Category: Writing

Philosophy / Philosopher

On By Alias HarlequinIn human, Language, love, meaning, Philosophy, Purpose, Wittgenstein, Writing1 Comment

Things happen.

Accidents.

Today, I was browsing the shelves of the library at which I work, looking for books most precious to me to “represent” me as a person – a librarian, human, father, partner, son, life-trajectory, organism, friend – in honor of (yet another inexplicable almost insane “let’s-find-a-reason-for-celebration-instead-of-accepting-reality” National arbitration of “National Library Week” among perhaps many other things we are trying to laud ourselves for being every day/week/month/year).  And I stumbled across a title related to a hero of mine I had never seen – combining both the delights of the personage & thought I associate with him, and a favorite thing to ponder – communication or discourse:

Rhees - Philosophy9

From that point on, it has been what Eugene Gendlin might label felt experiencing: the occasional yet over-powering moments in life where we feel all-in, fully alive, in the flow, MET… RESONANT… acknowledged and identified.

The book opens with a prefatory essay by one of Wittgenstein’s students, literary executors, and, quite clearly, astute thinker in himself, Rush Rhees.

I include it here because it evinced that moment of relief, exhaustion, affirmation, Okay-ness, that comes from Emily-Dickinson-like “What – you too?” moments in our strange, convoluted, web-networked, chaotic and most-often-indecipherable human Who-Am-I existences…

All to say I read this brief and delightful (to me) report of a fellow human and thought:  Okay, I let down, I collapse, I am guilty of what you describe… and elated to find I am not alone.

For what it’s worth… this seems to “get me” :

Rhees - PhilosophyRhees - Philosophy3Rhees - Philosophy4Rhees - Philosophy5Rhees - Philosophy6Rhees - Philosophy7Rhees - Philosophy8-001

From

From

Fits & Starts

On By Alias HarlequinIn creative writing, Experimenctes, fiction, fragments, hope, life, Writing3 Comments

What scribbles out the sides, longing for a place to go…

while I’m busy with other things

743-C.TWOMBLY.

The sentences broke between them.  Not twisting or scrambling, no encrypted script noising up communication; more like letter parts and chunks of words crumbling away before they even bridged the gaps.  Sayings that collapsed on themselves as they emerged.

***********************************************************************************************************************************************************

At the point we begin imagining ourselves insane and institutionalized, conjuring car wrecks or dreaming deaths in the family to avoid our obligations…we are well-advised that something has gone wrong…

************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Whenever what might be called an “encounter” occurred between them, everything else grew less pressing, less…significant or unsurvivable.  She became a solution and a re-solution all at one go…

**********************************************************************************************************************************************************

fragments, in other words.

The days have to be enough…they’re all we have.

Resources

On By Alias HarlequinIn Current Reading, human, life, Literature, meaning, Writing1 Comment

One of the many reasons (words-turned-to-meanings) he’s tattooed on my veins…

Jabes

Velocity and Friction

On By Alias HarlequinIn Aging, creative writing, Experience, Experimenctes, Fear, fiction, love, relationships, Self-Doubt, Writing2 Comments

This uncovered writing has parts that feel like 16-year-old wordplay mixed with the aging man…sigh.

FROM THE 9 NOTEBOOKS

desert driving

Velocity and Friction

9 Notebooks

On By Alias HarlequinIn communication, creative writing, Experience, identity, Kafka, life, notebooks, Writing1 Comment

In an act of rebellion and a kind of self-serving exorcism or slate-clearing (what blog is NOT an attempt at an entity’s expression, communication?), and facing the duress of weeks burdened with commitments and inescapable responsibilities…[in other words]…I intuit I am encountering a “time” (weeks / months / foreseeable futures?) that I deduce as laden – somehow preordained – for preoccupations of employment, previously established obligations – freighted with encumberances complexly negotiated…[under pressure I compose]…and so I search for a project [as is my way] that is FOR ME[?] (something autotrophic, self-cannibalizing and nourishing at once, individually comprised and contained) an insurrection and defiance honoring self [so I surmise] facing compulsion…

…and I unearth these 9 Notebooks…all aborted undertakings from the past 12 months…via which I propose to mount mutiny by posting all that seems potentially warranted in them [upon re-reading as if the first time, long forgotten]…toward little other purpose than for purging, opening, erasing – a clearinghouse of efforts – that might evolve toward some novel substitution, unforeseen modification, development, emergence…

“this is what directs him to learning – where he may encounter fragments of his own existence,

fragments that are still within the context…”

– Walter Benjamin on Franz Kafka – 

9 Notebooks

There will be stories, concepts, poems, characters, reflections, essays…and ephemeral scraps like these…

  • think feel – attune to meaning – reflect and refract
  • befriend your body, take care with your mind
  • be gentle, be open.  move fluidly, breathe
  • go alert to your dreams
  • wish more than hope, walk don’t run, run sometimes
  • be careful of rules, they’re always changing, it’s the nature of the rule, the measure, the standard
  • keep your eyes and ears open, along with heart and mind – only let things close into pleasure and pain – and that more of a wince
  • don’t be afraid of your story – write and rewrite it, edit and revise, revise, revise, and write it again
On By Alias HarlequinIn communication, creative writing, human, meaning, Writing6 Comments

Witt Quote

Sometimes it seems, it takes me so much time (it seems) to find whereof I can speak…

On By Alias HarlequinIn change, creative writing, Experience, Journal, life, Writing4 Comments

Losing

Ash grey little body only upright heart beating face to endlessness.  Old love new love as in the blessed days unhappiness will reign again.  Earth sand same grey as the air sky ruins body fine ash grey sand.  Light refuge sheer white blank planes all gone from mind.  Flatness endless little body only upright same grey all sides earth sky body ruins.  Face to white calm touch close eye calm long last all gone from mind.  One step more one alone all alone in the sand no hold he will make it.

– Samuel Beckett, Lessness –

Distractedly riffling through old notebooks stacked, shelved and scattered about my working space, some dating to 1991. 

For most of my life I’ve desired to be a writer.

Nearly all of my life I’ve been writing.

Reading.  Writing.  Reading.  Writing.  Reading.  Writing.  Thinking.

Once out of the home, off on my own, out in the world,

the marginalia and doodles, notes in the headers and footers,

grew redundant with desire…

…desire for language to do some certain things,

…desire to be a certain sort of sayer, singer:

to write the ambiguities.

Repeatedly:  to be a writer of “the grey,” “the foggy,” the layered and the liminal.  Experience thickly translucent, ambivalent, inconclusive and unclear.  That light in which even our shadows go unseen.

Yet over time, enduring work, assembling children, compiling experience, occasioning love and its passing by,

encountering mortality in its consistent accumulation of extraction,

my writing desire grows more active,

toward the active,

and its happening,

writing verbally,

writing living:

to write losing.

Losing in its agility and operation, its perpetuity. 

Losing as it eventuates and proceeds, universally, in each instant.

TO WRITE LIVING : LOSING

to loose losing

…perhaps to lose it…

…face to endlessness…

will he make it?

FYI – in margins

On By Alias HarlequinIn change, creative writing, Experience, life, WritingLeave a comment

Although nearly silent, or, too busy to conjure and compose, or…

I have not given up, having not ceased,

somewhere in the mix of these,

somewhere between voices…

ASPECTS OF WRITING

Another Rejected (albeit kindly!) fiction…

On By Alias HarlequinIn WritingLeave a comment

Curious… I rarely remember things I’ve written… this is no exception… but stumbling across it I am pleased that this happened…

Alias Harlequin's avatarAll my Words are Silent

WHO THEN IS SPEAKING?

“the preliminary condition of any work of literature is that the person who is writing has to invent that first character – the author of the work… the author’s name and the various ‘I’s’ that go to make up the ‘I’ who is writing”

–Italo Calvino–

“’I’ can only be identified by the instance of speech which contains it, and by that alone”

–Emile Benveniste–

“Who, then, is speaking?”

–Maurice Blanchot–

who is speaking: 

I am the one, come to tell the story, the code of information and words, with    letters and gestures and some touches of inflection, but I mean to tell it straight and impartially, save the parts I must needs factor in.

who is writing:

And I am the one, come to present the speech in images – to sketch, doodle, scrawl and scribble – marks and…

View original post 1,508 more words

A Narrative Construction

On By Alias HarlequinIn Art, creative writing, Experimenctes, fiction, meaning, Writing2 Comments

This weird stuff:

This Stuff

            The sky is “cloudy.”  This is part of who he is, just now, in this case.  She’d said “______ ___ _______, _____!” in just that tone, this manner – another aspect constructing him.  That he’s a “he” is also not irrelevant.  Of so many “years,” “locations,” “relations,” “activities” and “behaviors,” “interactions” and “learnings” ought not be ignored or left aside.  There’s no other way to identify him, along with appearance, but that depends (and has changed dramatically from those first cells).

The man is “of an age,” as some might say, keeping track in the ways that people will.  Is “like” (comparing as they do).  Says and does, makes and thinks, with categories shared among the lot of us.  A male human, then, within the commerce of the world, regardless of distinctions, and because of them.

“Specialness” is a classification reserved for none and all.  A sensuous “unique,” observable and rich, endless and utterly common.

And yet we’ll pay attention, for awhile, to THIS ONE.  The one recounted and described, gradually revealed (such as it is), and selected for this tale and task (a narrative product of our genes).  We abide.

Recording “life” – an optional project at our disposal, and “communication” – a capacity shared.  Let’s do this then, with “me” – teller, author, scientific artist; and “you” (all) – necessary “others,” listeners, readers, hearers, respondents.  Composing and perceiving, interpreting, creating – the ways we get along and mean, “make sense of,” all that “happens”

as we’re “in it.”

as we “are it.”

Let’s begin.

We have begun.

And “long” ago, in its beginning – wherever (whenever) – that might be for any one of us.  “Us” – that spreads the lying truth of it – that we are “We” and never “one” or “me” or “he” or “she” or “it” or “they” without the others.  Simply being – substances and structures interactive in “their” ways…

We, the happening, as we perceive it.

What we make of it.

(Whomever we are).

Squirrel, fir tree, trout.

Stone, astronaut, wetness.

“We” – bound by our conditions.

Let’s begin.

[I’m glad we’re sharing] (he says).

THERE IS A BEAR

Contingent Narratives

                                                …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 ws,

I light

a small fire in the rain*

Narrative Construction