Category: University at Albany

The things that make you disappear into experience are random things. Or, to place it in Sartre’s terms, since I really should be writing about Sartre and not the other things swirling in my mind, some things hit so hard and fast they drop us from the reflective into the non-reflective, me-in-the-world. Like the red stained wood and Elliot Bay ferry images of Seattle’s Best Coffee.

It’s funny; Grey’s Anatomy doesn’t really make me homesick. It makes me laugh, because the closest they’ve been to Seattle is some alternative world Seattle where you go north on 99 from Queen Anne to get to Downtown. There are occasionally things I recognize, like flyers for the 5 Spot, but it’s so obviously a fictional place I feel no greater affinity for it than I do any other place I’ve never been.

But for just a moment, the pure, non-reflective experience of this Seattle’s Best had me both wondering where I was and experiencing Seattle, and missing Seattle. I miss the sharp smell of the saltwater air, the breezes racing up streets, playing hide and seek with you as you run through the Downtown grid, the misty dripping of the weather, the campus, the people. I miss going to wine bars with friends, meeting up for coffee or movies, the occasional night dancing, sitting in my cramped living room with the cats, doing shots to Stargate, birthday parties… I miss the life I had.

Isn’t it weird, when we slip into experiential being, and forget where we are? I had that a lot last weekend in Denver — I was around everyone I see here in Albany, and inside, so it was hard to remember that I was actually in Denver and not simply at a long affair at home. Stepping up to the Seattle’s Best counter, looking at the ferry/Public Market picture, I had that same sort of experiential dissonance, where for a moment, I knew I was in Seattle, and if I turned around and walked outside, it would be damp, grey, cold, and familiar. The moment I moved to reflective self, to saying “I am thinking I’m in Seattle”, I was of course able to say “no, idiot, I’m standing in Albany thinking I’m thinking I’m in Seattle” (which I suppose leaps from the first to second reflective state), but there is still a sharp jarring between the non-reflective and reflective. I feel I’m in one place, while I know I’m in another.

I wonder if any of the phenomenologists have an answer for that?

The worst philosophy joke, as told to me earlier this evening by Professor Jerry Levinson:

A young man is going out on his first date, and is very nervous. He asks his father what should he do, if conversation fails? The boy’s father tells him this is easy, just remember family, food and philosophy. “The three ‘fs’.”

So the young man and his date are driving back from the movies, and conversation has indeed failed. Desperate, he remembers his fathers advice and asks, “So, do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“I’m an only child.” She replies shortly.

“Oh.” He thinks, and remembers the next ‘f’ is food. “Uh, do you like broccoli?”

“No, I hate it.”

“Oh.” He thinks a little longer, remembers the third categorty, and asks, “So, if you had a brother, would he like broccoli?”

…yes, I laughed. Hard. We all did.

And then Pete followed it up with the worst utilitarian joke he’d ever heard, which I’m also going to force on your eyes:

A small bunch of utilitarians had a food group, where they would gather together and cook for one another, sharing food and wine, appreciating the good. At one meeting, one of the members told them, excitedly, that he had just heard of a recipe that made the most perfect, succulent pork ever! The problem was, you had to put the live pig in a metal box, then heat it slowly over a period of 24 hours. The pig would die after 12-13 hours of intense pain. But! It apparently made the best pork you would ever, ever taste! The group was eager to try this, but one member asked whether or not they could, in good conscience, do this – was the net gain of good enough to warrant the extreme suffering of the pig?

Everyone sighed and frowned and thought about it, agreeing that it was an awful lot of suffering to cause… then one member snapped his fingers and said “I have it!” Everyone looked eagerly to him for the solution: “All we have to do is get more members!”

…I’ll spare you the rest of the jokes that were flying around the table. I, however, had an awesome time: an interesting discussion on aesthetics and no one true beauty, lasting several hours, accompanied by dinner at a very nice French restaurant, followed by drinks and live music at a very funky jazz bar. (And how small is this town? Small enough that we ran into another grad student at that jazz bar, out on a date.) All in all, a lovely way to spend the day – laughter, geekiness, and intelligent discourse. For all my moments of homesickness lately, having the occasional day like this really nicely highlights why I am here.

Insomnia struck tonight – I guess that’s what happens when I don’t take something to help me fall asleep. I’m running low on that arsenal, though, and can’t afford to pick up Lunesta on my own. I have to wait for both finaid and my prescription card to get here, and who knows how long that will take. So I thought, since I was sleepy, I’d just wait for the sleepy to become the sort of sleepy where, well, you go to sleep.

It’s 5:15am, and that hasn’t happened yet.

So on the one hand it’s late. I had a full day, too – the first day of class. I think I’ll enjoy it; phenomenology with Ron. It looks like it will be a good blend of familiar while also pushing what I know.

After class, I wandered through the graduate student office, chatted with a couple of people, and started to meet the other students. By some weird twist of fate, everyone I talked with today was also new, and we all seem to hit it off well. An added plus? We all have slightly overlapping, but very different interests. This means we compliment one another well; N~ will be able to help me with, say, political philosophy, while I can probably help Sa~ with phenomenology.

The important thing, though, is meeting people I like, and that I can talk to.

I played in the library after that, and I ended up bringing home a stack of books, a stack of books I don’t have to return until 2007. Anyone who remembers my bitching about the UW library policy for undergraduates doing research (essentially, nothing) will know how much this fills me with joy. And even better, I can have up to 200 books out at a time! Delicious freedom!

Anyhow, I did a couple of other things, and got home in time to eat dinner before my Weds night entertainment. I figured I’d be in bed around midnight, 1am at the latest. But that didn’t happen, and now it’s late.

It’s also early. We’ve ventured into and are soaking in that time of the morning I love, when the world is quiet and soft, and it seems like it can’t be complete without a cup of tea and perhaps a few biscuits at hand. It’s the dawn version of the gloaming, the world holding its breath as it waits for the sun. This is a wonderful time of day for me, and I’m always extremely productive during it. (So you’d think I’d consistently get up at this hour. The problem, of course, is that there’s so much on in the evening I enjoy, and I truly am still a night owl. What I need to do is be able to sleep from 8am – 2pm!) So I feel like I should do things, unpack things, organize and make right. I’d love to have everything set up here by Monday at the latest, but I don’t see that happening without serious energy or help. Naturally I feel like I should take advantage of this time of day and the energy and wholeness that comes with it.

Except, of course, the fact that my arm hurts when I even flex it (yet I still type; I know, I know), and the more base fact that I appear to have slipped into hallucinating slightly. It’s that sort of watery world hallucination, where you are suddenly seeing everything through 5 feet of slightly waving water. My senses are hyperalert, just…wrongly so. So in addition to the natural wonder of this time of day, I have the crystalline perceptions of a world slightly distant, shot with electric pain at every twitch.

And now, two cats, both insistently cuddling and purring. Perhaps I should rearrange things so that they have more room than the computer, and contemplate how I’d like to arrange my books – maybe I’ll get better perspective from a horizontal position. One that includes a squishy thing other than cat, and a a shawl knit from love and friendship.