On Mon, Feb 18, 2002 at 02:48:21PM +0000, Rachel Playforth wrote:
sometimes i think i have enough free-floating anxiety to power a small country.
I needed to write to say that this is a sentiment which I can wholeheartedly identify with. It's one of the reasons I started zazen practice, actually. Western philosophy had sort of bottomed out with Nietzsche and Wittgenstein--where do you go from there, the ontology of Heidegger? Fup that. I was dating a girl doing her doctorate work in philosophy and at times there was this weird tension where my lack of interest in continental philosophy and inability to articulate certain concepts of Soto Zen practice caused these eerie silences. Philosophy as a means vs philosophy as an end. "There's no end to that sort of question" is something Shunryu Suzuki said once, and it's an idea that really resonated. You can keep arguing and debating questions of existential meaning ad nauseum. In the end, here you are, here is the world. Too simple, I know, philosophy shouldn't be some static process with an answer. I haven't heard from her in a bit, I was thinking about it this morning, and suddenly some mangled Morrissey popped into my head: "you're so busy, busy busy, ooo, philosopher on fire." Which made me think of another song, Cure-related, I had modified for her... "f i r e i n c a r l a"... I thought it was cute, if remarkably corny. But I'm a sentimenal fellow. I miss her a lot. I've been working 70 hour weeks trying to finish this video game, and when I wake up in the morning it's beautiful and gorgeous, but instead I sit inside all day... it seems a crime. I can't wait for summer, when work will have returned to normal, and I can sit lazily on the beach and read novels and run into the surf (at the same time, even). ObB&S: I saw High Fidelity for the first time the other night, and it was a wonderful film, and the Seymour Stein really made me grin ear to ear. Lovely stuff. Regards, m. -- "Plum blossoms everywhere. I should go south, I should go north." -- Basho +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+