what's on my mind?
Yesterday afternoon I read, like a good lad, from A History of Technology, From Eden to Exile, and Alexander the Great. This morning I got up and keyed notes from The Ruling Class of Judaea and Alexander the Great. So far so good. Saw Kimmie off ("Well all that time I spent this morning was wasted," she said sharply. "This looks awful." She was dressed, very nicely, I thought, in black capris with little black dangling ornaments at their cuffs, and a white top.). Had my morning cereal while reading Scientific American (article on the geology of Mars). Sent Kimmie her morning e-mail (I send one most days to start her day off and perk her up), did my stretches and exercises. But when I came down again to face my PC: no dice. I could not even open files relating to my project. Didn't want to.
Yikes. OK, don't panic.
I muddled through the morning, took lunch a bit early (leftover Greek salad, Indian naam bread in lieu of pita, hummus). After lunch I brushed my teeth and lay down. Closed my eyes for awhile, and wondered, What's on my mind?
For if I don't feel like working on my book, I must be interested in something else. What? That would be simplest: not to force myself to work on something I don't want to, but to go where my mind wants to be. Where is that? Is there some philosophical question I want to explore? Some historical era? Science? Do I want to write about my own life? What?
I'm not sure. So this blog post is a start. I'm simply exploring my thoughts. I can't really do that here--it's still too public a place. But I can give a flavor of the sense of questioning, of uncertainty. The most productive thing, surely, is to go where the mind wants to go. There is where the energy and interest are--the things that will cause work to be produced, if work is to be produced at all.
Maybe it's not. And maybe that doesn't matter. Productivity in some ways is bourgeois. I am bourgeois. And I don't want to be. I don't want to care what anyone else thinks about me, my life, or my work--or nonwork. I don't want to have a superego within me that pretends to look at me through others' supposed bourgeois perceptions. "Get busy. Don't lie around."
It's actually hard to be inactive. I feel a conflict within myself, a struggle--like the confluence of two rivers: the waters charge together, mix, toss, create whirlpools, stir up mud.
What is on my mind? It seems a simple question. It's certainly an interesting question. If I'm not interested in my project or its research, what am I interested in? What's there, if I sit down and listen?
Maybe I'll keep you posted.
Yikes. OK, don't panic.
I muddled through the morning, took lunch a bit early (leftover Greek salad, Indian naam bread in lieu of pita, hummus). After lunch I brushed my teeth and lay down. Closed my eyes for awhile, and wondered, What's on my mind?
For if I don't feel like working on my book, I must be interested in something else. What? That would be simplest: not to force myself to work on something I don't want to, but to go where my mind wants to be. Where is that? Is there some philosophical question I want to explore? Some historical era? Science? Do I want to write about my own life? What?
I'm not sure. So this blog post is a start. I'm simply exploring my thoughts. I can't really do that here--it's still too public a place. But I can give a flavor of the sense of questioning, of uncertainty. The most productive thing, surely, is to go where the mind wants to go. There is where the energy and interest are--the things that will cause work to be produced, if work is to be produced at all.
Maybe it's not. And maybe that doesn't matter. Productivity in some ways is bourgeois. I am bourgeois. And I don't want to be. I don't want to care what anyone else thinks about me, my life, or my work--or nonwork. I don't want to have a superego within me that pretends to look at me through others' supposed bourgeois perceptions. "Get busy. Don't lie around."
It's actually hard to be inactive. I feel a conflict within myself, a struggle--like the confluence of two rivers: the waters charge together, mix, toss, create whirlpools, stir up mud.
What is on my mind? It seems a simple question. It's certainly an interesting question. If I'm not interested in my project or its research, what am I interested in? What's there, if I sit down and listen?
Maybe I'll keep you posted.
posted by paulv at
2:37 PM
2 Comments:
I just wanted to say, after discovering you because you signed onto wikipedia not that long before I did, that your struggles are inspiring to me...I suppose as the collective beings that we humans are, it makes us feel better when someone else voices similar expressions of ... whatever it is that we feel. It makes us feel less alone in an emotional way. After all, in a purely intellectual way - I already know that we must be alone in this part of the galaxy anyway, or else why haven't we been invited to the party?
Seriously though - good luck with your pondering. And I enjoyed your description of the waters converging...almost violently. In my mind there is a similar water metaphor, in that there is a floodgate which until recently has been plenty sufficient to prevent my creativity from doing any more than leaking out in random ways. But something recently has changed and I feel like if I do just one more thing, the gates would pop open like a belly bursting out of a too-too-tight shirt with weak buttons...and my creativity would then lie flooded all over, exposed for the world to see and hopefully, enjoy. I suppose it would need to be shaped and massaged into a form that others might appreciate and connect with though...but that, that can be done in the revision stage(s). :D
Write on, good pen-soldier...and thanks.
By
ladymurasaki, at July 27, 2005 4:00 PM
And thanks to you, lm. I appreciate the encouragement--and can use it.
By
paulv, at July 27, 2005 6:17 PM
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