Category: desire

Deranger

On By NW FilbertIn communication, Complexity, creative writing, desire, Experience, Language, love, meaning, Writing2 Comments

Someday maybe, someone will say of me that I “tore up language,” made it useless.

Maybe, someday, someone will “feel” that.  That I destroyed something precious.  Something necessary.  Like oxygen, or water: something we could not live without.  And I ruined it.  Like meaning.

That would be something.  Something I could do, with nothing.

Simple undoing.  To sequester and burn.  Try or experiment.  Atomic bombing atoms.  Untangle into knots – vacuum emptiness, so to (un)speak.  Rather ask than say.  Rather ponder or wonder than postulate or state.  To query, not question.  Change, not challenge.

Disorder and dismember as an alternative to reordering and remembering.  Dissolute versus dissolve.  “Me.”

.

How significant that would be!  How real and present I might become!  How impossible to ignore!  Then ‘I’ might come, be-come, cum-cum… be undone, finally.

.

De-ranger opposing A-rRanger.  The chaos, disturbance, tremor and volatility… the tension pulling on the only bottom we can conceive… the bottomless.  Topless.  Beautiful that way.  Exposed.  Denuded.  Open.  Available.  A fresh take.  Lake.  Like.  Lack.  Unknowable.  Perhaps deep or infinite.  Perhaps uncontained.

.

Let’s say “language.”  Let’s say molecules, atoms, cells.  Let’s say “space” or “time.”  Let’s say “let us say.”  (i.e. let’s assume something).

.

Like hallucinogenetic drugs without purpose.  Instrumentalization.  Meaning.  Like feeling too cold or too warm.  Like grief or ecstasy – any of these experiences we don’t understand.

.

Disjunctive dysfunction.  The uncanny.  Morphology.  K would call it (maybe) “infinite possibilities of infinities without numeration – perhaps most of which are empty” – and how would we know (or be able to know) what that means?  Like this here = that.

.

Suppose you could “see” it (imagine – image-in) – I use language.  I’d use language.  I would.  To “see” it.  To image-in, to imagine the impossible…compossible.

.

To love.  To be.  To live.  To try.

.

Apparently (according to K) that doesn’t “do” anything – doesn’t instrumentalize or operationalize the unknown potential, even though I compare it with sound or dance or computers or nuclear war – as physical.

.

Whatever.  (Exactly!).  The vague potential of supposed infinite possibilities we cannot possibly comprehend, uncover, dis-cover, realize (as far as we know, at our scale of experiencing) – but how is it not part of these possibilities?  Actualized, instrumented (pen / paper / sign), operated-in or upon or with or for…

.

Whatever.

Exactly.

.

Here is your possible result: an 100th Monkey.

.

Water moved all over me – a bath, a shower, the rain… I broke my skin stumbling on a curb, and bled… a knife, a table… Ha!  I have a body.  Yes, there it is.  Maybe I’ll make love – what will be discovered then?  Yes, “we.”  I have a porous body.

.

Another reason writing is an instrumentalized “reason.”  Eat this.  Peace among worlds.  Going on a manhunt for a woman.  A particular ‘one.’  Watch me (if you want).

.

I can pull at the hair on my face.  I just gathered my child in an embrace (a ‘hug’ we called it).  Ha!  I have a body, it is porous.  Operationalized by “desire” (we call it).

.

Part II: Language (we call it).

.

Floor (feet feel).  Hair (hands hold, harry, hank).  Skin (sentences slit, suckle, sense, susurrate, sing).  Grass (gander, gaze, grab, grackle).  Oh the things you can do!  Meaningless, morbid possibilities.

.

To prove – ? What? – “I” hear?  “I” touch?  “I” see?  Taste?  Feel?  Encounter?  Interrupt?  Intrude?  Act with and upon?  To what purpose?

.

Proof of possibility?  Infinite (unknown) potentials?  What do “I,” am “I,” wanting?

.

“Desire” I wrote (instrumentalized) earlier.  Ha.  A word.  An action.  [I have a porous body].  “I” (what I call) “love.”

.

In other words, this was the day K hobbled away.  You wouldn’t understand.  [meanings].

.

I’ve written other words, even what might be called “assemblages” (markings in accord with other ‘possibilities’…infinitely (?) variable).

.

In other words… the spread of the tree.  This one sends its branches this way into the world… (porous)… this one yearns vertically… these at certain angles… sentences… reactions…

.

I am thankful for Kansas… for sex… for her… for elsewhere…

.

For Pakistan.  Where she first appeared… from California… I “love.”

.

It’s, she’s, notable.  Noteworthy.  I mark them.

.

The refrain: I love.  I have loved.  I will.  [“desire”]

.

“I” say “yes”

.

Yes, M.  Yes D.  Yes A, T, H, H, J, M, T, J, M, J, S, R, R, R… yes almost anyone almost anywhere… yes.

.

Yes.

.

Let us try this out: language.  Touch.  “Yesterday.”

.

And something becomes.  The unknown (unknkowable?) – K’s infinities paralleled and interwoven.  What is liminal.

.

The liquid between every book on my shelves, every line, the air and its waves, the light and hard matter.  [porous].

.

G, D, K, M, Lispector… what do we see?  Le spectre.  The specter.  What we see.  What can (not) be seen.

.

The visible and the touchable – “the Prose of this World.”

.

“You.”

.

Trees sprout branches slantwise.

.

Language.

Silence.

.

Whatever.

Exactly.

.

And there… the name “Steiner.”  A Viking.  A Spartan.  A Cherokee.  And there is “rain” (we call it).  And I: love.  And that can be its own end.  The German.  The Thai.  The Nubian.  Each native as The World Goes On in The Physics of Sorrow… selected, selected, selected…

.

Selah.

for LMK: Living Mitigates Knowing: the Sirens’ Song

On By NW FilbertIn being, desire, ecstasy, eros, Joy, Living, love, meaning, Other, Poetry, relation, Writing2 Comments

Birdcall.

Morning.

Activity-signal.

 

Somewhere day arrives.

 

We are in bed.

Day neither comes nor goes.

Neither night.

 

We inhabit a single chair.

A reciprocal rebellion.

Atemporal, atopos.

 

The other.

The relation.

The kiss

 

that undoes the you, the me,

joining any separation

as touch

 

along with bodies of skin,

skinned together,

indeterminable

 

without one, another

within, without each –

a combinatory beast

 

where components are absent,

extended, present-ly,

be-coming

 

birdcalls and signals

dependent on immanent surrounds;

nothing undone,

 

anything in their crafty work

and wrestling,

Eriegnis, evental –

 

a pleasure and desire

formulating forms

without priors –

 

echoed and originary;

unpredictable, unknown;

tandem happenings

 

we sometimes describe

 

as love.

Ways of Naysaying

On By NW FilbertIn absence, communication, desire, Experimenctes, Language, love, Negativity, relation, Uncertainty, WritingLeave a comment

It was funny how she, how I, refused, declining enticing invitations of love.  Once.

Then again.  Or not.

Still, it happens, rejected or otherwise.  Naysaying, that is.

Negotiations.

Strange relations.  Using yes for no, and their returns and variations.

She says no though.  I did.

It eventuates, seemingly regardless of our answers.

Check boxes.  Lists.  Identities.  Likert-scales of experiencing.

Mouths inclining.  Decline.  A trajectory of eyes.  Reclining seduction.

I decided not to go along.  (Where do we go instead?  Who goes?  When?).  Each denial an assent.

What did the trees refuse?  What was the grass fighting, then?  The clouds?  I watched… she observed birds.

The dancers’ bodies.  A dismissal of space.  The removal of sound.  Absent silences.

Where was she?  I?

We said no.

Do words incline or recline for us?  What of the ear, the eye?

Still I smelled her.

“I love,” I thought, “I cannot love.  I can not.”  She declines.

These are the ways of naysaying, all our doubled negatives, equaling… what, exactly?

I love her.  I can not.  She won’t.  Will not.  Negativity in a vacuum.  Apparatus.

The squirrel upside down, above the lawn, on the long tree limb.  What is it denying?  And where is the use of speech?

We cried out, decrying.  (What could that mean?  That seems always in question).

I asked Beckett and Blanchot.  They each said that she said “no.”

Apparently, she says “no.”  “I’d really like to, but can not, must not,” i.e. “no.”

It rings out, like bells – so radiant, so silent, such dissipation.  Such temporal hazard and warning.

Something refuses the air.

I remember.  She traces back.  What means “over”?

Sound refusing silence.  The first.  The second.  The next.

What is “last”?

She says no.

I recall dreams from time to time.  Unable.

Something may have been said.

A Conversation of Humanity

On By NW FilbertIn Aging, creative writing, desire, Experimenctes, grief, Journaling, memory, Writing1 Comment

A man stumbles into a bar… (perhaps you’ve heard this one before)… truly more of a sauntering in seeming need of assistance… must be no stranger here, his drinks await him wherever he finds or chooses or results in sitting: a something-with-vodka, large glass of water, and occasionally a cup filled with coffee.

“You’re the one that always has books,” some say, “you some kind of writer or something?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he mumbles.  “I’m always tired, I feel ugly and old, I don’t like my body but don’t desire doing anything about it, perhaps I should, I’m sure to lose it someday…” (he isn’t talking to anyone).  “Thank you, always, you’re ever so kind,” he says.

He says “My children seem to remember me,” shifting in his chair as if to leave, or relocate tables, “my children they seem to remember, and they hurt me, they have hurt me, my body hurts, mostly in sport, and what they do and don’t remember.”  He opens a book, looks as if he’s reading, another round of drinks appears.

He writes and marks in many colors.  He is dirty.  He wears overalls and moccasins.  He never seems cold.  It is cold.

“I decided to shower today,” he mutters.  “Some ladies still talk to me,” something-and-vodka drips through his beard, “some will even hug or hold me yet, even this way” (patting his belly, grimacing) “I guess I didn’t like my smell or simply thought it might change me, it’s awful hard to be alone with my body.”  He moves, his drinks are waiting at another table, both fresh fills and half-drunks, and a sandwich of some kind.  The cook passes and pats him on the shoulder, smiles, asks of how he’s doing.  They hug.  The man praises him and his eyes are moist.  The man isn’t anyone in particular.  He isn’t anyone.

“What you doing with all those books?” she asks, he thinks.  Pretends that someone’s interested.  “Not the young ones much anymore,” he says, “they are needing something else, they can tell I’m aged and tired, carrying the trouble of experiences, but a few, a few older ones will let me hug them, touch, perhaps a kiss, perhaps an accidental overnight, that strange collapse.”

“I have them to read,” he replies, “there’s always more to read,” he whimpers, “so much, so many, to read,” he sighs and smiles like a boy receiving toys, “if only people, my children, if, if they felt read this way by me, some women, some wonderful women, if I could delve, could attend, if others felt read this way, these books, I love them, I love and need them, their words, I love and need and want them…if others felt that way, I’d like to feel that way – loved, wanted, needed… sometimes my children…”

“Another?” she says so warmly with her tight and fast-moving body, lithe and breasted, friendly with its clothes.  She has a fresh vodka-with-something, he says “no I shouldn’t, but sure, I guess, you’re so kind to me, why  not?  I will, yes” (wanting, loving, needing.. books scattered over the tabletop, all closed).  He drinks.

“My children, my friends – so smart, so beautiful, with verve… so helpful… I did shower today,” he thinks, “maybe I’ll be useful to one or some of them, but probably not, what could they need or want of me,” he drinks.  “Not the young ones, though, not anymore,” he thinks, “what could I offer – these worn experiences, these words and doubts, these lacks of memories, confusions, waking dreams, these wonders.”

“You’ll need to go soon,” she chides, “you can’t be staying here.”  “But he’s the writer,” a boisterous drinker shouts, “he oughta tell a story, oughta earn his keep!”  Drunk old friendly at two in the morning (bar time – it’s actually 1:35).

“Tell us something,” they gather, they prompt.  “Say some of those words,” they prod.

So he opens his notebook and begins to write…

 

 

“…the contradiction which awaits the writer is great.  There is no mission, he cannot undertake it and nobody has sent him on it, that is to say he will have to become nobody to accept it; a contradiction which he cannot survive.  That is why no writer can hope to preserve his life’s freedom for the benefit of the work… everything takes place between the artist and himself; no one else can do anything about it; it is a mystery like love that no extraneous authority may judge or understand.”

– Maurice Blanchot-

The Incompletion of Words

On By NW FilbertIn Aging, awareness, creative writing, death, desire, Loss, Poetry, relation, Writing3 Comments

We tried, once.

Attempted an adjoining.

No one cared or cares.

It’s not a point.

THE point.

.

I never wanted it to mean anything.

It never has.

(I never wanted it to).

Never really thought it could.

It might.

It doesn’t.

It won’t.

Hasn’t.

.

The only point I perceive

Is our dismissal.

Evolution.

Another term we use for mortality.

.

Something hopeful.

Never helpful.

Just is.

The way of things.

.

I’m not here.

I’m not anywhere.

There are birds.

Little Offerings

On By NW FilbertIn absence, creative writing, desire, Experience, Language, longing, Loss, notebooks, Poetry, Writing2 Comments

This Autumn has found very little time for sustained reading and writing, resulting therefore in meager offerings here.  But I am finding jottings, thoughts, and notations in scattered journals that have somehow happened anyway.  Please accept these little offerings as efforts to remain in dialogue…

Journal Entry

Why do we (at least some percentage of us) take such pleasure (or at least seem to relish) in dark and heavy sorrow, like longing?  Grief, hopelessness – is it finitude and mortality that cause us to feel so at home in it?  Our drowning womb, begun from a watery coffin?

The sweet, rebellious, anarchy of loving, passion, writing, painting, music…sex – whatever it is we do that works our death deeper in us, through ecstatic bursts that we respond to like life.

We all ways dying…from that first launch…that initial spark of convergence – our long elimination.

Praise for the Name what Remains

By the light of the last thing decaying,

Erosion, they call it,

a painful dwindling away

.

Inception that won’t return

Sand, soil, snow, wind,

some sort of passage

.

One-Way.  Only.

Irreversible.

It is called.

.

Loss, we name it.

Lossness, lessness:

Simply change.

.

If time is an arrow

even in some infinite

loop and swerving traffic

.

I’m not.  Nor are we.

The finite and fragile

Affected in the midst

.

Continuously undone.

And never remade.

Brief Entry

On By NW FilbertIn absence, Aging, death, desire, Poetry, Writing3 Comments

On my Deathbed

 

I told language:

Thanks for having my children

 

The language had names,

As did the children:

 

They were all words.

 

I dreamt of a door

The kind without windows

 

That always stands open.

I remembered some more

 

So I said the unspoken:

I gave them my want.

 

It declined.

Fragment: Brief Conversation

On By NW FilbertIn Aging, awareness, Confusion, desire, Fear, longing, relation, Writing4 Comments

“How come language (or drinking) makes the pain of language (or drinking, or relationships) go away, recede, soothe…and then becomes language (drinking, relation) and its pain…again?” he asks.

I smoke.  I look at him.  He is examining (with obvious pretend furtivity) my pale, smoothe legs, coming out of my singular light dress.  At my arms, my skin, my cheek and throat, my hair.  Lasciviously thoughtful, he.  Almost curious.  Almost authentic in his desire.

He is trying to daydream.

I am trying to be.

We are drinking now.

I am young, he less so.

Or neither.  We do not know.  Anyone can be so near their end.

So the story goes…

“The world smells good,” he says, and the delectability to the nostrils clearly depended on death: burning wood, smoking pig, a nostalgia of forests…

I knew not what I felt.  Mixtures.  Pleasures and sorrow.  Excitement and fear.  Doubt.  I did not respond, just masked placidly.  Pleasantly, I hoped.  Ambiguous.  And what does he sense?

Meaning

On By NW FilbertIn absence, desire, fragments, Language, love, Poetry, WritingLeave a comment

…still seems

to occupy us

as an open question

 

who (yet) knows

what language means?

 

I love/d you.

What more is wanted

ever?

 

With all of its not

mattering, like changing

seasons, world

 

going on.  A hawk

(or owl) shrieks

‘beauty’

 

We ask again

at the canyon,

the peak, the abyss,

 

And I say simply

‘You are beautiful,

Thank you…

 

therefore I love you.’

 

Nothing meaning

but some report,

some expression –

 

Elementary assignment:

This is why I’m alive.

Possessives and plurals,

the mysteries remain.

http://www.schirn-peace.org/en/post/marcus-steinweg-notizen-zur-liebe/

Cabin Reflections

On By NW FilbertIn being, desire, Experience, family, Gratitude, grief, Journaling, Loss, love, meaning, Photography, Reflections, Writing3 Comments

IMG_2623[1]

“Penelope remembers having read that of all the liquids and fluids produced by the human body – sweat, semen, vaginal fluid, saliva – tears are the only one without any trace of DNA… Impossible to identify someone from their tears, we’re all identical when we weep despite the many different reasons we have for weeping, something like that.  Unlike unhappiness, tears don’t set us apart, they make us the same.”

Rodrigo Fresan, “The Invented Part”

Last week I spent with my four offspring at a cabin on the Pikes Peak Massif in Colorado.  Mostly I register grief and loss in my experience of living… but interestingly enough, the first entry of my vacation journal begins with the simple sentence “I’m happy.”  Unqualified, that’s it – myself + my offspring + a rich world reeking of “no service” and untellable beauty… “I’m happy.”  Here are some notes I made throughout the week:

Simple things innerheard during cabin stay:

The stars: “We can’t tell the difference: between light or dark, death or what remains.”

The streams: “Where have we come from, where are we going? / Where we have come from, where we are going.”

Growing things (grass, moss, wildflowers, mushrooms, wild berries, etc…): “Not yet, not yet.  Who knows?”

The rocks, the boulders: “Once upon a time.  Now.”

IMG_2613[1]

The mountain(s): “Maybe.  May Be.”

The cabin:  “Us.  Here.  We.  With.  Hold.”

Phrases of my children:

  • “It’s good to live this way once in awhile.”
  • “Why do we leave here, ever?  I never want to.  What is have to?”
  • “Dad, everything here is your ‘favorite‘.

And me:

  • “Nothing is like this.  Nothing… Belonging, I belong.  Time changes, it’s different here.  As if there isn’t.  THIS PLACE IS ‘BEAUTY’ TO ME.  THIS PLACE IS WORTH MY LIFE.”
  • on climbing: “I’m a dad: we ALL make it, or none of us really do.”
  • on love: “If I say ‘I love you’ – please don’t hear it as worship, as inordinate.  In love we see the ‘too much‘ of the other – that which is always beyond our own reach, the ‘too much’ in each of us we struggle with, and seem to be unable to assimilate or observe in mirrors of our own.  Perhaps this is one of the reasons the conundrum we call ‘love’ exists?

Addresses to my children and loved ones:

  • To T: “Always beware of logic – our fabricated things.  What we may wish toward but doesn’t make matter.”
  • To A: “Recall.  There are differences.  Beware.  There are openings for more life.”
  • To I: “You have it.  You carry your own water.  Your own dreams.  Your own beginnings.”
  • To O: “Heroes also may shrink you, diminish, contain.  You are deeply your own.”
  • To H: “Never mind.  I am not the one who can conquer it in you.  I believe someone will.”
  • To ?: “I love you.  Like literature: the possible of life.  Impossible.”

IMG_2605[1]

Thank you mountains, rocks, growing things, streams….