Still, no picture

of what I am going to be doing in the future. Bergson elucidates the centrality of intuition over intellect in consciousness, and right now I am running low on intellect. Perhaps all humans resemble the hybrid cars that recently hit the market. We run on intellect/reason for as far as we can until our limit is reached and then switch over to intuition. If I could understand him a little more, I would be more confident in saying that Bergson was one of those people who, like well-intentioned energy researchers everywhere, are looking for ways to get us around without destructing, or deconstructing, our environment.

I remembered what and why I wanted to talk about today. Reading the newspaper this morning, another "off-day" at school (we have hit the doldrums of the Japanese school year, between graduation (yesterday) and the beginning of classes (mid April)), I came across an article about physchotherapy and its commercialization. Apparently the field of psychotherapy is undergoing an identity crisis itself, says the author. I thought of academics too in the same light, and really all of my options lead to the same destination. I am not in any way alluding to some metaphysical truth, no, just a state of things in the present world. There seems to be no place in the world, no position one can hold, that is free from this invisible, pervasive, and unnameable presence. I can' put my finger on it, but everytime I think about how to make money, how to merely "survive"; everytime I read a scientific explanation of the world, extracting the wonder and joy from being alive and putting it in one of the lab's many beakers that stand lifelessly on the shelves; or (re)read the newspaper every day with a sense of deja vu, that there seemed to have been a car bombing in Iraq yesterday (and there was), skimming a very graphic report of the killing of school children in rural Japan, reports on global warming, McDonalds making profits on their new Ebi Filet-O burger, email scandals in the top-level of Japan's government, bird flu arriving in France, Bush's surprise visit to Afghanistan, etc.--in all of these observations, these apparitions, it feels as if this "thing" has just passed by me, like a ghost, and I can only intuit for a second what was there. A vestige remains somewhere in my memory of this unnameable, absent figure.

Then there is the positive things happening in life--also happening now in concurrence with the aforementioned personal, global, and universal woes. I read C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" the other day, and I am looking forward to seeing the movie on Saturday. Even though the Disney version will surely be less fulfilling than the book, will shine a little too brightly and lack the depth of Lewis's original (which is a masterpiece), I still believe the experience to be promising. I've also been reading the work of Haruki Murakami, Henri Bergson, and (off and on) O. Henry. Lots of Hs, I know. So, while March rolls along with promises of spring slowly unfurling in the first few plum blossoms, I have a lot and not much on my mind. Reading books, enjoying life, and all the time carrying around that companion with which I must learn to live with, smile at, and forebear in everything I do.