a discourse: the library, Plato and Gramsci I go to the library to find a book on plato and end up with a book on platonic theology by Marsilio Ficino. What the heck!? I am an idiot, that's all there is too it.

Later, roaming through the library, I tried to find a place to sit myself but every table, chair and cranny was taken by some laptop toting JCU student! Thus I went into my favorite room (the philosophy and sociology section) and sat on this inch high ledge of a cold and shadowy window. I sat there for a minute or two, fuming at the horde of students in the other room, but was quickly distracted by my knee high companions. Books. Right in front of me stood a whole wonderful section of Gramsci. I was in heaven! The first book I picked up was a collection of his prison letters, which were most interesting and depressing at the same time. Interesting to see Gramsci writing in a more personal form yet still expressing his most powerful ideas and depressing because he was inprisoned for over ten years. The letters show how he struggled with his confinement and being cut off from the world, and as sad as it is, I actually felt I could relate.

Being here in Rome, a foreign language, foreign people and place, sometimes actually feels like being in prison as I have very limited contact with the world I know best. Of course it is silly of me to relate my life to the struggle of Gramsci, unlike him, I could leave and go home anytime I want too. In other words, my inprisonment is by choice, his was not.

And that my friends, is my discourse of the day. Ciao.  ¶ 10:10 AM