Category: Journaling
Language/Life
This is the same struggle – (LanguageLife)
this mis-match, trans-mesh, between media (their mediums)
.
A woman arrived – beautiful.
First thought: why isn’t language like her?
no – why isn’t language Her.
The difference. Media.
Eventually I felt this about music, painting, photography.
Eventually I felt this about perception, expression, myself.
.
i.e. Why isn’t one thing another to the same effect? Why doesn’t one temporally unified multiplicity (perception) correlate adequately in another?
.
My writing, these shapes, lines, movements, and possible sounds and touches and sayings are ever as real as hers, (equal), but not her (different) <in so many ways, sort of> <and not many ways, kind of>
.
There is animated material in motion with layers of perception – interpretation – impression / meanings. And here as well.
But they are not the same,
metaphorically, experientially, actually.
And they are.
(We are, species-level, carrying similar realities in similarly leaky containers).
And we aren’t.
- Effect (1)
- Affect (2)
- Mode (0)
- Artifice (N+1 / N-1)
- Occurrence Happening Being (=)
We are.
And aren’t.
Same Difference
.
Language lives. is alive. is not life. is life.
As also language.
And not.
She and I are. And are modally identified. Materially.
And are categorically for many striations,
same.
And not.
Effect. Affect. Also same difference, everywhere within scales. Eventually, no difference?
Eventually…only same? In a thin layer, deep and thickly.
Undone. Coordinated.
Same difference.
eventuates:
AND – – – – OR – – – – NOT
(same differencings, as each require equal potentialities)
.
Endless.
This is a slippery slope of a flat plane.
.
Therefore I love the “Book of Idolatry,” “truth,” empirical methods! Same differences, endlessly, potential, infinite variation and similitude. Swerving curves of identity deranged.
Lo how the mirror distorts in its clarity.
The painting clarifying distorted.
Voila.
Another.
The same.
Again.
Differently.
.
One might suppose differing due to activity – close circle – if static could be posited or possible we’d see (as we are seen). But seeing is active. As is that seen.
therefore, indeterminate
that is, knowably unknowable
i.e. uncertain in its certainty
Voila!
What?
same difference
BEING
matters
Cabin Reflections (July 2022)
Between
(sky and birds), between
(enclosed and contained),
between the not existing and the sleepless
there are no obstacles.
Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Xenia
it’s hard to make sense
outside of the world
or in a larger world
things don’t register
in expected ways
.
the pace is all different
and nothing is counting
time, space, and motion
do their thing as one
the human happenings
.
don’t make sense
or seem separate, divorced,
a frantic scale
the earth holds quietly
.
even words dissolve
and transform
like breezes
and bird-calls,
not meaning the same
.
passing, passing, held
passing, passage, hold
i imagine at Heidegger’s hut
he was murmuring
these things, being
.
hard to make sense of it
with reason or belief
a stance
but easy sense
outside
.
Where do you listen?
What are you listening
with and for?
How do you listen?
Silently, with wing-beats
aflutter
water moves
.
i move
out of my head
into the rest
of me, my skin
an open passage
my organs trudging
patiently, waiting
blood moves
.
accordion chest
filling my limbs
hands holding
feet touching
grounded
.
lay back
all in
an other
with / in / of
this world,
here.
Morning Thoughts – Saturday
“If there is progress then there is a novel.”
William Carlos Williams
You wait for it to come, grow, become. You may be waiting forever. Like love.
Perhaps it will visit, pass by. You’ll notice, probably feel hopeful, or inspired. Forlorn.
You’ll keep trying, as in waiting. Wanting and waiting are such wrestlers.
From time to time you’ll dream. Fantasies and nightmares.
But language will twist your words.
“Today I wrote nothing.”
Daniil Kharms
Morning Thoughts in a Blustery March
…and so we think. I do not say we must think, for I do not think that is so – it is simply a kind of capacity we have, apparently related to external pressures and a possible pleasure, or unknown effects involving desire – a torsion, disturbance, a stirring unsettling perhaps necessary to our living continuance, like pain, like lust.
An activity we call by many names and nuances – reflection, perception, analysis, intuition, sensation, theorizing, dream… but all uncanny practices of turbulence as if trying out invisible options on our world, imagining alternatives, inventing holding frames for experiencing that must constantly and continuously alter and adapt and reorient as living never stills. Like language, like longing, like living. Such things show no signs of resolving, their solutions are their ongoing instrumentalization, their habitude.
- Writing, kissing, and walking are synonyms.
A Conversation of Humanity
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-
Cabin Reflections
![IMG_2623[1]](https://manoftheword.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/img_26231.jpg)
“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]](https://manoftheword.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/img_26131.jpg)
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]](https://manoftheword.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/img_26051.jpg)
Thank you mountains, rocks, growing things, streams….
Confusion : Fusion-with
The light is good. I’m confused.
What “good”? “Good” for what, and in relation to? Diffuse, azure atmosphere of oncoming dusk. Chilly, not cold. Nearly pleasant, yet crisp enough for shiver and grip. Unsteady, trembling grasp of pen, a striving for control mated to its lack.
Hardly daylight. Liminal.
I would like to express. What I do not know, perhaps am even unable to.
This is why I approach a page – blank, blind, lined, empty – in “good” light and confusion.
Fusion-with, what? Chemistry, alchemy, biosphere, organism, complexity, surround. Others’ emotions, experience. Possibilities not actualized, each swarming potential of vocabulary, gesture, signification – line, sign, mark, motion – converging formulation, conveying contrivance / re-cognition. What is not, hovering about each “is.” To write. To write (only) this. When…
Once begun. Light, terms, cursive. Blue Bic ball-pointed pen. Moleskine substitution and human and language and in- and ex- perience and some =, some theorized equation of functions and results.
January 29, 2017. Nathan Wayne Filbert. 5:44 pm according to a Centrally Standardized Timepiece, an Apple product, arranged amidst pages from many centuries and sources, composed music sounding from the last, temperatures…”actualities”?…amid vast, incomputable com-possibilities.
If Nathan had not been “this one,” had not begun with a “T” or a “T + h + e” in this light, in this almost comfortable, discomfiting condition, in this notebook, with this pen and its ink at this time on this bastardized quality of paper, among such circumstances and scenarios, amid these relations as a father, a student, librarian, scholar, male – of this certain (arbitrarily standardized mandatory and countable) age, intimately (accordingly – to strata not set by either) coupled to- caring for-, concerned with-, worried by-, wishing for-, happy about-, and so on…
this word or letter at this time in this space with these extremely idiosyncratic and unlikely determinate positions and scenes in a surround incrementally rare and unreckonably accidental…
“The light is good. I am confused” leading itself its own very peculiar particular wave way toward each next and next co-dependent with innumerable constituents and counterparts yet occurring here, now, 5:54 pm CST in Wichita, Kansas in United (are they?) States of America (wha-? why? how? when?) 2017 (by what calendar and whose and wherefore?) at an intersection outside of a centuries-old and decrepit “house” it calls “home” (why? wherefore? from whence toward and…?)…
Indeterminate. Indecipherable. Unreasonable and incalculable. Not accountable or even conceivable…but IS (apparently). Simply IS, what is written, at this time, in this place, by this organism, of these relations, in this surround, at this moment, occasion, “actuality”…
…as it happens… as if
“The light is good. I am confused.”
Out of the Woods
“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.
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
Polysemic Stupor 