I would gladly wait for those snippets. Also, what made you want to listen to Hegel? I guess it's easier to listen to the tome than to read it. I'd love to know your thoughts on Hegel
These are ten days under the auspice of the Sun, apparently; where I am, it has indeed gotten quite a bit sunnier. My constitutionals go well, as I spend them listening to an audio-book of Hegel's 'The Phenomenology of Spirit', no less. Mind-bending literature increasingly presents itself as a high-powered palliative in the face of empty, anxious distractedness.
Medical progress, meanwhile, eludes me for the time being. My pharmacy gave me the run-around on a new medication for a few days before finally letting me know that, not only were they unable to furnish me with my prescription (which I initiated three weeks ago), but that they can't stock it until July at the earliest. July! The god-forsaken governance of Cancer, overseen by expeditious Mercury—or so they say. At any rate, the technician's best recommendation was that I pester a number of other pharmacies around my city which, according to their system, may or may not have my prescription in stock; but if this pharmacy was incorrect in concluding that they themselves possessed it, why should I trust their system to guide me to somewhere that does? Looks like I have some calls to my doctor ahead of me.
That being said, I appreciate that many, many people are in far more precarious medical circumstances than myself, and I feel unusually grateful, at least while I write this post, for my robust health otherwise. The mere possibility of recovery or improvement, after all, depends on this neglected reservoir.
I told ~sonam that the next time I posted I would include some snippets from those poets I mentioned last time, namely Georg Trakl and Jim Harrison, but I'm out of the house right now, and must defer the fulfillment of my promise to some future post. I'm sure those patrons of the pub who share my ever more acerbic prejudice against needless digitization appreciate that I won't simply google these writers, seizing whichever text surfaces first in accordance with the algorithm. I would much rather flick through my physical books at home, and especially the notes I've made as to which poems stand out to me. (But I recognize, too, that this is a somewhat disingenuous suggestion of authenticity prevailing over profilicity, the former being almost inexpressible, here, and the latter inescapable.)
I hope everyone has been well, and can find some opportunities to enjoy spring.
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I would gladly wait for those snippets. Also, what made you want to listen to Hegel? I guess it's easier to listen to the tome than to read it. I'd love to know your thoughts on Hegel
As you say, it's so much easier to listen to the 'Phenomenology' than read it, at least for my first time through. A friend of mine is reading it alongside me and his primary intention, apparently, is to perform a "vibe check", which I think is a reasonable aim for one of the most famously mystifying works of modern philosophy. This first read- and listen-through is just to get the lay of the land.
What I really appreciate about Hegel so far is just to what extent the notion of a dialectic allows me to re-contextualize everything undesirable which I experience. Whatever is seemingly contingent and degrading is, in my crude manipulation of the dialectical lens, a necessary movement into obscurity and illegibility prior to the resurgence of whatever seemed to have been lost, but was actually being refined and enriched. It doesn't seem that important whether or not all that I've read is true, so much as it benefits my philosophical processes, somehow, allows me to feel more stable, capable, and integrated into my immediate context. It's tempting to suggest that, in his elaboration of the dialectic, Hegel managed a kind of precursor to contemporary cognitive behavioral therapy.
Of course, this all comes with the risk of feeling as though I better understand what happens to me just because I've learned the word "dialectic". Very large portions of the 'Phenomenology' are going completely over my head. I was baffled by his discussion of the "super-sensible world" in which, as I recall, north is south, tart is sweet, the electron pole is the hydrogen pole, etc. But it's okay that I don't understand it very well, since there are many secondary resources out there which comment on difficult passages, and at any rate I expect to re-read it in future.