Tag: imagination

‘One’s’ thoughts on in-here-nt bounds

On By NW FilbertIn awareness, Confusion, Cosmology, dreaming, Experience, human, Philosophy, thinking, Writing2 Comments

The “world,” as it were, as it ‘is’ (also, reduced, in addition) “for us.”

How it comes to be as we are – briefly.  Almost incalculably miniscule.  Almost ‘happenstance.’

“Our” world, as it were: all we cannot know, that we are part in, of, with.

One wonders what “world” can possibly mean.

Every meaning apparently nothing outside of this microscopic sliver of kind… EVERYthing and more, “for us.”  Some ‘infinity’ or ‘void;’ ‘abyss’ or ‘chaotic complexity’ – a reference to every-thing (or not) that so far surpasses us, outstrips us, beyonds us.  Some so-called…”world.”

One. Can.

One could turn toward all that, could ‘be-itself,’ bi-pedally, shrimpishly, speck-o-dust uprightedly, with/in ‘it’…and have a dwarfed, almost indiscernible ‘experience.’  Or “one” (were such a thing possible) could de-cide, di-vide, con-sider (?) – place oneself ‘over against’ or ‘in contrast’ (contra-di-stinction) to all that: otherness, ‘world,’ ‘uknown/unknowable,’ ‘beyond,’ ‘out-side,’ infinite… and de-term-in.

Squash it down to ‘one’s own scale, name it / call it / sign it, and ‘fit’ it in.  i.e. cut it small enough to be comprehensible, digestible, sensible (according-to-one’s-own) and pre-tend, fore-tell, image-in, sign-i-fy it ACCORDING TO… ‘one,’ ‘us,’ ‘me’ (such as math, logic, language, communicable signs, etc – in-(ter)ventions on/of our own terms).

Human knowledge, inquiry, disciplines, creations, theories, etc. are EXACTLY (and perhaps ONLY, one surmises) THAT: at the scale of the human. ‘One’ is prone to automatically grant every ‘other’ (plant, material, organism, structure, system, etc) the ‘same’ ‘world’ – as Wittgenstein indicated: indecipherable, untranslatable or communicable between kinds, but most probable, no? – Umwelts – worlds upon worlds within worlds outside worlds… we (‘ones’) can have no share, understanding, con(with)cept, com(with)munication of…

To each its scale of experiencing, and all scales together…

Given the human (so-self-called) scale, this seems pertinently and poignantly most evident…

…why would we chafe against our limits… or (perhaps) every scale always is – no ‘one’ could know this… ones (and many ones) are only ones – more and less than their own possible perspectives… in- and out-looks OF.  Scale.  (Perhaps).

Obviously, com(with)posing in your/our language… whatever I dream is representative of my scale… i.e. is only a capacity of ‘one’(kind) … of many.

Pleasurably so… or why not?

Dreaming beyond scale (or, inventing scale and its beyond – in the de-term-in-ing) demonstrates itself as a capacity… (e.g. mythology, science, religion, fiction/fantasy, psycho-anything, spirituality, philosophy, history, and so forth) … all imagined efforts beyond-scale, that, in occurring demonstrate the possibilities/limitations of human scale…

What ‘beyond’ could ‘one’ see, think, feel, etc., that is not a demonstration of limited and actual capacity of ‘one-scale’-to-experience?

So ‘one’ has a-, con-, etc. scales… all part of one’s scale (abilities, capacities, possibilities, options, kind).  Against, with, creative, reductive, but ALL and ANY activities of one kind (so-self-called ‘human’) show its locked and limited capacity.  One never goes beyond.

Fini.

To ‘work limits,’ and boundaries are clearly elements of our ‘limits’ and ‘boundaries’ of the scope and scale of the ‘human.’

“Gods,” cosmologies, dreams, histories, theorizing, etc., all contained within the ‘bounds’ or capacities of the ‘kind-of-thing-‘One’-is.  Perhaps.

It is the ‘perhaps’ that haunts us.  [but what could ‘haunt’ indicate but another human capacity – perhaps a ‘felt capacity’ of bursting or extending our capacities?]

Witchcraft.  Art.  Technology.  Religion.  Theoretical and experimental anything.  Logos.  Arche.  Tohu.  Bohu.  Beginning.  Universe (must needs always shrink to one’s own scale… in order to uni-anything… ‘multiverse’ simple exponents of capacities for in our microscopic self-experienced sphere… we named ‘infinity’ – is there no exponent we can’t add – within our tiny range of potential?).

One’s own anthropology.

Logically [though I excessively distrust that program of human-ing] – what con-cept, i-dea, imagine-ing, or object-ivity is not necessarily always paramatered by the human ex-periential capacities?

The bounds may be elastic or no – there would be no way for a kind to know – being all-ways the ‘one’ experiencing.

IN-HERE-NT BOUNDS.

Alias Alone

On By NW FilbertIn absence, Aging, friendship, human, identity, Language, loneliness, longing, Loss, survival, Writing4 Comments

“it was neither the cradle nor the grave of anything whatever.  Or rather it resembled so many other cradles, so many other graves, that I’m lost.”

–Samuel Beckett-

The silence.  The separation.  The solitude.  This is not novel, not uncanny, not even irregular or unexpected.

Betwixt Alias & Laramie, in fact, it would not be unusual for 1-3 years to pass without interpersonal communication.

The interruption, irregularity, or stretching intermittence of intimate interaction (current parlance “intensive interaction” – what they’re calling genuine conversation these days – a sort of treatment or therapeutic method for the autistic or ‘disabled,’ – akin to the ‘Talking Cure’ of psychoanalytics past) wasn’t really odd or unexpected or otherwise for Alias…merely unfortunate…he accustomed to his cycles and wishes, routines and desires – never mated very well with the world-at-large…his surround.

Still somehow Laramie’s “off” was different.

Perhaps.

No matter.

Alias driven back to Kafka, Beckett, Jabes, and other authors of silences whom he’s long aspired to – wishing (not so secretly) that he might require only some genuine solipsism or solitude, a kind of retreat or reversal from the cultural logorrhea (social media posts, artist’s talks, professional blogs and listservs, tweets/tumbs/grams & feeds) –

incessant reports on one’s self

– disgusting yet enticing,

If other humans ever happened to ‘like’ or ‘follow,’ ‘share’ or ‘pin-it’ or – could it be – actually care?

Alias entering thickets alone.  Laramie “off” (in every way his ‘right’).  No human (living, warm, alive, and responsive).  Alias turns to the ‘mind’ (texts, images, memories, dreams, literature, language, art, thoughts) – in any case or scenario – some abstracted cerebral, cognitive-capacity, the Human Imaginary.  The Pretend.

Meaning.    God.    Religion.    Truth.    Santa.    Satan.     Logic.     Math.

His pet feline “Luna(tic)” and fractured Chihuahua “Gizmo” as company.  And printed literature.  Recorded music.  Playback audio-visual-cinematography.  Machinic animations.  Pornography.  Movie.  Television.  Photographs.  WHATEVER.  Virtual Realities in the place of persons.

Attempts to stay alive, carry on, delude oneself that meaning and reason and experience and expression had validity and representation, communication and comprehension, and so forth.

To “keep calm…& carry on.”

Breathe.

Or…whatever.

Laramie: “OFF”

and

Alias: (“ON”)?

never the twain shall meet?

well, occasionally

(he says, he thinks, he imagines, she says, someone hopes)

The HUMAN (Alias surmises) – ‘an interminable thinking-speech,’ Alias think-speeches, “surely I read/heard/saw/overheard that somewhere.”

It’s Alias alone…free(?), unfettered, allowed, supposedly “ON”

Laramie – “OFF,” Alias sighs.

(and therefore no way to ‘think through’)…

***********************************

Point is, Alias thinks as he murmurs and walks along, there is no meaning, purpose, or point to it all.  “Think-writing” Laramie once called it (re: Alias’ poetry) – “simply inscriptions of progress, er, process…languaging what happens in your miniscule portion of the world (as you know it).”

Think-writing, write thinking, “fuck you!” Alias thinks (writes).  “How can one think without someone or something to think ‘off’ of or ‘with’ or ‘in relation to’?”  Alias grumbles – “yet you’re ‘OFF,’ gone, along, beyond, and so remains me, it, this ‘against,’ ‘in relation to,’ this withless ‘with’ (all versions of the same) ANYthing, EVERYthing, NOThing.”

Something!

“OFF” said Laramie, he

said to Alias, “simply ‘OFF’” like a switch, a light, a life, a dream, a thought, an inception of memory, an hope, ON/OFF, ON/OFF, there/gone, here/gone, you/I, yes/no,…’OFF’ said Laramie, he said to Alias that day, that last day, that latest traversal, that…

…dream,

imagining, encounter, hope, wish, Alias imaginary…

———————————-

…because no one cares, and there is surely no reason to (Alias ruminates).

Having always wanted, desired, craved (it might even be said) to be some strange, unrepeatable and unique (or recognizable) combination of human/person/lover/writer/philosopher/musician/writer/virile male and sensitive, omniscient (no, not ‘omniscient,’ not ‘all-knowing’ but ‘all-considering,’ ‘all-comprehending’ and ‘-allowing,’ ‘understanding’) homo sapien.

There is never any reason (Alias considers) that he should (in any way) be special, “special,” and yet, and yet…

There’s no smidgen of doubt (Alias i. e. Harlequin, piecemeal patchwork of human male – a man, a father, son, parent, professor, laborer, home-owner, some-time partner, friend, teammate, band member, student, child-like adult, mature-seeming child, and so forth…animal, patron, caretaker & guardian, public, customer, businessman, blah, blah, blah, descriptor, descriptor, word, word, term…) that Alias i.e. Harlequin, in relation to Laramie James Backstagger, in relation to J, J, K, T, A, H, O, I, Sam, Franz, Helene, Clarice, mom, sister, dad, daughter, cat, dog, cow, instructor, stranger, landscape, realm, city, genre, language, world…

wanted, even craved (it might be said)

being “special.”

Alias Harlequin.

Alone.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

A thousand shades from cynical to fine…

…medium nor method, mechanism nor machine matters…

…it’s simply the persons involved…

…the choices they make…

….ways they behave…

…what is made of it…

….making and interpreting…

…given the day, the moment, the situation…

…without matter or evidence or reason.

The world happens.

And then we die.

And then world continues.

Happens (for us) (me) (Alias) (Laramie) (you)

No more.

The equations very, VERY simple.

Here & Gone

Heaps of trouble in between

Self-causation

-regulation

Autopoeisis

 

 

Erosion, continued: “What Begins as I, Ends as It”: A Form of Fiction (explicit)

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing6 Comments

MEANING from EXPERIENCE:  “What Begins as I, Ends as It”: A Form of Fiction

 

“Every movement resonates with its preacceleration and its overarticulation, active in a contagion of speeds and slownesses”

-Erin Manning, Always More than One–

 

I.

The erosion would be complete (or very nearly) now.  What had once seemed an “inner life” or “personal experience,” perhaps “individuality” or some such, (as far as could be sensed) was wholly in absentia.  No happening, event, or perception – let alone interpretation or meaning.

Now it was only something thesauri’d as anguish – maybe migraine, maybe ennui.

The emptying and erasure, incessant deterioration.  Taking it back to the cells.

  •          Movement.
  •          Terror.
  •          Survival.

Formulating a system.  Psychology and reflection not necessary.  Systems in relation for persistence.  An added instant.  Another day.

            Flefzzhat, remune, it sounded like, and signifying nothing.  Activity is all.  Behavior.  Quieted, plastic, rearranged.  Emotion in hiding or exile.  It would not be decease, and he could not seem to help it.

It was cold.  Began to chill.  Unable, apparently to warm itself.  Something gave it liquid, which, though iced cold, seemed to flush it warm.  Reaction, not response.

Activity observed, not intention.  It shivered.  A scribbling, not a mark.  A murmur, not a sound.  It seemed deflated.  Otherwise.

Not like a rodent, really: not furtive or purposeful.  How to describe it?

A wrapped tree or  scarecrow – if the scarecrow was broken and crook’d.  What would survival mean, without love for words, without relish?  Without desire – is it pro-cess?

Dead crow in flannel.  No future envisioned, no breathing to count by.

 

II.

Room after room over months all displacing.  Pieces at a time – chair here, sock there, key, sign, and implement.  A picture.  Emptiness synonymed, a variant from loss.  Loss implies gone; emptied – gone away.  The figure shuffling toil devolves the way of water – seamless evisceration – an evaporate.

The labor worked like cancer on its host – a devouring accretion.  Humans call it grief – the impression of depression.  Unable to relate, all signs a bag of Scrabble tiles.  A tick will move toward warmth, grass stems trigger to the sun.  Scarecrow? – merely flux.  Perhaps the wind.

At one time it forayed.  The worlds of animals and humans.  Would have named systemic processing: “living.”  Drill down deep enough, or extend exponentially – the vitality recedes.

            Vitality recedes.

            Sonic elements, sense.  Beyond the psychosocial, even basic physics began un-mattering.

Another room, another artifact, another particle of dust duly removed.  The figure now a beach – sand devolving slowly toward rock.

Rock:  elemental, unfeeling, simply there.  Simply there, in its flux.  Taking space by making it.  Stupid, muted, dumb.  Pointilism sans points – that sort of thing.  The figure itself an oxymoron, an elision.  Not illusion.  From outside this is really happening.

From within, it’s only time.  The songs of Orpheus, collected as poems.  Dalliance in extinction, without a puffin’s reward or a dinosaur’s drama.  Just scarecrow – a covered tree – limbing in almost dark.

Prime example of nearly.  Nearly being, nearly attached, nearly meaningful – nearly perceived.  Nearly alive – another way of saying (in a scientist’s tongue): NOT.

III.

If a statement of faith is “always more than one” then here we have a really hard problem:  no statement, no faith, and ever only one…Beckett’s dissolution… How It Is.

“how last how last”…”vast tracts of time” 

IV.

It echoes.  The emptying room.  A hollow.  Blowing stiffly enough, some would say it howls.  If a howl, then a cry.  If a cry, a reaching out.  Scarecrow doesn’t cry.  But the drink kills the migraine, whites out the angst.

Wrapped tree in snow.  You know it’s there.

It, without life or blood or brain.  It now alone, now diminished, now slowly stripping bare.

            Call it the Passenger Pigeon, the Ibex, Orpheo rising from the dead.

Call it Nothing and No-one.

 

Please do not call it at all.

     V.

Someone said meaning was the sticky point.  Point dislodged.  Evaporate.  Another: “this is love.”  Love fucked and raped in eye socket, armpit, ass – then abandoned.

Another room cleared by the scarecrow.  More bark removed from the tree, even while the burlap clings.

Life would astonish the gods – an elegy owed.  It’s worse than that.  It’s autopsy alive – with light everywhere.  A copyist’s error.

            Branches clack, and make impressions.  That is all.

 

 

Being Human – Voracious, Delusional, Fantastic

On By NW FilbertIn Journallings, Philosophy9 Comments

I get a little weary of philosophy.  It fascinates and intrigues, has its spectacular, glittering moments of what feels like beauty and “accomplishment” – like architecture, the sciences and arts, studies human and social and hard.  But with each human activity and behavior there can be too much of a good thing.  Perhaps it’s the fantasies involved in abstraction – in the feeling of “figuring things out,” or of “making sense” – our human super-additives to experience that are also experience themselves – that I, at times, weary of.  That eminently falsifiable intuition that everything is made up.

web perhaps called “self”
imagined universal web of matter & energy

It is extremely hard work to keep up a worldview.  Involving enormous complexities and details, layer up on layer and strand interweaving strand of biological and logical, illogical, psychological, irrational, emotional, – ologies and descriptions, manipulated perceptions and re-interpretations of interpretations reinterpreted (ad infinitum) – it takes matter and energy, and particular organisms, which grow tired.

Those same realities, capacities and activities are also extremely inspiring, enervating and exciting for organisms – the behaviors of productivity, creativity, imagination and survival – and our weird confounding capacity to think we can observe our perceptions/observations to an infinite regress, make for a very strange frenzy of energy and matter indeed.

In a possibly (?!) infinitely webbed interdependence with our surround copious possibilities of activity are available – all bewildering: chaos can be so generative.  Chaos can be so nullifying.

What might we know?

And why do we want to?

  • That we are organism within dynamic systems?  (How would we know that, from within the systems?)
  • That we are dynamic organisms alongside other dynamic forms of matter and energy?  (Sometimes seems to be our sense of it – that we might somehow step aside – wha-?!)

and…so…what!?

Alongside and within – in order to be – apparently (that is, according to OUR OWN perceptions) – however would could we exist either detached (abstracted) or without (independently, unattached).   To imagine distance, “objectivity,” without the imaginative capacities of fantasy – illusions – for example logic, mathematics, economics, philosophy, psychology – codes and symbols – DElusions in order to play the games in these forms of life we are with delusional sincerity – effectively.  And our fantastic delusions or profound poeitic creations are often effective, productive, pragmatic, dynamic and evolving – techniques and time – which would seem to imply that they also are part of being within a myriad of dynamic systems…

…one might suppose (i.e. “hypothesize”); or infer (i.e. “fantasize”)

All an immersion in symbols – languages – stipulated relations – codified behaviors –

– which is what I had set out to consider

drowning in symbols

the wonder and bewilderment of it

the sense of delusion and ecstasy

being human…

The Life of the Mind (or, Reading World)

On By NW FilbertIn Graphotos, Poetry10 Comments

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.

 N Filbert 2012

In Living Memory

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes39 Comments

Copyright-Rich Vosa

Not like there’s a whole lot there.  It is what it is, my memory – glossy, apparently endless, and stripped bare.  But there seem to be windows, areas the light creeps in, and doorways – entries to room after room of possibilities.  If I could get in there, could move past this moment of glimpsing, find the courage to carry myself forward (or is it back?).  Remains to be seen, here – me at the cusp, in full view, just on the verge, of remembering.

What just happened?

N Filbert 2012

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