Life: almost there….

I’m in the home-stretch… four more days… Friday at 5pm, the last (except for one that I have an almost indefinite extention on) of my papers is due…

Sartre test Wednesday – presentation Friday morning – paper by 5.

No sweat.

I think that only after last week could I make such an assertion. Then I had paper Wednesday, presentation Thursday, drive 200 miles and give a presentation Friday.

Speaking of which… I think the Sartre paper turned out ok. I never know on such things. My friend Sally proof read it and asked, “so, ya just B.S. your way through these things?” I just shrugged.

The presentation Thursday got the qualified praise of the German philosophy professor, “very good,” followed by a 10 minute talk about what’s wrong with philosophies such as that held by Julian Huxley (a so-called self-actualization ‘SA’ philosophy). Basically, Dr. Borgmann’s argument was that the SA folks treat ‘reality’ as merely instrumental for their own projects rather than treating it as something to revered and recovered…

Then we had a great talk in the philosophy colloquium about the philosopher’s place in the conversation about what America is. (Dr Borgmann has a book coming out in the fall, “Real American Ethics: Taking Responsibility for Our Country” University of Chicago Press). I’ll devote a post to this alone soon.

Friday, exhausted, I drove to Spokane, WA and Gonzaga University for the AAR meeting. My talk… I think it went well. I had spent half the previous night organizing it into a PowerPoint presentation, so I covered all of my material, at least in an overview. And the PowerPoint had shnazzy graphics, which I hoped would wow everyone (I don’t think they did though – darned academics). In the Q&A; a fairly big-shot professor, Nick Gier (his CV is 16 pages long – and that’s how we measure things in my world…) had some tough questions for me. He’s takes Buddhism to be most akin to Virtue theories, and so was subject to some of my criticisms. But his arguments were good – and the terrible terrible part was that I was just too tired to come up with rough and ready answers… so that looked kind of bad. But afterward he came up and we chatted and agreed to discuss the matter more – it was all quite cordial; and later two others who were there said I did a fine job – so my dismay afterward (Sally called and I told her I felt like I had been through a boxing match – don’t forget that it was after very little sleep and a long drive, so it wasn’t just the presentation and questions…) was for naught.

Saturday I got to relax a bit – watch other people give their presentations – nothing that really sparked my interests though… Dr. Gier is putting together a book on the origins of religious violence in Asian religions – beginning with the thesis that Asian religions have spawned objectively far less violence than the Abrahamic ones… That proved pretty interesting, but his talk was more history than philosophy or religious studies.

Sunday I drove home and spend half the day packing and moving from Lance’s house to Sally’s – it made me glad for how little I have – wishing I had less (envying those Tibetan monks… but just a little, ’cause they can’t have lovely Spanish girlfriends… and envy isn’t good for anyone anyway). So I got my stuff into Sally’s place and after some heavy lifting to rearrange her world a bit all my stuff fit into place in a quite remarkable way (I’ll post some pictures soon). It’s really very lovely – a lovely house with lovely pets, just a block from campus (and a coffee shop!) and a compassionate Buddhist in the house to encourage my better habits and raise disapproving eyebrows at the lesser ones.

And now I’m transcribing Sartre lectures… trying to get through 30 pages of hand-written notes before tomorrow afternoon. So I’d best get back to work. I’m almost there, the light at the end of the tunnel is near (or is that an oncoming train?)… Bad humor. But what can ya do?

Make the best of what you’ve got.