Fallen Into Knowledge

“what do you do when you have a big project ahead of you?  You clean your house.  I have a big stack of papers to grade this weekend, you can be sure that my house will be clean by Monday.”  So said the Prof of my Milton Class.  Its true, at least for me.  I have a bunch of projects on the stove, but somehow, I feel like in order to focus I need to clean my space.
“Cleaning” quickly became “re-arranging” Today.  While it is certainly the case that in the process of re-arranging my space I get it cleaned in the process, for me it also means moving 1000+ books off their cases onto the floor in order to move the cases, and back again from the floor onto the cases.  More work than is sensible for just a cleaning job.
But, having done all of that, it feels better.  I think I have used the space better than I had before, I like being able to look at the trees from my desk, I feel that by un-cluttering my space I have cleared my head as well.
I have always been interested in the relationship between the physical space in which I live and my mental state.  How well I think life is going, how productive I am (or feel), my ability to relax and rest:  all of these seem to depend heavily on my living space.  Often, just a re-shuffling of the stuff in my physical space is enough.
It would be interesting to study how physical space affects people’s quality of life.  Is this just me, or is it a universal phenomena?
Okay, here is a poll:  Is your Living space subject to frequent or periodical re-arrangement?  Or, once you have put things in their places do they stay there until you move again?  What are your thoughts on the relationship between physical space and perceived quality of life?

I have decided to start including some of my thoughts, of the academic variety here in the blog.  These thoughts are not fully formed, so take with a buckets of salt, and feel free to respond:

From Jamison:  “It is instructive here to juxtapose Auerbach’s discussion of the odyssey in Mimesis, and his description of the way in which at every point the poem is as it were vertical to itself, self-contained, each verse paragraph somehow timeless and immanent, bereft of any necessary or indispensable links with what precedes it and what follows …the historical un-naturality (in Brechtian sense) of contemporary books which, like detective stories, your read ‘for the end’ - the bulk of the pages becoming sheer devalued means to an end - in this case the ’solution…’” (126)

I know I find it difficult at best to slow down in my reading and enjoy the texture of a text - I am always in a hurry to “get to the end,” even when I am reading the Odyssey.  So the question is:  when did the primary motivation in reading become consumption?  And, Just what are we trying to gain by consuming the book?
What about the reading experience make us want to be done with it?  to get to the end?
Further, and perhaps more concerning to me, is the prevalent assumption amongst literary critics that the interesting work pertaining to a text happens after the text has been read.  That is, the text is assumed to be an object to be analyzed, and not as facilitating an experience:  the text as static and not as acting upon the reader.  Does this tendency, too, come from a capitalist / consumerist mentality?  Or, more pointedly, what would a non-capitalist reading look like (assuming we can even talk about it, enmeshed as we are in capitalist structures)?  Immediately, Marx’s somewhat undeveloped concept of the “sensuous revolution” comes to mind:  that we might relate to each other as persons, not as objects to be consumed.  I think a return (? move to ?) a model that pays attention to reading as an actualizing experience of a text would be a step in the right direction.

The Oregon State house has voted to do away with the whole CIM / CAM nonsense:  a view that will undoubtedly make the educator friends that I know very happy.

Found:
Very cool website:
Landscapes of Capital
1 part database of commercials, something like 800 commercials that you can watch online, indexed so that you can search them
1 part analysis: what do these commercials tell us about ourselves, about the economy, about the workplace, about conditions of production.
Do they tell the truth? (No) In what ways do they re-present reality?
Check it out.

So, as you know, I spend a majority of my time trying to understand Really Difficult Ideas.  Difficult enough that most people acquire a “deer in the headlights” expression when I answer the “what are you up to these days” question.  And there is no doubt that Understanding such ideas is difficult and takes concentrated time and effort, but I find interesting that we don’t acquire similar expressions when confronted with the notion of understanding people.
I know, call me Captain Obvious:  People are difficult to understand.
Some might object; but we cannot understand people as if they were ideas.  True, nor would I advocate such a thing.
But.
It seems to me that responding well to people; responding to people in a peace and life-giving way, responding to people in such a way as to maintain their subjectivity as persons, requires some degree of understanding.  Not complete understanding - that, even in the realm of Ideas, is a mirage, unattainable - but adequate understanding.  Enough to respond well.
When I think about this process, I feel the “deer in the headlights” expression coming on.  Because responding well to People is so much more important than understanding Really Difficult Ideas.

It is amazing how things fall together.  The lecture tonight by David Tracy  touched on themes that I am thinking about in many of my classes:  Nietzsche’s use of Tragedy, Milton’s making of a “Christian Tragedy,” the problem of the Other, Virtue Ethics, etc.  Amazing.  The upshot?  the Tragic vision is about Awe of Life and Compassion for the Other.

This beautiful quote is from the introduction to Schopenhauer’s “The World as Will and Representation:”

I am afraid, however, that even so I shall not be let off. The reader who has gotten as far as the prefaceand is put off by that, has paid money for the book, and wants to know how he is to be compensated. My last refuge now is to remind him that he knows of various ways of using a book without precisely reading it. It can, like many other, fill a gap in his library, where, neatly bound, it is sure to look well. Or he can lay it on the dressing table or tea table of his learned lady friend. Or finally he can review it; this is assuredly the best course of all, and the one I specially advise.

Fortunately I have only a few papers this term, in addition to the usual round of mid-terms and finals (read: madly fill as many blue books as one can in the alloted time)
these are not what is creating in me a sense of panic; no, what I am panicky about is my calculation that I will need to read 1000 (one thousand) pages per week to keep up. None of the reading is as hard as last semester (Kant and Heidegger), but there is a lot more of it. Yikes!
I guess it is time to take up again that habit I broke: reading while walking. Maybe I should also learn to read while riding my bike….

The amazing thing about Paul isn’t that he said and did all these wonderful things; it’s that he did it all without coffee.

– N. T. Wright, in a lecture on Romans at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C.

Two weeks left this term. Two weeks, four papers to write and seven books to read. If you are wondered if I had wandered into oblivion, I am still here. I’m feeling kinda busy, though. I’ll write more when I come up again for air.

Well, I just hit the “print” button for my last mid-term. A paper on a book that I do not understand - no fun at all. But, rejoice, it is done - even if the paper makes no sense at all, thats okay by me, since the book that it describes doesn’t make sense either. Now I am making no sense. Oh well, now that I am finished, it is time to catch up on my reading in those other books (the ones that do make sense). Ahhh. the Joys of Schooling in the Fast Lane. Back to work.