Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Chloe's LiveJournal:

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Monday, September 7th, 2009
11:19 pm	I'm feeling smugly, serenely domestic. I just pulled off a three-layer apple cake with carmel frosting and decorated it with little bits of marzipan shaped and dyed to look like apples. It would be kitsch, but something about the beige of frosting and the slight irregularity of the apples just makes the cake look un-campily precious, at least to my doting eyes. I'd thought about molding a snake to twist around the central apple--a nod to my research interests--but the Augustinian impulse (quite uncharacteristically) deserted me. Though as an ascetic (Jerome-like?) antidote there's homemade yogurt going warm and sour under the pilot light. I've gone a little mad and decided to do *everything* from scratch for the party I'm having Saturday--boureka pastry, yogurt for the tzatziki, almond paste for a "snake" pastry (though in a rare bit (bout?) of sanity, I'm buying the phyllo). *** In a frenzied month I managed to redeem what was otherwise a stale and listless season. Somehow--still not sure how--I banged out passable drafts of two chapters. Still mountains of work (molehills of philosophically interesting writing, towering cliffs of footnoting medieval philosophy's greatest hits, dues paying to latter day Scholastics) left. But I'm pleased in a way that's (literally) peculiar to grad students--I've been praised with faint damnation, quite an achievement for my ilk. Now I'm paying for my late starts and later nights: the usual roster of phantom aches, fever, and the kind of un-earned exhaustion that makes me ashamed. I slept 14 hours Friday--the kind of adolescent indulgence I thought I'd kicked... (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 1st, 2009
3:31 pm	Monday I nearly reached the height of domestic goddess-ery: a lattice-crusted peach pie twinkling with demerra sugar. Tuesday's pie was less of a looker--tweedy streusel covering out of season apples. The crimped crust went practically frizzy in the humidity, and even a stint in the fridge couldn't turn irregular S's of pastry back into curls. Still, it was worth it to play indulgent big sister, catering to autumnal appetites in my unairconditioned apartment... A week ago I would have wanted nothing more than today's summery swelter, sprawled on my parents' deck so hot and satisfied that I could easily mistake the drone of the neighbors' mower for something more pastoral. Yet now all that empty time feels as barren as the seasons in between. (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
6:40 pm	Something about the burble of rain in the gutters reminds me of the wintertime hiss of the heaters, and these past couple of damp and coldish days have me aching for autumn. All of a sudden I want the (literally) obscene abundance of fall--mammary pomegranates, hippy, full-bellied pears, parsnips and carrots, squashes practically parodying a woman cut off just at the point where bone and muscle intrude. More wholesomely, I've been reading the King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook and wanting to do all the sorts of nourishing and homey things I've never learned to do: make the kind of echt and stodgy pancakes that could never masquerade as anything so citified and cosmopolitan as blini or crepes or dhosa (the latter along with latkes being the only pancakes I've ever bothered to make); rolls fortified with cheddar, apple, and dill; breads bound together with all kinds of pleasantly soft and squishy things (the odd apple in a bushel, part of an imaginary and endless zucchini crop)... The stout and cheerful good sense exuding from the headnotes to these recipes makes me ashamed that I don't have a child or two to prop against my own overly abundant hips as I knead dough or stud a clove-hot apple pie with nubs of butter, barely noticing as afternoon gives way to night. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 5th, 2008
9:45 pm	I passed my prospectus defense! (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 26th, 2008
7:01 pm	just another reason I love my Mac: No on Prop 8 Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8. (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 21st, 2008
7:02 pm	It's been college-brochure autumnal this weekend, and in deference to the weather I've baked a ginger cake dense and spicily sharp then smooth with a gently sour dairy tang on top. I wish I had some of that fleshy sugared ginger to stud the margins. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
11:03 pm	For a small dinner party on Thursday: roasted eggplant and peppers, chickpea tagine, tabbouleh, moroccan salad with oranges and olives, cranberry date cake. Perhaps orange sorbet if I'm awake and clearheaded enough to handle a knife and zester before I leave for my TA class. (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
11:39 pm	I don't know why I read the Times' wedding announcements each Sunday. Even after the most satisfying Saturdays they leave me feeling emotionally underdressed, or gauche somehow as if I were at one of those posh receptions swilling Champagne from a novelty mug. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
10:48 pm	My copy of the Meditations looks like a Talmud, its text overtaken by emendations: the inkily unconfident undergraduate print, the furry pencil marks of a few months ago like my own Rashi script, my teaching notes written maternally and expansively in purplish pink. What seemed to me so scholarly now looks like desecration: the translators' phrases pushed aside in favor of the original Latin, crucial pages bled upon in sap or syrup orange, favorite passages a bashful shade of beet. *** I happened upon this yesterday. And I love it best as it is here, without its fantastical latter half, ending instead with Dora Dymant's murmurings that, had they been overheard, would have been mistaken for prayer. (Comment on this)
Monday, August 18th, 2008
9:37 pm	It's lovely how late summer straddles fall and spring, the leafy vernal dampness hovering just above the shards of oak and maple leaves broken off from their skeletons and the twigs stiffened into the shape of scolding fingers. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008
9:00 pm	All that's felt urgent to me has been exhaustion--not even satisfying it nearly drowned by sheets in the afternoon --but the sheer, sore eruption of it. I've become an insomniac of the most tedious sort, tottering through the day bruised-eyed and achingly dulled. Every daydream is nocturnal, lunar-eclipse-like nearly, portentous and out of character. (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 29th, 2007
10:21 pm	peccatum superbiae Because I haven't had the chance to engage in my favorite of the deadly sins (gluttony and lust, if you need reminding) lately, I'll indulge in some pride. I managed to solve yesterday's NY Times crossword. I.e., the devilishly difficult-seeming one with 28 black squares in a grid of 225. So take that Will Shortz and Manny Nosowsky! Unless, Manny, you happen to be single and in the 25-35 age range. In that case, we might make a good couple. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 27th, 2007
11:14 pm	Oh and it really irks me that I misspelled 'trite' in a previous entry. That's what I get for nattering on about transcendental idealism and art. (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 22nd, 2007
9:57 pm	this is pretty awesome but at the same time it feels frighteningly banal. I think I'll stay high up in the ivory tower... (Comment on this)
7:21 pm	FIRST PART ON THE PASSIONS IN GENERAL AND, INCIDENTALLY, THE WHOLE NATURE OF MAN I. That which is a passion with respect to a subject is always an action in some other regard There is nothing in which the sciences we have from the ancients appear more defective than what they wrote about the passions. Because this is a matter whose content has been keenly sought and which does not seem to be very difficult because everyone feels them in himself, one does not need to take an observation from elsewhere to discover its nature. Yet everything that the ancients have taught is so meager and, for the most part so unbelievable, that I can only hope to approach the truth by avoiding the paths that they followed. This is why I will be obliged to write here {in the same fashion} as if I were discussing a matter that nobody before me had ever dealt with. To begin, I will remark that all that takes place or reoccurs is generally called a passion by philosophers with respect to the subject to which it happens and an action with respect to that which causes it to happen. Thus, although the agent and the patient are often very different, the action and the passion must always be a single thing which has two names because of the two diverse subjects to which it can relate. II. That in order to know the passions of the soul it’s necessary to distinguish their functions from those of the body Also I will point out that we are not aware of any subject that acts more immediately against our soul than the body to which it is joined. Consequently, we ought to think that whatever is a passion in the soul is simultaneously an action in the body. Therefore, there is no better way of coming to know our passions than examining the difference between the body and the soul in order to know to which {of the two} we ought to attribute every function that is in us. III. Which rule we ought to follow in order to do this We will not encounter any great difficulty if we take care that all we experience to be in us, that we see can also be in inanimate objects, should only be attributed to the body. On the contrary, all that is in us that we cannot conceive as belonging to a body in any way ought to be attributed to our soul. IV. That warmth and the movement of [our] limbs proceed from the body and thoughts [proceed] from the soul [B]ecause we do not conceive of the body thinking in any way, we are correct to believe that all kinds of thoughts that are in us belong to the soul. And because we do not doubt that there are soulless• bodies that can move themselves in as many or more ways than we can and that can be as warm or warmer than we (which experience shows us [about] a flame which itself can have more warmth and movement than our limbs), we ought to believe that all the warmth and movement which are in us do not depend on thought at all [but] belong only to the body. V. That it is an error to believe that the soul gives movement and warmth to the body In this way, we will avoid a very considerable error into which many have fallen and which I suspect is the primary obstacle that has prevented philosophers until now from {being able to} explaining the passions and the other things that belong to the soul. This error consists in seeing that all dead bodies lack warmth and movement and imagining that it was the absence of the soul that made warmth and movement cease. Thus, philosophers have falsely {lit. incorrectly} believed that our natural warmth and all the movements of our bodies depend on the soul. [I]nstead, they ought to have thought {on the contrary} that our soul only leaves [us] when we die because the warmth ceases and the organs which are used to move the body corrupt. VI. What difference there is between a living body and a dead body In order to avoid this error, we will understand that death never happens through the absence of a soul but only because some principle part of the body decays. Let us hold {lit. judge} that the body of a living man differs from that of a dead man in the same way that a watch or other automaton (i.e., another machine which moves by itself), when it is running and it has in itself the corporeal principle of the movements for which it was designed along with all that is required for its action, [differs from] the same watch or other machine when it is broken and the principle of its movement ceases to act. VII. Brief explanation of the parts of the body and some of their functions In order to make this more intelligible, I will {now/here} explain in a few words the whole fashion of which the mechanism of our body is composed. There is not anyone who doesn’t already know that in us there is a heart, a brain, a stomach, muscles, nerves, arteries, veins, and similar things. We [all] also know that the food that we eat goes down in[to] the stomach and the intestines from where its liquid flows in[to] the liver and all the veins, mixes with the blood that they contain, and augments its quantity in by that means. Those who have heard anything {lit. talk} at all about medicine know the structure of the heart {lit. how the heart is composed} and how all the blood in the veins can easily flow from the vena cava on the heart’s right side, passes from there into the lungs through the duct which is named the arterial vein, then returns to the lungs on the left side through the duct which is named the venial artery, and finally passes from there into the great artery whose branches spread through the body. All those who have not been completely blinded by the authority of the ancients, and who have wanted to open their eyes in order to examine Hervaeus’s opinion regarding the circulation of blood, do not doubt that all the veins and arteries of the body are like streams through which the blood flows unceasingly and very rapidly while taking its circuit from the heart’s right cavity through the arterial vein whose branches are scattered throughout the whole of the lungs and joined to [the branches] of the venial artery through which it passes from the lungs into the heart’s left side. Then, from there, it goes through the great artery, whose branches, [which are] scattered through[out] the rest of the body, are joined to the branches that carry the same blood, once again, in the right cavity of the heart so that these two cavities are like sluices through which all the blood passes as it makes its complete circuit of the body. Further, we know that all the movements of the limbs depend on the muscles and that the muscles are opposed to one another such that when one becomes shorter, it draws itself to the part of the body to which it is attached which makes the muscle to which it is opposed lengthen at the same time. Then, if {another time} it happens that the latter shortens, the former must lengthen, and it again draws itself towards the part to which it is attached. Finally, we know that all the movements of the muscles, like all of the senses, depend on the nerves which are like small threads or tubes which come from the brain and contain, like the brain, a certain very fine {lit. subtle} air or wind which is named ‘the animal spirits’. VIII. What is the principle of all these functions But it is not commonly known how {lit. in what manner} these animal spirits and nerves contribute to the movement and the senses nor what is the corporeal principle which makes them act. It is why, although I have already dealt with this matter in other writings, I will speak succinctly about it here and only allow myself to say that while we are alive, there is a continual warmth in our heart, which is a type of fire that the blood and veins maintain there, and that this fire is the corporeal principle of all the movements of our limbs. -From Descartes' The Passions of the Soul, trans. me- (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 17th, 2007
10:00 pm	Now that I'm older, and purportedly wiser, I feel that I should have a more coherent set of interests. As well as reading philosophy (the historical figures, mostly) for the joy and sheer strangeness of being transported into a scheme for viewing the world, I should be reading with some purpose whether or not my ultimate aim ends up criticism or synthesis or some combination of the two. With that in mind*, a list: (1) metaethics/philosophy of mind -how do desires (passions, affections) differ from feelings (emotions)? -can reason have a connative or affective aspect? -judgment externalism (too much to say about it here) (2) history -the relationship between moral and metaphysical perfection [Leibniz] -relevance of the natural world to ethics and agency [Kant] -natural laws and moral laws [Leibniz and Berkeley] (3) philosophy of religion -what happens when we make theodicy a practical problem? -what would a valid and sound design argument accomplish? *And because I'm nervous about starting French class tomorrow (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, June 10th, 2007
9:27 pm	For no good reason, I feel abandoned: as if I've been writing chatty letters to no-one in particular and pining for an affectionate response. I've gotten out of the house--to teach Friday and today and to see the incredible Van Gogh and Expressionism exhibit with KSG yesterday--yet I feel confined and spectral, somehow. Everythink irks me and I have to talk myself out of my peevishness to get anything done. This listing of symptoms annoys me: it makes me feel astutely pathological, portentously (and pretentiously) self aware --> i.e., Alexander Portenoy in heels and drag... (Comment on this)
Monday, June 4th, 2007
10:21 pm	(those pearls that were his eyes. look!) I spent the better part of the day making aloo paratha, eeriely unconcerned that all I have for hours of labor is the neat arc of a burn on my left hand and six UFO shaped patties with crimped and upturned edges. The first came off of the skillet singed with a skull's face--no grin but a smirk or perhaps a leer instead. The second was impressed with a heart shaped marking, and aptly enough, it's the one that burned me. *** KSG and I went to the Modernisms exhibit at the Whitney the other day, and after the third room of splotches and furrows and exuberent slashes of paint I wondered what it would be like to look at abstract art without an innate disposition to see figures. It's a terribly tright observation that things wouldn't look quite the same with different nature, different nurture, but somehow it was startling to me. Now I feel compelled to re-read the Third Critique... (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 26th, 2007
1:07 am	I sat down to write my philosophy of social sciences paper around 5:30, and all of a sudden it's nearly 1. I should be tired but my head's swimming; I'm intellectually twitchy and I haven't even attempted to follow my own argument yet. I've been trying to argue: (1) if Smith is an externalist in Korsgaard's sense, he can hold that we judge that x is right by means of sentiments yet we're motivated to do x by means of reason (2) if our motive for doing x is different from our grounds for judging that x is right, there can be times that our moral judgments (what's right) and practical judgments (what to do): (a) are both correct yet conflict, i.e., doing x is right yet it's irrational (in some sense) do do x, or (b) conflict and one is wrong (3) both (2a) and (2b) are bad news for Smith if (2a) he'd have to have some account of when to follow reason and when to follow moral sentiments, but this looks like an appeal to an ultimate principle and what could this principle be? if (2b) how do we know when our moral sentiments are reliable? I'm not sure that any of this makes sense... If (1) is true, we need to accept that (i) we can have certain sensations, e.g., boredom or itchiness, and not be motivated to do anything about our situation based on the sensations (ii) moral sentiments are relevantly similar to boredom and itchiness because they're just another type of natural feeling I think (ii) is probably true, and I think most historical and contemporary sentimentalists would agree (well, probably not McDowell but that's probably a weakness in his account). I'm not sure about (i); I don't think it's obviously false, but there's probably no a priori argument to demonstrate its truth or falsity. Worst of all, I may be right about the whole argument, but it might not really have much bearing on my goal, demonstrating that Smith's sentimentalism is a mess. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 15th, 2007
10:13 pm	non cenabimus sine apro, amici The menu for tomorrow's dinner party: Appetizers Black bean cakes with scallion cream Salsa de molcajete and cumin chips Entree Fish tacos with chipotle cream Sides Pinto beans with sofrito Orzo salad with roasted peppers and corn Desserts Coconut Ice Cream Double Chocolate Brownie Ice Cream Brownies with Chai Spices Mudslide Cookies (2 Comments |Comment on this)