Here in my head
Apr. 28th, 2004 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j4Inside my head at the moment are the following:
A vague musing on poems about rain, and a half-remebered line which I want to look up later, leading to slight wonderings about why rain has not acquired as much emotionally symbolic significance for me as other weather phenomena, and a reminder of the ongoing mental itch which is a web project which I have been intending tocompletestart for several years now, which I jokingly referred to on oxnet (which should tell you how long ago this was) as "mapping the psychosymbolic universe", a designation which still amuses me enough to have retained it.
A twitch in the direction of the question of the quantity of caffeine lately consumed, and a mild worry about the ongoing health consequences of an excess of caffeine and a corresponding deficiency in sleep.
The mental background drone of the tedious itemisation of Things I Have To Do and Things I Have Done, as if there were some virtue attached to Doing Things or some of whatever your antithesis of virtue may be attached to Not Doing Things, and when that background mumble becomes foregrounded for long enough to be made audible to my conscious mind, it occurs to me (as it has done many times this week) to ponder the question of whether anything that we do has inherent virtue, and this particularly in the context of the work we do, and the considerations -- emotional, spiritual, financial, economic, political, personal, practical, and so on -- which we may bring to bear on the question of why we work at all.
As an appendix to the above: emails I have failed to reply to, and a constant worry about why I find it so hard to reply to some friends and not to others, and whether this makes me a Bad Person, and whether everybody will immediately hit the "Leave Comment" button right now so they can say "You're not a bad person!", and whether if I were not me I would do that, and whether it would be of any help to anybody.
A dangerous feint towards the yawning abyss of why I always seem to end up thinking about the process of thinking more than thinking about things.
The above neatly diverted into some ongoing guilt about the books I have not yet read but want to read, tinged with an attempt to address the question of whether, for me, attaching value to reading is merely an attempt to dress consumerism (in the broadest sense) in respectable clothes while still procrastinating further away from any real creativity, though the question is ironically sidelined in my mind by the realisation that I am subconsciously trying to list all the books that are currently at the top of my list of things to read, which (the list will out!) include: several books on women's relationships in the context of school fiction; Don DeLillo's Underworld (started but never finished); James Joyce's Ulysses (a perpetual source of misguided guilt); Andrei Bely's Petersburg (borrowed and unread); a history of the London Underground (which I have yet to source); Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, which I have started again in the hope of finishing this time, but which is hard to concentrate on when I find that it persistently distracts my brain into a brief study of absurdist writing about bicycles.
And, as good a place to end as any, a half-imagined picture of the sprawling landscape of fields and woods and crumbling castles and shining towers and bottomless oceans which visually represents all the paths through my mental meanderings which I did not take at this time and in this place.
A vague musing on poems about rain, and a half-remebered line which I want to look up later, leading to slight wonderings about why rain has not acquired as much emotionally symbolic significance for me as other weather phenomena, and a reminder of the ongoing mental itch which is a web project which I have been intending to
A twitch in the direction of the question of the quantity of caffeine lately consumed, and a mild worry about the ongoing health consequences of an excess of caffeine and a corresponding deficiency in sleep.
The mental background drone of the tedious itemisation of Things I Have To Do and Things I Have Done, as if there were some virtue attached to Doing Things or some of whatever your antithesis of virtue may be attached to Not Doing Things, and when that background mumble becomes foregrounded for long enough to be made audible to my conscious mind, it occurs to me (as it has done many times this week) to ponder the question of whether anything that we do has inherent virtue, and this particularly in the context of the work we do, and the considerations -- emotional, spiritual, financial, economic, political, personal, practical, and so on -- which we may bring to bear on the question of why we work at all.
As an appendix to the above: emails I have failed to reply to, and a constant worry about why I find it so hard to reply to some friends and not to others, and whether this makes me a Bad Person, and whether everybody will immediately hit the "Leave Comment" button right now so they can say "You're not a bad person!", and whether if I were not me I would do that, and whether it would be of any help to anybody.
A dangerous feint towards the yawning abyss of why I always seem to end up thinking about the process of thinking more than thinking about things.
The above neatly diverted into some ongoing guilt about the books I have not yet read but want to read, tinged with an attempt to address the question of whether, for me, attaching value to reading is merely an attempt to dress consumerism (in the broadest sense) in respectable clothes while still procrastinating further away from any real creativity, though the question is ironically sidelined in my mind by the realisation that I am subconsciously trying to list all the books that are currently at the top of my list of things to read, which (the list will out!) include: several books on women's relationships in the context of school fiction; Don DeLillo's Underworld (started but never finished); James Joyce's Ulysses (a perpetual source of misguided guilt); Andrei Bely's Petersburg (borrowed and unread); a history of the London Underground (which I have yet to source); Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, which I have started again in the hope of finishing this time, but which is hard to concentrate on when I find that it persistently distracts my brain into a brief study of absurdist writing about bicycles.
And, as good a place to end as any, a half-imagined picture of the sprawling landscape of fields and woods and crumbling castles and shining towers and bottomless oceans which visually represents all the paths through my mental meanderings which I did not take at this time and in this place.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-28 05:40 am (UTC)Baaa! Except I appear at present to be a herd of one, much like Shrek, the escapee sheep that has been appearing in the news muchly.
And judging by the length of that post, you might be wanting to cut down on the caffeine slightly! [hugs]
no subject
Date: 2004-04-28 05:54 am (UTC)And the best poem about rain ever is the one that ends
A puddle a lump a puddle a jump
A mudpuddle jump in and slide!
no subject
Date: 2004-04-28 06:14 am (UTC)"Umbrella umbrella umbrella umbrella
Bumbershoot barrel of rain"
But fortunately that was enough to google it up:
http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1210 (http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1210)
(Can you still say "spack a spack" without getting into trouble with Scope?)
no subject
Date: 2004-04-28 06:51 am (UTC)I knew it from that great book I Like This Poem, which had little endorsements under each poem from the children who made the selection ('because it gives me pictures in my head') and fostered my deep appreciation of Stevie Smith's 'Not Waving, But Drowning'.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-28 09:12 am (UTC)Other ones I loved included (yes, me too) "Not Waving But Drowning", "When Daddy Fell Into the Pond", "Ducks' Ditty" ... was the entire book actually about water?
no subject
Date: 2004-04-28 06:41 am (UTC)Start with mapping the Phenomemology of The Tube!
no subject
Date: 2004-04-28 06:41 am (UTC)The Third Policeman is *fantastic* and it's well worth the the surreal bicycle musings distractations. My copy is almost dead from re-reading.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-28 06:48 am (UTC)The Third Policeman: okay, I know this is a horrible question, but why is it fantastic? I mean, what does it do for you? It's not doing much for me so far. I mean, I can extract meaning/interest from it, but it doesn't resonate for me, IYSWIM.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-28 07:15 am (UTC)Why I like The Third Policeman
by Marna, aged 3.
I like The Third Policeman becuz it has funny words and it makes me laugh and I like the little boxes that are tiny and I like the funny man who is doing the talking's voice and I like the things as well.
I like the narrator's voice very much - the style is delicious and real - sort of like a really cute accent but in book form. I think that even if the book was about something really boring I would happily read it for that voice along.
I like the surrealness - the boxes within boxes within boxes is one example that makes me feel all happy when I read it. I like the big splodge mixup of the mundane and the just plain daft.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-30 03:11 am (UTC)White Noise.
Maybe you'd prefer it to Underworld. I think it's top: give it a try.