Sinister: i can smell the coffee, why can't you?

[Michael Vance]

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
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