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.