Shall I sow some words?
Poetry
I am reading Thomas Sayer Ellis's Skin, Inc. and finding myself in a complex socio-political net that he has constructed for himself and his readers. It must be exhausting to write with such hyper consciousness of yourself and your readership!
Fiction
I'm craving the last Stieg Larssen book the way I crave a cigarette two days after I've quit... the biochemical urge hasn't disappeared and without conscientious reflective restraint I'll have it in my hands before I can help it.
Philosophy
Speaking of reflective restraint, I'm reading some things Heidegger has to say about human reflective cognition in contrast to "animal drives" in his Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. It's fascinating to read Heidegger using the word "protoplasm" and writing about the irises of bees. Nonetheless, he persists in dismissing animal life as "driven" and "poor" in world. He also claims that they are never "free for" things "as such." As if I can ever be "free for" my cappuccino as such! Or a cigarette "as such"! I identify much more with his description of animals than humans. Ah, my friend Heidegger, reflection is less frequent than we think. Present-to-hand is a useful descriptive ideal but nothing more actual than the ideally feminine, masculine or free.
