An Austere Passion: 2005 Edition

Thirteen more hours and then it is the new year.

This past year, in addition to my normal reading, I read a lot of philosophy. Montaigne, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Barthes, Derrida, Lyotard, and Zizek come immediately to mind. I read far more than a dabbler’s amount of them. The reading went quickly, not because I wanted it to, but because that is the way it happened. Plus, I had read many of these writers before, so I was not completely cast adrift. I will freely admit that I did not gain much in erudition from my reading. That wasn’t my goal. I did begin to satisfy an odd curiosity.

I really did not plan on reading this much philosophy. I sort of fell into it as I do most of my reading. Reading certain blogs this past year started me on the way. They are mentioned within my bloglines listing at the side of this blog.

I discovered blogging in the summer of 2004. On this day last year, I did not plan to keep this blog. As soon as I made that decision, it became a daily ritual. I’ve enjoyed writing it even though I have badly said a lot of stupid and contradictory things in it. I think it has made me less shy. I live alone, so being less shy is probably not of much value to me.

I have this feeling I will be reading a lot more philosophy in the new year. There are a lot of interesting bloggers I read everyday who keep arousing my curiosity.

I finished reading Capital over the holiday. I’m reading Moby Dick right now. I am embarrassed to say I’ve never read it.

For someone like me, for whom books are a passion, it has been a very good year.

P. S. I learned a little about the Riemann Hypothesis and did some other things in 2005 that I liked and enjoyed. I am very fortunate to have had the opportunity.

The Planet on the Table

Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.

His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of his self,
Were no less makings of the sun.

It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they should bear
Some lineament or character,

Some afluence, if only half-perceived,
In the poverty of their words,
Of the planet of which they were part.

Wallace Stevens