Day 8

I attended the Wittgenstein seminar for the first time today; quite the experience. The professor (Zwicky) is very much an artistic type... we spent the first hour reading and analyzing poetry, of all things. It was said by Wittgenstein himself that the greatest philosophical ideas are best expressed in poetic language - the class is intended to focus on the link between philosophy and poetry.

I contributed by likening poetry to music - that the notation of Chopin, for example, has highs and lows, particular sounds and patterns designed to excite the emotions, and in my mind a certain rhythm to it; the music breathes very much the way a human breathes while reading a poem. The only drawback to this course is that the reading load is borderline unreasonably high. We're expected to ingest all of three of W's books (which, in terms of time spent reading, equates to about 10 books of normal english), and several essays. Truth be told, with this schedule of six classes, most of which are quite challenging, I'm a little worried.

On the bright side, my cable has finally been disconnected. I'd asked them to have it off by the first, but they were too busy hooking other people up in the new year to come and disconnect me. Today is a new day really. It's the first time I've ever lived without cable television.


Things that annoy me in class:

Water bottles
Cell phones
Flourescent lighting (particularly the buzzing sound)
Whisperers
People with laptops who spend the class on facebook. Just... why even show up?
Perfume!
Usurpers; people who ask many questions, and muse out loud for everybody else to hear.


Also, what do you do if you run into somebody you haven't seen in a long time, but they've gained about 40 pounds. It's not polite to say or ask anything, but at the same time, they know you know, and they know it's all you're thinking about. How does one deal with the 'elephant' in the room?

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