Tag: self

Unknown and Unnamed Undoing: the swoon and the swarm (a kind of mathematics to be continued in rain)

On By NW FilbertIn Art, Experimenctes, Journallings, Philosophy, WritingLeave a comment

Unknown and Unnamed experiences: the swoon and the swarm

 

I hadn’t remembered it like this (trying not to remember).  That all of it got into you.  That all of it came out!

Immersion.  Enthrallment.  Ecstasy – words that come, to mind.

That if en-joined, then out-sourced.  Becoming indecipherable – like epistemology.

A moment’s rush, for example.  I encounter – which encountering looks like insertion and abstraction on me.  I move toward, feel it out, then back off and observe.  Active, passive; a swing, a rocking boat.

This is different.  Inundation, a flood.  Unable to say what’s mine, what’s not; who’s me, who’s you.  Unable, frankly, to say, at all.  Only be.

Motion, reception; injunction and release.

Think sky-diving: that decision to jump, trusting something, someone will hold together as form in all that air.  Like diving the deep blue sea, compression surround, that some element will remain intact without ground or solidity.

It works that way.  Give and take, see and saw, this uncanny to and fro of body, perceptions, breath.  Eyes contact then fog to some self between.  Fleshes – distinct and specific – now con-fused.  Who’s sweat?  Who’s secretions?  It’s sticky, yes, like that – a gluey bond.

Then the wave, the distended moment – incalculable clockwork – where all borders and boundaries seem lost, some extended and mutual sigh or moan within which the voice is other and the same without identity.

The swoon of it.  The swarm.

Dizzying rush of blood as warmth or wind; eyes roll back, also in, but not to my darkness.  As if limbless or prosthetically invented, my body grows – grows yours or ours or contracts to another covering, but inside-out.

As if leap or let go were no longer options, but instinct.

As if hot and cold – undifferentiated – some something that must define pleasure –

as in emptiness, fullness

the yin, the yang

a cellular entanglement

The swoon, the swarm

emerge

But what?  Or whom?

And what occurs in the median?

Who were that?                                                                                                       What was those?

The swoon, the swirl, the swarm.

            No one effecting.  Effected.  What does that indicate?

Nothing, essential to event – if nothing, than an absence utterly imbued.

A radiance, evocation,

like a sleeping brain on dreams…

with-you, the unknown gets no/w/here.

Whatever the constants, coefficients and variables, given the operator as convergence, the equation = whole,

where the w stands for we,

without which none – (“hole”).

Affecting substance…no one gains currency…necessity (no 1, but at least 2)… and then – ?

No one, unknown, unnamed, no/w/here as 0+O

where O stands for other

in this case, you

O requiring as much as I

inferring – ?

you can’t have 1 without anOther

but where anOther occurs must be at least 1 (other)

even if unknown, unnamed

in order to be lost and found in the joining

the immersion and enthrallment

the ecstasy

I, in instances of jell-o

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Journallings, Philosophy, Writing4 Comments

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I, in instants, divested

 

Let me put it this way:  I find mysterious pockets of habitual thinking functioning like cradles of jell-o.

Say couple’s therapy is called for: I consciously feel gung-ho, pro-choice, empowered by trust and intention and reciprocal hope.  Our determination, our hope.  But the rear half of my skull, the scape my subject lands in, I realize is slicky, silently and squishily snuggling into a jello-y bed of “there’s something wrong with me.  I’ve got the problems.  We’re really trying to figure out why I’m so hard to live with; how my moods impede relational success and happiness; my fears – intimacy.  If the truth were told, my spouse is acting graciously and sacrificially in order to get me help.”  It’s as natural as instinct for me to believe I’m a burden, a difficulty, a special case.

The endless desires of youth.  Our adolescents seem never to be satisfied (perhaps aren’t even “meant” – biologically, psychologically, socially, developmentally – to be), rarely “up” for family events or participation in chores, games or outings.  Seem preoccupied with themselves and their wants and preferences, shifts and swerves.  Rationally – I sense the raging hormones; the violent ego-mania seeking a code, a reflection, its own DNA; the psychoses of self/other, boy/girl, love/lust and so forth – upheaval and growth!  But my torso is wiggling and sliding itself into the slushy comfort of “I have no idea how to guide these kids!  Who am I to parent and protect, encourage and inspire?  I’m just as fragmented, uncertain, conflicted, aroused and cynical as these guys!  No way I’m good enough, strong enough, wise enough, and so on… unqualified to father, even at directing myself!”

The list goes on – as reader, writer, artist.  As male, friend, laborer.  As handyman, citizen, spouse.  As mind, as body, as conglomerate selves:

How does it come so natively to cuddle in, automatically, unself-consciously and familiarly into negative perceptions, fraught with inadequacy, victimhood and failure, with no perpetrator(s) to blame?

Ideologically, philosophically, linguistically, aesthetically, psychologically, and so on, I can adapt party lines and mottos of health, truth, justice, fallibility and courage; equality and imperfection; becoming and process,

but wherever this social solidarity is not called-for or aimed at, this prompting to blend toward community or “normalcy,” my actual mind-body-complex demonstrates an incredible proclivity to nestle and burrow into a gooey surround of personal suspicion and doubt, misgivings and cynicism…like a worm to mud, or a fossil its imprint.

What the I/eye prefers.

How we see what we see.

How something – something – (but what is it?!)

contradicts mind’s understanding and body’s sensation/perception/evidence and goes its own hellbent way in whatever direction it selects!?

I-cipher.

I-estrangement.

I-observer,

                                                            for instants,

for instance.

The Unknown and Unnamed Hears and Replies

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, WritingLeave a comment

Running into Melodies, Lyrically

(the unknown and unnamed hears and replies)

 

Or picture it this way: a runner yearning to the tape.

Arms flung back as if flagged by a gale, chin and neck making way for the shoulders – a pure strive.

And rushing against, past and around…force and flow.  Learning the body by all that surrounds, through which it hums and throbs.

The air is full of waves.  The waves are full of particles – particles agitating, dancing.  Or the fragments are waving, threading this way and that – streaming and winding – I feel it.

Over the curves of my shoulders, the chorus.  Deep in my belly – the bass and the drum – caverns of mind.  The ticking, the singing, the whispers and thrums.  Brass flowers into blooming curlicues, echoing labyrinths – my ears.

In such a wind the eyes will close, and the legs will strive and stride.  No matter my position, in the medium of music, I am always moving forward, setting forth – possibly sailing, possibly struggling with every ounce – but making progress.

It glances off the elbows, reverberates the bones.  Fills the mouth, stuffs the nostrils – can make it hard to breathe.  Sound.  Shuddering loins and quaking knees, a tremor-massage, a tumbling.  A sleep.

I lean in.  Becoming a shaping of waves – reaching, aching and out of breath.  Receiving the blast and caress.  The force and the flow.  I listen, I feel.  I am drowning, aware of each inch of my skin.  I am falling in flight, my organs engorged.  I am musically shaped as a man.

FYI

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, WritingLeave a comment

In attempts to make following/reading easier…particularly for pieces and fragments of ongoing series…I’m adding new pages under “Experimenctes” page, a miscellaneous…a fetal gathering of “I, for Instants” posts…. and sections of the work-in-progress “Unknown and Unnamed” and images that inform them…

thanks always, all, for reading

it means a lot

N

The Unknown and Unnamed: Sees and Seems

On By NW FilbertIn Art, Experimenctes, Writing2 Comments
Unfinished Encaustic by
Holly Suzanne


 

Welcome!

I venture to say this piece is unnamed and unfinished, but I tell you it’s alive and it dances!

I can touch it with my hands.  The wax is smooth like flesh, the collage like scars or scabs – where the texture lies.

Up close – I am underwater on sand, watching the fluxing of weeds.  Looking for retinal patterns.

At a distance it traces a woman, her dress kicking out, a-twirl and limning the lithe.

I’m entranced!

It’s Chinese scriptwork of wisdom and way, a beautiful nude languidly branding the air with her limbs – fertile signs and images prodding me – “move!”

Move myself.

Activate.

Address.

What looks like dark ink stands out, but in reality swims under the surface – blotting, inscribing and guiding the paths.

Emotion and gesture alike: drawn swiftly and sourced far beneath, or pressed on and affixed from outside.  Each leave their marks – stark and prominent, – resonant emblems of what lies beneath, what responds.

I pretend I am calm, blank canvas to world – but when it brushes or cuts, smothers or slaps, what is bold in me reveals.  The fears, the wounds, the anger and dream.

My vision scatters in rage.  Vehement dashing and strike.  I can promise you this: the world will reveal me.

I have told you: you are with the unknown of the unnamed – a nothing answering to nothing – a cooperative become.

At the end I will be named, will have accumulated and inscribed them.  Surface, object, ground: our object.

Enaction.

The Unknown Unnamed scribble-sketches – just a minute

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Graphotos, Journallings, Traces, Writing1 Comment
overweight head, foreshortened body (misjudges lankiness for heft), unintended while inscribing a circle, lines of meaning?, where the webs are sourced?, self-reflexion

2 Newish poem efforts

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Poetry, WritingLeave a comment

Kalispell

Marriage.Void

Unknown and Unnamed, cropping up everywhere: Imagine Me

On By NW FilbertIn Art, Experimenctes, Writing9 Comments

            To all concerned, or the least bit interested, I am no one on the road to nowhere.  It’s taken me a long time to set out, but I have begun!  My path has been wily.  Many joys and celebrations, discoveries and inventions mark the past.  Wounds bored of enormous riggings and bits; injuries, damage and crime barbwire the road.  Imprints of loss – great and unexpected gains pock my surface.  Years of input and adventure, learning and error track me.

Now I am no one.  Purposively, conscientiously and chaotically venturing into the everywhere that is nowhere.  Now here.

Sure you can read the past’s path – identifying me, mind and body cropping up here and there, in and out of people’s lives – particular places, practicings and performings.  Believe me – that’s not the point.

The point, or series of points, or scattered suggestions of borders, like shot smattering air…is where everything meets, interacts.  A porous place, undefined, ever-defining.  Unknowns cropping up everywhere.

I’m talking about the enormous field wherein which forms mingle, shaping and providing contents, ever on the verge of in-forming.  This inchoate and omnidirectional process we name “becoming,” “coming-to-be,” we know so little about but strive so constantly for a sense of.

Image me then, if it helps.  Outline a human, male, having endured four decades existing, of average height and weight, nondescript.  (It doesn’t “matter” – the matter is shared commonly, specifics will rise in and out of clarity through encounters).

Here I am, essentially:

            Pocket into this figure, wherever you like – an education in classics, advanced studies in music, theology and philosophy.  Twenty years of retail labor in bookish culture; three wives, seven children.  Smear that around with geographies – their weathers and landscapes, flora and fauna and politics – of the American Midwest, big-city Northeast, farmlands and Great Lakes, Germany, UK, Pacific NW and Israeli-controlled Palestine.

Inject strains of passions: fine arts, literature, music.  Linguistics, semiology and phenomenology.  Parenting, intimacy and artistic creativity.  Psychology, biology, mythology.

Take and run an eraser randomly across, leaving trails for griefs, abandonments and disillusions.  Separations, misunderstandings and woundings, coming and going both ways.

Scribble.  I mean doodle maniacally in pencil or pen, any color or width.  Scratch, wobble, circle, until the figure looks like an indecipherable tangle, a rough frenetic sketch, something built up and crossed out –

that represents the meld.  The interlacing and cross-currents of all the things within, without; nurtured or native; learned or instinctual; native or chosen; perpetrated or inflicted.

Voila:

ball-point sketch
Alberto Giacometti

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

there is no one (or every)

moving nowhere (or every)

save this monumental caveat:  that bungled mass of human has a goal.  In keeping with appearances…he (I) purposes now/here…

I hear the feedback

“get on with it already!”

Here goes

(again)

Another Rejected (albeit kindly!) fiction…

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing3 Comments

WHO THEN IS SPEAKING?

“the preliminary condition of any work of literature is that the person who is writing has to invent that first character – the author of the work… the author’s name and the various ‘I’s’ that go to make up the ‘I’ who is writing”

–Italo Calvino–

“’I’ can only be identified by the instance of speech which contains it, and by that alone”

–Emile Benveniste–

“Who, then, is speaking?”

–Maurice Blanchot–

who is speaking: 

I am the one, come to tell the story, the code of information and words, with    letters and gestures and some touches of inflection, but I mean to tell it straight and impartially, save the parts I must needs factor in.

who is writing:

And I am the one, come to present the speech in images – to sketch, doodle, scrawl and scribble – marks and letters and symbolic dashes and curves, points and curls in order that you might decode, perceive and interpret the messages of speaker, silent though you both may be, with all of us reading what we each are choosing to see.

who is reading:

we, all of us, some before the text is made, some almost simultaneous with it, others far along and away, ingesting quite similar physical marks and gestures, each in our own way through our various individual-minds, group-minds, cultures, vocabularies, languages and eras.  In other words, nothing stays the same, and everything is alike in this.  We read, re-marking the text.

who is not-writing:

I am capable of inscribing in my mind and body, the world.  As if an invisible typing-machine, a reordering recorder, some receptive-creator-genius, as it were, a super-computer which you are incapable of judging for yourself, as each to our own mechanisms, susceptibilities, senses and necessary wiring.  Humana/inhumana – therein lies the distinctives, do not doubt it.  I am known by my knowing.

who is not-speaking:

Therefore I do not tell, have no voice of my own but merely exist to compile and report, as if I were a memory file tabbed for all occasions.  I absorb, alchemize and purify.  I add solvents and neutralize, catalyze, in effect I am a scientist or theorist, objectively observant as I play in my private lab.  Whereof I do not know I cannot speak, and results are eternally forth-coming, each instant a universe of new, each moment a rearrangement of all the parts in an ever-altering and incomplete whole…my lips are sealed.

who is not-reading:

[the non-readers, alas, are unable to report or tell.  Our theories include the “supernova” and “black holes;” however, some have suggested to add in this category “blind faith practitioners,” “idealists,” “atheists,” – actually all –isms and –ologies, but given their abilities to say and to write and/or gesture their positions, “non-reader” would have to be distorted to incorporate “those who read in only one way”] –editors note

who is speaking:

“and like I said, ‘it began,’ he said, ‘this way:  she turned the corner in a frenzy of hurry, skirt twirling this way and that, clop-clop of pumps, some windy vibration to her flesh,’ which corresponds very neatly to the moment I heard him exclaim, (he who I’m speaking of), and forthwith interviewed concerning the commotion, sitting (as he was), on the bench in the park, with such a beautiful female, I had thought, at the time I approached him, given the apparent accident of noise fomenting beneath my window”

who is writing:

wrote

who is reading:

is a little confused by the pronouns.  The speaker apparently involved in the he-she story that he tells, but is the she also the beautiful female or some other rushing one?  He being the same as exclaimed and sweated on the bench?  Am I reading this right?

who is writing:

I write it as I hear it, with the proviso of necessary adjustments, corrections and expansions to concoct a sensible array of language, given current grammatical and syntactic preferences of the culture at large and my own personal tastes.  Not that I actually “hear” it, as it were, more as if I see it occurring on the page where my hand is making marks, deriving setting, speech, movement and character from the silent leak of pen, like reading perhaps, a proto-reading of sorts, replete with imaged-in (image-ined?) activity, not physical, of course, save insofar as my hand and parts of my arm make a sort of jittery movement in utilizing the pen, but, well, is that any clearer?  Helpful in any way?

who is reading:

am I supposed to know all that?  I picked this up engage a story, a motion-picture-in-words type of thing, not a movie with commentary and special-effects how-tos;  I’m very uncertain as to what’s actually going on here – am I to believe I’m encountering a work of someone’s imagination that I might while away some hours of my life participating in, thereby stimulating my own?  Or is this some sort of step-by-step author-diary phenomenological-literary inquiry, with which I have no concern or interest whatsoever?

 

who is writing:

Where does the reader fit in? (a marginal note)

who is speaking:

“so he says to me, I mean, I’m just sitting here enjoying a beautiful Spring day on my favorite perch in the local park with this incredible girl I finagled to my side with brilliant hubris and aesthetic chatter, just sensing the verdant nearness of her, knowing that just beneath that thin satiny-cotton her flesh continued – from her arms and knees to her chest and crotch, those virile thighs, I’m dizzy almost here – my intellect on autopilot while my senses imbibe, and this guy, this frantic frazzled business dude scurries up asking ‘What!?  Is everything – ?’  ‘What’s happened?  Is everyone okay?!’ and ‘What the hell is going on?!’  I bristle of course, no one likes shit instead of rain on parade day hoping for a carnival ride, and I cinch up, scowl, and I tell him, I tell this guy: ‘Sir!  What are you talking about?  Step back!  Calm down!  Breathe…then begin again, but slow it down – try to make sense!’ demonstrating my world-wizened calm and strong fearless demeanor to the steaming body right there up next to me – I’d picked the half-bench with a patch of sun so we’d necessarily be close and she’d need remove her sweater-shawl thingy – I wanted the curve of her shoulder, slight swell of the breast, and neck and jawline all around, the way her hair chose so many intricate ways to secretly touch her skin”

who is reading:

Wait.  So the guy telling the story isn’t the observer of the action?  Or did you forget to switch scenes or something?  I mean, I guess we are in the park now on a bench reeking with sensuality, you’ve brought me closer to the lady, but truly – who then, is speaking?

who is writing:

(seems readers have so much to say) [that, in parenthesis further along the side of the page, ed. note].  I’d like to involve the reader(s) here, to take them into account.  Who should I ask?  Or should I simply re-read what I’ve written, perhaps aloud, pretend I’m someone else – not the spider’s butt spinning the web, but the focused chameleon on the next branch?

who is speaking:

“Honestly, I don’t really feel that he ‘gets it,’ most of the time?  I’m not really here for the talking, you know?  As if I’m a silage pile feeding the hogs of his emotions or desires, or simply raw fuel for his machines.  I often feel like some objectified character or like I’m playing a role, you know?  Sometimes even as flimsy and see-through as an idea!  As if I’m here simply to be used.  A tool, like his cock or his pen.  I usually don’t let on because otherwise I’ve no way to be seen or heard, it would be like I don’t even exist if it weren’t for him.  He does pay attention to me, as far as that goes, a careful kind of threatening interest, truth be told, but it’s cheapened because he only cares insofar as he wants (or, as he might put it – ‘needs’).  I don’t know, all his ‘he saids, she saids, I say, you say,’ – it gets old, I get lost, and often become confused about who or what I am – this is sort of a caveat here, unscripted, I think, I’m just saying…”

who is reading:

            [writer notes: is speaking too]

who is reading:

I do get a “feel,” in my body, as to what’s going on here.  I’m hearing a lot of voices on a lot of levels and I’m trying to piece them all together – as if all the parts, in fact, are part of a whole – and the whole is this limited pulped object filled with typescripts that I’m holding in my hands and reading.  Representational then, I guess?  I reiterate: I didn’t purchase this for a mirror to life, or struggles of making sense.  I wasn’t itching to go back to my school-days – science, philosophies – I should have ordered a film, but now I feel stuck – what with the time spent and cursory effort – I got comfortable…I almost feel duped…and yet…

who is writing:

how can you drown a baby, right?  I mean, it’s begun its life, it has promise and as many possibilities as the next child – rebellious, colicky, all the spit-up and shit it throws back at you – I can’t just discard it, leave it to itself, it needs me, I think.  I brought it into this world, am I also responsible to take it out when it runs amok?  How the hell do you control a living thing like language?  Am I the man?  Wanting the girl?  Questioning confusion?  Discovering a traumatic event?  Exclaiming?

 

 

 

Debility

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Poetry, WritingLeave a comment

Debility.