Im reading some stuff that is messing with my head. With all thats been going on in my life over the last few months (friends dying, grandmothers losing the plot, lovers coming and going) perhaps Im just ripe for some head-fucking.
Please understand. This may sound like a cry for sympathy; like the railings of a self-piteous emotional masochist. But not so. Think more cocooned sloth. Think the stirrings of change. Think the chafing of leather wristlets of reality; of the cold steel cuffs of the everyday.
Mon Deiu! Rather, mes dieux! A call for escapism? though I wonder: is there a difference between transformation and change? Does the butterfly not flap its wings to escape from its former caterpillarness?
Winter brings such thoughts. It is the time of death. In my mind the Tower stands amidst a blizzard. Structures must fall. Progress requires destruction. Death before life. You get my drift...
In a little under a year my MA will be finished. In a little over a year, I shall be gone for a while. Im trying to hook up with a team of medical anthropologists who are researching into something to do with ayurveda in north eastern India. Whilst my role would be minor, it would be a chance to involve myself in a few months wirth of basic fieldwork practice. The children the family... I wouldnt mind spending some time in the south west, in Kerala, trying to get a look into Kalaripayyatt (forgive the mis-spelling, any specialists out there!), an interesting and ancient system of martial (including healing) arts. Theres also a month-long course in Thailand that Im interested in. And Ive been guaranteed some work in some sexy coctail bars in Sydney and Melbourne if I feel the need to spend some time rebuilding the bank account in an English speaking nation...
Or theres Brazil. Or the rest of the world. I thought I just wanted to wander, to holiday, to chill out. And I do. But I am suffering (suffering?) an ache to get something done. (If Im not careful, I might just start having children or something... The need to create, to shape, to make, to produce, to perform, to affect my entire life at a structural level, is truly that strong!)
And the head fucking literature? An essay I should be working on right now (but this seems to calm my pounding heart, my furvent soul, my empassioned mind just a little more) on the negotiation of reality between doctors and patients... So Ive been thrown (launched myself; take control/responsibility and all that - never the victim) into considerations of the inadequacy of verbal expression of physical experience (pain/pleasure); of objectification of the body (my foot hurts, my stomach aches); of objectification of the patient by the doctor, and thus of Foucaultian insights into power and knowledge production (and thus Marxian notions of class-type power relations, but only vaguely); into the difference between illness and pain, and thus into the social language that surrounds illness (battling cancer, living with AIDS; Susan Sontag has dont great work on Illness and AIDS and the metaphors surrounding them/involving them...).
Like I said: head fuck. Its what I love about this course, but it is so hard to live in society whilst you question everything about it and your involvement/role/conception of self and others therein. I had the same thing with prose, poetry, theatre and film immediately after my English degree. Turning off the analytical is difficult. Turning it down is a little easier.
But sometimes I dont want to. Which brings us back to escapism.
Or is it change? (Phew!)
Please understand. This may sound like a cry for sympathy; like the railings of a self-piteous emotional masochist. But not so. Think more cocooned sloth. Think the stirrings of change. Think the chafing of leather wristlets of reality; of the cold steel cuffs of the everyday.
Mon Deiu! Rather, mes dieux! A call for escapism? though I wonder: is there a difference between transformation and change? Does the butterfly not flap its wings to escape from its former caterpillarness?
Winter brings such thoughts. It is the time of death. In my mind the Tower stands amidst a blizzard. Structures must fall. Progress requires destruction. Death before life. You get my drift...
In a little under a year my MA will be finished. In a little over a year, I shall be gone for a while. Im trying to hook up with a team of medical anthropologists who are researching into something to do with ayurveda in north eastern India. Whilst my role would be minor, it would be a chance to involve myself in a few months wirth of basic fieldwork practice. The children the family... I wouldnt mind spending some time in the south west, in Kerala, trying to get a look into Kalaripayyatt (forgive the mis-spelling, any specialists out there!), an interesting and ancient system of martial (including healing) arts. Theres also a month-long course in Thailand that Im interested in. And Ive been guaranteed some work in some sexy coctail bars in Sydney and Melbourne if I feel the need to spend some time rebuilding the bank account in an English speaking nation...
Or theres Brazil. Or the rest of the world. I thought I just wanted to wander, to holiday, to chill out. And I do. But I am suffering (suffering?) an ache to get something done. (If Im not careful, I might just start having children or something... The need to create, to shape, to make, to produce, to perform, to affect my entire life at a structural level, is truly that strong!)
And the head fucking literature? An essay I should be working on right now (but this seems to calm my pounding heart, my furvent soul, my empassioned mind just a little more) on the negotiation of reality between doctors and patients... So Ive been thrown (launched myself; take control/responsibility and all that - never the victim) into considerations of the inadequacy of verbal expression of physical experience (pain/pleasure); of objectification of the body (my foot hurts, my stomach aches); of objectification of the patient by the doctor, and thus of Foucaultian insights into power and knowledge production (and thus Marxian notions of class-type power relations, but only vaguely); into the difference between illness and pain, and thus into the social language that surrounds illness (battling cancer, living with AIDS; Susan Sontag has dont great work on Illness and AIDS and the metaphors surrounding them/involving them...).
Like I said: head fuck. Its what I love about this course, but it is so hard to live in society whilst you question everything about it and your involvement/role/conception of self and others therein. I had the same thing with prose, poetry, theatre and film immediately after my English degree. Turning off the analytical is difficult. Turning it down is a little easier.
But sometimes I dont want to. Which brings us back to escapism.
Or is it change? (Phew!)
VIEW 9 of 9 COMMENTS
that at the store i didnt notice a couple items that seemed confused as to whether they were mats or rugs, as they were either large bath mats or small rugs. I think those crossover pieces where what made me think some further specification was neccesary.
this is no oversized bath mat, it is as long as i am tall (maybe a little over) and almost as wide.
for the record, i gave up on wrapping it, and said screw the surprise, your getting a damn rug, see it there by the tree
and ho ho ho to you too