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a tangent of etymology
What's really quite bizarre is that the last three books I've read (or found myself in the middle of, as I seem pathologically unable to read one thing at a time, the affliction which is quite possibly responsible for my never being able to write one thing at a time) have contained the word solipsism, and I had never seen that word before in my life.
Don't get me wrong, I adore the word: I adored it when it first turned up in Orwell's 1984 and I adored the thrill of romance and clandestine intellectualism that it sparked when it was used in John Barth's Once Upon A Time in the context 'solipsism à deux', and by the time it appeared in shaping up, Robert Dessaix's essay on the nature of the adopted family, it was an old friend.
(After the fact definition: solipsism, to view the self as the only thing that is real, the only thing that can be verified, a quite literal retreat into and embrace of one's own inner reality)
It sounds vaguely geometrical, which the mathematician in me likes, and it's one of those hissing sibilant-ridden words - like insensate, another recent discovery - that I can happily imagine whistling off a snake-tongue. It would probably take Crowley three times as long as a human to say it, provided he was angry or drunk enough. The sound and shape of words means a lot to me. Cadence has long been a favourite, because not only does it sound musical, it has musical connotations. Twisty. I like it. If paradigm ended in -eem rather than -ime, phonetically speaking, I'd consider it quite perfect; shades of deem, old-fashioned and with Middle English roots, rather than the blatantly American dime. (Intellectual snobbery? Moi? As a random side note, I first encountered the word deem in a Disney movie, which probably says something telling but I'm too lazy to put the paradox together.) As the word stands it's too abrupt, for all I'm fond of the elusive nature of its definition.
(At this point I've worked out why I started writing this in the first place; not only to document one of those little coincidences that pop up from time to time, but to take my pretentious vocabulary out for a spin. I'm not taking any Arts subjects this semester and I'm beginning to feel a bit cramped. There are only so many opportunities for delicious words like juxtaposition, credo and inherent when one is writing about the mechanisms of leukemia on the genetic level or discussing adolescent psychology. All those wishing to abandon ship at this stage are free to do so. Don't trip over the giant sign proclaiming FAHYE'S PROCRASTINATION on your way out.)
In what I consider a remarkable (and quite unprecedented) stroke of good timing, I've hit a patch of intellectual thirst whilst still in the middle of the semester. It would have been nice if it had happened along whilst I still had piles of assignments up to the ceiling, but it's here in time to catch me putting together an essay and seminar presentation on the role of Human T-cell Leukemia Virus 1 in adult T-cell leukemia and other assorted diseases. As I watch the humanities-centred half (uh, two thirds? three quarters?) of my friends list flee towards the horizon in horror, I'll assure the rest of you that I'm not about to go into gushing detail about retroviruses and deregulation of the cell cycle and the warm glow of semi-professional smugness that I get every time I use the words 'presents with' in reference to the symptoms of some particularly nasty disease.
But the important thing is that I could. I'm invested. I like what I'm studying and I (not quite so conveniently) like what everybody else is studying and there literally aren't enough hours in the day for me to read the books I have and the books I've optimistically borrowed from my mother and various libraries, to write the things I have to write, to go out and research some more, to continue working my way through my French grammar book and occasionally throw self-congratulatory gems at Ji across the ether. There's a five hour choir rehearsal tomorrow that I begrudge in the extreme. But I'm happy, and I'm looking forward to the holidays with pathetic eagerness; with exams and compulsory learning out of the way, the broader and more informal type of learning can happen.
(At this stage I think I can pretty much drop all pretense that I have ever shrugged off the labels of geek or nerd or square, all of which have been liberally applied to me and sometimes caused a great deal of personal distress. I'll give a nod to Mel and agree with what she is nodoubt thinking, which is that I'm Ravenclaw through and through. Oh, fandom, how handy you can be in the assignment of more positive labels to oneself. I suppose I should start knitting myself a blue scarf. Or just persuade myself that manual labour is for the plebeians, as an excuse not to have to reteach myself knitting, and move on.)
Having jumped quite away from my subject line (I'm not quite sure one can be tangential to a tangent; we're referring to straight lines here, even if I'm quite obviously not thinking in them) I'm going to revert to fangirling Robert Dessaix, as I've been doing to anyone who will listen lately. Firstly, a paragraph from the introduction to the final section of (and so forth), the book of his essays and reviews and stories and musings that I've been buried in lately. It's helped me to pinpoint why his writing resonates with me so much - quite apart from the fact that he writes extensively on the subject of aestheticism, a motive that's been emerging quite prominently from my whittled-down personality, the things he wants to explore and find in life align so very neatly with my own:
Not everyone, naturally, will have quite the same bees in their bonnet that I do, but many will find the buzzing familiar: the desire to be unique but at the same time to belong somewhere; the need to love intimately and unreservedly, but also to be free; the deep attachment to places and people, even as they change and unloose our fraying bonds with them; the impulse to live (and work and read and shop and garden), not so much in order to attain something, even knowledge, but creatively; and the conviction that not everything about being here has yet been explained, not by a long chalk.
Gardening aside (and apologies to the green thumbs out there, really, but I'm one of those people who could only keep plants alive if they were the kind that responded to menacing threats and conspicious empty flowerpots - thank you, Good Omens, for once again providing me with a delightful store of similes with which to pepper my ramblings), this is probably what I'd be saying if I had anything like this man's talent and insight and propensity for original thought. I'm sure a lot of you feel the same way, if indeed there is a 'you' by now and I haven't lost my entire audience to bemused boredom. I feel like inserting some fine print: if you've read this far, leave such-and-such in the comments. Have a sticker. There will be a pop quiz at the end. Etc. Wonderful, I've lost my train of thought. Dessaix! When I wasn't quite as far into this collection and my thoughts were not quite as well-formed I wrote the following in my journal-notebook, which is mostly devoted to semi-pretentious and semi-self-deprecating rambles akin to this one:
Venice beads, and my mind drifts back to Robert Dessaix, who is having a strong and slightly uncomfortable effect on me at the moment. It's his frank easiness, his ability to completely avoid purple prose (unless to show a genuine emotional connection that enhances the description of walled gardens, dark railway stations, the best and most sublime of Europe's art) and yet to come across as intelligent, piercing and friendly. In PLAIN words, with the occasional intellectual or oblique piece of vocabulary thrown in as a jab of reminder. I'm reading (and so forth), a collection of his short stories, reviews and essays, and have just finished a speech he gave ABOUT the art of reviewing - oh, he's very aware of the seductive nature of his chatty, personal tone. Odd to read. Makes you wonder if the genial chap you've taken quite a liking to (fellow Aussie, fellow queer, fond of travel and writing and reading for the sake of the JOY of the thing) is nothing more than a construct of a very clever and analytical mind.
I am blaming Dessaix at least in part for my sudden mad desire to become well-read and clever and able to spin out the little things that happen inside my head into something to stop and tilt one's head at, like a work of art. (Again, we dig up an embarrassing ulterior motive for this now startlingly lengthy rumination.) So I find myself reading John Barth's semi-autobiographical and altogether quite odd novel about a long-married couple going on a voyage. I haven't read enough to have formed any concrete opinions yet, but it's undoubtably very good. A little too self-reflective in parts, almost violently postmodern in his wild 'arias' about the fact that he hasn't planned the plot yet and he's making it up as he goes along. But I'm warming to him, as well, with his mentions of his treasured notebooks full of ideas for books. My own (second such) general-purpose notebook is open to my right as I type this, pages split between French verbs and careless jotting down of my exam timetable for the end of semester. I'll get back to you on the value of the book as a whole when I'm futher into it.
At this stage I began to segue into a discussion of why I'm going to read Salman Rushie's Shame when I didn't particularly enjoy Midnight's Children, being too young and too impatient when I read it, but I soon discovered I've run out of steam and it would just be charging on pointlessly for the sake of nothing in particular.
I'll leave it here.
I know exactly which icon to use for this post.
Don't get me wrong, I adore the word: I adored it when it first turned up in Orwell's 1984 and I adored the thrill of romance and clandestine intellectualism that it sparked when it was used in John Barth's Once Upon A Time in the context 'solipsism à deux', and by the time it appeared in shaping up, Robert Dessaix's essay on the nature of the adopted family, it was an old friend.
(After the fact definition: solipsism, to view the self as the only thing that is real, the only thing that can be verified, a quite literal retreat into and embrace of one's own inner reality)
It sounds vaguely geometrical, which the mathematician in me likes, and it's one of those hissing sibilant-ridden words - like insensate, another recent discovery - that I can happily imagine whistling off a snake-tongue. It would probably take Crowley three times as long as a human to say it, provided he was angry or drunk enough. The sound and shape of words means a lot to me. Cadence has long been a favourite, because not only does it sound musical, it has musical connotations. Twisty. I like it. If paradigm ended in -eem rather than -ime, phonetically speaking, I'd consider it quite perfect; shades of deem, old-fashioned and with Middle English roots, rather than the blatantly American dime. (Intellectual snobbery? Moi? As a random side note, I first encountered the word deem in a Disney movie, which probably says something telling but I'm too lazy to put the paradox together.) As the word stands it's too abrupt, for all I'm fond of the elusive nature of its definition.
(At this point I've worked out why I started writing this in the first place; not only to document one of those little coincidences that pop up from time to time, but to take my pretentious vocabulary out for a spin. I'm not taking any Arts subjects this semester and I'm beginning to feel a bit cramped. There are only so many opportunities for delicious words like juxtaposition, credo and inherent when one is writing about the mechanisms of leukemia on the genetic level or discussing adolescent psychology. All those wishing to abandon ship at this stage are free to do so. Don't trip over the giant sign proclaiming FAHYE'S PROCRASTINATION on your way out.)
In what I consider a remarkable (and quite unprecedented) stroke of good timing, I've hit a patch of intellectual thirst whilst still in the middle of the semester. It would have been nice if it had happened along whilst I still had piles of assignments up to the ceiling, but it's here in time to catch me putting together an essay and seminar presentation on the role of Human T-cell Leukemia Virus 1 in adult T-cell leukemia and other assorted diseases. As I watch the humanities-centred half (uh, two thirds? three quarters?) of my friends list flee towards the horizon in horror, I'll assure the rest of you that I'm not about to go into gushing detail about retroviruses and deregulation of the cell cycle and the warm glow of semi-professional smugness that I get every time I use the words 'presents with' in reference to the symptoms of some particularly nasty disease.
But the important thing is that I could. I'm invested. I like what I'm studying and I (not quite so conveniently) like what everybody else is studying and there literally aren't enough hours in the day for me to read the books I have and the books I've optimistically borrowed from my mother and various libraries, to write the things I have to write, to go out and research some more, to continue working my way through my French grammar book and occasionally throw self-congratulatory gems at Ji across the ether. There's a five hour choir rehearsal tomorrow that I begrudge in the extreme. But I'm happy, and I'm looking forward to the holidays with pathetic eagerness; with exams and compulsory learning out of the way, the broader and more informal type of learning can happen.
(At this stage I think I can pretty much drop all pretense that I have ever shrugged off the labels of geek or nerd or square, all of which have been liberally applied to me and sometimes caused a great deal of personal distress. I'll give a nod to Mel and agree with what she is nodoubt thinking, which is that I'm Ravenclaw through and through. Oh, fandom, how handy you can be in the assignment of more positive labels to oneself. I suppose I should start knitting myself a blue scarf. Or just persuade myself that manual labour is for the plebeians, as an excuse not to have to reteach myself knitting, and move on.)
Having jumped quite away from my subject line (I'm not quite sure one can be tangential to a tangent; we're referring to straight lines here, even if I'm quite obviously not thinking in them) I'm going to revert to fangirling Robert Dessaix, as I've been doing to anyone who will listen lately. Firstly, a paragraph from the introduction to the final section of (and so forth), the book of his essays and reviews and stories and musings that I've been buried in lately. It's helped me to pinpoint why his writing resonates with me so much - quite apart from the fact that he writes extensively on the subject of aestheticism, a motive that's been emerging quite prominently from my whittled-down personality, the things he wants to explore and find in life align so very neatly with my own:
Not everyone, naturally, will have quite the same bees in their bonnet that I do, but many will find the buzzing familiar: the desire to be unique but at the same time to belong somewhere; the need to love intimately and unreservedly, but also to be free; the deep attachment to places and people, even as they change and unloose our fraying bonds with them; the impulse to live (and work and read and shop and garden), not so much in order to attain something, even knowledge, but creatively; and the conviction that not everything about being here has yet been explained, not by a long chalk.
Gardening aside (and apologies to the green thumbs out there, really, but I'm one of those people who could only keep plants alive if they were the kind that responded to menacing threats and conspicious empty flowerpots - thank you, Good Omens, for once again providing me with a delightful store of similes with which to pepper my ramblings), this is probably what I'd be saying if I had anything like this man's talent and insight and propensity for original thought. I'm sure a lot of you feel the same way, if indeed there is a 'you' by now and I haven't lost my entire audience to bemused boredom. I feel like inserting some fine print: if you've read this far, leave such-and-such in the comments. Have a sticker. There will be a pop quiz at the end. Etc. Wonderful, I've lost my train of thought. Dessaix! When I wasn't quite as far into this collection and my thoughts were not quite as well-formed I wrote the following in my journal-notebook, which is mostly devoted to semi-pretentious and semi-self-deprecating rambles akin to this one:
Venice beads, and my mind drifts back to Robert Dessaix, who is having a strong and slightly uncomfortable effect on me at the moment. It's his frank easiness, his ability to completely avoid purple prose (unless to show a genuine emotional connection that enhances the description of walled gardens, dark railway stations, the best and most sublime of Europe's art) and yet to come across as intelligent, piercing and friendly. In PLAIN words, with the occasional intellectual or oblique piece of vocabulary thrown in as a jab of reminder. I'm reading (and so forth), a collection of his short stories, reviews and essays, and have just finished a speech he gave ABOUT the art of reviewing - oh, he's very aware of the seductive nature of his chatty, personal tone. Odd to read. Makes you wonder if the genial chap you've taken quite a liking to (fellow Aussie, fellow queer, fond of travel and writing and reading for the sake of the JOY of the thing) is nothing more than a construct of a very clever and analytical mind.
I am blaming Dessaix at least in part for my sudden mad desire to become well-read and clever and able to spin out the little things that happen inside my head into something to stop and tilt one's head at, like a work of art. (Again, we dig up an embarrassing ulterior motive for this now startlingly lengthy rumination.) So I find myself reading John Barth's semi-autobiographical and altogether quite odd novel about a long-married couple going on a voyage. I haven't read enough to have formed any concrete opinions yet, but it's undoubtably very good. A little too self-reflective in parts, almost violently postmodern in his wild 'arias' about the fact that he hasn't planned the plot yet and he's making it up as he goes along. But I'm warming to him, as well, with his mentions of his treasured notebooks full of ideas for books. My own (second such) general-purpose notebook is open to my right as I type this, pages split between French verbs and careless jotting down of my exam timetable for the end of semester. I'll get back to you on the value of the book as a whole when I'm futher into it.
At this stage I began to segue into a discussion of why I'm going to read Salman Rushie's Shame when I didn't particularly enjoy Midnight's Children, being too young and too impatient when I read it, but I soon discovered I've run out of steam and it would just be charging on pointlessly for the sake of nothing in particular.
I'll leave it here.
I know exactly which icon to use for this post.