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j4A new and wondrous discovery, which has brought light to the darkest corners of my world: ginger nuts dipped in peppermint tea.
...
I had a Great Insight the other night, which I thought I'd share with LiveJournal ("All the peer review that matters"):
I was in the pub, and I wasn't drinking, despite having had a scary interview in the morning. Normally I'd welcome the chance of a few pints to dull the memory of my own uselessness; this time, however, I decided not to; and I think some part of me thought that by being virtuous, by not taking the easy way out, I'd just come to feel better about it naturally.
It's just not true.
Drinking to drown your sorrows does help. That's my great and sad insight: that everyday tragedies don't have neat endings with a moral.
...
Currently waiting for the rejection phone call from the Refugee Council (they promised they'd phone between 9 and 12 today). When that comes through, I'll phone the next place and tell them I will do their interview, I will allow myself another chance to fail. (Everyday eclipses.)
Update: As expected. <sigh>
...
I had a Great Insight the other night, which I thought I'd share with LiveJournal ("All the peer review that matters"):
I was in the pub, and I wasn't drinking, despite having had a scary interview in the morning. Normally I'd welcome the chance of a few pints to dull the memory of my own uselessness; this time, however, I decided not to; and I think some part of me thought that by being virtuous, by not taking the easy way out, I'd just come to feel better about it naturally.
It's just not true.
Drinking to drown your sorrows does help. That's my great and sad insight: that everyday tragedies don't have neat endings with a moral.
...
Currently waiting for the rejection phone call from the Refugee Council (they promised they'd phone between 9 and 12 today). When that comes through, I'll phone the next place and tell them I will do their interview, I will allow myself another chance to fail. (Everyday eclipses.)
Update: As expected. <sigh>
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-11 05:45 am (UTC)Something like that was a big revelation for me, too. In effect it was that the logic of narrative is as flawed as a representation of and distant from reality as moral and deductive/inductive logics -- only more charismaric. I don't think there are everyday tragedies because life isn't as simple as the layout of tragedy.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-11 07:35 am (UTC)I was thinking of tragedies in the common sense of the word rather than Tragedy in the classical sense. Not in the Steps sense, not at all.
Narrative is the pattern that we attempt to impose on life. That's the real reason why fiction is escapist: not because it depicts different places and people from those we know, but because it offers development and motive and tying-up of ends, and -- most importantly -- a point at which to stop narrating. (Who was it who said that the difference between comedy and tragedy is just where you stop the story?) In real life we're more like Beckett's protagonists, doomed to tell our sorry circular little stories for all eternity. But even they have the luxury of the curtain. And who would have thought the old man had so much narrative in him?
(THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.)