{"id":6822,"date":"2007-09-07T16:50:45","date_gmt":"2007-09-07T16:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/07\/swimming-a-litt\/"},"modified":"2007-09-07T16:50:45","modified_gmt":"2007-09-07T16:50:45","slug":"swimming-a-litt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/07\/swimming-a-litt\/","title":{"rendered":"Swimming a Little"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this, the Barthes of September (so<\/a>
\noccasioned<\/a>),
\nI am left with no choice but to post an excerpt. But which one? Something
\napropos to this afternoon’s mood (any respite from Why does this over-warm
\noffice where I sit working on my dissertation smell like shit?<\/i> It’s
\n94F–record-setting heat in CNY. A dead squirrel in the eaves? I refuse to
\nclimb in the small, hot, unlit nooks to inspect them. Tactic: wait it out–in
\nthe office, curious, resting on hope alone that the unbearable stink resolves itself).<\/p>\n

RB (from RB<\/i>) on "My Head is Confused":<\/p>\n

\n\tOn a certain kind of work, on a certain kind of subject (usually the ones
\n\tdissertations are made of), on a certain day of life itself, he would like
\n\tto be able to post as a motto the old-wives’ remark: My head is confused<\/i>
\n\t(let us imagine a language in which the set of grammatical categories would
\n\tsometimes force the subject to speak in the aspect of an old woman).<\/p>\n

And yet: at the level of his body<\/i>, his head never gets confused.
\n\tIt is a curse: no value, lost, secondary state: always consciousness: drugs
\n\texcluded, yet he dreams of them: dreams of being able to intoxicate himself
\n\t(instead of getting sick right away); anticipating from a surgical operation
\n\tfor at least once in his life an absence<\/i>, which was denied him for a
\n\tgeneral anesthesia; recovering every morning, upon waking, a head swimming a
\n\tlittle, but whose interior remains fixed (sometimes, falling to sleep with
\n\tsomething worrying me, upon first waking it has disappeared; a white minute,
\n\tmiraculously stripped of meaning; but the worry rushes upon me, like a bird
\n\tof prey, and I find myself altogether back where I was, just as I was the
\n\tday before<\/i>).<\/p>\n

Sometimes he feels like letting all this language rest–this language
\n\twhich is in his head, in his work, in other people, as if language itself
\n\twere an exhausted limb of the human body; it seems to him that if he could
\n\ttake a rest from language, he could just rest altogether, dismissing all
\n\tcrises, echoes, exaltations, injuries, reasonings, etc. He sees language in
\n\tthe figure of an exhausted old woman (something like an antique cleaning
\n\twoman with worn hands) who sighs for a certain retirement<\/i>…. (176)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why not this<\/i>? While there is no relief from the odor (decomposing flesh, I am sure of it),
\nthere is a little<\/i> relief for my head. It is a couple of pages less
\nconfused than it was yesterday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this, the Barthes of September (so occasioned), I am left with no choice but to post an excerpt. But which one? Something apropos to this afternoon’s mood (any respite from Why does this over-warm office where I sit working on my dissertation smell like shit? It’s 94F–record-setting heat in CNY. A dead squirrel in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[69],"tags":[400,718,470,719,683,720,721,722,140],"class_list":["post-6822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dissertation","tag-barthes","tag-confusion","tag-dissertation","tag-head","tag-heat","tag-odor","tag-retirement","tag-rot","tag-writing"],"yoast_head":"\nSwimming a Little - Earth Wide Moth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/07\/swimming-a-litt\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Swimming a Little - Earth Wide Moth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On this, the Barthes of September (so occasioned), I am left with no choice but to post an excerpt. 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