Locating my mind

On August 17, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Journallings, Traces2 Comments

Nothing is the force / that renovates the world.

-Emily Dickinson-

Please read the following conversation between poets Christine Hume and Rosmarie Waldrop (pp.76-88, click on image for text)

Waldrop has always been a heroine of mine, and I’ve been struggling again with “Who am I?” “What do I do?” “How am I?” – questions of identity and difference that come up in times where we are suffused in roles – students, parents, spouses, artists, employees, gendered, and so on…In insular places where I feel safe I am able to theoretically conjure a kind of flow, that these aren’t choices but movements, that things and actions do not exist, only ‘occasions”, “relations,” but under stress I quickly find myself wishing I knew who/what/where/when/how I am. Today I received this book through inter-library loan, and kept opening to the Waldrop chapter… apparently for good reason. I share many of her points of view, and would like to share them with whomever finds themselves interested.

I think of the ‘between’ more in terms of both, and of extending the gray zone between the black/white in the direction of multivalence. ‘The yes and no in everything.’

-Rosmarie Waldrop-

Drawing a Blank ________________ …

On August 13, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes3 Comments

Okay, it really isn’t my preference to clutter you with personal information / process…but the month of July turning into August has been something of a whirlwind of large changes for our family. Traveling for three weeks and all the saturation that implies (very GOOD – but overwhelming for one like me who likes to control the pace and type and style and content of input 🙂 )…now registering everyone for school, gathering supplies, moving into new vocations or returning to vocation outside of our home studio…enduring a home burglary in which one of our children was assaulted and some irreplaceable valuables stolen…you get the picture. After spending most of yesterday trying to “touch base” with our home and our lives, I found a few moments personally directed. What I encountered felt like a Void. The last I’d recorded in my reading list journal was July 8. The last I’d written in my private journal was July 6. I couldn’t remember the projects I’d been in the midst of when we took to the mountains, the road, the lakes, the cabins. I was bewildered. I drew a blank…some empty fullness…and here is what tumbled out:

Drawing a Blank _________________ …

So that after long whiles, some sometimes, nothing

nothing left or right remembers stirs reminds

conjures therefore a kind of empty fullness emptied

of what seems everything but is nothing for we feel

pretty certain (what is called “knowledge”

i.e. “belief”) that nothing empties, nothing

moving nowhere neither expanding nor

retracting, not replete or depletable,

so to say a blank is begin, as you see it

__________________________ …

indicates (is a kind of sign) indexes you

elsewhere toward or away, that is, movement

what we might apply another sort of signifier

otherwise (a.k.a) simply known as “blank”

becomes arbitrarily a point of action (more

accurately a line) trail train of efforts

here, like god, as I understand the term,

to name without knowing or under-

standing: “begin.”

__________________________ …

empty trajectory boundary border

line emptied of nothing (not possible)

remains only to be filled with doing

which I’m doing, once a word like “god”

enters as a placeholder, rhythmic beat,

disregulating reorganizer that empty

fullness reveals itself full indeed

by which I mean synonyms collect

(as I experience them) through action

upon within the emptied track

(emptied of nothing, nonsensical)

or trace, that is, “god” =

_______________________ …

metamorphosing in my apparatus I

once perceived as empty, better

said “lost” or “chaos-crossed”

too full in a way to recognize it-

self until such a thud as god

should stir the matter like a magnet

drawing unto after it syllable

after syllable sounds sounding as

“death” as “human” what resounds

in my cranium with deity, but death

of which or both at once, such

emptied fullness I think, led by

__________________________ …

because I’d though how much humans

were like god in their deaths and invention

death like a horse dragging a sledge

without sleds grinding splinters shafts

“substances” to naught, limbs undone

what we thought were wholes – holes

skull shrinking withered of hopes

and fears, identity’s loss, how

death depurposes unknowns…all

the strenuous loves and desperate

frights I gave names and space and

time during life that were not

anything actual only possibilities

but words worries made them seem

death immediately deletes leaving

______________________ …

like character or personality, what

is memorable or terrifying even

unimaginable things we imagined

treating, relating to, engaged as

real entities death erased, again

the emptying, of nothing, no thing

to be rid of but a sound, a rhythm

a term – god, human, death –

superadditives, ideas, beliefs, myths

theories without basis no matter

observation perception interpretation

super-imposed on

________________________ …

emptied of nothing as nothing being

undiminishable death demons-

trates depurposing de constructions

we attribute fully to emptiness

what is unknown its own sort

of impossible excepting conjecture

consideration deleted at death

by death what life had spent

on deities and persons, ideas or myths

where nothing was, actually empty

but for matter beneath and slowly

ground back down toward away

emptying the nothing to fullness

_____________________ …

drawing a blank

N Filbert 2012

Sneak Post

On July 23, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Journallings4 Comments

Hey everyone – this is basically what i’m looking at for the next 8 days (and climbing). Happened in to town for groceries and water…and a cafe-created coffee (which happened to host wi-fi) – thanks for reading, for your comments and i’m sure your posts – i’ll get to as many of them as i can when i return next week for two days of Kansas’ hell-hot heat and then we’re off for another week until BOOM school/work/etc. starts!

I can tell you that thusfar feeling high-altitude breezes, looking at deer, marmots, chipmunks, rabbits, and an amazing variety of birds and flora – my mind is cruising into a calmly-breathing state I haven’t known in a very long time. Hopefully much will soothe and settle and i’ll notice something interesting or beautiful to share upon my return. For now, I’m resting, climbing, loving, and exploring these mountains 🙂

Thanks and happiness to all

Scribbling. Toward purpose.

On July 20, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Journallings9 Comments

Summer is quickly departing. In the next few weeks – school supplies, a trip to the Rockies to a rustic cabin, a trip to Branson with little children and wizened parents, work, deadlines, textbooks, and BAM! the “Fall” begins. I don’t know if I’m easily overwhelmed, perhaps so, I can say I am overwhelmed. I think I’m good at surviving things, at persistence, but in a rather melancholic way, steeled and a little removed.

I am not certain what will become of this blog as two years of a most incredible opportunity that cost us so much is coming to an end – the ability for Holly and myself to devote ourselves to our personal passions, our internal vocations: our families, our art. Enormous changes are afoot. I will be back to work and a full-time graduate student, Holly will practice more therapy and a little less creating artifacts, two high schoolers ever increasing their busyness, fullness; and two young ones growing ever so fast. Our older children are fairly self-sufficient, but also ever growing and expanding, and keeping up with all requires our hearts.

In a recent interview, my interviewer looked at me and addressed the cliche “Change is difficult.” Pause. I agreed all over my body. She resumed: “change is NOT difficult, it is always occurring, ALWAYS. What we experience as “difficult” during the endless changing is perspective.”

She was right. My mind and body were not. I create the difficulties by my approaches and interpretations. The difficulties themselves often becoming creative catalysts of change. “I am proud to be melancholic.” (see following quote). It is empowering to gradually claim responsibility for one’s self and one’s constant choices of outlook, intake, response, action. Thus I enter the ensuing flow.

This morning has been spent reflecting the feelings I’m having of loss in relation to this blog, more open time for reading/writing/composing, family-time, couple-time. The feeling that perspectival anticipation re: these ensuing shifts has slumped me, lessened my determination, devotion. I countered it with Lynne Tillman (as I often do), and read the following, from Madame Realism Lies Here (everything is intentional in her writings :)):

“In her waking life, as in her dreams, she concocted art that confronted ideas about art.

So life wasn’t easy; few people want to be challenged…

…Madame Realism’s work wasn’t her child. But, inevitably, it was related to her, often unflatteringly…

…what if art can’t tell the truth? What if it lies?…

…Art was a golem. It had taken over. It had a life of its own, and now she feared it was assessing her. What did it say about her?…

What I make is not entirely in my power, as conscious as I try to be. It’s always in my hands and out of my hands, too. I like to look at things, because they make me feel good, even when they make me feel bad. I’m proud to be melancholic. I like to make things, because they usually make me feel good. I am not satisfied with the world, so I add to it. My desires are on display. What I make I love and hate…

…She made a spectacle of herself from time to time, mostly in her work, trying to tell the truth and finding there’s no truth like an untruth. She kept pushing herself to greater and greater joys and deprivations, which were invariably linked. And like any interesting artist, who can’t help herself and is in thrall to her own discoveries, Madame Realism shocked herself most, over and over again.”

(from Lynne Tillman, This is Not It)

It’s like this. So onward I go. Be assured I will try to stay up with all of you wonderful creators. And I will (“can’t help himself”) keep making at each opportunity. And I thank you all so much for these past 8 months or so where I have had the inception of experiences of finding an audience, truly being read and responded to, a sort of community of creativity. It has greatly influenced my life and practice and confidence in keeping to my dreams. Thank you!

Be well everyone. Be well.

Men. Amateurs.

On July 12, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Current Reading2 Comments

Rereading. Had forgotten how good.

Or maybe things get better – different – time.

Recommended.

Weekly Photo Challenge : Fleeting Moment – street scene(s)

On July 5, 2012July 5, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Photography1 Comment

There was one I liked best…but then when I got them uploaded…I wasn’t sure! But I promise they all were fleeting….

An Equation

On June 25, 2012June 24, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, WritingLeave a comment

I’m running through files trying to organize things and adjust to a new computer. Once in a while I stumble on something I hardly remember making but still feel a deep accord with. This was one of those things. I think it stands for. Still. What.

(i only wish it were still freezing)

Here goes:

Moment: Airy

(being an experiment, in theory

a result)

It is hard.

It is hard and it is cold.

Hard as in difficult.

Each thing.

And cold because of the weather. Well below the freezing point. But his gloves staid on, his lips held a cigarette, and he boxed.

He could box that paper. That paper-thin page. Already beaten to a pulp.

Him with a theory.

The theory a sort of equation.

The equation as follows:

ALL (whatever a person is, has, does) + ALL (a person’s skill, effort, strength, talent, knowledge and ability)

= Appearance of Art (momentarily)

Notation: A + A = AA

An utter mystery to him.

So he sat in the freezing cold, a pen in his hand, the ink sludging slow, paper on a desk, digging/ exposing / exploring himself, believing / composing / revising language,

oh, and the catalyst necessary to the actual experimentation of this theory – (he writes) – MAKING

One had always to be making (working, acting, writing, performing) with ALL (of him or herself) and ALL (of one’s capacities, faculties and tools) to carry out this experiment, i.e. to test the hypothesis.

Catalyst: (he notes) making (out of/into/with/toward)

Source and goal (purpose, intent) unnecessary, indifferent

Any action requires an energy source. In this case: living organism possessing capacities, perhaps even proficiencies, and coffee, and cigarettes.

No specified laboratory or station or constituents (conditions) to each his own [marginalia]

Quite a simple test really.

Requiring no great funding, no special services or permissions, few qualifications, variant supplies.

Simply vast amounts of time and consistent (persistent) and enormous amounts of effort. (As he saw it).

Reviewing centuries of other experimentations and practitioners of this simple eternal test led him to observe : “results in momentary airy results”

(often discovered in different places at different times dependent on observer – even in same test results – thus airy, ephemeral moments)

Feeling he had yet to produce an AA. A momentary Appearance of Art, he was compelled to introduce a compendium of criteria – identifiable attributes – whereby to justly analyze resultant artifacts and actions.

Again the qualities boiled down quite simply: put the equation into reverse for the observer or verifying assistant:

an Appearance of Art results through the remaking process or catalyzation of the observer,

requiring as a result, ALL of the observer’s person and ALL of the observer’s capacities,

faculties, abilities.

Notation: criteria for AA to be AA:

AA = (must equal) A + A

He practiced this experiment from both sides of the equation – attempting to verify Appearances of Art by engaging / observing / remaking results that demanded enormous effort, large amounts of time and all of his experience and capacities, and as the performer of the experiment – devoting vast amounts of time, energy and effort of his total self to the making of Appearances of Art.

It wasn’t going well.

It is hard (extremely difficult)

And it happens to be very cold (causation: weather in Winter)

He’d read of other conditions explicated by practitioners before him: contingencies such as warmth, geographical position, silence, wealth, solitude, suffering (the Ss came up quite often); specific environments, times or places, assistant substances or particular tools or resources, even difficulty itself had been recorded – but there seemed to be no rhyme or reason, certainly no agreement, in fact, very often direct and incommensurable contradictions between one catalystic experimentor of A + A = AA and the next, which led to his marginal note (copied above): “to each its own”

He carried on, in spite of the grave difficulties, confusions and multivalent referents of the equation’s elements. Once in awhile he believed he had discerned a momentary result – an appearance of art in his own private performances of the experiment; unfortunately he could not obtain verification of his tests from contemporary scholars/students/or adepts of the ancient and cryptically-clear equation.

He had no trouble himself verifying most attested AAs, given sufficient time and effort, but, as he progressed in his work, identification became more efficient yet verification demanded more and more of him, devouring his time, energy and effort, interfering with and greatly complicating his own experiments and test cases from the equation’s other end.

He began to understand why past personages were led to choose to practice and perform the experiment from one side or the other.

It is hard.

It is cold.

And there is only so much time and effort.

There is only so much living organism to be had.

Limitations began to seem insurmountable.

But by now he had come too far.

There was only to go on.

It is hard, he wrote.

It is hard and it is cold, he recorded.

Hard as in difficult.

Each thing.

And cold because of the weather.

But my gloves stay on, he wrote, and my lips still hold a cigarette, right to the end.

His gloved hand fighting the pages.

There is only so much life.

N Filbert 2012

Places

On June 14, 2012June 13, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes2 Comments

The Essence of Place

“To record the essence of a place, so that it can be inhabited by something outside itself, is to start a story. This means searching for a language, one that we know intuitively but cannot spell out.”

-Lukas Felzmann, Landfall–

“The time has come to talk of whatever we want”

-Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Xenia–

“the work drives beyond promise, craving and time”

-Louis Zukofsky, Prepositions–

Sometimes there were birds there. They passed through in groups, in swoops.

I’ve seen people there too, but not swooping or grouping. It just isn’t that kind of place.

It felt large and open yet cloistered, contained. There were large trees all around and throughout. Somehow it seemed level.

I don’t recall there being water, but I believe it staid nearby. As if it were ready for when it was needed.

I’ve no memory of critters or pets, cycles or frogs. Only birds that might swarm like the leaves filling trees as they swayed.

Oh my, but the blur! The soft focus in apprehending! It rocks and it waves, it flows through you while sitting, I say!

I wonder the eyelids of storms. I leap lying down. I silently sing out the shrieking of birds. I love in this place. As wild or as calm as is needed, a respondent surround.

When I’m here I try to tell you, by searching for words or the making of pictures. That don’t capture.

Have you wandered here before? To the essence of a place?

Please do tell me or show me what’s yours…

N Filbert 2012

An Opinionated Review

On June 12, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Journallings, Uncategorized6 Comments

Eat. Pray. Love.

On a wonderful jaunt to our public library yesterday, my wife spotted a movie based on a mega-bestselling memoir that she’d been curious to see since its release a couple of years ago. We checked it out and viewed it last night in hopes of a light, relaxing fare to happy us toward slumber.

It was excruciating. My first reaction was – can a person’s biography truly resemble such a cliché’d American self-realization mythology? Basically a woman goes on a journey away from her responsibilities to others to “find” or “heal” herself, in the process (and apparently justifiably since it delivers her to a goal of peace, happiness, pleasure and love with a seasoning of spirituality) wrecking others’ lives and forgiving herself for it, ending in the arms of a handsome foreigner on a tropical island with some standard religious “truths” in tow.

Here are things I realized about myself:

I am suspicious of personal pleasure that causes others pain.

I am oh-so-glad and grateful that I grew up in a reserved Western culture with Continental philosophy and theologies at its roots. I much prefer battling to wisdom and calm through the frenetic and anxiety-ridden vertigo of a convoluted mind ferociously doubting and investigating than through some “be here now” philosophies of higher unities and cosmic accord. Rather interrogate now than “let go” and “let be.” I am attached to the workings of our brains and our languages, pestering perception and scrutinizing sense experience with imaginative and skeptical rationales.

I radically doubt “gurus,” “prayer,” “saviors,” and other spiritual or “wholistic” practices of “balance” that accomplish “goals.” Outcome-based anything feels totalitarian and programmatic and therefore facile to me, as if there were a form or behavior we might fit ourselves to that would lessen the struggle or suffering of “to be.”

The film’s story took a year’s time, replete with life-changing habits of mind and body and some claimed resultant growth. As if wisdom came from Apple or McDonald’s. The past was hardly processed, responsibilities released like thoughts during Zen, and no effort to apologize or repair any damage or hurts the main character had caused those close to her along the way (thank goodness no children were involved!).

It was the time-tested failure of the American Dream: do what you want to get yourself comfortable in your own skin (whatever beliefs, illusions and experiences that might seem to require) and everything will be alright in your world.

I simply don’t buy it. And I won’t. If we are socially constructed realities (and my point-of-view on the cosmos supports this) then final import is not in a self, but in a system. Not toward results but a how of processing. Not a personal calm or pleasantness but a social accord.

The film made me terrifically thankful for scrutiny and doubt, fervent self-questioning in light of surroundings, and the “wisdom of no escape.” It just goes on.

For what it’s worth,

here lies a steaming pile of my opinions.

N Filbert 2012