Category: Semiotics
“Internal Monologue” (Virno)
βThoughts constituted by non-uttered wordsβ¦This monologue always β βI speakββ
Paolo Virno β Word Became Flesh
βits thisness, then, cannot be fully articulable since any such articulation would require the articulation of a complete context, which in all cases is the worldβ¦often the experience includes an awareness of not being able to give an account of the thisβ
Jan Zwicky β Wisdom & Metaphor
“457. Yes: meaning something is like going up to someone”
Ludwig Wittgenstein β Philosophical Investigations
ββ¦I wept up to a great age, never having really evolved in the fields of affection and passion, in spite of my experiencesβ
Samuel Beckett β Malone Dies
βto frame the unsayable, & mute the sayableβ¦ he was the singing and the no one thereβ¦β
Larry Levis β The Darkening Trapeze
βAll this must be considered as if spoken by a character in a novel β or rather by several charactersβ
Roland Barthes β Roland Barthes
*****************
– I believe I told them that βall language was like a metaphorβ in several characters.
I heard nothing, I said to myself, as if nothing were something that might be heard.
Still I stroked her ankle, index-finger-pad to delicate-bird-bone. And lip. Finding textures and surfaces with lips and tongue. Precariousβ¦it never lasts. Taste and touch are like that [metaphor] immediate.
Am I speaking when I write? What is happening now?
Several characters.
– βoften the experienceβ¦includes an awareness of not being ableβ¦β (J. Zwicky)
She tasted ofβ¦
ββ¦to give an account of the thisβ¦β (Zwicky)
β¦coffee grounds, sandalwood, humidity, and turquoiseβ¦
I left off my exploring.
What is it like [metaphor] to�
I told them that βI speakβ is a metaphorβ¦as is indeed all the rest having to do with language.
(consolations of philosophy)
I hear nothing when I talk with myself. [metaphors].
The sounds of flying a kite.
Itβs rare that I am naked. But βyes: meaning is like going up to someoneβ (L.W.)β¦some sort of connection is made (some convergent affect) and a resolution leaks openβ¦resonanceβ¦endlessly (perhaps).
βI wept up to a great ageββ¦by which we always mean the aggregateβ¦which seems quite less than my βgreat ageβ, if ever there was one.
What is βgreatβ like? [metaphor]
Once I was youngerβ¦
– Always wished youβd known β
Are photographs metaphors?
I said that βnothing made is like.β
(βin spite of my experienceβ)
βDid I say I only say a small proportion of the things that come into my head?β (ontology of perception) (Samuel Beckett)
I intended to quote: βIt is a pretty little object, like a β no, it is like nothingβ (Samuel Beckett)
But what is βnothingβ like? A βpretty little objectβ?
We know what he means (βlike going up to someoneβ) β¦ I was naked, I tasted.
You know the storyβ¦ βI wept up to a great age.β I touched, I tried, I felt.
What do you see?
Hardly ever the point. Perception + Reflection = Imagination (perhaps) I told them β itβs a metaphor β a βcrossing-over,β some traversal. The trace of sweat behind her knee just above the calf.
Once I was alive.
I crossed over.
Several characters: βI speak.β
βAffection. Passion.β I said. (what I had thought it was βto learnβ [metaphor]).
– βin spite of my experienceβ β
Perhaps language wasnβt made for speaking.
Someone. Somewhere. Maybe. Here. Now.
That thing that words do [metaphor].
The βexperience of thisββ¦βnon-uttered words.β Non-utterable? Perhaps, this. (I traced the swerve of her, its curvature, hair-smell and soundingβ¦βI speak,β non-utteringβ¦)
What is writing?
I believe I was speaking of metaphorβ¦
Something crossed-over.
Nothing.
βYes,β I said, βyesβ¦β βitβs always alright to weep.β
“The Dream’s Navel”: an adaptation
…yet another example of negotiating tools and context. Β The previous post it seemed natural, as if I reached into the surround in order to work through something, reveal or discover something I hunched toward. Β For me this is often why reading, why conversation, why activity – in order for something to emerge, perhaps unsubmerge, for perhaps…
As I sat to write the other day, I recognized my reaching (a little more). Β That because 4 colors of pen were available… because they fill my surround when I am annotating texts I read… more voices seemed to join the conversation. Β Perhaps intoned by the colors, perhaps offering myself other conversations, altering access, even as the shape of the page contains my possibility. Β Or evokes it.
Anyway… the notebook notions tincture now… and I – both follow and concoct…
“words are drying out” –Β Franco “Bifo” Berardi
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β …and for her,
whose face
I held in my hands
a few hours, whom I gave back
only to keep holding the space where she was,
–
I light
a small fire in the rain”
– Galway Kinnell
“Who will ever be able, in this heap of dust, to tell the words from their underpinnings of paper?”
– Edmond Jabes
“Life is the search for the impossible via the useless…no one truly knows how to know and thinking confuses everything.”
– Fernando Pessoa
“man has no other way of living ‘now’ at his disposition besides the possibility to realize it through the insertion of discourse in the world”
– Emile Benveniste
“…if philosophy can be defined at all…”
– Silvia Jonas
“THE DREAM’S NAVEL”
or, Troubling Abstraction
or, refusing reduction
or, peircing the generic
There was a fox with a beautiful tail. Β And wondrously colorful. Β Like a dream, but tangibly perceptible.
– A dream then, while you’re thick in it –
No, an actual. Β Not a virtual. Β An imagining. Β Beauty.
And this, it is said, is philosophic thought… the questioning and caress of what is, unknown.
– Perhaps unknowable? –
What I do not know. Β Have not experienced. Β Know this way.
– Imagining. –
Experience. Β Experiencing. Β Almost like a dream, but languaged now, i.e. controlled, labeled, made discrete and symbolically communicable…signified. Β Not that.
- Again
- An other
- Anew
–Β Something, anyway. Β Try again. Β Become. –
To cross. Β Trans-late. Β Waver boundaries of meaning. Β Only to continue discretely, or to discretely continue. Β To work at the edge… both/and versus either/or versus verses… Weaving. Β Text-ure. Β
Ever again, always another other, anew, again… What is: difference, and repetition. Β Never the same, almost, again
– What? –
Someone or something is living. Β Is being. Β Perhaps simplyΒ is. Β Perhaps that… if only we knew. Β If anyone could.
– Imagine –
Perhaps.
****
Someone (something?) said. Β Set down, symbolized, spoke… suggested…
– Something to work with – from, into toward, away, perhaps. –
Perhaps.
Dip and scratch, gesture, limit, now one, now another, both? Β The thread, the fox’s multi-colored tail. Β Needle. Β Point. Β Pierce. Β But the thread connects above/below, under/over, in/out, alike… just traversing, transforming, betweening, continuous. Β Air, breath, blood, wave, particle, motion, fluid… Β Almost a point-of-meeting, a multi-sided trace, not a touch. Β Not touching, perhaps. Β But touching’s not a point of contact. Β Where do you feel the touch of your hand to a leaf? Β The touch of your hand to yourself…?
Perhaps.
I’d imagined so. Β I’d dreamt of thought. Β Particularized continuity. Β Cognizable flow…
– Something to work on… in… to be… come… –
Participate? Β Renew? Β Anew? Β A gain?
There was a fox with a beautiful tail. Β Like a dream, not quite limit or form or shape… potential, like beauty, like amost…AND… Β Like a resonant word meaning this and more also, perhaps non-compliant, unresolved
– How “hate” = “love”, both and neither? –
What!? Β I don’t know.
Adjoin. Β A margin? Β Where what, which, might be meeting – meets all ways? Β Area? Β Neither/nor, both/and, reciprocity?
– Someone spoke “transduction” –
The fox’s tail is never still, too many hairs to distinguish, melded, trembling in airy surround. Β Sometimes the light seems colored, sometimes the fox’s tail.
I began
– Perhaps –
Always part question, regardless the notion, emotion, or statement.
May not have been a fox
– Every thing questions –
Such is our “stance”? – ever in motion
Only a question, questing, going-on/in/for/toward/away?
I saw colors in the light, or air, I “took” to be a fox. Β I ex-tracted, ab-stracted, perceived… removed and oriented, made foreign, recognizable. Β This woman is so beautiful.
– In other words, “desire,” an imagining –
Almost like a dream
What is?
– What IF? Β What if we take back as we give, and offer as we reduce or remove?
Seams
Now one thingΒ and another
And others more and more
– Only extension, addition? Β To multiply? –
No. Β Also…
Cuts that open and join… multiply and combine…
A fox with a beautiful tail, perhaps… flowing in forested light…
Anything, anywhere, and also
– And also not-this, not-that, not-quite, almost… else…
Perhaps.
What is?
Marking My Way
What follows is exemplary of my tendency when I open a notebook and begin to write… digression… sigh…
“a man, however intelligent, is no better at maze-running than a rat, unless assisted by notes, whether these are remembered verbally or sketched out in a drawing”
– Michael Polanyi,Β The Study of Man –
I am beginning this story with words, for I am writing, and writing has often occurred as the transformation of experience to perceivable mark for communicable purpose: programming code, impressions in sand, lines about the mouth and eye, numbers, letters, notations and visible strokes.
The mark I begin with is βI.βΒ To imaginative purpose.Β Say we could coordinate belief around marks (which βweβ already have, or βyouβ are unable to comprehend, co-perceive or mutually interpret anything of what βIβ am scribbling).Β Imagine with me that we can: foster markings and gestures, sounds and expressions, that stabilize over time toward agreementβ¦
1, I; 2, we; 3, you; 4, with; 5, world; 6,β¦ and so onβ¦ where marks come to re-present a sharing or relation toward β together we assemble at βtree(4)β or βword(4),β at βsign(4)β or βkingdom(7),β at βours(4)β and βus(2)β and at βwe(2)β or whatever(8).Β All might be marked other ways, sounded or gestured β a squirrelβs flicking tail, a whaleβs sonic wail, bird twitters, rock cracks and colors, cloud movements, sighs.Β Images, letters, motions, or sounds.Β Impressible, expressible movements.Β Relations enacted, touches and probes, effects and affects across spaces and times, this is language in-scribed and con-scribed –communicability β glance of finger or toe or of eye, brush of hair or of death or of lightβ¦ con-tact.Β Tactility, touchability, WITH.
Imaginatively-agreed-illusory and often elusive β βAbstraction (11, or 10+1, or..)β β What-is-not becoming what-is.Β βCreation(8 or eight or 11111111β¦).βΒ Coordinated occurrence of subjectless objects and objectified subjects and things among things among things βco-existing(10),β β or so βweβ mark βit.β
I begin with a mark that is βiβ or 1, or the slightest, least notable line.Β βiotaβ in Greek, as Frost deftly inscribes β just a pass, accident, happenstance, hardly constructed and simple β a stick falls from a tree and leaves an βLβ or a βYβ in the soil, but an βiβ?
A mistake usually, a drip.
So βIβ use it to refer to βjust 1β = βwhat-is-not.βΒ No βone(1)β has yet known only one.Β With βone(1)β there is nothing βto knowβ β to attend to, perceive.Β With 1 there is only the one β less than nothing.Β 1 counts the same in negation.Β You have nothing or one, but once perceivable three β the 1, the 0, the difference.
We make marks.
The mark I began with is βI,β just the least, the inception, the start of a βwe.βΒ A cry, a twitch, a tone or effect, a coloration, occurrence.Β Whatβs the differenceβ¦
βIβ could have made a sound.Β Could have poked, puked, stomped, wriggledβ¦simply gestured into windβ¦
ANYthing, EVERYthing can only happen as more-than-one.Β More than meaningless mark (/) or vanishing point, it indicates RELATION.Β If 1=nothing, we still get 1 + -1 = 0β¦all ways at least 3.Β And if 1 is alone (βall-oneβ) thereβd be no knowing, telling, perceiving, deciding without at least a βNONE(4, 0)β or βTWO(3, 2)β to proffer recognition β ALWAYS MORE THAN ONE for there β2B.β
I could not propose βIβ without other or else (no-thing could be perceived without difference, and difference demands at least two + a relation, [even similarity β which always harbors difference] β therefore 3 at the least for a mark).Β If βyouβ couldnβt tell a difference (perceive or experience somethingβ¦how would you know some thing is?).Β Identi(cal)ty would seem (necessarily) IM-perceptible.
1 NEVER EQUALS 1.Β Such is my thesis.Β If equality and sameness are possible no one could mark it, perceive it, proclaim it β 1=1 is not perceptible.Β For 1(βIβ) to be identifiable, not-1(not-I) is required, which demands a 3rd(third) that might distinguish or experience β whether relation-itself 1Β±1 or Otherness to βtell apartβ or cleave.
Identification demands Other.Β A mark, even the slenderest, simplest, accidental dash β to be perceptible, to matter β must be different from an other.Β Therefore, always 2 have to be for a 1 to be, and for that to be perceptible a third(5, 3) must existβ¦ 1β 1=3, and 1=1=3β¦
i.e. I begin with βIβ to invoke/inscribe MANY.
I am beginning this story with wordsβ¦
Hyphen & Hymen, Pt. 1
βAll discoursesβ¦would then develop in the anonymity of a murmurβ¦
What difference does it make who is speaking?β
Michel Foucault
βWe talk only because of a persistent desire to understand what is it we are sayingβ
Arkadii Dragomoshchenko
βAgain and again there is the attempt to define the world in language and to display it β
but that doesnβt workβ
Ludwig Wittgenstein
According to a receipt yellowed in the pages of The Impossible book, 16 years ago I purchased the Story of Rats by Georges Bataille.
βWhat are you βgetting atβ?β
βWhat do you mean by βkernelβ?β
Questions are asked.Β I ask them myself.
Today I got bored of it.
Uncertain I βget atβ anything.Β Doubtful even that βIβ.Β Yet βfeelβ pursuit of some βkernel.βΒ In other words, because, simply, βother wordsβ (fore-words, afterwords) sometimes eventuate communicationβ¦
β¦as if experience were an undifferentiable ocean of moving waves β incalculably deep waters ever in motion β unstoppable, interminable, immersive, and overwhelming β and something splashes, a cup dips, a boat prow plows its way, an arm drops, or rock, or bird flashes down talons β and a surface becomes, is brokenβ¦
βA wordβ
β¦ruin.Β Ruined.Β Inalterably (no, thatβs not accurate β rather incessantly alterable, altering, altar-ing, alterity β othered and changed) altered, altared β SACRIFICED to perception, experience β peering-in-out-of, or peering/prying-out-of-in, out-of-pry-into
βand vice-versaβ
Rue-in, is what βIβ seem to do.Β Bring sorrow, lack, and loss with each perception, each calling, each again/comparison/re-cognitionβ¦Ruin, rue-in.Β Touching, seeing, tasting, smelling, hearing β continualΒ selection and ignor-ance (DE-selection, de-lectory, de-clamation, di-visoryβ¦) rues-in, sorrows-in, i-dentifies creating lack, erasure, damage.
βWhat happens – ?β
The temptation together [to gather]β¦to peer and pry into, in, withβ¦to test and to tryβ¦to extract and bring, to-gatherβ¦ to form-u-late.Β AFTER experience, to create otherβ¦posit(-ion) a βYou,β βout,β exo-, ex-tend, ex-plain, ex-haust, ex-hilerate and ex-aspirateβ¦to KILL, CRUSH, SLICE, DIFFERENTIATEβ¦βIβ hiding somewhere in All and Every.
An βIβ in All is AIL.Β Rue-in.
βWouldnβt it be better if we didnβt get sick?Β But we do.β β Jan Zwicky
βDonβt be so hard on yourselfβ¦we allβ¦β
Separate, tear, disjoint, di-chotomize, di-vulge, de-story, de-struct [de-con-struct i-we-form de-form]
βHey!Β Enough!β
As I was saying, try-pry-di-ing to sayβ¦
βWho?Β When?Β Where?Β How?β
Tri-, di-, all in-volves, in-volutes, con-volutes a cutting, a ripping, a be-lying of de-struction β as it crafts an alternate structure (con-struction)β¦
βthe βkernelβ
Oui.Β We.Β Yes.Β The sense thatΒ Β Is the sense of being-thrown, dropped, something making a splash, separating the watersβ¦ a kerneling, an ob-ject (re-ject, ab-ject) dis-turbance that sub-jects turbulenceβ¦
Thrown.Β Splash.Β Change.Β Alteration.Β Altaration.Β Altarity.Β Othering.Β For-IN (foreign)β¦ kernel.
βWhat are you βgetting atβ?β
βSo thatβs what you mean by βkernelβ?Β Dis-turbanceβ¦ Turbulenceβ¦ something must beβ¦ in order toβ¦β
βWhat thing?Β Why?β
βIn the beginning was the Wordβ¦ was Godβ¦ and God movedβ¦and divided the watersβ¦β (John 1:1, Genesis 1:1, 6, KJV) a Bar, a βfirmament,β a permanent Between βcalled Heaven.βΒ And so separating, separation be-ginsβ¦from the first very first motion, movement, changeβ¦ ex-pulsion, ex-crement, ex-ultation, ex-is-stance.Β Out.Β OUT.Β OUT-ofβ¦ posit-ion.
βYouβve lost meβ¦β
βOui β what are you βgetting atβ?β
Ex-perience.Β Prying, peering.Β Trying.Β Be-ing separates?Β Dis-joins?Β Dis-tracts?Β βIβ am a rupture.Β Dis-rupts: not two, not one.Β I stray, strive, volition, voluteβ¦de-story, de-volve.Β What am βIβ but a weapon-blade?Β Rue-in.Β And thus I speak, say with pointed penβ¦poke and pry and terrorize β ex-perience.
βGlorious or gory-ous β visions are di-visionsβ
So it seemsβ¦
βSo it isβ¦β
Is, was, will be spoken into/out-of our stance (existance)β¦falsified di-visionsβ¦
βI cannot get beyond language by means of languageβ
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Inexpressibles
The Three Oddest Words
When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.
By Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
Copyright Β© Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
thank you Unwanted Advice
Unstillable
βPangs of faint light and stirrings still.Β Unformable graspings of the mind.Β Unstillableβ
– Samuel Beckett β
Letβs loiter about here a little, as if language were lakelike, locatable, alive enough to lollygag loose within.Β Perhaps not.Β Perhaps it is nearly always just-becoming.Β Perhaps nearly all, nearly always, is thus: just-becoming – liminal lineaments languishing-then-livened, languishing-then-livened, βagainβ we might say, designating (de-term-ining) a balance to enlivened.Β How so?Β Why so?Β By what author(ity)?
Unstillable.
βIn the madhouse of skull and nowhere elseβ (– Samuel Beckett).Β Is that so?
βSkin has no choice but to converse with the worldβ¦thin, ignorant borderland of skinβ¦myself all trespass, misunderstanding, translating, translatingβ¦β (-Laurie Sheck).Β Is that so?
If words were invented with sense.Β To βmake senseβ between one and an βother.βΒ
What if words ARE THAT?Β Connective contours between.
I am inebriated, my willingness loosened to expression, though it might ruin me (like language) and I stare (Dostoevsky β βMyshkinβ) βintentlyβ into Mikhail Bakhtinβs face, his specific eye-gaze, and say:
βIs it the case that words are βmeant,β are βformed,β are breathed, areβ¦constructed, areβ¦utilized, to be tissue woven between βmeββ¦and βyouβ?β
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.Β Mikhail Bakhtin does not have the capacity to co-respond.
β¦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 βselvesβ but not betweenβ¦
What might this βmeanβ β between anyone?Β 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.Β Prognostic retrograde delineation.
Bankrupt, impassible, impossible, communique.
The decoding of words as communication, connection?Β An imaginary.Β A handling of terms.Β Inventing, devising, originary.Β With whom?Β Where?Β How?Β Β Hint and vestige, remnant and sketch, scheme and fabrication, inkling and outline.
Unstillable. Unformable graspings of the mind.Β Is that so?
If weβre limning the liminal now, letβs loosen the letters and slacken the sieves.Β Lasso and lounge, scatter and scrape, together (to gather) β a scintillate sense β sporadic sparks, succulent scenarios β exist for enlivening language, whatever limited lust lies therein β if language is locatable and not merely modal mechanics?Β A modicum of music then, some scrap of sonority, some lingual litmus βmaking sense.βΒ Whatever.Β Possibility, potential, particible particularsβ¦
βTHE TEST IS COMPANYβ
βIf there may not be no more questions let there at least be no more answersβ
– Samuel Beckett, Company β
βWe must not die: kindred spirits will be foundβ
– Viktor Shklovsky –
Β
Haunted Man: I am: the possession
βquiet field without possessionβ
Laurie Sheck, Captivity
I am an ocean of signs.Β Of a womby surround β undulate, viscous, discombobulate, obscure.Β Tremulous quarks of murky markings and inference, connotative particles, confused, ill-defined, and indifferent.Β Instigative convolutions, a potentia of concatenation and combine, cations and anions, dispersive attract.
Filled with words.Β Prescriptive, disruptive, chaotic, coherent.Β A turbulence transposing subjects, predicatively morphing, an aqueous slurrage of verb, vim and weave.Β Compositive, foreign, constitutive terms.Β Not-I.Β Of Other.Β As shapes and colors, sounds, concepts, any all perceived β no idgit of me, all permeable outside β Otherness, environ, cocoon β borrowed, received (or rejected?), an elusive collude.
Signifiers swarm me.Β Inherited meanings, genetic loom of semiotic loops and swirls.Β Who begins?Β No ex nihilo.Β All arrange, revise, adapt.Β Weβre composed.Β I of an ocean of signs.Β Language and impulses, instincts and codes.Β Ellipses and notions imposed.Β Undifferentiate, senseless, stirred by experience β a cacophonous chorus of bones to my suture.
Oral, aural, textured and gestured, I swim and I sink, flux in the float.Β Fragments and fractures, compounds and bonds, links and erasures.Β Malformations.Β Dis-ease.Β Some viral, some blocked, unusable and ill-conceived, undone, or aborted.Β Indisposition. Swim on, slurry substance, amalgam of shreds, resist and desist, copy and swallow.Β I choke.Β I chortle.Β What makes βmineβ?Β Just a word, (yet another), from whence and from where we donβt know, but not βusβ (neither that, nor this keystroke, this breathy design, dasein, without ownmost).Β Even a name is built upon countless.Β Other.
Epi-, meta-, arche-, unknown and unknowing, interpreted through mediated mattery fracas, encompassing commotion, tempestuous din, innately ordained.Β But not-I, freak iota, insignificant smallest, author of none.Β No one.Β No thing.Β No not-I.
Quavery, wavering, components of signs, my birth-sea and umwelt, disjoiner and fabricate mush.
This become, in this swelter, this wrap and unravel.Β Efface and inveigle a ubiquitous unique.Β I am drowning, a seaway of signs.
Within / Without
βI have only to go on, as if there were something to be done, something begun, somewhere to go.Β It all boils down to a question of words, I must not forget thisβ¦β
– Samuel Beckett, The Unnameable β
Waiting for the passerby to pass.Β Contingency.Β To not open the door until the potential for harm is past.Β No apparent harm: adult man, skin color variance, divergent ethnicity, strolling outside the iron black gate surrounding my home, gesturing toward and addressing my small pet mammal (a dog) – ostensibly safely contained and separate – from the strange-other, (βstrangerβ) traveling past my abode on a designated path βoutside,β a public sidewalkβ¦ yetΒ no harm is ever apparent, or weβd be almost certain to avoid it.
From behind the closed door, thus abandoning the small animal, the βpetβ that I care for (βcareβ? β to keep alive with food and water, activity and touch β for what reasons I have never understood, it seems something we do, or something done to us) in any case (who βusβ?) to me (βmeβ?), in any case, in every case, (what is βcaseβ? β case is what occurs), in any case the sensation that harm is imminent, is possible, that any/every-thing (or case) harbors potential threat β intrusion, oppression, obligation, response-ability β that ANY passer(s)-by may enforce (force what in?), force βpresenceβ (presence: the pressure of an other)β¦occurring-with.
Mammal, woman, weather, man.Β Peril of change, of inevitable occurring, alteration, the inception of a βcase.βΒ Event.Β Permutation.Β Disaster.Β Perhaps.
Wait for βitβ to pass (ambiguous constancy of language, of pronouns, of perhaps).Β To be.
No apparent harm, harm always arriving where not apparent, otherwise averted.
Therefore damage expected everywhere, until proven otherwise or bypassed, for when has it ever been the βcaseβ that harm, hurt, or affliction were not lurking unaware?
Always caught βoff-guardβ when injured.Β As in βaccident,β or un-fore-seen.Β Must not not-fore-see.Β Avoid wreckage.
He passes by.Β Or she, or it, or they (ambiguous language and malleable, eminently referable, transferable, vague for application).Β No harm incurred (as far as is known).Β As who knows?Β Who might know?Β Or what?
World transforms.Β Passers-by.Β Incidents.Β We have a βcaseβ (who β βweβ?).Β βIβ step back, step in, amidst Β walls, barriers, rooms.Β βIβ retreat.Β Evading catastrophe.Β Probable hardship.Β Imaginable uncertainty. Β Such is the “case,” my “cave,” a cave uncertain, unreliable, self-designated, no one knows. Β This (what βthisβ?) is vague β hurt has always materialized unexpectedly.Β Danger is disaster, or if not, no harm no foul, never wounded by suspecting, only oblivious or uninformed.Β Must anticipate harm.Β Less proven guiltless.Β Never guiltless.Β Never harm without an-other, without outside, without obscurity.Β What is βwith-outβ?
When ever not with-out?Β With-out always.Β With.Β No in without with-out.Β Danger of disaster. Β Any definabilityΒ requiring with-out.Β No in without out. Β Being with out.
Waiting for passersby to pass.Β Bye.
When have I been harmed when I expected?Β Perhaps in love, perhaps adventure.Β Any venture with out.Β Into the without. Within without.Β Knowing I was risking with the out.Β βSelf-harm.βΒ It would appear withoutβs within as well.Β Never not another.Β Abysmal and ubiquitous.Β Possibly impossible: to be without with-out.Β No reference or referral without being-with βout.β
No within then.Β Only out could be.Β In with in?Β Self-same.Β Tautology.Β A=A.Β How A without out?Β Without not-A?Β Without absence, other, space, not-line, shapelessness, void?Β A=A because A is distinguishable from.Β Distinct.Β From – ?Β Without.
Why βwithoutβ?Β Why not only βwithβ β necessarily out or other?Β Variant.Β Different.Β Without βoutβ no βwith.β
Squirrel, leaves, air, skin.Β Cells, organs, activities and processes.Β Even whatβs βinβ is βoutβ for βwith.βΒ βInβ βwithβ βout.βΒ A=A.Β So say.Β Think.Β βI.βΒ Passing by.Β Table, paper, pen, without prompting βin.βΒ In without as well.Β No βin.βΒ A=A.Β IN WITH OUT.
Out the βwithin.β Β Without in/out.Β Writing.Β Saying.Β Bleeding.Β Breathing.
Only think with out.Β All out, away, a way.
Wait for a way to away.Β Within/Without.Β A/A.Β No equals.Β Never equal.
Pet mammal dog, own voice, man, woman, child, sensation, language, molecule, atmosphere, ground: without with-in.
WITH, then.Β Simply with.Β No out, no in.Β All danger and disaster, potential and unsuspected harm.Β Can not.Β Unprotected.Β Only WITH.Β No out, no in.
Waiting for the passers-by.Β Passing.Β Bye.
Untitled Fiction III
III.Β ββ¦with murderous careβ¦β
Jon had said, to Jesse, about the fires.
So we persisted, Jon, Jesse, and I, and the deceased Beckett, with perhaps thousands of others, unbeknownst any to each around some mythical innermost.
βFail better.βΒ The worst times are the ones in which one simply wants to quit failing altogether.Β Unfortunately (literally) that necessarily entails a kind of βend of the world as one βknowsβ [perceives, participates, experiences, or imagines] itβ β either suicide, tragedy, βterminalβ illness β death of some sort.Β Maybe silence, but thatβs not certain.
The game table is always already laid, youβre always simply βenteringβ it (LW points out this fallacy in his collections of numbered critiques of anything anyone writes or says or claims) actually (as far as we know) always already there (where you βfindβ β what?!? β your βselfβ β what?!?) and (again, perhaps, literally, unfortunately β or at the very least extremely limitedly) you can only occupy one position at the table (or wherever the action happens to be) at a time, that, unfortunately, always involves the very delimitedβ¦well, YOU.Β These are the arrangements as they transpire.
Language can (and does), we surmised, go anywhere.Β I try to record, invent, notate, mark, initiate.Β It all seems unnameable.Β Or of far too many names, references, usages, subtexts and connotations, inferences and denotations, already implemented in order to represent anything undone, reconstructed, deconstructed, novel or βnew.βΒ βThereβs nothing new under the sunβ was already a clichΓ© at the beginning / in the earliest phases.
Fires and voids all imagined early.Β [Apeiron.Β Chora/Khora.Β Clinamen.Β Flux.Β Infinity.Β ABSENCE.Β The βOther.β].Β I begin.Β Again.Β GWFH and Freud refer to this as βrepetition.βΒ A hopeless hope of emergence.Β As different or unique as it may seem, ever a plenitude of the pre-existing.Β The already-there.
Been there, done that, Beckett exhausts from his grave alongside.Β βHe was found lying on the groundβ¦a voice comes to one in the darkβ Imagine.Β Imagine.Β Everything is already there.Β The table set and set again, arranged.Β Already there when you wake to it.Β World.
It hasnβtβ¦apparentlyβ¦been given up.Β Perhaps it is inexhaustible.Β Limited though we be, we seem to be teeming with it/themβ¦ efforts at the unsayable.Β Unnameable.Β How it is.Β What is the what.Β Lost in the labyrinth of the occurrence, experience, now with shoddy, partial, biased and over-specified or eccentrically particular maps, guides, or rulebooks.Β Ourselves.
All my Words are Silent 