We could have played other games,
ever so many on offer
whiling the distribution and dissipation
time might be
.
Yet “I” became,
constructing choices –
the parenting,
the poetry,
philosophy,
and family;
addiction,
restriction,
believing all the loving –
each complicity
.
To be
.
At least some things,
anything,
.
everything
one knows not what
.
but still
less (or more)
than nil.
Great grandeur of light
Your laughter tinkling its tent
A poet has died
Like a raven
We watch him pass
Rivers and trees
There’s probably more
Words
Are like that
– suspended –
Over silence
You’ve heard her
Read the dictionary…
Everyone disbelieves
Only I drink it in
– sufficiently –
Everyone’s doubt
Grand Canyons
are like
the unknown
we feel
of any other
(or each)
–
I put clothes on
have hairs trimmed
appear
and once again
guess at meanings
In other words
I “care”
insofar as an organism
hopes to live
Which I continue
to exhibit
because I think
I love
you
–
And no one knows
Not-knowing (yet)
What “love” is
“Yet” such an
Empire-ical promise
(some day our greed
will pull through) –
you hear it:
“I love you”:
that evil
devoted
inspired
and diabolical
urge, disturbed
and ravishing
–
As long as
we win something
we’re almost happy
To try.
Try to
re
member.
Stitching together the dismembered, again.
It is “us”? “That”? A substance? A trajectory?
A subject? A story? (Fable)?
.
What might re-member, and re-member what?
Sensations? Who? Events? When? Experiences? How?
Is re-membering an aspect of Why?
Moods?
Times?
Being?
.
Where are the members to be re-stored, re-gathered, re-composed, or freshly constituted?
.
That pre-(before)-fix (secured, pinned, stayed) “re-“. To do over, again, re-peat. Peat is a furry humus, a difficult detangling. Nigh impossible to dismember without caveat or faith. Some belief in categories or divisions, de-cisions, parts and wholes, composites and particles, atoms, scales, cells, waves or functions… no longer “peat.” How would one forge that again?
.
Moist and messy tangle, eons into bog…
.
I thought.
Thought “it” – “I”.
Knifeblade activity.
.
Peat. Re. Member(s).
.
Desire. (Mood? Emotion? “Drive”?).
.
Prompted to thicken. The caked, flaky, dry – toward some humid, muddy moor. A memory.
.
To re-member one must pre-fix. In order to carve members to append and rivet. Desiccate to gather. Continuous forgetting forging together. Organic? Decomposition’s ritard?
.
Where does one go for the matter of “parts”? Ingredients for concoction, for the rotten mixing and blend. A meaning dependent on decay.
.
What is it we spoil in re-membering?
.
Experiencing. Out of – perceiving – in to. Wherefrom, wherefore, this ‘out of’? And the in-to flows – ? The membering limn. The meeting-joints. The fields of grave. Are there objects? Is it obstacle? In-to-eruption? Happen-stance?
.
Vivisection for autopsy – our arbitrary blade. Figures cut. Marking the joins, indivisibly. Perception. To sieve-for. For what? For whom? In the mire.
.
Try.
Try to re-member without division.
Immersively, immanently, experiencing… without within, within without.
.
Re-peat.
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.
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.
“Weren’t there any words that she accepted more willingly? Any that diverged less from what she was thinking?”
-Maurice Blanchot, Awaiting Oblivion–
There have been many hers,
some promise of connectivity
or commerce
(perhaps promise is too much,
perhaps desiring is more
accurate).
In other words, and
many of the same
from time to time
over time
the process equals =
it is hers –
my strands cannot reach,
meaning cannot knot,
meeting grown unable…
…
Ellipses…
continuance and breakage
characterizing in-between;
a trailing-off, a dwindling,
leaning toward the open –
deletions and erasures, a clearing of a space.
Again
and
Again
and Again
Again…
“perhaps because the first words
say everything / He decided
to begin
again
from there” (Blanchot).
We can know
the first word is
“Here.”
[After-words?]
Again
and
Again
and Again
Again
“Begin.”
He thinks that
it belongs
to her,
it is hers,
all of them;
In other words
are there any words
that diverge less…
that would not
initiate ellipses…
-the crossing
-the forking
of roads-
Here.
Again.
Begin.
– each eviscerating concoction…
clarifying conundrum,
each undone doing…
[doing undone].
Not quite correction,
no improvement, evolution,
no repeat and never same,
inceptive destruction…
He names it “failure”
“recurrence”
He says it is the “here”
of meeting
inducing the there of separation,
of potential gain
and irreparable loss.
“Here” is where it begins
Again…
and ends,
alwaystime…
It is hers.
Colluded
and conspired.
She is never wrong
to say
it is his.
This Here.
Again
and
Again.
Begin…
…until finally…
![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:
And me:
Addresses to my children and loved ones:
![IMG_2605[1]](https://manoftheword.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/img_26051.jpg)
Thank you mountains, rocks, growing things, streams….
he who already knows cannot go beyond a known horizon
– Georges Bataille, Inner Experience –
In a bout of acute loneliness (a sharp pang of alone signifying a sort of paralysis – some definite inability, however temporary, to start oneself up by or with oneself) I reached out to Hannah.
For some of you, the term Hannah will conjure connotations and resonances, perhaps emotions or concerns, discomforts, even though she does not exist.
Or I loaded the film Satantango by Bela Tarr & Laszlo Krasznahorkai.
A start-up, a stimulus, a searching.
Actually I wrote the name Hannah, or Hollie or Holly or Hallie or Halley or Bela or Chris or Maurice Blanchot.
Perhaps Kafka.
To be lonely and to reach out.
A drink then, for interaction.
A scribble on a page.
A smoke for an ‘other.’
Some music.
I read Beckett.
The cat.
Maria. Edie. Sarago. Marcuse.
To become. To be. To begin.
As if I knew.
In a bout of acute loneliness I penned a letter to Herman Melville.
I wrote words onto a lined page.
I made an ‘other’ and called her, Hannah.
Or Meagan or Meghann, Angie or Angela or Angelo. Gilles or Jill. Jean and Jan and Jen.
I reach out. I almost full fill. Another notebook. A drink. A smoke. A page marked and turned.
I do not know what loneliness is.
Perhaps it is nothing, or nothingness. Perhaps frustrated desire. For – ? What is not (isn’t that what defines desires?). The missing, the absence, the unknown.
I called it Hannah.
Or Hamza.
Hell or Helen or Helene/Helena.
Laurie.
No one knows but the name that works best. Christy or Christina. Vernoica/Veronique.
Beatrice.
I read Jabes.
A drink to an other (to signify might be). A smoke for the presencing. Another word, another name for something. Out there = O ther. Elves of else.
The book’s called Nothing Matters: a book about nothing, because “that nothing becomes the quest, which in turns begets something” (Ornan Rotem).
Dear Herman, Dear Samuel, Dear Franz:
Dear Larry, Dear Jack, Dear Jon:
Dear Hannah:
I do not know what it is to be alone, and my loneliness is painfully acute.
Dear Laura, Dear Sara, Dear Simone:
This is my correspondence with nothing.
I remember that I am falling
That I am the reason
And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be
Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy
– W.S. Merwin, “When You Go Away”
Time keeps accumulating on my inability to write, to find time to write, to process living with language. Simply to keep this space alive, I am posting a journal-like entry so as not to give up.
Recent weeks have been dominated by readings of Doug Rice, Laurie Sheck, Jon Fosse, Georges Bataille, Larry Levis, Maurice Blanchot, Samuel Beckett, Franco Berardi, Robert Bringhurst, Jeremy Fernando, Elfriede Jelinek and others…
What a traversal, passage, the past couple of months have been…
…like following the draw of the moon through dire straits
in dark, tumultuous seas…
…a feeling that everything is at its limit (Bataille, l’extreme) – EXPERIENCE.
…a teetering balance…
Mind you, this is how it feels in me, not how it is.
I miss everything that is/was good
…fail better…
There is a certain uncertain sorrow to things
(presence of melancholia, moon-draw)
Georges Bataille’s certainties:
THE UNKNOWN THE UNSOLVABLE THE POSSIBLE
darkness levity
Lynda Barry & the “Underground Skateboard” – how we draw from others work what we need to survive
Lemony Snicket & the autographing instruction that I should “read something else”
FAMILY
immersion (doom, closure) held in levity
conscious moderation
– 1st Tarot reading –
(processual journey mythical)
Jacob recommends Homer – The Odyssey
doubling letting go – holding together The Devil/The Chariot
dark surfaces / surfaces of darkness (The Fool)
The Moon (dark journey) crossed by the Queen of Swords (wounding love)
THE UNKNOWN THE UNSOLVABLE THE POSSIBLE
-Summer
Temperance
The King of Wands – leaders, pole vaulters, utilizing tension toward propulsion
leap over? through? on?
The Fool
Pas sage – not wisdom FRAUGHT JOURNEY
– Odyssey –
BATAILLE: “nothing is final…”
– “what is not there, which, once it is seen, often in literature, tells us what is” (Fosse)
Inner Experience
“the suffering of the disintoxicated” (Bataille)
The Human:
“Experience reveals nothing and cannot found belief nor set out from it” – Bataille
“The hand moves forward, the tragedy begins” – Bataille
“no one grieves with you for what you are unable to say”
“life itself…always swerves away from my mouth”
– Elfriede Jelinek –
“how I’m owned by that which will not answer” – Sheck
“What you are will be spelled by whatever
lies trapped in your hand” – Robert Bringhurst
– emptiness is also empty –
“what is the part of us… feels…unnamed…
…i must live at some distance from convinced” – Sheck
“When I say you to what isn’t there – I mean me” (Larry Levis)
“you won’t find me in me” (Jelinek)
Experience eludes understanding ( Bataille)
– nor can I compute the possible (Sheck)
This too
is just one
more opinion
to move through
(Bringhurst)
FIRST AND FOREMOST YOU WRITE (Fosse)
“From an abandoned myth
(I write to you)” (D. Rice)
– wanting them to mean nothing –
– and suggest everything (L Levis)
INTENTION:
“This is the dream’s navel, the spot where it reaches down into the unknown…” – Jan Zwicky, Alkibiades’ Love
“the dream-thoughts to which we are led by interpretation cannot, from the nature of things, have any definite endings; they are bound to branch out in every direction into the intricate network of our world of thought… So, too, philosophy. So, too, the gestures through which we bind, and let go of, our lives.” – Jan Zwicky, Alkibiades’ Love
“…readiness is all…” – William Shakespeare
On our way down above the below, recognition dwindling through each swerve, turn, and curve. Uncertain of finding, finding uncertainty.
What began in fantastic. Unanticipated. Such sights, indescribable, feels. Sirening sounds, whooshing and whining; colors and tones past belief, perhaps, unless of course you’ve been there…I had thought that you were? We followed by following, relentless, directionless openings, vague paths.
Kaleidoscope world of liminal pinwheels, whirring musics of future and past, tinged with voices we wish that we knew, and we did. It seemed you were there…?
Where have we been? Where are we going?
Navigations that spiral – we wind and knot, unwind, become. And over again – yet nothing is ever not new. Or so nearly, almost.
I, if indeed it was I looking out (or in) kept distracting desires (and extracting) ~ wanting this way and that, akin to imagine, hungrily, wily, and wild. As effects of strong wishes might be – subterranean, subsumed, leveraged like magnets and threats.
I stumbled, turned ‘bout, perhaps even flew, there were times that I ran – indistinguishable voices undoubtedly precious, familiar, like realizing wants tended constant as fuse…dangerously sparked to go off…
…now this and this and this…fierce purpling red, liquid breasts and svelte buttocks, elbows and shins, calves and thighs (ah! sweet the ankles and knees, wrists and shoulders, the lips, the hair, and the eyes… I love bodies! I crave!) the serpents, the birds, the language and leaves flung like banners… where were you? I had thought you were there… and you… and you… and many others of Is beside…
Darkening greens. What gathers and whispers in pleasure, awareness acute, we We again in these margins and loops. We reach and we blend, wrestle and harm, struggle and rush, and we mend. We are bound and unbounded, boundlessly shaped in our flight.
Constrained in the thickets, the azures, the blood. I choke and cry out (do you strangle?)… we are veining, okay, seeming ever en route, all approachings and wanders from here.
I (if it’s ‘I’) I am there, by which I must mean, “it is here,” diving downward or in to the out and the others, another, anew. We’ve become and we’re far more than we – both generic and common – and burning, aflame, each of ever a kind, made of ice and so crystalline, clear, so…
…unknown and still further… along, further on, further out and away, further in, indecipherable and never forewarned…
“There is IT!”
“There is IS!”
And our readings surround as do laughter or tears, streamings of verbiage, mellifluous notes, and you and I and countless of we, and no matter, we happen, or are, happening, or become, as we come, as we enter, reveal, as we’re reaching…
I had thought you were here –
Where are we?
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