A Middle Voice

Some phenomenologists use Edith Stein’s theory for analyzing the phenomenon called ‘eating disorder’. Others use Edmund Husserl’s or contemporary scholars’, such as Matthew Ratcliffe’s, analyses. Often these authors argue that it is the body image that changes and causes the disorder. Often, these scholars do not seem to grasp the whole picture. Of course, the perversion of one’s body image is one aspect of the disorder. But, the perversion is far from sufficient for creating a disorder. And sometimes, no perversion takes place at all, like in the case of my friend, who did not even think about his body but just unlearned how to eat. I do think sometimes that my body is bigger than it actually is, and I am always surprised when someone tells me that I am skinny or “thin,” as one of my friends said. “You are like a crain,” he said. “Thin and white and beautiful” (I was wearing a white dress. Also, later the same friend told me that my other friend likes to talk to me because I...

I can’t write poetry in English, so I’ll just write words.   I do not know whether my words are right and rightly put, but the reason(!) why this is not poetry is that the aesthetic is not primary but what is important is the content, the affirmation, the implicit secret we (always?) already share.   Poor in words, everything becomes simpler, thought shuts down, opens up new possibilities.   For feeling, perhaps?   Feeling the friendship, l’aimance, not asking, what is love? but listening, responding, being, and finding what was destined in the way.   And what is destined is that we cannot choose, where to go. Not going back to where we came from, because time has already passed, and we are lost, again.   But, please, I ask you, tolerate the messiness. Only untruth and naïvité are clear and clean, what there is, is already decided, not by you but for you.   Be the honest yourself, ...

I thought I was the one making decisions. Still I find myself in situations that I would like to describe to someone, not because I would like to tell something about myself but because I want to share the news. I am surprised of how situations develop and unfold. I find myself on a train to Vienna. I left from Venice. In between those two sentences I had to pause for a moment for remembering my point of departure. It seems that even when it is me who makes the decisions for taking a direction of action, I still can not decide the situation that follows. I feel that I am flowing in the surface and diving from a space to another. I do not know where I am going, and I do not know what to expect. - - I survived from Rome. I did not decide to leave two days earlier, but I could not help the strong feeling of having to leave. I did not decide to be treated in a certain way (good, I guess, but not for me), and I did not decide to miss my beloved one so much it ...