merry christmas.

véhicules blindés.

i am up against a puzzle. exhausted as i am today, i have no real hope of ’solving’ it, my mind is woolly, i listen to this cool track that says ‘thou shalt not make repetitive generic music’ and i like the humour in the lyrics. i feel like i’ve been running in circles for the last four years. not a great feeling, but it might be better tomorrow.

so here goes:

so in my thesis, i am making an argument about what kinds of persons were successful in postsocialist romania, and how this worked in the context of eu integration and agricultural/rural livelihoods.

i keep coming back to this thing that also affects the cultures i’ve been living in, namely of the connection between the big ideas of ‘how to change so as to avoid disaster’ and the practice. and the gap in between. i desperately want to think relationally, but i think my brain is too limited.

- a culture of blame that deflects responsibility to the ‘top’ or sees impediment in the ‘bottom’. ‘they’ will not save us versus ‘they’ are the problem. replace ‘they’ by anything that you oppose to your own kind in terms of morality, e.g. the government, the lazy, the gypsy, the woman, the disabled, the child.

- i make some kind of argument with personhood, and how the way in which we think about persons and time and value is influenced by dominant models of individual/economic value/progress. i make an argument that this leads to exclusionary processes because of the categorical nature of boundary-making knowledge practices that classify into superior/inferior, etc.

here i run into major troubles. how do i reconcile the idea of progress which i do not entirely reject with the idea that exclusionary processes will happen?

i kind of want to take the relational epistemology very far, but i feel there is something here i am not getting. how can one minimise exclusionary processes in practice?

hm. the room is smoky from thinking, dear reader. help me out here. aaargh. better still, get me out of here… and let’s burn the thesis together.

gos·sa·mer (gäs′ə mər)

noun

1. a filmy cobweb floating in the air or spread on bushes or grass
2. a very thin, soft, filmy cloth
3. ☆ a lightweight waterproof coat
4. anything like gossamer in lightness, flimsiness, etc.

Etymology: ME gosesomer, lit., goose summer: with allusion to the warm period in fall (St. Martin’s summer) when geese are in season and gossamer is chiefly noticed

light, thin, and filmy

this is the nicest word i’ve seen today. very tired. unconcentrated. body aching. why can the thesis not just go away?

*insert insane amount of expletives here*.

sunday’s lack of concentration, anxiety bursts, political angst and perfect lunchtime left me feeling sad. not a kind of immersed sadness but a self-reflecting sadness that can switch into anger and longing every 12.4 seconds. i thought about this for a bit, as i do, while clearing the table and deciding against destroying other people’s property. i decided to map the exact thing i was feeling by recourse to utube. yes, you heard right, utube is a useful technology to get anger vented off. use utube irresponsibly. hellyeh.

i went clicking through rage against the machine to patti smith to faraquet to nick cave to the prodigy to basement jaxx, but none of this really hit it.

i thought about it some more and SKA PUNK emerged in my head. magic. i think i need to attend some really really loud drunken ska punk night.

i then thought about the mighty mighty bosstones, but they sound way too happy. streetlight manifesto are more into the right direction, and so did choking victim, and, of course, operation ivy. that lovely mixture of pisstake and anger and goodtime. yes.

i think part of my music taste has never evolved a single bit in the last decade or so and still loves da punk 3-chord-simplicity-rage too much. she’ll never change at this age!

*insert insane amount of expletives and skapunkchords here*.

feeling slightly better now.

for 2010, less thesis writing and more singing. definitely.

thesis&i.

2 strategien fir mat der thèse emzegoen tëscht deenen ech am moment zimlich hin an hierpendelen:

1. léif kleng thèse, ech froen dech heimat ganz héiflich an matt ‘wann ech glift draga’ als hannergrondmusik fir deng frëndlichst mattaarbicht sou dass mer eis kontraktuell zesummenaarbicht geschwenn op en enn brengen an matt eise béider liewen weiderfuere kënnen. merci dass du hei nit domm gëss.

2. kleng domm houer, wanns du nit paréiers, da schécken ech déch do wu de peffer wiisst, an do kanns de dann frecken an vermuuschten. mech huet na nie een sou gelangweilt matt senge ville gescheite wierder di ech amfong nit wierklich verstin, an et huet na nie ee mech esou op de baam gedriwwe iwwer eng däermosse laang zäit wi’s du. verstan?

grommel.

GROMMEL.

will it ever end?

end of melodrama, back to work… GROMMEL.

image rippled from here.

what is ‘development’ for again?

i found this here, from Bill Easterly’s Can the West Save Africa. fascinating stuff.

Ich leih dir meinen Kopf – FC Delius.

Ich leih dir meinen Kopf für diesen Nachmittag.
Du kannst ihn durchstöbern, diesen Irrgarten,
Und in Millionen Zellen nachforschen,
Was alles über dich gespeichert liegt.
Du kannst ihn als Flugzeug benutzen für einen
Rundflug über Mauern, Bilanzen und Doktorarbeiten,
Hinweg über Nettigkeiten unerträglicher Leute und
Weit hinausfliegen über die Wolken bis Feuerland.
Du kanns ihm eine Brille aufsetzen, wie immer
Ihn lesen lassen, Gedichte, Berichte und Wissenschaft.
Du kannst seine Sehstärke prüfen, seine Blindheit,
Wieviel er wahrnimmt von der Welt und von dir.
Du kannst auf einem seiner inhaltlosen Gedanken
Reiten zur Sonne mit Lichtgeschwindigkeit.
Du kannst ihm jederzeit einen Tee anbieten.
Du kannst genau feststellen, wann er weghört.
Du kannst ihn mit Gerüchen fesseln.
Du kannst ihn nach Lissabon verpflanzen.
Du kannst mit ihm auf ein Dach steigen
Und dir erzählen laasen, was er alles sieht,
Von Unglück z.B. möchte er wenig wissen, aber soviel,
Wie ihm zur Änderung erforderlich scheint,
Obwohl er ja nichts ändert, erstens allein
Und zweitens als Kopf. Deshalb kannst du ihm
Wenigstens deinen Kopf entgegenhalten.
Du kannst ihn davonjagen, ihn ganz langsam auf sich
Zukommen und fallen sehn, mit fallenden Haaren.
Du kannst ihn schlafen lassen und dir
Geschichten erzählen lassen wie diese:
Ich leih dir meinen Kopf für diesen Nachmittag.

himalaya glaciers melting.

sellout.

Gras, auseinandergeschrieben.

Die Steine, weiss, mit dem Schatten der Halme:

Lies nicht mehr – schau!

Schau nicht mehr – geh!

(Celan)

I’m worried I will sell out too late, too soon, too little, too much. I’m afraid I didn’t do enough to make it different. I’m wondering where I am going and whether I can make the right decisions.

Back to patterns that make me the stressed hamster in the wheel.

quite.