Overheard at BU...

is usually rather boring, monotonous shit. But at lunchtime, when I got on the elevator, I couldn't help but overhear this one guy's conversation with two embarrassed and uninterested women. And by couldn't help, I mean he was the only one talking on the elevator. So to paraphrase what he said:
"So, I've gotta say - that I didn't know what inner peace was until these past two weeks. I mean, that's what enlightenment is - is giving of yourself and, like, finding yourself in love. There's where you find your purpose. Yea, I believe that everyone has a soulmate and they bring you meaning. I feel so enlightened now..."

Other than the fact I wanted to stuff his mouth with a gym sock and berate him for his liberal use of the word "enlighten", his conversation got me thinking, is it that people need to find love to achieve peace? Or do people have to be in peace with themselves to be able to love others? Because I've known people who had to be in a relatively stress-free time of their lives (including me) to get into serious relationships. But then again there are manic problem-thinkers who need a significant other to put a leash on them. Or is it just a case by case basis? And really, what type of love was he discussing? What happens when the initial euphoria is over?

I ponder this, while I bang my head against my laptop, wishing this will make my thesis write itself. Sadly, this didn't work for my BA thesis either.

I've noticed many of the old Chicago crowd are re-reading Nietzsche again, and I had an interesting conversation with a PhD candidate from BC on nihilism at a party last night (after accidentally hitting on his girlfriend). So I tried going through Birth of Tragedy today. From what I read, Nietzsche really didn't have that much to say about love. Not love "agape" or love "philia"; he's all about that love as a moral emotion to affirm life and transcend the old past philosophies. But the eros type of love. That struck me most reading the entire Apollonian and Dionysian diatribe. Yes, the entire disparity of balance between presenting good and evil is written, but I've yet to be rid of my disinterest in his philosophy or to find any connection between reading his books and Valentine's day. Is the will to power romantic?

I Hear Linkin Park when I Hear Valentine's Day...

"Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap." Joel Barish, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Every other person I talked to last week wasn't, per se, outright embittered it was Valentine's day. They just had a more apparent feeling of malaise than usual. Hearing stories about relationships that strained to make it past last Thursday, failed engagements, the stress of long-distance relationships, I began to wonder why I myself wasn't sulking or indignant about being single on Valentine's day. Maybe because I just associate with bitter intellectual people. But the holiday never meant anything really significant to me except another example of crass commercialization destroying the true meaning of a Catholic holiday (I damn you all if you do that to Palm Sunday!!), so I never saw giving tokens of affection as being limited to, or the duty of, Valentine's Day. Also I'm fine not being attached to anyone right now and just playing the field. I know (or suspect I know) of what I'm missing out in not being in a relationship - the confusion, the dizzying initial happiness, and possible isolation, regret, hope and future. Yet I'd rather work on being sane and grounded myself and not having to force that responsibility on any new love interest.

Talking with old Sports editor Joe from the Maroon, we recalled what probably is the most saccharine thing i ever did for a girl, which was have Joe deliver her a birthday cake (actually a cupcake with a candle on it) on my behalf as a surprise. His version of the story was that he was madly in love with the girl, even though he had just met her two minutes before he delivered the cupcake. I resolved my next romantic gesture will involve a boombox and Peter Gabriel.

February Observations

- February is an insane word to spell correctly. Stupid eclipsed first 'r'.
- I find it strange that the only times I experience anything close to inebriation in Boston is with the old UChicago crowd. And it's not with the UChicago crowd who have or had transplanted here, but instead visiting compadres who say, "Hey, it's been a long time since I've gotten hammered. Roger that, we have a goal." And before you know it, I'm drinking a pitcher of Sam Adams, Blue Moon, Johnny Walker, weird tasting grappa, or some other wowie sauce. Is it that the company I keep at BU just can't hold their liquor as well, or the life of the mind happens to ruin the life of the kidneys and the liver? Could be both.
- Today it started to rain. Then it got sunny. Then I heard thunder. And then it started to snow flakes as large as cottonballs. Cold, icy cottonballs being hurled at 20 mph. Now it's sunny again.

Election Smelection

The most Super Tuesday activity I did yesterday was sitting at an Obama phone bank reminding the good citizens of Massachusetts to vote and using up 80 minutes. The most interesting conversation I had was with an elderly man chiding me for supporting a "Muslim Communist who would turn over the country to those terrorists."

There's many things inherently wrong with that statement.