crisis of ugly consciousness

I'm auditing a German philosophy class focused on Wittgenstein and Heidegger: it is full of a) people--or rather one individual--who have no filter between brain and mouth and dominates the class and b) fabulous insights. Today, for example, we were discussing portions of Being and Time and spent a while on H's concept of the Entscheidung: that is, because our entire lives are spent honing in on death, the realization of our finitude forces us to make certain actively committed choices and to live out that commitment resolutely. (This, according to my professor has totalitarian overtones when the commitment is a social phenomenon, but for my purposes, that's a sidebar, hence the parenthetical.)

Although graduate school may not seem like a good use of time when considering death as impending, this does mark the thinking that led me to graduate school: I recognized that I couldn't dither forever and picked a career--one albeit that allowed to dither for almost a decade.

However, what the being on the job market insecurities have revealed to me are the mechanisms by which I made that choice. And it's not pretty.

Yes. I love my work.
But partially, I love my work because I'm good at it. And it feels good to be good at things.
How do I know I'm good? Cuz people tell me so. People I respect. Institutions give me further validation by picking me to receive their financial proof of confidence.
So, now that it's fully likely that I will not get a job for a goodly time, thus stripping from me the ego-boosting aspect of my initial choice, what am I left with? The work itself feels a little empty and difficult to motivate for when it is no longer guaranteed to transfer praise to me.

A fine thing to realize seven years into a degree: that seven years in therapy might have been a better investment.

fancy restaurant manners

When the solicitous waiter in a fancy special occasion restaurant where you are having the chef's menu no less asks you how your last course was, are you supposed to automatically chirp "great!" or are you supposed to weigh in with a foodie critique? If the former, then why the charade of interaction?

I remember someone telling me once that the most annoying thing about being a potsmoker was that part of the transaction of buying it was to smoke a bowl with your dealer, when you truly have no desire to create anything other than an economic relationship with this person.

I supposed that having the chef twirling around the dining room is part of the customer service by which fancy restaurants distinguish themselves from other types of dining establishments. It's not one that I value, mostly because I'm confused about what role I'm supposed to play in this particular scenario.

At Ortolan the other night, we mixed it up: for the most part, I did the requisite chirping and mr. babe remained silent rather than overly-honestly express his true feelings about the heirloom tomato five-ways. But what do you want from someone who hates tomatoes, on principle? In any case, I only expressed displeasure over the caviar and cream and runny egg cooked in the shell in ash which was interesting at the top with the thick sweetness of the cream and the sharp salty tang of the caviar, but by the end of the egg was too too salty, grossly so in the sense of fully unrefined and overwhelmingly salty.

However, when I said I loved various courses, I meant it. All the courses were small--thank god, because we were full and trying to strategize how to pace ourselves after three--and different and surprising. The trend seems to be a conjunction of two things: to derail the expectations of common ingredients and to put different tastes together. That is, few dishes did not have some combination of delicately sweet and slightly bitter, such as the duck which was paired with a slice of peach and a peach glaze with the verbena emulsion.

Here is the full chef's menu. http://ortolanrestaurant.com/showmenu.php?id=1

It was wonderful to have our anniversary there: the ambiance creates the feeling of luxuriating in comfort and thoughtfulness--a lovely reflection of what being with Michael is most often like.