Intellectual masturbation

While my roommates study the anatomy of a chicken (its comb, to be specific), I study four different texts of hardcore nature with terms such as “hermeneutic praxeology” and from time to time cites Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Jacques Lacan like they were still fucking alive–four different texts with verbose and seemingly intangible (not only the form but also the meaning) concepts for an eighteen year-old. I only read novels with plots, the climax most of the time makes my day. This doesn’t have any fucking climax or any twist at all.

I am taking Critical Writing (ENG 103) this semester, and the bulk of it presses the students to read thick handouts of post-structuralists, among other criticisms. (Yeah, fuck it.) But the thing I felt a while ago, after leaving the class, was the same thing I felt whenever I leave my coma-inducing Philosophy class a semester ago. I call it “intellectual masturbation“, for the lack of a better term (though I have heard of the term but am unsure of the meaning), since it leaves you dumbfounded, removed from reality, the same pupil-dilating feeling you get during climax. I easily forget group meetings, my LSS, my schedules. I am so absorbed by the concept that it leaves me suspended from reality, as if I were in the limbo between reality and the inner workings of my mind, never withholding the interest for such highfalutin concepts, but never wanting to seem insanely withdrawn from reality.

I suddenly couldn’t concentrate with something, like this blog post, because my head aches. My head fucking aches from over-thinking, over-analyzing, and that the only solution (eventually, I knew about it) is to close my eyes for a couple of hours.

But I couldn’t just let go of the concepts; I want this. I somehow like this feeling of thinking something that isn’t mundane, of a problem I could just drop if I want to–since most people don’t give a damn about it anyway. (In short, it’s making a problem out of something, intellectually speaking.) Last semester I wanted to extend my Philosophy class for a good three hours–who cares if my nose bled–just for me to have enough time to relish this state of intellectual masturbation which tickles my mind, and which I rarely feel with other subjects.

Now I’m having trouble whether I should still think about it or not.

November 18, 2009 at 3:23 pm, filed under Life at UPLB, Pensive shits. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.