Cafe #19: Chocolateria San Churro

Date: Friday, 11 April 2007, 5.00pm
Location: Brunswick St near Victoria St, Fitzroy
Coffee: $4.90, Spanish mocha - delicious
Reading: Being and Time

I wrestled with Derrida again last night until close to 3.00am. I think I 'translate' about a paragraph an hour. I woke up at 11.00am today, which meant a late start on more Derrida. I don't think I got through more than two pages. This insistence on tackling Derrida seems a bit masochistic but I am a bit proud of myself as well. I still am not sure why it is necessary to be so complicated (Heidegger's language is much more straightforward) but I am not as sure as I used to be that the purpose of its difficulty is to hide the flaws in the theory. Still, it is difficult to argue with something so abstract as how the way we conceptualise meaning and thinking is affected by an idea of the unity of truth that we'd like to preserve. For this next essay, though I think I'm going to structurally analyse and deconstruct a Salinger story, maybe my interest will take me elsewhere - or distract me from my goal. I'm considering looking at the play Copenhagen instead of Salinger since it is a play about philosophical issues and it interests me more. Hopefully something comes together - with less grief than it did last time.

I meant to walk to Smith Street to treat myself to a cafe work-read, but discovered Gertrude Street, which is perpendicular to Smith and has many funky and artsy shops. I didn't find an open cafe however (as opposed to a restaurant or bar) and ended up on Brunswick St. I haven't been to this part of Brunswick Street yet while living in Melboune, and am not sure if I've ever been here. The chocolateria seemed the likeliest place to obtain a coffee only, given the dinner-time nature of the hour. The cafe is a long narrow shop all wood and brick, with orange baroque-patterned grating windows and frilly brown and orange aprons on sale. The mocha was thick, creamy, deep and beautiful.

It has been a good week. I didn't do too badly on that first paper (Derrida and Barthes) - 3 points only off a High Distinction, with the major comments being such that I should be able to fix quite easily for the next paper. Mainly the paper was marked down for being under-researched (which it was given the (now I realise) overblown claims I made in the introduction and conclusion). I was relieved the major issues were not with my argument or interpretation. The paper felt like a risk and I am glad the risk was one well taken.

I got to take centre stage in the feminism class of my Wednesday Critical Theory course as the only female in the seminar and, you know, actually knowing about feminist theory. I had a good chat afterwards with two other Masters students, talking about sexuality and Cisoux and gender. Yesterday I saw K at her apartment in Docklands. She cooked me a lovely frittatta and plied me with red wine. The highlight of the afternoon was scoping out a couple of fancy time-share luxury boats. They were beautiful things, replete with beds, fridges and barbeques. Check out photos of the boats here (http://www.leisureboating.com.au/Boats.asp?sessionID=), though I don't remember which ones we saw - two of the biggest, anyway, though I liked the smaller one better. I told K that if they do join the club she MUST take me out on the boat.

On Monday evening I went to a great feminist lecture (check out http://lipmag.blogspot.com for details). It made me understand that after this experiment with critical theory I will go back to feminism - so much more immediately relevant to what's going on in the world right now. Tomorrow night is a Frencham Smith gig.

I certainly could have gotten more work done this week but I'm going to try to do some significant hours of work over the weekend to make up for it.

Hmmm, need a new notebook...