Kierkegaard
and roses are older than people--34 million years to 250,00--
I'm reading a bio on Soren Kierkegaard.
I bought the book at Powells in Portland several years ago on a trip through that city on the way home from Wyoming. It will probably take me two years to read it.
When I'm reading it I can't believe I'm reading it. It seems like such an old thing to do, a weird way to use one's eyes. The book's really heavy, 800+ pages, so that when I'm reading it I'm constantly asking myself, why are you reading this?
So far, Kierkegaard's a scream. I laugh out loud at a lot it, read passages to my mate. But when I laugh I realize I'm laughing at myself.
Let me set the scene: Europe's on fire intellectually. Goethe and Hegel are still alive but about to die. K's father switches ministers every few years, a big deal in those days. Pamphlets are published with titles like, Is Dr. H.N. Clausen, Professor of Theology, an Honest Christian Teacher in the Christian Church? K's matriculating, beginning to publish essays in journals...
I'm not sure where this is going. I think I know, but it might not be going where I think at all.
Octavio Paz thought the future of poetry was in video. He wasn't specific, but I took him to mean that video provided the means of presenting something that had pretty much exhausted itself in a way that would transcend its exhaustion.
Yesterday I took a bike ride from The Presidio to the Marin Headlands and back. When you don't time it right, the west side of the bridge is closed and you have to ride on the east side where the tourists are walking. It's precarious. And then you have to walk your bike under the Golden Gate bridge to continue up Counzelman to the headlands. From below, you get a good idea of how thunderous it all is up there and how delicate at the same time.