Monday, February 18

 

 

I woke up this morning with a sudden start when the alarm went off.

In my dream something had delayed my plane for twenty four hours and I found myself deposited in the lounge of an endless hotel. All the sofas seemed completely circular with the seat on the inside of the circle. Various old people had arranged chairs on the outer edge of the sofas and made efforts to climb onto the chairs and drop into the inside of the circular sofas.

One woman kept shouting that her husband had fallen into the middle but had now completely disappeared. Airline staff kept shouting to her that you couldn’t see the people inside from outside, not always, and that she should just climb over and join him.

But he has disappeared completely, she wailed, as I woke up slightly confused.

On the way to work I decide that I want pickled cucumbers on my rye bread today, and so I walk from the tram, over the ice to the mall. The mall stands empty, or almost empty, when I arrive; something I suspect that has something to do with the time it took me to slither over the ice to the entrance.

By the time I leave S-Market with my bananas, my mandarins, and my pickles, a crowd will have gathered, many of them waiting for the magic hour of nine, when shops start selling alcohol. They hover expectantly, not wanting to risk the embarrassment of getting refused service at 8:59.

I will look at an overdue project in the morning, and grade it. I will read and write without much enthusiasm.

In the afternoon I will have an online tutorial with someone who refuses to understand what I attempt to suggest. In the end she will ask me to email her tomorrow with my suggestions, saying that her notes do not make any sense.

I will then have an online meeting with Sophie that will raise my spirits somewhat. For some reason the conversation will turn to G.D.H. Cole and guild socialism and, when the conversation has ended, I will go off and find a treasure trove of his writing online at archive.org.

I will then have a meeting with Elize and Scott. I will get detailed instructions on how to fill in the application form for the Fulbright scholarship, and a lengthy discussion about Peirce, absolutes, and media. Now my brain will get fired up.

On the way home I will wonder about something Scott said: that Peirce regarded the universe as a learning entity that gained habits over time, and I will try to fit this into the ideas of Universal Darwinism. I will suspect that something is lacking, because the logic I have in mind does away with the need for universals.