So… finally a post about one of my favorite subjects. It’s… 45 minutes long. Sorry! But it contains a lot of interesting (hopefully) information. Let me know what you think of it, and if you want a sequel that tells what happened the next day.
The First Crusade – Origins, Siege of Antioch
Note: For those of you who like to read first-hand accounts, here are some translated primary sources.
On this day in 1478, a conspiracy to depose the Medici rulers of Florence was carried out with Papal backing. The conspiracy failed, but the consequences of the plot were quite interesting indeed!
This is an off-the-cuff lecture, so it’s a bit scattered. It combines political and art history. I’ll post pictures of the woodcuts I mention if anyone is interested. It’s only about 14 minutes long, so if you’re interested in history at all, have a listen!
If you like these, I can do more on occasion. :) Do let me know in the comments section what you think.
So I was reading a personal finance blog that I like the other day, and a question came up to the writer (a man) how he felt about makeup on women – and the costs associated therewith. He said that he didn’t find makeup to be necessary, except in business situations where every other woman in the office wore makeup, and then some might be required.
I heartily agree with him. I, myself, don’t wear makeup. I never have. And here’s why:
1. It feels GROSS. – Whenever I put makeup on (anything from drugstore Maybelline to $50 mineral makeup) it feels… gross. Like I have a mile-thick layer of grease on my face, and I can’t close my eyes for fear of getting my eyelashes stuck together. The only difference between the drugstore stuff and the horribly expensive stuff is the amount of time it takes for me to need desperately to rush to the washroom and scrub the offending crap off my face. The more expensive the makeup, the longer I can wear it. Some brands I can even wear for an hour before I’m clawing at my face in my desperation to get the damned stuff off!
2. It’s expensive. – See above for makeup cost vs. the length of time I can actually wear it. And, of course, you can’t keep makeup forever. It eventually goes off, spoils, what have you. And of course since you put it on your face, it’s best to keep it fresh.
3. It doesn’t look very good. – How many women have you seen walking around with 3 inches of powder caked on their face and their lashes all stuck together from too much mascara? I’ll bet you that these beldames look even worse with the makeup on than they do with the makeup off. Invariably, women use foundation to even out their skin tone, and then they put blush on to put the ruddiness back in their cheeks. Why? Unless your skin tone is really horrid, why would you do any such thing? Now, even I must agree that very small amounts of makeup which are very tastefully and skillfully applied can sometimes make a woman look better, especially if she has skin problems. However, such stuff is almost invariably too much and ill-applied. Even when I’ve gotten makeup done professionally, I’ve always felt that I’ve looked worse after the makeup artist was done with me.
4. Self-esteem. – Every woman I’ve ever met who was one of those that felt that they absolutely needed makeup to look good had pitifully poor self-esteem. These are women who don’t feel human until they smear crap on their face. They seem to need makeup as a self-esteem crutch – or maybe they think that they wouldn’t be pretty without it? Folks, if you didn’t win the genetic lottery and you’re not pretty… makeup ain’t gonna help. I have no problem with makeup use by people who don’t need it as a self-esteem crutch to make them feel better about themselves. That’s fine – and in certain social situations such as job interviews or gala dinners, makeup is useful socially and should be worn. But the every day dependency… really scares me.
5. I look good without it. – Fortunately, I did at least in part win the genetic lottery. My skin has always been fairly clear, and its tone has almost always been even. It’s generally soft (hence no need for heavy moisturizers – I really can’t stand putting anything, not just makeup, on my face) and… pretty nice looking even without makeup. I generally don’t wear anything on my face, or if I do, it’s some chapstick. This does, in fact, have a tendency to make me look younger, but that’s ok. I do, of course, wear makeup to job interviews and such – any place where it’s socially necessary. And the moment I can, I dash to the washroom and scrub the offending crap off my face.
I’m not sure which if any of these are valid arguments against makeup use. I suppose it all comes down to personal preference. I’m always well-groomed – clean clothes, combed hair, pleasant fragrance, trimmed nails – but always without makeup. I think the former is the more important. :)
Filed under: vie quotidienne | Tags: life story, music, philosophizing, snoozers
I’ve been listening rather obsessively to one song. Bitter Boy by Kate Rusby, if you must know. I’d post a link (to her singing it at a folk festival with her ex-husband – the title character – on guitar) but the video was removed from YouTube. It’s fascinating to watch them trying very desperately not to look at each other while singing that song. They fail. Here’s a link to the lyrics.
I’ve been talking a great deal lately to a gentleman whom I very much esteem… and other words as well. I’ve not mentioned him here before and don’t really intend to do so again for quite a while, but in his predicament I see elements of mine. It sort of seems that the path is parallel – that he has trodden some ground that I’ve not yet covered, and vice-versa. I believe we can be of mutual aid to each other, and yet… the past two days I’ve been sensing something odd. Not between us, I don’t think – but each of us, in our parallel spheres, is feeling the same emotions of restlessness and frustration and loneliness, which are all three by their natures distancing. I’m afraid that I’ve been rather abrupt or curt with some long-standing friends lately owing to these unprocessed emotions – for which I will make my apologies in a more personal manner – and that also I’ve been rather passively avoiding company. I intend to remedy those two things.
For my part, the feelings I think stem from three areas:
1. A soured interpersonal relationship – There is another gentleman whom I gravely offended a week since. It was my fault, and I apologized truly and profusely, but the gentleman, in his implacable way, punishes me by having nothing whatever to do with me except for the bare and ordinary requirements of civility. That wounds me cruelly. It reminds me of what my mother used to do, in fact. She would freely “forgive” me for any crime I committed – whether real or by her imagined – and then alternately either show herself solicitous for my feelings, or she would ignore and revile me, and then tell me that though she had forgiven me, the enforced estrangement was my own fault, and I was – though forgiven – responsible for her repudiation of me. Her “feelings” would hourly change until I was no longer sure what ground I stood upon with her, which was extremely frightening to me. I was reading Jane Eyre again tonight, and I’ll quote a long passage which seems apt:
“…during that time he made me feel what severe punishment a good yet stern, conscientious yet implacable man can have on one who has offended him. Without one overt act of hostility, one upbraiding word, he contrived to impress me momently with the conviction that I was put beyond the pale of his favor.
“…not that he would have injured a hair of my head, if it had been fully in his power to do so. Both by nature and by principle he was superior to the mean gratification of vengeance: he had forgiven me… but he had not forgotten the words; and as long as he and I lived he never would forget them. I saw by his look, when he turned to me, that they were always written on the air between me and him; whenever I spoke, they sounded in my voice to his ear, and their echo toned every answer he gave me.
“…All this was torture to me – refined, lingering torture. It kept up a slow fire of indignation and a troubling tremble of grief, which harassed and crushed me altogether. I felt how… this good man, pure as the deep sunless source, could soon kill me, without drawing from me veins a single drop of blood, or receiving on his own crystal conscience the faintest stain of crime. Especially I felt this when I made any attempt to propitiate him. No ruth met my ruth. He experienced no suffering from estrangement…”
That says what’s to be said better than I could. Though a stray thought passed through my head in reading that. Charlotte Bronte sets up St John Rivers as both an angel and a demon. It is the demon part of St John which tortures Jane, and the demon part of him which she reviles as daily she admires his angelic side. If – despite the otherwise plentiful virtue of the man who is so punishing me, though he knows I hurt – he continues to exact his revenge, might I not revile the demon part of him without impugning my virtue by throwing away the entire acquaintance? If I figure out how to do that – to admire one part of a man while despising another – I’ll post my method here. But reason tells me that it must be one way or another – I must revile the entire man, or admire him. I cannot revile the entire man because I am cognizant of his virtues, and yet I cannot admire him while he exacts an unjust punishment for a crime to which I have admitted most freely, for which I have apologized profusely, and about which I have thought – and continue to think – much in order to analyze my actions and the motives behind them. That last is the most important, of course.
2. A feeling of being ineffectual – As K says, I wish to “get to the doing of it,” and yet I lack vocation. All of my goals are rather long-term, and the accomplishment of my short-term goals (an example of which would be to do preliminary research for a paper due in April) are hampered by lack of spare time. As a result, I waste stretches of time when I could be something, feeling overwhelmed by the fact that there is too much to do. There are so many projects hanging in abeyance, on semi-hiatus, etc. My overarching monthly goal is to make enough money to pay my rent. My overarching lifelong goal is to be happy, and to be happy through being useful, virtuous, and healthy. All intermediate goals seem less than worthwhile, try as I might to tie the doing of them into the accomplishment of either overarching goal. My vision is clouded by the emergence of a new goal, the accomplishment of which does not involve me alone. Though I am ready to meet its challenges, I must confess that I desperately wish to be assured of either my success or my failure before investing as many emotions and resources in it as I might otherwise do. I shall know all soon enough. I fear greatly to be assured of my failure, but Hope softly tells me otherwise, and teaches me… a rather impatient patience – one that knows that by being impatient I utterly dash my hopes, and cautions me to take it slowly therefore.
3. Anxiety (in general and specifically) – The general anxiety comes from items 1 and 2, but not entirely. There’s a feeling of wanting to burst through restraints, but the restraints are not anything I could name, and the land beyond their confining bands is a void. The specific anxiety comes on the part of one of the gentlemen named above. I am learning daily to trust his genius (his own trust of which is at a low ebb now, but will in time revive) to guide him safely, and my anxiety is not that he will do himself a mischief – either physically or emotionally – but that he will remain ignorant of the beauty and nobility others see in him. Or… that’s not 100% true. My anxiety comes partly from the fact that I wish to aid him but do not know the extent of my power to do so, partly that I see that his trust of himself is almost nonexistent, and partly the anxiety I usually feel when I see any essentially (at the core, essentially) virtuous human being take a drubbing for daring to exercise their natural faculties. That’s all professor talk for “I really like him and don’t want to see him get hurt, but yet I know that he will, and that he must, and that I can do nothing to shield him, and that pains me.” There – the same sentiment in fewer words.
Feelings 2 and 3 are symptoms of some larger thing, which I cannot see at the moment. I lack necessary perspective. I cannot pin all (or even the majority) of my anxiety on item 1. The relationship therein named was collegial, but not particularly close – though I desired to be slightly closer. I cannot pin my anxiety on the fact that it is no longer collegial, or the fact that closeness does not now seem an option…
I’ll continue to think about it – not in the sense of beating my head against a wall (which this issue isn’t) but in the sense of useful, open, scientific inquiry. After all, how can one trust the genii of others and yet not trust oneself? Allons-y.
Ok, so while I was showering I had a great idea. (I swear to god I could do what Alexander did at my age and conquer Asia Minor if only I could take my bath on campaign.)
I think some of the anxiety comes in the feelings (not the weird kind of “feelings”) I have towards the two gentlemen whose papers I was editing. They’re actually similar, if you discount the length of time I’ve been in contact with them. The main feeling I have for them both is the desire to be useful.
So… let’s think about this. I don’t frankly see how I’m the type of person that either of them would want to have contact with. I’m certainly not in their age group, certainly not wiser than them, am certainly not able to give them any insight or provide them with any thought that they’ve not seen coming a mile away. I am in just about every way (physically, mentally, fiscally, god knows emotionally) inferior to them. Yet I want – because of their greater virtue and wisdom and insight and knowledge – very much to gain their good opinion. Yet this cannot come from my just presenting myself and expecting to magically have it. No… I must have a commodity to trade for their good opinion. Since I’ve not enough virtue, wisdom, etc… I chose to trade in time.
Now, this is less true with C (not the bastard who owes me money – the other one) than with Stef. Stef I don’t know at all, and probably never shall. So his time is the only thing I can trade for his good opinion, and so there the decision was a conscious one. With C, I trade as well in other personal qualities which he finds attractive, and the editing his articles thing – which he also does for me for god knows what reason, but I do so appreciate it – is just a sideline.
Can all personal interactions be broken down to trade terms, I wonder? Probably all of the good personal interactions. If my interactions with mother were broken down in trade terms, for instance, I’d be hemorrhaging time and money and energy and just about everything else without ever getting a transfusion of any of those things in return. That makes bad economic sense. But with friends or mentors or – one hopes – random internet philosophers, the balance is even over time. One may perhaps give a little more in one interaction, and then get a little more in return in another. But on the whole, the relationship is on par. You get at least as much as you’re giving, though the specific things traded might be different for each party.
It sounds so low and common to talk about “buying” someone’s good opinion. But I think we really are all traders in that sense, no matter what we like to call it
What the hell does this have to do with RTR? Let’s think.
I think for a moment that the trade became too unbalanced. That I felt that what I was putting out wasn’t quite being reciprocated. This was especially true in the first part of the book – which, being somewhat “old hat,” was a little boring to me… just a nod (as in affirmative nodding, not as in nodding off to sleep) fest of “Yes, I read that in UPB” or “Yes, that was in On Truth” – and it was a little bit of a slog for that reason. Necessary – for as Stef said, the book should be accessible to all, not just people already in the conversation – but a little bit of a difficult go. The way I got over this was to finish that section and come back to the book yesterday having been refreshed with a nice long sleep. I flew through the last 200 pages in an afternoon and did enjoy it really.
So the trade balanced out in the second section. Not only did I get to be useful in proofing the book (and I really do like to be useful to just about anyone who has my good opinion), but the RTR theory is interesting and validated some things I’d thought about already and seen already, as I’d said. So while in the first part I felt as though I was investing more in the book than I was getting back, the second part did not make me feel so.
If I do any more cogitating on the whys and wherefores, this blog is going to explode. In order to avoid a fate worse than a fate worse than death, here are John Cleese and Graham Chapman in a very funny sketch.
So Stef asked me this morning why I found it such a slog to get through the first section of his new book. I told him that the symptoms were my reading a couple of pages, then getting up and walking around… reading a couple of pages, then getting up to get a cup of tea… reading a couple of pages… etc. When he asked what feeling the symptoms expressed, I wasn’t sure. And I’m still not sure. Hence this navel-gazing post.
The closest I got to pinning down the feeling was introducing a Monty Python metaphor – from the end of Holy Grail when the main action keeps cutting to a shot of Arthur’s army standing on a hill and shouting “Get on with it!” in unison. Stef didn’t seem to pick up the metaphor as part of my explaining my feelings (I think he thought that it was just a random thought) and I didn’t press the issue because I guess it didn’t reveal much more than I was able to say to him before. I don’t know if the conversation was frustrating to him or not. On my end it felt like 18 minutes of him trying to pin down a fog. That’s not his fault, god knows, but mine.
So… he asked me my feelings about the RTR book. The blank, unholy surprise of it is that I really don’t. Have feelings about it, that is. As I told him, none of his books have ever moved me to great emotion. (Very few books do – this certainly isn’t an attack on or denigration of his writing.) The book made a good deal of sense, but then again I had some knowledge of the theory, having seen it in action in and around the FDR boards, and – to a much lesser extent – in chat. There were even a couple of things I will implement myself, starting with an ex-friend who constantly prates of his “honor” and won’t pay back the money he owes me or even talk about it with me. So I found myself reading with anxious impatience through the first part of the book, and nodding in a sort of “Ok, this makes sense. Good on him. Maybe I can use this stuff” sort of way. I even imagined a couple of possible emails to send to the dishonorable C – one before the book said not to present emotional conclusions as things to be shot down by the person you’re talking to, and one after. And yeah… oh, well, there were a couple of times in reading his tables of “what they say vs. what they mean” when my cynical amusement shot to the top as I recognized something I’d heard or seen from mother. That was pretty much the extent of it.
The problem is, though… what if you don’t actually feel anything when you’re talking with someone? RTR is about providing real-time emotional feedback. So… what if you can’t? I see people on the boards providing feedback like “I feel scared and anxious when you say things like that” to other people. (I certainly hope I haven’t made anyone feel scared or anxious, but I don’t know whether I have or haven’t – hence the utility of RTR for people like me who are horrifically bad at reading tone and body language – something you don’t get online anyway.) But the problem is, I’m not exactly what you’d call “in touch with my feminine side,” if any. I simply cannot imagine myself saying “I feel scared and anxious when you say things like that” to anyone!! This isn’t because I don’t have emotions. I certainly do. They just seem to be a little bit weaker and a little bit slower in coming than everyone else’s. I don’t tend to get scared in talking to anyone. My most common feelings are either anxious impatience (as exemplified in my mother’s favorite phrase – “Don’t jerk me around!” – except she only says it when she’s trying to manipulate people (projection, much?) and I only think it when I’m standing on top of a metaphorical hill shouting “Get on with it!”) or grudging indifference when speaking with “normal” people, and a sort of faintly pleased, milky happiness when talking with the few folks I would consider my “friends” and most of the people on FDR. I have the emotional range of Al Gore’s face.
So I don’t know. Was my impatience and then my lack of later emotionality just because this book was largely confirming things about which I’d already had some thoughts, or does it signal something deeper? Considering Stef’s normal audience, I think they’re going to find that it completely rocks their world (in all senses of that metaphor) and… yeah. Considering my normal reactions to Stef’s stuff, this is definitely on par with his other books.
There’s that whole feeling of anxiousness in the beginning, though. Something’s built up around that, and that’s why I had a hard time initially getting into the editing of it, and why I kept leaving little marginal comments that threw me out (so to speak) of the work. It’s kinda the same feeling I had when editing another one of my friend’s articles. I’d already seen it three times, and wasn’t necessarily keen on seeing it a fourth, and that sort of feeling of tension and “Aw, c’mon here… why do I have to slog through this shit again!” that was completely not a reaction to the work itself (don’t think it was, either of y’all – it wasn’t) but to something else. Not because I felt it was an imposition – or, ok… because I felt it was an imposition, even though I’d cheerfully agreed initially to do the editing on both pieces – but… eh.
So now I’m just trying to pin down the fog of my own impatience, which has never really worked out for me at all. If I think of something, I’ll post it. Now… I have to decide whether this is useful enough to send to Stef. I don’t think that it explains much… but maybe he can use it.
Filed under: FDR | Tags: FDR, music, philosophizing, RTR, snoozers, youtube
Reading Stef’s new RTR book. I’m enjoying it so far, but haven’t gotten to the meat of the theory yet. Am still in the run-up material, of which there is quite a bit – most of it necessary. I’m going slower than I need to because I’ve agreed to proofread it. Stef tends to write like I do: that is, with too many commas and too many words. Am doing the best I can to remove extraneous commas and the more unnecessary of the extra words. Never say in 15 words what you can say in 25, is my motto.
Will probably engage myself in proofing the book at work tomorrow as well. All I ever do there all day (besides the little projects that A and F sometimes throw me) is chat with FDR folks. I wish I had something to do, really… something useful! I don’t consider sorting through posters for various music competitions very useful. This is the same reason that I would surf YouTube at Avero when Portnoy was busy and couldn’t teach me anything new or I didn’t have useful work I could do on my outstanding tickets. Normally if I’m feeling like I’m doing something worthwhile or have something worthwhile that I can do, I don’t need to be pushed into anything. I sort of feel like I’m goading myself into proofing Stef’s book. I mean, it’s enjoyable, but I’ve built up more anxiety around it than I need to. I’ve gone a ways to dispelling that tonight, but am still behind schedule. I’ll have to get over that one.
Back to it.
Gratuitous Breton folk song – very high energy, very good:
Filed under: first principles project, school, vie quotidienne, work | Tags: dancing, FDR, first principles project, france, movies, music, orson welles, philosophizing, put money in thy purse, school, snoozers, study abroad, work, youtube
I just wanted to proclaim my undying love for Orson Welles. The 10 minutes that he’s actually on screen in The Third Man make the entire movie worth watching. Joseph Cotten isn’t half bad either.
Sending in a registration form tomorrow for classes at the Irish Arts center. I know I’m going to take classes in ceili and set dancing, but I’m not sure yet whether the third class will be an intro to solo Irish dance or a fiddle class. I think probably the latter… but I don’t have the money for an instrument right now. Will just rent, then, and see if I like it (and if I’m any good!) before actually buying a violin. The class that I really want to take (on the tinwhistle) is at a time when I can’t get to the Center. Damn!!
Finally finished registration for Columbia. 2 French courses, elementary logic, earth science, art hum, and a class on the renaissance. Woo hoo. I don’t want to take the science course, but needs must. Alas, alackaday. It shouldn’t be too terribly bad, though. What I really need to do is start getting application materials together for Paris. I’ve simply got to get into that program and get out of America for a year. Will see how long I can stay abroad. The carte de sejour should last for about a year, so if I can get a decent summer job in Paris I may well stay until the visa runs out. That’s the plan at least. If not, I can go to England or Germany or… god knows where else. Maybe apply for an overseas internship through Columbia, or to that State Department language program.
Someone I know vaguely from FDR emailed me about an interesting blog project that’s been cooked up. The idea is for a group of us to write blog entries on various aspects of certain philosophical first principles, and then combine those writings into a sort of wiki. I’m not sure exactly what the audience is for the wiki, but I’d like to use this blog to explore some aspects of first principles, so this project comes at a good time. We’ll see where it leads.
Have been working a lot at the music dept. Have over $400 racked up for next Friday’s paycheck. Can’t come at a better time. I promised myself that I would not let my savings account get below a certain level. Well, it is about $65 above that level right now, so if I don’t make enough money every month to cover rent and bills, I don’t eat. Or… don’t do something else. Don’t get to spend any money, let’s say. I hope that Ye Olde SFP gives me more work-study money.
Tired tonight. More maybe tomorrow.
And the famous cuckoo clock speech from The Third Man. Forgive the Spanish subtitles.
And a gratuitous Irish reel set from the Transatlantic Sessions:
Filed under: introduction | Tags: introduction, life story, objectivism, philosophizing, snoozers
I’ve decided to give up my other blog on LiveJournal. Why? I’ve been thinking a lot about boat anchors recently. The other blog is the least weighty of the many I still have tied around me… but there are a number of associations and other things about it that are best dumped down the memory hole.
No… that’s too pretentious a beginning. What I mean to say is that I am changing – have changed – and new faces and new routines and new attitudes are the order of the day. That blog and that name no longer reflect who I am, and it’s time to come out of the hall of mirros and show my actual self, and not a reflection or a pose.
I used to pride myself – or no, that’s not quite true… a better way to say it would be “I used to think it would be a mark of honor if I could pride myself” – on having no essential self. No “me”-ness. That’s sort of odd for someone who found big-O Objectivism when I was 11 and rejected it 2 months, 3 days, 15 hours, 9 minutes, and 36 seconds later. (All times approximate.) Why I thought it would be a point of pride – or an amusing boast – is beyond me. But part of it was tied up in a pride in my ability to adapt. My personal motto was (and still is) the single Latin word Resurgam, meaning “I rise again.” That, at least, is a point of pride: that nothing that has happened to me (passive voice bad, try again…) nothing that I have done or experienced or has come down the pike as a result of lack of virtue in myself or others has touched that essential self that I wanted to deny. So in thinking that I wanted to think that I had no essential self, I was denying what I really admired in myself.
I think that attitude suited me at the time. I rejected big-O Objectivism mostly because the orthodoxy of the folks at the ARI really stuck in my craw. I wrote an email to Peikoff asking how one might get the word out. His secretary asked for my mailing address and he wrote me a postal letter back praising my writing skills (I remember the phrase. He said “If there were more young people like you in the world…” and I can’t remember the rest because I threw the letter out, but it was laudatory) and telling me that I might think of giving my non-Objectivist friends some ARI-sanctioned philosophy workbooks, and in my case he’d pass my name on to his friends at the ARI, who would be happy to help me on my way. Jesus H. Christ. So that ended my very short love affair with big-O Objectivism.
After that ended, I was just a bit homeless. There was a brief (3 years brief) interlude after I read Atlas and before I found and began writing for STR when I was alone (but for one person, who believed he had been obliged to compromise his morals, but tried to shield me from having to compromise – or, let’s face it, even test mine) and that’s when that “no essential self” attitude first cropped up. I think it was useful through the last years of living with mother and through the first Wilderness Year I had with some bad roommates in Houston and then alone in Dallas. Thanks, false self, for covering my ass.
But that’s gone, now. I shoved my essential self so far down under cover that bringing it back up again will take a lot of time and effort. Whether lowering my defenses is truly the best defense I cannot tell. I’m beginning to see that it might be. So that’s what this blog is about – well, that and less snoozy stuff – and that’s why it has to be a new one. The old blog is the blog of that girl who had no essential self. So this is my essential self’s blog.
Oh… from the depths, it said “Hello, world!”
