquid. Reading arcticles or books that are appearently not related to each other but somehow make sense together, when you feel like all those informations and inputs are immediately turned into synapses in your brain. Laughing hillariously for minutes about a Lacanian pun ('hommellette'). Finishing all the things you've set yourself and going home with a feeling of pure satisfaction of "work done". Having your IPod on shuffle, and all the songs played seem not conditioned by an alleatory function, but by your feelings and moods, a perfect match for each one of it: laughter, dreaminess, that particular joy of spring, just a small drop of melancholia. Going to the cinema alone to watch a movie you've heard only good things about and still being amazed by its beauty, completley sucked in by its images. Ending the day with the Largo of Bach's piano concert in F minor.

Nous autres, victoriens

If something like reincarnation exists, I must have been living in Victorian England in one of my previous lives. Around 1900 or so. I don't know, I just love movies and books about that time. E.M.Foster, The Bloomsbury Circle, Jane Austen, you name it. Plus I'm doing my research on 19th centuries autobiographical writings (not only English ones though). Plus I love the fashion: the high empire waist line that had slid around an inch lower by 1900, delicately pressed curls of hair, three-piece suits in beige and black, carnations in button holes, striped neckties, hats with ostrich feathers, pocket watches inherited by grandparents. Changing your attire at least five times a day. To make a call on the local vicar. Tea parties and real lawn tennis. Uptight misses and their chaperones. Doing educational journeys to Italy and Greece to see the arts and culture. Invitations to dinner parties. Piano music played by the daughter of the house. It is just wonderful, I think. Very posh too, of course. Maybe I was British landlord Mr Elisburry, or an aristocratic spinster named Lady Katherine Swanson, a neurotic bourgeois or an eccentric third-rate novelist with the pseudonym Eleonor Devreux or, most probably, a devoted butler called Henry. Which is to say: I guess that time was less funnier if you didn't belong to the upper class.