The limits of my language are the limits of my world, as every reasonable and cultured person knows.
My education—which feels so inadequate, yet whose exorbitant costs are still yet to be reckoned by some future debt—has taken the better part of a young adulthood. As I recently overheard upon leaving a lecture by the philosopher Alain Badiou in Westwood, it is good to know that little has changed since this study began some time ago. The names of the theorists, philosophers, professors, and writers have remained but shadows on the walls of the cave. There must be, he thinks, after years spent lost in this shadow metaphysics, some fire to make the shapes animate. It is difficult to express one’s participation in this ritual, and not wanting to reveal my ignorance, which churns ever softly beneath a film of laziness and self-medication, I have lost touch with the institution and whatever network of peers I once had the opportunity to create. Graduate students are meant to feel this way I have read, and the acuteness of my circumstances, however distinct to this particular school, is nothing new. Yet, in driving along the ugly white interstate from Echo Park to Claremont, and arriving here at this summer quiet library, I am filled with a kind of sadness that is responsive to the frame of pine and mountain the windows create. The time has not been wasted, but it is as if an opportunity has been spent. Alone, with no master and no students, and with only these books I cannot comprehend to read. Must philosophy grow in the cunning silence of a natural theology?
