“Pangs of faint light and stirrings still. Unformable graspings of the mind. Unstillable”
– Samuel Beckett –
Let’s loiter about here a little, as if language were lakelike, locatable, alive enough to lollygag loose within. Perhaps not. Perhaps it is nearly always just-becoming. Perhaps nearly all, nearly always, is thus: just-becoming – liminal lineaments languishing-then-livened, languishing-then-livened, “again” we might say, designating (de-term-ining) a balance to enlivened. How so? Why so? By what author(ity)?
Unstillable.
“In the madhouse of skull and nowhere else” (– Samuel Beckett). Is that so?
“Skin has no choice but to converse with the world…thin, ignorant borderland of skin…myself all trespass, misunderstanding, translating, translating…” (-Laurie Sheck). Is that so?
If words were invented with sense. To “make sense” between one and an ‘other.’
What if words ARE THAT? Connective contours between.
I am inebriated, my willingness loosened to expression, though it might ruin me (like language) and I stare (Dostoevsky – ‘Myshkin’) “intently” into Mikhail Bakhtin’s face, his specific eye-gaze, and say:
“Is it the case that words are ‘meant,’ are ‘formed,’ are breathed, are…constructed, are…utilized, to be tissue woven between ‘me’…and ‘you’?”
Do we… speak, say, expire back and forth… to become? To string and weave lines, flows, strands, threads, that might forge or invent co-respondence, texture, significations combining you and myself into WE?
But Bakhtin is dead, and cannot answer. Mikhail Bakhtin does not have the capacity to co-respond.
…like Beckett, Blanchot, Plato, Montaigne, Pessoa, Pascal, Wallace or Euclid, Bulgakov, Heraclitus, or Celan (as with any and all dead!) he emits traces (tracings) with which I can consider, decipher, and interrogate in and within my ‘selves’ but not between…
What might this ‘mean’ – between anyone? Nothing.
It can not, has no opportunity to, delineate or circumscribe, draft, figure or shape any relation.
Sign emitted, call evoked, death, and then text as silent partner. Prognostic retrograde delineation.
Bankrupt, impassible, impossible, communique.
The decoding of words as communication, connection? An imaginary. A handling of terms. Inventing, devising, originary. With whom? Where? How? Hint and vestige, remnant and sketch, scheme and fabrication, inkling and outline.
Unstillable. Unformable graspings of the mind. Is that so?
If we’re limning the liminal now, let’s loosen the letters and slacken the sieves. Lasso and lounge, scatter and scrape, together (to gather) – a scintillate sense – sporadic sparks, succulent scenarios – exist for enlivening language, whatever limited lust lies therein – if language is locatable and not merely modal mechanics? A modicum of music then, some scrap of sonority, some lingual litmus ‘making sense.’ Whatever. Possibility, potential, particible particulars…
“THE TEST IS COMPANY”
“If there may not be no more questions let there at least be no more answers”
– Samuel Beckett, Company –
“We must not die: kindred spirits will be found”
– Viktor Shklovsky –
Reading these posts aloud helps me appreciate them — the sounds of the words, the alliterations, the lists, and the parallel structures. I discovered this when reading them aloud to my brother. He and I both liked this piece.
Thank you very much Herr Lemons. As the comment quotation intimates – I find out all sorts of things about my usage of language by the comments that come from those bored enough to while time away with them… it supposed in me (your comments) the recognition that the assemblage owes at least as much (if not much more) to my origins in music as to my failed attempts at meaning. Thank you for saying so…
Yes! I agree on the sounds. The very opening caught me mouth agape. I wanted to fall into grassy sand and listen to the words, the l’s and o’s and a’s and m’s fall into the water’s current and spill over my toes. Quite lovely, Friend. xxxx
Non omnis moriar.
https://imperativeobservationsmk2.com
Do Like it. Now you have my Gravatar
hope it is reciprocal.
Bridie.
Thank you so much. I’m not savvy with digital reciprocality, you may need to specify for me what you may want from me. I am engaging your works with interest and grateful for your efforts at thought and expression. I am curious to convergences and weaves, clashes and hitches, betwixt our experiences with world. Thank you so much for the gift of time and consideration (unmerited) – re: reading my attempts. It is an honor to read yours as well.
That I’ve found how to use this reply to comments has kept me busy all afternoon.
Can’t get to watch my soccer!
As I am digitally illiterate I only ask about Word Press technology in the hope I find something new out. My time is preciously taken up getting down on paper what enters my brain, and editing it the best way I can.
Everything I write is disposed to cover the action of principles as they define themselves.
It will in the end require linguistic experts to apply the template within their own discipline.
Apart from my personal interest in dementia, all languages contain the same basic principles and provide a rich and colorful tapestry for new and constructive thought.
Thank you for your kind observations – they are encouraging!
Bridie.