The Collar

Wee hours.

Still I have difficulty sleeping. I think it’s from the cholesterol medication. For now I’m not going to worry about it. In a sort of delirium a minute ago I thought of D.H. Lawrence again, that he was thrown in jail for obscenity or something that wasn’t accurate, and why did I have to study him at the university if he was such a degenerate? 

I don’t think anyone really knows anything in these times. But we have to believe somebody and maintain optimism, a faith that things will work out okay. People as a rule are not the nasty brutes that Hobbes described in Leviathan. The other day I made an observation in my journal on the priest’s white collar and what it might symbolize from a psychological perspective. The collar seems to sever the head from the body, or rather rationality from feeling. If hell is everything below the neck, then heaven is what is above it. I wonder what happens when the collar is removed, and head and body are allowed to communicate? The result is not chaos, but instead experience in full color and wholeness. The thoughts you only cogitated become convictions you feel with your whole body. And what I’ve just illustrated is an aspect of schizophrenia, originally conceived as the split between reason and feeling. But what I find interesting is how this condition applies not just to me, but to a lot of people in some capacity. 

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Nominalism: a Letter

Thanks for the pretty photograph. The colors remind me of the cover to an edition of Robert Frost I used to have, long ago, as a college senior. I remember reading it in the Knight Library on the third floor, particularly “Tree at My Window” and some of the other early poems.

I had a rather difficult day. I don’t understand what’s going wrong with my life or the way my mind works, but I’m having trouble keeping boundaries with other people, and I’m letting little disagreements really upset me. Why can’t I simply assert myself without worrying about how other people feel? Something has gone wrong. Since last month I’ve become more sensitive to the things people say or seem to believe. I feel like I have to agree with them in order to get along, while asserting myself is the worst thing I can do. All I can see around me is conflict with others. This makes me think of the ideas of Thomas Hobbes, who among many things said that people don’t help each other, but rather they interfere with each other’s interests. In his view, human nature is egoistic, and individuals do what is good for themselves. I guess what I’m beginning to perceive all over again is that people are separate individuals and not just a shapeless mass of humanity. Doubtless my perception is changing since my repeated absences from church over the past two months. The pastor’s collectivism, his tendency to view people as groups, for me is gradually going away, replaced by the individualism I grew up with. Maybe Pastor’s perspective is a convenient way of handling the church group. My meetup with Tim a month ago faced me with some new problems regarding the congregation… I don’t know, but it’s harder for me now to compartmentalize real people in easy categories and classes. It all started with not going to church anymore. I imagine I’ll figure out a way to impose order on what I see, but it’ll take time.

Perhaps I’m not making much coherent sense, but then I have to muddle my way through to get to the next phase. Maybe things won’t be easy for a long time. At least I’m still sober, though life is quite a pain right now.