Category: absence

notes

On By NW FilbertIn absence, awareness, depression, desire, Experience, fragments, grief, Journal, loneliness, Loss, meaning, Questions, Writing3 Comments

Why not call it magic, this unsettling alloy of grief and anger we experience when shunted by anxiety, disappointment, depression, or loss?

We cannot deny that we crave!  That we are struck through – bolted with fervent desire (all that which we experience as, well, unsettlingly – disturbingly – vital, ALIVE, active, possessive, in us) – when we are crushed, smushed, squelched, or helpless, hopeless, dismayed – how else could we be?

Without the vital, fierce passions – the damage is to no effect/affect.  Depression must press against something.  Must be pressing something down.

“Am I at the right house?” the internet-technology-installer asked from my gate.

“How can I know?” I responded, “it would depend on the future.”

He checked the numbers and moved away.

Now how will we ever know?

Isn’t this what every human encounter re/presents?

So de-pression presses something down in us.  Anxiety stirs.  Sorrow re-cognizes meanings.  No negative without its positive charge.  To be noticeable.  And what is it that is noticeable?  (able-to-be-noticed)?  ONLY DIFFERENCE.  Only time and space and whatever it is those veil, uncover, hide, or displace.

O-ppressed, DE-pressed, what are these SU-ppressing?  Accentuating?  Calling to attention, to activity, awareness, task?

Grief, loss, de-tachment and longing: what do these expose in order to occur? 

Is anything ever lost?

She passes by with a friendly, perhaps even loving and happy wave.  What reality is evoked in the pain of the passed-by, passed-over, un-preferred?  What does it render actually present?

Is it possible that in the “missing” nothing is lost?  Some present is heightened?  Something even added to the present?

In losing a struggle don’t we gain what the effort was for?  Clearly?

Does surrender underscore the sub-ject, the value, the relational ob-ject-ive given over?  Adding acknowledging import?

Difference demonstrates value.  Matter(s).  Sign-if-i-can-ce.  Without difference nothing would know.  Indistinguishable = pure repetition.  (Doesn’t matter).

Passed-over, passed-by, passed-on.  De-pressed, su-ppressed, o-ppressed.  Lost, lossed, re-moved, de-tached, re-apportioned.  ALL LOSS ACCENTUATES HAVE.  ALL DIS-POSSESSION EXPOSES POSSESS.

Difference de-scribes=in-scribes OURSELVES.  What we are constructed from, contain, proffer, offer, obsess, possess, ARE.  What we ARE (have and do).

Our com-position, con-stitution, con-struction are most clearly expressed in difference, ex-posure, de-struction, de-pression, o-ppression, loss.

In de-composition, we know and learn what composes us.

The question beggars: what have we to lose?  What can we lose that in losing its learning is not gained?  What have we to lose?  And how do we know without losing?

 

“All I know is the text” – Samuel Beckett

On By NW FilbertIn absence, Aging, awareness, being, Books, Complexity, Confusion, creative writing, Experience, hope, human, identity, Language, Maurice Blanchot, Reading, Samuel Beckett, thinking, Writing3 Comments

“A voice comes to one in the dark.  Imagine.

…Deviser of the voice and of its hearer and of himself.  Deviser of himself for company.  Leave it at that.  He speaks of himself as of another.  He says speaking of himself, He speaks of himself as of another.  Himself he devises too for company.  Leave it at that.  Confusion too is company up to a point.  Better hope deferred than none.  Up to a point.  Till the heart starts to sicken.  Company too up to a point.  Better a sick heart than none.  Till it starts to break.  So speaking of himself he concludes for the time being, For the time being leave it at that” – Samuel Beckett, Company

“The words spoke by themselves.  The silence entered them, an excellent refuge, since I was the only one who noticed it.” – Maurice Blanchot, The Madness of the Day

So, speaking of himself, I only noticed it.

The small furry animal, almost humming in its purr, he had chance, so he thought, to please, to comfort, with a pet, a scratch, an acknowledgment, tender, while it butted and marked itself against him.  The illusion.  A kind of company in itself (or to).

The ungrammaticality of occurrences.  Of happening.  What happens to be.  Or is not.  When speaking to himself.  Without voice.  I was the only one, as far as I am able to tell – if in fact this is telling – who noticed it.  It seems words speak of themselves.  From elsewise and through whom.  He says, speaking of himself (or to).  Without voice.

Devising.  Illusion.  I devise, he says, speaking to himself, of himself, without voice.  Seeking – is he? – Am I? – Seeking…company?

A small child (another illusion, devised) passes by, walking a young dog and waving a nod of sorts – I don’t remember which, he says, but I returned a gesture and obtained a moment of calm in the chilly Autumn breeze.  There was a sun full of color due to the leaves in their change, and fall, and flutter (due to the nothing-shaped wind).  But what seemed a moment of warmth, of calm, devised by a child with a dog and a friendly (fearful) gesture, he thought (speaking of himself without voice), I was the only one who noticed it.

I take to reading then – others speaking of themselves without voice (or beyond it) – in order to devise… company? he wonders of himself, to himself.  For when reading, it surely seems the words are speaking only of themselves, no matter who pens them.  Such the character of the texts he chooses (I thought of myself, to myself, or an other I devised as myself, like puppets).  And in part read and read for the experience or feeling that I alone notice it.  That I might in fact provide the company I devise, yet hardly able to tell since I have not penned the words but merely notice – borrow, listen? (there are no voices) – the words seem to speak of themselves.  Without voice.  (He said of himself, devising).  Something like company.  Perhaps.

Even in the color-filled sunlight of Autumn days, I at times experience myself as being quite deeply in dark, he says speaking of himself, myself, devising voices, soundless, out of words that seem to be speaking only of themselves and their variegated histories and usages, and billions of potential speakers and hearers and interpreters – creators and devisers – filled with ambiguity and application.  Here with me on shavings of dead trees, providing stark living contrast to Winter’s day-night.  I get confused, he says speaking of himself.  Confusion too is company devised, up to a point, I suppose.  Obviously “fusion-with” implies an other, perhaps enough, I said, speaking to myself, without voice, here on dead leaves in black scars.  In mutilation.  Transgression.  Inscription.  Perhaps the words will speak of themselves and some other “I” will claim to be the only one that notices.

A strange delusion of company indeed.  He says speaking of himself, devising a voice, its hearer, and an himself as participant and therefore a company to keep.

Reading: “only a detour is adequate” (Agamben), and “in pursuing meaning we are pursuing our limits” (Allen), and was perhaps meaning a synonym or metaphor, simile or metonymy for company he thought, speaking to himself, without voice.  But with an illness, diagnosed by doctors – those scientific political powers responsible for providing facts or devising happenings, pronouncing occurrences – so in any case he is not alone, being-with his illness, I thought, speaking to myself in an absence of sound.  The words spoke by themselves.

Other things as well: the furry animal, its humming purr, its actions; the trees, the leaves, the wind, the light.  The child, the dog, the gestures.  The books, the authors, the words themselves.  Divisors of voices, of hearers, of selves.  Sick hearts, confusion, and company.  Am I the only one who notices? he says speaking of himself, speaking of himself as another.

So speaking of himself he concludes for the time being, For the time being leave it at that.” – Samuel Beckett

 

 

Out of the Woods

On By NW FilbertIn absence, being, change, desire, fragments, identity, Journaling, loneliness, longing, nature, Writing3 Comments

“Why did you come out of your place in the woods?” I was asked.

“I guess so,” I replied.

So what?

This I find I cannot answer.  It is irrational.  Perhaps to stir and sense?  Dis- or un-cover?  “Strife” (from Ancient conceptions of the term).  Turbulence.  That something rather than nothing?  Not to have one’s hands folded on one’s lap? (Dostoevsky).  How should I know?  It’s irrational.

Unreasonably, I’ve begun.

Of course beginning will destroy things:  my stasis, comfort, stillness.  Family roles, relationships, profession.  Any beginning changes everything before (prior) to it.  Friendships, rituals, schedules, habits.

To START (anything) means to RUIN.

And also…BEGIN.

In other words, if I (one) reach out – lash, swipe, caress, call, correspond, text, touch, encounter or engage – an Other (one)… all will be disturbed… it’s the nature of contact between living beings: landscapes, art, humans, animals, spaces, times, words, events.  Everything alters at encounter.  Period.

If I (or we) are available (or needy) and therefore present ourselves (vulnerably) to a reality (actuality, happenstance, opportunity, occurrence) everything changes.

Past.  History.  Future.  Meaning.  Understanding.

So “Why did you come out of your place in the woods?”

What was my ‘place in the woods’?

Repetition.  Familiarity.  Habitue.

Security?  Comfort?  Compatibility with my environs?

I must have desired DIFFERENCE.

And how to account for that?

This is something we just do.

Clothes, taste, touch, belief, surroundings, movement – variance, dissimilitude, change – this signals in some way to our mechanistic (apparently) methodology of ‘survival’ – that we’ve ‘still go it,’ still HAPPEN, to-be… we live.  Are a-live.  Existence.  (See how the noun – the naming/defining – kills it?  Stills and destroys it?).  Existing.

Out of the woods I desire – not to be “existing”, not to crave “existence.”  I do not want any THING.  SOMEthing. I am simply wanting to be-ing… indefinable, indescribable, occurring, happening, all-live – not staid enough, locatable or timed enough to be characterized, apportioned, described and named.  No!  I (for one) am wanting to be happenING, impossible to capture, occur-ING, become-ING, vital not repeatable, unique not typified, tabulated, calculated or classified.

And thus, and so, I change (again).  Again.

Again I come out of the woods.

I be-come.  Out from the woods.

I say, I write, I speak, I act.

I am.

Friends to Fall

On By NW FilbertIn absence, Aging, Dying, Experimenctes, fiction, fragments, friendship, human, loneliness, seasons, Traces, Writing1 Comment

Elf says “ripe.”

Martin responds, wondering.  Curious as to that which it applies, or whom, or what.  Contemplating reference.  Filled with questions.  Martin says, “yes,” almost under his breath.

Elf shrugs.  Elf walks on.

Martin follows, thinking, looking at leaves falling into blades of grass, alerted by the shushing and darting of squirrels, saddened at the amplified pffft of cars passing by.  Wishing for silence.  Wondering if Elf will speak a further word or two.  Sensing like a dowsing rod for meanings.

Walks on.  Shuffles.  Walks on.

Martin, too.

There’s a relative silence from the two of them – these humans wandering across a concreted trail.  Sure there’s the sound of their footfalls, scuffles, even some noise in the pause of it.  Or the noise of the absence of noise.  But you’d have to be different to hear the breathing, the heart pulse, the slide of muscles and blood.  As far as humans-in-environs go, the pair presents retraction.

Hard to say for soil.  The squares composing sidewalk must suffer pressure, absorbed by the earth beneath and shared out through verberations for miles.  Hard to say for air.  Full-grown males, plodding forth like prows along a rickety line-of-motion has to be pushing particles around, making waves.  Nothing gives report.

Elf stops and sighs.

Martin responds, slowing, looking out, looking forward, looking round.  Lets his hands limp his sides.

Elf crouches down.

Martin scans the street, examines bark, follows trunks and branches, admires leaves and colors and movements.  Birds.

Elf.

Martin.

Already Alone – Norway, October, 2016

On By NW FilbertIn absence, being, existence, human, Image, Language, loneliness, meaning, nature, reclusion, Reflections, time, Wittgenstein, Writing7 Comments
wittgensteinskjolden
Wittgenstein’s Cabin – Skjolden, Norway

ALREADY ALONE

Norway, October, 2016

 

Far from.

As near as I can be, as near as I can tell, I am far.

Far from.  And already alone.

So long I dreamt this cabin, this hovel, this cave.

Some safety, a distance – ‘solitary’ space.

*

Who ever would I be – were I alone?

What am I – alone?

Where is one – alone?

*

Silence quickly transforms into noise.  One’s ‘self.’

Alone.

These window cubes, cut from concrete.

These thick and stony walls.

Such noisy fire.

*

I am far.

Far from.

So very long – already alone.

And yet I’ve just arrived again.

*

It is cold.

Often, always, winter.

Sheer, spare, space.

Hardened, austere, edges, boundaries, shapes.

We are separated.  Blocked.  Reaching…

I am.  Here.  Alone.

Always.

Already.

Alone.

*

But not really quite.

Not really quite – all one.

Alone, never seems to actually equal – all-one.

Even though it’s used as stand-in.

Words.

*

I write.

Here in this far-removed, distance-sequestered solitude.

I AM.

Yet I only AM…

…in relation to.

I am not, not ever, NEVER ‘ALL-ONE,’ ‘AL-ONE,’

‘I’ am all-ways, al-ways, IN-RELATION-TO

in order…to BE…even ONE.  Even singular

demands plurality.

And so forth, and so on…

*

I…am UN-ABLE to ‘BE’ without an-Other, another,

TO-BE-IN-RELATION-TO –

a note, a chord, a color…

a line, a shape, a term…

some weather

*

‘Language’ as we’ve come to consider, think, imagine…it…

‘simplified’: NOT ONE BIT W/O THE OTHER.

*

NOT ONE BIT W/O THE OTHER

*

My youngest son (10 years old) has heard

a strange, elaborate, convoluted and contested myth/story/fiction/fantasy (hypothesis)

about the “Origin of the World”

involving particles, waves, heat, light, sub-sub-sub quantum symbols & movement –

all sorts of scientific (& notably human) inventions

from Professor(s) AZIFF…

“as if”

these might declare, or describe, inscribe or explain

SOMEthing, ANYthing

about…EXISTENCE…EXISTING… (EX-is-tence, EX-is-ting…’out of’)

*

I heard stories as well (as-if)

that A god (or many) breathed, touched, loved, crashed

SOMEthings, ANYthings into be-ing…

that there ‘likely’ (or MAY HAVE BEEN – according to human conjure)

a “Big Bang”

another Big Daddy of heat…of particles…of waves…of sub-stance…of light…

or MORE,

or LESS

*

Wavesparticlessomethinginmotionimplosionsexplosions WORDS

InthebeginningasfarasWE’reconcernedwastheWORDlogossymbolmarksign

SOMEthingOTHER-thanwhatIS-AZIFF-asifperhaps

[how might it be ANYthing other than ANYone’s guess, among us, pray tell?  WHO or WHAT might qualify – among US – as arbiters or judges, experts or prophets – and by what measures or standards (or WHOSE?) as each of us species-specifically WE?]

inotherWORDSinod,bow,listen…WHOtellsthestorythatMOSTaccordswithME?

andsoitgoes…WORDS

*

and it alters – it changes – the stories – generation to generation

depending on the rulers, the beliefs, the ‘logics,’ the ‘sciences,’ the ‘mathematics,’

the tools, the techniques…

and it alters…from season to season…

depending on the ‘outlook’ or ‘prognosis,’ ‘fellow-feeling’ or ‘concern,’ – survival needs

Some call Physics, others Philosophy, some Religion, others S.T.E.M. or art or politic or publicsocialpolicy…some Business (nearly all)…das capital

Each and every DIFFERENT time

a ‘this is how it is,’ a ‘this is what we know’

i.e., a ‘THIS WE BELIEVE.”

*

Our creedal species.

And I…

I say…

Some say…

“No Matter,”

“No Substance,”

“No Essence”

…”WHATEVER.”

*

Always a begin – always a play of language (nigh-universal) and power (universal).  PERHAPS –

And so it goes (or so ‘I’ imagine…or ‘so it seems’ to – ‘ME’) and so forth, and so on…

…the playing field remaining species-equal betwixt athlete and artist, philosopher, scientist, politician and doctor, worker and ruler and indigent intelligent…so far as ‘I’ can tell of it…

*

HERE NOW I.  NOWHERE ME.  Language – experience – meaning – species: HUMAN.

“All the Same?”

Equalists all, at fundament.

Inequalists all, at experience.

Thus: equations.actions.creations.obstructions.thoughts.languages.behaviors.codes.might.

“Might”…a PERHAPS…a possibility…a WE (species-specifically): DON’T KNOW.

*

It is thus I invent and inscribe.

Posit.

Create.

Detract.  Distract.  Distrust.  Conjure.  Conspire.

Attempt a BE-come…becoming…convergence.

Attempting to BE.

And another is able to write “Why the World does not Exist”

And another “Being and Time” and still more “Being and Nothingness” and still more

all kinds of SOMEthings and SOMEones and ANY’s…

with their WORDS.

and mine, and ours, and we

*

I write.

Far from.

As near as I can be, as near as I can tell, I am far.

Far from.  And already alone.

wittgensteincabin

Untitled – Fiction for Becoming

On By NW FilbertIn absence, Aging, death, Experimenctes, fiction, fragments, Image, Jesse Ball, Jon Fosse, Language, Literature, Maurice Blanchot, Questions, Writing3 Comments
sleefa2016
image by Summer Lee – http://www.summerleeart.com/

Untitled Fiction : Years of Birth, Becomings

Jesse’s working up something, so is Jon.  I’ve begun working again.  Beckett is still dead.  Or dead, still – either way he has not concluded.

There was plenty of talk – banter, chatter, fulminations, really – to the contrary, to the effect that the ‘working up’ had ceased, had dwindled, long since dissipated or been simply forgotten…not so.  Now I’ve heard from Jon and Jesse, piecemeal though it be, and my own ‘working-on’ (or UNWORKING, as MB always referred to it) is near to its inception.

Something is going to emerge.  Jon repeats and repeats that “Someone is going to come” and Jesse appears to have passed beyond the silence once begun, through all his notes of suicide, toward fire and conflagration and some bewildered youthfulness.  Nohow On become a MUST.  And all of it inconclusive, i.e. not concluded.

I work in, on, up, and ever forward, toward – ‘toward the what?’  Jon keeps asking while Jesse scrawls on napkins – figures like cartoons, clowns and foxes, masters, slaves, and mysteries – our locations go unmarked, our whereabouts unknown.  This is How It Is, according to Beckett and MB.  FK in the burrow.  Plato in a cave.  JD taking apart each domicile, meticulously.

We are looking for a place to work at our unworking, the time and space to be for what is not.  Beckett named it The Unnameable.

I took to the books and letters, while apparently the others wrote, made messages and codes, secreted the symbols into texts and silences, plays and fictions full of pause.  GWFH, another spell of YHWH, foretold this long ago: “the ends are reached and reached beyond, folding under, folding through, reached again, again, and…”

For years now Jon is melancholy and therefore quite abbreviated, unable to go on, full of stutters, repetitions, and always the questions, questioning, questing, the undone.  Jesse through his trials and papered rooms, sometimes near and sometimes foreign, never-know, never-mind, never-where, scraping geography and clouds in search of where No Where and Now Here meet.  I’ve thus far been unable to locate him.  As for Ivan, Ivan and Enrique both stopped working after the library of loss – assembling detectives, interviewing the dumb and victimized, missals here and there, mostly filled of snow and jungle.

I think: crows spread across the overcast, charred ash sprinkling fields, nothing rooted, nothing grown.

The unworking.  Almost a throw of the dice.  Half of each sentence erased.  The subtle coterie of literate mathematicians.  Reports from elsewhere.  WG’s layered travelogue… in search of… The work of unworking goes on.

“Splitting on difference,” he said, the passage from mayhem to insight – WG described as “Vertigo,” the verge, the swerve, the swoon.  You reach an edge or limit, what cannot be undone, begin unworking.  Begin unworking there.

At the grave “I can’t go on.  I must go on.  I’ll go on,”  Beckett decries.  It’s not at understanding – “splitting on difference” – but in the going-on, turning over/under, inexhaustibly or ad infinitum – convergences coming undone.

From JD Jesse gets a Post Carte, leaves it somewhere in the margins, but we know.  We know we have heard, even if we can’t re-member.  All variations of death, Jon thinks, Jon writes, Jon says…assembling the book of questions…the interior distance of this fierce and beautiful world filled with women, fire, and dangerous things…keeping MB in infinite conversation.

Some things don’t make sense yet seem imperative.  As if there were a realm of the unsayable, a set of stanzas wedding language and death – signifying nothing – that is to say, a world of unspeakable silence that works like clamor.

Exhausting voice and nothing more.  The trouble with pleasure, with suffer, with become.  None of us trust ideas and yet we generate and respond.

“He was found lying on the ground.  No one had missed him.  No one was looking for him… An old woman found him.” (Beckett).  We somehow set out to search.  “That seems to hang together.”  Jon, Jesse, WG, myself, scouring the globe for more – who, what…- “But finally I asked if I knew exactly what the man – what exactly was required of the man, what it was he could or could not say.  No, was the answer, after some little hesitation, no, I did not know…” and so we keep on.

“A voice comes to one in the dark.  Imagine.” JD post carte.  Beckett’s own death, still.  GWFH, WG, FK and MB’s left messages, notes, recordings.  “Only a small part of what is said can be verified”…if any.  We are left, bereft, full of fragments, thoughts concluded, forgotten, ignored, but still unworking – in journeys, in dramas, in fire.  Hanging at the limits of ropes.  To strangle or drop, and what then?  What next?  Splitting on difference.  It comes apart, what holds together.  No one knows.  Nowhere, now here, very difficult to say.  Meticulous dismantling, decode – recode – Unicode – uncode.

…Jesse’s working up something, as is Jon.  I’ve begun working again.  Beckett is still dead.  Or dead, still – either way he has not concluded.  Piecemeal as it may be, we are all working on (or UNWORKING, as MB liked to refer to it)…and nearing some inception.

Continuing Reading Writing

On By NW FilbertIn absence, creative writing, Language, life, Literature, meaning, Parapraxis, Philosophy, Samuel Beckett, Writing6 Comments

“an ‘absoluteness of absence’ if writing is to be possible” – Jacques Derrida

Certain works by Samuel Beckett eventuate an environment of silence for me.  For instance, the brief poem “What is the Word?”

What Is the Word

folly –

folly for to –

for to –

what is the word –

folly from this –

all this –

folly from all this –

given –

folly given all this –

seeing –

folly seeing all this –

this –

what is the word –

this there –

this this here –

all this this here –

folly given all this –

seeing –

folly seeing all this this here –

for to –

what is the word –

see –

glimpse –

seem to glimpse –

need to seem to glimpse –

folly for to need to seem to glimpse –

what –

what is the word –

and where –

folly for to need to seem to glimpse what where –

where –

what is the word –

there –

over there –

away over there –

afar –

afar away over there –

afaint –

afaint afar away over there what –

what –

what is the word –

seeing all this –

all this this –

all this this here –

folly for to see what –

glimpse –

seem to glimpse –

need to seem to glimpse –

afaint afar away over there what –

folly for to need to seem to glimpse afaint afar away over there what –

what –

what is the word –

what is the word

– Samuel Beckett

Perhaps the what where is always what we’re attempting to tell.  Perhaps that’s eternal recurrence / return.  The when is always known.  Always NOW.  The folly, truly folly, of our attempt to tell the what where that is our being, our being NOW, always being NOW, no when needed, no whom known, just what where presently…occurring.  Is this always what we are attempting to say?  To find words for?  To tell?  What where, now?  Always NOW – whether reading or writing, assailing past, present or future – it is NOW that it’s occurring, but what? where?  And what is the word?  What are the words for this what where we’re attempting to tell?  This is my writing, reading – in a way, it seems, the all of it – my folly.  Perhaps what where is unnameable.  

And so I also offer a reading – for even as soon as I re-read my own writing – I cannot remember the whom or what-where of the writing.  Because the reading is always right NOW.  This reading – a chapter from Mark C. Taylor’s book Tears (as both eye-leak or suffering and rift-split-rip-“tear”) entitled “How to do Nothing with Words”  (my own copy a rainbow of highlights and symbolized marginalia – like all that I read significance to). If this sort of thing – this philosophizing or wondering writing – is not of your interest – don’t bother.  But if it is kind of intriguing, or causes curiosity, I find this chapter a compelling and admirable attempt to descry the “what is the word?” tussle I constantly struggle and strive for enacting the telling what where.  

Tears

(click image for chapter, or here: How to do Nothing with Words)

And, after all that…here is neither, a short writing by Beckett to go on with…

neither

To and fro in shadow from inner to outershadow

from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself by way of neither

as between two lit refuges whose doors once neared gently close, once turned away from gently part again

beckoned back and forth and turned away

heedless of the way, intent on the one gleam or the other

unheard footfalls only sound

till at last halt for good, absent for good from self and other

then no sound

then gently light unfading on that unheeded neither

unspeakable home

– Samuel Beckett

Thank you for your time.  It goes on…

 

The Empties

On By NW FilbertIn absence, being, creative writing, fiction, fragments, Friday Fictioneers, Loss, meaning, Science, Writing14 Comments

It has been a long time since I’ve participated in the stellar Friday Fictioneers writing challenge and consortium, hosted and enabled by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.

Phriday Phictioneers Phone

In many times of my life, this simple challenge has kept my creative writing inertia active when seemingly the rest of my life-world was mitigating against it (such as currently).  I am happy to join this group again, and hopefully contribute small pieces of worth… and ensure my pen stays active.  Thank you Friday Fictioneers!

FFimage08_2016

The Empties

For ages, they spoke about ‘the Empties.’  Of everything, they said.  No emotion, no perception, no experience, or meaning.  No one would know.  Even absence would be left behind.  We imagined, but really hadn’t.  It must have come.  If/then occurred.  This be ‘the Empties.’  There is no knowing.  There is no happens.  There is no history or time.  Perhaps no space.  A strange again of Only Things.

Alias Thinks Back…On…

On By NW FilbertIn absence, Aging, Alias Harlequin, awareness, creative writing, death, desire, Experience, Journaling, Language, loneliness, longing, Loss, love, Melancholy, time, Uncertainty, Writing6 Comments

“To bring a work to ‘a conclusion,’ as Picasso said, is like putting an end to a bull – to kill it.”

-Francois Jullien-

diaries

from the diaries…

Woke this morning with a particular feeling.  I’ve never been one to believe people could name their emotions or feelings.  The best we can say are parts.

Words like a parts catalog: indicating pieces and components, but never the working, not the operative whole.  Machines are full of mystery.  What’s hidden.

They say you cannot know.  As you age.  Cannot know if it’s the end, exactly.  Perhaps they’re right – I’ve surely been surprised in middle age, believing everything was lost, doomed, downhill and erosive, some slow and steady depleting – and then WOW!  Who could have known or imagined!  This luck, this place, this woman or experience!  Perhaps.  Perhaps.  But maybe we do.  Maybe we really know, once twilight settles.  I’ve never trusted “them” – the “experts,” the “scholars” and “scientists,” “politicians” or “leaders” or “doctors,” the “speakers for” and “authorities”…i.e. privileged observers (an illusion or delusion or both – no one ever gets to be ‘outside’ existence, any more than any other).

What with Laramie gone, and a birthday round the corner, and language just a parts catalog – my experience.

I woke with a particular feeling.  That things were near their ends.  That I am nearing ends.  Work, love, breathing, will.  That the stories I’m involved with are dwindling in pages, thin and wearing out.  These ‘particular feelings,’ “somehow we just know,” kinds of things: lay down, close your eyes, cross your hands over your chest and hope things are in order.  Or not.  Depends on inclination and values, I suppose.  What one cares about, or for.  Perhaps.  “They” say you cannot know.

I’ve been surprised.  Even wildly.  Much I’ve never been able to believe and yet it seems: my children – engendered by me and of such promise; this beautiful woman that loves me; that I’m still alive.  One never knows (is what they say).  So who knows what?  And how do “they” know that?

I think I do, what with Laramie gone, and my faulty parts catalog, and this particular way that I feel.  I’ve worked too long and too much.  Tried too failingly.  Never quite trusted or believed.  Never found my worth.  Maybe now I know.  Maybe now I’m certain of something.

The end is coming – for me – always concerned and consternated by beginnings – how to start, where to set out – and now, here (nowhere) the path, it dwindles away.  What have I done?  What did I mean to?  What did I wish?  Why didn’t I?

I wanted to write a scholarly work about something that truly obsessed me.  Something I’d spent my life searching.  Something that likely doesn’t even exist, but no matter – because Scrabble, because poems, because science.  Unscramble (by scrambling) the letters – you’ll see: it can almost be said, almost anything – existent or not – almost.  Parts constructing strange wholes and plugged in, eventual malfunctions, repairs – and yet “no matter, try again, fail again, fail better” (Sam Beckett – I’ve read and I’ve taught far too long).

And one solid work of fiction and some poems.  That’s all.  That’s what I wanted to do.

So I studied, and traveled and loved.  Raised children, made music, pushed learning and literature publicly, worked and worked, and drank and drank.  Took in stragglers and strays, made it work where I could, doubted and doubted, desired.  Everything but what I wanted – that’s how you perpetuate desire.

I woke today with a particular feeling, though “they” say you cannot know.  Cannot know for certain, that things are yet to surprise you, yet to get better.  I will not argue.  Perhaps.  But what with Laramie gone, and all that’s undone, maybe I know, maybe we do.  Maybe we’re aware when our endings are coming.  Who could know?  Who could tell us?

My ends are coming.

I can’t go on.

I’ll go on.

(still more from Beckett)

Related: Alias Harlequin

Signifying Writing, Figure 1

On By NW FilbertIn absence, Art, awareness, Confusion, desire, Experimenctes, Graphotos, human, Image, Language, Mapping, Semiotics, sign, Traces, Writing9 Comments
Opicinus De Canistris World Map
Figure 1

Opicinus De Canistris World Map

*

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.