“…in the universe of the sign there are no clear-cut identities, only delayed differences. Never a dead end, always an already-but-not-yet; never a genuine original, always an imperfect copy. Language is a simulacrum of simulacra, the privileged hiding-place of the psychoanalyst’s repressed supplement.
“Pushed to its own limits, the difference between identity and difference is that in the world of the former everything sticks to itself, while in the heaven of the latter everything escapes from itself. Comparison rests on a foundation of difference, for once a sign is interpreted it no longer is what it used to be. And exactly therein lies the crux of the matter, for it is well established that the structure of language itself makes perfect translation impossible. It follows that reality is never what it is said to be, for reality and language are never one and the same, a painful lesson…
“The conclusion is straightforward: although word and object are always related, they are never identical.” – Gunnar Olsson, Abysmal
At times unbearable. At times a satisfaction of “all we have” and the effort of maximizing it. At times re-solve (for x?). At times a re-linguishing abandonment: despair.
I study her, hair splitting and spreading, trailing inky-green over the vein-passages, delicately swollen, along the backs of her hands, superfluous and jewelry-like wrist-bones, concatenation and symphony of muscled, cartilage-limned lineations from thigh to knee-bend to calf, turning into sun-drenched marble of ankle, tendon, toes…painted, dusted, perfection…
The beauty will not hold to term. Will never be contained. It was impossible before it began. Eventuated, erupted, but was not “meant” or realized for any capture. It’s irreducible and indescribable, and I always already knew that – thus a torment, self-torture, a suicide term-inating – necessary failures I will elect to die trying: inconceivable, yet experienced; an incalculable worthless worth because unshared and uncommon. Just perception, experience, singular…impossible. Not factual. Incommunicable. HER.
To simply see (receive, perceive, conceive) – non-transferable, i.e. ‘unreal,’ unrepeatable, or ‘not the same’ as that. Untranslatable.
Yes, it starts to map. A conjecture of imaginary spaces, places, locations. Lines drawn wobbly and around, surround, what mystery? To dialogue and dream – hypothesize, surmise, polygraphy. I.e. to fail.
Ends in its begins, becoming something ‘else,’ as self might with each other – between showing new unknowns.
Not sure its believed in any more: “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
The map began as a scribble, a doodle. Begins as a failure to write, to “compose.”
In lieu of a word there’s a wiggle of pen wandering aimless in search. Cartography-graphology-psychology – a loitering for logos.
Begins this way – in hope of words, a sort of squiggle. A body desiring a mind. To show up, to take over, provoke or convince – to appear, make a meaning, disclose – to figure toward sign. Some unconcealing.
The signal’s not there, so it moves: the hand, the instrument, the breath and the heart – are they tools? And for what? A cartographer’s dream. Of no training, no knowledge, even reason is lacking.
A pen making marks on a page, mapping none. Tracing nonsense. It begins in this way, and it leads, so he hopes (it hopes, is hope, is desire).
The scrawl travels over the page – given borders and boundaries, arbitrary and set – 6”x9” and lined with a soft viscous grey. He (it) slows down. Just a hand and an arm and a shoulder – in motion – holding a technical device filled with fluid – black, yes, like bile, but less tacky, diluted – it flows, threading lines – it’s con-fusion – yet taking, biting, inscribed. Something happens. Drawings are locked to a medium stock. Incomprehensibles stained on a page.
It crawls on.
*
This mapping begins in a loss. He is lost. It is lost. Doesn’t “know.” Just beginning, because – with desire. It is driven, compelled, WRITER WANTS (for to write) with “nothing to write, and no means to write it” yet constrained to keep writing, to expunge merely SOMEthing, some THING. Which is NO thing, no THING, but to mark. It goes on.
Makes a map, a map-ping, tangled series of lines meaning nothing, no THING, but creating TO-WARD. Ward off absence, off void, ward off death, this is to – .
It (he) is tired. Is forlorn. Is an absence and loss, a re-mission, re-cursion, re-morse. And not even that clear.
Scribbles on. NOT a map. NOT directions. For NO where to go – NOW here, now HERE, no-where. Which begins all the longing, for “he’s” heard it said, found it written – in signs, in-scribed, sign-i-fied: but NOT HERE. Not in him or this body. NOT THIS. No sense. Non-sense. “It’s” not “working.”
Trail dwindles along cross the page. It’s a map. Just of being. NOW here. Now. HERE. Looks like this – some electrocardiomusculoskeletalpsycognilinguadigital-gram. From this angle, this tool, these techniques. As a Ouija. No meaning. Saussurating. Arbitrary. Mediate. Only markings.
It falters.
And so it begins – as a failure to write – as a scribble – an assay – a tribute to write – that cannot, that will not, that does not…quite occur.
Polysemic Stupor 