2005-05-25
what animal are you?
according to my birthday I am dragon, but I'm not chinese; also I'm Sagittarius, which is half person half horse at least in pictures... maybe this is more accurate... though more accurately I am one of those creepily hairless, upright shuffling human things.
***
I realized yesterday and more today that outside of my necessary contact with business life... my internal reality... does not adhere to, or pay attention to, notions of time passing, things progressing. I feel more like I'm swimming in some big ocean of events, than passing through successive years. which means I'm not detached from all of my previous selves. the only thing is it gets a bit hairy sometimes trying to keep everything organized. organized enough to spit out sentences that make sense to the person I'm talking with.
mostly I realized this all in one moment and started unravelling it. I was walking down the back alley (montreal has the most beautiful back alleys) thinking about something from when I was a kid or when I lived with my family, and I realized that I dwell on the past, A LOT. like, I really really miss it. I really really miss being a child and all the attendant discovering and carefree-ness [?]. and I know it's kind of icky when supposed grown-ups use the word 'child' about themselves -- I too cringe when people describe themselves as "childlike". I'm not going to do that -- nor do I feel that I need to re-establish a relationship with "my inner child".
I just need to figure out how to maintain my affection for the part of my life that's past, while seeing the things of the now more clearly, instead of sort of half noticing them through a fog.
this sounds more problematic than it is. I should qualify that many realizations I have strike me as dramatic lightning bolts to the soul, but actually, they are applicable to a tiny tiny percentage of my overall existence. still, though, at the moment, that percentage is overwhelming, so it's good to get somewhere with it, I think.
I started reading a book of Foucault's work on Religion and Culture, yesterday. I think I'm in love with Foucault. Except he's gay. and dead.
but long-distance relationships really are my preference, so I think this could be just beautiful.
Here is a brief quotation from the introduction by James Bernauer, which gave me thrills and chills as I read in bed last night:
"I believe that even the most a-theological of Foucault's readers would find it impossible not to see how distinctive was his effort to escape identities. He claimed he wrote in order to have no face... a special strange ambition which expressed itself in lines such as these: 'Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.'"
pansycline at 9:34 p.m.