For no reason at all i picked up the book Feast of Love today. It’s a great book, one of my favorites. Here are two quotes from it. The first is an interesting story about Kierkegaard. The second just nails the sadness and self-reflection of Charles Baxter, the main character and narrator.
Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher fell in love with an attractive girl, Regine Olsen, and then he had concluded that they would be incompatible, that the love was mistaken, that he himself was so complex and she was simple, and he contrived to break the engagement so as to give the appearance that it was the young lady’s fault, not his.
He succeeded in breaking the engagement, in never marrying her. Cowardice was probably involved here. Kierkegaard wished to believe that the fault lay with the nature of love itself, the problem of love, its fate in his life. From the personal he extrapolated to the general. A philosopher’s trick. Regine married another man and moved away from Copenhagen to the West Indies, but Kierkegaard, the knight of faith, carried a burning torch for her, in the form of his philosophy, the rest of his days. This is madness of a complex lifelong variety. He spent his career writing philosophy that would, among other things, justify his actions toward Regine Olsen. He died of a warped spine.
For some reason it give me great pleasure to read of someone who, out of bitterness of letting his love get away, spent an entire career postulating that love & God can’t be spoken of and are thus dying. Just think what the religion and philosophy worlds might have been had he just gone through with the marriage. Oh, but then again, he literally did not have any backbone.
Now, here’s the 2nd…
What’s agitating about solitude is the inner voice telling you that you should
be mated to somebody, that solitude is a mistake. The inner voice doesn’t care about who you find. It just keeps pestering you, tormenting you – if you happen to be me – with homecoming queens first, then girls next door, and finally anybody who might be pleased to see you now and then at the dinner table and in bed on occasion. You look up from reading the newspaper and realize that no one loves you, and no one burns for you. The workings of nature are mysterious, but they do account for a certain amount of despair among single persons, the irrelevance you sometimes feel.
Just so you know, he (Charles) does end up with someone at the end. So, the world is just and it does end well (for him at least).
I read this story today written by Isaac Asimov:
I love my Google Reader. I like being able to stay in one “web inbox” and cruise through a stream of web clips.
-in first). i’d like to have is a universal comment field that’s part of Google Reader and interfaces with many different types of blogs. It has all the necessary fields and the Reader communicates with the blog. That’d be helpful.
Let’s start by saying this: there is a lack of ROCK in the world today. It’s become a hiphop and country world, and this world has kicked good ol fashioned rock n’ roll to the f’ing curb. There are about 3 rock bands in the mainstream right now: Daughtry, Nickelback, and Hinder. I only know Nickelback and think all 3 pretty much suck. It should be noted that they’re selling records like hotcakes. Why? Because there are no other choices if you want to rock. But it’s good to see that there are people like me – people who still care and want to crank some tunes and rock out.
I’m trying to make a point to blog about books i’ve read, so here goes….
First, it was really interesting to see what college life was like in the early 1960’s because of the emergence of rock n’ roll and the absence and importing of women at/to the school. Chris was really into rock and roll, which was new on the scene. Rock and roll at the time was played exclusively by African Americans and was not universally listened to. When rushing a frat, he remarked that most of the frats didn’t even know about Rock at all. AD back then fully embraced it and most of his stories either revolved around the music or at least discussed what what music was playing. The management of women at colleges in the 60’s is amazing. Women would train up to dartmouth for a weekend and be paired with a date for the entire time which would transform the entire campus. For the guys, it was like going on a 2-3 day blind date. As someone who’s been on a bunch of blind dates, i can see how this would be painful (both for the men and the women) and could lead to some social madness. I can also see why there was so much alcohol involved. Further discussion with my parents about this time has shown that travelling to schools and finding the right guy/girl was one of the main mechanisms provided at the time to find a suitable husband. Keep in mind that no sex before marriage was believed to be normal and there weren’t many options for birth control. After reading this, i’m very happy that i came through 40 years later when women were on campus and many of the dating conventions have been changed.
I recently found a little gem on XM radio. Every week, for an hour, 
You read it here first. The next Guns N’ Roses album called Chinese Democracy that’s been rumored for about the past decade is finally coming. And to prove it, there’s a single coming out from it. It’s called “Better” and i’ve got it right here (