Not Good

It's 6:45am and already hot. This does not bode well. The weather forecast is the sort we generally don't see until a month from now. Our recent statements about having grown to welcome the heat are about to be severely tested. My head already feels like it has been compressed between two giant stones. I wish I-8 didn't have to wait another nine days.

Words and Deeds

It was the perfect time for me to see a film called Eros because I've been having many deep and important conversations about what the concept of "sex" entails. I've read enough of the literature on the subject to know that the PC thing is to state that just about anything can count as "sex" under the right circumstances. The definition is as subjective as they come. On the other hand, I've known a good number of people, men and women, who restrict the definition to intercourse, whether of the anal or vaginal variety.

I had a woman friend when I was an undergrad who would go months into a relationship before consenting to penetration. She would say, "We haven't had sex yet," during that time, even though she was swallowing her partner's ____ on a daily basis. I found the idea that this activity was only "fooling around" rather curious at the time. But now that I'm wiser, I recognize that her definition at least had consistency going for it.

My current preoccupation is erotic language. Does it ever make sense to say people are having an affair when they are exchanging only words? At what point would a mutually shared fantasy take on the force we normally associate with physical contact? If an idea makes you come, could its influence reasonably be described as a type of penetration?

I'm fascinated by the divide between my theoretical position, which holds that the distinction between words and deeds is ultimately an illusion -- Faust might as well have quoted the Gospel of John the way it usually gets translated, "In the beginning was the Word. . ." -- and my practical one, which counters that there is a huge difference between merely thinking of an action and actually doing it. Interestingly, it's the theoretical position that is steering me away from the path of freedom. I'm sure I could get along just fine with the knowledge that the space of fantasy only promises liberation so long as it is unregulated, provided I could convince myself once and for all that it really does matter whether we act on our impulses or not. Stranger still, as I've been writing this entry I've been fighting back the urge to go read the New Testament. What's that about?

Remembering Why I've Made The Choice I've Made

I'm standing here at the free computer in the Xoom Juice on Speedway having the latest version of my personal-is-professional crisis. I'm tired of feeling battered by people I know and people I don't know because what I do best is to write dense interpretations of dense interpretations. On the other hand, I had the very positive experience this morning of talking to one of the staff members in my department -- someone who is bright, curious, but not at all "academic" -- about the music we played for the Bean in utero and as a baby and then being able to print out a copy of my "Music For Babies" piece from Bad Subjects for her to read without having to worry that it would make me look ridiculous or perversely difficult to her. When I returned to her office thirty minutes later, she had it open on her desk. Were I to have given her my response to the theoretical tracts I'm reading right now, however, I doubt whether she would have ever begun to read it. The thing is, I really need to read difficult theory in order to have productive thoughts that I can, under the right circumstances, turn into something accessible to people outside the academy. Unfortunately, however, I usually lack the time to take that last step these days. So I'm caught up in a whirlwind of self-doubt that saps my confidence. I want out, but I don't know how to escape the centripetal force that holds me in its thrall.