people we want

slow morning. a sleep in. newspaper flicking (but not reading). muesli eating. coffee drinking. SMH Target Word (too hard). looking at Jessie's homebrew. listening to Dirty Three. contemplating a trip to the beach but knowing I need to be here, at my desk, at uni, working.

and so i'm here.

on the bus i read the foreword to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. i was impressed by the final paragraph of the acknowledgements section:

My final ackowledgments, to my parents, wife, and children, must be of a rather different sort. In ways which I shall probably be the last to recognize, each of them, too, has contributed intellectual ingredients to my work. But they have also, in varying degrees, done something more important. They have, that is, let it go on and even encouraged my devotion to it. Anyone who has wrestled with a project like mine will recognize what it has occasionally cost them. I do not know how to give them thanks.

so beautiful. the best thanks would surely be an impossible thanks; something expressed as inexpressible. this final line is nicely balanced with the statement about probably being the last to see the ways in which his family helped - "I shall probably be the last to recognize". there's something intensely romantic about this. it gave me the kind of buzz i might otherwise get from reading virginia woolf.

perhaps the buzz relates to my new writing project. i'm conjuring the memory of a lost love by writing to someone i haven't seen for many years. dragging this impossible love into a new fantasy. i will write him every day. i shall pick at these scabs to bloodlet. and i'll call on the spirits of kuhn and woolf to find the words i need. i'll also turn to pop music.

today's journey-to-school playlist was a selection of 'britpop' tunes. catchy jangle pop infused with longing, lust, misery. can't get much better than that. here's a taste of what i heard:



this track seemed to gel with the kuhn preface. it got me thinking about being in a position where there's nobody i want. where perhaps i'm more interested in becoming the person i want.

i wondered who i might thank when i have to write an acknowledgement. i won't thank family. i don't have a wife and kids. not even a lover who inspires. well, not a 'legitimate' love interest. though there's now someone, the addressee of my letters. love is communicated, and perhaps that's all that's needed to have a lover. of course, i also turn to barthes.

and perhaps i'll also thank chris kraus who gave me the impetus to start this. and neko case, as it was her, in that recital hall, that made me think about him so much that i forgot to listen to much of her music.

well isn't it nice
when you're loved by someone
but this love life
it just takes too long
so i'll go home