apologees

got home early to my new home today and sat around for a good while doing not a whole lot. then i went outside and read. this is something new. i stopped reading for a long long time because i got sick of philosophy. i don't really think alot about why i got sick of it, but i know why i did. i got sick of it because the 2 times i've been in love, thought fucked it up. thought rather than action, i mean. a lack of living in the moment, you could call it. its the part of me that is so good at abstract thought and logic and philosophy that is so bad at looking out for my own self-interests. in both cases, i gave it away because of some abstract reasoning that i convinced myself was wrong. after the second time, i pretty much drank myself stupid for a year. didnt read anything. hated even thinking about it. which is likely why i did so poorly in grad school. well, no, i didnt do poorly. i did well. i made A's. i just hated it. it was torture--thinking about metaethics, metaphysics and religion (those were my classes my first semester). i love heidegger and i love metaethics, but not then i didnt. i was so used to being excited about studying that stuff, i didnt realize how much i was hating it. the fact that my preferences had changed--that they had been effected by something apart from my own will--this was something my pride would not allow me to realize at the time. i was more than capable. i still got off on arguing in class, still loved the competitive nature of it all, but i couldnt do it the same as i had before. where i used to quote page and line of something i browsed in the library 3 months before, i now made some grumpy comment about how fucking stupid philosophy was because it is based on subjects which are universally available and not wholly spontaneous and how it lacked authenticity and was inundated with professionalism and ambitious bias... all a cop out because i was too proud to realize that i really, really hated it all then, and therefore hated myself because i had arranged a life for myself in which my personal identity and, more importantly, my self-image, was wrapped up in some goal i had set for myself out of spite 8 years prior...

but i sat today and read some john hick. my favorite philosopher of religion. and i realized again why i hate philosophy right now. it crystalizes in my head, and i see the implications of true statements. and the ones dictating action hit me too hard. i can't put up with that kind of self-examination right now. i am such a bad bad bad person. i can't take the look in the mirror that such reflection forces on me. i read through 20 pages of an essay and wanted to puke.

i needed beer, and got some. sat on the porch and listened to the braves game and read the paper and watched people and smoked cigarettes. i'm not sure that i'll ever be able to go back to the place where i enjoyed philosophy games. i think i am too honest with myself about myself. and other times, not honest enough. everything in its wrong place, i suppose.

i need another beer now.