Life seems to be getting more and more confusing. The problems of self, determinism and time make even the simplest of actions difficult. I find myself stopping in the middle of a conversation to wonder who it is that I am actually talking to and who I am and where I am. I of course, pretend that nothing is happening - otherwise I would be dragged off to the Booby Hatch (Thurber story) - but the thoughts remain like a high pitched whistling inside my head. Another high pitched whistling to go with the one in my ears.
I blame spukhafte Fernwirkung. Say it again with a different link,
spukhafte Fernwirkung.
German always makes things sound portentous, French clever and witty, English dull, Indonesian relaxed and Chinese... well Chinese just makes any non-Chinese speaker feel somewhat stupid. It's probably deliberate.
It is perhaps appropriate that one of the 'well being' courses on my work list advises people not to think too much in order not to become depressed.
There are also now lots of courses on 'presentation' that promote the idea that people should do things like iron their shirts and cut their hair before going to an interview.
The Trent Vale Poet is a very lucky man, he has a job cleaning the toilets at a large factory and that gives him time to think and write poetry.
It is a job that was good enough for Gandhi, when he was not being a lawyer, and perhaps the most dignifying of all labour. But a job you would have little chance of getting unless you had ironed your shirt and/or put on your make up.
This is a real problem, one I have touched on several times, the lack of simple honest work for riff-raff. What simple honest work there is is being replaced by simple dishonest work. Work that pretends to be something other than it is by wearing an ironed shirt and having a fancy title.
A gentrification of labour.
I can imagine that there were feudal Barons that washed their peasants and had them stand around tending flocks and hoeing bean rows while whistling gaily whenever the King came to stay. Plus ca change.
By the way, thanks to the classification, I am now officially Working Class!
There is a pile of clean washing on the floor. Should I stuff it all into a draw?*
That would be the sensible thing to do as it would only take a few seconds and a tedious chore is done. Or should I sort it out and iron an emergency shirt in case of an important 'meeting'?
I am now, of course, paralysed by the choice and the possible implications of ether actions, both of which are overflowing with social, political and philosophical significance.
At times like this I ask myself the question, what would Diogenes have done?
Really?.... I can?...
This early in the morning?...
Then I will!
* I use 'draw' as a noun in order to prevent confusion. There are those of you who would believe I stuffed my washing into an artist.
Oh, why a Klein bottle? Rivers here always lead you back to the point where you started through every possible point on the surface of the Earth.