Scary

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The weather seems to have passed some tipping point in the last week. Today it was very Seattle-y, and by the time I finished class at 5 it was basically dark. It's rather scary--I can already feel the weather getting to me. I want to avoid blaming it all on the weather because I don't want to reify the idea that I just get sadder when the weather sucks--I don't want to make it any more true than it has to be, as you may imagine--but so many times in the last week that I've found myself stressing out or feeling sad about something that I know I should not be stressing out or feeling sad about, and when I realize that I acquire the near-suffocating feeling, in turn, of knowing that there seems to be very little or nothing I can do to change it despite knowing I have little or no reason to feel that way and despite wanting very much to not feel that way. Sometimes the realization that there's little or no reason for me to feel a certain way will help me out for a bit, but it just seems like the default state for those sorts of switches is set to shitty. Maybe I should get a sun lamp, but that sounds so insufficient as to be almost more depressing. Physical activity doesn't seem to help particularly much either. Maybe I should try and eat better--that often seems to help. Mmk, I'll try that. In the mean time I think I'll try and do my best to steer my emotional ship against these headwinds--I find that reading The Prophet, or, well reading anything that I want to read (recently this has included The Stranger by Camus and Sartre...how's that for uplifting? I think If on a winter's night a traveler... might be more appropriate now) helps--but it's tough. I've been finding it much harder to do my school work or to even get out of bed. No wonder Dr. Elner suggested I go on Prozac when this time of year starts, eh?

In other news, I have an exciting week ahead of me. I have two essays to write, jamming with Paul (which I've been meaning to do) and a concert on Thursday, possibly a Boys Night Out to the military museum on Friday, preparing for Tuesday (more on that in a second) and meeting Ariel's friend Ben and dancing on Saturday, a mystery adventure on Sunday, and basically teaching my Philosophy class for a day on Tuesday. What's that, you say? Today we had a Socratic seminar in Philosophy about the direction the course is taking and why most of us have found it so dry, what kind of issues we'd like to explore more. It was rather refreshing. So yes, my professor asked me to give a 15-20 minute lecture on an Existentialist metaphysical understanding of freedom and how, or if it is even possible, to relate it to a political project of freedom, and to guide a discussion for the rest of class on it. Because I know more about it than she does. Well, that's kind of scary, but it means getting a perfect grade on my third paper without having to actually do it, and I like to try to take as many non-deadly challenges as I am given, so I'm doing it. I think it will revolve heavily around Sartre's Existentialism and Humanism (which is kind of silly since he later totally denounced it--but then again he also basically denounced existentialism and became a Marxist in the end, so I guess by that logic it would be silly of us all to even read Being and Nothingness still), and possibly even The Illuminatus! Trilogy. It'll be interesting to see what happens, eh?

Also, what I think I am going to do after my semester is ended is bus to Sofia, Bulgaria, spend some time over there in mobland, fly to London around the 20th of January, spend time there with Alison Chatfield's sister and Kate Osbourne and whoever else I hang out with, surf some couches, make my way down to Paris and spend some time at the Louvre and stuff, pay for only one meal a day and dumpster dive anything else I want to eat, maybe even make my way to Amsterdam for a bit, and fly out of Charles de Gaulle back to Istanbul around the 12th of February. In all, airfare will cost me a couple hundred bucks and the bus to Sofia not too much (I think Richard even bargained it down to 40 lira when he went? Wait, maybe that was just to the border...). I'll be able to surf some couches and not even have to pay much to live. I think I'm going to buy my tickets in the next several days so that I literally can't not go. I'm excited. Want to come with?

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