Friday, October 14, 2005
(7:28 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Friday Afternoon Confessional: Redundancy is Strength
There is something different in asking forgiveness of those you have wronged and in confessing -- slightly different, at least.
I confess that Wednesday I bought a new Agamben book and read all the footnotes first, in one fell swoop. It was very satisfying. I confess that I have been just a couple days away from starting up on learning Italian for about three weeks now.
I confess that I am arrogant. I confess that there are some areas of my life where I no longer experience any feeling of angency or control. I confess that I woke up in the middle of the night during a dream in which I was walking around Hyde Park trying to figure out the difference between theology and literature.
I confess that an early success in my quest to become a freelance copy-editor has calmed some of my creeping financial worries. I confess that I never want to temp again. I confess that I am in a phase where I'm very reluctant to go to the grocery store, because I always end up spending way more money than I had planned -- but part of that is surely because I wait so long between trips. I confess that I am not eating as healthily as I did this summer.
I confess that on the one hand, Nietzsche's discussion of the philosophical personality in the third essay of On the Genealogy of Morals ("What is the meaning of ascetic ideals?") was almost frighteningly accurate in its description of my prefered lifestyle and that on the other hand, a little more than half of me willingly embraces that. That other 49%, however, often threatens to fillibuster. The result is deadlock, also known as picking fights in comment threads.
I confess that Adam Robinson's recent loss makes me very sad on his behalf, and that his tribute post is wonderfully written.
I confess that I'm only recently discovering how helpful it is to read and underline, then go back through, look at what I've underlined, and actually write down the things that I found important, with page numbers. I confess that I am overly critical of in-class discussions that don't stay close to the text at hand, particularly given that I don't really practice what I preach. But if everyone in class did the underlining-then-note-taking thing -- wow. Then we'd be in business.
I confess that I haven't been flossing lately.
