beyond the zero

A Certain Blindness

Studying for the Hist and Lit orals has reminded me how much I love the pragmatists in general and William James in particular. Here are some passages from James’ great 1899 essay “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”:

Each is bound to feel intensely the importance of his own duties and the significance of the situation that call these forth. But this feeling is in each of us a vital secret, for sympathy with which we vainly look to others. The others are too much absorbed in their own vital secrets to take an interest in ours…

The subject judged knows a part of the world of reality which the judging spectator fails to see…

Wherever a process of life communicates an eagerness to him who lives it, there the life becomes genuinely significant. Sometimes the eagerness is more knit up with the motor activities, sometimes with the perceptions, sometimes with the imagination, sometimes with reflective thought. But, wherever it is found, there is the zest, the tingle, the excitement of reality; and there is ‘importance’ in the only real and positive sense in which importance ever anywhere can be...

To him who feels the inner secret, they [the outwardly ‘meaningless and vacant tracts of time’] tingle with an importance that unutterably vouches for itself. I am sorry for the boy or girl, or man or woman, who has never been touched by the spell of this mysterious sensorial life, with its irrationality, if so you like to call it, but its vigilance and its supreme felicity. The holidays of life are its most vitally significant portions, because they are, or at least should be, covered with just this kind of magically irresponsible spell.

And now what is the result of all these considerations and quotations? It is negative in one sense, and positive in another. It absolutely forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own; and it commands us to tolerate, respect, and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however unintelligible these may be to us. Hands off; neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer, although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands. Even prisons and sick-rooms have their special revelations. It is enough to ask of each of us that he should be faithful to his own opportunities and make the most of his own blessings, without presuming to regulate the rest of the vast field.

Forget 'Bull Durham'

I’ve recently begun to get really interested in minor league baseball. And with all the info out there on the internet, it’s pretty easy and fun to follow your team’s prospects — in more ways than one.

For example: any Cub fan who follows the minors has gotta be pretty excited about Tony Thomas, a 22-year-old second baseman from Florida State who’s currently hitting .356/.430/.632 for the AA Tennessee Smokies. But as much as TT’s hitting has got me feeling good, what I really love is his twitter. Let’s take a look at the life of a minor league baseball player, shall we?

Going to hooters to drink some beers and lick on som legs…… I mean wings4:58 PM May 2nd from twidroid

Lick on some legs at Hooters? Oh Tony, that is some “saucy” innuendo right there, my friend. I like it.

Tenn. Smokes goin out with huntsvill girls. Ps I love them southern girls they r crazy9:20 PM May 2nd from txt

Hey, I’m not one to judge. Minor league ballplayers have been more adept at scoring ladies than scoring runs for as long as minor league baseball’s been around, right?

Stipclub with hooter girls… Tryin to live the dream!9:27 PM May 2nd from txt

Wait, so you’re going to a strip club with Hooters girls on your arm? Okay, that’s kind of crazy, but it’s also kind of awesome, so hey, man, go for it. And I love that he’s using “tryin’ to live the dream!” in reference to strip clubbin’ with Hooters girls, not making the big leagues — very clever.

But here’s where things start to take a turn.

I want to make things right and show her how much she means to me!12:15 PM May 3rd from twidroid

Wha…..wait, what?!?! You’re telling me you spent four hours getting drunk at Hooters, took a bunch of Hooters girls to a strip club, publicly broadcast all of this on twitter, and you have a girl you really care about? Oh Tony……no.

Miss my boo11:30 AM May 4th from twidroid

DAMN IT TONY WHAT WERE YOU THINKING WHEN YOU WENT OUT WITH THOSE HOOTERS GIRLS!?!?!?!?

I excited to see the most gorgeous girl in the world today who is also my best friend @sweetkadence6:01 AM May 6th from twidroid in reply to sweetkadence

Awwwwwww take him back, @sweetkadence! He made a mistake with those Hooters girls! He won’t do it again, he swears! Can’t you just forgive him?!?!

Epilogue: The Tennessee Smokies played a double-header against the Mississippi Braves last night. After presumably spending his tweet-free off-day with @sweetkadence, Smokies leadoff hitter Tony Thomas turned in an inspired performance, going 5 for 8 with 3 doubles, 1 triple, 2 walks, and 3 runs scored.

I couldn’t make this stuff up.

The Dowd Zone

The Twitter dudes are pretty hilarious in this piece, but what I can’t get over is this: how genuine were Maureen Dowd’s questions? Even though I’m never positive she’s entirely earnest, I generally assume she’s not being ironic — just dumb.

Take her last column, a true Dowd gem. Look, I love talking about Star Wars at least as much as the next guy, and I’m glad Dowd’s confirming my long-held belief that Star Wars can be used to explain ANYTHING IN THE WORLD. But seriously, what do those first five paragraphs have to do with, you know, the actual subject of her column? She tries, though — you gotta love this painful transition: “Sated, I went over to talk to the other celestial celebrity in San Francisco who inspires cultlike devotion for what she does with green cooking rather than blue screens.” I’d say this was a self-parody or something, but again, I don’t think Dowd does irony — just stupidity. (There’s much more to say about Dowd in the context of an anti-snark rant — it’s effective when used well but when the default form, as it too often is right now, it just leads to lazy, intellectually vapid writing — but that’s for another time when I’m not being a wee bit snarky myself.)

It’s like Dowd’s editors have given up trying to get her to write well thought-out or coherent or readable columns. Her writing has reached some version of The Tyson Zone: I accept all her columns as genuine no matter how outrageously bad or stupid they may be. She’s in The Dowd Zone now. God help us all.

Fragmented

Still, I don’t consider my thesis the culmination of my intellectual journey at Harvard—not by any means. In the abstract sense, it combined a lot of my interests—theory and philosophy, matters of race and pluralism in an American context, 20^th-century American literature, popular culture—in a way that I found both interesting and necessary, but in another sense, it felt like one more paper (a very long paper that required a lot of work, to be sure, but still a paper). But it shouldn’t have felt like a culmination to my intellectual journey through Harvard and Hist and Lit, because that journey has been less like a vector than a scatter plot. As I look back on my four years, though, that’s something I’m not simply okay with; it’s something I’m grateful for.

—from my Hist and Lit program statement/intellectual autobiography. I like being a scatter plot.

The Most Wonderful Time

My favorite player just drilled the second pitch of the Cubs’ season out to left-center off Roy Oswalt.

It feels good to watch baseball again. God I love Opening Day.

Bad Omens in a Bad Economy

My friends are afraid to borrow my books. They’ve always been afraid to borrow my books.

Other than the ease with which the covers flip open, you can hardly tell I’ve read them — no creases, no folds, no scratches; only the lightest of pencil marks pops up every now and then, but it’s always out of the way, carefully skirting around the printed words so they won’t be altered in the slightest on a reread.

I’ve been scolded for fetishizing my books. I don’t care: I’m obsessed with good books as physical phenomena, the way they feel in your hands, the way they look, the way cover and page and text all blend together to create something amazing.

That’s why e-mails like this make me depressed:

Dear Patrick,

Thank you for applying to the 2009 Random House, Inc. Associates Program.

Unfortunately, the program has been suspended for this year.

Not good.

Pie Chart

Approximate breakdown of my last 24 hours:

Time spent watching Angels in America on the Loeb Mainstage: 7 hours (29%)

Time spent finishing My Name Is Red: 7 hours (29%)

Time spent thinking, reading, and fantas(y)izing about Opening Day: 3 hours (13%)

Time spent on miscellaneous activities (eating, showering, going to class, spacing out and daydreaming, etc.): 5 hours (21%)

Time spent sleeping: 2 hours (8%)

All things considered, it’s not a bad way to allot one’s time, don’t you think?