The story to now…
and part the sixth…
6
“I propose description as a method of invention and of composition. Description…is phenomenal rather than epiphenomenal, original, with a marked tendency toward effecting isolation and displacement, that is toward objectifying all that’s described and making it strange…Description then is apprehension, ‘the act or power of perceiving or comprehending’ and a motivating anticipatory anxiety, expectant knowledge…the very writing down seems to constitute the act of discovering it…but also and problematically an act of interpreting it.”
-Lyn Hejinian-
Hybrids.
What is “normal” or “traditional,” what forms remain (for long) in a universe of chaos ever emerging and expending? Convergences, then. Bloodline here, bloodline there, cross it through and pull it taut. Cultural collage.
The parents lead the way, though not as masters, more experiments – of brother linked to sister linked to brother step toward brothers veined by half with sister same as brother. Not personal or by choice until fixed in the same installation. Could be called art, called family.
Other halves and steps by three with partners of their own yet bleeding half their blood. Where are they? A sitcom cast of lesbians and addicts, the wealthy and the poor, the liberal, constrained. Kaleidoscoping styles and beliefs – “it takes a village” – and they’ve settled one.
Working well enough – a jalopy needing constant tinkers. It most assuredly breaks down. Imagine society. Or the size of it, extended. How many grandparents can a child acquire? Its fine for rituals like births and holidays – multiplying spoils – but where does one belong? With whom? Family-by-affinity? Reunions become a game of pick-up-sticks or jacks and marbles (except with persons). Arbitrary circles depending on usable space.
The family tree she drew for therapy’s a forest. Cottonwoods and pines, baobab, bonsai. An oak thrown in for measure, and barely identified shrubs. What base is there to touch?
Parliament versus monarchy, troubling the court of appeals. With manager-types and generals, gurus, debaters and clowns. Stir in deconstruction and some faith for emotive stew. It’s a kinky chain of command, yet all are bound by it. Children vying a vote.
And if infected by the peacemaker-pleaser-gene, the torsion becomes a complicated interpretive dance. A surplus of baggage with all the due fees. A lot to saddle on young.
They’re resilient. Navigating democracy and other octagonal squares -awkward parallelograms – never quite losing site of Atlantis. Lost kingdom, utopian, buried deep under vast emotional sea, at times nearly glimpsing a spire. At least some strange stirring. Dreams of a large enough house. Solving nonsymmetrical fusion equations. These children are smart.
If an artist paints the picture she performs mixed-media collage with inks and clay and dozens of paints, incorporates cloth and wire and found objects with hopes enough resin or wax will contain it. Hold it all fast. And still let everything – everyone – be seen. The composer creates an erratic symphony – arrhythmic with regular dissonance, whelming moments dramatic with harmony and occasional measures of quiet resolutions. The scientist keeps figuring on emergent chaos, open-ended systems like weather and complexly variable algorithms. Author writes it down and edits, erases as much as inscribes, constantly losing track.
Each makes their own scribbled lines, overlaid. Its sketchy and messy and thick. Kids jumping ropes, fingering string figures, string theory, Spiderman-webs. It gets made.
Polysemic Stupor 
The stage is set, now enters the actors.
What will the exchage produce in us the readers, what conflict will arise, and what resolution, or another vein, another direction.
I am noticing we two like to wax philosophical at the expense of letting our characters speak. We are mere babes in the woods being raised by wolves. Tooth and nail we will fight to have our day. Write we must.
I find that to be true – what you say about being babes in the woods. Wrestling with everything else inhabiting our medium. Thanks Tocksin.
Let me feel you more with what you mean by wrestling with everything else inhabiting our medium.
Basically the phenomenon of language itself. More and more I think of the use and application of language in and with experience as a primary world-making process. So as we fish for and create words related to our senses and perceptions, what we choose and try are also creating new experiences and organizing/forming our experiences. So the medium IS a kind of firstness of experience, meaning a totalizing encounter each time – determining values, selecting priorities, isolating objects, estranging emotions to formulate being for us. Once we set out to language, in effect we’re interacting/engaging and making up our realities. We begin these markings and are thrown in to exploring our whole being-in-the-world, like you said – alongside everything else that brings to the actual and real – characters, emotions, ideas, sensations, persons, perceptions – the whole bag – as with dreams (I think?) subject/object, male/female, truth/falsehood, etc., polarities don’t apply except as we employ them for whatever personal reasons regarding “making sense.” From the first letter of the day (or even in the mind) then, wrestling with EVERYTHING, as it inhabits the medium that is inhabiting it. Is this helpful?
It’s a start.
It’s like we have to either study and understand Ludwig Wittgenstein, or devise our own meaning. Come at me again, though make more clear what is this medium that is inhabiting it?
synonyms there 🙂
the medium is language – for us that medium in-habits us in the world (and with one another) and for us language is where world inhabits in a knowable way. (I think). So language is the knowing relation (exploration) we possess between sense/perception experience (underconscious) and external world? So wrestling into that very medium or relation-content that constructs both our relation to ourselves (self-reflexive) and to understanding/organizing/perceiving world = means it’s easy to get distracted (if it would count as that) by 10,000 things (self and world that we relate to through the inventive medium of language, which really only exists as a medium or RELATION)…
hmmmmm…let me take some time on this instead of just breathing it out
We can fold this into furture discussions where the demarkations are more clear, we got time to evolve.
Enjoy the rest of your day!
i am – and largely thanks to this discussion!
Every sentence a finely crafted journey. I am constantly amazed and thrilled with your work, your ideas, your knitting.
thank you so much John – that is very encouraging
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A nice jig there. A dance of alikes, a dance of comparisons, obscuring and revealing. A digger digging has found some nuggets…
the hope of the digger