In vino veritas

In a year of Thursdays, today remains the greatest Thursday of all. Today is not only World Philosophy Day but also the day on which the Beaujolais nouveau is released. I continue the endless and thankless editing of my dissertation, effectively avoiding finishing the two or three sections of chapter five--I refuse to count how many--that still need words and work. I spent five days last week in Eugene, Oregon, attending the Radical Philosophy Association conference, where I had smart conversations about Benjamin and Blanchot with people who had better educations than I had. I held my own and even offered insight into these two thinkers to people who had written them off as too difficult and opaque. When I was a child, I was taught that the universe was made of atoms and molecules and elements, but now every scientist affirms that what we see is merely a scrim over the dark and invisible universe that does not exist. I think language is like that. Hence, it's difficult to write words that don't or can't say what I mean about something not there in the first place. Having written that, I have already written 183 pages, without finishing the text or even beginning to put my bibliography together. My two-page table of contents mesmerizes me daily: I could stare at its simplicity and form for hours, having never before written anything requiring such a detailed table of contents. For the past week, I've been repeatedly listening to Hildegard von Bingen's The Origin of Fire and Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3. While trying not to weep or to come undone from mourning, I edit my dissertation about words that only reveal their essential absence in the absent universe on a Thursday filled with words (and love!) of wisdom and wine.