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
Tag: identity
Nil
We could have played other games,
ever so many on offer
whiling the distribution and dissipation
time might be
.
Yet “I” became,
constructing choices –
the parenting,
the poetry,
philosophy,
and family;
addiction,
restriction,
believing all the loving –
each complicity
.
To be
.
At least some things,
anything,
.
everything
one knows not what
.
but still
less (or more)
than nil.
Marking My Way
What follows is exemplary of my tendency when I open a notebook and begin to write… digression… sigh…
“a man, however intelligent, is no better at maze-running than a rat, unless assisted by notes, whether these are remembered verbally or sketched out in a drawing”
– Michael Polanyi, The Study of Man –
I am beginning this story with words, for I am writing, and writing has often occurred as the transformation of experience to perceivable mark for communicable purpose: programming code, impressions in sand, lines about the mouth and eye, numbers, letters, notations and visible strokes.
The mark I begin with is “I.” To imaginative purpose. Say we could coordinate belief around marks (which “we” already have, or “you” are unable to comprehend, co-perceive or mutually interpret anything of what “I” am scribbling). Imagine with me that we can: foster markings and gestures, sounds and expressions, that stabilize over time toward agreement…
1, I; 2, we; 3, you; 4, with; 5, world; 6,… and so on… where marks come to re-present a sharing or relation toward – together we assemble at “tree(4)” or “word(4),” at “sign(4)” or “kingdom(7),” at “ours(4)” and “us(2)” and at “we(2)” or whatever(8). All might be marked other ways, sounded or gestured – a squirrel’s flicking tail, a whale’s sonic wail, bird twitters, rock cracks and colors, cloud movements, sighs. Images, letters, motions, or sounds. Impressible, expressible movements. Relations enacted, touches and probes, effects and affects across spaces and times, this is language in-scribed and con-scribed –communicability – glance of finger or toe or of eye, brush of hair or of death or of light… con-tact. Tactility, touchability, WITH.
Imaginatively-agreed-illusory and often elusive – “Abstraction (11, or 10+1, or..)” – What-is-not becoming what-is. “Creation(8 or eight or 11111111…).” Coordinated occurrence of subjectless objects and objectified subjects and things among things among things “co-existing(10),” – or so “we” mark “it.”
I begin with a mark that is “i” or 1, or the slightest, least notable line. “iota” in Greek, as Frost deftly inscribes – just a pass, accident, happenstance, hardly constructed and simple – a stick falls from a tree and leaves an “L” or a “Y” in the soil, but an “i”?
A mistake usually, a drip.
So “I” use it to refer to “just 1” = “what-is-not.” No “one(1)” has yet known only one. With “one(1)” there is nothing ‘to know’ – to attend to, perceive. With 1 there is only the one – less than nothing. 1 counts the same in negation. You have nothing or one, but once perceivable three – the 1, the 0, the difference.
We make marks.
The mark I began with is “I,” just the least, the inception, the start of a “we.” A cry, a twitch, a tone or effect, a coloration, occurrence. What’s the difference…
“I” could have made a sound. Could have poked, puked, stomped, wriggled…simply gestured into wind…
ANYthing, EVERYthing can only happen as more-than-one. More than meaningless mark (/) or vanishing point, it indicates RELATION. If 1=nothing, we still get 1 + -1 = 0…all ways at least 3. And if 1 is alone (“all-one”) there’d be no knowing, telling, perceiving, deciding without at least a “NONE(4, 0)” or “TWO(3, 2)” to proffer recognition – ALWAYS MORE THAN ONE for there “2B.”
I could not propose “I” without other or else (no-thing could be perceived without difference, and difference demands at least two + a relation, [even similarity – which always harbors difference] – therefore 3 at the least for a mark). If “you” couldn’t tell a difference (perceive or experience something…how would you know some thing is?). Identi(cal)ty would seem (necessarily) IM-perceptible.
1 NEVER EQUALS 1. Such is my thesis. If equality and sameness are possible no one could mark it, perceive it, proclaim it – 1=1 is not perceptible. For 1(“I”) to be identifiable, not-1(not-I) is required, which demands a 3rd(third) that might distinguish or experience – whether relation-itself 1±1 or Otherness to “tell apart” or cleave.
Identification demands Other. A mark, even the slenderest, simplest, accidental dash – to be perceptible, to matter – must be different from an other. Therefore, always 2 have to be for a 1 to be, and for that to be perceptible a third(5, 3) must exist… 1≠1=3, and 1=1=3…
i.e. I begin with “I” to invoke/inscribe MANY.
I am beginning this story with words…
Haunted Man: I am: the possession
“quiet field without possession”
Laurie Sheck, Captivity
I am an ocean of signs. Of a womby surround – undulate, viscous, discombobulate, obscure. Tremulous quarks of murky markings and inference, connotative particles, confused, ill-defined, and indifferent. Instigative convolutions, a potentia of concatenation and combine, cations and anions, dispersive attract.
Filled with words. Prescriptive, disruptive, chaotic, coherent. A turbulence transposing subjects, predicatively morphing, an aqueous slurrage of verb, vim and weave. Compositive, foreign, constitutive terms. Not-I. Of Other. As shapes and colors, sounds, concepts, any all perceived – no idgit of me, all permeable outside – Otherness, environ, cocoon – borrowed, received (or rejected?), an elusive collude.
Signifiers swarm me. Inherited meanings, genetic loom of semiotic loops and swirls. Who begins? No ex nihilo. All arrange, revise, adapt. We’re composed. I of an ocean of signs. Language and impulses, instincts and codes. Ellipses and notions imposed. Undifferentiate, senseless, stirred by experience – a cacophonous chorus of bones to my suture.
Oral, aural, textured and gestured, I swim and I sink, flux in the float. Fragments and fractures, compounds and bonds, links and erasures. Malformations. Dis-ease. Some viral, some blocked, unusable and ill-conceived, undone, or aborted. Indisposition. Swim on, slurry substance, amalgam of shreds, resist and desist, copy and swallow. I choke. I chortle. What makes “mine”? Just a word, (yet another), from whence and from where we don’t know, but not “us” (neither that, nor this keystroke, this breathy design, dasein, without ownmost). Even a name is built upon countless. Other.
Epi-, meta-, arche-, unknown and unknowing, interpreted through mediated mattery fracas, encompassing commotion, tempestuous din, innately ordained. But not-I, freak iota, insignificant smallest, author of none. No one. No thing. No not-I.
Quavery, wavering, components of signs, my birth-sea and umwelt, disjoiner and fabricate mush.
This become, in this swelter, this wrap and unravel. Efface and inveigle a ubiquitous unique. I am drowning, a seaway of signs.
Haunted Man
[from a crumpled writing found under a car seat among additional trash, transposed to typing as a record of a mind’s mayhem and mistakes]
“Deliver me, prays the haunted man. Therefore…”
Gunnar Olsson, Abysmal
I am Dostoevsky and I am Beckett. I am Hegel and Heidegger and Holderlin. I am Kafka.
I am not good enough for any of you. I do not merit your time nor your attention, affection, sensibilities, your human talents, or your care… no conceivable reason to mention “love.”
But I love you. I am the one who loves you. The one who writes. Who writes these words. The haunted one, the Reader, the Librarian; the Lover, Scholar, I am me. I love you. I am haunted. Words runnel through me, and with them thoughts, and with them feelings, and with them meanings, which means…nothing. No matter, no space, no time.
The “haunted man” is a passage, a passing, a ‘type.’ Of no import, little reality, barely occurrence.
*
I am Blanchot, am Homer, am divine Scriptures, and Shakespeare. Simply, small-ly, in my own way, this very general way, I am what humans do with language. For one another, with one another, to one another, as.
*
Yards and houses, flesh and voices, signs and symbols, marks and sounds, music and rhythyms and gestures, as attempts to conjoin – join and connect – survive, discover, endure, be, become, in-volve… With no idea. Or ideas that continually prove false and faulty. Elaborate records of revision, perhaps better inscribed as simple songs of effort. Urges only TO BE, and that, TO BE CONNECTED.
But what do I know? I’m Pythagoras, call me Ishmael or Ahab, Everyman or Whatever. I’m out-dated. Assign me a number. I don’t really care. I really care. I am here, and I, (at least) re-present, or present again, or presence, a sort of being. Such as it is… with no “REAL” way to evaluate, estimate, “tell,” or “express.”
*
Satan, then, Jesus, Joyce, Proust, Alexander. No matter, no space, no time, only IS.
A “tradition” (as it were, in our own words). We. Its + That + This. US. Humans strangely (apparently) in environments. These ways of thinking, of being, of behaving and operating, of supposedly surviving (but with what evidence? WHO or WHAT might know?).
How might elements arranged thus & so, survive? I am Nebuchadnezzar, Mohammed, Hammurabi and Ishtar. I am ab-original.
I am Nothing. Everything. No one. Me.
Each time.
Each press of the pen: “Hello – ‘here’”
*
As simply as I can construct it (all of it, any of “it”) it goes something like this: accidents occur, accidents are weird, and accidents give way.
I, like all other(s), an accidental novel. Occasional and Whatever.
WHAT HAPPENS TO BE… at any given point-of-measurement (i.e. as far as we have a capacity to render, sunder, and effect – “Reality” (for us)). Some quirky, unlikely, ridiculous, painstaking, odds-massively-against, and over-dramatic assessment of a certain sort of being-in, being-with, co-occurrence, happen-stance, we fabricate “human.”
TO BE SOMETHING
(organism, constituent, element, participant, activity)
*
In many other words (for the sake or ability of ‘them,’ ‘it,’ ‘all’) I may as well be. Be Hallie or Ollie or Aidan or Rhesus. Chief Joseph or Samson or Ghandi or Jordan. Be you or Sara or Maya or Jimmy John.
“no matter. Try again. Fail again…” no matter.
THIS TOO SHALL PASS.
“the venom of the serpents were within him”
Gunnar Olsson, Abysmal
HOW SHOULD I KNOW?
*
And so what if I were Bernhard or Bach, Napoleon, Attila, Montaigne or Dorothy Parker? If I had the ammunition or energy (and weaponry?) – the rhetoric, the nerve, or the madness. L. Sterne, Nagarjuna, Hafiz, JL Borges?
“No matter. Try again. Fail again…”
Titian, Beethoven, Plato/Socrates, Palestrina. Michelangelo, V. van Gogh, and Chuang Tzu. You.
“No matter. Try again. Fail again.”
(hardly Beckett)
“All I know is the text” – Samuel Beckett
“A voice comes to one in the dark. Imagine.
…Deviser of the voice and of its hearer and of himself. Deviser of himself for company. Leave it at that. He speaks of himself as of another. He says speaking of himself, He speaks of himself as of another. Himself he devises too for company. Leave it at that. Confusion too is company up to a point. Better hope deferred than none. Up to a point. Till the heart starts to sicken. Company too up to a point. Better a sick heart than none. Till it starts to break. So speaking of himself he concludes for the time being, For the time being leave it at that” – Samuel Beckett, Company
“The words spoke by themselves. The silence entered them, an excellent refuge, since I was the only one who noticed it.” – Maurice Blanchot, The Madness of the Day
So, speaking of himself, I only noticed it.
The small furry animal, almost humming in its purr, he had chance, so he thought, to please, to comfort, with a pet, a scratch, an acknowledgment, tender, while it butted and marked itself against him. The illusion. A kind of company in itself (or to).
The ungrammaticality of occurrences. Of happening. What happens to be. Or is not. When speaking to himself. Without voice. I was the only one, as far as I am able to tell – if in fact this is telling – who noticed it. It seems words speak of themselves. From elsewise and through whom. He says, speaking of himself (or to). Without voice.
Devising. Illusion. I devise, he says, speaking to himself, of himself, without voice. Seeking – is he? – Am I? – Seeking…company?
A small child (another illusion, devised) passes by, walking a young dog and waving a nod of sorts – I don’t remember which, he says, but I returned a gesture and obtained a moment of calm in the chilly Autumn breeze. There was a sun full of color due to the leaves in their change, and fall, and flutter (due to the nothing-shaped wind). But what seemed a moment of warmth, of calm, devised by a child with a dog and a friendly (fearful) gesture, he thought (speaking of himself without voice), I was the only one who noticed it.
I take to reading then – others speaking of themselves without voice (or beyond it) – in order to devise… company? he wonders of himself, to himself. For when reading, it surely seems the words are speaking only of themselves, no matter who pens them. Such the character of the texts he chooses (I thought of myself, to myself, or an other I devised as myself, like puppets). And in part read and read for the experience or feeling that I alone notice it. That I might in fact provide the company I devise, yet hardly able to tell since I have not penned the words but merely notice – borrow, listen? (there are no voices) – the words seem to speak of themselves. Without voice. (He said of himself, devising). Something like company. Perhaps.
Even in the color-filled sunlight of Autumn days, I at times experience myself as being quite deeply in dark, he says speaking of himself, myself, devising voices, soundless, out of words that seem to be speaking only of themselves and their variegated histories and usages, and billions of potential speakers and hearers and interpreters – creators and devisers – filled with ambiguity and application. Here with me on shavings of dead trees, providing stark living contrast to Winter’s day-night. I get confused, he says speaking of himself. Confusion too is company devised, up to a point, I suppose. Obviously “fusion-with” implies an other, perhaps enough, I said, speaking to myself, without voice, here on dead leaves in black scars. In mutilation. Transgression. Inscription. Perhaps the words will speak of themselves and some other “I” will claim to be the only one that notices.
A strange delusion of company indeed. He says speaking of himself, devising a voice, its hearer, and an himself as participant and therefore a company to keep.
Reading: “only a detour is adequate” (Agamben), and “in pursuing meaning we are pursuing our limits” (Allen), and was perhaps meaning a synonym or metaphor, simile or metonymy for company he thought, speaking to himself, without voice. But with an illness, diagnosed by doctors – those scientific political powers responsible for providing facts or devising happenings, pronouncing occurrences – so in any case he is not alone, being-with his illness, I thought, speaking to myself in an absence of sound. The words spoke by themselves.
Other things as well: the furry animal, its humming purr, its actions; the trees, the leaves, the wind, the light. The child, the dog, the gestures. The books, the authors, the words themselves. Divisors of voices, of hearers, of selves. Sick hearts, confusion, and company. Am I the only one who notices? he says speaking of himself, speaking of himself as another.
So speaking of himself he concludes for the time being, For the time being leave it at that.” – Samuel Beckett
Addenda of sorts
“…in the universe of the sign there are no clear-cut identities, only delayed differences. Never a dead end, always an already-but-not-yet; never a genuine original, always an imperfect copy. Language is a simulacrum of simulacra, the privileged hiding-place of the psychoanalyst’s repressed supplement.
“Pushed to its own limits, the difference between identity and difference is that in the world of the former everything sticks to itself, while in the heaven of the latter everything escapes from itself. Comparison rests on a foundation of difference, for once a sign is interpreted it no longer is what it used to be. And exactly therein lies the crux of the matter, for it is well established that the structure of language itself makes perfect translation impossible. It follows that reality is never what it is said to be, for reality and language are never one and the same, a painful lesson…
“The conclusion is straightforward: although word and object are always related, they are never identical.” – Gunnar Olsson, Abysmal
We are. Are we not.
Beginning this way, I have jettisoned my goal.
No one is able to say precisely when it will rain, until it is raining. Not this one. Nor…
At times it is raining.
When will I be here? Or, better, perhaps – When am I here? (Already? Again?) How?
Am I when and where I love you? And how? Forego why, too complicated.
Say “I am this one who loves you” now and now and now again. As if a presence on repeat, differently again. Registers and tones; layers, levels, circumstance; sense/nonsense and the liquid continuum between.
Who are you?
Say “you are the one this one loves.” Or the many. Or the one this one loves in relation to I. Or the other-than-one loving other-than-one, here, now, again, again, differently.
When is this love? And how? Dropping why in the craggy abyss, as it dissipatively floats, up and away. Where is this love?
I begin. It is raining. Say that you are. If I say that you are, or how, when, or why, I have failed what I set to inscribe (you). Say now. I just missed it. Say love, saying what?
I’m aware of your absence with pain I can’t tell. I say “love.” I say “miss.” I say “yearn.” Goal discarded.
Please say that you are. I will be that relation. Will not. And I am.
It is raining. What it? Say I am and you are. Less than one and still more, it’s becoming. Undone. The suture begins in the cut. We are we. We might be, when we are. Now and now, say now, and is differently.
We’re unfound in this you and this I inter-change. Inter-change-able as we. And we’re not. Either you or an I as these two, but not quite, there’s an extra: BETWEEN.
Which is nothing, like water in air, molecules known by connections. Re-cognized. Understanding might pull them apart, separate, while reason(s) constructs some assemblage.
Say I love you, as this one to this. Say it’s so, without knowing, ‘cause with. In between, together; understanding, a part; reasoning a sort of equation.
Where am I? I appear in this with. Who are you? This one forming between. When now comes it is raining, again, again different. Some of the notion we are.
Alias Ouroboros; or, Alias and [the Philosophy of] the Process of Elimination
Looks, stares, gazes. Alias, alone (with ants). In bathroom. Facing mirror.
Is reminded (from whence and where?) “My way of not being the same is, by definition, the most singular part of what I am.” Remembers Foucault wrote that (how? why?).
Contemplates. Scrutinizes. Reflects. Adorno: “To make things of which we do not know what they are.” Wherefore? Examines his old face for repetition. For resemblance.
What ever did he suppose the “self” was? Leans closer. 12 years old, exploring raggedy woods surround childhood farm in the Kansas countryside with a crooked clumsy stick (a settler’s gun). Who did he posit “others” to be?
Laramie, somewhere far. Laramie: OFF. Sister. Sometime “friends.” Lucy (before that H____, before that T_____, and prior A______, D_______, J_____, and so on). Had he come to approximate “himself” at all? And who and what and where determined that? Where is the Observer?
“What constitutes the subject in its relations to the true, to rules, to itself?” (Foucault had queried) – the “I” in a sentence – and why had he ever read that stuff? Why did he feel himself “drawn” to it? Magnetized to self-reflection, chaotic perspective gyroscope?
Can almost see the swallowing snake. How long he’s longed (like Laramie) to shed obligations and self-evolving charges (children, lovers, homes and labor)…and how lonely alone turns out to be.
Leans back. The hair, the shoulders, the wrinkles and beard. Sheer size alone an entirely variant specimen from 12, shape of 20, motility of 3, vim of 47.
But the naming remains: Harlequin – spanning centuries, derived from ancestor’s medieval roles. “Ignatius” and “Evgeny” – monikers pilfered from grandfathers – representing both (or some) genetic “sides” – the mother’s and the father’s. Then Alias, alas – selected purely for sound and almost a joke – “let him make his own name” his dad was supposed to have said – “make a name for himself.” Alias i. e. Harlequin – an identity of shifters. Contentless, versatile signs. This or that, also known as, patchwork jester. Volatile collage.
Multi-colored robes of Joseph – Alias certain he’s never led anything out of bondage – let alone himself. A joker then? Entertainer with a deathly fear to perform. Chameleon, hodgepodge, bum. Rag-tag coddle of experiences, interests and events: people, places, actions and things. Jumbled potpourri of knowledge sans expertise. “Who is this what that I am?” he thinks, unattended, gaping at the bathroom mirror. “How?”
Sways toward. Yellowed teeth, crudded sockets. Webs stringing out from the eyes indexing smiles – from when?
Drinks. Diarrhea. Trembles.
Considers process of elimination. Engages, ingests, transforms…and turns it all to shit.
Precisely! If we could do without metaphor! “The real,” “the rules,” “itself” and “other” hacked, torn and blundered, mulched and mushed, pulped and extracted…some to nourish, some to harm, random keeps and passes…What if “itself” were able to masticate, dissolve and disperse, digest and diarrhea itself? If thinking passed like food and water?
Crush the judgments, statements, words and perceptions. Struggle to swallow. Swill the pains and fears – chug through the gullet – expel from the sex. Crap the hopes, the dreams. Piss prejudice and myth. Ingurgitate logical systems, impressions and lust. Eliminate ruin and waste like a transitioning, dynamic…eroding, decrepit, diminishing body.
Examines physique – misshapen shapeshifting slush. Deliberates learning. Vocations. Training. Behaviors and “talents.” Successes.
Swallows again, more of a choking or gulp. Peers closer. Slurps and gobbles, wriggling it down – acids and micro-solutions…expel, eject, devour. Autosarcophagy, necrotizing fasciitis, auto-immune (how did he know these things?) parasiting himself – is it possible to empty? To void? And where’s Laramie? Lucy? The children?
The trots again. He starts to gag.
A Far Story – Samuel Beckett
I wait for me afar for my story to begin, to end, and again this voice cannot be mine. That’s where I’d go, if I could go, that’s who I’d be, if I could be.
– Samuel Beckett
Nos. 3 & 4, Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett
it doesn’t get better than this…unless it’s more of beckett
Polysemic Stupor 