New Year's Scrooge

Oh and by the way: fuck new year's eve too.

Nineteenth lesson of academic logic

Somehow, I have recently found myself answering inquiries of how I am doing/feeling by referring almost exclusively to my work. Granted, it might be a rather common resource to respond to a question that is mainly an attempt of smalltalk (what a strange word, if you think about it - what is small in smalltalk?); a social ritual of politeness in which neither the questioner nor the questionned are really actually interested in the fundamental or existential well-being of one another.

But here's the strange thing: I noticed I was talking that way not only in smalltalk situations, but even to my family and friends.

Two possible, correlative explanations for that behavior:

My work in general and my thesis in particular have become such an integral part of myself that I automatically and without thinking refer to them when questioned about how I am doing.

I don't really want to talk, let alone think about my self or the part of my self that doesn't have anything to do with my work.

Conclusion: If things continue at this pace, I'll be finished writing this goddamn PhD in no time.

Zwischen den Jahren...

... denominates the time between Christmas and New Year's Eve in German. The expression seems strangely accurate to me; these days seem as if fallen out of time; out of regular life; out of everything. And I am immensely happy it is a time I have entirely to myself this year.

Happy fucking birthday Jesus

I know you died for us a couple of years ago, but right now, I can't really feel thankful for it.

It much rather feels like you were born to turn out to be a royal pain in the ass, because seriously, I'm quite fed up with people sacrificing themselves for other people without ever asking those other people whether they really want any of that fucking sacrifice in the first place. I, for my part, could do without being involved into any sacrificing business, because, say what you may, in the end it turns out to be this huge self-gratifying enterprise that is really not about other people, but only about yourself. And what happens then is of course that you're royally out of this shit because you died, and we - supposedly the beneficiaries of the whole story - are left to deal with this huge mess alone.

But I might be mixing things up here.

Time to make inventory

2009 new year's resolutions:
# 1 Write a substantial part of my thesis.
-> check. Allright, I haven't written a substantial part, but at least I've started writing.
# 2 Have more sex than in 2008.
-> check
# 3 Do sports for at least an hour at least twice a week.
-> check
# 4 Ammendment to # 2: Have good sex.
-> check
# 5 Go away for a two-week vacation to a place that is not Austria or France, and without any work related books.
-> nope
# 6 Make some essential progress or breakthrough in my analysis.
-> check

Heyyyyyyyyyyy, that's five out of six - you ain't done so bad dahlin'!

Quote of the day

Der Todestrieb ist in der Tat nichts anderes, als uns gewahr zu werden, daß das Leben unwahrscheinlich ist und völlig hinfällig. Begriffe dieser Art haben nichts zu tun mit irgendeiner Art lebendiger Tätigkeit, denn die lebendige Tätigkeit besteht präzise darin, seine kleine Passage zur Existenz zu machen, wie all jene, die uns auf der selben typischen Linie vorangegangen sind.

Jacques Lacan - La relation d'objet

Consolation

Apparantely, Boris Becker declared that he feels sorry and empathical for Tiger Woods.

Clearly, there are people far worse off than me.

Seriously, how much lower can you sink if Bumbum Becker feels sorry for you?

Answer

- of course it can, you goddam fool.

Day X minus 2

At this point, I wonder whether it can really get any worse.

Being Scrooge

I don't want this coming week to be this fucking exceptional thing. I wish life could just go its normal way; I wish that there was something of a daily routine; I wish I could go to work to my office and to my analysis like I do every week, and that I wouldn't have to bother being anxious about just getting through this huge mess in a halfway decent way.
Which brings me back to last year's promise I made to myself and broke: When am I ever going to be rich and smart enough to fucking get out of this place at that time of year?
Oh, how I dream about China, Dubai or any other obscure place without Christmas.

Fucking shit. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Fuck.

Amen.

To speak in FB slang: I like.

Pass time

If you're every highly bored and/or utterly desperate, try the following game:

Pick anything you've been waiting for (letter, email, phone call, ...).
Choose a time, say, 11pm.
Tell yourself: if you won't check your mailbox or phone my 11pm, that letter, email, phone call you've been waiting for will surely arrive. All you have to do is hang on until 11pm.
Then, at 11.01pm (it is very important for you to stay put until 11.01pm), check your mailbox.
If the message isn't there (which, honestly, shouldn't come as a surprise to you, although it does), repeat the process in 10-minute-intervalls. If you're really bored, you can also do 5-min-intervalls.

Confession

I know some of 'em feminists are not quite going to like this, but I have to admit that I am quite in love with Lacans texts; I think he is a pretty brilliant guy.

10 things I hate about Christmas

On occasion of hearing the first Christmas song on the radio today.

1. Christmas songs
2. Christmas decorations
3. Christmas markets
4. Family reunions
5. Hot wine
6. Christmas shopping
7. Christmas presents
8. The winter
9. Hypocritical religiosity
10. New Year's Eve being just around the corner

10 Dinge die mich wohl fühlen machen...

(...damit ich es nicht vergesse; für gute Tage; für soso lala Tage; für beschissene Tage...)

1. Yogapraxis
2. das Soap&Skin-Album hören
3. meine Diss schreiben
4. der Kaffee, den ich mir jeden morgen hole
5. Radfahren durch die Stadt
6. ein Bad bei Kerzenlicht nehmen
7. Theorietexte lesen
8. Jacques Lacan lesen
9. mir etwas zu Essen kochen
10. dienstags Simpsons schauen

Bilanzieren

Und auf einmal wird dir die doppelte Bedeutung des Wortes Schuld klar; der Zusammenhang von "sich schuldig fühlen" und "jemandem etwas schuldig sein".

Tatsache ist: jemand muss immer bezahlen, so oder so.

Vorfreude

Eigentlich ist es schon mehr als bizarr, dieses seltsame Gefühl, dass wir Vorfreude nennen.

Denn was wir damit im Grunde meinen, ist, dass wir unseren Körper nicht nur soweit domestiziert und reguliert haben, dass wir den Aufschub der Erfüllung unseres Begehren ertragen können; nein, vielmehr haben wir uns so weit gebracht, dass wir diesen Aufschub als lustvoll empfinden. Vorfreude heißt, den zeitlichen Abstand, der uns von einer Sache trennt, nicht nur mit Sinn zu füllen, sondern mit Lust. Es bedeutet auch bis zu einem gewissen Grad, der metonymischen Natur des Begehrens Rechnung zu tragen. Vielleicht ist die Vorfreude der einzig ungetrübte Genuss, den wir erfahren können.

Was für eine unglaubliche Zivilisationsleistung, so gesehen, ein Adventskalender darstellt.

Photo of the day

Anne Bennent und Otto Lechner

Quote of the day

Begriffe sind vor der Aufklärung wie Rentner vor den industriellen Trusts: keiner darf sich sicher fühlen.

Horkheimer & Adorno - Dialektik der Aufklärung

Fab's wisdom of the day

Was sie dir alle gesagt haben, als du klein warst, alle - die Märchen, die Geschichten, die Filme, die Erwachsenen -, ist, dass am Ende alles gut wird.

Und du verbringt dann dein Leben damit, dass die Realität (was auch immer das heißt) dir das Gegenteil beweist.

Im Grunde genommen ist Erwachsen werden vielleicht nicht das Verlieren von Illusionen, sondern das Verlernen von Illusionen; was ungleich schwieriger ist. Verlieren kannst du schnell etwas (wie einen Handschuh auf der Straße); Verlernen, was dir jahrelang eingetrichtert wurde, ist weitaus langwieriger und schmerzhafter.

Eighteenth lesson of academic logic

Sometimes, writing your thesis feels like this:

"Weil wir grad vom Aquarium redn, ich hab nämlich früher - nicht im Frühjahr - früher in der Sendlinger Straße gewohnt, nicht in der Sendlinger Straße, das wär ja lächerbar, in der Sendlinger Straße könnte man ja gar nicht wohnen, weil immer die Straßenbahn durchfährt, in den Häusern hab ich gewohnt in der Sendlinger Straße. Nicht in allen Häusern, in einem davon, in dem, das zwischen den anderen so drin steckt, ich weiß net, ob Sie das Haus kennen. Und da wohn ich, aber nicht im ganzen Haus, sondern nur im ersten Stock, der ist unterm zweiten Stock und ober dem Parterre, so zwischen drin, und da geht in den zweiten Stock eine Stiege nauf, die geht schon wieder runter auch, die Stiege geht nicht nauf, wir gehn die Stiege nauf, man sagt halt so."

Karl Valentin

Conclusion: The danger with writing your dissertation is that you become a Tristram Shandy.

Selbsterkenntnis

Das Problem ist natürlich, dass man sich selbst am besten belügen kann.

On a beau dire aux autres: je pense ceci, je suis comme cela; c'est soi-même avant tout qu'il faut persuader.

Quote of the day

Am Ende ähnelt man immer mehr oder weniger seinem Vater, diese Erkenntnis ist mit der Eleganz eines Betonblocks über mich gekommen.
Michel Houellebecq

Ich lach mich kaputt

Status Update.

If only my (academic) life could go on like this: brain-exploding, vibrating, thrilling and enthralling. I want to think think think and write write write and never stop again.

Vater, warum hast du mich verlassen?
Possibly the most heart-breaking question ever to have been asked.

Love letter

Meine liebe Diss,

ich finde dich wunderbar, und bin so wahnsinnig, wahnsinnig in dich verliebt. Ich kann nicht aufhören an dich zu denken und möchte am liebsten die ganze Zeit bei dir sein.

Dein ergebener
Schreibsklave

Quote of the day

Ich weiß nicht, ob jemand, nachdem der Tatsache, den anderen als ein Objekt anzusehen, eine so pejorative Konnotation verliehen wurde, die Bemerkung gemacht hätte, ihn als Subjekt anzusehen, sei nicht besser.

Jacques Lacan - Die Triebfeder der Liebe.

Die Verben und ihre Präpositionen

denken - an; z.B. an dich denken.

sehnen - nach; z.B. nach dir sehnen.

schreiben - für; z.B. für dich schreiben.

lesen - von; z.B. von dir lesen.

freuen - auf; z.B. auf dich freuen.

sein - bei; z.B. bei dir sein.

missen - ver; z.B. dich vermissen.

What hormones can do for you.

These past days = emotional overload.

Consequence = hardly any sleep, not enough food, adrenaline level on a constant high.

I wonder how much longer my body will last?

The other night, au Café de Flore

Neuigkeiten aus Wunderland

Heute, an diesem Samstag, 24.10.2009, habe ich die erste Seite meiner Diss begonnen.
Amen.

Quotes of the day

Illusions - Affecter d'en avoir eu beaucoup. Se plaindre de ce qu'on les a perdues.

Inventeurs - Meurent tous à l'hôpital - et un autre profite de leur découverte, ce n'est pas juste.

Gustave Flaubert Dictionnaire des idées recues

Warum man älter wird, aber nicht schlauer (frage ich mich)

So, da sitzt du nun also wieder; wartend.
Sämtliche Vernunft verpufft; nur noch ein hohles Loch (ja, auch das scheint es zu geben), wo einmal Magen war.
An Schlaf ist nicht zu denken; normal ist es nicht, nachts vor kindlicher Aufregung zwei Stunden lang wach zu liegen.
Ja und auch das Bangen hat dich wieder; jede noch so kleine Geste interpretierend (aber nun sein wir doch mal ehrlich, es sind nicht einmal Gesten, nicht mal das), beschäftigst du dich stundenlang mit hauptsächlichen Nichtigkeiten; deine Gedanken kreisend, deine Stimmung minütlich (wenn überhaupt) wechselnd - himmelhochjauchzend/ zu Tode betrübt, wie Goethe schon wusste.

Und du fragst dich: wird das jemals ein Ende haben, und will ich das überhaupt?
Denn noch ist dir selbst dieser Limbo der Ungewissheit lieber, als die möglicherweise niederschmetternde Gewissheit.
So ist es also, gib es zu: Verliebte sind paranoide Angsthasen.

Quote of the day - Part II

Wo die Regel ohne ein Bewußtsein von der Möglichkeit der Überschreitung befolgt wird, ist der Genuß unkompliziert.
Georges Canguilhem - Das Normale und das Pathologische

Quote of the day

Imbéciles - Ceux qui ne pensent pas comme vous.
Gustave Flaubert Dictionnaire des idées recues

Kitsch vs. Kult. Or: Just another version of the old affirmation vs. subversion question

It was Oktoberfest in Munich. For those of you who were up until now lucky enough and didn't have the slightest idea of what that means, let me tell you that your days of bliss have come to an end.

Oktoberfest, like most of the public festivities in Germany (and probably any other country), is mainly a good excuse for people to get unreasonably drunk at any time of the day and for as long as they want without having to feel like an alcoholic.

Like carnival, Oktoberfest has one pecularity: people not only get drunk, they dress up as well. What they do is they wear traditional folklore dress, called "Dirndl" (for the girls) and "Lederhosen" (for the boys).

So this is what happens during Oktoberfest: The city gets invaded by masses of drunk people wearing strange outfits. It lasts three weeks unfortunately.

Allright, you might say, so what's the big deal? Haven't you ever been in Argentina during a world soccer championship, or in Cologne during the Carnival, or whatever other silly public event people celebrate?

Well, the point is this: I had a discussion about the difference between Carnival and "dressing up" for the Oktoberfest; also, I had a discussion about the fact that some women were "cross dressing", i.e. they were wearing "Lederhosen", thus the traditional male costume (so basically pants instead of a dress). Is that subversive, I ask you? My point was mainly that wearing this kind of traditional outfit, no matter how you wear it, just isn't subversive, because it just sucks and it's conservative etc. etc.

Let me tell you another little anectode of my not so distant past:

I cut my hair short recently, and one night I was out with friends, and I was wearing a brownish (I would acutally say ochre, but I won't be fuzzy about the color question) shirt, a black tie, deep blue jeans, and black shoes. I was trying to do a kind of butchy style with a little dandy on top (green socks, man, green socks).

What happened, though, was that an older guy in a bar approached me and asked me whether I was a fascist. Needless to say, I was shocked. I mean, the whole situation was totally okay, because I had a good laugh, and the guy was in no way aggressive, though still trying to lecture me about bladibla, one shouldn't wear stuff like that, you know, because of "the paaaaast" etc. I was trying to tell him that if I really was a fascist, I wouldn't be wearing this kind of outfit, or at least I wouldn't be wearing it in this kind of bar, or in any case, I wouldn't wear an outfit that made me look like a boy from the Hitler Youth, but rather wear my hair in braids and maybe wear a Dirndl.

So, you know, that incident made me think. It made me think about whether if I had been to a queer place anybody would have been offended in the way that guy was or have the same assumptions. I was also thinking: Hm, would it be subversive if I really was trying to look like a boy from the Hitler Youth as a queer woman?

I guess in some sense, it is a question about contexts, and how you are read differently in different contexts. It is also a question about the possibility of subversive appropriation, and whether and where and why such appropriation has its limits, and who says so. And it is again, I realize, about the intentionality and thus souvernity of a subject. Does it really matter what my intention was in wearing that outfit? And does it really matter what those girls think or intend when they are wearing "Lederhosen" to get drunk?

Interestingly - though not surprisingly -, it is only the girls wearing "Lederhosen". I didn't see any guy dress up in a "Dirndl".

Dictionnaire des idees recues. Part I

When you talk to people, more often than not they will tell you that the feelings they have for their own parents (present or past) are quite different from the feelings they have for their (sexual) partners and/or friends later on in life.

Now, without wanting to simplistically understand every (sexual) partner as another version of either your mother or your father, it seems striking to me how effective and total the retrospective (or should I say retroactive?) erasion of (sexual) desire for your parents is. Parental love, presumably, though it is - naturally - the most intimate and innate, deep and unconditional feeling we are supposedly capable of, has nothing to do whatsoever with the kind of love and desire we seek later on in life, or the kind of love and desire we are able (or willing) to give, or the relationships we are able to forge and live.

There seems to be a distinct, yet immensely important gap between the feelings that exist between family members, and the feelings you have for your (sexual) partners. The incest taboo (and concomittantly, the fear of castration) is so strongly embedded in our culture, that we supposedly cannot admit even the slightest sexual inuendo in familial bonds. Hardly any crime seems to shock us as much as incest; and it does not only shock us, but make us react bodily with disgust and revulsion.

I am not in any way trying to make a case for incest and/or sexual violence and/or sexual abuse in families.

But I am currently struggling with the fact that I had such an intense, deep, intimate relationship with my mother; a relationship so complex and manifold that I seem to unconsciously live out parts of it even in my relationships today.

I am, I guess, trying to make a point for desire (which is, to me, also something different than saying sexuality is everywhere or, like in Harry & Sally, that women and men can't be friends because there is always sexual attraction between them).

Quote of the day

Les prêtres surtout, qui ont toujours ce nom-là à la bouche, m'agacent. C'est une espèce d'éternuement qui leur est habituel: la bonté de Dieu, la colère de Dieu, offenser Dieu, voilà leurs mots. C'est le considérer comme un homme et, qui pis est, comme un bourgeois.

Gustave Flaubert

Bloggo-Abstinence - the why and the how. (Attempt of an analysis, possibly not an apology)

It may sound strange, but there is a feeling of guilt or bad conscience in neglecting your own blog. It seems strange, because after all why should you feel in any way indebted to a virtual place, even if you might consider it a virtual part of yourself?

Why have a bad conscience, similar to the feeling of guilt you have when you realize you've been neglecting a friendship? Is it because writing here is somehow connected with the commitment to an (imagined or factual) reader - and thus a person - somewhere out there? Or is it simply because you somehow made a promise to yourself (even though it might have been an unconscious one at the time) by engaging to this kind of regular writing activity, a promise you seem to break when failing to write regularly here?

Curiously enough though, when thinking about the reasons why you don't write, what comes to your mind is not the lack of things to write about, but on the contrary: too many things to write about. It is as if, paradoxically, the more that is going on in your life, the less you seem to be able to write about it here. Suddenly you remember Proust, and the amazing fact that he shut himself up in a dark room for nearly the 20 years of his remaining life to write about the previous 20 years of his life lived in society.

Without wanting to compare yourself with Proust in any way, it seems striking that there must be something about writing and living, a mutual exclusion if you will. Maybe this is the best argument that writing really is a kind of living - and that this might be the reason why you can't do both at the same time.

Marseille, la vie en bleu

If only life could go on like this, like an endless sequence of sun and warmth; the feeling of sand between my toes; the flurry edges of boats on the horizont.
No need to get up in the morning; no urge to go to sleep at night.

Munich, Day 3

I don't know what and how it happened, but somewhere along the way I got lost.

It feels as if I hadn't been away for three weeks, but for much longer; and in a totally different world.

I don't know why but I can't seem to find my life again; my "old" me; the "Munich" me.

The problem, of course, is that if you plan a flight, you usually don't intend to come back. I never thought beyond those three weeks; I never thought that my life would go on, that there was something I was going back to or rather: had to go back to.

Now I stand amazed; disaffected; a stranger before all this: the people, the places, the daily routines. I remember what I am supposed to do; I just don't feel it anymore.

It reminds me of this book by Richard Powers, The Echo Maker: The protagonist suffers from a particular memory loss, making him unable to feel the appropriate feelings for his own sister. Thus, because his brain fails to draw a connection between particular emotions and the cognitive recognition of the person, he believes that his sister is some kind of spy or double. He sees that this person looks exactly like his sister, behaves like her, talks like her, knows all the things about their life, but because he fails to feel that this is his sister (instead of cognitively knowing it), he thinks that the person can't really be his sister.

I have the same kind of feeling; only that it's my own self and my own life I can't seem to feel anymore.

Berlin, the last days

(Not that this is gonna change anything.)

I don't want to leave.
I DON'T WANT TO LEAVE.
I D-O-N-T W-A-N-T T-O L-E-A-V-E.

I
d
o
n
'
t
w
a
n
t
t
o
leave.

Leave. I don't want to.
Want to don't leave I.
Don't I want to leave.
To want I leave don't.

Leave.
I.
Leave.
Want. Want. Want.
Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
don't.

Berlin, the last days

Im Moment gibt es, außer meiner Analyse, keinen guten Grund nach München zurückzugehen. Die Dinge, die ich fliehen wollte, sind immer noch da; der dumme Klein-Mädchen-Glaube, sie wären während meiner Abwesenheit verschwunden hat sich nicht bewahrheitet; im Gegenteil. Wie ein Geschwür weiterwächst, wenn man es ignoriert.

Fab's wisdom of the day

Und wenn du glaubst es geht nicht mehr, dann kommt von irgendwo her noch ein unerwarteter Haufen Scheiße daher.

Berlin, the last days. Thoughtful.

I guess when you're as out of touch with your body and nerdy as I and much people around me are, the only chance your body has of getting a rest is to become ill. It's its way of saying: "Come on, you have to give me a chance here!"

Allright, I got the message, dear. And I will make yet another promise to take more care of you.

Berlin, the last days

It sucks to be ill - I guess everybody would agree on that.

What sucks even more:

- Getting ill during your 3-weeks-stay in one of the most exciting towns you can imagine.

- Being ill while sharing an appartment with 4 other people (one of them being the person whose room you're living in) who cannot talk with each other without bursting into fits of (extremely loud) laughter every 5 minutes or so.

- Becoming ill without having finished to copy all the important documents you found at the library, and you're not sure whether you will be able to still make them or not.

- Not being able to meet a friend you meant to meet for the last 2 and a half weeks or so because you're ill.

- Being ill while one of your friends is here to visit you.

- Being ill in a place that doesn't have a TV and your only resort to watch episodes of the L word is youtube.

=> My life right now.

Berlin, Day 7. Prospective Future.

Today is kinda like my first day off in Berlin.
I'm going to meet a superhero at the ZOB.
I'm probably going to go to a birthday picknick afterwards.
It's gonna be exciting.
Yay!

Berlin, Day 6. Relations.

This seems to be the week of relationship movies. Unconsciously (thus probably not accidentally) I've seen to movies about couples in the past days Alle Anderen and Revolutionary Road. Although they're set in different countries (Germany; USA) and different times (present; the 50s), both show a fairly young (meaning: roughly my age) couple trying to come to terms with their relationship, their dreams, the future they imagined for themselves. Generally speaking, they were trying to negotiate the difference between ideal and reality of their relationship.

A lot of the things in these movies resonated in me: Here were protagonists my age trying to make some sort of major life decision; wrestling with the question whether they had "succeeded" in realizing their dreams or not and whether or not they were living the life they had imagined for themselves. It was a lot about not only assessing (if you want to call it that way) yourself, but also their partners as a sort of "mirror image" of themselves. Partners, like children, are sometimes a sort of appendix of our selves (like a trophy wife). We seem to think that we are judged according to the person we are with. Needless to say, both movies were also about "the others" - society, community, families - and how they perceive us as a couple; as part of an entity.

The situation I am in right now is different, of course, because I am single. And the difference, I believe in regard to those movies, is mainly that I cannot blame another person for not being the way I want to be; not living the life I want to live.

Berlin, Day 5.

One of the people working at a local radio station here must be the biggest ABBA fan in the world. So far, I've heard an average of two ABBA songs per day; and I am not listening to the radio all the time (so imagine how many songs must be playing during the whole day). Who would have guessed that my time here in Berlin would have an ABBA soundtrack?

Also, on Sunday, the very first "Currywurst"-Museum will open in Berlin. I don't believe there is anything more German than making a museum for a sausage.

Berlin, Day 2

If I were to live permanently in Berlin, I think I would spend most of my time in organic supermarkets. I feel healthy and sane just by walking around the isle and looking at 100 different brands of Tofu and Yogi tea.

Also, I didn't know that Dawson from Dawson's Creek lived in Berlin. But he does. I saw him on the subway today.

Like me, Dawson wasn't really impressed by the musical performance of a busker riding with us on the train. The lyrics of his song were something like: "My song is true/ don't feel blue/ I sing for you/ you lovely crew". It was the kind of song, in short, where kiss rhymes with bliss; and the likes - you get the picture, the guy wasn't exactly e.e.cummings (unfortunately). He then advised us to either download his songs on I-tunes or trade one of his handmade CDs right there on the spot. None of the things I had in my bag seemed worth trading.

Berlin, Day 1. R.I.P. the cheap way

The first difference you notice immediately about Berlin in comparison to Munich are the graffitis.
The most bizarre discovery of the evening was a Discount Funeral Home. Apparently, there is a market out there for people who are looking for a cheap way to spend their after lives. (Maybe one of the effects of the financial crisis.)

Makes sense, when you think about it. Why should I spend a lot of money on, say, a coffin, considering the thing is gonna rot in the soil anyway? Also, why would you wanna spend a lot of money on that stupid great uncle once removed and his death? Clearly, Discount Funeral Homes are a market niche. And let's be honest, MJ was probably the only one in a long time (maybe the first one since the Pharaons) to be burried in a golden coffin - if they're ever going to bury him at all, that is.
I love Berlin, capitol of cheap funerals.

Space and time

It's strange how a change of places seems to make you leave your "regular" life behind. It is as if spatial distance also means temporal distance; and the people and places you usually see every day seem not only kilometres, but years away.
It makes me wonder whether this is the reason why I feel old(er) at times; as if the fact that I have moved a couple of times and sort of started anew in different places has made me grow older than I really am. As if every move meant adding at least a year; thus multiplying my birthdays and life years.

Soundtrack of the day

Freedom!!! Yayyyyyy!!!!

Don't analyse - enjoy!

Weird how the message from one particular person makes you want to get out of bed again and face tomorrow.
Thanks B.

Nimm dein Leben in die Hand

Heute früh bin ich aufgewacht und beschloss, Prioritäten zu setzen.
Dann bin ich aufgestanden und habe Prioritäten gesetzt.
Ein ganz neues Gefühl.

Erkenntnis

Ich habe das Gefühl (und schon seit langem), eine Zumutung zu sein für andere Menschen.
Die Wahrheit ist etwas anders.
Tatsächlich ist es so, dass ich mehr und mehr die anderen Menschen als eine Zumutung empfinde.
Und mich selbst schuldig fühle dafür, dass es so ist.

Neverland

One of these days, I am going to wake up and getting up is actually going to be easy for me.
One of these days, I am going to make plans in the morning and realize them throughout the day.
One of these days, I am going to stop feeling this weight around my ribcage and just let go.
One of these days, I am going to be the most courageous person in the world and be honest to myself and to others.
One of these days, I am going to realize what it is I want, what it is I fear, and why I sometimes cannot discern between the two.

Soundtrack Frittenbude - Hildegard

Tribute to Miss Trudl Pospischil

Miss Trude,

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more funny and more elegant.
Rough winds do shake the cities in which we go astray
And our reunion's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometimes too hot the eye of the mirror ball shines
And often is our gold complexion thus dimm'd
And every hair from hair sometimes declines
By chance or because of bad hair dresser's trim

But thy eternal splendor shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that hair thou owest;
Nor shall Holy Golightly brag thou wander'st in her shade,
When in eternal lines to Helmut thou growest:

So as long as turtles can breathe or lobster see
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Quote of the day

Existieren, das bedeutet: wählen; leidenschaftlich sein; werden; vereinzelt und subjektiv sein; sich unendlich um sich selbst sorgen; sich als Sünder wissen; vor Gott stehen.

Jean Wahl

Deluge

I wake up; it is raining.
I want to curl up in my bed and never go outside again.

Message from a bottle

On some days you have this particular feeling for yourself. It is as if you can tune into the perception of your self and your own body a tad more than you usually can or would. It is as if you can hear yourself inwards; as if you could smell yourself; and the tips of your fingers have a very soft and permeable touch. And suddenly, also, it seems that you can perceive your eye sockets; you see the world as if through binoculars: two holes perforated by the bridge of your nose. [There is a great episode of Pinky and the Brain told entirely from Pinky's point of view - literally speaking from his point of view: you see everything through two holes.]
Isn't it strange, after all, that one has to arduously learn to neglect, ignore, and/or be ashamed for most of the impulses and sensations that stem from one's own body (the ratteling of your breath, the crackling of your bones, the gurgling of your intestins)?

Granted, if one were to pay attention to all one's inward noises and sensations, plus all of the sensations and noises that surround us, one would probably go crazy within 24 hours. Strange, when you think about it, that being able to survive also depends on a highly selective perception and particularly perceptive habits. The process of becoming a subject and thus 'growing up' being - to large parts - a process of desensitization.

Heritage

I live the life you never could live.
I speak because you are silenced.
I see the things you wanted to see.
I cry because you can't.
I do the things you did not dare to do.
I am happy because you told me so.
And, impalpably, I am growing - not up, but lost - among all of it.

Today's soundtrack

Unfortunately just a Van Morrison cover, but a pretty good one.

Today is one of those days when I feel like going on a vacation; or rather: when I feel like I desperately need one. I dream of a deserted island; blue sea; white sand; sunshine; books; sleeping & eating - eating & sleeping. No one to talk to; nothing to think about; nothing to care about. My soul hanging loose.

I'm afraid it's more than any travel business can offer.

Michael Jackson

Who really died yesterday, around 11.30pm CET?

Hadn't the person called Michael Jackson become a simulacrum of himself in so many different ways? A man larger than life; a star - lost maybe behind and between and among his fame and the imaginary it entails; a black man turned into a white man; a human face operated into an uncanny mask. A body-project. A musical project. A myth. The king of pop.

So, who died yesterday, around 11.30pm CET?

Still learning a lesson, this time with Cinderella

Allright, so I've been reconsidering this whole shoe business. When you think about it, Cinderella's story is pretty intriguing:

What is it really about the shoe? It is a sign of recognition and identification - the shoe functions as a kind of symbolic ID. Knowing nothing of the mysterious woman (particularly not her name, the ultimate signifier of identity), all the prince is left with is an object, or rather: a commodity (and it is a commodity of femininity, of course. Think Sacher-Masoch and fetishism, and you know what I'm talking about). But isn't it odd that a commodity should be the proof of your identity? I mean, seriously, what are the chances that in the whole kingdom there is only one person who can fit this shoe without having to cut off her toe or heel?

She must have had a particularly small foot; and isn't it very telling that the shoe doesn't fit the sisters because it is too small? How different would the story have been told if Cinderella did have, let's say, shoesize 44? But of course, if the shoe would have been too big, there wouldn't have been the possibility for her sisters to show the utter determination in trying to fit this shoe: namely, that they were willing to cut off their own toes or heels; thus sacrificing parts of their own body to fit an ideal of femininity.

So Cinderella's identification is enabled through a commodity and a commodity that implies a particular kind of feminity (small, frail, etc.). But it gets more complicated. Because the shoe is an emblem of a masquerade - Cinderella has to leave the ball (and her shoe) behind, because she was going to risk revealing the guise at a certain hour. What the prince is looking for is a mask; a figment of a night's charade; he's looking for a princess that does not exist; a princess whose carriage turns into a pumkin at midnight. (And I ask you this one thing: why didn't the shoe disappear or change back into a cabbage?)

Cinderella, thus, is a kind of drag queen for one night, if you think about it. Her identity - the one the prince is looking for to reveal by shoeish means - is a fake; it's a drag. And that's probably why the name wouldn't have worked. You can change names, you can't change feet. Cinderella is - when you think about it this way - a story about the uniqueness of bodies; the uniqueness of female bodies, the uniqueness of a female nature.

Though in the end, obviously, Cinderella isn't about magical drag at all; about femininity as a sort of drag. It is about the return of your real (female and social) idenity: Cinderella deserved to be a princess. She deserved to wear small glass slippers and ride a white horse. Because the magical masquerade of the night of the ball wasn't a masquerade at all - before her father died and her stepmother took over, she used to be a noble woman, not a maidservant counting peas.

And the morale of this little story is: The true (read: heterosexual) love of your life will make your real identity appear; it will bring the shoe that reveals it all: your worthiness, your femininity, your social standing, your merit.

And isn't that, I ask you, a bit too much to expect from a person?

Learning a lesson with Madame Bovary

Don't let yourself be fooled: the biggest myth bourgeois ideology ever set into place is the so called love of your life. I believe it has kept women all over the western hemisphere within the past 200 years or so from being content and emotionally balanced, realistic and autonomous. It is utterly bewildering to me how well-educated, funny, mature, intelligent women turn into 7-year-old girls that wanna wear a pink princess dress and become Cinderella when it comes to talking about meeting the one. It seems to me that, when it comes to the mystical love of your life and - particularly - its disappointments, we haven't really moved on from the 19th century and Madame Bovary.

So listen gal: There just ain't gonna be anybody walking around with a glass shoe that fits your foot. You're always gonna be like Cinderella's sisters: cutting of your toe to fit the shoe and smiling through the tears the pain causes you. And the worst thing is that you are going to tell yourself that it is absolutely normal that shoe hurts you; nay, you're not even gonna notice the shoe hurts you. Or else, you're going to meet someone who doesn't really have a shoe at all, or only, say, an ugly old sneaker. So you're gonna spend your time thinking about this person out there that supposedly has the glass shoe- your glass shoe -, and how you were never a sneaker person anyway, and why should you spend the rest of your life with a Adidas sneaker when you could have a Gucci glass stiletto.

But honey, why don't you just fucking get out there and get the goddam shoe for yourself?

I am discovering Eric Satie's piano music. It makes me realize how much I miss playing myself. I miss making music; literally producing it with my body; feeling it in my own hands; feeling my body shift and sink into a melody, against the instrument. I miss the touch of the keys as they give way under the weight of my fingers. I miss the way you forget about yourself; and the way you feel yourself while making music.

On a day like this, it seems like the only way to comfort me.

Things learnt in an ordinary week

#1 I sleep badly when I didn't have enough food. Even if I'm dead tired.

#2 I know nothing about my sleeping habits. Being tired is certainly no criteria for sleeping well.

#3 Try as you may, you ain't gonna change that fast. (By "fast" I mean a period of, say, a week.)

#4 Sometimes you do change though but it goes so slowly you hardly even notice it yourself until someone tells you something about you and you're like: "hey, what, this is me? when did that ever happen?", but then, the longer you think about it, you realize it's true.

#5 I want to live in an urban city. I never left province; though I gradually moved to larger cities.

#6 I want to teach but I don't want to have students to talk back at me. Or rather: I only want nice students and motivated students and smart students but not the precocious kind who are gonna be testing out their limits like fucking three-year-old toddlers in the midst of their terrible twos.

# 7 I'd rather be 95% dictatorial teacher, 5% buddy teacher; right now, it's the other way around and I have to laugh about my 5% Kim Yong-Il.

# 8 I can write and work more or less 24/7; no problem. The problem is stopping again. So that's why they say workaholic. I think I preferred cigarettes as an addiction, thank you.

Please explain the world to me

According to a recent survey, 6% of the Austrian population would rather want a military dictatorship than democracy. Six percent!!! That's 480.000 people!!!

Fucking idiots. Go fuck yourself and move to North Korea.

Kindliches Denken

An manchen Tagen der kindlich-sinnlos-vergebliche Hass und Trotz auf die Welt und alle Menschen, die nicht sie sind. Als ob man jeden - egal wen; selbst den fremden Passanten auf der Straße - anschreien müsste, weil er lebt, wo sie doch tot ist. Manchmal die Unerträglichkeit des Weiterlebens; des eigenen und des der anderen.

Die Rückkehr in die eigene Kindheit ist an manchen Tagen auch, so lernst du: Den anderen vorwerfen, dass sie nichts getan haben.

So Cold the Night

Ich fahre weg und komme an in der Stadt; ich sehe: die Türme den Fluss und den einfahrenden Zug vor mir. Ich fühle (Reiter überm Bodensee) erst jetzt - und mit Schrecken - die Traurigkeit den Schmerz die Agonie dieses Lebens, das meines war und doch nicht wirklich gelebt. Ich könnte weinen erst jetzt; und habe erst jetzt Mitleid mit mir selbst; Mitgefühl für diese Person, die ich war und immer noch bin; betäubt in ihrer Traurigkeit (ein Vogelstrauss). Ich bin traurig für mich um mich um die Zeit, die verging (verstrichen ist - ausgestrichen auch); scheinbar ohne mich und trotz mir.

Denn paradoxerweise verrinnt die Zeit nicht nur während des Glücks wie im Flug (so sagt man, ja), sondern auch im Unglück; oder vielleicht ist es tatsächlich so, dass wir die Zeit vergessen verdrängen: die Psyche bemüht, um jeden Preis nicht sich zu erinnern, nicht wahrzunehmen, nicht hinzusehen. Was bleibt, ist ein Nichts, ein Loch in der Lebenszeit; eine Fermate - gedehnt bis zur Unkenntlichkeit und leer bis ins Unverständliche hinein. Oder doch, etwas bleibt vielleicht doch - eine Erinnerung: die des Körpers; die Erfahrung eines Gefühls, welche das Leben trotz allem immer in uns hinterlässt - uns beeindruckt, im Sinne von: uns etwas eindrückt.

Appercu

Und dann sitzt du da und du wartest; wartest in die Leere und Stille hinein. Auf die Erleichterung. Doch wie ein Muskel, der - aus Angst davor, erst dann den Schmerz zu empfinden - nicht locker lassen kann, bleibt die Anspannung; es bleibt die Angst; es bleibt die Unruhe.

Und du lernst: Es ist schwierig, den Körper von seiner Alarmbereitschaft zu entwöhnen.

In der Nacht wachst du auf, weil deine Kiefer mahlen.

Quote of the day

In psychoanalysis nothing is true except the exaggerations.
Theodor W. Adorno

Seventeenth lesson of academic logic

The only problem with your PhD is that it doesn't sing you to sleep at night.

Conclusion: Work might make you happy, but it's also makes you feel lonely at times.

Quote of the day

Ich lasse mich niemals durch atmosphärische Störungen oder durch die konventionelle Zeiteinteilung beeinflussen. Ich wäre gern bereit, den Gebrauch der Opiumpfeife und des malaischen Kris wieder einzuführen, aber diese unendlich verderblicheren und zudem nur dem ideenlosen Bürgertum dienenden Instrumente wie Taschenuhr und Regenschirm ignoriere ich.

Marcel Proust - In Swanns Welt

Quote of the day

Uncle Toby [...] attempts to live by Bishop Butler's axiom that 'every thing is what it is, and not another thing.'

How true and beautifully simple - if only man and the word did not exist to give it the lie.

Sigurd Burckhardt - Tristram Shandy's Law of Gravity

Alice in Wonderland

One day I'm going to be a grown up person.

I'm going to be emotionally balanced. Small and unimportant things won't bother me, because I'm going to be able to discern the narrow, but distinctive line between "worth while" and "not worth while" the trouble. Nay, much better: Unimportant stuff won't even cross my emotional radar anymore; I won't even register it, or if at all, then only as one would register the buzz of a fly in a huge library - as some distant, barely audible humming. As a grown up person, I won't judge people anymore on the first impression; I'm going to be open-minded and tolerant to everyone (because, all in all, what I consider the false consciousness of people won't bother me that much anymore, because people in general won't bother me that much anymore).

When I'm going to be a grown up person, I'm also going to have a healthy work/life-balance (or rather: something worth calling a balance between work and life in the first place, that is: a life outside work worth calling life). Real weekends and holidays, vacations where I read the latest Paul Auster for fun, sitting on the terrace sipping a cold beer in the sunset. I'm going to have a job that actually allows me to pay for the things I want to do, and where I don't need to worry how I make it through this month and whether I find the time to go and donate blood plasma so I can afford that sport bathing suit I need. I'm going to have a grown up relationship with an equally grown up, that is: mature and reflected partner in which we actually talk about problems instead of just ignoring them.

In the words of Janosch's little tiger: "Oh wie schön ist Panama!"

Futur antérieur II

I rectify: my next post is going to be about fucking annoying students that don't know how grown ups behave and think University is school.

Futur antérieur

One of these days (when I get back my private life), I'm going to write a post about how life feels these days.

I'm going to write about how it feels to write a PhD and actually enjoy it. I'm going to write about how mysteriously my own perception of myself (or my self) gets confronted with other people's perception of myself (or my self); and how, accordingly, I am learning to readjust how I see myself (or my self). I'm also going to write about the old boys club that academia in Germany is. I'm going to write about being afraid of the future and forgetting to live in the present. I'm going to write about how it feels to be lonesome, and how it is to be lonely, and why it seems I want to be both most of the time. I'm going to write about myself as the lonesome rider. I'm going to write about the teacher I'm trying to become. I'm going to write about how I'm learning and/or trying to be a sensual person.

In the end, I guess I'm going to write about how it feels when you want to say it all, and find out that what you say (or have to say), ultimately, seems always infinitely less.

Sixteenth lesson of academic logic

I'm writing, and I'm enjoying it. It's miraculous.

Conclusion:

(= lines from a song by 2Raumwohnung)

Bleib doch so mein Leben/

Bleib so gut.

Life's a movie - somtimes. (Or the other way around?)

Have you ever seen The Graduate?
Feels kinda like my life right now. Wicked.

Learning a lesson with Don Quijote

Try fitting the world to your imagination, and you'll end up being bruised and broken.

Windmills simply ain't giants, no matter which way you turn it. So you better be satisfied with the windmills and stop drooling over imaginary giants.

Audrey Hepburn & Cary Grant @ their best

I'm minding my business. So I'd be glad if you would, too.

I can only do some things for some people on some days.

Today is not your day. And tomorrow doesn't look good either.

Quote of the day

Je me souviens des jours ancient, et je pleure.
Charles Baudelaire Les Violons de l'automne

In the beginning there was the clitoris

In everday and scientific knowledge alike, there is the persistent rumour that the clitoris looks or is like a small penis.

Well, phylogenetically speaking, the clitoris comes first. So if one was to make a comparison at all, one would have to say that the penis looks like a giant, deformed clitoris.

Highlight of the week

Yesterday was the first time I made my analyst laugh. It was the most wonderful and strangely intimate moment.

We are the economic crisis

For a kilogramm of bred you needed to work 20 minutes in 1960. Now 10. For a bottle of beer 15, now 3; for a chicken 133, now 12; and for a TV 351, now 29.

Any questions?

Quote of the day

Nette amélioration le 1er janvier. Mon état se rapproche de l'hébétude; ce n'est pas si mal.
Michel Houllebecq Extension du domaine de la lutte

Fifteenth Lession of Academic logic

There are those days when you just wanna be left alone.

Unfortunately, most of my days these days are days when I just wanna be left alone.

More unfortunate even, most of my days these days are days when I just wanna be left alone but due to circumstances I am bothered by all kinds of people and problems.

Conclusion: Life = tedious.

Semesteranfangsbilanz

Ich muss anfangen, mit meiner Energie hauszuhalten; geizig und egoistisch damit zu sein. Wenn das Semester so weiter geht wie diese ersten beiden Tage, dann bin ich bald wieder reif fürs Burnout.

Tief durch atmen. Und 3, 2, 1...

Two of a kind...

Okay. So I've been writing these past couple of days/weeks; for work, not for fun that is. (Well actually also a bit for the fun of course. But I'll come back to that in a minute.)
I've also been having a very intense and emotionally disturbing time in my analysis (and that is: in my life). Not really a lot of fun, but kinda satisfactory nonetheless.
Both of which made me sort of incapable to write something here. So now I'm wondering if I have a sort of limit of writing/creative capacities (and also whether that exists in general, and not only for me). It seems that because I was busy with academic writing on the one, analysing my life in therapy on the other hand, I didn't feel the urge to write something here.
It's amazing how both of these activities are about analysis and interpretation; and this might be one of the most important reasons for my sympathy for psychoanalysis. I feel a very similar degree of satisfaction (or fun, as I would have it above) both in analysing a text and analysing myself; the pleasure culminating in the moment when you gain insight into something previously unclear or unknown to you. Things - almost suddenly and arbitrarily, out of the blue - fall into place, and you realize something you haven't realized before. Although this gnostic moment is of course no coincidence, but - in terms of psychoanalysis - the doing of the unconscious, revealed by the process of free association.

Both are processes of sense-making, but without you yourself really knowing where that process will lead you. I believe the most pleasure is gained precisely from the fact that the insight somewhat surprises you. That way, even if you realize a negative thing, you still have some sort of "pleasure in knowing".

It's the same, finally, with this little piece right here; I started writing without know that this is where I would end. Right. Here.

I'm lovin' it

Great music, choreography, editing, colours... I particularly like the snap at 0:23.
(NB: I think I want to have my hair cut like this.)


Vincent - tu viens me voir quand tu veux!

Small compendium of the swimming ethnologist

Recent activities in the enhancement of longevity have brought me back to the cultures of sport. Like any other community and/or discursive dispositive, sports have a set of specific subject positions that you must comply with in order to become a legitimate or accepted member. Judging from my particular swimming experience, they are the following:

(Note that the categories can be - with slight adaption - transferred to any other kind of sport.)

- The absolute beginner: With his/her unassertive look and habitus, the absolute beginner is easily identifiable by his/her assigned domain (reigned by total chaos), that is: everything that isn't the lanes visibly marked as for swimmers only. You will also easily recognize an absolute beginner by the lack of the very basic accessoire of every serious swimmer, the so called goggles. Some daring beginner will, after having bravely absolved a considerable amount of time in his/her region and familiarizing with goggles, trespass into the swimmer lanes, upon which he/she is either doomed to drown, die of a heart attack after a lane swum at the limits of his/her physical capacities (while being outdistanced by at least 12 other swimmers), or survive and henceforth be an officially accredited, serious swimmer.

- The desperate: A hounded look and slighlty despairing manner, the body of the desperate swimmer will have "I want to go home" written all over. Clearly, the desperate swimmer is overstrained, yet he/she will do everything to keep up with the norms of the swimmer lanes, and that is mainly because he/she likes to think of him-/herself as athletic. The obvious split between outer appearence and inner being (that is: capacities) will consistently be ignored by the desperate swimmer, although apparent to every other. Usually, the desperate will swim a maximum of two lanes at a time, after which he/she will retire for a 20min "stretching" break at the edge of the pool.

- The do-or-die: To call his/her look determined would be the understatement of the century. The do-or-die swimmer is clearly not here for fun or relaxation or entertainment; he/she is here to do business, that is: break a world record, or at least the national one. He/she will mercilessly floor everyone and everything that dares to come into his/her way. After 2 hours of swimming, he/she will usually go on to absolve another countless kilometres of jogging or cycling, because - obviously - the do-or-die is training for the next Ironman.

- The pro: Former or active swimming professional, the pro will with a single tempo cross half the length of the lane. He/she is able to do a professional turn even at the shallow end of the lane and without swallowing half the water of the pool. He/she will also use different, variously shaped foamed rubber accessoires (and while using, say, only the arms, he/she will still be faster than most of the others). The ultimate and foolproof indication that you really are seeing a pro is that he/she is the only one in the whole pool doing the dolphin butterfly strike.

- The senior: You will recognize the senior swimmer immediately, because her/his skin looks like dried fruit already before he/she enters the water. The senior swimmer clearly has seen better days, but nevertheless, he/she wants to keep in shape, and he/she does so in a pool because swimming, for whatever reason, is considered a particularly gentle kind of sport. The senior swim style is best characterized as ballet of the whales meets the dying swan.

And finally, the category I consider myself to belong to...

- The elegant fish: What strikes the eye first is a certain, nonchalant laissez-faire attitude. Every part of the elegant fish will tell you that if he/she wanted to, he/she could easily make the effort and outdo most of the other swimmers. But that would be unelegant and kind of popular, and elegance is the prime principle of the elegant fish (hence the name). The elegant fish easily blends into his/her element and has a swimming style best characterized as water camouflage. Understatement is the elegant's fish second principle.

The same but not quite

So there is is. You wake up one morning, and feel - not completely different, but slighty off track. As if slightly unhinged. It is not a big deal, all in all. Your perception of the world just a wee bit changed, as if hearing through clogged ears. And it's not even that you mind it that much. That may be the most surprising thing about it all: the amount of indifference felt. No drama.

Images past and forgotten resurge.

And it seems that all of a sudden, you can feel the weight of your own body.

Quote of the day

When a psychic structure is objectively determined by economics and political relationships, it cannot be dealt with by means of purely pschyological therapies; yet it is equally impossible to deal with it by means of purely objective transformations of the economic and political situation itself, since the habits remain and exercise a baleful and crippling residual effect.

Fredric Jameson World Literature in an Age of Multinational Capitalism

Dressing fantasy

I wish I could wear one of Hussein Chalayan's dresses for my PhD defence.

Beckett's Waiting for Godot meets Orwell's 1984. Or: North Korean Theatre of the Absurd.

After launching a long-range missile today, North Korea claimed it had successfully shot a satellite into space. A satellite that, besides registering some sort of space data, was supposedly playing revolutionary songs in praise of dictator Kim Jong-Il.

Dear Barak Obama and all you other super military power people. Do not worry about a space defence shield against aliens to protect the earth. North Korea found the solution. Motto: Communism or death; even for you alien buggers.

H-I-L-A-R-I-O-U-S, I say.

Who the Facebook are you?

So half my class turned up on Facebook in these past couple of week.

It's the oddest thing. All of a sudden being confronted with your past. People you once spent most of your time with, everyday, in my case for 9 (very long) years. You're confronted with the person you once were. And the person you might have turned out to be.

But do they really care who you are now (or, as a matter of fact: did they care who you were in the past)? For the most part, I don't think so. I mean, I'm not really interested in what most of them have done, or are doing right now, or - as a matter of fact - I wasn't even interested in them back in the days when we were in school together. It just so happened that we shared the same classroom, whether we liked each other or not.

I don't mean to be snobbish or anything. It is a matter of pure indifference, actually. And frankly, I don't really know why I should feel in any way connected to those people, just because we once accidentally decided to go to the same school.

It's a bit like with your family; classmates are people you can't really chose. And high school reunions, too, are a bit like family reunions; certainly feels that way to me.

Fab's words of wisdom

Erinnern und Erleben sind, physiologisch betrachtet, beinahe dasselbe.

Womöglich hat Proust sich deswegen die zweite Hälfte seines Lebens zurückgezogen, um zu schreiben; und schreibend von seinen Erinnerungen zu leben.

Womöglich ist das auch der Grund dafür, dass wir Träume so intensiv erleben.

Und der Grund dafür, dass Lesen Abenteuer im Kopf ist.

So gesehen, wäre womöglich - physiologisch betrachtet - schreiben, träumen, lesen, erinnern und erleben beinahe dasselbe.

False consciousness or something of the likes

You know, compulsory heterosexism is a powerful tool. It makes people see what they want to see; it makes people believe what they want to believe.
Love is blind? Heterosexuality is too.

Quotes of the day

Ich erinnere mich daran, dass ich ihr sagte, dass es für den überwiegenden Teil unserer gemeinsame Zeit ihre Aufgabe sei, mir körperliche Gegebenheiten bewusst zu machen, in den Vordergrund zu rücken, die wir unsere ganze Kindheit über lernen zu ignorieren, um überhaupt leben zu können. Und dann gab sie mir eine Antwort, die mir einleuchtete: Dass nämlich das 'Lernen' in der Kindheit falsch gewesen sei, sonst hätte ich es nicht nötig, ihr gegenüber in einem Sessel zu sitzen und dreimal in der Woche um Hilfe zu bitten.

Werde ich die naheliegende Feststellung machen, dass das Wort 'neurotisch' vielleicht den Zustand eines Menschen bezeichnet, der in hohem Maße bewusst und differenziert ist. Der Kern der Neurose ist der Konflikt. Und der Kern des Lebens heute, eines Lebens, das sich allem stellt, was vorgeht, ist der Konflikt. Tatsächlich habe ich die Stufe erreicht, wo ich die Leute ansehe und behaupte - er oder sie, sie sind überhaupt nur intakt, weil sie sich entschieden haben, auf dieser oder jener Stufe abzublocken. Die Leute bleiben gesund, indem sie abblocken, indem sie sich selbst begrenzen.

Doris Lessing Das goldene Notizbuch

Coincidence or destiny?

The most amazing thing happened to me this week. Before I share this most extraordinary little piece of adventure, let me give you the following, essential information: To get to my office, I have to take two different subway lines and change at a particular stop. Usually, when I change the subway, I walk all the way back to the end of the train, because then I'm right at the exit once I arrive.

All right, so on Wednesday I get up in the morning, I go through all my regular morning routine, I get onto the subway and change at the usual place. I make my way up the escalator, and I arrive just at the same time as the train, so instead of walking all the way back, I get onto the middle wagon. I stand right next to the doors, not because the train is particularly crowded; just 'cos I feel like it. Okay, so at the next stop a man and a woman get onto the train and they stand right in front of me. Looking without thinking at this guy, I suddenly think that his face seems familiar; and familiar as in: I know you from a former life (called teenage years). So I turn off my Ipod and realize they are talking Austrian. And suddenly it dawns on me: I had a "relationship" (well, actually, I believe it lasted about 4 weeks or something) with this guy back home when I was a teenager. After which I never saw him again, because he didn't really belong to my circle of friends or my school.

Isn't that the most unbelievable thing? Granted, that he'd be living in Munich is probably not that unlikely, but imagine what had to happen for us to meet on this particular train on this particular day? Just a shift of thirty seconds or so in our respective trajetories that morning, and we wouldn't have stood in the same wagon of the same train right in front of each other.

I'd say: Destiny 1, coincidence 0. Now I only have to figure out what destiny wanted to tell me with this encounter.

My litte Pony - revisited

For those of you who also had a little pony as a child. If you want to see more hilarious make-overs, click here.

Soap&Skin

My latest fancy.

Quote of the day

Zu umschreiben, was man selbst getan hat, war vielleicht eine Möglichkeit, Zugehörigkeit zu sich selbst zu bekommen.
Per Olov Enquist Der Kartenzeichner

Fourteenth lesson of academic logic

Once you have gotten yourself around to actually start writing, it becomes, of course, one of the most gratifying, exciting, mind-thrilling things on earth. You can feel your brain bubbling like a fizzy tablet dropped in a whirlpool.

Conclusion: I love my job; even if I always wine and complain about it.

Be real

Okay, this is kinda like a follow up story on the killing spree business.

So of course now everyone is discussing the damaging and dangerous effects of violent video games, particularly ego-shooting games (those are the ones played in first-person-perspective), and the bad influence of hiphop/rap (mostly because of a video/song by a no name German rapper that was about running amok. The video was banned immediately; thanks to which - I imagine - the guy is a millionaire by now). All sorts of very intelligent, well-educated and worried adults give interviews discussing whether the influence of violent video games and violent song texts explains why youngsters get a gun and start shooting people in their school. What they discuss is the inflation of the boundary between reality and fiction; between the real and the virtual world - and whether or not that has something to do with said games and music.

As far as I know, there is to date no empirical survey whatsoever that would prove or exonerate violent "fiction" (in whatever form) as the cause for killing sprees. Be that as it may, what annoys me in the current discussions yet once again is that they seem to suggest "we", the adults, (that is: the normal and mentally sane adults) can of course differenciate between the virtual and the real. Or, let me put it yet another way: As if much of ourselves, our lives, our aspirations, our conception of the world wasn't virtual, that is: shaped by the imaginary (in the psychoanalytical sense). As if the distinction between reality and imagination wasn't quite impossible - because what is "real" for the psyche is a very difficult matter in the first place. (And I won't even start to discuss Baudrillard here; who, I'm sure, would have a lot of things to say about the reality or virtuality of events.)

Secondly, and even more astonishing to me, is the implicit assumption that children and young adults are idiots. As if they weren't able to discern between reality and fiction. Seriously. The "problem", as far as I see it, is that fiction causes "real" (whatever that means) feelings (which is at the same time the widely appraised benefit of fiction); and this happens despite the fact that we know we're in a fictious world. I could tell myself as much as I wanted to that Walt Disney's Snowwhite was but a movie; the queen-turned-witch still scared the shit out of me.

Finally, and this is quite a Derridaen point to make I guess, what is annoying in those kind of discussions is that it also seems to involve a discussion about the literal and the figurative (which, needless to say, is another variation of the "real" and the "unreal"). It's a discussion about what texts or games "really" mean, and whether or not kids will be able to understand and discern that "real" meaning. In regard to the said rap song about a killing spree, people were worried that kids might not read it as a form of provocative social criticism (= its "real" meaning, according to the rapper), but as an instruction manual for their next violent run around school (= the "wrong" meaning). The Derridaen question to ask would obviously be who is in the position to define the "true" or "real" meaning of a text; and if there is a "true" meaning of a text to begin with. In this particular case, it's very tricky of course, because the literal meaning isn't the literal meaning (i.e. you go to your school and shoot people is not the "true" meaning); and how, I ask you, should the generation of poor, illiterate, angry-without-a-cause, stupid boys and young men be able to understand such an intricate and complex message?

Question to my future self

I wonder whether I will ever feel less uneasy about things.

Winnenden - Columbine

Fünf einsame Frauen, von denen jede für sich in aller Stille verrückt wird, trotz Ehemann und Kindern, oder eher deshalb. Eine Eigenschaft hatten sie alle: Zweifel an sich selbst. Ein Schuldgefühl, weil sie nicht glücklich waren. Die Formulierung, die sie alle gebrauchten: "Mit mir muß irgend etwas nicht stimmen."

Doris Lessing Das goldene Notizbuch

I've really been wondering the past days about those killing sprees. The one in the US was almost covered up by the massacre in a German high school, where a 17-year-old shot to death 10 pupils and 3 teachers before killing himself.

The media now are, obviously, full of experts giving their opinion about how and why they think such a thing could happen. What seems striking to me is that most of the people running amok are young men. Granted, the connection of violence and masculinty isn't exactly what you'd call a fresh concept. Apparently we've had - at least since the early 20th century - generations of young men who aren't only willing to kill, but willing to kill themselves. (Which, at least in my opinion, has something to do with the instauration of the modern army and nation states.)

What is thus very interesting in this respect, at least from my perspective, is the fact that almost every killing spree ends with suicide (though I am not sure if - causally speaking - suicide is the end, and not the starting point). I believe those young men are just another form of suicidal bombers. Of course, contrary to religious fundamentalist or separatist suicidal bombers, they do not openly display a political agenda. It seems as if they "merely" suffer on a very personal level and for very personal reasons. But then you have to ask yourself why they seek this kind of publicity (in the sense of a public space and attention), and why they don't merely kill themselves in silence, but chose to go out there and cause as much damage as they possibly can.

And what they are saying, in the end, is fuck you. Fuck this society. Of course it's a personal problem, but if you think about it, those young men do some form of social protest. And it's not about violent video games and nerdy children being outsiders in high school. This 17-year-old kid theoretically speaking was a so-called "winner" of German society: well-off family, educated, with all the possibities of making it. (Notice, by the way, that a lot of the suicide bombers in Western Europe do have a similar situation. The 9/11-terrorists were educated men who, if it weren't for their ethnic background, would've probably been able to live a comfortable life in Germany. Another question - one that Houellebecq might ask - would be whether Tim K. was an economic winner, but a sexual looser.) In any case: what he's saying is: I don't even want to be a winner in this society, in fact, I don't want to be part of it at all; and I want to kill as many people as I can out of sheer rage and desperation.

The host of a discussion round was despairingly asking psychiatrists and teachers, policemen and media experts why there was a generation of angry kids "out there". Quite frankly, I'd find it bewildering if those kids weren't angry; if, given the present social conditions, they weren't on the verge of going completely crazy.

As I said in an earlier post, I think the question isn't why and how things like that happen. The question is why they don't happen more often.

NB: This is the only (and maybe most important) objection to psychoanalysis I would agree on, i.e. that it is reactionary in the sense that it "cures" people's personal problems, as if they weren't suffering from society but from their individual, particular biography. It's like: People go crazy in patriarchal, capitalist, heterosexist nuclear families, but hey, go see a shrink and you'll do fine and be back into your machine routine in no time. I believe Freud was very right with his description of the problematic of identity formation in a Western patriarchal, capitalist society, but since he was an old chauvinist himself, he wouldn't dare think of any other way out other than curing his patients from their neurosis and hysteria so that they could go back to their bourgeois lives which made them sick in the first place.

Bloggobirthday

Dear blog,

I wanted to seize the opportunity and tell you how grateful I am you came into my life. We've come a long way since we started our journey together; you bore with me through all my caprices and tempers, you witnessed the good, the bad, and the mediocre.

Stay just the way you are, and I hope there are a lot more years ahead of us.

Happy Birthday!

Bloggingly yours,

Blogger

The Celibate Life - Thoughtful.

What you miss being single is not so much the company (because after all, you have friends and other people dear to you).

What you miss being single is not so much the sharing of a daily routine (because after all, routines get quite tedious; and you've grown a little peculiar with time anyways).

What you miss being single not so much the sex (because after all, you can masturbate and have one night stands).

What you miss being single is not so much emotional security and intimacy (because after all, you don't really believe in finding such a thing with another person anymore, if you can't find it within yourself).

What you do miss is the body of the Other; to touch, to smell, to taste, to nestle against. The incredible strangeness of another body that can't be denied or rationalized. (And I'm afraid this does not come out right the way I mean it. What I mean is not remotely connected to sexual attraction or desire. What I'm talking about is that every baby, even if you satisfy its basic needs, will eventually die if it doesn't get some sort of bodily attention and affection; if it does not feel the attention and touch of another body. Almost as if human life without the feeling of other bodies was unbearable and ultimately unlivable.)

Bitter, sarcastic cynic

(Inspired by a scene from Hannah and her Sisters)

The problem with everyone wondering why people run amok is that it's the wrong question.

Considering the present situation of the world, you'd better ask why things like that don't happen more often.

Thirteenth lesson of academic logic

I don't know how or why or when that fear of writing materialised in my life. Fact is, I've lost the light heartedness and airiness of writing; all that's left is an incredible anxiety in the face of a white page.
Or maybe I fantasize that I used to be able to write without fear; just like childhood days always seem like the golden days in retrospect.

Conclusion: Having to write an essay and trying to stop smoking is NOT a good combination. Believe me.

Quotes of the day

Et c'est bien cela l'inter-texte: l'impossibilité de vivre hors du texte infini - que ce texte soit Proust, ou le journal quotidien, ou l'écran télévisuel: le livre fait sens, le sens fait la vie.

Caractère asocial de la jouissance. Elle est la perte abrupte de la socialité, et pourtant il ne s'ensuit aucune retombée vers le sujet (la subjectivité), la personne, la solitude: tout se perd, intégralement. Fond extrême de la clandestinité, noir de cinéma.

J'écris parce que je ne veux pas des mots que je trouve: par soustraction.

De même que l'enfant sait que sa mère n'a pas de pénis et tout en même temps croit qu'elle en a un (économie dont Freud a montré la rentabilité), de même le lecteur peut dire sans cesse: je sais bien que ce ne sont que des mots, mais tout de même... (je m'émeus comme si ces mots énoncaient une réalité).

Roland Barthes Le plaisir du texte

Ideology and ideological state apparatus

The Spanish socialist government replaced compulsory religious education with civics. Countering this law, roughly 50.000 parents withdrew their children from those lessons because they considered the taught content (democracy, equality between the sexes, homosexuality, immigration, globalisation,...) as indoctrination. Particularly catholic parents felt that their children were being infused with certain (read: communist) morals, and claimed that it was their (inalenienable) right to corrupt their children themselves and with their own morals.

Now, I don't know anything about this civic education business, and honestly, I don't care whether it "really" has a leftist coloration or not. I am simply astonished by the fact that those people obviously think that their children are blank spaces and will-less machines that can be fed with whatever content you have and ta-da! they become well-behaved, honest communists, who think men and women equal and don't consider homosexuality a curse or an illness. (Of course, since there never were any youngsters who revolted against the values and morals of their teachers or parents.) I am also astonished by the fact that obviously they don't think that their children get infused with values and morals in any other class. Like: History class, as if that had anything to do with morals or ideology? Please! Moral free schools! Teachers without opinions! Lessons without ideology! TV without information! Capitalism without bad banks! Society without citizens! Markets without states!

For heaven's sake people, you can't be serious about this.

Quote of the day

Dans la perversion (qui est le régime du plaisir textuel) il n'y a pas de "zones érogènes" (expression au reste assez casse-pieds); c'est l'intermittence, comme l'a bien dit la psychanalyse, qui est érotique: celle de la peau qui scintille entre deux pièces (le pantalon et le tricot), entre deux bords (la chemise entrouverte, le gant et la manche); c'est ce scintillement même qui séduit, ou encore: la mise en scène d'une appartition-disparition. Ce n'est pas là le plaisir du strip-tease corporel ou du suspense narratif. Dans l'un et l'autre cas, pas de déchirure, pas de bords: un dévoilement progressif: toute l'excitation se réfugie dans l'espoir de voir le sexe (rêve de collegien) ou de connaître la fin de l'histoire (satisfaction romanesque).

Roland Barthes Le plaisir du texte

Onanist manifesto

Don't knock masturbation — it's sex with someone I love.

Annie Hall

Masturbation has a pretty prestressed history. Particularly starting from the late 18th, early 19th century onwards, Europe witnessed a crusade against onanism; medicine and pedagogy blamed it to be the cause of almost every mental or physical illness you could think of. Interestingly enough (I've read quite a bit about the topic, as you might have guessed), there was a particular link between reading/books an masturbation. Of course because in pre-movie times porn was mostly in written form (Rousseau once referred to them as the books you read with one hand). But even more so because reading - like masturbating - was something to be done alone; both were solitary vices.

Masturbation was a site where boundaries between individual and societal body, public and private, and the particular fears of bourgeois society became apparent. Foucault (who else?) described the fear about infantile masturbation as the key trigger for the instauration of the heterosexual, bourgeois nuclear family; the infantile body becoming the area of a particular parental care and thus - hello psychoanalysis - the vanishing point of incestual desires. Masturbation was also a key figure of class anxieties, because the servants were seen as the modern Evas who seduced innocent and healthy children into depravation. They were the enemy in one's own house; potentially dangerous because they would teach the precious offspring an alluring hobby which in the end would lead to the degeneration of bourgeois class and thus of all society. (The most interesting story to me is the one where nurses would masturbate crying and annoying babys and toddlers to calm them down.)

Masturbation was more or less absolved in the 20th century, particularly by dear Siggi who was one of the first ones to openly accord sexual drives to children. Nevertheless, masturbation beyond childhood and puberty still carried (and carries) the stain of deviantness and something vaguely associated with infantilism (also dear Siggi's idea, because the ultimate goal of sexual development was of course genital, heterosexual intercourse). To masturbate is embarrassing, pubertal, deficient - you're only doing it because you can't get the real thang.

I, for one, am really into masturbation. I got a late start, but enjoy it all the more. I don't consider it as a supplement (to speak with Derrida) in any way or as something inferiour or less good than sex with another person (in fact, I've had sexual partners where masturbation clearly would have been the better choice). I just think it's a different way of having sex. I would like to see it as a technology of self in the Foucauldian sense; a bodily exercise where you work on yourself, for yourself. I see it as a way of being nice to myself, of taking care of my body; also a way of getting to know my body and explore my fantasy and my mind.

When I masturbate, I feel like the boundaries of my body are becoming strangely blurred. You know, it's like when you go to sleep and there is this moment where you can't exactly tell where your arm ends and the part of your body on which your arm rests starts. I get a sense of total disorientation or rather: I feel like my whole sensations are solely focused on my lower back and pubic region.

I kinda feel like a Monchichi, you know those stuffed animals you had in childhood that had those plastic fingers you could stick in their mouths?

Twelfth lesson of academic logic

It's very easy not to write a PhD, because there's nothing that can't keep you from actually writing it: Cleaning your fridge, going to find a Turkish supermarket, reading anything that is remotely not connected to your topic, having a chat with a friend or a collegue, going for coffee; pick and choose.

It's also very easy to feel bad about your PhD in general and your topic in particular; any negative comment by a passer-by that doesn't have a clue what you're writing about will do.

Conclusion: I'm a PhD-hypochondriac. It causes me a constant level of sorrow and worries, without actually anything really troublesome happening (least of all: that I am actually writing).

Rectification

I got up this morning and realized that serotonine hangovers do exist.

In German we call them muscle cat, though considering the amount of pain my legs are causing, I'd rather call it muscle lion.

Thus, on the third day of the rest of my life, I went to bed human, and woke up on the fourth with a walk like a rheumatic duck.

Day 3

On the third day of the rest of my life I took my body for a run, and it made me a present immediately.

Serotonine, man, serotonine. It's for free and you don't get a hangover.

Illumination

On the second day of the rest of my life, I realized that I was heart-broken.
So I sat down listening to music which made me cry.
Because I figured that there was no sense in spending the rest of your life pretending to yourself that you're stronger than you really are.

The first day of the rest of my life

The first day of the rest of my life started with good news, i.e. my dermatologist told me that I was not going to die of skin cancer (or at least not now). Needless to say, this is a sine qua non for starting the rest of your life, because, after all, it would actually be impossible to have the first day of the rest of your life without having a rest of a life to live.

On the first day of the rest of my life, I decided to take things easy and enjoy the moment. Whereever I went today, I tried to walk slowly and consciously, savouring every minute, even the minutes I had to wait for public transport. Because clearly, when you are starting the rest of your life, you want not a single precious minute to pass you by.

On the first day of the rest of my life, I went to see my analyst, and found out that what I was most scared of was to die alone. Hence my wish for a baby. Needless to say, I am not going to go and get knocked up by the first passer-by, because, after all, when the rest of your life just started, you don't want to blindfoldly rush into things.

On the first day of the rest of my life, I went shopping because I figured that when you've just found out you've got the rest of your life to live, this is clearly not the day to be frugal. Also, you want to be well dressed for the rest of your life, and wear shiny brown cowboy-like boots.

On the first day of the rest of my life, I cooked myself a delicious dinner, because I thought it a good idea to be a bit more hedonistic for the rest of the life ahead of me.

On the first day of the rest of my life, I called my friends who I had been worrying over the weekend and told them that today was the first day of the rest of my life, because clearly, when you've just started the rest of your life, you want people dear to you to be part of it.

On the first day of the rest of my life, I vowed never to google any medical conditions or symptoms again, because, obviously, you don't want to spend the rest of your life worrying about death.