Tag: time

“Now” “again”: or, desire in times of control

On By NW FilbertIn anxiety, desire, human, Language, Perception, Poetry, time, Writing3 Comments

The times are not easy.

Time never was.

Yet we insist

on enumerating

our lack of control,

unknowing…

.

“God,” we say, (in 3 digits)

“atom” at four, or the “facts” being five,

“knowledge” (as 9) over

“wisdom” – contrived in 6 letters

resembling “power” (which is slightly less-than) –

.

pretending we’re nearer

a “truth.”

Splintering this countless discourse

making babble –

pathways dividing again and again

.

Not to worry,

No-One,

least not here,

never there, nary hereing

we strive to forget –

.

the small fractions

we are,

even increments fail –

our instrumentation –

excrement turning to soil.

.

We say on,

calculating

in terms.

Splits on a dial

or bits switching voltage

to light

and/or sound –

inexplicably deafblind

we human – perceiving,

depleting, reduce.

.

The times never easy,

or real,

and all barely broken apart –

what we call the “fantastic”

(9 marks) nearly actual

.

what goes on

is a “now” and “again”

without ceasing…

a particle-waving

at sea

and to stars

.

an endlessness

born of its end.

Hold Lightly, Leave Be

On By NW FilbertIn change, creative writing, life, longing, love, Poetry, relation, Writing15 Comments

 

Hold lightly, it said,

there are so many voices,

movements.

Hold lightly,

lest you repeat,

she said.

[the surfaces, and distance, beneaths]

I listened:

breezes, waves;

windiness and water;

the moon riding along,

each night so differently

the same.

 

Without repetition,

she said,

my hands open,

palms and whatever fingerprintings,

the bruising, barely,

again and again,

so differently.

 

How tides change,

or seasons:

things we’ve come to think of –

each you, each I,

each every –

quivering along

like leaves

 

through the years.

In other words:

over and over

without repeat

again, anew –

how ‘new’ requires reference

of similarity.

 

So love

hold lightly,

she said,

it says,

as wheat falls into ground

and suns set down, again,

as moons rise – (which, neither) – and

never the same.

 

Both-and

either-or

neither-nor

and so on

without repeat

within the like,

the long, the loving.

 

You come again.

I try to grip lightly –

the future never knows –

I’d like to leave it,

to gather you,

to hold…

you.  You.  You.

 

(Again, differently).

“Hold lightly”, you (she) says,

“lest you repeat

and grow tired…”

My palms are open                                                                             (to touch, to pass by)

I am trying to read,

to listen.

 

To leave be.

Now, and so on: an addendum

On By NW FilbertIn communication, Embodiment, Experience, Language, love, memory, relation, time, Writing1 Comment

I do not doubt that we are all capable of learning to freeze.  Or starve to death, for that matter.  Death will not be a stranger for any, for long.

.

There are reasons we are constituted in uncertainty.

We are able to learn.

Everyone will.

.

It’s why I told her how much I trusted her.  To change.  And therefore never knew anything, asking so many questions, again and then again, about plans.  Who knew when?  or then?  or now?  I said.  Things fluctuate as they die.

Or I never knew.  Having so little to do with facts or truth, beliefs or trust.  IS is always something else.  Or here is always different.  NOW has never been, in other words.  Even if the words are the same.

.

And. So. On.

Apparently.

.

There is music.  And recognition – recognizability – (memory?) – a passion for pattern, a shine to similar, a longing for location, locatability.  For what it’s worth – a pronounced inaccuracy and pro-found nostalgia.  As the ‘similar’ is founded on what’s been experienced before (pro-found), and at least less than (or more?) than present.  Pre-sent?  NOW was given / sent before?  I doubt that… but feel wary that that’s all we’ll ever know, never quite catching up to being.

In another sense: the inherent lag of perception.  How old (again, pre-supposedly) are the stars we ‘see’?  Or the squirrel on yonder branch; your eyes across the table; our held hands… by the time they register?

What happens, “now”?  And why are we occupied with what we call “next” when we can’t even exist at once’s occurring?  Seeking a head start?  A virtual or imagined pre-sent?

.

Yes I heard what you said…after you’d said it.

There’s our “now.”

The cut from stepping on glass… and then the pain… later.

The bite of food, licks of flesh, kisses… and then the tasting.

The breeze and then the leaf, light and then its outline.  Mostly shadow.

“Hello,” I reply in turn, but your head already bowed and path resumed, on the far sidewalk.

.

I fall behind.

.

Suppose this is why, in conversation, ever losing our way in delay, we ask “where were we?” rather than “where are we?”  What is it we wish to know?  Where do we hope to be with one another?

As I was saying – with requisite gap between whatever may have been transpiring in my ‘mind’ (or whereverywhere thinking occurs) and the sludgy musculature, instruments, and carefully crafted formulation of alphabetic symbols to display attempts of communication or composures…

…now I’ve forgotten…

The Confession, or, “I am a thing that breaks” – Laurie Sheck

On By NW FilbertIn Aging, being, Complexity, creative writing, Experimenctes, fragments, time, Traces, Writing2 Comments

I’ll map it out for you.

No, I’ll inscribe it.

47 cuts (myopic) in everything.

  1. That’s as far back as the lineage has been traced. A patchwork of stitches, genes, and lines (or lies).

Unfinished.  Inability to understand apparatus.  Has not accomplished death.

Librarian, parent: attempts to track, preserve, and access – things precious, silent, useful.

Pseudo-scholar (any otherwise?), thinker: an inability to avoid pollution when considering or engaging relics of world.

If desired sexually, probably will… it depends.

Begins halfway.

Sometimes only in pieces.

Life is hard to figure.  Mostly illegible, as well.

47 marks on anything.

Read what you can, listen.

Smells are.

Skin-shaped textures.  Walks on land.  Occasionally tree or canyon.  Mountain, river, ravine.

As easy to trace as wind.

Whatever being.

Kiss for kiss.  Breathing.

Something (someone?) called “melody.”

Hurts too.

.

Intimate uncertainty?  Certainly not.  Perhaps.  She would know.

Maybe furry, fuzzy androgyny.

Offspring reveals: “Crow’s a Decomposer.”

.

Decomposer.

.

What is poet?

Said all things grow, cannot hold, to dust and such.  Singing.

Some might remember.

Touch.  Taste.  Trying.

.

Loves deeply.  Expects nothing but passing, passage.

Fabricates patterns.

Dances.  Slowly.  Grasslands.  Prairie.

AND.  OR.  NOT.  (every day. moment) +/-?

What equals?

.

Like erasure.  Accumulation.  Obscurity.

Sometimes.

.

Decomposer.  Lover.  Friend.  Everenemy.

Anonymity.

.

“Love” (used, spoken, felt, lost, wished-for, pondered).

.

Language, landscape, living organism… perhaps that equals.

.

Sing “You Fucking Did It”

When does death arrive?  Why?

.

Glossy haze = language, landscape, living organism.

.

Children.  Music.  Language.  Elements of play.

Emotion.

Sex.

.

Stretched out.  A boy and a girl (E. Whitacre).  A boy and a boy.  Girl upon girl.  They and them.

Exchanging foam.

.

A poet working a way to an underworld.

Death is.  (a “thing”).  Exists.  =.

.

Kansas:  what gives silence for silence.

As easy to trace as wind.

.

Igloo.  Cabin.  Family farm.

DNA.  Bacteria.  Cancer(ous) cellular cell’d activity.

.

The living.  The dying.

.

Unfinished undoing.

.

47 paces toward the dark.

.

Re-membering foam.

.

How life gets made.  A ratchet, a sprocket, an engine and a wheel.  Add water.  Fuel to the fire.  Desiccate.

.

Perhaps it will rain.  A slight ritard.  Some sounding quiet.  Remediate.

.

Take 47:

Watching flowers blooming to dissolve.  A capture.

Sight slated to dim.  Shuffling ensues.  The stoop.

In a chair nearby, another.  More better for company.  When alone.

Exchanging foam.

47 paces in the fog.

Take three, four, and so on.

.

Circle round.  Loop back.  Never again.

Erasure.

Easy to trace as wind.

.

Leaving lights on.

Reading words, far from men.

Lost facilities.  The stakes.

Dwindle toward final.

The effort, the offspring, the progeny.

Prognosis.

.

47 accounts of the night and the wheel-well thickened with road.

Splashes the mill.  Grinds crank.  Pressures to turn,

turning back, away, toward.

Another.

47 gaps in the shawl.  Inconnu.

With something like delight.  How to stand before them.

Poeting down for underworld.

Looking back.

Slows.

Was there ever progress?

Thinks over.

Takes the hand.

Strikes the key.  The 47th.

.

Saturate for stupid.  Loses steps.  Must wake.

A happy mess.  Weighted results, dependencies, accumulation.

As easy to trace as wind.

Utilizes snow too much.  The rain.

Abandoned places.  What removes.  The melt.  What remains.

The unfinished.  Undoing.  Become.

.

For ‘I’ is a thing that breaks.

.

47 footprints from the hands.  The notable.

Swirly ways of working.  Feels like – .

Inspiration hopelessness.  This language.

This living organism.  Landscape.

47 miles to go.  All the cracks and divets.

Bolt after bolt unscrolled as flesh.  Laid out.  Stretched out.  Smoothed.  Sagged.  Ironed.  Smelt.

Felt for quality.  Caressed and examined.

The lonely wonder.  Represent.

47 X x = ?

.

Confusion persuasive.  Revelation / insight.  Chords resolve.  Dissonance.

Language + landscape + living.  47 measures.

Months go by.  Chairs and couches filled by others’ beds.  Warmth weighs.

Waits on wisdom.  Depletion.  Adventure as excited strain.

.

Poison intravenous.  Copulating cells and fluids.

Ends of the guilty.  Interpret unfinished systems.  Dis-ease.

The long whine wail across the prairie.  Animal manual.  Wind wires rain.

What gets whispered and transcribed.

Stumbling toward the underworld.  Looking back.

Eyes up, ocean bottom.

Some things are out of hand.

Like danger.

The grey and black.  The dimming.

47 warnings.  The morning comes.

.

Making it.  Happens.

Diagnoses and analyses.

Shuffles, stumbles, strikes the keys.

Easy to trace as wind.

Chorded coagulation, confounding,

comprehending (very little, almost nothing)

language, landscape, living,

another note tunes the swing on the porch –

inconnu – 

what’s wide open, open wide

.

Shrewd and undiminished.

Minimize = understanding.

A matter of scale,

for I am a thing that breaks.

.

47 slices of nothing.

Little Offerings

On By NW FilbertIn absence, creative writing, desire, Experience, Language, longing, Loss, notebooks, Poetry, Writing2 Comments

This Autumn has found very little time for sustained reading and writing, resulting therefore in meager offerings here.  But I am finding jottings, thoughts, and notations in scattered journals that have somehow happened anyway.  Please accept these little offerings as efforts to remain in dialogue…

Journal Entry

Why do we (at least some percentage of us) take such pleasure (or at least seem to relish) in dark and heavy sorrow, like longing?  Grief, hopelessness – is it finitude and mortality that cause us to feel so at home in it?  Our drowning womb, begun from a watery coffin?

The sweet, rebellious, anarchy of loving, passion, writing, painting, music…sex – whatever it is we do that works our death deeper in us, through ecstatic bursts that we respond to like life.

We all ways dying…from that first launch…that initial spark of convergence – our long elimination.

Praise for the Name what Remains

By the light of the last thing decaying,

Erosion, they call it,

a painful dwindling away

.

Inception that won’t return

Sand, soil, snow, wind,

some sort of passage

.

One-Way.  Only.

Irreversible.

It is called.

.

Loss, we name it.

Lossness, lessness:

Simply change.

.

If time is an arrow

even in some infinite

loop and swerving traffic

.

I’m not.  Nor are we.

The finite and fragile

Affected in the midst

.

Continuously undone.

And never remade.

Writing Ontologically? – the shit thickens

On By NW FilbertIn desire, identity, notebooks, Purpose, time, Traces, Writing11 Comments

“It is the slowness of the art of writing, in its mechanical execution, that for years now has at times repelled and discouraged me: the wasted time of a writer throwing words on the page.“

Julien Gracq – Reading Writing

for Jean Lee @ Jean Lee’s World, with apologies

I really “mean” it when I say that I don’t know what I am writing, and that the REAL WHY is because I want to write, and am able, and that I honestly have no character, event, or idea in mind or body as I apply this mediatory marking instrument (ball-point-pen) between whatever-myself-is and this-blank-lined-paper.

I truly might be WASTING LIVING TIME.

OR…might be recording something useful…providing traces…leaving marks of process…like masturbation, cooking, politics, or work – HOW LIVING TIME IS “WASTED.”

Who knows?  The scientists?  Or neurobiologists?  The philosophers or anthropologists?  Historians?  Pastors?  Sociologists?  CEOs?  Artists?  Who determines (evaluates and judges) what is “waste” from what is “significant”/”important”?  Do humans?  Does Time?

For what it’s worth, I have an ellipsis of minutes I am not (apparently) needed by children, pets, work, or world…and so I have taken up a writing tool and am drawing letters in collectives called words onto an empty section of a blank lined notebook.

Is this valuable?  Don’t we wonder or ask this regarding every action and breath?  From holding a child, to exercise; fixing plumbing to sleeping?  Laundry.  School.  DOES THIS MATTER?!?  And, if it might, to WHOM or WHAT…why?

I cannot imagine to whom it might matter that I am stumbling out sentences with nothing in mind other than WRITING, TO-BE-WRITING – excepting my insignificant eperiencing of “self” that WANTS TO BE WRITING – in any case.  Therefore, I AM writing.

All those who seem to depend on me for their well-being, survival (or SENSE of same) also SEEM to be surviving and existing at relative comfort.  Those who purchase (shamefully) my “LIFE.TIME” via employment – have proffered the day off as a normative weekend practice.  For the time being, apparently NOTHING has immediate NEED of me, so I am left to determine what to do with “TIME.”

(my LIFE).

And because I overhear myself continuously complaining, desiring, wishing and bemoaning that I ‘never have time’ to write – I AM WRITING.  Because.

As far as I can tell, I am writing nothing (of worth) because, as much as I desire to write, I actually don’t know WHAT to write, or for WHOM, or WHAT – and so i am just WRITING because.  Serving no one, not even myself, yet perhaps.  Perhaps, because the WANT or URGE “to write” as a writer…is NOT to WRITE SOMETHING (as far as I can surmise – albeit I also regularly wish I were writing something ‘great’ or ‘evental,’ etc…) but truly is simply to be IN THE ACT OF…WRITING, which I AM, and therefore I cannot know what good any of it does beyond being what I wish I were doing…becoming ACTUAL.

Wishes come true: I AM WRITING.

To no point of purpose but the fulfillment of desire: I AM DOING WHAT I WANT TO BE DOING: I AM WRITING.  And it does feel good, and part of it (I think) feels good because I am unable to discover a path, direction, or ‘way’ for it to feel good FOR.

In conclusion: I AM WRITING

and this is: WHAT I WANTED TO BE.

Mission.  Accomplished.

(to/for whomever wherever whatever)

i.e. IN FACT – I AM WRITING.

On Being Other

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Experience, family, friendship, Heidegger, identity, longing, Melancholy, mystery, nature, Philosophy, Poetry, Traces, Writing4 Comments

On Being Other

(after Heidegger, on Holderlin)

 

Broken off from origin: gods, family, homeland.

Early switched direction – turning back, against, since.

No belonging.  No church, no community of mortals.

Reliant on the peaks and the abyssal.

No lasting love, but efforts toward convention –

when giving up –

even offspring, domesticity,

varietous employment,

almost friends.

No lasting commerce, always in-between,

feeling resistance and restraint,

constraints of discipline and need,

of longings, love, and lust.

Searching Other

fueled by others – across the times –

creators of the peaks and their abysses.

Oscillation.

Not yet rational, it commences –

undone in the unknowing, uncertain constant flow

generates turbulence toward an opening

or a gap, some kind of fold –

“run up hard against the unsayable.”

the closing line is a quotation from Heidegger’s

lectures on Holderlin’s poems “Germania” & “The Rhine”

The Dual Activity of the Properties of Erosion

On By NW FilbertIn Aging, change, Complexity, desire, Dying, eros, Journaling, Loss, time, Travel, Writing6 Comments

Having traveled 2000 miles: Wichita – to – Carlsbad, NM – to – Guadalupe Mountains Nat’l Park – to – Presidio, TX – to – Big Bend National Park – to – Wichita in the past few days, I was privy to the glories of erosion.  What it builds, what it wears away.

My 10-year-old is studying erosion in 4th grade and reminds me that the current definition is simply the movement of material.  What dwindles somewhere accretes in another…

IMG_0896

and leaves or creates (absence or presence of absence?) some glorious ruins (or productions)…

IMG_0911

In an accidental synchrony, we traveled the paths of a favorite album of mine – This Will Destroy You – This Will Destroy You, and the following clip has long moved me, perhaps as much as any music ever has…

…ever reminding me of how I’d like my living dying to go…the movements and decaying – its constructions – the thickened gradual swelling of the deep good of being alive, punctuated by weighty whiles of thriving and ecstasy, momentous significants of loss or gain, as materials move and their relations alter / evolve / generate and decompose.  Its insistence and tocking inevitability.  The (hopefully) delta-like depositing of the full lot, spreading throughout, in its end…

Here’s to our living-dying onlyness…and wishes toward beautiful erosion.

 

Borrowing: James

On By NW FilbertIn awareness, being, Complexity, Language, meaning, Philosophy, Self, william james1 Comment

Felzmann - Swarm

“In the pulse of inner life immediately present now in each of us is a little past, a little future, a little awareness of our own body, of each other’s persons, of these sublimities we are trying to talk about, of the earth’s geography and the direction of history, of truth and error, of good and bad, and of who knows how much more?”

-William James-

Old Ruled Writing Pad

On By NW FilbertIn Aging, grief, Journal, love, meaning, memory, time, WritingLeave a comment

Old Ruled Writing pad

today, searching for paper to make notes on for work…I grabbed a used “ruled writing tablet” of mine, last written in in 2014…and read…

“I am an educated writer who loves a lot of things.  I love language, I love learning, I love relationships – to partners, children, nature, arts, literature, and ideas – to “world.”  I love to study.

By “love” I mean that I choose and enjoy expending my available energy on these things.

I like very much to reflect and consider, experiment with and actualize what seems meaningful for living as a human individual.

That is what I know of myself, besides the facts which are unruly, shifting and so very difficult to capture or recount with accuracy.  All the terms (‘born,’ ‘lived,’ ‘married,’ ‘completed,’ ‘received,’ ‘produced,’ ’employment,’ ‘accomplishments,’ ‘age,’) and their explications are far to vague to be useful here.”