Folks still inquire about my stacks of books that accompany me everywhere and the tattoos that enscript my flesh and I recently stumbled upon this old post of mine that still feels as accurate as I could express presently…
Tag: being
Silence
Greetings all – thank you for continuing to visit, care, find, read the polysemic stupor this site has been for me. I have felt that I should respond to my extended quiet and lack. As with everyone, much transpires within-without always/all ways… for now I can report that after years of PhD studies into the concept of “nothing”, an ever-expanding and extending fertile void…
Has drawn me toward pondering more intensely what silence might evoke or emit… I should like to say that I have been interactive, con-fused, com-municative, alive/immersed in much (empty-full) space(s). Here’s a card of greeting, thanksgiving, and hello again:
Words of Silence
…dreamt to hush you,
like “now”
or some othered ‘then,’
“here” “you” “?”
It is time now, I said,
for the deepening and quieting of the spirit
among the flux of happenings.Something had pestered me so much
I thought my heart would break.
I mean, the mechanical part.I went down in the afternoon
to the sea
which held me, until I grew easy.About tomorrow, who knows anything.
Swimming, One Day in August – Mary Oliver
Except that it will be time, again,
for the deepening and quieting of the spirit.
“Most of the time, to give oneself to language is to abandon oneself.”
–Maurice Blanchot–
“A word’s reach extends a speaker’s grasp, or what’s a language for?”
–Stanley Cavell–
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
Cabin Reflections (July 2022)
Between
(sky and birds), between
(enclosed and contained),
between the not existing and the sleepless
there are no obstacles.
Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Xenia
it’s hard to make sense
outside of the world
or in a larger world
things don’t register
in expected ways
.
the pace is all different
and nothing is counting
time, space, and motion
do their thing as one
the human happenings
.
don’t make sense
or seem separate, divorced,
a frantic scale
the earth holds quietly
.
even words dissolve
and transform
like breezes
and bird-calls,
not meaning the same
.
passing, passing, held
passing, passage, hold
i imagine at Heidegger’s hut
he was murmuring
these things, being
.
hard to make sense of it
with reason or belief
a stance
but easy sense
outside
.
Where do you listen?
What are you listening
with and for?
How do you listen?
Silently, with wing-beats
aflutter
water moves
.
i move
out of my head
into the rest
of me, my skin
an open passage
my organs trudging
patiently, waiting
blood moves
.
accordion chest
filling my limbs
hands holding
feet touching
grounded
.
lay back
all in
an other
with / in / of
this world,
here.
“I is Another” (or pronouns as shifters; after Jon Fosse)
Like the first,
the every new
dependent of change;
agent of again,
now this
.
the starting
that continues
into while
.
its struck
and tumbled
and keeps rumbling
a murmured name
.
an other, again,
an I, again,
iota, (the smallest mark),
now this
On Thinking
jackrabbit mind, dashing –
here thick grass of nothingness
there a frenzied masturbation –
to and fro, quick left, jab right,
the daydreams, grief,
and absence fore and aft.
It’s a wonder, this pondering
machine, unhinged
of its bearings, moorings,
bodies baring everywhere
and not a drop to think.
What drives desire?
Seems pushed and pulled
and craven. Erotically
erratic, playing at its gloom
“it’s nothing,” says the mouth,
always caught between
the breathing and the axons
blood swelling pounding through.
The feral hind leaps out,
ruminate sparkle, devious
flux of concept, fact, or notion,
swimming in emotion,
nothing known.
Alias V. Harlequin, remembers (via language)
I always wondered at my naming – “Alias V.” Not knowing where I come from, and finding all locatable Harlequins tricky and at play.
“Alias Verbum” – who would name an infant that? Another name, a word. Also known as, logos. Usually I identify as iota subscript, after Robert Frost.
No one knows my origin, but he’s very hard to find, everywhere, continually on his odyssey.
i‘m reading a book entitled “How Words Make Things Happen.” What have we made? Ideas, spells; subjects, objects, and actions. Incantations all. Beginnings, I suppose, but not the first.
As I understand it, aging along, someone had to be there for me to come about, and coming-about would be my story. Who or what might tell it? Acted, sung, or read? Becoming other after other after other. Known again as… by any other name. The player. The trickster. The Joke.
In the beginning was… and I began, an alias of something… and everything its word.
Being something
This is how we see:
a set of brackets, dark,
moving across wires in the sky
(that we placed there)
because of the angle of light
and it’s changing
– perhaps –
and perhaps it’s the change
and the angling,
and perhaps it’s involved with the light
A Tenure & Promotion Dossier
To think.
To get done.
To be done.
To survive.
Get by.
Endure.
[what will feed and fuel us?
how might we grow like errant plants?]
There is weight, great,
like words of Beckett,
terse and heavy
with ridiculous
mind
To go on.
In spite of.
Anyway.
[to round a bend, turn it in, be relieved
to be accepted, acceptable, acknowledged.]
To count, to mean, to matter
Anyway.
Because
we happen
and go on…
[if I might vine, might drink the spoiled
to live, to thrive, to weed]
To make the turn
into what grows
anyway, despite
out of joint, or time, or space,
terrorized
refusal
The flagrant
Remainder
Unmerited
Surplus
[as if we were another sort, not a same-seeded,
same-growing, same-veined kind]
Even though at least one said:
“Everywhere
being is dancing”
and another
how alike are dancing and sex
And another
and another
the variety
the merited
surplus
We forgot.
All my Words are Silent 