The $1500 check Columbia sent me (finally returning my security and the remainder of my last month in the old department) is burning a hole in my virtual pocket. I spent a little too much on a surprisingly flattering dress from American Apparel yesterday, and today I couldn't resist a pound of fresh okra along with expensive-ish ingredients for the ( Read more... )

If I hold my head very carefully and dim the lights, I can't see that Manhattan College and some highrise hide behind the tangle of woods out my window, so the rocks and trees and dirty margin of snow along the roadside look like Ithaca. Sometimes I'm sure they are part of the weird and lonely road that divided an abandoned coal mine from a ( Read more... )

My Spinoza paper is either extremely clever or complete bullshit. I'm leaning towards the latter, but I' not despairing because the weather's lovely and warm (at least until tomorrow) and I'm having dinner with the fantastic LC and JT tonight! And the utterly awesome AP arrives tomorrow ( Read more... )

because it feels like spring...
this evening the mist is trailing on Heavenly Kagu Mountain/I see that spring has surely arrived
-from the Man'yoshu

I'm not sure if this is even about spring (it may be a summer harvest poem), and the translation is very loose....
going to the gromwell field in the red dawn light, going to the marked field in the ( Read more... )

Things are better today, saner. SR was having the same shit kind of night and afternoon that I add, so our metaphysics-chatting coterie headed to her apartment, drank white wine, shared stupid stories, and then ended up talking about textual support for Calvinism. Does anyone know a source for the claim that Protestants are the "new Jews, bound by ( Read more... )

If someone were making a movie about me, today would be the going mad scene. Here I am, slightly feverish dismantling a juice carton and refereeing a discussion about whether Carnap is an improvement on traditional metaphysics. Here I am, slightly more feverish, pitching about on the subway refusing to sit. Baking a complicated cake, even more ( Read more... )

All's not so glum: I've cheered myself up with this and maybe this (perhaps if plans for a mid-March dinner party cohere).

I hope that baking cookies for the department is post-feminist. I hope that 'post-feminist' is not co-extensive with 'reactionary'.

I wonder if anyone might ever love me like this
To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings--the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward--I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have ( Read more... )

I miss Ithaca and familiar faces and rhythym and routine. I wish I'd managed to shrug a semester's worth of tiredness and disappointment.
***Most of my books are still in boxes, and last semester's deritus is strewn around the living room; not suprisingly, only the kitchen is in order. On Tuesday, my couch is being delivered, and I'll hang up my ( Read more... )