listen to a slow plodding sound. footsteps on a pine needle forest floor. sloe gin clouds fuzzing by, blurring the atmosphere with amorphous movement. it was me pressing through the syrup of days, all dried out and looking. breathing steam rising up hairy. taste the way that it moves like grass growing down your tongue and through your throat. but this will never do.
Run. run through the next frame. Plod no more as you search and search and let it go while your fingers blur and the toes can barely grip a thought before you're landing on the next. there's a lightness that comes from moving this quickly like an outstripping of the thoughts that hold us down, a blur that others can't pin, a sound that's too loud to hear by those who think rationally. running quickly and out of control we laugh down the hillside as the ground turns over our heads and the rocks and soil leave their mark on skin that's torn and ragged. but even though our teeth fall out and our tongues dry up it doesn't matter as our spirit slips free from confinement.
it feels like chocolate chip cookies in here.
and my knee hitches.
10.25.2013
No-Where Man
and so it was that he truly was a No-Where Man who didn't have friends to lose or places he recognized. It had been a long time and the ground had cracked as the weeds tangled with the words withered and died leaving them to bake in the nowhere space that didn't exist unless you found it. But with these few drops of water seeping down to kiss the legs of plants buried deep in the sand-dust colored life began to seep again.
Trundled through snow into staircases warm with life the No-Where Man stirred up his own emotions. This was once a place where my shadow chased me down three flights of stairs pursued by me into the lamp light. This was where the door had slammed in my face when I had made my one attempt to seek human contact, where my attempt had failed, where I'm not even sure if the door had opened since I'm pretty sure that I hadn't knocked. Shut doors slammed the loudest.
Yes it's happening all over again the rampant overgrowth of the undergrowth swallowing all consciousness and leaving only its form to bear on the wasteland of untraveled distances. Where thousands of survivors stood up and looked around wondering what had knocked them down, where trees fell into the oblivious. Will you print this out and frame it on your wall? I didn't think so. Will you take this down and use it for shoes? Because where will this take you when the leader is led by the fingers in the mud?
Yes it's fitting to end on the questions that so often make their appearance when wandering. Questions that lead to nowhere. Questions left behind unanswered like bread crumbs that no bird will eat by the No-Where Man. Listen, you can hear him tip tapping his way among the lettered. Remembrances of plastic and the smell of PVC molded into representations. There's that feeling again as the fuzzy notes trill three times down and up, over and over again.
This was the No-Where Man peeking out through the curtains to make sure that the theater was empty, that the flood lights were off, that the room was cold and bare, removed of seats and rows before making the first leap out onto the stage and dancing his lightest steps in elegance only he could bear. The applause was felt loudly through the muscles that hadn't exercised in years as every fiber smiled.
Trundled through snow into staircases warm with life the No-Where Man stirred up his own emotions. This was once a place where my shadow chased me down three flights of stairs pursued by me into the lamp light. This was where the door had slammed in my face when I had made my one attempt to seek human contact, where my attempt had failed, where I'm not even sure if the door had opened since I'm pretty sure that I hadn't knocked. Shut doors slammed the loudest.
Yes it's happening all over again the rampant overgrowth of the undergrowth swallowing all consciousness and leaving only its form to bear on the wasteland of untraveled distances. Where thousands of survivors stood up and looked around wondering what had knocked them down, where trees fell into the oblivious. Will you print this out and frame it on your wall? I didn't think so. Will you take this down and use it for shoes? Because where will this take you when the leader is led by the fingers in the mud?
Yes it's fitting to end on the questions that so often make their appearance when wandering. Questions that lead to nowhere. Questions left behind unanswered like bread crumbs that no bird will eat by the No-Where Man. Listen, you can hear him tip tapping his way among the lettered. Remembrances of plastic and the smell of PVC molded into representations. There's that feeling again as the fuzzy notes trill three times down and up, over and over again.
This was the No-Where Man peeking out through the curtains to make sure that the theater was empty, that the flood lights were off, that the room was cold and bare, removed of seats and rows before making the first leap out onto the stage and dancing his lightest steps in elegance only he could bear. The applause was felt loudly through the muscles that hadn't exercised in years as every fiber smiled.
2.04.2011
Startled Dismay
How is it that we find ourselves separated from beings so throughly that we are wrapped around them again and realize them as beings? Why is the separation from things necessary to realize that they are things, that they have existence, that they are? When in normal use and everyday views we do not realize that the keyboard we are typing on exists, that the monitor we view is, that the words that appear on the screen and the letters that make them up are real. It is a conduit format through which our Beings flow.
Making sense of the world does not require the analytic objective classification of all things before us. In fact the opposite is true and holds sway when the world makes the most sense. Let's take something apart to understand its function that it can no longer do. This is the insanity of scientists. Clearly suggesting that the parts exist yet the whole is fractured and meaningless in their hands. Yet there are times when we are forced into this display of things, and in these moments we are overcome with the fear of losing all around us even though we are getting it all back.
Falling into the world is normal and true and should not be reviled and derrided as it so often is. Once again, no matter which stance we adopt, we find ourselves again in the circular contradiction.
Making sense of the world does not require the analytic objective classification of all things before us. In fact the opposite is true and holds sway when the world makes the most sense. Let's take something apart to understand its function that it can no longer do. This is the insanity of scientists. Clearly suggesting that the parts exist yet the whole is fractured and meaningless in their hands. Yet there are times when we are forced into this display of things, and in these moments we are overcome with the fear of losing all around us even though we are getting it all back.
Falling into the world is normal and true and should not be reviled and derrided as it so often is. Once again, no matter which stance we adopt, we find ourselves again in the circular contradiction.
9.10.2010
and it felt good to follow an ever changing path that never changed my mood
I was going to write something here about something, but interestingly enough that something came and changed what I was going to write about into something else. And the format as well went from something to nothing, a loosely linked collaboration of words working together to express some idea that isn't thought out. Let's journey together.
Are the emotions meaning giving? If so what role does Contingency play in giving meaning? Let's say that I'm feeling one way one moment and in the next something has happened to make me feel differently, that gives new meaning to the rest of the day, that colors my mood and the world around me. Suddenly something that might have had no meaning gains a weight that it shouldn't(?) have.
So where do I focus this point of attack? On emotion or Contingency? It would seem that focusing on one or the other is a turning away from their combination. Often times I find myself ruminating on Contingency and I wonder if this is a distancing? An effort to push aside the emotions that the contingent brought forth or cut down. An effort to extract Being from meaning, a refusal of the everydayness of Being. What are the value of our ideals and ideas? What is the idea without emotion, without meaning?
Certainly ideas are not created in a vacuum of emotion, the idea brings forth and springs from moods and emotions, our environment, our Situation. After all we are not mechanical thinking machines. And here, this thought pathway was cut not with the dull blade of logic, but rather the searing moment of the Contingent. But how do I feel? What is the meaning? Is it impossible to assign meaning without feeling? Is it possible to maintain feeling past the contingent? How could that be? How can I hold on to a feeling though the world changes around me? Is not this the same as holding on to the ever changing and sacrificing the emotion? What is the meaning involved in always being happy? What is the meaning involved in witnessing the delicate hanging together of life's precious permanence?
Is meaning the contradiction that holds together two sides of nothingness?
Are the emotions meaning giving? If so what role does Contingency play in giving meaning? Let's say that I'm feeling one way one moment and in the next something has happened to make me feel differently, that gives new meaning to the rest of the day, that colors my mood and the world around me. Suddenly something that might have had no meaning gains a weight that it shouldn't(?) have.
So where do I focus this point of attack? On emotion or Contingency? It would seem that focusing on one or the other is a turning away from their combination. Often times I find myself ruminating on Contingency and I wonder if this is a distancing? An effort to push aside the emotions that the contingent brought forth or cut down. An effort to extract Being from meaning, a refusal of the everydayness of Being. What are the value of our ideals and ideas? What is the idea without emotion, without meaning?
Certainly ideas are not created in a vacuum of emotion, the idea brings forth and springs from moods and emotions, our environment, our Situation. After all we are not mechanical thinking machines. And here, this thought pathway was cut not with the dull blade of logic, but rather the searing moment of the Contingent. But how do I feel? What is the meaning? Is it impossible to assign meaning without feeling? Is it possible to maintain feeling past the contingent? How could that be? How can I hold on to a feeling though the world changes around me? Is not this the same as holding on to the ever changing and sacrificing the emotion? What is the meaning involved in always being happy? What is the meaning involved in witnessing the delicate hanging together of life's precious permanence?
Is meaning the contradiction that holds together two sides of nothingness?
9.09.2010
Even what we know for fact
Even what we know for fact is contingent, our ownmost possibility. Our guaranteed possibility. Strange that the only thing we know for sure is not known (cannot be known by Being) and contingent (could arrive at any moment). How contradictory are Death and Being.
The I, Being, cannot know it's death. Death as a state of non-being, cannot exist at the same time as Being. Nothingness cannot exist with something, however, we carry nothingness inside of us as a possibility, as the possibility that cuts off all possibility of Being.
The unknowing, in terms of time, is curious and displays the contingency of our own possibility. Will I die tomorrow, today, a year from now? I do not know. Will I die? Yes. I know for certain a future possibility that will come to pass, and yet have no idea about it at all. The Contradiction of Being. Perhaps even the most contradictory.
We know all about death, from watching others pass away, and yet we know nothing of Death. What does it mean to not-be? Even our Being-at-death cannot answer. Instead we lay plans for the future ignoring that those plans can be severed, we lay tracks of permanence that go in the opposite direction of permanence, and we ride both ways.
The I, Being, cannot know it's death. Death as a state of non-being, cannot exist at the same time as Being. Nothingness cannot exist with something, however, we carry nothingness inside of us as a possibility, as the possibility that cuts off all possibility of Being.
The unknowing, in terms of time, is curious and displays the contingency of our own possibility. Will I die tomorrow, today, a year from now? I do not know. Will I die? Yes. I know for certain a future possibility that will come to pass, and yet have no idea about it at all. The Contradiction of Being. Perhaps even the most contradictory.
We know all about death, from watching others pass away, and yet we know nothing of Death. What does it mean to not-be? Even our Being-at-death cannot answer. Instead we lay plans for the future ignoring that those plans can be severed, we lay tracks of permanence that go in the opposite direction of permanence, and we ride both ways.
9.02.2010
My tuatological Being is contradictory.
The illusion of time as a linear-line works well when it's not broken. However, Beings are in-the-past, in-the-future, are the-present. Events in the past and future are alive and meaningful for us today, and they are always changing their Meaning. If we were involved in a series of now, neither past or future, would hold anything for us. What do our Illusions do for us but strip meaning away? Meaning seems to come in through the cracks, to be an ever-present pressure, Meaning waits patiently, Meaning Cares, but Meaning doesn't care.
Illusions separate things into black and white. Meaning joins separation, unites seeming opposites, is the line that connects. Black and white are both colors, both things, scientifically barren objects to be measured. Black is not the opposite of white, black as a color has nothing to do with white, other than colorness (and I suppose that the scientist could further argue that even this is not true, as one is the absence of color and one contains all colors).
When the idea is introduced that black and white are opposites, somehow warring parties opposed to each other, trying hard to get as far away from the other, Meaning comes in and grabs hold of two concepts, and in the hands of Meaning these concepts are not only unified, but separated! Meaning holds apart these colors to make them opposites, and holds them together in the strength of Contradiction.
What is contradictory is often the same, if not always the same. Life and death, something and nothing, yes and no, they are the same in that meaning is joining them by holding them apart. By pushing dualities to opposite ends of the spectrum, by making things into a contradiction, Meaning holds them together. Where are we on the line between life and death? Why is there something instead of nothing? By saying no, what am I saying yes to?
Is this Meaning just another Illusion too? If things are really not opposite, is it not an illusion to posit them as enemies? Is there no Meaning and merely meaning? The answer to this is of course contradictory: yes and no. Meaning is annihilated and born in the same breath. What is the Meaning of Illusion? If illusion is bad, that is its Meaning. If the glasses of Illusion are done away with, and this is deemed to be good, then once again Meaning, and Illusion, sneak back in. After all Meaning and Illusion are opposites, contradictions, one carries weight and one is a sham...how are these opposites held together? What is the third other trying to hold onto both while pushing them away? Being.
Being gives objectivity and subjectivity, things and together-things, something and nothing, meaning and meaningless, black and white yes and no right and wrong up and down there and here past and future life and death, contradiction and tautology. and gives them all via Meaning.
Illusions separate things into black and white. Meaning joins separation, unites seeming opposites, is the line that connects. Black and white are both colors, both things, scientifically barren objects to be measured. Black is not the opposite of white, black as a color has nothing to do with white, other than colorness (and I suppose that the scientist could further argue that even this is not true, as one is the absence of color and one contains all colors).
When the idea is introduced that black and white are opposites, somehow warring parties opposed to each other, trying hard to get as far away from the other, Meaning comes in and grabs hold of two concepts, and in the hands of Meaning these concepts are not only unified, but separated! Meaning holds apart these colors to make them opposites, and holds them together in the strength of Contradiction.
What is contradictory is often the same, if not always the same. Life and death, something and nothing, yes and no, they are the same in that meaning is joining them by holding them apart. By pushing dualities to opposite ends of the spectrum, by making things into a contradiction, Meaning holds them together. Where are we on the line between life and death? Why is there something instead of nothing? By saying no, what am I saying yes to?
Is this Meaning just another Illusion too? If things are really not opposite, is it not an illusion to posit them as enemies? Is there no Meaning and merely meaning? The answer to this is of course contradictory: yes and no. Meaning is annihilated and born in the same breath. What is the Meaning of Illusion? If illusion is bad, that is its Meaning. If the glasses of Illusion are done away with, and this is deemed to be good, then once again Meaning, and Illusion, sneak back in. After all Meaning and Illusion are opposites, contradictions, one carries weight and one is a sham...how are these opposites held together? What is the third other trying to hold onto both while pushing them away? Being.
Being gives objectivity and subjectivity, things and together-things, something and nothing, meaning and meaningless, black and white yes and no right and wrong up and down there and here past and future life and death, contradiction and tautology. and gives them all via Meaning.
9.01.2010
Your chaos theroy is my meaningless Contingency
Chaos theory is a fun thing to say, a scientific idea that carries the weight of mystery in the word Chaos. It implicitly sounds dangerous, but what is it really? What are all the interactions that cannot be mapped out ahead of time because they're so numerous? Your chaos theory is my meaningless Contingency.
When science steps in and with its all knowing glance takes a look at Contingency and removes meaning by making all things objective and equal it computes chaos theory. A theory that seems to be limitless and unable to be calculated merely because of the not-knowing of all the factors that could and will and do apply to a single event. Still there is no anxiety in science, science is not worried about the not-knowing, it is less of an issue than one would think when postulating a great all knowing theory. When the all knowing sweeps aside the not-knowing in order to know, we do not have a scientific problem (for science has never cared for what it did not know, only for what it does not-yet know), but we have a problem for Being.
Contingency is chaos theory with the full not-knowing included. The not-knowing is what gives meaning to Contingency. I do not know what will happen to me tomorrow...on the way home tonight...this afternoon...or in the next ten seconds. Like science Being also tries to do away with the not-knowing, and therefore render the power of Contingency impotent. The grand idea is Illusion. Illusion is what allows us to not-know, and not-care. Illusion strips meaning of Contingency, and Illusion's power is so great that it only fails at the greatest, seemingly most powerful, moments of Contingency.
When I am in a car accident on the way home from a boring day at work, a boring day in which I only wished to go home and relax and all day I saw myself sitting on my couch at home and watching 'Dancing with the Stars', suddenly Illusion is rendered powerless as it shatters the World around us and Being is confronted with its Contingent existence. When Illusion falls away, its most powerful falling-away is when it is quick, like a mirror breaking in front of us. It is still powerful, yet less noticeable, when it melts away like a fading photograph, for we are given time to build up new Illusions while the old one is melting away, and by the time the old one is gone we have completed construction on its replacement that it simply fades away into. When we are not prepared with an Illusion-at-hand for the destruction of out current Illusion, then Contingency and its meanings are laid bare, ugly, anxious and deathly....but also full of meaning giving Being.
When science steps in and with its all knowing glance takes a look at Contingency and removes meaning by making all things objective and equal it computes chaos theory. A theory that seems to be limitless and unable to be calculated merely because of the not-knowing of all the factors that could and will and do apply to a single event. Still there is no anxiety in science, science is not worried about the not-knowing, it is less of an issue than one would think when postulating a great all knowing theory. When the all knowing sweeps aside the not-knowing in order to know, we do not have a scientific problem (for science has never cared for what it did not know, only for what it does not-yet know), but we have a problem for Being.
Contingency is chaos theory with the full not-knowing included. The not-knowing is what gives meaning to Contingency. I do not know what will happen to me tomorrow...on the way home tonight...this afternoon...or in the next ten seconds. Like science Being also tries to do away with the not-knowing, and therefore render the power of Contingency impotent. The grand idea is Illusion. Illusion is what allows us to not-know, and not-care. Illusion strips meaning of Contingency, and Illusion's power is so great that it only fails at the greatest, seemingly most powerful, moments of Contingency.
When I am in a car accident on the way home from a boring day at work, a boring day in which I only wished to go home and relax and all day I saw myself sitting on my couch at home and watching 'Dancing with the Stars', suddenly Illusion is rendered powerless as it shatters the World around us and Being is confronted with its Contingent existence. When Illusion falls away, its most powerful falling-away is when it is quick, like a mirror breaking in front of us. It is still powerful, yet less noticeable, when it melts away like a fading photograph, for we are given time to build up new Illusions while the old one is melting away, and by the time the old one is gone we have completed construction on its replacement that it simply fades away into. When we are not prepared with an Illusion-at-hand for the destruction of out current Illusion, then Contingency and its meanings are laid bare, ugly, anxious and deathly....but also full of meaning giving Being.
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