b a t t l e c a t . n e t

My incredibly learned and lovely friend Dr Aliese once tried to explain Deleuze to me and I’m pretty sure her description involved “he talks about teacups but I’m not really sure he was talking about teacups at all”.  Then again often my thoughts do return to tea, so she could have been talking about something entirely different. However, since that discussion, Deleuze has been a philosopher that I’m terribly intrigued with but intimidated by.

Impressively, there happens to be a copy of Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus beside my beau’s bed*.  Last night while waiting for dinner to cook (roast chicken pieces with vegetable risotto and salad), I made my way through most of the introduction.

As a result of my first foray into Deleuze my head is currently abuzz with rhizomes and how nicely the concept ties in with the graphical representation of relationships and their tangly nature. An integral quality of rhizomic forms is that a node can be removed, but the rhizome still exists as a entitity despite being altered.

I guess that one of the things that is drawing me to explore concepts of friendship is that I have a tendency to cut myself out of a localised friendship group and to then propagate new networks once I reach a new town. There’s a strange sensation of feeling a very strong tie to the older and more established rhizomes of friendship even when you are part of a new structure / waiting for a new one to grow of and towards you.

Today especially, I’m feeling the drain of not having an immediate and close connection to many established friends and colleagues. Language differences are a little overwhelming and the cold of Berlin encourages me to make connections between trying to grow plants in winter and the challenge of meeting people and feeling at home in a new town.

[I'm not sure how I'm meant to play with these concepts, thoughts and connections, but I'm sure I'm meant to be doing something with them.]

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*I’ve been assured that my beau has actually been reading the book and doesn’t store it there [just] to impress the ladies.