To understand the depth of my grief for the loss of my friend Art Schoeck, you’d have to know something about the context. In 1991, I had applied to the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory University, and moved from Iowa City to Atlanta without knowing whether or not I was accepted. Â I had intended to get my Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, but had taken a Masters degree and left when I wasn’t able to pursue my…
What a week. Really. On Monday and Tuesday, I was still recovering a bit from the effects of the pollen overload on my system. I went to work, but I was dragging. I was starting to look forward to my birthday, but I wasn’t sure what there would be in celebration. I got a few things in the mail – a cd, a book by Slavoj Žižek (looks like he ripped off Jean Baudrillard in this one), a voodoo toothpick…
Just when I had loads and loads to blog about, I got knocked down by oak pollen. I just knew those trees were hostile. There is too far too much to tell, so here’s just a very quick summary. Equinox Weekend – Inconsolably depressed, and for no good, acceptable (rational) reason. Spiraling outside my will. Surrounded by a wall. Falling down a well. But then… the thunder quieted a little and – between the soundcracks of the whirlwind – I…
Nestled front and center against a huge cumulus cloud, the moon looks like a hole in the sky tonight. My camera can’t capture the mood, but there is a fiery/faerie halo around the whole moon. It’s beautiful. It rained last night, so the full moon was hidden, but tonight’s moon still looks pretty full to me. “Then came old January wrapped well In many weeds to keep the cold away; Yet did he quake and quiver, like to quell, And…
Jean Baudrillard, one of my all-time fave thinkers, has written a short piece on the torched cars and ransacked schools of France. "The Pyres of Autumn" argues that these events (among other things) call attention to the actual lack of a meanful social culture. He describes the ideological bankruptcy of the West as a "banalized, technized, upholstered way of life, carefully shielded from self-questioning." What does national belonging really mean, and how does one have a sense of it today?…