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: Writing
St. John Chrysostom: Homily on Christmas Morning
This is another post I made during Advent four years ago, which bears repeating. I have read this sermon by St. John Chrysostom (late fourth century …
St. John Chrysostom: Homily on Christmas Morning
the songs i do not know (iii)
Tell me the songs you don’t know
Dan Beachy-Quick, Of Silence and Song
Light…makes some things seen, makes some things invisible
-SIR THOMAS BROWNE, IN B-Q, OF SILENCE AND SONG
iii. inside the other
.
i walked
caves, hollows, holes
reaching in
wondering, wandering,
exploring
.
wherefore?
in whom?
this forest-stream-mountain
rain
cloud or animal
species
perhaps kind
world
.
else
.
eye, crotch, finger, part
leg, mouth, buttocks, cleave
begin
in prayer
darklight arithmetic
and and and
also
more
.
a line
emotion
an happening
or even
event
what is called
beginning
again
what feels like
entering, entrance
entry
way
.
fuel
to the opening
.
i walked
in prayer
singing
nothing
known
listening
still
to answer
.
call
response
(“Tell me,” she said)
of songs
you do
not know
(“i don’t,” i said
i do
.
begin
again
before
where now
already
The Songs I do not Know (ii)
Tell me the songs you don’t know
Dan Beachy-Quick, Of Silence and Song
Light…makes some things seen, makes some things invisible
-Sir Thomas Browne, in B-Q, Of Silence and Song
ii. “Tell me…”
bluebell. jay.
joy. blank. block.
blur. when.
what?
how. where. ever why.
now
it is very
most unknown
not knowing –
i don’t;
breathe
.
cerulean. youth.
abstract. asunder.
i wonder
what for
then
when now?
how does
one tell
not knowing
unknown
always
it sings
knowing
(its’ icon)
and melody
The Songs I Do Not Know (1)
“Tell me the songs you don’t know.”
Dan Beachy-Quick, Of Silence and Song
“–knowledge is made by oblivion.”
Sir Thomas Browne, in B-Q, Silence & Song
clips, or snippets,
the known as partial
notes
signifying
the experienced
gesturing
hymning (nearly celebrating)
its reverse –
everything
unknown
i didn’t know
the sounds of
as they were
always changing –
ever never
.
so i made noise
my shapes
transparently novel (novice)
windows
framing, marking, visibling
all i do not know –
every word an icon
view-finding
all it’s not
.
Image
Sound
Landscape
Intention
Meaning
Clarity of
.
definition
None
.
thus every song i sing
i sing of what i do not know
or hear or dream or feel
i think
but do i tell of songs
i do not know
or sing not knowing?
.
would i recognize
unknown
song?
do i?
sing?
.
it’s hard to tell
meaningful questions
from questioned
meanings,
meaning
tones
notion
her eyes
the water
sky
adroit
wonder
or passion
.
not known
i sing.
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
a view from nowhere?
he can only be distracted by nothing (the reflection of everything), light uncontained or perceived, even though he cannot cease registering her flesh and its forms, thigh-lines, tone and texture, fluidity of folding and motion. Nothing refuses to contain it, and rather brings it back, and forth, or all at once space, always “this. this here. here.” Nothing missing mirror, his emptiness replete.
Bends and scent, nonsensed, indelible.
Him, there (here), composed observer, unable/disabling any view from nowhere. It is without a not…
our small lives are traversed by momentous movements, avalanches in the depths of the everyday
Knausgaard, Summer
How much longer still dreaming of a language
Not enslaved to words as it is today…
des forets, Poems of Samuel Wood
so we use words in order to go beyond words
Markides, Mountain of Silence
What constitutes unbounded in literature?
Knausgaard, My Struggle 6
…still she remains a remarkable beauty (how so easily contorted from inside?). If inner bodies resembled outer, how different life would be, observable reversed as well – cultural ugliness/fear/repulsion softens from inner loveliness, even as prettiness suffers its evils. That being said, the inner therefore rules the day for beauty, and earth must be divine.
Veins outstrip hand lotion. Wrinkles give the lie.
he depends on his non-mirror, and many come to light. Refractions, glints, unending activity – a world (or however you attempt to measure the imagined) exists as relation alone (all-one) – infinite interdependence ‘to be.’
slope, angle, apparent rest – the wrist, the knee, the curve to ankle, each knuckle and blade about the eye, how else to distinguish hair from head from air from skin from water – its relative.
all i do is sense and praise (that poorly) – relation, gratitude. Awareness – attention – all act. Calves, puppies, elbows, crooks – sway and struggle, chaos-strife, relations of same differences, now.
he calls out, a wave of vibrations; he smiles, a rippling fabric; looks (out or in at once) – “becoming” (some have spoken or written) – enacted, enbodied, at-once ‘taking place’ – now. Here it is, they are, him/her with in of. It goes. Nowhere but here (it comes in other words). his left, your right, his east, your west, up-down-other: relation. Occurs.
No else. No one. No thing. No where. Never. All depending, relating to this, us, that, here, now. Without which? Unknown, inconceivable, imperceptible, nonsensical…only possible.
Nocturne with a Line from Porchia
Nocturne with a Line from Porchia Everything is nothing, but afterwards. I rise and the moon disturbs the darkness, revealing symbols, a few stolen …
Nocturne with a Line from Porchia
Terrific post/re-post…feels like a birthday gift… & Porchia! thanks poet(s) – Okaji moved through Porchia – ah literature!
Cabin Letter, cloud fragment, Colorado, July
Dear – (names of loves, Colorado cloud formations)…
to follow scent and slope toward where words are to be tasted. Summer. Diction. Pronunciations of a walk, a caress, of noticing and discovery
.
Aspen, pine, columbine.
Grasses, marsh, and pebbles.
Sand and water.
Bodies in the world. Of.
Earthy heavens.
.
To lose reason and perception in being.
A sense of that. Sky. Fluid. Water flowing and founding, above and below.
I can still imagine desire,
after all.
.
Clouds never ceased converging and changing,
even when they weren’t.
Berry referred to this as “the space between the leaves”
“I,” for instance, mind or body both.
Clouding forms.
.
Smoke and drink still, even in absence of.
.
A carriage of conversation accompanying – in the form of silence, – inscriptions, all that is nonhuman, waiting for or presenting any of its forms.
Written language or music recordings, for instance: grasses and bushes, streamsongs and trees along with birds and stealthy deer.
All bodies of the world, in and with it, too.
Imagination.
Desire.
Making presence like a meal. A party. A walk, a hike, a bath, asleep.
If I named you to bring you near – what would you be? Who?
(shuffling the cards of names)
(faces all worn off)
A tiny pine responds, fake empire.
Eyes are everywhere, like leaves, like air molecules.
The spaces between.
.
I go out.
Asleep.
Nights are maps, are dreams.
Translations.
Cloud formations. Always.
“Russian blue.” Vodka. Confusion-in-fusion. Withness.
-to cease the spirit
Nothing beyond.
The mosquito, intravenous. To “draw” blood.
Spirits. (extraction versus infusion)
Extrusion. No medicine.
Aspen quiver, laboring breath. Alone. All becoming one.
What? Who?
(so much any named “you” as an “I”)
Caught in the trees, slipped in the stream. Thirsty.
Asleep again. Watching clouds.
Dear –
– you. fire. rain. bodies with and in and of the world. Here, not-here.
Results this letter. Address. Silently.
Solitude as a freedom to be alone, to become (how slowly?) all-one.
Alone there’s nothing there. Cloud fragments.
Sky rains its portions. With, in, of. Neither for nor against.
Perhaps awake now.
Air in, air out.
Changed
Is all I’ve learned to suffer.
Undergo.
Cloud formations
Storms. There is a darkness, a swelling uprising (not grand!) in me translating the transformation of Alone/All-one, a kind of grit and pollution I add.
Turbulence.
Bones. Rock. Stones
Desire
Imagination
Sky
the fluids
they conjoin.
Dear –
it began.
(it was left for the voices) – with/in/of.
Dear Marguerite, Helene, Clarice…
Hello, I am (not) alone. With/in/of the world. Neither for nor against.
Yet imagination and desire
cloud formations, I was expressing in
such great heights
Polysemic Stupor 