Philosophy is phenomenology –well yes and no. Phenomenology, as academic philosophy, has the feel of being a science. The –logy part has taken over – though not the Logos. Take Heidegger, who does phenomenology for the sake of ontology. He worries about the strange German he will have to put it in. He knows that philosophical writing has always been barely approachable because it is so far from simple narration. And he tries to make up for it by speak-writing as casually as he can - he is a professor, after all. He has to hang on to his students; they will be his grounding element. That's what science is. It is the everyday, the commonsense part of life. Heidegger, a sometime philosopher, mixes together the heavy compactness of philosophical terms with casual lecture-narration. It doesn't work well. One or the other, please. The Hindu philosophers knew enough to separate the compact Sanskrit from easy articulate explanation. And so I wonder about myself.

I mix together casual talk with the erotic. That isn't so bad. The most passionate, the most disturbed by desire, always hide it in the most casual. There, easy outward movement is a sign of inward agitation – everyone recognizes it. And so maybe Heidegger was forced into the same pretense. Still, it's hard to put up with. Just as living with a lover is nerve-wracking.

Philosophy is a lover's ever-failing attempt at phenomenology.

¶ 10:08 PM