Post-semester depression

When I finished my last class yesterday, I came home feeling tired and directionless.  All of this work went into the semester.  I had no one to measure myself against.  There are no clear guidelines for how to get an A.  There are no grades or limits.  I made myself feel better when I was overwhelmed by reminding myself that at a school like mine, I would have to try harder to not pass a class.  Regardless, I wanted the equivalent of an A.  The last month has been a frenzy of making up for past assignments I was disappointed in, getting my teachers to appreciate me, and showing up all of my classmates by revealing my concealed hand at the last possible moment.

This semester was difficult.  I felt overworked, overstressed, and unsure of how I fit into everything around me.  I closed myself off from other students, judged them, and criticized my teachers.  Then, somehow, with the help of all of you, it changed.  I got to watch how mutable my reality was.  I felt a little crazy for a while, because I thought I was missing a more objective reality.  Then, I felt powerful because I could change more of it than I’d thought.  This changed my output significantly.  I balanced out the half-complete painting I brought into my midterm critique with a series of five paintings and twelve small abstract pieces.  Most of them could use some work, I’m sure.  There’s something to be said for not using perfection as an excuse to not work, so I am happy with my volume and managed to turn in more work than anyone in the class.

So, before I go on any further.  Thank you guys.

I still need to work on the list of things I want to overcome.  I had a few tics I wanted to work on this semester, but I may have had the wrong list.  For instance, Ed suggests that working on my social ability might be a more important focus than I think.  He’s probably right.  There just seems to be too many things I want to fix in myself.  It’s funny how a new social situation can really show those things.

So, the semester is over.  In that last month’s rush, I didn’t get much sleep, didn’t have any breakdowns, worked on a lot, kept learning through the process instead of just trying to jam stuff through, and had fun.  There is also a certain comfort in not having to think of what to do with your time, since it’s already planned by an approaching deadline.  Because of all of this, I was willing to give into my post-semester depression.  I expected it.  But something changed today.  Today feels wonderful.

I woke up at 8:30 without prompting.  I started the clean-up through the homework strata in my dining room.  I took final photos of my semester’s work (most of it).  While I was uploading and editing the images, I watched a BBC miniseries on the Impressionists (which was very cheesy, but good).  I’m posting to the blog.  There is a ton of stuff I have to do.  Through all of this, I’ll still need to produce art and papers.  I’m open to new projects, and I may also start asking you guys to work with me on projects.  I plan to make this the best summer yet, and I believe I can do it.  The only missing part is that Dave may be missing from it, except for virtual form.

Teaching experiment

Today my department chair confirmed my teaching a course in the Winter term (January – April) of 2010. Originally he wanted a postcolonial theory course, but after a conversation with our undergraduate coordinator they decided instead on a postcolonial literature class. I will begin to structure the course this summer, and as an exercise I will chart that process here (or in whatever format/site/etc we decide to continue).

These updates will include not only the material itself, but also more basic questions of pedagogy: the syllabus, delivering lectures, handling student responses in papers and exams, and so on. Further, I will continue to discuss these issues and track the effective and ineffective strategies/techniques during the class itself. Are you folks interested in playing along?

Your list

I have heard several times now that people who write down a list of everything they want to accomplish in life are more likely to do so than people who keep their goals inside their mind. This makes sense to me, as the same rule applies for writing papers — the most effective way to communicate everything you want in the final draft is to write them all down at the beginning, rather than try to remember and organize your thoughts internally. I recently began a “list notebook” which contains everything from lists of things I want to purchase for the apartment long-term to what qualities great professors share. Also included is my “life list” which I just wrote this evening. It’s fairly short but (for me) comprehensive:

Blog organization

I admit, I am a stickler for organization when it comes to entries and categories. As I understand things, every new post we submit is dumped into one page (”Home”). We can differentiate between types of posts by applying categories, and then click and/or search through categories to find every relevant entry. This is a nice feature, but I wonder if, in addition to it, we might also have a few dedicated pages for specific things? For example, could we segregate posts relating to the page I just created for “ideas, research, writing” to that page, so that instead of searching for that category I could click on the page tab?

I imagine this blog as similar to the DevonThink 2.0  database I use on my computer for organizing files for my research. Yes, the program allows me to search through everything in the database with a category function, but it also lets me create folders (here: pages) to organize that information as well.

Also, is there a way to create a page in the above manner and with access restricted to specific authors? I would love to share certain things with you all about my research and get your input/opinions, but I do not want the information freely available via search, for the same reason Bellee stopped submitting poetry to Society back in the day. I want to make ideas accessible to interested parties, however in some cases (such as outlines, articles) it is in my best interest to keep them private until I formally publish them–I cannot get a job in academia otherwise.

Edit: also, how do I edit the header…?

Note: this all relates to my desire to use the blog more frequently. I am just working out the kinks.

List of Names and Notables for Further Research & Reading

Wilhelm Reich
Timothy Leary
Robert Anton Wilson
George Orwell
Richard Bandler
Milton Ericson
William S Burroughs
Aldous Huxley
Alan W. Watts
D. H. Lawrence
Ernest Hemingway
John Lilly
Alan Watts
Buckminster Fuller
Aleister Crowley
Anton LeVay
Illya Prigogine
Alfred Korzybski
Gregory Bateson
B.F. Skinner
Thomas Szasz
John C Lilly
Abraham Maslow
Hassan i Sabbah
Andrew Dickson White
Dr. Richard Alpert a.k.a. Baba Ram Dass
Charles Sherrington
Bernard Wolfe
James Frazer
R.E.L. Masters
Akron Daraul
Robert DeRopp MD
Thomas Wright
Ashley Montague
John Allegro
Moses Maimonides
Abbie Hoffman
Louis T Culling
Omar Khayam
Andrew I Malcolm
Michael Aldrich
John Allegro
R. Gordon Wasson
Allan Bennett
Charles Baudelaire
Theophile Gautier
Norman Mailer
Yussef el Masry
Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie
Michael Broddie-Innes
Kenneth Rexroth
Masters & Johnson
Jacob Bohme

… in no particular order.
More to come…

Suggestions from Dave for Edwin

Music:

The Boredoms
Vidna Obmana
Nigo
Buffalo Daughter
Muslimgauze
Som
Stuart Dempster
Pauline Oliveros
Third Eye Foundation
Elders of Zion
Songs: Ohia
Sweep the Leg Jimmy/Johnny
Don Caballero
Neutrino
Nad Navillus
Merybow
Aphex Twin (Selected Ambient Works Vol 2) (Drukqs)
Relapse.com >Release Label Artists
DJ Spooky (The Dialectic Projet)
Agina P.

Authors/Books:

F. Jameson – The Political Unconcious
A. Gramsci & G. Spivak (on Gramsci)
Booth, Colomb, Williams – The Craft of Research (for Ang too)
John Rawls – Justice
Barthes – Death of the Author
Focault – What is an Author?
S. Fish (google “reader-response”)
Focault – Discipline and Punish

Software:

Scrivner (Mac Brainstorming Program)

Collected thoughts/ notes

1) 2 tasks for early childhood are to a)create a model of the world that is functional by b) creating a process for dtermining what is real, including a way to test reality determinations. If a parent insists on contradicting a child on every point, then the child will at best have a shaky grasp on reality, at worst will be be functionally schizophrenic.

2) Music is a “state” art due to its linearity, visual art id nomadic or rhizomatic because it is interpreted non-linearly. This explains in part the blue visual iconoclasts who nevertheless create musical pieces.

3) Ghosts might be epiphenominal experiences. They inhabit the folds of an area and can only br experienced at the right place at the right time. Like the pictures that appear different from different angles because they are displayed on teeth. In this way some ghost may be viral in the way their residu gets into your own folds and may even rub off onto other people. In a way they are an interference pattern in reality that reconstitutes holographically under certain circumstances.

4) People cannot repeat themselves: regarding TOTEs as folds within folds – a series of nested TOTEs nested down to infinity takes less than an infinitee amount of time to simulate in “symbolic time” as opposed to real time, assuming we have the symbolic language to express it (rep.systems)but the TOTEs branch down forever recursively dependant on the level of complexity of the brain so that what we rehearse to ourselves is not what we do, it is only what we think about, meanwhile the TOTEs fire, turtles all the way down like waves lapping the shore after vogorous action or tidal wave of initial thought. The actions or branches of the tree, the roots, the rhizome extend down indefinitely because we assume eternal life – a lof continuous novelty would render thought -concious or otherwise impossible – as you approach the limit…

Dave: Notes for an essay

The notes that follow are collected thoughts for an essay on Akira viewed through a post-structuralist filter.

1) The degree to which a body can be disordered determines not only its potential for karma but also its potential for evolution. This is discussed in the movie Akira. As a body gets more folds and organ-izes, its potential for karma goes up: the endogenous and exogenous force’s ability to transmit and reflect disorder goes up. The more organ-ized a body is, the less disorder it can stand, the less evolution it can stand, and the more it requires engineering (outside intervention) to progress organically. As Tetsuo is de-invested in his organs, his potential for for evolution goes up and his karmic entanglement goes down. He is able to act super-naturally because of this. Akira himself at the end is de-organized, and yet also a loos network of organs.

2) While Tetsuo’s model of the world was adequate when his potential was lower, as his potential increased his behavioral options increased independently of his internal models of the world. This out-stripping actually reduced his behavioral choices to their most fundamental formulation: consumption. The culture of the bikers was one of pure nihilistic consumption. THeir model and therefore behavior was marginal, but in a way they exerted more control because they were willing to do what others weren’t. As Tetsuo dis-organized, his model became less organized which led to his behavioral impoverishment.

3) Self-destruction can become a feedback loop. Greater disorder can stand more destruction. As Tetsuo’s body unfolds at the end it is disproportionate to the way his soul occupies those folds, and becomes too diluted to control his body – the mechanistic forces of his unfolding overpower the determinative forces of his soul/will. His “vertiginous animality” overcomes his organic or cerebral humanity.

4) As internal disentanglement occurs, increasing potential, external entanglementmust increase in order to realize that potential.

5) As Tetsuo becomes more dis-organized and his karmic entanglement goes down, the military complex centered around the espers and its interest in Tetsuo increases, so does its karmic entanglement, and so its potential for flexibility and meaningful action goes down.

6) As Tetsuo’s disorder factor  increases, his actions become more selfish – his newfound potential for growth demands a higher resource input in order for the potential to be realized (real-ified). His potential becomes momentum as he “cashes it in”.

7) There are many examples of dual-articulation in Akira.

8) As Tetsuo becomes more dis-organized, he begins to act more self-destructively, in ways that no-one could survive if they were more organiz-ed (invested in their organs) or karmically entangled. Since hardware is software in the brain, the more dis-organized his body is, the more disorganized his thoughts and behavior are.

9) -Tetsuo becoming pure desiring machine – Akira as BwO – Kaneda disentangles his relationship w/ Tetsuo – Akira as Deluzian difference, numbed espers as repetition.

Exercise 4.1 from Steering the Craft

Bird’s liver, mashed with blood and ramp-juice: it wasn’t egg, but it should be wholesome and easy enough to swallow. Though he was clumsy with his right hand, Finn patiently spoon-fed the rank paste to Tant, who, in his feverish delirium, had begun to act half his proper age and was apt to spit out more than half of whatever went in his mouth. “Eat up, little one. At least it’s not more grasshopper.” And anyway, you don’t know what I had to go through to bring you this, he thought. Grasshoppers didn’t leave you with beak-gouges in your side, or dislocated shoulders. Hunting grasshoppers never involved climbing ridiculously tall trees, nor falling out of them clinging to blinded, maddened birds eight times your size. And even the biggest grasshopper was small enough to bring home without the aid of a litter – hadn’t he brought home five at once last summer?

Exercise 3.2 from Steering the Craft

Half an hour after closing my eyes, it became clear to me that I was, in fact, Dick Tracy, famous detective and star of the funny pages and, once (regrettably) the silver screen, which was odd as I’ve never really been a fan of Dick Tracy; the strip angers me, the horrible and often comically misguided little ‘crime-stoppers’ advice-nuggets in the opening panel infuriate me, and the worldview the strip presents, in which the bad are disfigured and the disfigured are the bad, is not so much medieval as prehistoric; nevertheless, I was Dick Tracy, and deeply conflicted about being Dick Tracy, famous detective and star of the funny pages and, once (regrettably) the silver screen – so conflicted, in fact, that I had abandoned my policeman’s duties and taken off to Paris, in hot but entirely unsanctioned pursuit of Mr. Ewan McGregor, being convinced of that well-known screen actor’s complicity in a far-reaching international criminal conspiracy of vague impact and intent, although I will readily confess to a dearth of specific evidence, and in fact when I did encounter Mr. McGregor in a small gazebo at the rear of an improbable Paris petting zoo (which featured, among other attractions: singing sheep, miniature pandas, carnivorous ducks with razor-sharp, scalloped bills, and giant orange kiwi birds), he was in the company of Clint Eastwood, that grizzled and concentrated specimen of 20th Century American Republican machismo, and was engaged in nothing more criminal than pressing his (assumedly unwelcome) affections on the older man, who bore it all with an air of quiet, stoic dignity, which led me to reconsider my assumptions about Mr. McGregor, for now all his actions which had once seemed so suspicious could be more readily ascribed to a bad case of unrequited man-love, and my jaunt to France was laid bare for what it was: a mere pretext for dereliction of a now unwelcome duty, a fool’s errand that had, it was apparent, left me adrift and bereft of purpose in an unfamiliar city filled, apparently, with carnivorous, scallop-billed ducks and who knew what other dangers, wandering down a garden path that led, as it happened, to Mr. Diet Smith, eccentric industrialist and purveyor of wrist-watch radios and other such gimcrack to the police, who stabbed me in the throat with a box-cutter, at which point, I trust you will understand, I awoke.

Exercise 3.1 from UKL’s ‘Stirring the Craft’

The bird flew from its nest. This was the moment. Finn silently uncovered his bark-shrouded hole. He gripped the thorn sword tightly. He was silent as he climbed. The bird might return at any moment. A woodlouse scuttled past, nearly toppling him. He swore under his breath. He needed that egg. His family needed it.

Hand over hand he climbed. Looking down was not an option. Three more lengths separated him from dinner. Then it was two lengths, then one. He peered over the nests edge. There they were – seven sky-blue eggs. It was enough to feed an army. But even one was far too heavy. If only the others would come!

‘If’s didn’t bring home any eggs. He vaulted the edge of the nest. His water-skin was empty. His thorn was sharp and fire-hardened. This had to work. He raised the thorn to the nearest egg.

But Finn never pierced the first hole. A rustling noise made him look up.

There was another bird. It was watching him, waiting. They’d used their own eggs as bait.

Exercise 2 from UKL’s “Steering the Craft”

He stepped across the edge and then it was too late for turning back too late to discover a path out of the precipitous dive and fall and tumble of it of the water reaching up white and green tongues to lick at first his shoulder then his arm and ear and then the whole of him engulfed in the splash and tumble and the sharp screed of pain as the rusty iron of the seawall the jagged edge of corrosion and decay tore at the meat of his right thigh in the thrash of the wave and the just then solid thump of the slime and weed as they lubricated the rock to which they clung and sped his general downwardness turning what might have been an end into the start of yet more water now billowing red in the faltering light where it was mixing with the profligacy of his blood in its nearly joyous leaping escape from the gash in his thigh that only now after long seconds began to knit itself to itself to itself and close itself flesh to flesh and he was down now in the silt the weed the muck that sucked at him and he was eyeless for a moment as the weeds wrapped his face and he was stunned and battered by light and rocks and walls and mud and his bruises fled as quickly as his wound and he tried to force his mouth to open to drink no breathe the cold and throbbing lake but the body was not fooled by his insistence and resisted for a full three thrumming minutes before it came to the end of its endurance and drew in what it knew to be death and found that everything the body knew was wrong.

Exercise 1 from UKL’s ‘Steering the Craft’

I can’t have the North Woods – the ducks, black lakes of pike, the crackling winter wild and ice-cold crystal needles of the pines. I can’t have the whitewhite reticence, the isolated strangeness, the solitary wisp of human kindness. I can’t have the forced air heat, Chihuahua sized mosquitoes, blackflies, bonfires, gridlessness. I can’t have the rifles and the venison, the violence of a land that wants me dead. I can’t have the islands and the isthmuses, the leaking sieve of glaciated ground, the population 374 sign.
But I want them.

Stress and Exertion

Chart of Stress vs. Exertion

“Celebrate Change” limited edition print released

I’ve released a limited edition print for the Obama Election Night Rally in Grant Park on Craigslist and Etsy.  Apart from an early computer disaster, I’ve enjoyed working on this project.  We wish you guys could be here for this.  Ed and I have secured tickets, and we’re looking forward to being there in the cold chaos.

My sales post is after the jump.