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Tag: arkadii dragomoshchenko
Metaphors of Mind
Metaphors of Mind
I thought about the East like sunrise, or, the bright shadow of sun as it sets on the sea. Opening out, up, growing wider from a perceptive center.
I thought of my own like a spider rushing to complete its web and attachments to structures while the prey already wriggles in its core. Spinning quickly, creating patterns, finding foundations so one might approach, carefully, and engage.
And of the wise, “responding with the submissiveness of a mirror to a completely unthinkable array of things where there’s no space or time” (Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Xenia). “And which I can’t accept” (he adds immediately afterwords).
My wife like a field of slender grasses made out of senses waving in rain. It touches everywhere and then is guided and drawn into the veins and roots in a natural process.
An ecstatic: the moon hovering above, without details, yet influencing tides.
Fundamentalists jackhammering surfaces to shape; drilling from the riggings a far cylindrical bore.
The verbavore – translating, translating, translating…signs, digits, numbers.
Intuitionists: winds situationally directed by unseen prompts or hidden obstacles.
Perhaps the thing itself – sensual and complex machine – absorbing, recording, repeating and combining – crafting temperaments at the switchboard?
N Filbert 2012
Places
The Essence of Place
“To record the essence of a place, so that it can be inhabited by something outside itself, is to start a story. This means searching for a language, one that we know intuitively but cannot spell out.”
-Lukas Felzmann, Landfall–
“The time has come to talk of whatever we want”
-Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Xenia–
“the work drives beyond promise, craving and time”
-Louis Zukofsky, Prepositions–
Sometimes there were birds there. They passed through in groups, in swoops.
I’ve seen people there too, but not swooping or grouping. It just isn’t that kind of place.
It felt large and open yet cloistered, contained. There were large trees all around and throughout. Somehow it seemed level.
I don’t recall there being water, but I believe it staid nearby. As if it were ready for when it was needed.
I’ve no memory of critters or pets, cycles or frogs. Only birds that might swarm like the leaves filling trees as they swayed.
Oh my, but the blur! The soft focus in apprehending! It rocks and it waves, it flows through you while sitting, I say!
I wonder the eyelids of storms. I leap lying down. I silently sing out the shrieking of birds. I love in this place. As wild or as calm as is needed, a respondent surround.
When I’m here I try to tell you, by searching for words or the making of pictures. That don’t capture.
Have you wandered here before? To the essence of a place?
Please do tell me or show me what’s yours…
N Filbert 2012
Sunday Sustenance
conversations with my wife (www.lifeinrelationtoart.wordpress.com & www.ekphrastixarts.com)
and all accompanied by:
Sigur Ros’ relatively new “Valtari” album
hope your day is great!
Sweet I.L.L (inter-library loan) Manna today!
“Anything you can write is already somehow immanent in the language, a baffling fact that has various ways of affecting those who discern it…For if we both of us, reader and writer, command our common language – and if not, why go on? – then we both know, potentially, whatever it can say, and shall neither of us gain anything if I raise my voice…Let us agree to pay attention, then, to some sequences of words which I shall now set down, with my usual respect (which you share)…uses of words which entail ways of being used by words”
-Hugh Kenner, from the foreword to Prepositions, and applicable to both)!
Thank you Wichita Public Library! Thank you Inter-Library Loan!
Signs
Signs
“We wanted love. This sentence has no meaning outside a sentence. We wanted a multitude of words. Love was to become the quarrying of ourselves, emerging from a completely different side of the narrative…Representing ourselves to ourselves was an unmanageable task from the beginning. To continue being a reality while simultaneously becoming its sign that dissembles nothing, only relentlessly elevates itself in a continuous shadow – “
-Arkadii Dragomoshchenko-
There was no doubt we wanted. What it was that we wanted, exactly, was another matter. We wanted love? Perhaps. Love made from words and signs and gestures. From the beginning we had trouble representing ourselves. Being a reality while also signifying it and being its addressee – inveigled us in a continuous loop. We needed another view. From a completely different side of the narrative.
Maybe we wanted to drink reality to its dregs. We wanted love. Someone who could read the being and its signs and comprehend its address. Someone to help interpret the loop, quarry the signs, chart and map the shadowy spiral. We wanted a multitude of words. Words we’d never thought of. Never heard before. Synonyms and antonyms to set apart our signs, that we might, perchance, see who we are. Learn, not just be. We wanted love.
Loving ourselves was clinging to continuous shadow. Ourselves always just ahead of us, being, quarrying experience, fabricating new signs, dissembling nothing. We didn’t know, anything. We wanted love and a multitude of words, of gestures – significations of action and matter – we wanted to be real.
Your side was completely different. There you were – being, assembling signs, dissembling words I thought I knew into paradoxical meanings. I’d see a sign that seemed familiar but the language was foreign, the reference obscure, of exotic materials. Where were you quarrying? I was stunned and fascinated – we could make such similar things of our surround and within – yet pointing in apparently opposite directions! How could this be?
We wanted love. I followed your signs, tried to tell you what they meant. We wanted for multitudes of words. You sought to explain, what with the being, the source, the signs and address, indicating your shadow, not mine. I, forever chasing the shade of your dress.
We wanted for love and showed each other signs. We gestured and addressed our bodies and songs, put on shows of ourselves for each other. Here are my banners and pennants. Here my consistent mottoes. Here the images we keep – representations of ourselves like lost memories. Here our directions and contents, graphics and readings. Signs, signs, and a multitude of words.
We began telling one another their stories as we read. Replete with new words, new signs and misreadings. This did not often go well. With each sign that we made we were reading the last. We couldn’t keep up, swimming in continuous shadow.
A multitude of loving and words. We believed we wanted reality. We decided to quarry together – our insides working into a shared surround. We disagreed on its representation and agreed to post personal options. We grew confused and crowded with signs and gestures. Grabbing some of these, we started swinging, thinking ours might outlast the others, might prove “right,” win out, or be “true.”
Our signs began to shatter as our words and gestures dissembled. We established picket lines and separate camps. We fashioned more signs with blazoned slogans of ourselves and our views, losing them inside our shadows. We decided to climb. Perhaps a view from afar, or you’ll be off on expedition. We located a guide. Who seemed to think all of our signs were true. We looked again and could read that we wanted for love. Our valley was riddled with signs. Our guide interpreted gestures the same. Words of pain, words of fear, a multitude of words. All quite similar but in our own languages.
We wanted love, he said.
Someone to read our beings, our signs and receive their address. Someone to help interpret our loops, quarry new signs, and map our spiraling stories. We wanted multitudes of words and we had them. Words we’d never thought of nor read. Words replete with variant meanings and references. Synonyms, antonyms distinguishing our signs, redirecting our shadows. If we listened and looked, and with care, he said, perchance we might see who we are, being. And learn how to be. If we wanted for love, we had it, he said. Just look at the signs.
Polysemic Stupor 