for my wife on Valentine’s
The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. Β It goes among
things that change. Β But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread
–William Stafford
Amassing contexts and histories barely constitute beginnings.Β Relations between entities are potentially infinite and full of traces.Β Somehow, occasionally, they equal: an identity β identities β by whatβs between.Β Continuous dynamic variables.
By chance each of our indefinite immensities meshed boundaries.Β Bodies permeable as minds, and vice-versa.Β Reciprocity β reality and dream.Β Kisses channeling deep into veins, correspondence shipped and received β held gently in the hands while splicing ripples through craniums.Β Made of margins we, venturing portals and hallways one of another.Β Each an entourage, an army, and its festival.
Bound by genuine threads.Β Wrapping rocks and trading rings, patchworking children toward tapestry.Β Our eyes β microscoping telescopes, telescoping memories.Β We are wheres and whens, whos and whats β and how!Β No wonder why receives no answers, only possible descriptions.
We search for language with our bodies.Β Attempting to define the terms and parse the verbs together: love, trust, respect and honesty.Β We have said βyou are my person,β communication requiring the whole shebang β dismembered pasts and potential futures β all we do not know mustered toward a truth, collaborating is.
If we were to withhold what we cannot show, βwhereof which we cannot speakβ (as Ludwig tells) avoiding formal pseudo-propositions, we would only telegraph senses, dropping our abstracting frames and their symbolβd referents.
But we are artists β metaphors ourselves β infusing nonsense into world, creating kinds of sense, some of it illuminative.Β Morphing forms and casting doubts to converge in content.
I love you.Β I am so glad
WE ARE HERE
βFor that I blame the craven desire to speak, to write, to be heard.β
-Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet–
Semantic Animals
It goes on.Β Seduced (sickened and soothed) by symbols, I read.Β I write.Β In dilettante-like forays into advanced mathematics, physics, cognitive sciences and biology,Β I learn:
βThe first message is that there is disorderβ
(-James Yorke, attributed with naming the science known as Chaos)
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β So back to first principles (they have a habit of coming in threes, and splitting into fragments).Β I take out a blank sheet of paper, filled with lines.Β A patterned absence.Β Boundarying void.Β I write βseducedβ because Iβm thinking about language.Β Thinking instinct and survival and desperate need.Β Thinking overload, βmore than you could possibly imagine.βΒ Semantic animals.
When I last saw the snow fall, it was raining, offering an impression of βwet.β
She is far from me in two dimensions.Β Only two, of multiples of three.Β I count by the βtrick of the nines.β
If only there were a way to collect accurate data.Β Then adequately calculate and organize.Β Unfortunately, life is mostly made of problems existing on continuums of countless dynamic variables, most of which β unsolvable.Β They call these βdifferential,β or Derridaβs Infinitude of Differance. Β Professionals finally agreeing: βregularity is aberration.β
We search for patterns.Β Even in chaos we find them (or create).Β Seduced (sickened and soothed) by symbols, we βread.βΒ There are so many oscillating signals that even the few we donβt inherently tune out we call βnoise.β
Philosophically, on the other hand, where I feel more like an amateur or novice, I understand the problem/hypothesis/theory equation to be: EVERYTHING goes into EVERYTHING, that weβre only ever engaging possibilities.Β That probables are fleeting, and certainties are few:Β You are limited, peculiar, and definitely will die.
In other words, βthe very process of cutting up and cutting off, opens up and opens out,β or some of us are developing βa belief in the musicality of creative disjunctionβ (Lance Olsen), because, seduced (sickened and soothed) by symbols, we select and collage our own inspection.
Itβs easy to forget the first things that we find, i.e. that all positive statements and beliefs are built on βthat there is disorder,β
and seduced (sickened and soothed) by symbols,
we go on from there.
Perambulating
Sickened and soothed by symbols, I set out.
Signals come and I perceive, I respond.
The I forms to the action.
With enough exercise, tissues tighten:
there are knots and strains and sprains
that need unraveling, massage.
I turn to music
buried deep within the signs
a way to loosen and undo
the stressing strands.
I unalign
and gain relief
spread out through many pathways,
any selves
allowed to wander their own ways
beginning at the edges of their ends,
filling margins,
taking borders,
easing outward
to become.
Β N Filbert 2012
This morning she said she was “taking a walk for mental health.”
I decided to set out/in too…
For some reason this old post was on my stats page today…I opened it and browsed through and it says things again that I continue to experience:
thank you persistent workers and players of WordPress!
(click on image or title for past post)
Then I dropped my voice β BOOM β right onto the sidewalk.
A glitter, a spritzing, a spark.Β A diffusion and ooze.Β It runs out.
Watch it pour along the surface, draining toward sewage.
Voice.Β A voice.Β My voice.Β Sploosh.
All the books I want are priceless.
Those I need β they cost too much.
I am a writer who learns.
I am a learner who writes.
I am a failure that loves.
I am a lover that fails.
It becomes apparent: Yes, I am.Β A parent.
The book I am not reading β
caught in a withdrawal.
That is, boundaried from writing.
Between abstraction, and empathy.
There lies a void, inevitably.
You canβt trust silence.
We rush to fill.
(That distant sound).
Therefore,
I read for conversation.
But Writer says Iβm βvagueβ
(donβt fulfill responsibilities)
Attention.Β Integrity.Β Inquiry.Β Response.
(-ability)
I simply tripped, a clumsiness
[I dropped my voice]
but I am here.
Enmeshed in words but unable.
(metadata lacking)
Iβm no librarian.
Vague because I say so.
(my human apparatus little equipped for the overwhelm of data)
Ant in a kingdom
-of words-
of signifiers.
Less than that.
I wrap my brain around it.
Waving goodbye to body.
My voice drops.
“Was there ever a period when my words weren’t already headed?”
-R.M. Berry-
the Superstitious Naked Ape had the great idea of each of you offering a photo of your workspaces – see comment below – would be intriguing – feel free to provide
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