I think it significant that this post and these thoughts were constructed/composed to Max Richter‘s composition “The Haunted Ocean 4” from his Waltz With Bashir soundtrack. I have been unable to figure out how to load that piece here but so wanted you to be able to listen while you read. I have found “Haunted Ocean 1” which has similar themes, but if you are able to listen to #4 please do!
Ache
Borges writes “immanence,” Blanchot “infinite” and “void;” Beckett’s “dim” is Jabes’ “absence.”
– Let the attributes ring in your bodies like hymn –
Someone’s “silencio” is another one’s “vague.” Heidegger’s “Dasein,” a collective of “Tao’s.”
Whence this pull toward placed-ness, toward wholes, toward meaning?
What evidence have we that this could ever be the case?
From “birth”? Or “death”? And what might we mean by “life”?
Words.
Language.
“words are not the reality of language: words – by themselves – do not exist”
–Jorge Luis Borges–
He illustrates this simply. And might be demonstrated even more concisely, like this:
God. Dieu. יהוה. Allah. and so on…
Or, with Borges:
“En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero recorder” (12 words)
“In a place in La Mancha, whose name I do not wish to recall” (14 words)
“En un pueblo manchego cuyo nombre no quiero recorder” (9 words)
“In a Manchegan village whose name I don’t want to recall” (11 words)
or
I love you. Te amo. J’taime. Я тебя люблю etc…
or
I adore, crave, honor, respect, delight, select, prefer…
It isn’t the words, it’s the language. And the language isn’t just words.
Ache.
Torment lies here. Angst, frustration, agitation, anger and want. Fear and inadequacy, limitation and failure, desire and doom.
Ache.
If the words not the thing nor the thing without sign or presentation…for what, for what do we yearn?
Ache.
We seem unable to be HERE, PRESENT, and simultaneously FULLY SO. Some faculty, some capacity slighted. Either intellect suffers to passion, or understanding commands immersive sensation. Ever a split, a just-nigh or just-shy.
Ache.
To long for, to crave covet and burn…
Ache.
My love is absent. I ache, I yearn. But when she returns and is present, I lose the pregnant and consumptive fullness of her absence.
Either way I ache, for more, for all – for comprehensive life.
Called by “I,” “void” or “it.” “Being,” “nirvana” or “love.” “Youth” or “joy” or “wholeness.” “Pleasure” “emptiness” or “thou.” Nothing. or All.
I name it Ache, today, intending by it some constitutive condition or state, a description of “living,”
by which so many meanings are lost,
and I ache.
Polysemic Stupor 