I realize that posting comments is all the rage, but with my terrible internet connection, it's just one more page to bring up that takes several frustrating minutes to pull up. Gabe, you and me can stick to plain old blogging. We'll tell our kids (mine at this point are rhetorical) about how we used to blog without comments, and how the internet came through phone lines and how machines didn't enslave mankind yet. That'll be great. Especially if my kids aren't rhetorical into eternity. Maybe I'll take that back someday.
Annie, don't worry about being in the dark about Maunday-Thursday services. I hadn't heard of them until last year, I think. And I just found out what broiling really is tonight. I never knew there were coils in the top of the oven. And Robbie, the manual does say to leave the door open while broiling. I'll stick to my cast-iron skillet. Or else I'll stir-fry.
I'm amazed at the parallel between Mrs. Bachelor and Professor Erickson. "Well, there isn't a whole lot that I actually can "teach" but I am helping many to use talking words instead of whining! The whining thing gets old really quickly when you have five going at the same time." Either young lady could say that. I don't miss freshman one bit. Why- do you know any cute ones? Just asking... for sake of tradition more than anything. Speaking of tradition, I miss a good honor's study group. Lynnea, I'll put it together if you have a time that works for you. How does May look? Mid-July? The night before our ten-year reunion? Okay then.
I just wanted to end with a little bit of an excerpt from a book I picked up tonight that might explain a little better why I quit grad school. I'm just going to quote a few sentences from Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea concerning the main character (a former world-traveling historian) when he realizes that he is the one creating history instead of retelling events from the past. He's speaking of a specific person he was studying, but I think it can be quite easily broadened to fit my recent circumstances :
"It is not the lack of documents: letters, framents of memoirs, secret reports, police records. On the contrary I have almost too many of them. What is lacking in all this testimony is firmness and consistency. They do not contradict each other, neither do they agree with each other; they do not seem to be about the same person. And yet other historians work from the same sources of information. How do they do it? Am I more scrupulous or less intelligent? In any case, the question leaves me completely cold. In truth, what am I looking for?....
Well, yes, he could have done that, but it is not proved: I am beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved. These are honest hypotheses which take the facts into account: but I sense so definitely that they come from me, and that they are simply a way of unifying my own knowledge... Slow, lazy, sulky, the facts adapt themselves to the rigour of the order I wish to give them; but it remains outside them. I have the feeling of doing a work of pure imagination."
It was seriously eerie to come across this tonight while reading and know exactly what this character is saying. Maybe it is of no interest to you, but I read those words and knew so completely that feeling that what I was doing was not some wonderful, objective thing that could be praised for a thousand years as substantive historical work. Instead, I felt like myself and all those around me were creating and distorting history... and I soon wondered what, if anything, could be proved. I'm sure this doesn't make any sense to anyone. It is a reason, though, why I would rather write knowingly things that are based in my imagination than contrive such things to be from outside myself. I'm sure this sounds stupid. I'm glad to see so much blogging. That I am certain of.
Annie, don't worry about being in the dark about Maunday-Thursday services. I hadn't heard of them until last year, I think. And I just found out what broiling really is tonight. I never knew there were coils in the top of the oven. And Robbie, the manual does say to leave the door open while broiling. I'll stick to my cast-iron skillet. Or else I'll stir-fry.
I'm amazed at the parallel between Mrs. Bachelor and Professor Erickson. "Well, there isn't a whole lot that I actually can "teach" but I am helping many to use talking words instead of whining! The whining thing gets old really quickly when you have five going at the same time." Either young lady could say that. I don't miss freshman one bit. Why- do you know any cute ones? Just asking... for sake of tradition more than anything. Speaking of tradition, I miss a good honor's study group. Lynnea, I'll put it together if you have a time that works for you. How does May look? Mid-July? The night before our ten-year reunion? Okay then.
I just wanted to end with a little bit of an excerpt from a book I picked up tonight that might explain a little better why I quit grad school. I'm just going to quote a few sentences from Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea concerning the main character (a former world-traveling historian) when he realizes that he is the one creating history instead of retelling events from the past. He's speaking of a specific person he was studying, but I think it can be quite easily broadened to fit my recent circumstances :
"It is not the lack of documents: letters, framents of memoirs, secret reports, police records. On the contrary I have almost too many of them. What is lacking in all this testimony is firmness and consistency. They do not contradict each other, neither do they agree with each other; they do not seem to be about the same person. And yet other historians work from the same sources of information. How do they do it? Am I more scrupulous or less intelligent? In any case, the question leaves me completely cold. In truth, what am I looking for?....
Well, yes, he could have done that, but it is not proved: I am beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved. These are honest hypotheses which take the facts into account: but I sense so definitely that they come from me, and that they are simply a way of unifying my own knowledge... Slow, lazy, sulky, the facts adapt themselves to the rigour of the order I wish to give them; but it remains outside them. I have the feeling of doing a work of pure imagination."
It was seriously eerie to come across this tonight while reading and know exactly what this character is saying. Maybe it is of no interest to you, but I read those words and knew so completely that feeling that what I was doing was not some wonderful, objective thing that could be praised for a thousand years as substantive historical work. Instead, I felt like myself and all those around me were creating and distorting history... and I soon wondered what, if anything, could be proved. I'm sure this doesn't make any sense to anyone. It is a reason, though, why I would rather write knowingly things that are based in my imagination than contrive such things to be from outside myself. I'm sure this sounds stupid. I'm glad to see so much blogging. That I am certain of.
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