Deum et animam scire cupio.

Kingdom Come

(Coldplay)

Still my heart and hold my tongue
I feel my time
My time has come
Let me in
Unlock the door
I never felt this way before

And the wheel just keeps on turning
The drummer begins to drum
I don’t know which way I’m going
I don’t know which way I’ve come

Hold my head inside your hands
I need someone who understands
I need someone, someone who hears
For you I’ve waited all these years

For you I’d wait 'til kingdom come
Until my day, my day is done
And say you'll come and set me free
Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me

In your tears and in your blood
In your fire and in your flood
I hear you laugh, I heard you sing
I wouldn’t change a single thing
And the wheels just keep on turning
The drummers begin to drum
I don’t know which way I’m going
I don’t know what I’ve become

For you I’d wait 'til kingdom come
Until my days, my days are done
And say you'll come and set me free
Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me
Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me
Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me

Recovered Thoughts on "Real" Jobs: Nietzsche Again

"At bottom, one now feels when confronted with work – and what is invariably meant is relentless industry from early till late – that such work is the best policy, that it keeps everybody in harness, and powerfully obstructs the development of reason, of covetousness, of the desire for independence. For it uses up a tremendous amount of nervous energy and takes it away from reflection, brooding, dreaming, worry, love, and hatred: it always sets a small goal before one’s eyes and permits easy and regular satisfactions In that way a society in which the members continually work hard will have more security; and security is now adored as the supreme goddess." - once again, Mr. Nietzsche

More Snippets of Nietzchean Insight

“individually, but the single human being alone for himself, to gain some insight into his own misery and need, into his own limitation…” - Nietzsche

“Nietzsche describes “Dionysian man” as one who has “once looked truly into the essence of things” (56)

“In Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil it is not enough for the highest type to comprehend “the eternal nature of things”; he must also create and command it” 

Epimeleia Heautou

From the Classical Self to the Modern Subject
(interview with Michel Foucault)

Q. What is the care of the self which you have decided to treat separately in Le Souci de soi?

M.F. What interests me in the Hellenistic culture, in the Greco-Roman culture, starting from about the third century B.C. and continuing until the second or third century after Christ, is a precept for which the Greeks had a specific word, epimeleia heautou, which means taking care of one’s self. It does not mean simply being interested in oneself, nor does it mean having a certain tendency to self-attachment or self-fascination. Epimeleia heautou is a very powerful word in Greek which means working on or being concerned with something. For example, Xenophon used the word epimeleia heautou to describe agricultural management. The responsibility of a monarch for his fellow citizens was also epimeleia heautou. That which a doctor does in the course of caring for a patient s epimeleia heautou. It is therefore a very powerful word; it describes a sort of work, an activity; it implies attention, knowledge technique.

Q. But isn’t the application of knowledge and technology to a the self a modern invention?

M.F. Knowledge played a different role in the classical care of the self. There are very interesting things to analyze about relations between scientific knowledge and the epimeleia heautou. The one who cared for himself had to choose among all the things that you can know through scientific knowledge only those kinds of things which were relatively important to him and important to life.

Q. So theoretical understanding, scientific understanding, was second to and guided by ethical and aesthetic concerns?

M.F. Their problem and their discussion concerned what limited sorts of knowledge where useful for epimeleia. For instance, for the Epicureans, the general knowledge of what is the world, of what is the necessity of the world, the relation between world, necessity and the gods—all that was very important for the care of the self. Because it was a matter first of mediation: if you were able exactly to understand the necessity of the world, then you could master passions in a much better way, and so on. So, for the Epicureans, there was a kind of adequation between all possible knowledge and the care of the self. For the Stoics, the true self is only by what I can be master of.

Q. So knowledge is subordinate to the practical end of mastery?

M.F. Epictetus is very clear on that. He gives as an exercise to walk every morning in the streets looking, watching. And if you meet a consular figure you say, “Is the consul something I can master?” No, so I have nothing to do. If I meet a beautiful girl or boy, is their beauty, their desirability, something which depends on me, and so on? For the Christians, things are quite different; for Christians, the possibility that Satan can get inside your soul and give you thoughts you cannot recognize as satanic, but that you might interpret as coming from God, leads to uncertainty about what is going on inside your soul. You are unable to know what the real root of your desire is, at least without hermeneutic work.

Rilke

“if there is no communion between other people and yourself, try to be near things, which will not desert you; the nights are still there, and the winds that go through the trees and over many lands; among things and with the animals everything is still full of happening, in which you may take a part.” 

- Rilke, Letters To a Young Poet 

When I did feel that any relation I had to other people was never the right one to allow into my darkest depths, I did immerse myself in these eternal things - things still so full of happening and life - and had indeed resigned myself to these being the singular complete refuge for my soul. I still intently share in them for myself. But my soul has a refuge now, in another human being. Something I've never accomplished with complete success like this before. Fantastical.

"Real" Job

A few months ago, one of the things I wanted more than anything else in the world, was to be relieved of this status that I had brought upon myself of unconventional, weird, something of a pariah because of the way that I carry myself, the decisions I have made, the fact I was willing to work a highly unconventional 'job' (teaching Philosophy to inmates) for no pay, and all but still living off my parents except for my two-to-three-times-a-week-shady job. I sat in a Starbucks downtown, still wearing the clothes I'd taught in at San Quentin the day before, I'd just spent the night at my dad's house - him ever graciously having invited me over after several most unpleasant  and painful days - and ridden the ferry back across the bay with him in the morning, and I sat, an impostor, feeling the deep emotional wound - repercussions of some of my unconventional decisions - in what appeared to be financial district attire, with my coffee and my laptop, but I was pretending, and I was wishing that I wasn't. I was wishing I was sitting there like that because I was getting ready to go to my 9-5, seeming to be but anything but.

Well now I have my normal person job, or I've worked the first day of it anyway. And I just pray that I don't forget my dreams of scholarship and creativity, that I don't lose that thing in me that has kept me strange all these years. I pray that I don't become one of the millions of people who go to their jobs day in and day out, and like everyone else, never really forgets the truth of their resigned existence, but just get better at lying.

Although, I must say, it IS a relief to come home and have NO work to stay up into the late hours doing. The grass will always be greener, no matter whether I'm poor, artistic, intellectual, in love, rich, somewhere in between them all.

What else to do right now except listen to Apolcalyptica and watch Revolutionary Road, wait for my love to come home.

Watching the Eucalyptus dancing.


I'm crying my eyes out.