21.8.08
Get Drunk!
Be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans,
or rolls,
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
"Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"
- Charles Baudelaire
20.8.08
waiting
My classmate and I were walking along the corridor after class ended, when he said he wanted to base his research on people waiting at bus stops. I nodded, intrigued, chatted a little, but could not say anything smarter than, “That’s interesting.”
It was only a few minutes after we parted ways, and as an afterthought, that I realized how significant waiting is.
Waiting, I think, is doing nothing meaningfully.
The “nothing” in my previous sentence refers to all the things we do while waiting, but which appears naught in the face of waiting. Say, you are on your bed, with a big, silly grin on your face because you just got the number of a guy you are interested in. After moments of anxiety and inner dilemma, with his face etched in your mind, you drop him an sms.
Then, you wait. (Slowly realizing in horror the wait is more nerve-wrecking than your decision to text.)
You look at your phone blankly or stare into open space. You may even try to distract yourself by reading or working. But he is always, and persistently, at the back of your head. The activities you are engaged in lose importance, becoming nothing next to what you’re really doing. Which is waiting for his (goddamn) reply.
Despite this slippage of what you’re doing into meaninglessness, this state of being is also made meaningful because of the wait. Every minute that passes by means something. If he replies almost immediately, you wonder if it’s a sign of interest. If he doesn’t, you question if he finds you an irritant. Either way, waiting has meaning.
More complicated and longer-term examples include waiting for a new job, waiting for a holiday, waiting for brighter prospects, waiting for the right time, waiting for opportunities, waiting to be rich, waiting for the right one and waiting to be happy. We wait, and we wait and we wait some more.
Perhaps, waiting is inevitable in life. And if – as I have argued – waiting is doing nothing meaningfully, we shouldn’t keep looking at the future.
It was only a few minutes after we parted ways, and as an afterthought, that I realized how significant waiting is.
Waiting, I think, is doing nothing meaningfully.
The “nothing” in my previous sentence refers to all the things we do while waiting, but which appears naught in the face of waiting. Say, you are on your bed, with a big, silly grin on your face because you just got the number of a guy you are interested in. After moments of anxiety and inner dilemma, with his face etched in your mind, you drop him an sms.
Then, you wait. (Slowly realizing in horror the wait is more nerve-wrecking than your decision to text.)
You look at your phone blankly or stare into open space. You may even try to distract yourself by reading or working. But he is always, and persistently, at the back of your head. The activities you are engaged in lose importance, becoming nothing next to what you’re really doing. Which is waiting for his (goddamn) reply.
Despite this slippage of what you’re doing into meaninglessness, this state of being is also made meaningful because of the wait. Every minute that passes by means something. If he replies almost immediately, you wonder if it’s a sign of interest. If he doesn’t, you question if he finds you an irritant. Either way, waiting has meaning.
More complicated and longer-term examples include waiting for a new job, waiting for a holiday, waiting for brighter prospects, waiting for the right time, waiting for opportunities, waiting to be rich, waiting for the right one and waiting to be happy. We wait, and we wait and we wait some more.
Perhaps, waiting is inevitable in life. And if – as I have argued – waiting is doing nothing meaningfully, we shouldn’t keep looking at the future.
Because if we wait too long, we’ll never live in the now.
19.8.08
a poem I found while sorting my emails
Suddenly I desire to be an empty house
In an isolated village.
It should be bare and empty.
But pleasant,
With a fragrance long preserved,
And waiting for someone to move in.
An empty house
As clean and tide as it might be,
Yet open and simple,
From whence I can see the sky and the stars.
Someday
Its master will open the door and enter,
Softly saying, with a smile, “Oh I really like it.”
It is clean and lovely as I desire it to be.
In an isolated village.
It should be bare and empty.
But pleasant,
With a fragrance long preserved,
And waiting for someone to move in.
An empty house
As clean and tide as it might be,
Yet open and simple,
From whence I can see the sky and the stars.
Someday
Its master will open the door and enter,
Softly saying, with a smile, “Oh I really like it.”
It is clean and lovely as I desire it to be.
17.8.08
9.8.08
Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man
"The distinguishing feature of advanced industrial society is its effective suffocation of those needs which demand liberation - liberation also from that which is tolerable and rewarding and comfortable - while it sustains and absolves the destructive power and repressive function of the affluent society. Here, the social controls exact the overwhelming need for the production and consumption of waste; the need for stupefying work where it is no longer a real necessity; the need for modes of relaxation which soothe and prolong this stupefication; the need for maintaining such deceptive liberties as free competition at administered prices, a free press which censors itself, free choice between brands and gadgets.
Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination. The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual. The criterion of free choice can never be an absolute one, but neither is it entirely relative. Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear - that is, if they sustain alienation. And the spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies to the efficacy of the controls."
Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination. The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual. The criterion of free choice can never be an absolute one, but neither is it entirely relative. Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear - that is, if they sustain alienation. And the spontaneous reproduction of superimposed needs by the individual does not establish autonomy; it only testifies to the efficacy of the controls."
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