Tag: journaling
Language/Life
This is the same struggle – (LanguageLife)
this mis-match, trans-mesh, between media (their mediums)
.
A woman arrived – beautiful.
First thought: why isn’t language like her?
no – why isn’t language Her.
The difference. Media.
Eventually I felt this about music, painting, photography.
Eventually I felt this about perception, expression, myself.
.
i.e. Why isn’t one thing another to the same effect? Why doesn’t one temporally unified multiplicity (perception) correlate adequately in another?
.
My writing, these shapes, lines, movements, and possible sounds and touches and sayings are ever as real as hers, (equal), but not her (different) <in so many ways, sort of> <and not many ways, kind of>
.
There is animated material in motion with layers of perception – interpretation – impression / meanings. And here as well.
But they are not the same,
metaphorically, experientially, actually.
And they are.
(We are, species-level, carrying similar realities in similarly leaky containers).
And we aren’t.
- Effect (1)
- Affect (2)
- Mode (0)
- Artifice (N+1 / N-1)
- Occurrence Happening Being (=)
We are.
And aren’t.
Same Difference
.
Language lives. is alive. is not life. is life.
As also language.
And not.
She and I are. And are modally identified. Materially.
And are categorically for many striations,
same.
And not.
Effect. Affect. Also same difference, everywhere within scales. Eventually, no difference?
Eventually…only same? In a thin layer, deep and thickly.
Undone. Coordinated.
Same difference.
eventuates:
AND – – – – OR – – – – NOT
(same differencings, as each require equal potentialities)
.
Endless.
This is a slippery slope of a flat plane.
.
Therefore I love the “Book of Idolatry,” “truth,” empirical methods! Same differences, endlessly, potential, infinite variation and similitude. Swerving curves of identity deranged.
Lo how the mirror distorts in its clarity.
The painting clarifying distorted.
Voila.
Another.
The same.
Again.
Differently.
.
One might suppose differing due to activity – close circle – if static could be posited or possible we’d see (as we are seen). But seeing is active. As is that seen.
therefore, indeterminate
that is, knowably unknowable
i.e. uncertain in its certainty
Voila!
What?
same difference
BEING
matters
a view from nowhere?
he can only be distracted by nothing (the reflection of everything), light uncontained or perceived, even though he cannot cease registering her flesh and its forms, thigh-lines, tone and texture, fluidity of folding and motion. Nothing refuses to contain it, and rather brings it back, and forth, or all at once space, always “this. this here. here.” Nothing missing mirror, his emptiness replete.
Bends and scent, nonsensed, indelible.
Him, there (here), composed observer, unable/disabling any view from nowhere. It is without a not…
our small lives are traversed by momentous movements, avalanches in the depths of the everyday
Knausgaard, Summer
How much longer still dreaming of a language
Not enslaved to words as it is today…
des forets, Poems of Samuel Wood
so we use words in order to go beyond words
Markides, Mountain of Silence
What constitutes unbounded in literature?
Knausgaard, My Struggle 6
…still she remains a remarkable beauty (how so easily contorted from inside?). If inner bodies resembled outer, how different life would be, observable reversed as well – cultural ugliness/fear/repulsion softens from inner loveliness, even as prettiness suffers its evils. That being said, the inner therefore rules the day for beauty, and earth must be divine.
Veins outstrip hand lotion. Wrinkles give the lie.
he depends on his non-mirror, and many come to light. Refractions, glints, unending activity – a world (or however you attempt to measure the imagined) exists as relation alone (all-one) – infinite interdependence ‘to be.’
slope, angle, apparent rest – the wrist, the knee, the curve to ankle, each knuckle and blade about the eye, how else to distinguish hair from head from air from skin from water – its relative.
all i do is sense and praise (that poorly) – relation, gratitude. Awareness – attention – all act. Calves, puppies, elbows, crooks – sway and struggle, chaos-strife, relations of same differences, now.
he calls out, a wave of vibrations; he smiles, a rippling fabric; looks (out or in at once) – “becoming” (some have spoken or written) – enacted, enbodied, at-once ‘taking place’ – now. Here it is, they are, him/her with in of. It goes. Nowhere but here (it comes in other words). his left, your right, his east, your west, up-down-other: relation. Occurs.
No else. No one. No thing. No where. Never. All depending, relating to this, us, that, here, now. Without which? Unknown, inconceivable, imperceptible, nonsensical…only possible.
Morning Thoughts – Saturday
“If there is progress then there is a novel.”
William Carlos Williams
You wait for it to come, grow, become. You may be waiting forever. Like love.
Perhaps it will visit, pass by. You’ll notice, probably feel hopeful, or inspired. Forlorn.
You’ll keep trying, as in waiting. Wanting and waiting are such wrestlers.
From time to time you’ll dream. Fantasies and nightmares.
But language will twist your words.
“Today I wrote nothing.”
Daniil Kharms
Morning Thoughts in a Blustery March
…and so we think. I do not say we must think, for I do not think that is so – it is simply a kind of capacity we have, apparently related to external pressures and a possible pleasure, or unknown effects involving desire – a torsion, disturbance, a stirring unsettling perhaps necessary to our living continuance, like pain, like lust.
An activity we call by many names and nuances – reflection, perception, analysis, intuition, sensation, theorizing, dream… but all uncanny practices of turbulence as if trying out invisible options on our world, imagining alternatives, inventing holding frames for experiencing that must constantly and continuously alter and adapt and reorient as living never stills. Like language, like longing, like living. Such things show no signs of resolving, their solutions are their ongoing instrumentalization, their habitude.
- Writing, kissing, and walking are synonyms.
Confusion : Fusion-with
The light is good. I’m confused.
What “good”? “Good” for what, and in relation to? Diffuse, azure atmosphere of oncoming dusk. Chilly, not cold. Nearly pleasant, yet crisp enough for shiver and grip. Unsteady, trembling grasp of pen, a striving for control mated to its lack.
Hardly daylight. Liminal.
I would like to express. What I do not know, perhaps am even unable to.
This is why I approach a page – blank, blind, lined, empty – in “good” light and confusion.
Fusion-with, what? Chemistry, alchemy, biosphere, organism, complexity, surround. Others’ emotions, experience. Possibilities not actualized, each swarming potential of vocabulary, gesture, signification – line, sign, mark, motion – converging formulation, conveying contrivance / re-cognition. What is not, hovering about each “is.” To write. To write (only) this. When…
Once begun. Light, terms, cursive. Blue Bic ball-pointed pen. Moleskine substitution and human and language and in- and ex- perience and some =, some theorized equation of functions and results.
January 29, 2017. Nathan Wayne Filbert. 5:44 pm according to a Centrally Standardized Timepiece, an Apple product, arranged amidst pages from many centuries and sources, composed music sounding from the last, temperatures…”actualities”?…amid vast, incomputable com-possibilities.
If Nathan had not been “this one,” had not begun with a “T” or a “T + h + e” in this light, in this almost comfortable, discomfiting condition, in this notebook, with this pen and its ink at this time on this bastardized quality of paper, among such circumstances and scenarios, amid these relations as a father, a student, librarian, scholar, male – of this certain (arbitrarily standardized mandatory and countable) age, intimately (accordingly – to strata not set by either) coupled to- caring for-, concerned with-, worried by-, wishing for-, happy about-, and so on…
this word or letter at this time in this space with these extremely idiosyncratic and unlikely determinate positions and scenes in a surround incrementally rare and unreckonably accidental…
“The light is good. I am confused” leading itself its own very peculiar particular wave way toward each next and next co-dependent with innumerable constituents and counterparts yet occurring here, now, 5:54 pm CST in Wichita, Kansas in United (are they?) States of America (wha-? why? how? when?) 2017 (by what calendar and whose and wherefore?) at an intersection outside of a centuries-old and decrepit “house” it calls “home” (why? wherefore? from whence toward and…?)…
Indeterminate. Indecipherable. Unreasonable and incalculable. Not accountable or even conceivable…but IS (apparently). Simply IS, what is written, at this time, in this place, by this organism, of these relations, in this surround, at this moment, occasion, “actuality”…
…as it happens… as if
“The light is good. I am confused.”
notes
Why not call it magic, this unsettling alloy of grief and anger we experience when shunted by anxiety, disappointment, depression, or loss?
We cannot deny that we crave! That we are struck through – bolted with fervent desire (all that which we experience as, well, unsettlingly – disturbingly – vital, ALIVE, active, possessive, in us) – when we are crushed, smushed, squelched, or helpless, hopeless, dismayed – how else could we be?
Without the vital, fierce passions – the damage is to no effect/affect. Depression must press against something. Must be pressing something down.
“Am I at the right house?” the internet-technology-installer asked from my gate.
“How can I know?” I responded, “it would depend on the future.”
He checked the numbers and moved away.
Now how will we ever know?
Isn’t this what every human encounter re/presents?
So de-pression presses something down in us. Anxiety stirs. Sorrow re-cognizes meanings. No negative without its positive charge. To be noticeable. And what is it that is noticeable? (able-to-be-noticed)? ONLY DIFFERENCE. Only time and space and whatever it is those veil, uncover, hide, or displace.
O-ppressed, DE-pressed, what are these SU-ppressing? Accentuating? Calling to attention, to activity, awareness, task?
Grief, loss, de-tachment and longing: what do these expose in order to occur?
Is anything ever lost?
She passes by with a friendly, perhaps even loving and happy wave. What reality is evoked in the pain of the passed-by, passed-over, un-preferred? What does it render actually present?
Is it possible that in the “missing” nothing is lost? Some present is heightened? Something even added to the present?
In losing a struggle don’t we gain what the effort was for? Clearly?
Does surrender underscore the sub-ject, the value, the relational ob-ject-ive given over? Adding acknowledging import?
Difference demonstrates value. Matter(s). Sign-if-i-can-ce. Without difference nothing would know. Indistinguishable = pure repetition. (Doesn’t matter).
Passed-over, passed-by, passed-on. De-pressed, su-ppressed, o-ppressed. Lost, lossed, re-moved, de-tached, re-apportioned. ALL LOSS ACCENTUATES HAVE. ALL DIS-POSSESSION EXPOSES POSSESS.
Difference de-scribes=in-scribes OURSELVES. What we are constructed from, contain, proffer, offer, obsess, possess, ARE. What we ARE (have and do).
Our com-position, con-stitution, con-struction are most clearly expressed in difference, ex-posure, de-struction, de-pression, o-ppression, loss.
In de-composition, we know and learn what composes us.
The question beggars: what have we to lose? What can we lose that in losing its learning is not gained? What have we to lose? And how do we know without losing?
Meaning-Making in Living Systems, or, 15,000 Things
is a phrase and a theory I have queried, contemplated, spelunked and pursued for the past few decades of my “living.” Since (apparently) before I can remember, I’ve been addicted to a kind of figuring-out – some offspring of “understanding,” any concept / idea / or belief-faith – that might elucidate to me my (experienced) compulsion to “meaning” or “significance” – to matter as matter-in-relation.
I’ve encountered many gurus (preachers, priests, philosophers, psychologists, scientists, mathematicians and artists, farmers and engineers, poets = “people”) along the way who have sent, directed, swerved, commanded, troubled, commended, interrogated, suggested and questioned this impulse of mine. From sarcasm to scholarship I’ve been told I will not find that which I seek. Or recommended resolutions that don’t withstand my particular scrutiny and skepticism.
It is sunny and light, Spring-y and gentle in Kansas today. I took my lunch, after a walk, at a table among trees. Birds were active, dogs ambling by, flowers in bloom, and a breeze.
For the most part I “eat” cause I’ve believed that otherwise I would fail (as a being) and die. I like to enjoy food, but most often it’s presumed “preparation” falls to me, and therefore becomes a complication of time I would prefer not to.
So I sat and I drank (so much easier). Water & coffee & other things to my pleasure. And “pondered,” I guess – what I do, when (apparently) no one requires immediate need of me.
I was alone, in a way.
And thinking of “meaning-making,” and “knowledge,” “belief” and “desire” – human shit. (It’s what I do – that compulsion).
*** As I was contesting people’s behaviors and language recently in my home, my unanticipated fortune of something like a life-partner offered the response “there are 15,000 things it could be.” Which struck hold and has become something of a cliché in short order in our home. Imponderables, indefinables, indescribabilities. For any action any thing might perform – there are nigh infinite possible “reasons” (most likely irrational) – these courses are taken. “Personal knowledge” is not something we have. Systems do what they do – what is done is what’s done – and the likelihood of our assessments being correct is near null.*** [that’s all an aside]
I can be critical.
And quite gracious and kind.
“Depending.”
On what?
15,000 things.
I am rambling. And have decided to do so. Readers, you must know, I don’t write because I have something to say. (15,000 things). I have drives to express (inexplicably) – and most often what I write is precisely a declaration of what I don’t know.
“The more we know, the more exposed we are to our ignorance, and the more we know to ask”
– Marcelo Gleiser, The Island of Knowledge–
Well that’s a positivist view.
When I write, I expose all my ignorance. Compose hunches and urges, fascinations and fears. Ache to pull my ineffables toward tongues. Talking’s the same. I don’t know what I’m saying – just hoping experience finds text. Immaterial materializing. We might get “something to work with.” I don’t understand any of it.
Sitting then, in the sweet Kansas day, 20/30 years of my life gained a traction. “Meaning-making,” to make meaning, was obscuring infinite unknowns. Underlying such a contention – that meaning is made – swum its absence = there’s no meaning “there.”
“Person-hood” aptly decreed – “person” a “hood” that we wear. “Person-ality” – some ability we possess to appear as in situations. “Meaning” – a something we might craft to suit our unaccountable occurrences. I don’t mean anything, significance is made. If I’m lucky the people around me choose to do so with my existence. Otherwise it’s matter of course. We’re Matter…of course. But who knows? Also the problem of “knowledge” – the only “knowledge” we have is our own and some idiosyncratic communal bastardization of what our Species has MADE.
Not quite nihilism. Just meaninglessness.
I like the idea of “meaning-making” – finding it in the relation of atoms, of stars, of humans and beasts. Of dreams and delusions, of science. I like “knowledge” – created cultural artifacts and residue, flotsam & jetsam, structures and practical theories. AND it would seem it obscures what surrounds. For every academic discipline that drills its way into a world we experience (as humans) and stacks up hypotheses and –pedias…there’s still the wide world there from every other perspective and experience – the ant, paramecium, subatomic particle, sky. Your spouse or your child, parent or friend, or the foreign, the stranger, the Other, the “them.”
Myopia. Perception. The experience of meaning. Attribution of significance. What matters in matter to ME. IF matter – for even matter’s a human contribution to what seems to be.
Perhaps it comes down to particularized –“hoods” and “-abilities” – “each one’s” momentary personhood and personality – whether experience is an occasion to “make meaning” or glide on in its unnecessary meaninglessness. I don’t know.
What remains is my deranged and crazy compulsion – my “hood” I guess, and ability.
So many words come to mind.
Ouroboros, or Autophagia
I often feel that I’m dying. Killing myself with disease. Killing myself via the activities of my “mind.” Killing myself with alcohol. Killing myself by over-extension, -exertion, lack of self-regard. Worry. Anxiety. Perfectionism. Wishes. Desires. Dying from the absence of sex (and yet orgasm is also a breathless ‘little death’). Dying from lack of joy. Dying of disuse, depletion, or disregard. Dying of my own engulfing life.
Which only emphasizes the insistent FACT. One thing we know, perhaps the ONLY certainty we’ve understood in the thousands or millions or billions of years we’ve been species-al (spec-ial) and aware of such information…is that we are dying. Constantly. Continuously. Unstoppably. Irrefutably and inescapably. Inevitably.
Whether we do it to ourselves – amplify or expedite its course – or are at the mercies and whims of some enormous cosmic complex entanglement; whether our cells turn against “us,” or we turn our “selves” against our cells; excruciating or peaceful, ecstatic or terrifying – WE DIE. ARE DYING. WILL DIE.
For some, this undeniable evidence and unstoppable knowledge instigates a kind of “dead-already” worldview or perspective…a nihilism for some. A not-ness. A foregoing of LIVING, a preemptive attack, or some strange passion of alignment with the TRUTH – some subversion of the FACT (at the same time true, and as certain) – that a DYING thing MUST be LIVING.
An “it doesn’t matter.” Usually tacked on with an “ultimately.” Meaninglessness. Pointlessness. Purposelessness. Something some supposed “scientist” (devoted to “objective” observable “truths”) like a psychologist, biologist or physicist; doctor or therapist or mathematician – might call “depression,” “skepticism,” “cynicism,” – when in FACT it is adherence to one of the ONLY FACTs we’ve described or descried that has held TRUE while all of our tools, technologies, expansions of knowledges and theories, inventions, medicines and so on carry on their wars against it. A veritable CERTAINTY (indeed, perhaps the only occurrence in which a human being accords with reality).
DYING. From there – who knows? “At one’s own hand/operations” or “at the mercy of” environments, situations, circumstances, world… who knows? No one. Uncertainty. The process of being-alive to being-dead is fraught with everything else we are able to imagine. And almost entirely UNCERTAIN.
It happens. Living. Then Dead. Each one. Every one. “Me,” “You,” “I’s,” “They’s,” “We’s,” “Those” and “These.” Whatever begins…ends (in some form). Whatever emerges, converges and devolves. Whatever occurs…deceases. Ceases “to Be.”
And so what do we do…what do “I” do…with this LIVING? In full awareness of the synonymity – LIVING/DYING – why is the awareness of dying and depletion of a potency that oft outstrips its necessary , indeed indubitable counterfactual? LIVING. LIVING. LIVING…
Who now, what now, where and for why?
Alias (outside) – more from the notebooks
Alias “boyfriend,” alias “daddy,” alias “instructor,” alias “friend.” Alias “person.” Alias “student,” alias “son;” alias “scholar,” alias “man.”
Alias “Alias.” Always additional roles (or functions, behaviors, responses, and on…)
I.e. disciplines: philosophy, sociology, science. Alias “arts” and “humanities” and “lover” and “partner” and “parent.” Alias “human.” Alias everyone. I.e. no one.
Alias Ignatius Evgeny Harlequin, a simple human pattern, sample, example, i.e. so-far-survivor. It’s nothing, really, but something enough to write.
“His” body distinct in the way of all bodies, but matching no cultural icon. “His” mind above average – no matter. Mattered/matters little, just a human. Related to others in lieu of dependencies – that “human” is not a species that can live on its own. Therefore at least elements of an immediate surround are, well, ALWAYS, essential. Genuinely. Utterly. Whether air or land or water; people, chemicals, fuel. No human exists without others. Simply.
Therefore (i.e.) even the meaningless, unnoticeable Alias Harlequin could not survive without a surround. But might his “surround” survive without him? On this query, Alias’ presence (and present) is hung.
Polysemic Stupor 