O Superman

apropos

encumbrance

A lonesome madness blankets my every
outburst with rarefied dismay.

of conflict and not speaking

dear self, for future reference:

"Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket, and do not pull it out and strike it merely to show you have one. If you are asked what o'clock it is, tell it, but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman." Lord Chesterfield

le artiste manque v. family

A few excerpts from my current reading (The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker) to hold this blog over while I confront related engagements through reticence rather than composition...


"The answer is not far to seek: the depressed person avoids the possibility of independence and more life precisely because these are what threaten him with destruction and death. He holds on to the people who have enslaved him in a network of crushing obligations, belittling interaction, precisely because these people are his shelter, his strength, his protection against the world. Like most everyone else the depressed person is a coward who will not stand alone on his own center, who cannot draw from within himself the necessary strength to face up to life. So he embeds himself in others; he is sheltered by the necessary and willingly accepts it. But now his tragedy is plain to see: his necessity has become trivial, and so his slavish, dependent, depersonalized life has lost its meaning. It is frightening to be in such a bind. One chooses slavery because it is safe and meaningful; then one loses the meaning of it, but fears to move out of it. One has literally died to life but must remain physically in this world. And thus the torture of depressive psychosis: to remain steeped in one's failure and yet to justify it, to continue to draw a sense of worthwhileness out of it."

* * *

"Men aren't built to be gods, to take in the whole world; they are built like other creatures, to take in the piece of ground in front of their noses. Gods can take in the whole of creation because they alone can make sense of it, know what it is all about and for. But as soon as a man lifts his nose from the ground and starts sniffing at eternal problems like life and death, the meaning of a rose or a star cluster - then he is in trouble. Most men spare themselves this trouble by keeping their minds on the small problems of their lives just as their society maps these problems out for them. These are what Kierkegaard called the 'immediate' men and the 'Philistines.' They 'tranquilize themselves with the trivial' - and so they can lead normal lives."

* * *

"The neurotic's frustration as a failed artist can't be remedied by anything but an objective creative work of his own. Another way of looking at it is to say that the more totally one takes in the world as a problem, the more inferior or 'bad' one is going to feel inside oneself. He can try to work out this 'badness' by striving for perfection, and then the neurotic symptom becomes his 'creative' work; or he can try to make himself perfect by means of his partner. But it is obvious to us that the only way to work on perfection is in the form of an objective work that is fully under your control and is perfectible in some real ways. Either you eat up yourself and others around you, trying for perfection; or you objectify that imperfection in a work, on which you then unleash your creative powers. In this sense, some kind of objective creativity is the only answer man has to the problem of life. In this way he satisfies nature, which asks that he live and act objectively as a vital animal plunging into the world but he also satisfies his own distinctive human nature because he plunges in on his own symbolic terms and not as a reflex of the world as given to mere physical sense experience. He takes in the world, makes a total problem out of it, and then gives out a fashioned, human answer to that problem. This, as Goethe saw in Faust, is the highest that man can achieve."

mr. sinister and his little blue booties

Starting today I am officially unemployed (though I was on leave so I haven't actually shown up to the factory in some time now). Farewell anachronic test station! Farewell dot matrix printer! Farewell acoustic-traumatizing, industrial cooling fans! Farewell beige, padded cubicle walls! Farewell blue, bell-bottomed pantsuit! Oh wait, girl in photograph is not a likeness. Farewell soul-eating wage-slavery! Farewell!!!


So... what now?

[...what it feels like from the inside.]

then

Eight

"I weep not with remorse but for the fear that I shall not be able to satisfy my passion." ('Tis A Pity)

Nine

No More Masterpieces

"One of the reasons for the asphyxiating atmosphere in which we live without possible escape or remedy - and in which we all share, even the most revolutionary among us - is our respect for what has been written, formulated, or painted, what has been given form, as if all expression were not at last exhausted, were not at a point where things must break apart if they are to start anew and begin fresh." Artaud

Ten


...

you've done enough

A long time ago, in a thought now far, far away, I was going to vent my frustrations about a semi-forced viewing of Avatar, a movie of which I knew near zilch about and was content having it remain so. A one and a two sum it up about parallel to my own repulsions, and probably far more eloquently than I'm capable of outputting these days.

Its characters are stubbornly two-dimensional (irony intended), either good or bad, and Jake alone is allowed to briefly transition from one state to the other. The natives are good, because they are unsullied, they are innocent, they live by traditional values and know their place in the order of things. The bad guys are cartoonishly evil, and likewise without depth. In equal part greedy and sadistic, they need to be asked to please not kill the children, which they really don’t mind doing if it means getting their hands on the precious ore of Pandora more expeditely. Hell, they might even throw in the killing for free. Which is why, in the end, Avatar is against imperialism in the same way that Tom and Jerry is against cats. It is a caricature of what critical cinema could and ought to be and indeed has been and is, if altogether too infrequently.

Avatar is the cinema version of an ongoing trend: the piles of logo-stamped reusable shopping bags at the grocer, the urbanites sporting the fashion meets function that is SIGG... the flashy, feel-good marketing of an ideology not for change but to assure us we're buying and entertaining ourselves just right as we are.

* * *

Enough! From a gripe of "I" to a gripe of "us", this blog consistently feels as if it's being dragged down too cynical of a path. My next entry will be a sort of where I am now and what do I do from here (being a new year and all). The writing of this entry has been delayed due to my recent demotion to au pair.