note to self

so i say this more for my own benefit than my readership (or lack thereof), but my good friend APS gave a pretty good talk on : listen to it here. drawing on heidegger and bergson, he talks about 'grey ecology' - a concept which is premised on the fact that the city is vitally important for us to live ecologically. PLUS it's aimed at people who don't know stuff so it is super accessible. yeahhhhhhhh

in other news, i am still thinking about posting the one essay i am actually proud of. hm. even if no on reads it. the people who might be interested have read already anyway, i think. nevertheless. (hopefully i will follow through - we all know this blog is full of best intentions not always fulfilled!)

in other other news, i am somewhat lacking in motivation. and since i have been linking to this all over the shop, i'll do it again! it's another example of why this blog is called playing pretend. (this missing word being 'grown ups'). i have many things i want to say here but i don't really know how to begin (for a start, wjt mitchell's book that i mentioned before? there is a chapter called "drawing desire" which is very good and i wish i could say more about). and as for my thesis, it is on a subject that i find very engaging (we should hope so; i chose the topic!) but my heart isn't in it because it is too busy fretting for my as yet undetermined future. i should probably devote my energy to better things, like unravelling my mind:

to

in an attempt to help me do this, my supervisor has made the very wise suggestion that i plan a little more than what i normally do (think it out as i write it out, writing as thinking), and that i try mind-mapping (i saw someone on twitter refer to their thesis tree, another term i rather like). it's the sort of thing everyone was taught at school (spider diagrams), but which seemed kind of pointless. but perhaps it isn't pointless, but rather what i'm not good at: summing up in advance, looking at the bigger picture not through the details but as it is. this is my effort (although i have yet to update it to incorporate my newer ideas). it's a kind of untangling too, i suppose: