Packing Up
Last year, during these moments, I sat here in Florida and in this very chair, and wore a deep burgundy cast on my broken ankle. If you care to look back at the beginning of this blog, you’ll discover a whole series of postings concerning my experience with this vulnerability. 
At this time last year, I was reading about Baruch Spinoza; I continue to do so still, and I might even start reading Spinoza himself soon. I have discovered over the past year that I am a spinozist. And that I practice a philosophical position referred to as spinozism.
And now I am back at my mother’s home in Florida, this time sans cast, but for the last time; she has decided to move to Toronto where the winter thermometer over a week’s time doesn’t add up to the temperature of one Floridian day. Go figure, as my mother would say.
Spinoza says that our consciousness is filled with inadequate ideas because our consciousness is the awareness of effects and not causes. I know how I feel, and I attribute that happiness to this beer, or that chocolate, or this glorious weather, but I do not know what causes the pleasure derived from this beer, or that chocolate, or this glorious weather. Only those ideas which make causal connections are adequate ones, though Spinoza seems to suggest that though we aspire to complete knowledge, our humanity will always preclude this achievement. Nonetheless, those of us who live in the world which values intellect, understand that the closer we get to knowing causes, the closer we get to God and to Nature, and to God and Nature and Nature as God. And the closer we get to God and Nature, the more joyful we may be. I long for joy.
There is a sense that I have been moving toward spinozism for years. Daniel Isaacson, the protagonist in E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel, says that the radical is the one who makes all the connections, at which point the Power must eliminate the Radical. If I read had this novel twenty or twenty-five years ago, then for twenty, twenty-five years I have been a spinozist. I teach my students to be spinozists. I tell them that during my course the one who makes the most connections is the winner.
All that to say this: my father is buried here in Florida. My mother’s husband is here buried. It is no small event to move from here to there, because to do so is to leave her husband. Oh, I know, he had already left her, but it was, perhaps, on his part an involuntary move. This move is occurring in the full light of day.
All that to say this: my father is buried here in Florida. I don’t know if or when I’ll ever be back. Dan Bern says in one of his songs on New American Language, “There is a tombstone for my father, I visit sometime.” On my yearly visits since his death in 1999, I have visited sometime the grave of my father. I am not sure if and when I’ll ever be back.
There are in this posting a great many effects for which causes must be sought.
At this time last year, I was reading about Baruch Spinoza; I continue to do so still, and I might even start reading Spinoza himself soon. I have discovered over the past year that I am a spinozist. And that I practice a philosophical position referred to as spinozism.
And now I am back at my mother’s home in Florida, this time sans cast, but for the last time; she has decided to move to Toronto where the winter thermometer over a week’s time doesn’t add up to the temperature of one Floridian day. Go figure, as my mother would say.
Spinoza says that our consciousness is filled with inadequate ideas because our consciousness is the awareness of effects and not causes. I know how I feel, and I attribute that happiness to this beer, or that chocolate, or this glorious weather, but I do not know what causes the pleasure derived from this beer, or that chocolate, or this glorious weather. Only those ideas which make causal connections are adequate ones, though Spinoza seems to suggest that though we aspire to complete knowledge, our humanity will always preclude this achievement. Nonetheless, those of us who live in the world which values intellect, understand that the closer we get to knowing causes, the closer we get to God and to Nature, and to God and Nature and Nature as God. And the closer we get to God and Nature, the more joyful we may be. I long for joy. There is a sense that I have been moving toward spinozism for years. Daniel Isaacson, the protagonist in E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel, says that the radical is the one who makes all the connections, at which point the Power must eliminate the Radical. If I read had this novel twenty or twenty-five years ago, then for twenty, twenty-five years I have been a spinozist. I teach my students to be spinozists. I tell them that during my course the one who makes the most connections is the winner.
All that to say this: my father is buried here in Florida. My mother’s husband is here buried. It is no small event to move from here to there, because to do so is to leave her husband. Oh, I know, he had already left her, but it was, perhaps, on his part an involuntary move. This move is occurring in the full light of day.
All that to say this: my father is buried here in Florida. I don’t know if or when I’ll ever be back. Dan Bern says in one of his songs on New American Language, “There is a tombstone for my father, I visit sometime.” On my yearly visits since his death in 1999, I have visited sometime the grave of my father. I am not sure if and when I’ll ever be back.
There are in this posting a great many effects for which causes must be sought.
posted by Alan A. Block at 10:37 AM
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