There are all sorts of reasons why I shouldn't be allowed to write blogs in the middle of the night, least of all when I'm indulging some demonic wish to make myself tired tomorrow simply because I can. I finished my exam paper for Bernet today, so that's the last major piece of writing I have to do in Belgium. Things slow down a little from here, which is just good in every possible way. I need a break, I won't get a real one until the exams (only 2) and the thesis defense are over, plus I have this book profile that I was given to do almost a year ago and should have been done months and months before now. Such is the nature of things, I'm done beating myself up over it. I made a schedule and it's getting done on time, what more can be expected of me shall not be mentioned.

All this being said, I am writing a blog whether it's a good idea or not, because I have stories to tell that are already late (see above forfeiture of self-upbraiding). Number one, H.A. Nethery came to visit me. He came at what others might think was a bad time, but honestly, I don't know if I would have made it through those 9 excruciating days without him. With grace, insight and generosity -- as is his natural disposition, which I maintain against his irrepressible modesty -- he read the entire damn thing and commented on every page. He even sat through verbal rehearsals of my intro and conclusion, and without that interlocution I think my thesis would have suffered from the inevitable pitfalls of my otherwise self-enclosed ideality (for any Kierkegaard readers out there, is this enclosing reserve? or am I still just a depthless aesthete?)
He fit in Europe like a hand in a glove, though I think the likes of him should take up residence in Berlin or Prague. Leuven is many things, but it is not cool. I won't rant, but let's just say metal shirts, tattoos and mirrored aviators were like a breath of free air in this stifling sea of sameness. [Too much alliteration? Maybe. I found a note to self in the submitted version of my thesis. In the introduction, no less. It reads "Put something else in here." Dave drew my attention to the Freudian connotation, no further comments needed.]

Second on the list was the Kierkegaard weekend, hosted by my promoter, Paul Cruysberghs at his sister's summer house in Trou de Bra, a gorgeous hilly region in Wallonia. The house was the presbytery of a church (congregation 15) and between the church and the presbytery -- where I was sleeping -- is a hugely elaborate grotto immitating in its way the grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, but with a touch of Belgian nationalism and ostentatious (gold) kitsch. I was struck by it, and a little afraid. Religious zealotry has always given me pause, which is not to say I think its irredeemable.
There were ten of us, 6 grad students and 4 others, some professors, a priest, and an author by the name of Sarah Miano, who wrote Encyclopedia of Snow which I remember being recommended to me a while ago. It was really a very intense weekend. Kierkegaard by day, drinking and talking and chess at night, it was a little strange, and I had trouble adjusting at first, but Margherita was there, and Viktor as well, so it didn't take me long to get over my incredulousness and join in to the best of my ability. I can't drink like these Europeans though, so much is certain.
The Sickness Unto Death is a brilliant little book. It's little and huge at the same time. So direct, like a doctor giving a diagnosis to another doctor. Reading Kierkegaard seems to be all about preparation. You have to prepare yourself to understand him, no matter how obscure he seems at times. It's like you have to will that it makes sense, and then suddenly you're standing naked before everyone who's ever read this text. His descriptions are profound multi-layered distillations of religious, philosophical and psychological experience and there seems to be nothing that escapes his tireless, even obsessive insight. He was a force of nature, and I stagger to think that I have just submitted a commentary that pairs him with Lacan, who, in his way, has the same kind of power.

I am driveling. Was there something else? Not that I can think of. And so, photos:



Yay! Blogspot fixed the photo formatting!! Cut and paste freedom! This is H.A. and I, doing what we do best in the Blauwe Kater. Nevermind why I'm holding the candle, that beer was 11.5%.


My friends Dave and Astrid that same night. Dave is the one I play MarioKart with, his company is always refreshing, even Arnis notices. As it turns out I just tuned into the HTML obviousness, so it wasn't Blogspot's problem at all.

There are many, many reasons why I love Maastricht, but this is just one. From what we can muddle out of the faded Dutch inscription, a guy was there on that bridge for 70 years, somehow distributing cigarettes to the townsfolk. Statues, like time capsules right out in the open. I wish we had more in the States.
This, is another. It's a bizarre installation in an old zoo cage, in the middle of the municipal park. I touched it up in snipshot.com because it was horribly washed out, it didn't come out of the camera this way. As it turns out the oscillation between html editing and "compose"ing is still a pain, so Blogspot's back in the fire of my frustration.
and H.A. and Charles on the platform in Liege. Charles and I had turned in our theses that day, so we all went to Maastricht. God how I love that place, nothing but escape and celebration. If I make it through my PhD I think I'm going to apply for a post-doc in Maastricht. Somehow, some way, I will live there someday. Does it rhyme? Good, now I have a mantra.

Okay... tired. It's ridiculously late for me. I will forego the alarm, just because I can.

Love,

Cakes

People of the world, I have finished my thesis. I think in many ways I am a changed person. It may seem grandiose and bombastic of me, and despite my proclivity for such tones, there are now 89 pages worth of commentary in the world that weren't there before. I wrote them, interspersed heavily with rephrasings and blockquotes. I could tell you how I've changed, but that might be too much. As it turns out, over-determination is just the noisy road to despair. I think perhaps that's not my preferred route, despite the fact that it will take me time to remember why and how to go about avoiding it.

I cannot remember being this tired, and certainly not for such a sustained period. I still have so much work to do. It's bizarre, really. I think I may get 4 days to pack at the end, but the day before I leave is the all-encompassing "proclamation," which it makes me laugh to think about. Oh, the pomposity. They will call my name, and then they will "proclaim" on what scale I have been lauded. A more ridiculous social gathering I cannot imagine, all of which is ameliorated by the fact that it is simultaneously a BBQ. It's like the twilight zone here. Or maybe I'm just looking out of the psychedelic lenses that being this tired and this overwhelmed by the all-important mystery of their expectations have given me. Un-freakin-believable. I better be unconsciously psychic, that's the only way I'll make it out of here without being mangled.

All the more so, let me say that I am looking forward to spending the weekend with my promotor (Dr. Paul Cruysberghs) and a dozen other graduate students for the purpose of examining The Sickness Unto Death. Apparently Dr. Cruysberghs does something like this every year. We're going to a cottage and we're going to read Kierkegaard, all weekend.

I gotta go be outside for a while ... even though it's raining.

Lates!

Cakes

Again through Boing Boing, this is really simple and powerful. An art professor at the Art Institute in Chicago, who's Iraqi, locks himself in a room and lets people shoot him with a paintball gun through the internet. Momento the human.

Interview with Wafaa Bilal
by Brian Boyko

Mr. Boyko makes a point about dehumanization in IT, but after thinking about the more deadly connotations, that sounds a bit nerdy. Granted, it is from "the network performance authority."

Once again, I found a cool thing at Boing Boing. I have to resist the temptation just to repost everything they post, so awesome are the peeps over there. For some reason I've always been interested in the regional differences that seem to crop up in the terminology for carbonated beverages, and once again, the omniscient virtual realm has provided neatly organized answers to my questions. Alan McConchie is responsible for this, and you can look at the info and contribute to the information via his survey.

Yesterday I had the very fortunate experience of travelling to one of my favorite places of all time (Maastricht, NL) to attend a very small and intense conference on freedom in Psychoanalysis. It was held at the Jan Van Eyck Academie which seems to be a small group of independent artists and scholars who do what they do and then host lots of cultural and academic events. It was a really great day, I was all aquiver with new information and they provided lunch! I wasn't confident enough to say anything, but talking to some of the scholars I think Lacan's interpretation of Kierkegaard indicates the way the modern paradigm is forced to conceive human freedom negatively in terms of our freedom to die/defy the law. It is certainly the case that Adam's freedom in the garden is limited to the possibility of sin, which is of course unlimited, but once he takes that "qualitative leap" and eats of the fruit, we're all condemned to that distance from God that allows us to rattle around anxiously and do all kinds of things that seem contrary to nature. This is the account Haufniensis gives in The Concept of Anxiety anyway. I think that this corresponds to the distance that the symbolic order (language etc.) gives us from Lacan's sense of the Real, as an utterly meaningless transcendent element we need protection from. So says Lacan, the dilemma is now: "Your Freedom or your Life." You can be free, but that means giving up everything that makes your life meaningful.
Yee ha!

This is just plain cool.... A 2,100 year old computer. The picture above is of course only a replica. The original spent two millenia at the bottom of the ocean.

Hilarious! I think our paranoia is getting the better of us? Not to mention a bizarre degree of cultural isolation.

Wireless spy coin was just a Canadian poppy coin

AND, I found this through BoingBoing and now I'm totally hooked on Bibliodyssey, such amazing stuff goes up there, even though pk insists he's very busy. Some people can do it all... I thought of Phoebe when I saw these skull people.

I found this following a mention of Borges' Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Xul Solar was an Argentinian "everythingologist" and this link leads to an incredibly beautiful blog (and what looks like a very fantastic blog) post by misteraitch.

I may die of happiness looking at these pictures...

Crying Sumo, because crying is good for babies.

Oh man, so I realize that my last substantial post was not only a month ago, but also slightly manic, so let's do something a little more mellow.

The big news lately is that I got into Syracuse, so I'll be a religion scholar in the fall. Moreover I will be a religion scholar in central New York, which just makes me loads of happy.

Phoebe and Dom were here for two weeks, and I loved having them here. It was like being at home in Leuven, which doesn't always feel like home. The weather was just unbelievably fantastic, and has remained so. I know it can't be good for the farmers (cf. NYT report), but it hasn't rained in like a month and the sky is always blue and the sun bakes you but it's still sweater weather in the shade... totally ideal, has done wonders for my disposition. We went to Namur and I fell asleep in the grass on top of the fort-embarkment (BOMBARDMENT!!) thing. We played hot dice and had a picnic, it was totally dreamy. I couldn't believe it worked with the three of us in this room, but it was so much fun, and recharged my batteries, I was totally de-stressed when they left.

Nevermind that I got into the program of my dreams and am moving within mere hours of my family and a great many of my friends for what might actually be slightly longer than ten months; when I first found out it felt like a ton of bricks lowered onto my chest. That's just the way this shit runs with me, I have to put myself under enormous pressure just to compensate for the fact that I really freaking hate the work sometimes. But I love it just as much, so lately I've just been trying to relax and have a good time. For crying out loud I've been buried in this poop for what seems like years now and I can't writing anything intelligent?! It's ridiculous. So now I just write, everyday... I would connect this up with Lacan's logical time if I had the details at my fingerprints (sic), I'm almost positive it's related somehow. Psychoanalysis is fun.

So... I got locked onto private property with a friend (Charles) the other night. We tried to scale walls and jump spikey fences, but anyone who knows me knows I'm going to be one of the first to die if all hell breaks loose... I can't jump a fence to save my own life. So we ended up wandering into an old folks home (which was peripherally locked down like Alcatraz) and surprised one of the nurses, who threatened to call the police, even though I think she could tell we were just silly kids. It was all very weird, but we laughed a lot at the pure absurdity of it.

Yesterday my Dad went to look at a place in Syracuse for me, and signed the lease! I officially have a place to live, and John the Dad says it's by far the nicest place I've ever had. I will be living alone (with my geriatric cat Smokey, who's been in the custody of my Grandma Susie up until now), I have a dishwasher, two porches, a big living room and a bedroom, gas range, hardwood floors.... Oh it is just going to be .... I'm going to live like a human being!!! I'm so excited I'm totally beside myself. I've recognized in the last few years that I'm not the most well-balanced person upstairs, so I need my ground conditions to be as normal and low stress as possible. Alas this calls an end to my globe-trotting, but honestly, I'm sure I'm going to do a lot of travelling in my life, and what seems more important now is just to get some kind of home base established that isn't my Mother's house (beautiful and idyllic as it is). Having Smokey around will also make me happy, despite the fact that he's completely neurotic and defensive. I'm the perfect person to love a cat like that I think, I understand....

Today everything is closed in Leuven, it's some kind of holiday. No class, no library, so I have to self-motivate (argh) and finish my second chapter on schedule today. I've become totally obsessed with Bloglines, which just makes my surfing day so much easier, and you get all kinds of weird stuff if you sign up for the right feeds. Boing Boing is my new favorite, so upbeat, so weird and interesting.... I also get daily doses of celebrity gossip, which is another new passion, though I am so sick of freaking Lindsey Lohan and her idiocy it makes me want to vomit. Plus I can subscribe to all my friends' blogs and get daily updates (though I have noticed that everyone except Dana hasn't been updating their blogs... hint hint... not like I'm one to talk). I love the interwebs... Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy just posted a new entry on cognitive science, which is a really interesting (though excessively nerdy) read. Also, Charles introduced me to this internet radio program called Philosophy Talk, which despite the fact that it's almost all Analytic/History of Philosophy stuff, seems pretty awesome.

Mmmm, linky. Me and that hyperlink button are getting to be good friends... Have I mentioned that I love the interwebs? Well, I also love photos, so for those of you who are too lazy to surf to my flickr page, here are some snaps from the Dom and Phoebe vacay:

Nevermind how long that took to format... Blogspot needs to come up with some better way of dealing with photos, this is ridic. Also, just for added bonus, here's a video I took of some folk dancing (Ukrainian maybe?) that happened in Leuven one of the days Phoebes and Doms were here:




In other news, freaking NETHERY is coming on the 20th of May! I'm so excited I might pee my pants. Since he's coming nine days before my thesis is due, he's promised to read the whole thing and proof it for me. Having another nerd around is great, nevermind that he's a phenomenology nerd. It's just going to be awesome.

Anyway, that self-motivation thing needs to start happening, so I better stop with the internet stuff.

Toodles!

Cake

For those of you who haven't harvested this from NYT or Daily Kos... I'm getting all into the bloglines thing now, so convenient!

Food, money, government, politics, immigration... one big happy mess. Very important (and well written):

You Are What You Grow

Oh my God! (I just finished reading A Confederacy of Dunces, which I HIGHLY recommend, esp. if you're a Boethius fan) I'm in a good mood by some miracle of self-delusion, so I thought I'd write a blog while the sun holds out. The sun has, in point of fact, been in Belgium for the last week, though it's a bit gloomy today, so who knows what blessings are in store.

I alternate these days between a serious mental breakdown (a la last night) and a sort of elated nervous energy that keeps my head bopping to some inner music that I'm sure is just my prefrontal cortex malfunctioning again for the sake of the whole. Undoubtedly it's doing me a favor, but I really wish I could just FOCUS once in a while.

I've also somehow been completely unable to handle group situations on a mental level, so with the exception of a birthday, I've been trying to keep it to a one-on-one basis. Marianne, as always, is keeping me sane with a constant stream of encouragement, and I think if she wasn't here I would just roll into a fetal position and wait for it all to be over. I STILL haven't gotten my Kant grade, which shows up as a problematic withdrawal on my transcript, but other than a vague foreboding I have no real problem with that.

Random thoughts abound, but I'm counting the days until Phoebe and Dom get here. The pressure is on, but if I meet it I can just relax for a bit while they're here. It's going to be so great to see them, I think I might just pee my pants in anticipation.

Speaking of anticipation, I finally switched my flight and I will now be landing back in the motherland at 11:46pm on July the 6th! It seems a long way away, but I can't believe how fast the time is going, so undoubtedly I will be thunderstruck when I finally get on that plane. I miss home, there's no question there, and my summer is going to be crazy, what with all the reunions and moving shit and weddings and kissing all the inanimate objects that will never appreciate my affection. If they find my lifeless body in the gorge, don't suspect that I intended to end it all, the falls will have just rejected my effusive displays.

Spin spin spin... In other news I'm now on Facebook, which I still think is crap compared to Myspace, but there are elusive characters on there I can't find elsewhere (like TINA!! And Ashley Johnson, which is really just crazy!). So if you're on there and reading this and I don't have you as a friend yet, search me up. I still don't understand how the network functions work, so don't look for me that way. Here's a link to my profile, though I'm not sure it works the same way as Myspace in terms of linking in.

Love and stuff!

Cake

It's all about the middle way...

Alright, let's try a morning post, since I need some sort of exercise to extricate me from the womb-like oblivion of sleep.

Things are well in Belgium. I am somehow entering a new "ethical" phase wherein I floss every night, go to the gym, go to bed at 11, get up at 8 and clean my room whenever it's dirty. I spend about 10 hours a day working, though of course that's never enough, and I'm beginning to think that perhaps, at some point, I can stop spinning my wheels and actually get some traction in what is certainly not mud, but maybe something like dirty ice.

I am learning that, up until this point, I have been operating on a "gut" level. It's only luck that has gotten me this far, and perhaps a bit of talent, but it has become painfully evident that such a haphazard approach (totally lacking in concrete method) is completely inadequate for my present circumstances. That certainly doesn't mean that I am in the midst of concretizing some kind of method, but at least I am compensating for the fact that such a lack requires a great deal of time in order to accomplish the same effect.

This all has something to do with the fact that it takes a great deal of repetition in order for something to emerge as an actual "production." Which of course relates to my thesis, though I am as yet undecided whether what is necessary is the kind of divine intervention that a religious thinker would advocate, or if in some sense I just need a real, human (perhaps trained) interlocutor. The benefits of analysis are certainly something I have advocated in the past, but somehow I haven't gotten off my ass to find a therapist here. I settle for good conversations with friends, a proliferation of writing and self-analysis that may only be miring me deeper in my spinning self-involvement. If you can make any sense of it, I think the Lacanian diagram below expresses something of what I'm talking about. I made it in paint, so please ignore the fact that it looks like a vagina. That particular entendre was imposed on me by the crapiness of the program.

In the world outside, I am delighted that Dom and Phoebe are coming for my Easter break, which necessitates a much needed renovation of my room setup. I have ideas that I think will be pure genius as long as my sense of measurement does not turn out to be wildly imprecise. What this also means is that I have to get a rough draft of my thesis in by then, which is going to be a hard crush, but I'm working steadily and I haven't yet despaired of the possibility.

I've also taken up a crafty hobby, which I learned from my Grandma Susie (whom I will have to call very soon for help). I'm doing a very fine cross-stitch rose on an off-white background. It's hard and meticulous work, but I get to wear my glasses and listen to NPR and feel a little retired. It's also an activity that I can do to stay within these four walls and be content, taking down time that doesn't involve money or several hours. I've drastically reduced my socialization, so being able to be alone and challenged is very important for my mental health.

At any rate, it's time to get ready for class. Monday is my big day, I have two classes spanning 11am to 5pm, which is really not that bad, but I'm pretty burned out by the end. Tonight I re-read the Husserl that Prof. Bernet has assigned us. We're doing Husserl and Heidegger on the body, which promises to be very instructive despite the fact that our class is at 9am on Tuesdays and held in the coldest, most uncomfortable (but prettiest) lecture hall of the Institute.

Ta ta for now,

Ashley

Technology "saves" us again...

Totally different tone than yesterday, never fear...

Praise be to the powers beyond me, I passed dread logic! A beautiful, precious 10 awaited me today when I literally RAN to the office to get my grades. I have never been so happy about a 50% in my life. Don't poopoo, you logic-heads, this is not my tune and I am not a fantastic dancer even when it is. I'm just happy I don't ever have to get back on that floor again. I am brimming over with gratitude and humility.


As far as my other grades go, I did pretty well. The only one I was dissappointed with was my Malebranche grade, which I thought I had done better on, but Breeur has notoriously high expectations and I still did well enough that it doesn't cramp my style, so I am likewise grateful. I haven't gotten my Kant grade yet because Prof. Moors has been indisposed, but I'm not overly worried about it, that's another exam I'll be happy to pass. Anything above a 10 will be a thrill.

Marianne and I celebrated our personal victories over big shots of Jameson, and I am feeling loose and happy for my afternoon Husserl readings. Tomorrow I will probably descend into a pit of despair once again over my thesis, but at least I'll have the whole day to dredge my way along. I love only having class two days, at least it feels like I have a lot of time to schedule for myself, which is perhaps a dangerous illusion but also a serious advantage.

Anyway... WAHOOO!

Well... as my Maman pointed out, I have been neglecting my little space here on the wide open web. Things have been crazy since... well, I'm certainly not counting the days anymore.

Highlights include: a lovely visit from my Father and Julie and the girls (pictures to follow). We generally just ran around, there wasn't much of a plan, but we went to Brussels and Luxembourg, which was beautiful. It was nice having Maddie and Sophie around for a little while, even though they drove me batty sometimes. I haven't been used to the pitter patter of little feet for a long time, and I forgot how much fun kids can be. We played a lot of cards and ate a lot of ice cream, as well as negotiated the inside of the Atomium, which was a trip in itself. Overall it was just nice to see some faces from home, spend a little time with my Dad and show everyone around.

After the fam left, it was a matter of work, work, work. Which I will say is weighing on me. I'm trying to teach myself French in a super hurry, so I can really participate in an informal seminar that Moyaert is giving (and I somehow ended up organizing). We'll see how that goes. I'm also anxiously awaiting my grades for the first semester. I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter how well I think I did on (some of) my exams, I'm sure I'm in for some humbling. I worked hard, but that's no guarantee. I had no idea what I was doing with these oral exams, and I can still hear the missed questions in my head: "delectations of grace", "matter in motion", and the worst of all: "repetition is the result of a double reference within the network of signifiers to an extraneous element which has intruded into the mental economy of the subject." Hard, hard reality. I won't even mention my thesis, which has imploded so many times I don't think it will ever stand on its own. I'm sure I've felt this way before, but I haven't built up any callouses that I can count on. The best I can do is clean off my desk and start again. There's a disconnect somewhere, but I don't know where it is or how to pull everything back together, I'm just waiting for the world to turn a little further, and maybe everything will be fine.

Same sad old story.

Musically, I've been seeing a lot of shows. I saw the Decemberists at the Orangerie, which was lovely except for the fact that my new boots (not a small selfish joy in my life) were hurting me and I had to leave after the first encore and sit down. Similarly, I saw Tortoise Saturday night at the Depot, and they were great, but I left after an hour because I've come down with this flu that's been spreading like widlfire all over Leuven. Even my tobacconist is sick.

Anyway, I'm tired, but I'm sure I will talk to most of you soon.

Love,

Cake

The horrible nightmare is over... maybe.

I did well (I think) on my Malebranche exam, I missed the part about "delectations of Grace", which was a stupid point to miss, but I did well on natural judgment and he read my essay while nodding his head consistently. I also got his trick question, which I had been generally warned about, so hopefully I did okay.

Dread, horrible, gut-wrenching LOGIC on the other hand, I'll be lucky if I passed. I took it this morning, with the beginning sense that I had worked hard (flash-cards and everything) and that I was basically prepared. The damn test was only two pages long! I know I got the first question right, but the rest might have been uber crap. I totally missed a lot of the rules for proofs, so I don't think any of them were right, except maybe one or two individual lines. Almost everyone took the full 2 and a half hours, and I feel a little sick now thinking that I might have to retake it. People are in the process of assuring me that this is how a lot of people felt after the exam, and they did fine. I just suck really hard at memorizing things, and for the life of me the big picture does not make sense, so please God let me pass. I'd settle for a 10 or a 9, just don't make me retake it. I just keep muttering to myself and shaking my head: HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE nightmare.

So now the task is to shake off the massive blow to confidence that I've just sustained and try to relax a little before my Dad et. al. arrive on Sunday. I need a freakin' break. I am not going to read a damn book or write a goddamn sentence. The thesis can wait, I am pooping TIRED. In that line, my only plan is to do a whole lot of socializing and sleeping.

Horrible, horrible nightmare. But it's over.

On a completely different note, apparently we can modulate our brain activity by watching MRIs of it working! I probably just need a labotomy.

In Clue to Addiction, a Brain Injury Halts Smoking

Woo boy, so two down and two to go... I took my huge Kant exam yesterday, which I literally worked on for four days straight after my Lacan exam. It was probably the hardest I've worked on anything in a long time, which is hard to believe that I would stress about it more than my Kierkegaard work over the summer, but there it is. I had NO idea what the professor was talking about most of the time, so it was a long and arduous effort to make sense of the notes. Fortunately, there were a few of us in similar circumstances, and so we got together and worked on it, splitting up various sections and making presentation. It was a good experience, and when I got up there to talk to Prof. Moors, I felt pretty good about my answers. We'll see how I did though.

I love being here right now. It's totally the most stressed and pressed I have ever been, and yet the challenge is something I've been really looking for. Which is not to say that my previous academic challenges haven't been substantial or fulfilling, but something about the level of expectation and my new and improved level of committment and preparation is deeply satisfying. The level of comraderie is really nice too, everyone knows how hard this stuff is and we appreciate the diversity of talents that everyone brings to the table.

I have a long way to go though, still. I have my Kierkegaard paper to revise in the next two days (I hope to be done then anyway) and then Malebranche and dread Logic come up next week. I haven't even started thinking about them, but I've been working consistently throughout the semester, so I think I won't be coming to it blind.

The world outside has gotten very cold by Belgian standards, which is really alright because it helps to keep me inside and more or less focused. We had a crazy hale storm on Sunday night, I literally thought my window was going to break in on me, it was incredibly loud. I can never see hale without thinking of the time I went to Treblinka with my Polish camp in July and it haled on us. The most superficial guy in the group (whom we used to call "Gel" on account of all the grease he used to wear in his hair [ten points for the reference if anyone gets it]) said in perfect English: "God is crying."

So tomorrow besides work I think I'm going back to Holland for a little rest. It's lovely to be able to do that, I don't think I'll ever take that for granted.

At any rate, I hope everyone is well and projects are continuing apace.

Love,

Cake

Two words: Smoked it.

I'm not so sure I did all that well on the written part, but he kept me for a long time at the oral stage (ha ha!) and even insisted that I did know stuff I was willing to give up on. In any case, I feel pretty good about it, and even if I don't do as well as I think I did, I'm pretty happy that I didn't just humiliate myself. Woo hoo! for small victories.

Here's the summary that I wrote, it might be pretty boring for most of you, but if you're curious about what we did in this class, this is a very stripped down version that I think nonetheless captures most of the important elements and movements.

A.D.C. Cake January 18^th, 2007
Final exam general question: Advanced Philosophical Anthropology, Fall 2006

The broad historical context into which Lacan fits Freud in his Seminar on ethics (1959-1960) is the sense in which moral philosophy has lost the perspective of Aristotle. Lacan interprets Aristotle's ethical position as maintaining the possibility of a harmony between the human subject and the “sovereign good,” that ultimately the macro cosmos promotes the welfare of the human being. In this anthropology, our natural feelings of pleasure and pain lead us to a refinement of our moral actions. In Lacan's eyes, this Aristotelian anthropology is destroyed by the notion of Freud's that sexuality in particular is not a unity, but a unified complex of human drives and instincts. For Lacan, the idea that “pleasure does not begin with intentionality” destroys the Aristotelian moral perspective. Further, the moral philosophy of Kant also makes a break with the harmonic conception of moral life. It is rather the moral law that stands as the only measure of the moral worth of our actions. Kant denies that we can act according to our sensations of pleasure or pain and have anything but (at best) an accidental moral correctness. With this Kantian break, it is no longer with happiness that we associate moral life (as does Utilitarianism), but with the ideals of altruism, rationality and duty.

In this new ethical framework, Lacan is using Freud to advocate a hermeneutical contextualism that seeks to protect and describe those aspects of our moral life which are in danger of being obscured by the major moral theories. The task for an ethics of psychoanalysis is to uncover and preserve the subtleties of our spontaneous moral experience, so that we may open up a more adequate relation to them. To this end, Lacan highlights Freud's description of the two principles of mental functioning: the pleasure principle and the reality principle. For Freud, the pleasure principle is a principle of inertia which strives for a unity of perception and to this end will lead the subject by the quickest possible route toward a discharge of excitation, which Freud identifies as “unpleasure.” Yet the pleasure principle is not always adequate. It dominates the system of perception, and can often lead the subject to hallucinate an object, which may result in a relation with reality that is actually unpleasurable for the human subject. If the subject's drive for self-preservation prevails, the pleasure principle is replaced by the reality principle, which mentalizes excitation. The reality principle allows the subject to bear a certain quantity of unpleasure for a certain amount of time, and to take distance from the unattainable promise of satisfaction. This gives the subject the condition for having a more adequate relation with reality, taming the exigencies of the pleasure principle.

So at a certain level the pleasure principle and the reality principle interact fluidly, and protect each other from possible excesses. Yet there is another element of our moral life, for Lacan, and he reads this from Freud's notorious theory of the death instinct. Here there is an “instinct” that has something destructive about it and this element gives rise to a kind of repetition that resists mentalization. Here he finds evidence for a psychic force that stands beyond the economy of the two principles and has no dialectic with them. This outside influence on our moral life he reads as “Das Ding,” “The Thing.” Das Ding has an intrinsic value for the subject which is particular for every individual. As a force from beyond, it jams the smooth interaction of the two principles, disrupting and disturbing the mental economy of the subject. In relation to Das Ding an element of my life that happens to participate in its intrinsic value becomes no longer replaceable. I must have it, or I cannot be happy. Once Das Ding makes itself known, the subject's desire becomes unsatisfiable, infinite. If the subject is unlucky enough to have this intrinsic value invested in a specific aim that is at odds with the social world, then this desire isolates the subject from the social order. It is at this point, for Lacan, where we find ethics.

Lacan describes the desire for Das Ding as the desire for a satisfaction or a representation that unifies all the satisfactions and representations in some ultimate One. Thus the story of Das Ding can be told in terms of a kind of nostalgia, the subject feels that at some point wholeness has been lost. The only way to find it again is to find that One object, Das Ding. Lacan tells two stories about the origin of Das Ding. The first story involves an inevitable effect of an ontological process, wherein our mental life is brought about by the translation of impressions into representations, which are all associated in a network through which the mental life ceaselessly moves. Mental life is in a restless dispersion, produces its own beyond, as no single representation is sufficient to unify the entire network. Das Ding is brought about by the desire of the subject to rest in a unitary whole, under One ultimate representation. The other story involves the Freudian idea (taken up by Levi-Strauss) that culture begins with a primal prohibition, the incest taboo. Lacan stresses the arbitrariness of this moral law. There is no reason why we cannot stay with our mothers, but we are prohibited to do so. Our desire for wholeness is a desire to transgress the primal prohibition and stay with our mothers. In this story the mother is Das Ding, the ultimate object that will give the ultimate satisfaction.

This fundamental difficulty, the desire to transgress the law that cannot be transgressed, is the hard core of moral life for Lacan. It is in this schema that we can see that Aristotelian moral philosophy is lost to us, insofar as it emphasizes a harmony. The macro cosmos no longer promotes our welfare, we have unpredictable desires that go against our well-being. It is only if we are lucky that we are not isolated from the social world. Lacan's answer to this is to strive to enjoy the symbolic sublimation of our infinite desire, to enjoy the satisfaction it offers us in effigy, and thus to combine the powers of the pleasure principle (through smaller satisfactions) and the reality principle (through mentalization).

My big Lacan exam is tomorrow, and I feel prepared, but that somehow doesn't make the transition between now and then any easier, so I've got a tremendous amount of nervous energy that I need to put somewhere, and I'm going to do something I've been trying not to do, given the blessings I can currently count just off the top of my head. I will also do this in the form of a list, so that you'll all be spared the long-windedness of my less than zen state of preparedness.

Things I don't like (hate) about Leuven:

1. There's no such thing as free water in restaurants (although you frequently get free booze)
2. Beer is cheaper than water.
3. Coffee only comes in two sizes: small and extra small.
4. The coffee sucks.
5. It's raining almost all the time.
6. All the ATMs run out of cash on a weekly basis
7. The only food you can get after midnight is terrible for you.
8. The sidewalks are narrow and uneven.
9. The bicyclists couldn't give a shit about anyone else.
10. There isn't always a clear distinctinction between the way of pedestrians and the way of cars.
11. There is NO good breakfast here. You'd think in the land of waffles they'd have figured out by now that with a little imagination (and a little less chocolate), you can eat them for something besides dessert. What I'm really saying is I miss diner food.
12. The clothes are both better and vastly more expensive.
13. NOTHING is open until 3pm on Sundays.
14. The libraries work on the 9-5 clock, and hardly at all on weekends.
15. I can't deposit money in ATMs
16. Almost all payments are made internal to the banking systems, so the phone company can take their payment whenever the hell they want.
17. I have to go to the ring to get Bagels.
18. Nobody knows what rye bread or TVP is.
19. There's no Korean food, and no affordable sushi.
20. The music in the cafes and bars sucks... A lot. (except for Blue Cat and Libertad)

That's as many as I can think of without straining myself. Not bad, only 20. It's been worse? Yeah, it's been worse.

I think I might post my two page answer to Moyaert's question "What was the course about?" tomorrow after the exam. It will probably be a bit boring, I had to take out all the nice rhetorical flourishes for the sake of eXtreme concision.

I'm gonna break a leg, so much is obvious.

Happy New Year everyone!

2006 was a doozy, that's for certain, but I think 2007 is shaping up nicely. I'm tired as all get out, even though I had a very sedate New Year's Eve, relatively speaking. My Mom brought Trivial Pursuit for me when she came with my Brother for Christmas (more on that later) so Marianne, Shannon, Mark and I went for Ethiopian food (tremendously awesome) and just played Trivial Pursuit until well after the clock struck the beginning of the new year. Marianne won (of course) but I think the rest of us put up a pretty good fight. It was nice, I'm always afraid of this celebration day, especially when I'm away from Ithaca, because you really can't beat NYE in I-town, or at least I've never been able to find anything better. But we managed to beat all the blues and pressure and had a wonderful time!

As previously mentioned, the Momiji and Brohan came over on the 22nd and stayed for a glorious week. We went to Brugge and Antwerp, but otherwise we just rambled around Leuven and ate like royalty. Only the best for my Moms, and I love it when I get to ride that wagon. We played a lot of trivial pursuit too, and they took lots of pictures, which I am waiting to get through email (hint hint) and then I'll post them on Flickr. Here I'll include a couple portraits and the train station in Antwerp, which I promised to share a long time ago. We didn't get to go to Namur, which is a shame, I really wanted my Mom to experience the dessert house, but time is always short with the visits.

It was super nice not to be completely without family for the holidays, I think I would've been a bit upset if I was all alone (but for my wonderful friends). But now that it's all over it's just going to be work work work from now until my Dad and fam come in February. My exams start on the 18th of this month, which gives me a bit of time to catch up on all the stuff I've been sidelining, which is not a terrific amount, but enough to put the pressure on.This is the view of the spectacular entrance to the train station in Antwerp from the platforms, it's just breathtakingly beautiful, and massive. Below is my beautiful Mother (Pia) in my apartment, who thinks she takes terrible pictures, but as you can see, that's just modesty.And here of course is the Moose (Adam), with his new set of keys. He stayed with me while my Mom stayed at the Holiday Inn down the street. Of course he popped my airmattress, but was generally cheerful otherwise. It was SO nice to get to spend some time with my family, it has been a while after all.

At any rate, I hope everyone had a lovely break/celebration and I wish everyone absolutely the best the new year has to offer!

Much love,

Cake

Well, it has been a little while since anything substantive went up on here, and there won't be substantial activity while my family is here (Mom-dukes and Brohan arrive tomorrow at the buttcrack of Belgian dawn--9:30am), so let's call this the seasonal post.

Since last we spoke, I experienced the Christmas market in Leuven and went on a pastry field trip to the capital of Wallonia. There was also an exam, an application and a lot of messing around. Let's take them in chronological order.

Phil and I had our Critical Theory exam on Friday the 15th, which was honestly easier than I thought it would be, but let's see what I get on it, that may have been a fatal misperception. I honestly have no idea what to expect.

After the exam, I went and bought beer glasses with Phil and planned to hang out with Marianne. Phil was going to some kind of lecture, but once a more relaxing alternative presented itself, he was easily dissuaded. So we're on our way back from the grocery store and we happen upon the christmas market that had completely taken over the Ladueze- and Hoover-pleins. I had never had the traditional gluhwein (sp?) or the genever (sp?) which is an original Belgian gin liquor, OR for that matter had the christmasy sausage sandwiches. So we stopped and had all three, to very pleasant effect I must say. I was utterly relaxed, though I did prefer the cherry genever to the mulled wine stuff, wine and I have never really liked each other.

We had plans to go out to dinner with Dave, and we convinced Phil to come (though he took a stonecold nap beforehand) and we called Cordelia, and Charles came with Dave, so really, by the time we got to the restaurant it was quite a party! The restaraunt (Muy Sapore) is really nice, the first time Marianne and I went there they treated us like queens because we were friends with Dave. It's Italian and Asian together on one menu, so there's something for everyone. We ended up staying up pretty late that night, went back to the christmas market just before it closed.

So that was Friday. Saturday morning Marianne, Mark and I went to Namur (the capital of Wallonia = French Belgium) on Mark's invitation to go to the best patisserie in all of Europe. It was indeed, quite spectacular. Like those dessert houses you see in period pictures about the aristocracy. We wandered around, I bought a new (blue) scarf, we went into this beautiful cathedral and made fart jokes (God better have a sense of humor). We also hiked up to this huge fort overlooking the city, which was something else. It was pissing rain though, and although I had an umbrella my boots were sodden by the time we left. I only have a few pictures, and none of them scenic, there was too much wet. I'll upload them when Photobucket decides to work again.

So yeah, those were two very full days. I had a few classes this week, that wasn't bad. I'm sad some of them are over, but I'm excited about only having two days of class scheduled next semester.

Have a happy break/religious holiday!

Cake

I have absolutely no energy to write anything, I'm totally burnt out. But I will compensate with a buttload of visual aides.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cakerphotos/

Love,

Cakes

I'm hard pressed to take any decent pictures these days, kinda sucks actually because I sit down and realize that lots of interesting visual things have happened and I have absolutely no record of them. You'll just have to take my word for it.

In the news lately are a lot of Birthdays. My friend Viktor's birthday was on Friday, though he didn't care to celebrate. My friend Dave's was the following Saturday, and he threw a pretty splendid party at his and Frenchy's place (scene of the American thanksgiving bonanza). And now Phil's is today, so I spent some good currency on two beautiful fruit tarts and we'll be having a lowkey dinner at that house. I enjoy all the celebrating, for the most part everyone is very fun and gregarious and parties turn out to be really nice occasions, although the tendency to spill over into excess is pretty widespread, but ultimately I think that's probably a good thing.

Really the reason why I'm writing is to report the AMAZING concert I went to last night. It was Badly Drawn Boy in the Brussels Botanical Garden, and the show itself was almost the cherry on the cheesecake. The venue was beautiful. In order to get to the Orangerie (a smallish auditorium toward the middle of the main building) we had to walk through two beautiful indoor gardens, filled with large tropical water plants and those little white and orange goldfish you see in decadent places. The crowd was smartly dressed without being pretensious, and everyone was very friendly and I heard no fewer than 10 languages spoken. It was really wonderful, I felt encouraged on some existential level. I went with my friends Cordelia and Shannon, and we got there just early enough to get a good place in front of the stage. I was so close I could have pulled Damon's Gough's guitar cord if I wanted to. He played a lot of songs from Bewilderbeast, which I love as an album, some stuff from About a Boy, and then some of his new stuff, which I'll admit to not being terribly fond of, but they certainly play as a team and the drummer in particular was a thrill to watch. He looked like a blonde Toby McGuire, with that kind of sleepy, dorky slow smile. BDB himself played the crowd really well, alternating between Elvis-esque charm and completely insecure defensiveness, it was interesting to see. I know it's his trademark, but the knit beanie did not make any sense. It was so hot, and he was sweating profusely, and had a jacket on over two t-shirts! That seemed a bit silly, not that I'm to be excluded from such irrational practices.

What was a very special moment though, happened at the very beginning, before anyone played. Cordelia and Shannon went to the coat check and I stood around in our spot and people-watched etc. I was feeling pretty comfortable and pleased with the whole thing, thinking to myself how much better concerts are in Europe, and then the ambient music changed to the Kings of Convenience's "Homesick", which is one of my favorite songs of all time, but especially since I've been here. It was so perfect I almost jumped out of my skin, and I couldn't control my grin, even though I guess it's kind of a sad song. Sad songs that hit the mark are somehow not so sad really.

Anyway, beyond all that social stuff I've just been working. I actually started writing the intro to my thesis, which feels good, even though I know I'll have to rewrite it eventually. The idea is just to give a brief catalogue of all the references Lacan makes to Kierkegaard's Repetition, which are as numerous as they are impenetrable. The first one I site is from "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis", and just to give you a feel for Lacan's obscurity, the important sentence reads: "...the exhaustion of being consummated in Kierkegaardian repetition." Needless to say, I'm probably not going to be able to pull this one apart until the very end of my thesis.

I hope everyone is well, keep in touch.

Ashley

Another sleepy Sunday almost gone... for a while I was keeping track of Sundays gone and Sundays yet to come, but I lost track right around when school started getting heavy. I should count them up again, since now that school is heavy and socializing is occasionally blurring the distinction between one day and the next, I have completely lost track of whole weeks. I've been here for over two months! Where the heck did all that time go? Into books and glasses of Belgian beer, that's where it went. Not that I'm bitter, I only regret a few moments here and there--a much better ratio than at many other times in my life. Nonetheless, I wish I had about 60 more hours between today and tomorrow, hours wherein I didn't have to sleep or eat if I didn't want to. So many freakin' constraints, where's the manager! I have something to say about this! (The Young Man in Repetition has a temper tantrum against God at one point, very funny.)

Yesterday Marianne and I went on a hella shopping trip to Antwerp. Originally I had planned to go to a lecture, but I misunderstood the time slot, so I didn't make it. I needed new shoes badly, and I wanted boots so I could wear skirts in the winter. I'm sure I don't have to tell anyone out there how infuriating shopping can be for anyone who doesn't fit the fickle and changing standards of the fashion industry, with whatever mysterious means they have of producing such simple stereotypes. I alternately seethed with indignant rage and sunk into a pit of self-pity and loathing. If anyone out there thinks I'm exagerating, we need to get to know each other better. I HATE shopping. Even when it works I consider it the exception that proves the rule. Such a simple thing on the face of it: find a pair of boots that are both functional and not helatiously or hilariously ugly. I can't even talk about it it makes me so angry-slash-sorry for myself.

The great part about spending the day in Antwerp was really hanging out with Marianne. She staid my nerves and didn't dote on my helplessness, I could follow her along on her missions and still have the courage to stop in every GD boot store in the city. At a few points we got to laughing so hard my sides hurt, so that was another nice counterbalance to my otherwise abyssmal mood. I did get a nice pair of boots from Puma, in the last shop five minutes after they officially closed. I also got a really nice grey jacket that I really like and Marianne gave me a great red scarf that's way warmer than my plain old brown scarf, so really, I made out like a bandit. Antwerp is also really beautiful, I'll go to take pictures sometime. The train station in particular is stunning.

In other news I had a little visitor today, she got off the train and we went around and did stuff and took pictures, here she is having a hot chocolate in the Grote Markt. She's a great guest, doesn't say much, but not everyone's a conversationalist.

Anyhoo... I'm going to have my sleepy Sunday supper now, Indian food, Taj Mahal... again. It's good and cheap, what more can one ask?
At any rate I hope everyone is well and not too busy, it's almost paper writing season again. May God have mercy on us.

Me

Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone!

Despite the fact that Belgium passed over our hallowed holiday without any ceremony whatsoever, I managed to have a thoroughly fulfilling celebration (minus my family and absent friends, of course, which always weighs heavily on me). My friends Chris (a.k.a. Frenchy) and Dave threw a very lavish celebration in their thoroughly lavish apartment last night, and many people feasted, talked, feasted, drank and feasted some more. All the usual all-stars were there, and also a bunch of cool people I didn't know, so I got to broaden my horizons as well as enjoy my already opened one. Originally, Chris' idea was to stuff a duck wrapped in bacon inside the turkey, but the farmer talked the butcher out of it, and then the butcher talked Frenchy out of it. We were all suitably dissappointed at first, but the bird came out wonderfully, and along with a complement of luscious sides (and a really tasty tempeh dish for the veggies) we were all groaning with an excess of thanksgiving. I made Mr. Sumnauth's famous sweet potatos, even though I had to use Marianne's only two sweet potatos since there were apparently no other sweet potatos in Leuven. I remember passing hoardes of North Americans in the vegetable section bemoaning the unseasonable lack of traditional thanksgiving foods, but such is the luck of the displaced I suppose.

Tomorrow is Dr. Rodemeyer's talk, which happens at the ungodly hour of 9AM, but I am looking forward to it nonetheless. Marianne and I might go shopping in Antwerp after that, since I am desperately in need of new shoes and some other things... Marianne's a really great person and we get along famously, plus she's incredibly together and industrious, so she exercises a much needed good influence on me.

In the meantime, I've been working on my Aristotle summary, which is (predictably, to those gifted with foresight) a lot harder than I thought it would be. The various connections I have to explain just to get to luck and chance is taking several pages out of ten, so maybe I won't fulfill my ambition to talk a little about Lacan's appropriation, but such is life. The end of semester classes looms just over the horizon (I have an exam in three weeks!) and I'm scrambling to make sure all my ducks are in a row. I have alas not started writing my thesis yet, but between the summary, the various readings, a certain essay, a new editing job and the revision of the workshop paper, I have a lot of writing on my plate, so I'm not being too hard on myself (yet). I'm hoping that once the summary is done I can dedicate a larger block of time to the other things, but to tell you the truth, my optimism is hanging by a thin shred of self-delusion, so my next blog may just be a series of unintelligible frustration expressions, but we'll see. There just aren't enough hours in the day, what with sleeping and eating on top of everything else.

The weather has been absolutely depressing. It rained for four days straight and the only reason I don't count today is because it rained only for about two hours, which is a vast improvement. I haven't been taking a lot of pictures, taking the camera out in the rain seems like a bad idea, but I did manage to get a couple of very blurry pictures of a bunch of us hanging out at Amedee on Wednesday night.
This is (from left to right): Phil, his girlfriend Julia and Arnis, with whom in particular I have had some very interesting discussions. Phil is a really good friend of mine here, we hang out and study all the time, despite the fact that he thinks I'm just a big angry reactionary leftist.
From right to left this time: Phil, Shane's friend Adam (visiting Belgium to give a Kierkegaard paper in Antwerp!) and Shane himself. Shane, Phil and Marianne all live together in their beautiful apartment. So with the addition of Shannon and Frenchy, these three make up pretty much my whole circle. There are a lot of people I really enjoy talking to and hanging out with, but these are the ones I go out and drink beer with night after night. You will perhaps notice two glasses in front of me, both Westmalle Dubbel. I love this beer, but the reason I have two is because it's a pain to get out from behind this particular table, so I was just trying to exercise my foresight. Amedee is a great bar, lots of board games and decent (though flourescent) lighting, and they only play classical music. So when you picture me studying in a bar, this would be it.

Anyhoo, I have to go to bed, get up early.

All my love,

Cake

Hmmm, well... I really don't have much to report, but let's give it a shot anyway.

I met with Dr. Moyaert on Tuesday, finally. He was still 25 minutes late, but I count myself lucky. It was an interesting meeting, though now that I look at my notes, I don't think he told me anything I hadn't already learned in class. But on the other hand, it's always good to hear it one more time, and in response to a specific question. It did help to tie it all together and see where I'm just chasing Lacan's terminology in a circle. The more interesting part came when I asked about the Aristotle Lacan sites in the 11th seminar with regard to tuche and automaton, which is a subtle (and not always consistent) distinction between luck and chance. Moyaert asks me (for the third time): "Are you doing a research paper or a thesis?" A thesis Dr. Moyaert. "Okay, good, good. Write me a ten page summary on this section of Aristotle, due in two weeks."

I'm actually excited about it, although I know he won't remember asking me for it. It's a good chance to get to know Aristotle a little (yet another gaping hole in my education) and to do some concrete writing, which hopefully will transcribe itself into a chunk of my thesis, though honestly I'm not sure how it relates yet. Since Moyaert won't remember, I might do 5 pages on Aristotle and 5 pages on Lacan's appropriation, which I'm sure requires some serious documentation of its own. Then I'll include some little note like: "My name is Ashley Cake, I'm doing a thesis on Kierkegaard and Lacan, we met on Tuesday two weeks ago, you asked me for this paper, here it is." I think it'll be good.

In the meantime, I'm planning a trip to Maastricht again on Sunday, which should be fun. I've been saving up to go. I need to start planning some other, bigger trips, but for now it's all I can manage to do to get to Holland and back. I need to go to Copenhagen specifically, get back in touch with my Danish (if there's any left). I've been working hard and enjoying myself, anticipating a visit from Dr. Rodemeyer from Duquesne, who's coming next week for a Husserl conference. She's really been such a huge help to me in the last year and a half, and her Husserl seminar last fall was really one of the highlights of my time at Duquesne, so it'll be really good to see her in this new context.

I've been trying hard to save up some money, but studying in my room is getting pretty old. It doesn't help that my computer is right here, which means everyone I miss is just a few keypushes away. But also there's the bed, and I always think I can read in bed, but I can't, I just fall asleep. I am reading Alexandre Kojeve's (pictured) introduction to Hegel as nighttime sleepy reading, and it actually keeps me up because I'm beginning to understand how completely pervasive it was for Lacan and a bunch of other people in the same line. It's an interesting book for sure, though it's completely obvious that the guy thought a great deal of himself, as did the students who helped to put the published volume together. When you make a claim like: "This is THE book..." You can mean it, but meaning doesn't make it so, you know?

Anyway, I hope all is well with everyone. I hope to have more interesting things to report soon. Otherwise ya'll are going to be submitted to chunks of my thesis.

All my love,

Cake

You would not believe what I just went through with this computer. I got cut off by KotNet (KULeuven's ISP network) the other day, and they told me I had a trojan. So I go through the exstensive rigamorole to get the McAfee's yada yada and scan my poor little comp, and lo, 20something Trojans and over 4,000 viruses!! Poor thing, she must have been struggling in that sick state for some time, since I've been really bad about testing and firewalling pretty much since I got her. But, two OS restores and seven scans later, she's clean as a whistle and running better than ever.

In the meantime, I've been on this budget kick--wherein I try to stick to my budget--so I've been kicking around my little room, doing work and cleaning. Feels pretty good to sit down to work and have a nice empty area to fill. Even though Brad was very wonderful and cleaned my whole place and bought me flowers before he left, I've done a pretty good job wrecking the place since he flew back.

I guess besides the various modes of cleaning and working, I don't have much to report. I went to see Children of Men with Cordelia and Mark last night, which is only the second time I've indulged cinematically since I've been here. The last time was to see Science of Sleep, which I thought was excellent. Children of Men wasn't so good, I thought. Your standard pseudo-post-apocolyptic thriller with tons of shocking violence and many, many totally unbelieveable transitions and plot points. The best part though was Michael Caine's rendition of the standard enlightened-hippie-hiding-in-a-beautiful-house-in-the-woods character. As so many of these characters are for me--and I suppose are meant to be--his was an oasis in the otherwise dry and predictable movie.

Otherwise I'm just tired and feeling a bit overwhelmed I guess. So much to do, so little will to do it. I've been working pretty constantly, but I took this weekend off just to do nothing and fix my computer, which took most of the weekend anyway. At any rate, I did write out my research bibliographies for my thesis today, and I have a lot of really interesting reading to do, so I suppose that's something to look forward to.

I'll leave you on an upbeat note. This is my favorite stupid cat photo of the moment, second only to the Kitty Lime Helmet, which never gets old. She's a bit pixelated because I resized her to post on Phoebe's Myspace page, but you get the idea.


As if to say: "what?"

The man had a gift for understatement.

I'm a little weepy today, I'll be honest. The moontime's coming on and I don't feel much like my self. I spent three days preparing hard for a meeting with a professor, then was stood up without ceremony. Granted, I didn't make an appointment, but I made the (apparently typically American) mistake that the office hours on their doors actually mean the professors will be in their office between those times. So it's all my fault, but I'm still pissed about it. This would be the first thing (and relatively minor really) that I've found to be annoyed with K.U. Leuven over, so really we're still getting along fine. That kind of thing gets under my skin though, reaffirming my sense that I really have no idea what I'm doing here. Which doubt fits nicely into my personal theme of feeling that I don't really know what I'm doing anywhere, at any time. Bor or or, Ashley's paranoiac knowledge is getting the best of her again.

Nonetheless, I am thinking hard about what I want to do next year. I have this amazing offer to do an assistantship with my mentor, and I have the opportunity (the expectation really) to go back to Duquesne and teach, but somehow I still have hard choices to make. The sense of being somehow incompetant in some important way is really getting to me, and despite all my hard work, it isn't getting any better here, except that I am developing a sense that when I'm done with Leuven I will be a better person and a better scholar. Once I leave, I know I won't have another bar so close or attainable, that there will be a period of time stretching far into the distance wherein I will not find any bars at all, except for those I make myself. Self-determination is one helluva drive... no roads, no signs, no GPS, just the ceaseless forward. I'm going to burn bridges, go against advice, follow some call that could be coming from heaven or hell, and the only consolation I have is that ultimately, it was all my choice, my responsibility. Cold comfort if I end up flipped over in a ditch, or running out of gas in the middle of nowhere.
Funny how everyone goes through this, and has to go through this, all on their own.

In other news, I'm getting closer to understanding what my thesis is about. Of course I knew beforehand that Kierkegaard's repetition is a religious movement, and that Lacan's is not, but that didn't become clear in all its ramifications until just this week. Hopefully I'll start writing sometime this month, but I'm having increasing difficulty forcing myself to overcome the various neurotic boundaries that separate me from my goals and aims, but that's neither here nor there, it's always everywhere. Part of what is becoming clear to me is that this constant struggling with desire is somehow a permanent structure of me myself and there isn't anything I can do to escape it, it's just a fact of human life. So I have a long road ahead of me. The forever ironic coupling is of course how much I hate driving and how I refuse to let anyone else take the wheel. Meh, this is just the way it is.

Hello all,

So the prophecy came true didn't it? As soon as I'm immersed in the school life the bloglife slows way down. A lot has happened in the last two weeks actually, but I'm not sure exactly what to write about. I had a friend come and visit from New York for about two weeks, we went to Amsterdam, Brugge and Maastricht, which is this medium-sized Dutch town just across the Belgian border.

The trip to Amsterdam was nearly a disaster, one small part of which was the fact that I forgot the memory card for my camera, so I don't even have pictures of the many good things that happened. The hostel we stayed in was horrible, as in hor-ror. It was called D u r t y N e l l y's, write it down, because you don't EVER want to stay there. The bathroom (singular) was disgusting, I won't even go into how disgusting, and there wasn't hot water (or even warm water) the entire time we were there. It was like they had a kegorator underneath the pipes that actually refrigerated the water. We didn't get a single good night sleep while we were there--being interrupted twice by some sleep-deprived staff member confused about whether or not we were in the right beds--and the downstairs was this played out Irish pub that had nothing but loud sports events and even louder British rugby teams (or some other strapping congregation of young "old boys"). As cheap as it was, we paid too much to be so uncomfortable.

BUT, it all came together in the end. We decided to leave a night early, because we had to leave in the morning on Monday anyway, and another night in that horrible place was more than a mostly shut Sunday night in Amsterdam could compensate for. So we go grab our things out of the lockers, not intending to check out--just in case we can't get back to Leuven--but rather to get the 10euro deposit back in case we can. I hand the guy the lock, he hands me a 50. I look at it, I look at him, he hasn't noticed, I deliberate for a split second... I put it in my pocket and walk out the door. 40 euros bought us a train ride home, and we were back in Leuven by midnight. I know maybe I should have given it back, and perhaps I'm giving the fates a chance to make me by actually putting the name of the place on the wide open intraweb, but I would gladly give it back just to be able to tell the people why I decided to take it in the first place. Maybe the whole thing could be a learning experience for everyone. The worst case scenario is that that poor bartender got fired or fined or something for his mistake, in which case I would apologize to the best of my ability. Trouble with wearing a uniform is that you're obscured inside the identity of the institution, occupational hazard, in the broadest sense.

The good things of course were plentiful. Myself, Shannon, Brad, Corry and his friends Andy and Ivanna (sp? pronounced "ee-wan-na") all hung out and spent the night wandering around looking for various things, a good chance to see the city all lit up. Mostly it was the usual for Amsterdam: museums, coffeeshops, museums, coffeeshops. I enjoyed myself. I highly recommend getting the Museumkaart the next time you're there. 33euros for a 24hour transit pass and free admission to all the big museums. You have to start EARLY though, time flies looking at art and historical stuff.

In the Van Gogh museum's contemporary photography exhibit I saw that photograph of the woman in Italy walking through the gauntlet of leering men. I'm sure you've seen it, it was a woman photographer but I can't remember her name. Someone has it in their apartment, who is that? I wanted my friend Taine to be there so bad, I think she's the only one that would know where I was coming from when I looked at it, strange a thing as that is to say. I've seen it many times before, it's actually painful for me to look at, because the woman's face is distorted with fear, as all these dapper (and otherwise) men lean over banisters and motorbikes to harrass her. You can almost hear the whistles, sneers and tongue clucking. It makes my skin crawl even thinking about it. But I noticed this time, or at least I hope I saw, since I was so close to it, that there are three men who are standing in front of her and can see her face. They aren't whistling, or sneering, and their posture is almost confrontational, like they're ready to spring on whoever crosses the line to touch her. The one nearest to her looks surprised and concerned, like he's just on the threshold of figuring out what's happening, the second looks ready to whisk her out of there, and the third is an older man, maybe in his late 60s, who has his hands in his pockets and is watching the whole thing like he's seen it a thousand times before. I actually held up my hand to cover the rest of the photograph so I could just focus on their faces. I'm sure it wasn't the kind of nobility that would confirm all my fading ideals about the human race, but there was something there that was complicated enough to assure me that we are not entirely abandoned to the strange human propensity to view living things as objects, with all the cruelty that that brings out in us. I was happy I saw it, or at least wanted to see it badly enough that it seemed real to me.

Since then (more than a week ago now) I've just been visiting with my friend and trying, trying to get a handle on my work. It's crazy how the time just goes and I haven't done what I set out to do. I think I have a planning problem, gotta work on that. In any case I am getting closer to a fully in-charge position. I read the entire second book of Malebranche yesterday and besides the werewolf stuff, I think I have a handle on the imagination as far as he's concerned. A lively imagination is contagious, you know, and of course it is also a temptation to sin, so watch out on both counts. If anyone wants to have a good laugh, read the chapter on Montaigne in the last chapter of the third part of book two, I haven't even read Montaigne, but Malebranche sure hates him.

I'm off to the central library now, the boulder awaits.

All my love,

Cake