The Œuvre of Nietzsche

One of the things about blogging that I love, particularly as I come up on my ninth year, is the ability to look back on my life and see how things begin to unfold in my thinking. Nietzsche has been on my mind seriously since the summer of 2009, the summer I ran and listened to 'The Will to Power' on my iPod shuffle while I ran. This was also the summer that Bazan's 'Curse Your Branches' came out and I had, finally, really begun to make peace with leaving Christianity, and more importantly the idea of god, behind. Nietzsche played a role in this, in being able to say, if the choice is between peace and searching, I choose searching.

I envisioned myself at some time overcoming... Overcoming, yes, that's the right verb, but I'm not sure what the object is. I felt, caught up in a runner's high in a 13th or 14th mile, that it would be okay, that I would be okay.

I am okay, I'm sure of that, but I still don't feel as okay as I envisioned. Running, alone on the path, I was free of it, of all the things that tied me down, but two years on, I am not free and I feel as stuck as I always have, stuck inside of a personality and a body that I am constantly feeling foreign in. I think of Nietzsche eating alone. Yes, thoughts liberated, but body tied down.

The feeling of being foreign is something I think I have brought on myself by constantly peeling back, 'unfolding' is the metaphor from above. The more you know about something (Day 1), the less you can continue to remain true to it. Does this apply to oneself as well?

The meaning we make of Nietzsche is perhaps more important than the meaning we make of Walker Evans. Perhaps not. I want to hold on tightly to both: I think Nietzsche held onto the meaning of Walker Evans, for him embedded in Wagner's music. Liberated and free, even if it only lasts for a quick glance over your shoulder at a Ferris wheel.