Found…from the midst of a stressful week…
NO idea what that is.”
The crap that crumbles out…
Found…from the midst of a stressful week…
NO idea what that is.”
Tag: meaning
A book review of sorts –
A “Book Review” – complements The Whole Hurly-Burly
Dublinesque
By Enrique Vila-Matas
We are able to “keep up appearances” – some habitual collage of identities – for quite a long time.
I don’t have ANYthing to say, to speak of, when I encounter – READ – the work of a great writer / a great written work [or writerS – the book above is in translation, and that by two others]. Alas.
Broken. Spellbound. With nothing to add, say, profess, testify – unable to stop speaking.
: Literature, no?
The frozen sea within me (fraud, image, appearance, presentation, mis-representation) AXED?
It feels that way: like being stumped in a crucial interview by a question one never expected – exposed – somewhere beyond your bones – on into some uncanny…
Like that.
So I read, with the feeling of partaking of fine food outstripping my station. So tasteful, delicious and exquisite that the experience teeters at throw-up or orgasm…nearly too much pleasure…too much exposure…too much experience.
And the concomitant deflation, flattened, realizing that I am none of something, perhaps too many of somethings,
disordered, disorganized, confused.
Undone.
Vulnerable and laid bare – with nothing showing.
I am not that
Frightening (terrifying even, at some level) and freeing (or, unknown, unpredictable, possible).
Potential, unlikely, impossible to prove or ascertain – uncertainty – unknowable
to my ‘self’ in my body, as a name, or a father, a partner, a person, a friend.
A cipher. Undeserving of accolades or attributions, unaware of facts or characteristics –
just a long train of habits,
histories, perceptions and behaviors. A long, long trail of showing up…taking space…acting…AS.
With nothing else: not more-than or without, not subterfuge or false, no accomplishments or occurrences in lieu of AS.
The residue of NOTHING.
Bereft then, but not of substance. Empty, but not of force. Simply laid bare, examined, investigated…
…and found wanting.
I stare.
There are things I can perform, ways I interact, roles fulfilled, tasks achieved, conversations replete with reactions and response,
but that is all.
I have a shape, I’ve garnered knowledge, mastered speech and comprehension, can use my cock, can analyze, interpret and produce. Can keep alive and support others, draft language and record. Able to run, walk, sit, stand. To do, make, say and think. In other words – TO BE – and be HUMAN (passably), but undefined, unqualified, ephemerally labeled, nothing “sticking,” “fitted,” by which I might be “called.”
Just a human lacking content, wriggling survival as a beast. An educated beast. And unwitting, unaware and unforeseen.
AN EMPTY ‘I’. (Replace with senses – it means the same). A processing thing, operative organism – a complex or compound of certain circumstances, situations, affordances, of contexts. But nothing special, just unique. An additional example of a being.
Being false. In sense of veiled, covered over, costumed and behaved. Or misbehaved, rankly naked, shown-up short, struggling by.
It doesn’t matter as a seem or even category, division, or multi-ply. Can’t reach zero, can’t be counted, a kind of circumstance of pi. A virtual reality that’s not quite real, not loved quite right to rub it so.
A becoming, misshapen, and clumsily adorned, fooling-no-one. There is no one. Only you. Me. Us.
“an unleashing of erroneous energy”
Derivative and fake. A mistake, mistake uncalled-for and unnecessary, and untoward. A simple “me.” Empty. Formed.
An empty ‘I’ inside myself (shelf, shell).
In any order, or, perhaps,
on shuffle
5/5/15
“Whereof one cannot speak…” More Writings Unearthed
this repeated event of searching for blank pages only to find potential fertility in those already filled…
entries uncovered from March 2015
“WHEREOF ONE CANNOT SPEAK, THEREOF ONE MUST BE SILENT”
-Ludwig Wittgenstein-
HO SCIENCES, LOGICS, TECHNO-LOGICS AND MATHEMATICIANS!
PROGRAMMERS, DOCTORS, PHILOSOPHERS & ANALYSTS!
You have your discourses and discoveries, practices and spheres of operability!
You designate your domains through terms and definitions –
What is allowed and disallowed.
Vowed and disavowed.
Then silence.
EXPERIENCE
Whoever’s drawing lines of this and that, of here or there, of yes and no.
Whomever feeds the fuel of contradiction, against the singing speaking styles.
Whoever revels in dichotomy, clarity and divisions –
DIVERGE and then stay silent.
In complexity you must not speak,
on recursion and convergences be still,
traversing intersects and margins,
knotting nexuses and networks,
these zones your symbols will not call,
fringes disciplined discourses unable to name, locate, determine (undermine?)
WE UNDERLINE
AND HIGHLIGHT
HERE
REVEAL in complex approach – our work of ambiguity – perplexing and puzzling, unfathomable and obscure – in-determinate we sing, in language hard to cipher, discourse discomposing and dispossessed, polyphonious and multi-vocal, holding harmonies in dissonance
sing-speaking over/under/with
**********************************
Whereof can I speak?
I speak of pie. Fruit pies. My mother’s. Yet I cannot speak, for I have never figured out how they can be the way they are.
I sing to love. Great love. Experiences and events so totalizing in kind that one fears one will not survive them. And then does. Yet I cannot speak to it because I am unable to account for it, explain it, or…
WRITING MEANS CLIMBING THE STEPS OF OUR LACK
-Edmond Jabes-
as if the aim of writing were to use what is already written as launching pad for reading the writing to come
I-Native Writing: Attempt at a Self-Portrait
Things one realizes about oneself when one is “partnered” or loved well. That seems to be the theme for me of late. The differences between “automatic” self-recrimination when the Other speaks of an annoyance or a threat to useful relating vs. a kind of awareness and curiosity about one’s own behaviors that opens up understanding and attention related to the same habitual practices…
For instance. For years, the only tattoo I got that was not an author or artist’s name / signature / or self-portrait, was a whim of “…and then there’s me…”: and I had a simple Ouroboros inked into my shoulder. The snake eating its own tail. Sign of health, sign of destruction. Sign of…
What’s in a “sign?” A fundamental query ruling the bulk of my waking hours, and carried over from my sleep.
THIS NIGHT. Reading others’ words it dawns on me…”My biography is my catalog. But the man who was there before I decided to become a reader is missing. I, in short, am missing.” [Vila-Matas – Dublinesque]
I, in short, am missing. So long accustomed to defining and describing myself in relation to world, others, children, parents, education, travels, experiences, friends…roles, behaviors, actions, theories, ideas, feelings…and so on…
Each scenario, event, surround, circumstance, company : co-creating WHO / WHAT I am – with no idea what “I” might be stripped of literature, philosophy, family, knowledge, accomplishments, relationships, language, interpretations, and so on…
I had marked myself with “signs” of who I “am” for my children postmortem. OTHERS. Read these people, look at these artists, think about these things…and you will have some idea of who your father “was” – Nathan Filbert – a bibliography.
Hmmmm.
I AM what I am related to. Never being able to come to the end of it…I do not know what/who I am.
I can say something of the how…which felt like a revelation on me of why the most off-handed permanent mark I requested to be inscribed into my body has come to feel most adequate / representative / apt / true?
The how is like this. I recognize in intimacy and dialogue with a loving other (my partner) over time habits of mind: annoyances, arrogancies, logorrhea, unwise knowledge-sharing (always borrowed)…INSECURITY, self-doubt, terror, UNCERTAINTY.
In most seconds of my awakeness two things are tangled, wound, immediate, simultaneous, recursive and self-devouringly going on: WHAT AM I DOING/WHAT AM I? and WHY?
My children run in, blast a request that feels like a demand – at the kitchen counter I: what am I hearing? What am I feeling about what I’m hearing? Why am I feel-hearing that? What should I do? Why do I think ‘should’? How should I respond? Why do I think there’s a ‘should’-how to respond?
On the porch reading with coffee: Why do I cross my legs? Why do I like coffee? What am I looking at? Why does a squirrel catch my eye? Why did I choose these glasses? Why am I thinking about these things? Is this what others think about? What ‘should’ I be thinking about? Why ‘should’? How should I work? How should I think? Why do I think I should have a way of thinking? Why do I think about the way that I sit? What kind of being thinks about the way it sits when it thinks on a porch and is distracted by a squirrel?
WHAT AM I?/WHAT AM I DOING? and WHY? leading to HOW?
What am I doing? Looking at letters on a screen. Why do I look at these letters on a screen? Why does language move me, draw me, resonate? What is resonating? Why? Should other things be resonating? I enjoy looking at my love. Am I looking in the ‘right’ way? Why do I enjoy looking at my love? How should I look at my love? Why do I look at my love? What kind of thing is drawn to gaze at his love? What is love? Why do we love? How should we love / might we love? Why do I hold books certain ways. How do I hold them? How might I hold them? Why? What kind of thing thinks about how and why and what he holds? What was that tone? Why that tone? What kind of being uses that tone?
And so on. Moment after moment. I get a drink. Why did I get a drink. Why was I thirsty. What does it mean that I was thirsty. How should I vary what I drink to my thirst? Why?
Rarely do I consider “Who” does these things. It’s too far removed. Too unknowable – beyond any what/why/how I can even begin to contemplate.
But constantly constantly constantly WHAT AM I DOING? WHAT AM I? (in this situation, this situation, this situation) and WHY? HOW?
And this is how my days pass. Finding myself moving, teaching, listening, talking, drinking, eating, loving, avoiding, forgetting, imagining, smelling, saying, wishing, regretting, ashamed, confused, uncertain, unknown…but always searching, observing, inquiring, scrutinizing…
WHAT AM I DOING? WHAT AM I that DOes such things? WHY am I doing them? HOW ‘should’ I do them and where/why/what/who thinks of ‘should’? WHY?
And finding nothing but infinite tangles, recursive spiraling production and reduction, endless context surrounding every moment that is constructed only of questions and hypotheses…
I chose a good tattoo.
Permanently self-devouring and regurgitant.
Self-Imitations of Myself. (Gordon Lish)
perhaps shed light on through an-other?
“A single voice raises the clamor of being”
Gilles Deleuze
Philosophy / Philosopher
Things happen.
Accidents.
Today, I was browsing the shelves of the library at which I work, looking for books most precious to me to “represent” me as a person – a librarian, human, father, partner, son, life-trajectory, organism, friend – in honor of (yet another inexplicable almost insane “let’s-find-a-reason-for-celebration-instead-of-accepting-reality” National arbitration of “National Library Week” among perhaps many other things we are trying to laud ourselves for being every day/week/month/year). And I stumbled across a title related to a hero of mine I had never seen – combining both the delights of the personage & thought I associate with him, and a favorite thing to ponder – communication or discourse:
From that point on, it has been what Eugene Gendlin might label felt experiencing: the occasional yet over-powering moments in life where we feel all-in, fully alive, in the flow, MET… RESONANT… acknowledged and identified.
The book opens with a prefatory essay by one of Wittgenstein’s students, literary executors, and, quite clearly, astute thinker in himself, Rush Rhees.
I include it here because it evinced that moment of relief, exhaustion, affirmation, Okay-ness, that comes from Emily-Dickinson-like “What – you too?” moments in our strange, convoluted, web-networked, chaotic and most-often-indecipherable human Who-Am-I existences…
All to say I read this brief and delightful (to me) report of a fellow human and thought: Okay, I let down, I collapse, I am guilty of what you describe… and elated to find I am not alone.
For what it’s worth… this seems to “get me” :
From
From
Breaking down breaking it down
He is breaking it down, they say, breaking both the mind and the meaning (was that ‘minding?’, ‘minding matter(s)?’).
– But is it undoing? someone asks, breaking down towards what’s beneath (or behind or before)? One might ask.
In other words, do we detect a purpose, an intention to his breaking? Is he listening? Does one see him look?
And what is his name? That is, what does it ‘stand for’? He once said “for the entirety.” At which point (as in moment, context, hic et nunc) it was assumed or inferred (interpreted, understood?) he meant. Meant, with those particular terms, within that saying (that action, movement, that changing of things), meant: every form and scale, layer and convergence of space and time, world and universe ever nexused, woven, tangled with this organism labeled thus. What was his name?
A beginning, like reality, reduced. Already begun when started, thereby limited by selection and activity. The sentence finds its way via the words and marks that follow, and while variation is potentially endless, it is not infinite. As this genetic package and all its cellular, processual interactions are inexhaustible and basely finite. And so on.
The breaking down reaches far and travels everywhere but won’t arrive, that is arrest, accomplish fullness. Breaking or building is ever partial. The sum never equaling parts.
Like his name (what was it?) – the one so applied (and distinctively so) – i.e. different from you and you and you – that name though is shared. He is not the only one, even if we cannot recall what it is.
– The only one of those variations though? you pipe in. Perhaps. He did not know. But not only the one so called.
His name, his form and structure, and many patterns of perception are quite common, however he goes about them. His going-about is even similar, when you think of it, as well he would, and we might, yet also not. Not precisely so, more variantly the same, as it were. Normality with particulars then, or occasional surprises.
Something unexpected then, about this one and his efforts of breaking it down while breaking down? Not exactly surprising, from a general fund, the process has its predecessors and is likely to go on in many person at many times, perhaps even widespread and concurrently – other places at the same time with slight anomalies, or other times in the same place with concordant alterations.
– Not uncommon then? Not uncertain?
Uncertain, sure. No more or less than anything. Uncommon perhaps in extent or intensity. Perhaps not as well, given principles of relativity.
– Relative to the subject/objects situation then? she says in a questioning manner, or in her questioning manner, or a manner of hers I take to be questioning (and so on).
Uncertainty, sure; relative, yes; unique, undoubtedly; repetitive – of course…
…he is breaking it down, breaking mind and meaning, breaking down…
– What is the matter? another inquires.
The matter of his senses, yes, that sounds right, for now, at this moment, where we are. What is the matter of his senses, or his sense of the matter that eventuates as breaking down, breaking it down, getting to the bottom of getting to the bottom?
– I doubt he’ll reach the bottom.
– The bottom quite unreachable then? someone adds.
The bottom has never been found or reached or approached for all we know we don’t know, they say. In fact, many question the use of ‘down’ for a practice of dissection – what is excavated in undoing, piecing apart, isolating aspects or fragments? Where does one get by reducing?
– Or what?
A lot of objects without sense? Locations with no map?
– Or less, meaning-less, she says with intonation generally accepted as interrogative.
Perhaps meaning less than when together as occurring – fitted, reciprocal, converging and emerging, like cells in Petrie dishes versus cells moving in the bloodstream, performing functions – but perhaps wildly possible and free, ready-to-use, available some other way, he doesn’t know, nor do I, nor do we.
Facets, elements, aspects that he cannot quite assemble and yet they already are by virtue of being broken yet held together in his failing efforts at assemblage. Welded in the effort – imagined apart in a situation of thought – thereby joined.
– It’s enchanting, someone speaks.
– And depressing, reports another.
But is it useful?
I find it of interest.
BECOMING: A Something-Writing …Provisionally (cont’d)
Say it – “Mikhail!”, say it “Lover,” “son,” or “dad.”
Give me a robe, a title, anything,
let me to be,
yet call me “Person.”
(same as you).
Just like with all our difference.
Generic sets.
And without cease.
What’s inexhaustible
and finite.
Here We Be.
Call us “Person(s)”
In order to get by, to get along, to carry on, I invade your body as if planned. Swapping breath and sounds and fluids. Making more. A “he” a “she.” A “husband,” “wife.” A “muse” and “lover.” We pretend in our pretense and we become.
Call us Person(s).
We raise the dead and name it “memory,” name it “history,” name it “god.”
We start to drown, but we’ve become, and name it “family,” name it “nation,” name it “state” or “land” or “friendship.”
We disperse.
We send out tracts: “PLEASE CALL US PERSON(S)!”
No response.
And we become what we will be.
**************************************************
I scream your name for I am helpless, “I” am hopeless without you. And so I grasp and shape your body, your behavior, your aplomb. I demand answer for my question is the telling and I need to be an I: “Call me Person!”
It begins.
And it is reckless, it is violent and warm.
I am coddled, moisty, fragile. I need purchase(d). I need won.
You are one, and there are many.
We begin.
“Mother.” “Lover.” “Child.”
Call me Person.
Call me something.
We grow limbs and we grow hair. We swap shapes and alter presence. We emerge and we invade.
I am Ishmael, I am
Allah, I am Sam.
You are giant, you are troll, you are fairy.
I can’t tell but for the asking (as if same, as if identical) – simple call.
Call me Person.
We begin.
**********************************************************************
In some ways our job [for survival] is simply to affirm one another.
To provide response (which is a call) to a call (a form of response).
I affirm you (which affirms I) by telling you (asking back) when you ask (telling me you are – where?).
Co-respondence is affirmation – positive or negative (each a both/and) [as with most things living].
You there –where?—ask me, I will acknowledge – thereby telling “you” –
both of us thereby affirmed, established…
…Being…
Thusly, there are Varieties of Presence.
I am Stephen K. Plato, Laurell H. Hardy, John
Quincy Locke,
call me “Person.”
“We” will therefore become via our calling, our response,
-mutually constituted identities
-for the moment.
Johann Sebastian Souza strikes a note
Federico Garcia Chopin hears that tone,
thereby constituting,
no, co-constituting…
…sound.
Sound, press of fingerpads on forearm, shoulder, buttocks, calf,
breast, or clay,
each,
each each,
resonance, difference, identification,
-a becoming, become-
Affirmation.
Compliance.
What might seem
passive, active, passing to-and-fro, creating “We,” “Us,” “People,” “Person(s)”
Trolls beneath the bridge.
Knocking, knocking.
We. Are. There.
(Which is “Here” for NOW).
*******************************************************************
Being. and Time.
(one might say)
Call me Friedrich, Ortega, Alfred.
or: Being + Event.
Address me Giorgio, Alain, Ricky G.
Actor, actant, the motion of bodies.
Ludwig Joycenstein;
rejoice in time;
Osip, Anna, the noise of time.
Being. Event.
kairos
“it is Time”
fullness.
redolent.
predilective. propicient. promising. proclamative.
NOW.
In the Beginning, the wormy End.
Every Ending a Begin.
Transference. Transmission. Translation.
It is love.
Call. Response.
Affirm
Telling Asking
Achieve.
Archive.
WE ARE
You/I a He/She
(not long before combine, breed, be/have)
–BE-COME–
WE.
“I” was lost, until you found me…
…in other words…
…varieties of presence.
bumping into brambles,
slipping into sea,
hearkening to shriek,
Ask Tell
yay/nay,
no matter,
what matters?
too much, too little?
near enough
Begin.
Become.
just BE.
Be. Be. Bee.
1. B. 2. C. D.
Dee Harvey Osmont.
Olivia Newton jaunt.
Wolfgang Adolf Heisman.
Prince Albert Nobel.
Call “me” “Person.”
Julio W. G. Sebold.
Sign on page,
raised to the eye,
digited “touch,”
BECOME.
Vocable. Insignia. Etching. Stroke. Motion.
WE.
Call us Person(s).
*********************************************
“The pen asks / much more than it can answer /
one word at a time”
-Philip Levine-
All my Words are Silent 