Sous aucun prétexte je ne veux devant toi surexposer mes yeux,
derrière un kleenex je saurais mieux comment te dire adieu.
My reading has slowed quite a bit. I spent a lot of December bouncing back and forth between a few different books I happen to be interested in at the moment, as evidenced by my efforts towards Fundamentals of Political Economy and Badiou's The Rational Kernel of the Hegelian Dialectic, but I found myself, strangely, becoming incredibly frustrated with everything that I was doing. Maybe it's related to job stress. Maybe it's the ADHD. My efforts towards writing have also slowed, after I wrote Liber 303 I haven't really been praciticing as often as I should. At work for the holidays we were thankfully closed on both Christmas Day and New Year's, but neither of the Eve's. So, for two weeks in a row I had a 4-day work week, which I think I desperately needed at the time. I spent Christmas with my family and New Year's with friends. We played shot chess, Quiplash, and a card game called Hot Takes that made for some fascinating dinner conversation. We were drunk and high and had to come up with our own rules.
The day after Christmas I had a day off and from a complete chance encounter I watched a YouTube video from Language Simp and came across his interview with Steve Kaufmann, from that video I learned about LingQ and on a whim I spent a bit of money on an entire year subscription to the website. It's been totally worth it. My study plans for this year, and my life in general, have shifted dramatically. Since then, nearly every single day has revolved around working through the B1 French material, in preperation for a few books I ordered. Yesterday, I received the very first in the mail. L'avenir dure longtemps, or, The Future Lasts Forever, the memoir of Althusser that he wrote while institutionalized after his psychotic breakdown and the murder of his wife. It's always somewhat odd to explain to people, but for perhaps possibly horrifying reasons, I identify with the figure of Althusser so much that I'm willing to spend 6 months teaching myself French just to read more of his work in his own language. My adventure has begun, and my French fathers will guide me: Althusser, Badiou, Bataille. Deleuze is more of a strange uncle. But, French isn't the only language I'm tackling. There's also an urgent feeling I have towards learning Spanish.
Due to the fact that I'm a colossal weeb, I've been rinse-repeating Berserk's French dub and when I start to pick up Spanish later in the year I plan to do same with Neon Genesis Evangelion. It was incredibly surprising to see for myself just how good both of those dubs are. For the past two months I felt incredibly shitty, as evidenced by unhinged schizoposting, but lately my mood's been stabilizing quite a bit. Other than spending a lot of time learning French, the only thing that's really changed in my routine has been taking a GABA supplement that may or may not be pure placebo, and, as strange as it might be to admit, consumption of Fly Amanita mushroom gummies because I'm a little too lazy to get the dried mushrooms and prepare them myself. The first time I ate them, I laid on the floor and cried softly with Óscar Chávez playing in the background while my closed-eye visuals faintly resembled Aztec hieroglyphs. Fly Amanita, to me, feels like a low dose of psilocybin mushrooms combined with the ambien I took in the mental hospital. I can't say I'm disappointed with them. My sleep has been terrible lately but that's my fault for having friends in their early 20's. I can't stay up all night like I used to.
Now, if you'll allow me, I'd like to mention in passing some of the French books I'll be receiving in the mail soon! While I was drunk the other day I ordered Pour Marx by Althusser and De L'esprit by Helvétius, since I have a new fascination with the classic works of 18th century French Materialism. If ever possible, I'd like to write a chronological global history of materialist philosophy. Alongside Althusser's memoir, I should also be getting in a biography simply titled Louis Althusser: Une Biographie which I ordered alongside a French translation of Spinoza's L'Éthique. For Spanish, the first book I received is a Spanish edition of Jorge Luis Borge's Ficciones since in general that's one of my all time favorite books that I've ever come across. Another reason I want to learn Spanish is because I'd like to read a translation of Hegel's Fenomenología del espíritu and a history book I found about the Guerra Sucia that occured in Mexico during the late 60's through the early 80's. Before I get around to all of those, there's a Spanish and French section of Foreign Languages Press and I'll be downloading a few PDFs to put on the new e-reader I bought for myself recently. I'm still waiting on it to come in the mail but I'm very excited. I hate the hours I work but buying that for myself made it slightly worth it. Almost.
I don't know exactly how I'll get myself to learn French and Spanish on LingQ but since I bought an entire year I want to spend roughly 6 months with each. My ambitions are modest, I'd rather come to know two foreign languages well than a whole heap of them poorly, so unfortunately I likely won't spend much time with others I'd be curious to pick up, like German or Chinese or Japanese (again, massive weeb). I've spent about 2 weeks straight learning French and my motivation hasn't receded at all, I think I'll want to spend about 3 months with it before I switch to 3 months of Spanish, and then bounce back to French and vice versa until my subscription expires. Depending on how I feel about my skill level in each I may or may not buy another year. If after I'm comfortable enough about continuing to progress in each on my own, I likely won't. Lastly, I met someone that I feel really good about, they visit me at work the other day and we got dinner at a nice local Cajun restaurant and maybe, possibly kissed a little in their car. I've been playing a lot of Lethal Company with my friends and I'm absolutely loving it. Other than that, I bought a new phone and that's about it for what's going on in my life right now. I am fine, I shine, I am simply divine...