Among the awesome Christmas presents I received this year, I had requested this new volume of selections from Thoreau’s journal. I own the only complete edition currently available (the huge ones from Dover), which were birthday presents from my wife and from my parents five years or so ago. I’m infinitely fond of them, but they are a bit…unwieldy. I have a few of the selections, including the Odell Shepard edition (excellent) and the Dover Thrift edition (which I bought after a thunderstorm in July 2003, at Walden Pond, the day before we moved away from Boston). These make great gifts, great reading on a camping trip or train ride. But they can be so short! I’m hoping this new volume is as great as it sounds. It’s on my nightstand right now, though I’m well into The Road to Oxiana right now.
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I finally heard back from my dissertation director. As you can imagine, impending parenthood has us wanting to defend and be finished! But I have more work to do. Among several options is to incorporate Emerson into the work. So now I have to read a lot of Emerson this fall. Damn. Emerson.
While that’s certainly pleasant reading, I hadn’t planned on needed to do so much. One option was to use the Nietzsche scholarship I worked on for a long time but didn’t because I felt like including research for its own sake was a waste of time. But, I forgot. A dissertation is a HOOP to jump through, like the other hoops from my MA and PhD programs. It’s relevance to knowledge and truth is slight and fleeting. At least, it can relate to them, but has to relate to other thinkers’ relations (and their relations to other thinkers’ relations!).
So while I enjoyed digging in, taking notes and brushing up on my Emerson today, I remembered why I decided that I did not want to be a “working philosopher.” There’s little philosophy in it. Thoreau wrote:
There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet is admirable to to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live accordingly to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically but practically.
I don’t mean to single out every single academic philosopher. Certainly I had (and have) professors who genuinely inquire[d] even when it’s not for publication or a conference, and I knew (and know) some students of the same suit. But these good folks stand out. This is not encouraged or rewarded. This is something you do for yourself. And I had/have trouble spending my time reading something for a paper and then reading it again for my own investigations. While there are people (and I think I’d include my director) that can balance this in their heads/hearts, I have never been able to. Whether this is a weakness in my major or myself remains to be seen, but I suspect that philosophy majors who don’t want to hear about what hoops they’re going to be asked to jump through would say the latter.
The weather is getting warmer in Baltimore, but it’s still nice in the shade if you sit still. As much as I love my job, I’d love even more to be able to spend this morning sitting in a nice cafe’ reading and relaxing. I’m re-reading In the Skin of a Lion, which is a phenomenal story if you haven’t read it. Combining that book with some coffee might be a slice of Wednesday morning heaven today. But there’s work to be done in Central Baltimore Land.
Last weekend, in Philly, we went bookstore hunting, among other things. I had written down a lot of stores and addresses. We only actually went to two of them: Book Trader in Olde City, where I went in August when I was there for a week; and House of Our Own, an independent shop in West Philly.
House of Our Own had a second floor full of used books. Within two minutes of getting there, I had an arm full of Michael Chabon and was mourning having to leave behind Hemingway’s works on bullfighting. I’ve seldom been to such an organized bookstore, and the lady working there was incredibly nice. They had sections for everything: American Radicalism, Economics, Ecology, Eco-Economics, Peace Studies, Nonviolence, Gandhi (!), Community Organizing, etc.
Our train was leaving shortly, and we had a long walk to get there. So I didn’t get to check out the first floor or hang out in the reading nook. They put bookmarks in the books for you, which is one of my favorite things. I buy a lot of books when I travel, and it’s nice to remember where I got them.
I have always been both fascinated by and obsessed with drinks. Not alcoholic ones, mind you. Beverages. When I was a kid, I was always always thirsty. I needed juice or soda or milk constantly. I realize now that it was because I could literally not stand to drink water until I was 20 years old and was probably mildly dehydrated all the time. I think I’ve mentioned that I’m 29 and have been drinking coffee consistently for about 21 years, daily for 20. I’m American, so you know I’ve had my share of Coke. Etc.
So I began reading A History of the World in Six Glasses last night, and I am enjoying it immensely. I was tempted to consume the beverage in question while reading the six parts. Still am. But I read for my lunchtime whenever I can, and I can’t very well get tanked at work. (That only happens when I need to talk to someone and have to track them down at a community happy hour and — poor me — have to drink beer in the afternoon……..trying to think of who I can track down this week……..) Perhaps after the third part, when the drinks under examination are coffee, tea and Coke, I can indulge.
We have been watching scary movies, documentaries and “Treehouse of Horror” episodes out the yingyang. It’s awesome. I was reading some Poe, but I’m holding off on more of that until closer to the 200th birthday perhaps.
I wish I could sit home with a good book on a day like today. I like my job. Here I am, hyped up on coffee and with a few minutes to spare. And I’m blogging on company time, on a computer that is supposed to be “monitored.” But, like I said, I like my job. A lot. Being a VISTA is great, and I have a nice little office with nice people in nice little offices up here on the top floor. I have a lot of lunch meetings, but not today. Today, I get to do my favorite thing aside from biking up to Charles Village to meet Mrs. P.: get a coffee/snack and hole up in my office for an hour reading a good book. It’s a good way to spend lunchtime.
I wussed out and took the bus to work today. I rode the bus three days last week, but that’s because The Duke was tire-less. I’ll ride my bike in the rain, and I have. But “severe storms” — no. Not if I don’t have to. Not today. The bus picks me up outside my apartment building and drops me at Penn Station, across Charles Street from my office. It’s a good deal. I am soaked now from a coffee run with a co-worker. My sandals are on the AC vent drying. My bike is at home with new rim tape, new tubes and new tires with frikkin Kevlar in them. I feel like I’m cheating or being disloyal.
I am tired. I went to see Candlebox with my brother Sunday night, tickets to which show (along with a Tshirt) were my birthday gift. It was a hell of a lot of fun, but I was beat yesterday. Yesterday, I worked from 9am – 8pm and ate pasta and green beans when I got home and watched TV and went to bed. I’m still tired, but that could be the weather now that I think of it.
This blog got all “this happened, and I did this, etc.” all the sudden.
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