Terrific collection of attempts at languaging mystery around incarnate language: https://maney.us/blog/2014/12/28/meditations-on-the-incarnation-from-select-church-fathers-and-doctors/
Category: existence
A Womb-bomb Psalm
Blessed be the name of the Lord –
sweet carrier of the womb –
fiery cauldron,
cold and dark
within the pit.
.
Blessed womb-bomb,
threatening peril,
life-giving
horror of wonders –
inside
.
that terrible cave
in the belly
the heart, the brain
like a virus,
a cancer,
a seed –
.
herewith do we praise thee –
our lives
and surround –
impenetrable everywhere,
blessed immersion
and thundering calm
.
go forth
quiet conquer
of light
veiled in darkness –
a pit, a cave,
o glorious sky!
How in the world
The world is a weighted haunting –
– some complex surround –
to be dreamt and/or measured, and felt
with-in time
I amended the ‘haunting’ to be –
not the thick and illegible “world,”
but the compulsion of ‘figuring-out’ –
for with-out
the ‘figuring out,’
an ‘haunting’ is ghost –
and only just happens:
a nexting,
a breathing,
relation;
a missing,
a moving,
a touching,
a feel:
in convulsion.
Within which is conceived a convergence –
– event –
(some humanish word for ‘what’s happened’).
This ‘we’ –
what is it?
what part does it play
in the muddle?
And ‘what happens’ –
what means?:
That-which-is
(for us)
some occurring.
So diverge,
and tri-verge,
multiply in the mess –
the ‘world,’
as you feel it
and think it
and be –
how it wholly
might be
with itself.
This. Interesting. Day.
Interesting: it will come, whispering in your imagination that the English interest comes from the Latin inter esse, literally “in-between-being.” – Gunnar Olsson, Abysmal
“something must have changed” – Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies
I guess I just decided to let something else happen…
I suppose I decided
insofar as we do
to let something else
become…
“This is what I’ve decided. I see no other solution. It is the best I can do…
…that little space of time, filled with drama, between the message received and the piteous response…
…Of myself I could never tell, any more than live or tell of others…”
Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies
distrusting human plans
Unstillable
“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 –
Already Alone – Norway, October, 2016
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.
The “Tense of Incoherence” ( Paul Valery)
“I am suspicious of all words, for even the slightest reflection shows the absurdity of trusting them.”
– Paul Valery, Monsieur Teste –
“You know, dear you, that my mind is of the obscurest sort…I am composed of an unfortunate mind which is never quite sure that it has understood what it has understood without realizing it.”
– Valery –
FOR NO REASON
Delight. Hope. Survival.
Homer . Beckett. Kafka. Hegel.
Language.
Wittgenstein. Heidegger. Merleau-Ponty.
Fosse. Derrida. Foucault. Sterne.
Imagination. Philosophy. Fiction.
WHAT CAN BE THOUGHT? (Philosophy) “on the verge”
WHAT CAN BE WRITTEN? (Literature) “on the verge”
Maybe I’ll just read. Perhaps suicide (stop). Perhaps create. Perhaps avoid. Perhaps participate with others (friends, family, children, pets, nature). Perhaps think and drink.
WHO CARES? NO ONE. NO SOME. DO I?
Selected “foods for thought”:
The Event – Martin Heidegger. Monsieur Teste – Paul Valery. Replacement – Tor Ulven. Inexhaustibility and Human Being – Stephen D. Ross. The Meridian – Paul Celan. Verge of Philosophy – John Sallis. and so on. Potentials.
Directions for staying alive (as human being). Follow something: desire. hope. beauty. sex. belief. pleasure. pain. Try something.
Read history and imagine imagining a world that sensible.
Read science and imagine imagining a world that ordered.
Read literature and imagine imagining a world.
Read philosophy and imagine imagining that many questions.
Read religion and imagine imagining that many answers.
Stop. Say your own. (thoughts, imaginations, feelings, perceptions) to someone or to nothing (write them).
And so on.
For no reason.
But perhaps staying alive / living a little longer.
WHAT DO YOU WONDER? DESIRE? WISH? PROPOSE?
And so on.
WHO CARES? DO YOU?
And so on…
…for no reason.
Thus the life of “the writer,” “artist,” “human,” “scientist”… WHATEVER – WHOMEVER HUMAN (so-self-called) BEING.
In other words… when we encounter “literature” we (perhaps, perhaps probably) are engaging a fellow human being in the NOW – amidst an odd tactic of applying (through a strange and meddlesome nigh-universal ambiguous medium) the operation of EVERYTHING he/she knows or has experienced to the point-of-NOW. And we (weird, individualized organisms) either find correlation and correspondence with (some or much or little) of their ‘whole’ knowledge & experience (and thus, perhaps, probably, are moved by or like them) or… find very little correspondence or similarity with our ‘own’ knowledge and experience and therefore consider them banal, useless, uninteresting, untrue, or off-putting.
WHO CARES? DO YOU?
I do. It keeps me alive, surviving. I drink, I read, I think. Attempt to forget obligations, relations, and responsibilities (I can’t). That I’m a FATHER, that i exist in a socio-economic scenario that requires the bulk of my life be passed in “bullshit jobs” that somehow appease ‘Powers-That-Be’ and allow me a place on earth and a terrible fight to try and defend or spend ANY portion of existence doing-what-i-want, or what ‘fulfills’ or causes me happiness / gladness / joy in being alive…
When I’m able to “snare,” “steal,” “TIME” – I read and write, make love, or drink alcohol – because these things make me feel GOOD or WELL as the sort of being I am.
Why is it I feel compelled to sneak, steal, or justify what gives me joy in being? (whether plant, ant, mammal, or any other cellular construction)?
I wouldn’t ‘rather’ be famous, or a president, powerful, or a businessman, artist, or ‘professional,’ or anything. I REALLY just want to be a human-in-society valuable-to-the-rest because I happen to be one who loves language, literature, pretending, fiction, inventing, thinking, imagining what might be – this-wise, that-wise, which-wise, whom-wise, where-wise, when-wise…
WHY IS THIS NOT VALUABLE? ACCEPTABLE? SUPPORTABLE? along with each alternate things-one-might-want-to-be as valuable-to-the-cumulative…
Humans seem to be multiplicitous, variable, and plentiful. Many wish/desire/like to be strong, rich, beautiful, productive, etc. Why can not there also be room for those who desire neither usefulness, beauty, riches, or power… but CANS at the verges… of language, thought, imaginings? And are these really so different from those pushing edges of other characteristics?
Suddenly this entry feels like a wallowing or a requesting of pity.
That is not the feeling.
“I am composed of an unfortunate mind which is never quite sure that it has understood what it has understood without realizing it.”
- Paul Valery
Mappa Mundi
The key question is not what a given sentence means but what it does, especially how it does whatever it does…to know is by definition to say that something is something else and be believed when one says it – Gunnar Olsson, Abysmal
Whatever we might say, we see in all that we say. – Sophocles
Only apparently is it a ‘presentation.’ – Martin Heidegger
It follows that in the world of humans any mark is better than no mark, for without categorization there is nothing at all, not even nothing at all. – Olsson, Abysmal
How small life is here / and how big nothingness. – Robert Walser, Oppressive Light
Alias Alive at the Ends
“Always too late. This is the message of disaster. We are too late to the scene, and undone.
Even thinking and emotion. Even love, can’t keep pace with disaster, with entropy, with chaos.
Death always outruns us. World and chance incessantly out-maneuver. We are small. Very small. Infinitessimal, as it were, in our finitude.
Thus begins our own story of destruction: we are born. Perhaps conceived (of). Perhaps even further back, before developing. Prior to evolution. The brokenness. The cracks. The destitution.
Arising of accidents. Formed of the fractures. We become.
In other words – doomed from the start. Our ends preceding beginnings – the beginning began at the end.
At the point of ‘exist’ – our last chapter.”
This would be Alias, grieving his friend, in two colors. The living, the dead, the to and the from.
Laramie dies, and is absent (if memory serves).
Alias keeps after his death – loving Lucy, and children, performing labor and sin and its necessary too much – in his office with paper and pen.
He pauses and looks to the window. Birdsong, stray cats, and the leaves.
L. is gone, but he’s not. Just inevitable.
*
He perceives it as some kind of race – but death always the tortoise that outruns the hare – and is needed.
No more.
Lucy calls.
No more.
Hears the children.
No more.
Senses purpose –
*
The pen stays on – marking the book.
Alias. Alias alive.
Laramie. Laramie ceased.
Spiders and sunlight and dust – all alone. All all-one. All “the Same” in some mystical way, called the Real. The Real that repeatedly ends – its beginning. The Ends, then. The end.
Polysemic Stupor 