Category: Philosophy

It rains…complicating equations, understand? (for the Unknown Unnamed)

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Journallings, Philosophy, Writing2 Comments

[please bear with these ramblings…they are taking shape…and each stumbling advance leads…i promise…:)]

Standing in rain.  Under rain.  Understand.

Unknown, unnamed, still wet.  Still cleansed.  Garnering names…

One.  Other.  Wet one.  Lost one.  Un-one.  More.

Hearing one.  The replier.  Seeing one, seems, seams, semes.

No/w/here: under rain, understanding some thing(s).

The wet can flood and drown, or cleanse and caress.

Can surround, come down, or buoy and uphold.

Understanding rain.

One water-name, countless individuals.

Unknown infinity, possibly.

Unnamed – an incalculable number of names – possibly.

The Writing One and the One Who Reads.  The One-Standing-Under-Rain and The One Rain Falls Upon.

The One Reaching the Other and The Other Receiving One.  A One Necessary Other for joinder and boundary, their rift and cleft, the possibilities.

If “to understand” counts as knowledge, he is many-known and many-named as he engages, encounters no/w/here.

[if w always presents we]

so that without w there is no-here and no now.

N/amed

O/ther

W/e

+/= here.  now here.  how here.  now here.

He realizes this direction is constantly unknown, even at its end.  If he can know it is raining, he cannot know how many.  And whenever it ceases, the water will be elsewhere, other-wise.

The Thinking One.  Confused Other.

He is unable to inscribe or translate even a fraction of his names in a single no/w/here…which are not singular, ever.

Names rain when he looks, listens, feels.  Attends.

Ecstatic One.  Diluted Other.  Watery One.  Solid Other.

Who?

Unknown and unnamed begins to understand, standing under (and in) no/w/here’s rain.

Muchly known, muchly named, ennui…

in-we

he goes on…

standing under rain,

in the middle of,

no/w/here.

Unknown and Unnamed Undoing: the swoon and the swarm (a kind of mathematics to be continued in rain)

On By NW FilbertIn Art, Experimenctes, Journallings, Philosophy, WritingLeave a comment

Unknown and Unnamed experiences: the swoon and the swarm

 

I hadn’t remembered it like this (trying not to remember).  That all of it got into you.  That all of it came out!

Immersion.  Enthrallment.  Ecstasy – words that come, to mind.

That if en-joined, then out-sourced.  Becoming indecipherable – like epistemology.

A moment’s rush, for example.  I encounter – which encountering looks like insertion and abstraction on me.  I move toward, feel it out, then back off and observe.  Active, passive; a swing, a rocking boat.

This is different.  Inundation, a flood.  Unable to say what’s mine, what’s not; who’s me, who’s you.  Unable, frankly, to say, at all.  Only be.

Motion, reception; injunction and release.

Think sky-diving: that decision to jump, trusting something, someone will hold together as form in all that air.  Like diving the deep blue sea, compression surround, that some element will remain intact without ground or solidity.

It works that way.  Give and take, see and saw, this uncanny to and fro of body, perceptions, breath.  Eyes contact then fog to some self between.  Fleshes – distinct and specific – now con-fused.  Who’s sweat?  Who’s secretions?  It’s sticky, yes, like that – a gluey bond.

Then the wave, the distended moment – incalculable clockwork – where all borders and boundaries seem lost, some extended and mutual sigh or moan within which the voice is other and the same without identity.

The swoon of it.  The swarm.

Dizzying rush of blood as warmth or wind; eyes roll back, also in, but not to my darkness.  As if limbless or prosthetically invented, my body grows – grows yours or ours or contracts to another covering, but inside-out.

As if leap or let go were no longer options, but instinct.

As if hot and cold – undifferentiated – some something that must define pleasure –

as in emptiness, fullness

the yin, the yang

a cellular entanglement

The swoon, the swarm

emerge

But what?  Or whom?

And what occurs in the median?

Who were that?                                                                                                       What was those?

The swoon, the swirl, the swarm.

            No one effecting.  Effected.  What does that indicate?

Nothing, essential to event – if nothing, than an absence utterly imbued.

A radiance, evocation,

like a sleeping brain on dreams…

with-you, the unknown gets no/w/here.

Whatever the constants, coefficients and variables, given the operator as convergence, the equation = whole,

where the w stands for we,

without which none – (“hole”).

Affecting substance…no one gains currency…necessity (no 1, but at least 2)… and then – ?

No one, unknown, unnamed, no/w/here as 0+O

where O stands for other

in this case, you

O requiring as much as I

inferring – ?

you can’t have 1 without anOther

but where anOther occurs must be at least 1 (other)

even if unknown, unnamed

in order to be lost and found in the joining

the immersion and enthrallment

the ecstasy

I, in instances of jell-o

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Journallings, Philosophy, Writing4 Comments

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I, in instants, divested

 

Let me put it this way:  I find mysterious pockets of habitual thinking functioning like cradles of jell-o.

Say couple’s therapy is called for: I consciously feel gung-ho, pro-choice, empowered by trust and intention and reciprocal hope.  Our determination, our hope.  But the rear half of my skull, the scape my subject lands in, I realize is slicky, silently and squishily snuggling into a jello-y bed of “there’s something wrong with me.  I’ve got the problems.  We’re really trying to figure out why I’m so hard to live with; how my moods impede relational success and happiness; my fears – intimacy.  If the truth were told, my spouse is acting graciously and sacrificially in order to get me help.”  It’s as natural as instinct for me to believe I’m a burden, a difficulty, a special case.

The endless desires of youth.  Our adolescents seem never to be satisfied (perhaps aren’t even “meant” – biologically, psychologically, socially, developmentally – to be), rarely “up” for family events or participation in chores, games or outings.  Seem preoccupied with themselves and their wants and preferences, shifts and swerves.  Rationally – I sense the raging hormones; the violent ego-mania seeking a code, a reflection, its own DNA; the psychoses of self/other, boy/girl, love/lust and so forth – upheaval and growth!  But my torso is wiggling and sliding itself into the slushy comfort of “I have no idea how to guide these kids!  Who am I to parent and protect, encourage and inspire?  I’m just as fragmented, uncertain, conflicted, aroused and cynical as these guys!  No way I’m good enough, strong enough, wise enough, and so on… unqualified to father, even at directing myself!”

The list goes on – as reader, writer, artist.  As male, friend, laborer.  As handyman, citizen, spouse.  As mind, as body, as conglomerate selves:

How does it come so natively to cuddle in, automatically, unself-consciously and familiarly into negative perceptions, fraught with inadequacy, victimhood and failure, with no perpetrator(s) to blame?

Ideologically, philosophically, linguistically, aesthetically, psychologically, and so on, I can adapt party lines and mottos of health, truth, justice, fallibility and courage; equality and imperfection; becoming and process,

but wherever this social solidarity is not called-for or aimed at, this prompting to blend toward community or “normalcy,” my actual mind-body-complex demonstrates an incredible proclivity to nestle and burrow into a gooey surround of personal suspicion and doubt, misgivings and cynicism…like a worm to mud, or a fossil its imprint.

What the I/eye prefers.

How we see what we see.

How something – something – (but what is it?!)

contradicts mind’s understanding and body’s sensation/perception/evidence and goes its own hellbent way in whatever direction it selects!?

I-cipher.

I-estrangement.

I-observer,

                                                            for instants,

for instance.

I, the infinite? instants…

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Journallings, Philosophy, WritingLeave a comment

I, Gelaftimus

 

A jumble of words.  A spasm, a syndrome.  The spraying of a passing fancy, designation.

You don’t know where I got these words, nor do I, or only rarely.  A voided origin, a lifetime suffering verbs and the masks of nouns.

Experience: feels like something moving forward, somethings breaking and tumbling about it.  “Feels like.”

A kind of perceptual first instance, shaped by everything before, altered by everything after.

At the limit then, boundary-lip, threshold.  Moving, and that ceaselessly.  Colliding.

A poet, after committing suicide in his youth, now festering under the ground, is found to have remarked that “a tree grows upward…the path of least resistance.”  So most of us.

Whatever “us” might mean, a jumble of words, perhaps a spasm, unconscious and involuntary instinct, so carefully and meticulously learned: to say.

Gelaftimus is what I feel today, this moment, my wife sitting and stewing on her couch, me (whatever “me” might mean) crabbing over my desk, this white paper, with a ball-point pen, scribbling – “a jumble of words, a spasm.  A syndrome.”  Perhaps.  But it is gelaftimus, I tell you that.

Early on I was assigned this particular label: “Nathan,” only later coming to find that “the meaning of a word is determined entirely by its context.  In fact, there are as many meanings of a word as there are contexts of its usage.”  (V.N. Volosinov, et. al.)  “Feels like” experience.

Needless to say, “I” have struggled with defining the cluster of words “I,” “Nathan,” “man,” “boy,” “me,” “son,” “husband,” “father” and so on in their perpetually altered contexts, circumstances and situations, ever re-de-term-in-ing their possible meanings.

A jumble of words.  A spasm and syndrome.  Instinct and accomplishment (accomplice-ment?)

My wife, last night on the swing, beside me, in the dark, on the porch, spoke of “not being allowed to say” as a child – so very many experiences “not to talk about” –  frozen (perhaps) in their places or processed without knowledge dementedly deep underground (out of sight, out of mind, and so forth).

Contextually, she was addressing the decades-old infancy of “figuring out the world around me and my relation in and to it.”

“Reality works in overt mystery”

–Macedonio Fernandez–

which I found (what she said) to feel like truth (as in actuality) – the jumble of words, the spasms and syndromes of “making words fit.”  The odd difficulty we sometimes name “maturity,” i.e. beginning and growth.

I would confuse myself in this (were I to find me).

Alas it floats on the crest of the wave, breaks and spreads on the shore, regathers in a reflective pool, drifts away and starts again in fragments and particles.

Poised on a threshold, hardly poised.  Rather in the breeze, a metaphor passing hands.

This jumble of words.  Syndromes and spasms.  Accumulated masterfully and haphazardly over ages and accidents.  Feels like, experience.

Gelaftimus, today.

 

“A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it; [or making it fit with prefabricated words? –N.F.] and in writing [that babble at the crest of the wave –N.F.] one has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing apparently to do with words) [?! –N.F.] and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the mind, [ever creating more waves – N.F.] it makes words to fit it [or fits it to words which recognize? – N.F.]”

–Virginia Woolf–

Visual Mathematics: an experiment, an equation, an hypothesis

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Philosophy, Poetry, Writing2 Comments

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Playing with Numbers

(click title for text – thanks!)

For Communal Delight

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Philosophy, Poetry, WritingLeave a comment

If you enjoy, wish to, revel in, feel ecstasy toward, crave and are intoxicated by

the glories of language

I fervently recommend

 

for your enjoyment!

Anthropophobia: or, the Trouble with Misanthropy

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Philosophy, Poetry, Writing2 Comments

Anthropophobia: or, the Danger of Others

 

Let’s face it:  our primary threat is the Other.

Those alive and breathing, in need.

Replete with sense and emotions, desires.

Thoughts, feelings, and dreams.

Con-fused.

Instinct and culture,

Learning and language,

and bodies:

physiques requiring space,

ears, eyes, limbs and digits,

the nerve!(s) and bellies and hearts.

Brains complete with mind and will,

Choice and intent,

the capability to discern.

Sexual organs,

Breath-pollution.

 

Stealing glances –

the lechery of looking –

what they plunder to hear.

This multitude of selves and their interests,

their tumultuous clamor to survive

and their ubiquity:

disruption of personhoods and presence

leaving The Exit as the only escape.

 

Most dangerous, Other:

the contact, connection,

and ability to attach.

Insidious deception –

a paradox of similarity,

of kind –

some others so like

as to be indistinguishable,

from our selves.

Highly Recommended

On By NW FilbertIn Philosophy, Traces, WritingLeave a comment

Living Traces – Paul Valery

On By NW FilbertIn Art, Current Reading, Philosophy, Poetry, Traces, Writing4 Comments

“In the strange faculty of doing certain things irrelevant to life with as much care, passion and persistence as if one’s life depended on them…there we find what is called ‘living.'”

-Paul Valery-

I, for Instants: the writer question

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Experimenctes, Journallings, Philosophy, Writing4 Comments

I the Question; I the Answer That Does Not Satisfy

“I am both wound and knife”

E.M. Cioran

“Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river;

it is a tiger that mangles me, but I am the tiger;

it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.”

Jorge Luis Borges

“The question inaugurates a type of relation characterized by openness and free movment; and what it must be satisfied with closes and arrests it.  The question awaits an answer, but the answer does not appease the question, and even if it puts an end to the question, it does not put an end to the waiting that is the question of the question.”

Maurice Blanchot

“all things oscillate round me, and I with them, an uncertainty unto myself.

All for me is incoherence and change.  All is mystery and all is meaning…”

Fernando Pessoa

 

I am the writer.  Am I also what is written?

Both wound and knife.

I am the husband?  What the husband does.

I am their father.  Am I also their fathering?

 

I am the writer.  Not the writer I believe I am, want to be, imagine.  Am I the writer?  What is written does not appease, does not satisfy.  I am waiting, asking, waiting in openness for possibility.  I am the answering I do not desire.

 

Am I what is written?  Partial answers.  Fragments pieced together forming questions.  I wait.  Am I the one who waits?  While writing?

 

I love.  Do I love?  I answer by loving.  I am dissatisfied by my loving – it is not what I had hoped, was waiting toward, believed possible.  I am not the lover I asked for.

 

I feel I am the open, the possibility – the questioning.  My answering closes, arrests, delimits me.  I am neither satisfied nor appeased.

 

I am the human.  Am I human?  If I answer for that I am dissatisfied, given the question, the possible replies.

 

I write I am the writer, the one writing, this phrase of the question.  Its answer never satisfies, leaves me waiting, asking again, anew.  The questions.

 

“the anarchist keeps watch within us and opposes our resignations”

E.M. Cioran