Eros – acorn/oak – Identity – Desire

It occurs to me.  Occurs to me that vocation / personal / public / private / occupation / romance / family / profession are not separate elements of some proposed “self” I might emerge with in day-to-day interactions / responsibilities / obligations / choices, but rather tangled and woven threads of the unitary multiplicity (singular-plural) that is “me”, or some continuously occurring/re-curring cursive/re-cursive individuated co-construction of living human life in the world.

So that: when I compose an essay, poem, article, research, letter, note, list, diary entry, story, etc…I am not precisely operative as one or another individuated-circumstance of my “self”, but rather a that oneindividuated occurrence/happening/event – evincing/emerging via this vehicle/form/instance in this case.

Composing a letter to my beloved today, I found “I” was also addressing my own feeling for the circumstances of my living, perception and reflection of my beliefs and attitudes within it, and aims or desires associated with my experience.  So I make it an “open letter” – a public enunciation – of my experience being such-that-I-am.

tree-of-life-cast-paper-by-kevin-dyer

I love you, Hallie.

I love you in ways that are very difficult for me to express.

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Each aspect, experience, element of my reality – loving you/relation with you – always seems just out of reach of conveying, communicating.  Beyond.

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My appreciation, joy, anticipation, lust, desire, want, ache, gratitude, reception, pleasure, pain, fear, confidence, courage, adventure, dread, need, fondness, appreciation, hurt, etc… all seem diminished by, or unequal to, somehow MISSED, INACCURATE to my attempts at expressing, representing, sharing…

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Wishes, dreams, philosophy and poetry all live in this realm: ruled by the “well, NOT like THAT!”  Or…always followed by a “what I MEAN is…”

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Ambiguity, inexactitude, shortcoming, outstripping, seemingly hopeless and impossible – yet ALWAYS generating hope, desire, energy in the STRIVING and BELIEF.

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Hopes, wishes, illusions, truth, reality, dreams, love, art, religion… all seem to depend on this strange commerce of energy.

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discovered negatively, or via an absence or lack…Utopia – we only ever KNOW that “utopia”, “paradise”, is a sensed “longing”, a KNOWING-THAT-THIS-IS-NOT-IT.

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Perfection.  If perfection is experienced (instances of ecstasy? Joy?) we appear unable to express/share/tell it!

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Utopia, perfection, hope and desire – are each revealed by their “lack” or “absence” – their “NOT-IS”

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Everything “ultimate”, “perfect”, “totalizing”, “whole” or “outstanding” we experience as UNIQUE, DIFFERENT, distinct and incapable of analogy or metaphor.
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UNLIKE.  We know it negatively, according to what-it-is-not, and feel it positively – as something unprecedented, unexpected, novel, unique.  Anything comparable we realize – IT IS NOT THAT.  It is unknown, incomparable, we recognize it by it NOT being ANYthing else we have experienced – or only partially, tangentially, and contrastively (negatively)

THIS IS NOT THAT!

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Which leaves us, then, in a realm unspeakable, unreferenceable, undrawable – a pure IS realm.

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You, my beloved, ARE.  And ARE the occurrence or happening, the experience of, the REALITY (signified, significant) of a realm, experience, event, relation that is EXPERIENCABLE but not EXPRESSIBLE.

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An exquisite sort of heartache for one devoted to the crafts of “expressing the inexpressible”, “saying the unsayable”, and so on.

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Philosophy, poetry, hopes, dreams – ALL draw their CONTENT from what we KNOW “it” is NOT.  Attempt to use action, behavior, language, movement, thought and speech to draft original arrangements that might allow the unspeakably unique, unsayably novel, incomparably total or inexpressibly replete –

into the realm of expression, sayability, hint, token, trace, Reality, occurrence, activity, appearance or happening…

 and yet it is defiant, recalcitrant, resistant and intractable.

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You provide me a life of exertion and effort, a LIVING of ATTEMPT – impossible possibilities – or their interaction – irretrievable, unrepresentable happenings and events, experiences

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BEYOND…full, total, whole Real Experiences…

…LOVE, HOPE, FAITH, INTIMACY, RELATION, DESIRE…

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NEED for a mad trust in Reality that never equals recognition, cognition, reflection or thought.  Intransigent to language – ever DOES NOT EQUAL,

and THAT is how we know it –

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that it is Beyond-experience experiencing

Beyond-saying expressibility

Beyond-comparison analogy & metaphor

IN ITSELF OF ITSELF BY ITSELF

AN IS EXPERIENCE

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You ARE.

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It is amazing to/for me.  Unsettling, novel, inexpressible, unrepeatable, impossibly in-possible,

something total, whole and real

in ways that action / language / emotion and response can never be.

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Such is my lot.  Happily?  Momentarily joyous, ecstatic, HOPE-fully…

so much “better” than all it readily-apparently is NOT.

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And why I seek/work into poetics, philosophy, wishes and dreams…where experiencing surpasses expressibility…Reality surpasses its processing…love its ability to confess…

I love you beyond-this.

In some other-ing language.

I am.  Yours.

“Nathan”

Hallie thrift Love

p.s.  this is also a reason that these forms (philosophy, poetry, art, dreams, etc.) often read as “nonsense” or irrational – each an effort at translating totalities of experience versus “rational” expression or analogical/metaphorical transcriptions of experience.  Dreams combinate Reality…converge and reproduce whole happenings as “veritable” mash-ups; philosophy and poetry ache to stretch language affordances, or mate expressibility to totality…quite possibly irrational, even an impossible urge, but compulsive/erotic/desirous and humanly nature-al nonetheless.

In other words – if you “know what we mean” without knowing the meanings…we are coming nearer “it.”

Tripping into a “break” with no break, or antidote – meaning? purpose?

Investigating “breaks”: antidote? meaning?

When there are assignments – yes, that’s the word – trajectories commissioning the laborious application of signs – I resemble a young school-age girl white-bloused and checkered-skirted skipping little curlicues down a sunlit autumn sidewalk.  Either in performance or avoidance of what demands to be done.  Activity testifies to play.  The weight of the backpack keeps the frolic tethered to the ground.

Geometrically you could geo-graph-ically map the carefree trail, which would end up looking quite a bit like the path of Woodstock’s flight (extended)

 [how I investigate world]

Relieved of positive burden – reputation, obligation, guilt, shame, agreement – anywise some sort of internal enforcer relating to the external world – is as if Schulz erased the yellow birdy’s gravitation.  The backpack become balloon with the force of hot air but random like helium – set free of a hand and willy-nilly flitting to loss in midwesternly wind-raked sky.

Mine is more of a breach or a gap in the hedge – squares of deconstructed sidewalk without boards.

Collapsing toward me in slow-motion imminence are towers of books and billings, due dates and mouths to feed, souls to placate or nourish…rebar extending in its warped way out of the soil behind me – projects halfway done, future commitments previously agreed, promissory plans enacted for stabilizing measures.  Even now I hear the dogs barking outside, wanting in.  But the knot of rubber and tie of string are so easily undone…like mowers accidentally thud-chopping coiled garden hose that lay mimicking the hoppity school-girl’s jaunting…and all drifts off and away, falling through space, spinning in time – neither up nor down nor to or fro – simply set free  / total loss – momentary or not: unknown –  vacuous absence – somehow unmoored.

Where I am.