i was reading on the bed, my feet grew cold, my head grew tired, so i crawled under covers. a small nap. now i watch aeroplanes and listen to cars and wonder about what i should do tonight. i plan a trip to the supermarket. i realise i'm too tired to socialise. but i can eat. and maybe i can have a bath. and i can read something less taxing than this essay on foucault's theory of 'life as a work of art'.
parts of the text are in french, so i read those out loud to practice, and i try and make sense of them. i figure out some, but there's always unrecognisable words. so i refer to the square-bracketed translation, make mental notes of the new words, whilst also grappling with the ideas.
i wonder if i'll have enough years to learn french, write french, and be the academic that i'd like to be. i wonder if this is my life project, my art, my own suicide pact. Foucault says "Il faut travailler son suicide toute sa vie" [One should work on one's suicide all one's life]. and so i guess i'm busy etching the mark that i wish to leave behind, the souvenir [memory] of my existence; mon oeuvre d'art.
i think i'll make pumpkin and blue cheese pizza.
on contemplating my move to melbourne at the end of the year, i have been thinking (although it has been barely conscious) will i learn french so i can read, among others, lejeune? (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Lejeune_(auteur))
ReplyDeleteor will i start psychoanalysis?
both of these projects are related to the kind of life and academic i'd like to be. both are big projects, long projects.
and the perfect way to put these considerations into perspective is to make pizza.
xap
do it, do it! i think the two together would be a nice venture. big, but possible, and likely very nourishing. and then we can parlon francais ensemble.
ReplyDeletethe pizza was good. i ate it while watching http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Enfants_du_paradis