Philosophical Fridays: Keeping low doesn't make no sense

dead being computer without sense unable to Be
sense vs. reason as if this were a real opposition and duality as if humans are made up of these two parts, separate and antagonistic. where is the truth of the broken pencil in a glass of water?
does sense just merely color my being-in-the-world? does sense just give a flavor to existence? does sense add a soothing purr to the world around me, a soft touch, a mere quality? does reason alone determine the truth of existence, the truth by deduction of being-in-the-world? how can i use reason alone to be-with-others? how can I use reason alone to be-towards-death?

being-towards-death, how can reason help me here? what is reasonable about death, about the experience of death, about the oneness singularity only my own moment of which no other moment can inform? what do I deduce from to determine death? what prior reasoning of nothingness can I reasonably experience the fact of my own death from?

thus the truths in the myriad afterlifes, all obtained by reason, and argued over with logic, and proved on paper.

your reason is contingent on your senses, but does this elevate the senses to the place that reason once held? isn't this just a flip flop? yes. senses are not higher than reason, as if living a purely sensible life is something to strive for, there is a judgement here, for sure. but the drug addict, who chases after sensory pleasure 24 hours a day is not being-in-the-world. the senses can take us out of the shared world, the being-with-others, lock us away in an unintelligible solipsim.

connected reason and sense inside and out in contradiction. unable to be ripped apart.
try to rip apart the faces of a quarter. it's easy with your mind, too easy.

Brother

i heard another, the Other
his movements i was there too
scraping dry paper against his shit.
wash my hands quick and avoid the Other
the sounds, the mirror, the shoes, standing
next to me, it was someone i knew.

Being, touching up against nothingness?

When I lie in bed, what touches up against my Being? Simply the sheets and the pillowcase? The air the fan pushes down onto my skin? These are not the only things that touch my Being, and in fact they may be the furthest from it.

What touches up against Being? What lies intimately close to me in bed?
The sound of tires spinning on the highway outside is closer to me than the sheets on my skin. The places that I go following that tire-sound, big rigs pull me along, the wind whipping harder than the ceiling fan. Close to me is the future, the day I'm about to wake up into, the possibilities I will choose.

I may forget completely the things that actually touch my skin, the objects that my half open eyes let in. I may not be aware of the place that I'm in, the immediate, the ready-to-hand. Being is not like a piece of paper, bound in a book, touching only the pages directly before and after. No, Being is rather like a piece of paper in a book that touches the whole book due to the words printed on both sides.

Proximity to Being, is there such a thing? Doesn't this treat Being as an object, located in space only, able to be acted on by force, composed of a substance? What is proximal and what is infinitely far away?

When Being approaches death, sees the approach, realizes it, what touches up against Being is Nothingness. Surrounded by the Nothing, filled with the Nothing, this allows my Being to drive down a road I've never been down, to go to places while I lie in bed, to imagine the day as I contemplate the past.

Nothing touches up against my Being.

Living life like a black and white

somewhere there is a gray that I can't seem to step in only leap over.
though i know its borders and boundries i cannot get into it. yet.
life seemed like a half moon cookie, no space between, nothing separating chocolate and vanilla.
but the moon and the shadow are much further apart
than i could ever taste before.

somewhere there is a gray where I'm not so hard on myself.
it's OK in there to not achieve an ideal
to contemplate humanity's shortcomings that are not
apart from me.
to embrace the diffuse, to see the wrongness of right to leave
even a personal truth behind in a question
i can smile on a shitty day.

Philosophical Fridays: one in one in one in one in zero

Contradiction is a circular trail, a snake eating itself. Thus the sameness of the poles of contradiction can be viewed. Both poles are part of the same creature, the same Being, the same whole. Disconnected only by an imposed differentiation from outside. Wanting to not be something I often find myself, in my attempts to not be, being that very something. How can intention circle back on itself like this?

In wanting to live, I can find myself dying, but living in the dying, but dying, but living, and so the snake feeds. Infinity is a finite loop simply run over and over again. In the realization of the wholeness of contradiction do I realize the further separation of contradiction that leads back into the closeness of contradiction? And of course back again? The head of the snake and the tail of the snake. The snake is the whole, and yet there is a difference between the head and the tail, heads and tails on a coin. The whole cannot be without the parts, a snake without a head, a coin without a tails. The contradictory elements coming together to form the whole, the whole is divided to form the contradictory elements, which come back together to form the whole, which is separated into parts that have meaning, yet no meaning without the whole.

Thus do I run the circles in my mind. Contours run as straight lines.

Philosophical Fridays: A Rambling Tradition of Inexactitude

Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home." - Martin Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, 1947.

Language is the house of Being. Being is contradiction, or perhaps rather contradiction is the house of Being. Language then, and contradiction then, and now we begin to wonder. What is the connection between language and contradiction? Is it the simple representation of the "real" (real in quotes because I do not think in dualities, thus practically eliminating the need for this sentence, but I will continue) world versus the world of ideas? Is language a contradiction? Or is it that contradiction cannot arise without language? But I feel that I'm getting ahead of myself in this wordvom.

Language and Being. Dasein cannot be without language.
Contradiction and Being. Dasein is the contradiction, the creator of contradiction, and created by contradiction. Is that too contradictory for you?
Well then, language cannot be without Being.

What am I getting at? Where does this circular go-nowhere infinite road lead? There is no destination, no point of arrival, just as there was no place that we embarked from, although we did start off somewhere and the goal is to land somewhere else. Is it a truth that I'm after? Yes and No. Perhaps it's a belief, or a faith.

And one wonders about faith. Is it not contradiction? To expect something when I have no reason to expect it. What then is contradiction? Is it the absurd? That from which faith rises from? Is it absurd that we separate light from dark, up from down, the individual from society? I think always of contradictions as poles, as opposites, as separated by a nothingness, and Being is that which fills the nothingness and brings them back together. But it is absurd to think of one without the other, to think of loneliness without the idea of, and separated from, togetherness. I cannot be alone if I cannot be together with Others. So these two ideas are not distinct, existing without the other. Perhaps Being is that which does not join contradictory concepts, but instead is that which pushes them away. Perhaps Being creates the nothingness of a non-separation separation.

Nothingness would not exist without Being to posit it. Something would not exist without Being to posit it as against The Nothing. Both something and nothing would be the same if it were not for the intrusion of Dasein. Something and Nothing would be the same, would be meaningless, would be unthinkable. Meaning does not only have the connotation of defining, but it also has an indescribable function. Meaning is almost appearing. Meaning is almost weight. Meaning is a condensation of the fog that surrounds all. Meaning is poetry.

Where have I taken myself? Where have I gotten to? I don't know. These are just thought experiments on nothing and something being and contradiction language and meaning and nothing else. This is not a science experiment, a paper to be graded, a report to be filed. These are fundamental questions that no one thinks as they drive their car from home to work and never realize that they are always in the same place. What is geography to Dasein? What is location? What is a point on a map to Being that lives in language? Can I ever leave my home? Can I ever exist without contradiction. In death, I suppose, I pull the door closed behind me and become one thing. Or do I?

In death I leave the house I've lived in, no longer able to talk, no longer able to posit differences with my mouth, to form words. But does that mean that my Dasein ceases to exist? Do I become Negative, a negative existence, a not-Being? Or do I wholly join the life that is around me, do I close the contradiction, the gap that I've created, and become something and nothing at the same time? Do I fall or do I ascend? Do I dissipate or become whole, a wholeness that I can never feel now?

Only time will tell. That I can be sure of. But time has it's own problems to deal with. The linear succession of nows verses the non linear conglomeration of yesterday today and tomorrow. This is a thought trail for another day. This is another path to the clearing. This is a shady dirt trail in summer breezes with green leaves for friends.

bubblegum feeling

Being: a stretching between poles.
the meaning my dasein gives arises
from the opposites,
combined, connected.

I once did an experiment,
discovered one thing,
as long as I never looked behind me,
there was Truth without meaning.

a singular focus on only one half,
a nailing down, unaware of the floating away.
exist in irony, the basis of meaning.
I am the garden
of the weight.