This is NOT Over

Oct 25 – Oct 27, 1989 Learning Curve

It is Saturday morning. This post covers Wed thru Friday. Not sure why that needed to be said but there it is.

Three days of no drinking and too much reading and what have I learned? Don’t tell my friends but life is more interesting sober. Drinking, at least for me, is a lot of “same shit different day”. I’m sure Peter Cooke or the late Keith Moon kept things interesting and they probably did not have a lot of same shit days, but let’s face it – I am not those guys.

I don’t even like Courvoisier.

Learned something about Don Juan as well. I think his mother’s whoring led to his philandering. There is an echo of his comments (or is it the reverse) on “sun-drenched climates” in Toc’s D in A. It’s sort of disappointing to think Lord Byron associates promiscuity with the weather. I’m horny as hell all the time and we are way into fall here in corn country.

Maybe it’s the no drinking.

Am I going to go ahead and blame everything on the no drinking?

The answer is probably “yes”.

What else? Oh, it’s too late in the game to write this Don Juan paper so fuck it. I can’t waste this much time on something that probably has nothing to do with me. I will finish the James piece which somehow has slightly more than nothing to do with me. Or is that less nothing than actual nothing? Never mind.

Last night (Friday) I went with Jen-O and a few squares to the big city. Heard Harvey Weeks lecture on Xenophon. Of course Jen-O and I argued about the value of reading or even thinking too much about Xenophon.

Kept a low profile during the car ride back. Jen-O asked me what I thought and I said, “Impressive.” That is not bullshit. I did find this talk impressive as it challenged everything I thought I knew of Socrates’ student. But I didn’t want to go on and on because it just looks stupid to say something is shit on the long car ride to a place and then say it is amazing on the way home.

Weeks offered a nice turn on the name of X’s Cyropadeia (The Education of Cyrus) the kinds of “education” he receives throughout his life…especially the speeches his father makes before Cyrus goes off to war for the first time. Darius offers his son an expose on the nature of virtue during wartime, and the importance of things like lying. But then, I think Weeks uses this passage to explain to us something larger in Xenophon’s writing. What that something larger is, I just can’t say at this point.

Also, I found out the name means “slayer of strangers.” Yeah we get xenophobe from this old dead Greek and I should hate him for that because I go to university near the end of the 20th Century…

But “slayer of strangers” is a pretty cool thing to be called.

On the subject of Greeks and lying I am going to spend some of my sober time next week reading one of the Platonic dialogues named after the sophist, Hippias of Elis. Powell recommended both the Greater Hippias and the Lesser Hippias to me. I probably should do reports on both since his final is supposed to be impossible to pass…even in the ancient Greeks who are the subjects of the test were alive to take it themselves. Incidentally, that’s part of the reason I am taking this course. Any test with a reputation like that is worth taking once.

Possibly twice.

But I’m going to start with the Lesser Hippias and then, hopefully graduate to the Greater Hippias. That’s how this sort of thing works, no?

I am French, no?

No.

Anyway so long to sobriety for now. Going to a Halloween party tonight. E`{` tried to convince me to come over to her place for a quiet dinner instead of the party. She hates Brother Plumb and the old C1 crowd. So do I, but I stayed sober all week.