So, after a relaxing period of not-nearly-enough days, pagan gift rituals (kidding, they're not pagan...), the arbitrary celestial event that coincides with a New Year, and a few other stuffs, I find myself in a peculiarly similar position to where I found myself not 5 months ago.
More legal doctrine to learn, more petty (and not-so-petty) human squabbles to read about, more opportunities to plug strange appliances into the library outlets, more gin to put away. Occasionally. The familiarity of the faces that surround me is a comforting perk, though.
I find that I play way more air-guitar (or the appropriate air instrument...I was at a loss as to how to play an air Pocket Calculator the other day) than I used to. I have a few of theories about this:
1. I appreciate music more than I used to, and express it more physically as an outlet to the stress associated with being a student of the law.
2. I'm unintentionally over-caffeinating myself during the day, resulting in me torching the excess energy by pretending I'm Eddie Van Halen on EVERY SONG I hear. MEEDLEY-MEEDLEY-MEEDLEY
3. I'm going insane.
I've always sort of danced around, but it's gotten way out of control lately. It's fun, anyway.
Also, I hate to be a contrarian, but some of the fundamental precepts of our judicial system are built on a rather precarious interpretation of the 1789 Judicary Act. Everyone is always holy-rolling about Marbury vs. Madison, but Justice Marshall was pretty much vomiting all over the opinion for most of the text. I like judicial review and all....but jeez. I do like the guy as a writer, though. Most prose I've read in 19th-century judicial opinions is vacuous drivel; his isn't, really, at least in terms of comprehension.
Well, that made no sense. See you in 1-5 months.
Showing posts with label the law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the law. Show all posts
11 January 2010
20 September 2009
Dear John To Consciousness
This must be unique to humans.
I have occasioned to experience moments recently where I’m chugging along on a pattern of thoughts; of rational, inconsequential thoughts. And all of the sudden, a deluge of uncertainty, discombobulation and lightness. “Who am I? Is really the same body I inhabited as a child? Where are my thoughts coming from? How can any of this be?”
I suppose it’s a bit more natural for these moments to come at times of profound change. I hesitate to call what I am going through profound: its profundity is limited to a change of address and to the books I read, really. I still plop down in a chair for a few hours a week to be spoken to about something, plop into another chair to make sure I know from what context the something is emerging, and plop down into another chair in between these particular events to either eat, rest, or take in a few episodes of Star Trek which I’ve seen 40 times and yet never seem to age. So, I still sit quite a bit.
But the nature of my sitting, and what it represents I suppose, has undergone a rumbling, numbing sea change. Certain aspects of the knowledge I take in disturb me...not so much the knowledge itself, but how we get that knowledge. It’s all so much rearranging humans as figurines in some sort of dollhouse. You owed this man this duty, but you no longer do; you’re in the backyard. You engaged in this behavior which, though not at all morally or practically harmful, offends our sensibilities for some reason. Time out for you. 20 years from now, we may change our minds: but you are subject to our whims for now.
A perverse part of me wants to be the child doing all the rearranging; vetting and setting the rules would be such fun. I always liked the control of playing with action figures. Spiderman didn’t necessarily have to be Spiderman; I could rename him Erasmus and characterize him as a heavily tattooed postal worker. He could team up with Bucky O’Hare, Napoleon and Commander Dogstar and perhaps stage an invasion of some random Lego fortress, which was a competing private postal service. Or something. I think the law is sort of like this. At the end of the day, you’re either making shit up, or you’re scarfing up the shit people made up 3 days to 300 years ago.
This power, what it all means, it doesn’t usually hit me until I’ve had a moment or two to reflect on it. It’s impossible not to get lost in the verbosity and pretentiousness of it all, but ultimately, it’s quite a monopolistic system. So while my plopping may be the same (though the chairs here are generally provide a bit more lumbar support), it really is infinitely different. So maybe this does explain my disconnectedness from myself; I'm not familiar with this version of myself, the one that knows these things and lives this way, and my cranium's attempt to search the database for older matches has failed.
Ostriches don’t do this, I guarantee it.
I have occasioned to experience moments recently where I’m chugging along on a pattern of thoughts; of rational, inconsequential thoughts. And all of the sudden, a deluge of uncertainty, discombobulation and lightness. “Who am I? Is really the same body I inhabited as a child? Where are my thoughts coming from? How can any of this be?”
I suppose it’s a bit more natural for these moments to come at times of profound change. I hesitate to call what I am going through profound: its profundity is limited to a change of address and to the books I read, really. I still plop down in a chair for a few hours a week to be spoken to about something, plop into another chair to make sure I know from what context the something is emerging, and plop down into another chair in between these particular events to either eat, rest, or take in a few episodes of Star Trek which I’ve seen 40 times and yet never seem to age. So, I still sit quite a bit.
But the nature of my sitting, and what it represents I suppose, has undergone a rumbling, numbing sea change. Certain aspects of the knowledge I take in disturb me...not so much the knowledge itself, but how we get that knowledge. It’s all so much rearranging humans as figurines in some sort of dollhouse. You owed this man this duty, but you no longer do; you’re in the backyard. You engaged in this behavior which, though not at all morally or practically harmful, offends our sensibilities for some reason. Time out for you. 20 years from now, we may change our minds: but you are subject to our whims for now.
A perverse part of me wants to be the child doing all the rearranging; vetting and setting the rules would be such fun. I always liked the control of playing with action figures. Spiderman didn’t necessarily have to be Spiderman; I could rename him Erasmus and characterize him as a heavily tattooed postal worker. He could team up with Bucky O’Hare, Napoleon and Commander Dogstar and perhaps stage an invasion of some random Lego fortress, which was a competing private postal service. Or something. I think the law is sort of like this. At the end of the day, you’re either making shit up, or you’re scarfing up the shit people made up 3 days to 300 years ago.
This power, what it all means, it doesn’t usually hit me until I’ve had a moment or two to reflect on it. It’s impossible not to get lost in the verbosity and pretentiousness of it all, but ultimately, it’s quite a monopolistic system. So while my plopping may be the same (though the chairs here are generally provide a bit more lumbar support), it really is infinitely different. So maybe this does explain my disconnectedness from myself; I'm not familiar with this version of myself, the one that knows these things and lives this way, and my cranium's attempt to search the database for older matches has failed.
Ostriches don’t do this, I guarantee it.
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