so, speaking directly: i plan to pursue writing for a good 4-5 years, and then go for a phd, unless outside forces (eg success) intervene. but what kind of phd? i still dont have a definate answer but here's what i'm thinking: theres everything in the world, which is inaccessible to us, because our only tools for getting at this reality is our own human bodies -- imperfect to say the least. Break it down this way: the human body: psychology and anthropology; (an active) getting at: philosophy; everything: religion. I'm interested in the intersection of all these.

relatedly:

"The American writer, Eric Hoffer, described this syndrome nearly sixty years ago in a book that also generated a lot of zeal (for a short time, anyway), The True Believer. People convert quite easily, observed Hoffer; they switch from one ism to the next, from Catholicism to Marxism to whatever is next on the horizon. The belief system runs its course, then another one takes its place. What is significant is the energy involved, not the particular target, which could be anything, really. For what drives this engine is the need for psychological reassurance, for Meaning with a capital M–a comprehensive system of belief that explains everything. There is a feeling, largely unacknowledged, that without this we are lost; that life would have no purpose, and history no meaning; that both (as Shakespeare put it) would amount to little more than a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

and also:
“the world is not logical; it is psycho-logical.” - Goethe

~ tries to get me in media res -- I stare down the camera with the same intensity with which it stares me down (immovable, mechanical -- not a blink) -- the background is what changes. My time in china, for now, is almost (relatively) up. You'd think that i would have changed, but i was obsessed with a plan, which eventually, naturally, became two plans -- enough to crowd out the much of the background, really. Everyone knows that i think in big pictures, but this time I just dont see it. So i focus on variation -- the scale has been smaller, the language tonal, the beers milder. what else is there to say? I'm drawing a blank -- perhaps it'll all come up in the contrast, back in the states.


about non-interaction: ""The horror of stasis: to arrive at the empty inn, at the end of the adventure, and find your old self waiting for you". Ach, i'd rather not look.