Classics lecture

I am currently sat in a classics lecture. Imogen has let me sit in on one of her Beauty and Goodness lectures which is p cool bc I actually briefly considered doing this module as an optional module. 

They're discussing love and what love is and isn't and how it should be treated/ regulated in the state. how very Durham of them. 

All about Eryximachus and Pausanias - a statesman and a doctor apparently. That's so crazy. These guys had a conversation about love 2000 years ago and here we are in Palace Green still talking about it. Right next to the cathedral that was built like 900 years ago as well. Wow we really are a part of history. Kamala Harris was right.

It's so hard to lock in and come up with something interesting to write because I feel like such an impostor. The only other thing I can think about right now is my rent next year and how I plan to tell/ avoid telling my parents about it eehehehehehehe 

Millie thinks I'm cooked. I mean Millie thinks 120 a week is bad. Millie does not attend Durham university. 

The lecturer is Italian and she has such an Italian accent... makes me feel like I'm in Marchionni's Ancient Worlds tutorial all over again. It's always these Italian teachers doing the classics isn't it?

"He sees all bodies as going towards death, toward dissolution, so he sees the whole universe as such" - but didn't the Greeks have some beliefs on the afterlife? or was that sort of more of a shaky mythology that they didn't really fully believe (?) That's what we were asked last year in AWEL. 

Eryximachus focuses on the body when speaking about love because he's a doctor. That makes a lot of sense. The priest told me not to do that. 

I only have 15 minutes left of this lecture. I need to draw some conclusions. I like their idea of medicine as a unification of opposite bodily functions - like a macrocosm of broader society (Love as union of opposites) - and that also opens up the idea that the two opposites being Not in love creates illness. It so does. I mean that's what some people say God is - the union of opposites - which makes sense too. Love is union of opposites; God is Love; the circle comes shut. And again, illness; evil; all these things being the result of some lack... it's something that hasn't been altered with intention (?) if we consider love as romantic/ erotic love - then we are ill by default until we find union with that opposite, no?  Just the same as Augustine says children are no good by default - goodness is a choice, an action.... not a default ... (?) an effort more than anything. like constantly stitching shut this wound. Thta's exactly it. I like the idea of being alive as a wound. something bleeding and pulsating and flowing and painful.

"Globular beings" ... "our self-ah"... "the oder alf-ah".. beautiful. 

Man I can hear the cathedral in here. That's something I was thinking about and actually even told Liv about - like how lucky we are. But written down it sounds so generic. But it's true isnt it?? I could be in Nottingham right now - still getting a degree, still going to uni - like none of this nice stuff is necessary, and yet I have it. I guess that's why the rent costs 150 a week here aahaha not funny. 

"It's clear that each of them has some wish in his soul that he can't articulate; instead, like an oracle, he half-grasps what he wants and obscurely hints at it" (192c) I assume this changes when Zeus allows people to have sex. That's quite true, I would say. Isn't an oracle so beautiful though?

"Aristophanes' speech-ah..." 

"Freedom from desire" mind and senses purified? there's a reason I like that song.