Vignettes of the Hermit

On By NW FilbertIn creative writing, Experimenctes, fiction, Hermit, reclusion, relationshipsLeave a comment

Vignettes

 

He changed his clothes, wearing a color he usually would not.  And of course the day was different.  “Sameness” (from one moment to the next) is a difficult seed to piece.  Yet, he’s identifiable.

Last year, his hair was cut.  By a trusted friend, no doubt, yet it hadn’t been severed for nearly two decades.  His behavior altered, his manner of speaking and greeting.  Him.  But (to those who knew him) he was still recognizable.  Somehow.  Even if not so much to himself.

Humans are strange.  There’s the sound of rain.  Emotions.  Appearances.  Sunlight.  And many other things besides.  There is language, for instance.  And touch.  Scents.  Each tiny change – alteration/adaptation – is micro- and macro-scopic.  Is.  Effective and affective.  Not easily discounted.

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She did not want to interact with him.  That, at least that (much) was clear.

She sat down, she closed her eyes.

She wished to stop the opportunity.  As if to say – “I am now sleeping.  You (any other) cannot reach me.”  Any (other) – even (you) – blanked out, refused, forgotten.”  “I am asleep.  Do Not Disturb (me).  I am Off Limits to you (any) you.”

He understands.  Reads sign signals.  Goes silent.  Writes on paper.

His dialogue – a wounded scraggly trail of hurt – writing.

No one (wants to) listen(s) to him: so he wails, expresses, tells, shares his story with flattened and dehydrated tree-pulp.  He draws confessions (conventional words), his family-language, blah blah blah – onto surfaces of desiccated dying.

So he might feel (an eensy-weensy tiny-whiny) a little bit that he matters.  That (i.e his feelings, experiences, being) is not ONLY shut out by closing (closed) eyes, but may (in fact) –

No, never mind.

[someone might care?]

No, never mind.

Eyes closed, shutters drawn: No.

Notebook.

Believing language makes things possible.

He (in order to survive) needs belief (otherwise – ?) that someone (one?) hears (cares?) attends (asks?)

Shaping letters onto dead matter.

Anyway.

Self-reflective Intrigue of the Day

On By NW FilbertIn communication, desire, erotic, Experience, love, meaning, pain, Philosophy4 Comments

“I have tried to describe a feeling that has often troubled me: I revenge myself on it by giving it publicity”

-Friedrich Nietzsche-

THE SOLIDARITY OF MIND-BODY-WORLD

MINDBODYWORLD

In my life, desire has been a ceaseless problem.

I have always possessed an unquenchable, ravenous, hunger for knowledge, relation & sex.

For the first time (in nearly 45 years) I can see it as a wholism.

I could read & reflect in the literature and learning of the world 18-20 hours a day without tiring.

I could engage & evince sexual fulfillment and bodily orgasm repeatedly without complaint.

I could interact & dialogue with another willing human around issues of being 18-20 hours a day without exhaustion.

These seem equalities; totalities; wholisms.

The refusal of dualities and scissions.

Inasmuch as my mindbody organism never tires and perpetually desires experiences of stimulation, information, novelty and introduction : research – literature – science – philosophy – style of expression – CONTENT-RICH, CURIOUS, CREATIVE, IDIOSYNCRATIC, NOURISHING, INFORMATIVE OR CHALLENGING...

so does my body: traditional/conventional intimate relationships seem characterized by graphable, chartable periods of intimate craving passion of new love (novelty) / regulation of growing familiarity (intimacy) / rhythmic relational ritual regarding sexual (bodily) ecstatic experience…yet NEVER has that satisfied me.  I have always longed for CONTENT-RICH, CURIOUS, CREATIVE, IDIOSYNCRATIC, NOURISHING, INFORMATIVE &/or CHALLENGING bodily pleasure AS MUCH AS I have for my learning mind…with my bodily experience.

As with sex, so with reading (& vice-versa): the IMPORT is the quality, stimulation & unique learning & fulfillment that each author / partner / interaction / experience brings…NOT a quest for repetition or sameness…

I can read Kafka, Dostoevsky, Musil, Proust, Scripture, Aquinas, Plato, Aristotle, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Foucault, Gendlin, Rilke – indeed THOUSANDS of thinkers/artists OVER AND OVER again NEVER tiring or failing to notice / learn / experience some new insight / perception / feeling / LEARNING / ecstasy …

LIKEWISE – physical human partners – I WOULD NEVER tire, grow used to, familiarize, exhaust, cease or lessen to crave, desire, starve for – unique, intriguing, wonderful physical bodies for stimulation, perception, experience, learning, ecstasy …

Seems a Wholism to me.  With what is GOOD – nourishing, stimulating, fulfilling – I NEVER CEASE TO CRAVE IT, & NEVER AM FULFILLED – or “accustomed,” “familiarized,” “apathetic,” “exhausted” of detail, inquiry, pursuit, exploration…

Long and long I have felt BAD about this:

feeling that I am weird, a sexually addicted person, uncannily erotic, unnaturally intellectual/abstract etc…

No more.  I realize my MIND and my BODY are the same thing: ONE THING : a PERSON…and that exactly as much as I ache/lust/pine/hanker for intellectual stimulation and inexhaustibility in great works of human creativity and expression/reflection…SO I ache/lust/pine/hanker for stimulation and inexhaustible pleasure of bodily interaction… 

FOR ONCE…PERHAPS I AM NOT THE “WEIRD” ONE

The one desiring equally and inexhaustibly ecstasy of mind and body, untiringly, unceasingly, unsatisfiably…

The perpetual “quest” for the “endless joy of erotic experience”

MIND & BODY – Aristotle, Augustine, Heidegger, Agamben…

Sappho, Rumi, Rilke, Pessoa…

MIND & BODY EVER CRAVING

PERPETUAL DESIRE

PERPETUAL JOY 

impossible to fulfill

impossible to fail

ECSTASY

the perpetuation of joy and desire

WHOLLY

Well-matched, then.  Identical, then.  SELFSAME, then: mind & body

desire & fulfillment

joy and longing

selfsame in me

and I am not ashamed.

tricircle_fractal

LIFE: REALMS OF PERPETUAL DESIRE AND FULFILLMENT VIA THE JOY OF DESIRE AND PERPETUAL FULFILLMENT NEVER SATISFIED ALWAYS CRAVING ALWAYS NOURISHED CRAVING MORE 

PERPETUAL

DESIRE/FULFILLMENT

IDENTICAL

RECURSIVE

NO DESIRE WITHOUT FULFILLMENT

NO FULFILLMENT WITHOUT DESIRING

Ouroboros

WHAT I AM.

Media

On By NW FilbertIn change, creative writing, Current Reading, Literature, Media, TechnologyLeave a comment

So…fascinating and intriguing things are being done…

Kafka’s Wound – Will Self

Writing Outside Philosophy: An Interview with Simon Critchley » 3:AM Magazine

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Experience, human, Literature, meaning, PhilosophyLeave a comment

I am extremely honored and anticipating studies this summer with the guidance and instruction of Simon Critchley.  If you attend to this interview, you will probably notice the many resonances and ideas I “sense” and look forward to engaging…Simon Critchley

Writing Outside Philosophy: An Interview with Simon Critchley » 3:AM Magazine.

Things that remain from abandon : Implicit intricacies

On By NW FilbertIn creative writing, Experimenctes, fiction3 Comments

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Things that Remain from Abandon: Implicit Intricacies

A Fiction Fragment

From Laszlo Krasznahorkai: “Like a ninja.”

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, fiction, Language, meaning, Writing13 Comments

“In this system, nothing is more dangerous for an artist than success”

Laszlo

“Who made artists believe that art can be practiced only ‘successfully’?  Who made them believe that for a book to reach its goal and its readers, the ‘taste-makers’ are absolutely necessary?  How could they have allowed the critics, the editors, the owners of the chain bookstores, and so on, have so much power?  And who made them believe that they are truly artists?  Artists have come to believe that they, too, just like other people, need money and fame, money and fame for everyday life, moreover for being able to lead a lifestyle; and that these two repugnant things are seen as necessary for everything is not only tragic but ridiculous as well.  What kind of artist or writer lives like that?  Who is going to believe even a single line written?  What kind of esteem can the art of our age garner for itself after even one such bout of deal-making?  No, the artist’s needs are few: let there be something for him to eat and a place to live, and then every day he should circumambulate the city and country, like mendicants of old.  Nothing whatever can be more important for him than his own personal dignity, and this is exactly what he loses forever after the very first deal-making transaction…And so what do I recommend?  The taste of failure in place of success, poverty instead of wealth, anonymity in place of renown.  For now, utter concealment as opposed to publicity, perfect camouflage to the point of invisibility, because what the artist who lives in personal freedom and independence finds himself confronting today is unbelievably strong, and seems invincible…above all else, an artist must be cautious.  Like a ninja.”

LK

all excerpts taken from a powerful volume of Music & Literature:

MandL-Kraz

What a Story Looks Like to Me

On By NW FilbertIn Blogging, communication, creative writing, fiction, meaning, relationships1 Comment

The Trouble Is

He feels slow, tectonic, deeply submerged even, unable to act, not able to speak, disabled (apparently) to respond, incapable even of processing.  Something seems to have happened.

She – is confused and confounded – experiencing a complex cocktail of distress and depression, pointless and pointed-out, sludged, sloughed and slathered, comatose and doomed, sad and angry in equal measures.  A compound.  A compound problem.

But she’s not.  And he can.

And they will.

The trouble is.

Yes, the trouble is.

Not easily fitted.  Because it is this time.  Again, it is now.  And now, again.  The words were made from before, or for some last time, some other.  Something foreign.  Along with the categories, analysands and diagnoses.  Along with the remedies: all for a potential future or other distinctively past.

But it is now.  Yes, the trouble is.  Is now.

Words of others.  Ideas, aspects.

Always malappropriate and inadequate.  Words are not it.  Words are something else.

This is not discrete or verifiable.  Simple.  Is.  Trouble.

Yes, the trouble is.

And the trouble is now.

She collapses.  He freezes again.  And this frozen is yearning.  Something excruciating.  Like her.  Like where she is, now collapsing.  Collapsible.  Collapsed.  That’s the trouble.

The trouble is.

He wishes and fumbles, at light-year’s remove, another era, disabled, catatonic, all too aware.

She breaks in and through her fall.  He hitches and constricts.

She gurgles a sound, a horrible mutable sound, hardly audible in her destruction and dismantling, her infolding and coming undone.  And he cries, cries out, a sort of bellow and howl of noiseless emission, helpless to keep up with time, incapable of presenting, shaped and occurring like shore-stones and wheat-seed.

She is done.  He has yet to arrive.  He will not get there.  Too far ahead and far too behind, and she is in trouble, and the trouble is.

Yes, the trouble is.  It is now.

Something has happened.

Be faithful Go

On By NW FilbertIn WritingLeave a comment

Be faithful Go.

On Articulating Experience

On By NW FilbertIn Experience, hope, Journaling, meaning, Peace, Solidarity, WritingLeave a comment

“The more ways of articulating human experience one knows the better.”

– Eugene Gendlin

I would like very much to say/write something today.  Something resonant and broad, something that would stimulate empathy, reflection, acute sensations, self-awareness and some renewed purposiveness toward what any reader might consider their own “good” and the larger “good” of the “world.”  That would motivate us to be more fully, attentive to what we most value, what we most wish to value; that would tickle, trigger and activate that within each of our experiencings whatever it is in us that occurs in those sweet, heartbreaking and perception-exploding moments in which we feel like WE matter, that the WORLD we participate in matters, that meaning is worth, well, Life…and that Life as we are living it, we live together.

But I haven’t the first idea, concept or “hook” to know how to do that.  I have nothing to say.  I have urges, wishes, passions, dreams and a kind of crushing, yearning hope – that we might focus a little, shape ourselves, choose something for ourselves and one another and act with and toward ourselves, one another and the world in ways and fashions that could soothe, nourish, calm, comfort, extend and enhance our collective experience of being humans in a world full of so many other things we depend and inter-depend and co-depend on and with.  Rather than our easy, disruptive, erratic, dissatisfying instinctual and common practice of reacting, responding, self-protecting, guarding, distancing, lashing out, closing in…separating, hurting and harming, frightened, cowardly and weak.

I don’t know where to start with that.  I would that I could write the experience of others, could find synchrony and sympatico with my friends, family and acquaintances, could articulate the complexity and depth, mystery and reticulated implicit intricacies of their experiencings: their pains, joys, desires, griefs, knowings & doubts, wonderings and certainties, histories and prognoses, lusts and woundings… that I might be so much more tender to them, embracing, receptive, unthreatened and inclusive, gentle and comprehending.

I would like so desperately to be able to articulate the human experience of the world accurately…yet I am always wrong when I speak another, always deficient even when I speak myself…

other things articulate as well…

sciences, arts, histories, events, activities, gestures, accidents, philosophies, medicines, practices, rituals and religions

here are a few sounds (and in this order!) that have articulated my experience, today:

and

remarkable “accidental” or “fortuitous” articulations…

along with The Jerusalem Address by Laszlo Krasznahorkai

the sorrow and struggle of my love

the energy and delight of local biology professors to their craft and instruction

the events and experiencings of a day….

Here’s to us all

Social Media Space

On By NW FilbertIn communication, Compromise, relationships, Social Media, Writing3 Comments

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Articulating-Experience-with-The-Whole-Hurly-Burly/1507331726208608Articulating

in case you want to join me there as well…