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Feb. 4th, 2005
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Compare.
Evidently it's a bigger deal to pass 2 comps at once than I thought. Everyone in the department knows about it, everyone. They must have a meeting after the exams have been graded where they gossip about us and raise eyebrows. I wonder what it shows....; after all, in normal life I'm the person here least capable of arguing her way out of a paper bag. Or even a bag of Leibniz cookies. Or a bag of mutually indiscernible Leibniz cookies. Like all things I ever do well, it's a staged performance. But that's what successes are, mostly. There are those, and there's daily excellence. I'm too low-key to have a lot of daily excellence.
First independent study meeting: it was a conversation, or almost a conversation. I describe conceptual relations with my hands. So does he. He can turn around perceptual difficulties--which is what my misunderstandings usually are--easily. (Of course this entire project is about how and why we can remove what I'm calling "perceptual" difficulties.) Discussed: categorical v. hypothetical imperatives (declaratives, actually), whether there is in Cavell, or even in Socrates or Wittgenstein, an imperative to be intelligible to or consistent with oneself (there isn't--somehow, there isn't). Because even that can be subject to our aims. Sometimes we may want precisely to be unintelligible to ourselves. Cavell has written on perfectionism. Nothing I said was nonsense because he knew exactly where it was coming from, and knows where it needs to ultimately go. He gave me another essay covered with comments in Hebrew.
The other night I dreamed about Medora and Matt. She wanted to know whether it was alright to sign a card to him, "Love." I said that at this point it was probably ok. It was in a time beyond time, like a Bernard Shaw heaven or that island at the end of Underground. Then my best friend from elementary school (of whom someone here reminds me) appeared and gave me a hug; I had occasion to say "you were my first friend."
Evidently it's a bigger deal to pass 2 comps at once than I thought. Everyone in the department knows about it, everyone. They must have a meeting after the exams have been graded where they gossip about us and raise eyebrows. I wonder what it shows....; after all, in normal life I'm the person here least capable of arguing her way out of a paper bag. Or even a bag of Leibniz cookies. Or a bag of mutually indiscernible Leibniz cookies. Like all things I ever do well, it's a staged performance. But that's what successes are, mostly. There are those, and there's daily excellence. I'm too low-key to have a lot of daily excellence.
First independent study meeting: it was a conversation, or almost a conversation. I describe conceptual relations with my hands. So does he. He can turn around perceptual difficulties--which is what my misunderstandings usually are--easily. (Of course this entire project is about how and why we can remove what I'm calling "perceptual" difficulties.) Discussed: categorical v. hypothetical imperatives (declaratives, actually), whether there is in Cavell, or even in Socrates or Wittgenstein, an imperative to be intelligible to or consistent with oneself (there isn't--somehow, there isn't). Because even that can be subject to our aims. Sometimes we may want precisely to be unintelligible to ourselves. Cavell has written on perfectionism. Nothing I said was nonsense because he knew exactly where it was coming from, and knows where it needs to ultimately go. He gave me another essay covered with comments in Hebrew.
The other night I dreamed about Medora and Matt. She wanted to know whether it was alright to sign a card to him, "Love." I said that at this point it was probably ok. It was in a time beyond time, like a Bernard Shaw heaven or that island at the end of Underground. Then my best friend from elementary school (of whom someone here reminds me) appeared and gave me a hug; I had occasion to say "you were my first friend."