Written on the back of a photograph of a river in St. John's, Newfoundland: "I took this picture years ago. It reminds me that there are things worth loving even in St. John's, for all its decay and cheap defeat. The fleetingness and rarity of these things makes them even better." I'm drunk, friends and neighbours (can you tell me what popular novel I'm referencing right here? message me with your guesses!!). Shitfaced drunk. I'm supposed to be doing schoolwork but I'm not. Don't get me wrong: I just finished and sent off a proposal for a doctoral studies grant. I'm not entirely unproductive. Now it's late, and I wish to unwind and, well, drink. Let's do a rundown of the latest developments:

  • I've dropped most of my shifts at work
  • I'm negotiating the terms of my trip back to Newfoundland for the Yule season
  • My compatriot Mark and I are in the position of parting ways for our next degrees. This is interesting to me because we (not counting various friends here) were something of a team and a support system for one another when we first moved to Montreal and began attending Concordia. After having completed nearly identical Bachelor degrees at the University of King's College, I have sort of come to see us as a combined force - one to be reckoned with, no less! It will be interesting to see the dynamics of my life change once again after I have moved on to different pursuits with different personnel surrounding me.
  • I wrote a real live letter today, to my friend Janet - also a graduate of King's. She's currently working as a Nanny for a wealthy American family near Princeton, New Jersey and enjoying the throes of election fever. Janet once sent me a postcard from France which featured a picture of the cathedral at Montmartre upon the steps of which she vomited red wine and stomach acid. This holds immense sentimental value for me, as I trod those steps a mere ten ears ago. Janet is lovely and rules quite awesomely.
  • I am behind in school, but I am trying to catch up. Really. I owe my professor Vladimir Zeman 3 prĂ©cis of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and I've yet to complete them. That man really is a sweetheart.
  • Picking up on the item before last: we don't write letters enough anymore. E-mail is convenient and all, but what can equal the delight of opening your mailbox to find a letter or parcel from a friend?
  • Did I mention that I'm drunk? Honesty is my ethical concern here.
  • I would like to make a point of appreciating bewilderbeast, who is carrying on the King's legacy on e2 and producing some bang-up writeups while she's at it!

On the topic of my proposed PhD. research: I am almost surprised (it took me by surprise, that is) that the subject of democracy is of interest to me. For years I was so focused on the Nietzschean lines of thought that I could only imagine things in terms of flight, evasion, critique, and resistance. Now I feel that I'm ready to reconcile those (important!!) notions with the possibility of rolling up our sleeves and working together. I feel as though we can fly apart and come together at the same times. I can't justify my affinity for humans (in all their various contingent possible descriptions), yet I'm willing finally to work with it. If Wittgenstein has inspired me in any way, it is to let go of the deathgrip on justification. My faith in and love for human beings is something I'm willing to inflict as a force, without a logically precise rationale. This is a monumental turning point for me, as I have spent a long time doubting and being dismayed by the so-called human condition. Of course, there are multiple complications to everything I am saying, but I like it that way.1 I don't want finality, I want proliferation! I want motion! I want life! I want life for others after my death. I want liberty in the form of flight, collaboration and dissent. I want us to defend what we don't have yet.

Current musical indulgences

On the potential of daylogging

Mark and I have been discussing the usefulness of daylogs as an interdisciplinary noding tool. When daylogging, the noder isn't subject to the same restrictions as normal writeups (although he/she is subject to much more arbitrary and vindictive voting patterns!). This, on our reading, fully embodies on aspect of e2 in that it enables the noder to exploit e2's linking capabilities to pull a galaxy of concepts into one writeup much more easily than in a writeup of any given discipline or focus. Just sayin', yo.


I'm losing lucidity. I have consumed a lot of alcohol tonight. I need to stop this eventually. Sleep beckons. Tomorrow is already here. Be good to each other. I dream of silences and freefalls.

P.S.>> For Mark: Yeah, I know and believe that we're all doomed anyway, that's not the point.

  1. I take it back. I'm sorry.