Inconsistency in tone has always been a problem with every blog I’ve ever kept, but it’s also always been a normative kind of problem, a kind I regard as a problem more by external prescription than by conviction (as if I am somehow vindicated by this statement).
So to satisfy this self-defensive criticism with enough evidence, some more choppiness:
Finished day 2 of grad school life in Korea. Slightly taken aback by the sudden (although expected) intrusion of isms whose gathering seem cohesive only by way of another set of theories that occupy the infinitesmally parcelled out gaps in between. Still, a new interest has been highlighted while barely rummaging through all that: the position of language in the interaction of one and one’s thought.
In terms of living in one of the central parts of Seoul, the usual metropolitan craze: a lot of walking, a lot of people, thus, a lot of pushing. The opening scene of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times immediately comes to mind, and the strong resemblance is certainly more comic than tragic. Yes, comic, but only as long as you sustain your position (and point-of-view) as a spectator. I’m probably not available long enough to have the comedy of the situation lead me all the way to the point of laughter, the reason simply being I am, at least physically, also part of the incessant herding, leaving little perspectival(?) distance.
Let other ponderings sit in my head for a while, see if it’s worth another stir.
