"veiled threats?"

Martha Nussbaum: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/veiled-threats/

melancholy fire

It's 6:30 pm and behind the ever gray sky, the sun still burns. It is a damp 91 degrees. Lord help me.

A half hour of Facebook voyeurism has left me depressed. I ended up on some Waiakea friends' pages and saw, on the basis of status updates and pictures, where their lives are now. They are in steady relationships, have stable jobs and lead exciting social lives. Of course, all that's to be expected, and I am both happy for and envious of them. What the heck am I doing in China? Having the time of my life, that's for sure, but part of me feels like I ought to be maturing in step with my classmates. It's been a year and a half since my last relationship, I have no "real" job, and my social life is built entirely around people I may never see again after my stint here is done.

Also, thoughts of a certain person burn like coal in my heart. My position makes this fire impossible, and so it rages. I think he knows that I know. But what can I do? Anyway, he is gone for the summer.

the value of words

Writing is that means by which the world values the Way, but writing is no more than words and words, too, have value. Meaning is what gives value to words, but meaning is dependent on something. What meaning depends on cannot be expressed in language, yet the world transmits writing because it values language. Although the world values writing, I, for my part, do not think it worthy of being valued, because what is valued is not what is really valuable.

- Chuang Tzu, quoted in Peter Hessler's Oracle Bones