Tomorrow I am giving a presentation – a brief presentation – on a project that I imagine will preoccupy me for the rest of the semester, maybe the rest of the (school) year. Or, I suppose, it may occupy me for the rest of the year and some of the spring of next year. It is absurd to me that, beginning in September, my concept of what a year is changed drastically.

I am going to blog about it because writing about it isn’t helping. Blogging is helpful because the internet exists outside of my mind, whereas I am less than sure that TextEdit exists outside of my mind. In any case, there is a difference, at least in terms of a release of tension, between writing for oneself and writing for an (assumed) audience. Something about getting an idea out there, which in this case just means out of my head.

I am sitting at the kitchen table, next to a set-up board of chess. Also on the table is a cookbook, a book called Subtitles: On the Foreigness of Film; the novel Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee, which I am going to bring in as an example tomorrow; the book GO for Beginners by Kaoru Iwamoto, as well as a pamphlet entitled “The Way to Go,” sandwiched in between these two books; Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal talks on Zen meditation and practice, by Shunryu Suzuki, in which I found tonight a postcard with the book’s titles in calligraphy as drawn by Suzuki. I put it on the fridge.

RIP Kool Keith

On Saturday, I will begin playing chess, once a day, for 30 days. On November 15th, I will begin playing go, once a day, for 30 days.