"the purpose of my life would seem to be to express the truth as i
discover it, but in such a manner that it is completely devoid of
authority. by having no authority, by being seen by all as utterly
unreliable, i express the truth and put everyone in a contradictory
position where they can only save themselves by making the truth their
own." -kierkegaard
"as part of the dialectical approach that permeated his thinking, kierkegaard wished to put forward ideas from a number of different points of view. no single point of view was to be taken as correct or authoritative (or even as the author's). the reader was left to make up their own mind over the often conflicting ideas expressed.
in order to overcome the appearance of didacticism, plato had couched his ideas in the form of dialogues. but kierkegaard was a solitary. in his case, the arguments were taking place inside a single mind. . .
fundamentenally kierkegaard suggested that there are two ways we can live our life, the aesthetic and the ethical. each individual has the opportunity to make a conscious choice between these two. here lie the seeds of existentialism. . .
individuals who choose the aesthetic viewpoint basically live for themselves and their own pleasure. this need not be a shallow attitude to life. in working for our own pleasure, we almost invariable work for the pleasure of others too, if we are thinking in the longer term. indeed, it could be argued that the scientist who selflessly dedicates their entire life to curing a painful disease, sacrificing personal, domestic, and social pleasure in the process, is also living the aesthetic life if they do this simply because they enjoy scientific research. and in the context of modern psychology and the liberal society, it is difficult to see how anyone doesn't live the aesthetic life. . .
on a basic level, the individual who lives the aesthetic life is not in control of their existence. they live for the moment, prompted by pleasure. their life may be self-contradictory, lacking in stability or certainty. even on a more calculating level, the aesthetic life remains 'experimental.' we follow a certain pleasure only as long as it appeals to us.
the inadequacy of the aesthetic viewpoint is [that] it relies upon the external world. it 'expects everything from without.' in this way it is passive and lacking in freedom. it relies upon things that remain ultimately beyond the control of its will - such as power, possessions, or even friendship. it is contingent, dependent upon the 'accidental.' there is nothing 'necessary' about it.
. . . when an individual who lives the aesthetic life reflects on their existence, they soon realize that it is lacking any certainty or meaning. such a realization often leads to despair.
this despair may be repressed or ignored, and it can even be forgotten altogether by living a bourgeois existence. in other cases an individual may come to see this very despair as the meaning of their life. perversely they will reassure themselves that at least this is certain. if nothing else, this something of which they cannot be deprived. . .
in this way they can take pride in their 'heroic' despair and achieve a level of tranquil understanding. but kierkegaard is quick to point out the flaw in this 'seductive fatalism.' by accepting it we renounce something vital, something central to the very notion of our existence. we renounce even the possibility of freedom. by accepting that we are 'fated,' we disavow responsibility. . . we are not accountable for our lives; we are mere pawns in the hands of fate. . .
kierkegaard is very good at detecting the subterfuges of self-delusion. (in rejecting what he fundamentally believed during his student years, he had tried them all on himself.)
his stripping away of the layers of self-delusion points the way out of the aesthetic condition. we may find it difficult to agree with his ultimate conclusion (which was inevitably christianity, in a forbiddingly spiritual guise), but the steps by which he leads us along the way are compelling. he is leading us out of the abyss of despair, into a life where we take full responsibility for what we make of that life. . . in kierkegaard's words, the way out of the abyss was 'to will deeply and sincerely.'
this leads us to the alternative to the aesthetic life - the ethical. here subjectivity is the 'absolute,' and the foremost task is 'choosing oneself.' the individual who lives the ethical life creates themself by their choice, and self-creation becomes the goal of their existence. where the aesthetic individual merely accepts themself as they are, the ethical individual seeks to know themself and to change themself by their own choice. they will be guided in this by their self-knowledge and their willingness not to accept what they discover but to try to improve upon it.
here we see the categorical difference between the aesthetic and the ethical: the former is concerned with the outer world, the latter with the inner. the ethical individual seeks to know themself and tries to turn themself into something better - they aim at becoming 'an ideal self.' what is clear is that the ethical individual is no longer contingent, inconsistent, or accidental. . .
we can never live an exclusively ethical life - there will always necessarily be an element of the 'outer' and accidental about our lives. even when we have chosen the ethical, an element of the aesthetic is bound to remain.
by a process of dialectic this very unsatisfactoriness concerning the ethical now brings about a third viewpoint, which is a synthesis of the previous two opposites. this kierkegaard calls the religious, and he deals with it in his next work, fear and trembling. . .
in this work kierkegaard examines the notion of faith. this he characterizes as the ultimate subjective act. it is irrational - a 'leap' beyond all possible justification. it has nothing to do with ethics or good behavior. the ethical life, with its notion of self-creation and responsible choice, is unable fully to accommodate the leap of faith. such 'higher irrationality' lies beyond the ethical, which requires rational behavior. faith relates the individual to something higher, which is itself the essence of everything ethical. the religious can be viewed as a dialectical synthesis of the aesthetic and the ethical. it combines both the inner and outer life, certainty and uncertainty. . .
sacrifice is necessary if we wish to achieve something. the sacrifice is usually irrational and may well conflict with our previously understood notions of right and wrong. subjectively we often discover our purpose in life through an irrational leap of faith which has little or nothing to do with the ethical. but it is also how anyone gives their life a consuming purpose - by believing in themself. . . as kierkegaard put it, 'a poet's life begins in conflict with the whole of existence.'
. . . kierkegaard's aim was to make existence as intense as possible. only in this way do we see it as it is, see it for what it can be. existence is a colossal risk. we can never know whether the way we choose to live is the right way. anyone who realizes this fully, who makes themself constantly aware of it, is bound to feel anguish. such subjective truths, supported by no objective evidence, are grounded on nothing. we thus come to know the nothingness of existence, the utter uncertainty that lies at its heart. life is fundamentally tentative and elusive.
even consciousness itself is a contradiction. this is the intersection of actuality and possibility, the meeting place of what is and what is not. consciousness is thus a 'doubleness.' as kierkegaard noted, the word double and doubt stem from the same root. consciousness itself is a form of doubt. . .
he distinguishes between two different types of dread. first is the dread we experience when we are threatened by an external object (such as a roaring lion). the second type of dread results from an inner experience - our confrontation with the limitless possibilities of our own freedom. when we become aware of this freedom we understand its enormity and its irrationality. . . our state of mind makes us understand our freedom. and we realize our freedom to its fullest extent when we experience the state of mind called dread. . .
conscious despair is aware of itself. this comes in two forms. the false notion of conscious despair occurs when an individual knows they despair but imagines that others do not. ('no one knows the way i feel.') this drives them to even greater despair. the true notion of conscious despair realizes that despair is in fact part of the human condition, and as such a part of every self. this true despair is thus conscious of belonging to a self. for kierkegaard, the only way out of despair is for an individual to choose their own self and make the leap of faith." - paul strathern
rápidas manos frías/ retiran una a una/las vendas de la sombra/abro los ojos/ todavía/ estoy vivo/en el centro/ de una herida todavía fresca ~*madrugada* por octavio paz
Friday, July 15, 2016
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
you stared.
quotes from ana patova crosses a bridge by renee gladman
"the crisis took words out of my books and
strung them together, put them in
envelopes, and mailed them to my
friends, appalling them with obscenities
and abstraction. the crisis made me
give up architecture, drawing up plans
for building, and sat me roughly in
this chair from which i did not leave
for years. it was ten years, the despair,
and it was five days, and it was your
childhood, and the time it took to cross
a bridge; it was the love you could not
have of the woman who called your name;
it was while you were farming, while you
built a circular home. the crisis tied you
to a chair and said, 'write!' then took
your sentences as they landed. i farmed
from my window."
"we were making chaos with our goodbye notes,
and it wasn't as though leaving wasn't
happening but that it just wasn't ourselves
who were doing it. no one could name names.
we all knew that hausen wanted to go, and
when he finally vanished, many of us felt
relief. we missed him, though we didn't
know him (we knew his confinement), but
we celebrated his departure as a threshold
crossing. 'hausen finally made it,' we'd say
and clink our glasses. so, we knew that leaving
was possible and that in many corners of
our neighborhoods people were preparing
to depart, and did depart. but, we couldn't
call out to them, even when the time came
and the deserter was someone we loved or
someone with whom we worked and drank.
our mouths would empty, for a long time,
would be dry, and when saliva came back
to us, it was only to ourselves that we could
point. 'i'm leaving,' i would misspeak
without knowing. 'i've left too,' would say
luswage."
"i wrote this book in a circular home on a hill, overlooking
the city, which roams while we are sleeping; i wrote it in
a cafe with my friends; i wrote it as i looked for hidden
streets, while sitting in desolate and lush spaces. i wanted
to say language leaves a trace, makes a simultaneous trail,
of us and of the crisis. my walking leaves a trace, also my
saying i have walked. and, this is important, because,
though these marks do not render precisely the picture of
our crisis, they do show where there are still people. the
day fills up with monuments, and the book attempts to
erect a fence around them. the book wishes to end a crisis
by the sheer fact of existing. but, rather than a history, the
book becomes an index. it shuffles our bewilderment. it
does not tell our story. it cannot do that. nevertheless, it
opens toward you."
"for one second, i spoke 'sentence,'
which confused her, since all this time
i'd been saying 'paragraphs.'it was a
moment of our mouths missing one
another. her mouth was emitting sound.
she seemed to be calling my name,
breathing heavily, she seemed to put her
words inside me. 'writing my frightening
paragraphs,' i said, involuntarily. 'your
paragraphs grow on the walls of your
books.' we were inside an argument. i
resisted my torso toward the ceiling. i let
my hamstrings rise, something caught in
my hip. it was an interruption. i was
correcting her about my books: they did
not have walls, they had holes dug deep
in the earth. 'it's frightening,' she blew
in my face."
"he was a man
who swam at night in empty buildings.
the man went home to someone who
did not seem quite like a woman, but who
also was not identified as a 'man.' the
man coming home lay on top of this
person and swam and told a story, which
was a confession, and the body gasped,
but we did not know if the man's story
was causing this gasping or whether the
cause was his writhing. the reader couldn't
hear the story, but hausen had the language
around the story crack and drop heat on us.
and the body writhed on top of the other
body and whispered to it about something
done and undone in the city, something
sitting under water, something terrible."
"the west was not available to me. my
country was in a state of unspeakable
emergency. you could lift your eyebrows
when someone said so-and-so had left, but
you couldn't put shoulders to it. you
couldn't bend and show how your heart
hurt. you couldn't answer questions from
finland. but finland called and i said
something non-committal to keep finland
around, because it felt good that someone
was looking in. i had no need to curtain
the space in which i wrote, in which i
worried. in fact, if i weren't able to look
up from time to time to catch a neighbor
steal a glance through my windows, i
would not be able to progress in my
work. i waited for interruptions. i waited
for the feeling of eyes on me. finland felt
that i should reconsider. i felt simply that
i should be seen."
"i met luswage in an alley
when the 'moments' began, and would
stand there and would stare at her. we
would stand close and would stare at one
another until our eyes hurt, until the skin
beneath our eyes tremored and beyond
that point. luswage amini stood next to
me. nothing in the world could deter
this, no storm, no regulator. hausen had
gone, relations were strained. we feared
the worse, which were the moments that
tore you away from the city. for love,
you met in alleys, you bowed and
gathered in your hands someone's hair,
you hid when you heard voices, and you
stared. you stared. and at the end of it
sheets of paper were exchanged."
"the crisis took words out of my books and
strung them together, put them in
envelopes, and mailed them to my
friends, appalling them with obscenities
and abstraction. the crisis made me
give up architecture, drawing up plans
for building, and sat me roughly in
this chair from which i did not leave
for years. it was ten years, the despair,
and it was five days, and it was your
childhood, and the time it took to cross
a bridge; it was the love you could not
have of the woman who called your name;
it was while you were farming, while you
built a circular home. the crisis tied you
to a chair and said, 'write!' then took
your sentences as they landed. i farmed
from my window."
"we were making chaos with our goodbye notes,
and it wasn't as though leaving wasn't
happening but that it just wasn't ourselves
who were doing it. no one could name names.
we all knew that hausen wanted to go, and
when he finally vanished, many of us felt
relief. we missed him, though we didn't
know him (we knew his confinement), but
we celebrated his departure as a threshold
crossing. 'hausen finally made it,' we'd say
and clink our glasses. so, we knew that leaving
was possible and that in many corners of
our neighborhoods people were preparing
to depart, and did depart. but, we couldn't
call out to them, even when the time came
and the deserter was someone we loved or
someone with whom we worked and drank.
our mouths would empty, for a long time,
would be dry, and when saliva came back
to us, it was only to ourselves that we could
point. 'i'm leaving,' i would misspeak
without knowing. 'i've left too,' would say
luswage."
"i wrote this book in a circular home on a hill, overlooking
the city, which roams while we are sleeping; i wrote it in
a cafe with my friends; i wrote it as i looked for hidden
streets, while sitting in desolate and lush spaces. i wanted
to say language leaves a trace, makes a simultaneous trail,
of us and of the crisis. my walking leaves a trace, also my
saying i have walked. and, this is important, because,
though these marks do not render precisely the picture of
our crisis, they do show where there are still people. the
day fills up with monuments, and the book attempts to
erect a fence around them. the book wishes to end a crisis
by the sheer fact of existing. but, rather than a history, the
book becomes an index. it shuffles our bewilderment. it
does not tell our story. it cannot do that. nevertheless, it
opens toward you."
"for one second, i spoke 'sentence,'
which confused her, since all this time
i'd been saying 'paragraphs.'it was a
moment of our mouths missing one
another. her mouth was emitting sound.
she seemed to be calling my name,
breathing heavily, she seemed to put her
words inside me. 'writing my frightening
paragraphs,' i said, involuntarily. 'your
paragraphs grow on the walls of your
books.' we were inside an argument. i
resisted my torso toward the ceiling. i let
my hamstrings rise, something caught in
my hip. it was an interruption. i was
correcting her about my books: they did
not have walls, they had holes dug deep
in the earth. 'it's frightening,' she blew
in my face."
"he was a man
who swam at night in empty buildings.
the man went home to someone who
did not seem quite like a woman, but who
also was not identified as a 'man.' the
man coming home lay on top of this
person and swam and told a story, which
was a confession, and the body gasped,
but we did not know if the man's story
was causing this gasping or whether the
cause was his writhing. the reader couldn't
hear the story, but hausen had the language
around the story crack and drop heat on us.
and the body writhed on top of the other
body and whispered to it about something
done and undone in the city, something
sitting under water, something terrible."
"the west was not available to me. my
country was in a state of unspeakable
emergency. you could lift your eyebrows
when someone said so-and-so had left, but
you couldn't put shoulders to it. you
couldn't bend and show how your heart
hurt. you couldn't answer questions from
finland. but finland called and i said
something non-committal to keep finland
around, because it felt good that someone
was looking in. i had no need to curtain
the space in which i wrote, in which i
worried. in fact, if i weren't able to look
up from time to time to catch a neighbor
steal a glance through my windows, i
would not be able to progress in my
work. i waited for interruptions. i waited
for the feeling of eyes on me. finland felt
that i should reconsider. i felt simply that
i should be seen."
"i met luswage in an alley
when the 'moments' began, and would
stand there and would stare at her. we
would stand close and would stare at one
another until our eyes hurt, until the skin
beneath our eyes tremored and beyond
that point. luswage amini stood next to
me. nothing in the world could deter
this, no storm, no regulator. hausen had
gone, relations were strained. we feared
the worse, which were the moments that
tore you away from the city. for love,
you met in alleys, you bowed and
gathered in your hands someone's hair,
you hid when you heard voices, and you
stared. you stared. and at the end of it
sheets of paper were exchanged."
Monday, July 11, 2016
inswept
quotes from event factory by renee gladman
"every time he changed my plate, he spoke softly, 'i am miho. i will be your server.' but i did not think i had come to ravicka to be served. i wanted to protest, but thought that would require knowing why i had come, which i had not yet discovered."
"leaving that house and retracing my steps back to the hotel proved difficult. these people appeared dismayed to see me go, perhaps even insulted, which surprised me, considering what had just taken place between us. nevertheless, i lost time recalling the 'turns' i needed to perform my apology. i was in a hurry - i did not want to travel in the dark, when the city was still so foreign to me. but rushing made me clumsy. we were all frustrated. i went through pareis several times, but always tripped up on the same move and had to start over again. you cannot skip ahead, or you'll be saying something entirely different. i wanted to say, 'when you are a visitor to a place, especially one such as ravicka, it is difficult to remain stationary. the landmarks call out.' but i could not get my body to say 'landmark' versus the 'shipyard' it kept performing."
"after a while, so much time of non-interaction had passed between us that she was a stranger again. i leaned away from her towards the aisle. felt awkward. i looked out the window across from me. i could not say that the city was going by. i believed that it had not yet become a city."
"i had never been to old ravicka: i was told its architecture gave one a medieval feeling. i did not have nostalgia for that particular moment in human history; it was the idea of being inswept in time (as held by place) that possessed me. i wanted to experience the muscularity of the present diminishing in me as it was replaced by a past i never could have known myself."
"crossing into the old city took the better part of the day when you were as hungry as we were, which was not a nutritional hunger but rather something deeply emotional. the iron of the bridge becoming stone, becoming ancient and rough as we moved along it, without having altered our course, but the world around us changing. 'eat before you leave,' was more like 'forget where you have been,' because it was impossible to hold this crossing in your mind. the contemporary city did not align with this old one, which, in its preserved state, made a mess of our eyes."
"'who are you?' she responded. 'do you need to come up?'
do i need, i thought.
'yes. i think that's right,' i said."
"despite (or due to) our attachment to the esaleyons, we were not allowed to remain with them. early one morning, they walked us out of the depths into old ravicka. we were expelled because of the intensity of my dreams. my body wore the signs. each forearm was deeply imprinted by the fingers of the opposite hand, though this was at so odd an angle i had to wonder if it really was i who had made these impressions. but my fingertips were hot when i pointed this out to them, which weakened my position. they said they woke me afraid that i was being too insistent with this text, these prints on my arms, and they needed to know what i wanted. was i a spy? did i have a message? i told them at best i was a linguist and that the dream was about architecture. but they stared at me, still waiting. i dug deep within myself for words that might satisfy them. 'do i have something?' i asked dar in her language. she said, 'well, tell them why you came here.' which was perhaps more what she wanted to know. i thought about the gaps and breaths and my failure to record them. i said, 'at some point i knew we'd have to leave here.' and they breathed and beat back, 'the violence of your premise.' leaving no room for response."
"on the morning of simon's return, zaoter was helping me behind the counter. an elderly couple, attracted by the columns out front, had wandered in to inquire about the hotel's vacancies. they spoke the thick accent one finds in the ravickian hillsides. zaoter could not understand a thing they said, but persisted in pretending that he did. i tried to intervene, understanding their needs, and kept saying to him, 'halabiti astanga lo,' which means, 'allow me.' i even accompanied this offer with a hand gesture, soft against his shoulder. he responded, in my native tongue, from the corner of his mouth, the approximate of 'let me live.' i saw it then: zaoter was in over his head. the picture took its final form: without simon, there was no center. there was no hotel. even though i stood there and performed simon brilliantly, without him, it was a different place. it was a dormitory, a train station, just as he had said. realizing this, i knew the rest instantly. i left zaoter and the exasperated couple to find their own way, and ran up to my room. after securing the lock, pulling the shade, and turning on the desk lamp, i removed a tablet and pen from my travel bag. i lay a sheet of paper across the desk and wrote the following words in blue ink, in a large script:
DEAREST SIMON,
WE NEED YOU. ALL SYSTEMS HAVE COLLAPSED. PEOPLE AND MONEY ARE ONE. THE CORRIDORS LEAD TO UNMARKED DOORS THAT WILL NOT OPEN. I HAVE ADMITTED THIRTEEN NEW GUESTS AND SAID GOODBYE TO SIX. BUT WITH NO CORE, WE ARE ACTING WITHOUT MUSIC. YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO TRULY LIVES HERE. PLEASE RETURN."
"every time he changed my plate, he spoke softly, 'i am miho. i will be your server.' but i did not think i had come to ravicka to be served. i wanted to protest, but thought that would require knowing why i had come, which i had not yet discovered."
"leaving that house and retracing my steps back to the hotel proved difficult. these people appeared dismayed to see me go, perhaps even insulted, which surprised me, considering what had just taken place between us. nevertheless, i lost time recalling the 'turns' i needed to perform my apology. i was in a hurry - i did not want to travel in the dark, when the city was still so foreign to me. but rushing made me clumsy. we were all frustrated. i went through pareis several times, but always tripped up on the same move and had to start over again. you cannot skip ahead, or you'll be saying something entirely different. i wanted to say, 'when you are a visitor to a place, especially one such as ravicka, it is difficult to remain stationary. the landmarks call out.' but i could not get my body to say 'landmark' versus the 'shipyard' it kept performing."
"after a while, so much time of non-interaction had passed between us that she was a stranger again. i leaned away from her towards the aisle. felt awkward. i looked out the window across from me. i could not say that the city was going by. i believed that it had not yet become a city."
"i had never been to old ravicka: i was told its architecture gave one a medieval feeling. i did not have nostalgia for that particular moment in human history; it was the idea of being inswept in time (as held by place) that possessed me. i wanted to experience the muscularity of the present diminishing in me as it was replaced by a past i never could have known myself."
"crossing into the old city took the better part of the day when you were as hungry as we were, which was not a nutritional hunger but rather something deeply emotional. the iron of the bridge becoming stone, becoming ancient and rough as we moved along it, without having altered our course, but the world around us changing. 'eat before you leave,' was more like 'forget where you have been,' because it was impossible to hold this crossing in your mind. the contemporary city did not align with this old one, which, in its preserved state, made a mess of our eyes."
"'who are you?' she responded. 'do you need to come up?'
do i need, i thought.
'yes. i think that's right,' i said."
"despite (or due to) our attachment to the esaleyons, we were not allowed to remain with them. early one morning, they walked us out of the depths into old ravicka. we were expelled because of the intensity of my dreams. my body wore the signs. each forearm was deeply imprinted by the fingers of the opposite hand, though this was at so odd an angle i had to wonder if it really was i who had made these impressions. but my fingertips were hot when i pointed this out to them, which weakened my position. they said they woke me afraid that i was being too insistent with this text, these prints on my arms, and they needed to know what i wanted. was i a spy? did i have a message? i told them at best i was a linguist and that the dream was about architecture. but they stared at me, still waiting. i dug deep within myself for words that might satisfy them. 'do i have something?' i asked dar in her language. she said, 'well, tell them why you came here.' which was perhaps more what she wanted to know. i thought about the gaps and breaths and my failure to record them. i said, 'at some point i knew we'd have to leave here.' and they breathed and beat back, 'the violence of your premise.' leaving no room for response."
"on the morning of simon's return, zaoter was helping me behind the counter. an elderly couple, attracted by the columns out front, had wandered in to inquire about the hotel's vacancies. they spoke the thick accent one finds in the ravickian hillsides. zaoter could not understand a thing they said, but persisted in pretending that he did. i tried to intervene, understanding their needs, and kept saying to him, 'halabiti astanga lo,' which means, 'allow me.' i even accompanied this offer with a hand gesture, soft against his shoulder. he responded, in my native tongue, from the corner of his mouth, the approximate of 'let me live.' i saw it then: zaoter was in over his head. the picture took its final form: without simon, there was no center. there was no hotel. even though i stood there and performed simon brilliantly, without him, it was a different place. it was a dormitory, a train station, just as he had said. realizing this, i knew the rest instantly. i left zaoter and the exasperated couple to find their own way, and ran up to my room. after securing the lock, pulling the shade, and turning on the desk lamp, i removed a tablet and pen from my travel bag. i lay a sheet of paper across the desk and wrote the following words in blue ink, in a large script:
DEAREST SIMON,
WE NEED YOU. ALL SYSTEMS HAVE COLLAPSED. PEOPLE AND MONEY ARE ONE. THE CORRIDORS LEAD TO UNMARKED DOORS THAT WILL NOT OPEN. I HAVE ADMITTED THIRTEEN NEW GUESTS AND SAID GOODBYE TO SIX. BUT WITH NO CORE, WE ARE ACTING WITHOUT MUSIC. YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO TRULY LIVES HERE. PLEASE RETURN."
Sunday, July 10, 2016
Saturday, July 9, 2016
prayer
by kazim ali
Denuded and abandoned I recite
but what do I want
To rise again from the ocean
or be buried alive in the surge and sleep
To be a fearsome range in a single body
or to wind my unity down into depth
Missing in action, ghost-like
bobbing in the distance
Singing psalms to terrify myself
into deciding:
So long liberation
My time in the world was
only a gesture
My body a lonely
stranger
an ache
I never knew
Denuded and abandoned I recite
but what do I want
To rise again from the ocean
or be buried alive in the surge and sleep
To be a fearsome range in a single body
or to wind my unity down into depth
Missing in action, ghost-like
bobbing in the distance
Singing psalms to terrify myself
into deciding:
So long liberation
My time in the world was
only a gesture
My body a lonely
stranger
an ache
I never knew
Thursday, July 7, 2016
poem about police violence
by june jordan
Tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop
you think the accident rate would lower subsequently?
sometimes the feeling like amaze me baby
comes back to my mouth and I am quiet
like Olympian pools from the running
mountainous snows under the sun
sometimes thinking about the 12th House of the Cosmos
or the way your ear ensnares the tip
of my tongue or signs that I have never seen
like DANGER WOMEN WORKING
I lose consciousness of ugly bestial rapid
and repetitive affront as when they tell me
18 cops in order to subdue one man
18 strangled him to death in the ensuing scuffle
(don't you idolize the diction of the powerful: subdue
and scuffle my oh my) and that the murder
that the killing of Arthur Miller on a Brooklyn
street was just a "justifiable accident" again
(Again)
People been having accidents all over the globe
so long like that I reckon that the only
suitable insurance is a gun
I'm saying war is not to understand or rerun
war is to be fought and won
sometimes the feeling like amaze me baby
blots it out/the bestial but
not too often tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop
you think the accident rate would lower subsequently
Tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop
you think the accident rate would lower subsequently?
sometimes the feeling like amaze me baby
comes back to my mouth and I am quiet
like Olympian pools from the running
mountainous snows under the sun
sometimes thinking about the 12th House of the Cosmos
or the way your ear ensnares the tip
of my tongue or signs that I have never seen
like DANGER WOMEN WORKING
I lose consciousness of ugly bestial rapid
and repetitive affront as when they tell me
18 cops in order to subdue one man
18 strangled him to death in the ensuing scuffle
(don't you idolize the diction of the powerful: subdue
and scuffle my oh my) and that the murder
that the killing of Arthur Miller on a Brooklyn
street was just a "justifiable accident" again
(Again)
People been having accidents all over the globe
so long like that I reckon that the only
suitable insurance is a gun
I'm saying war is not to understand or rerun
war is to be fought and won
sometimes the feeling like amaze me baby
blots it out/the bestial but
not too often tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they kill a black boy
then we kill a cop
everytime they kill a black man
then we kill a cop
you think the accident rate would lower subsequently
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
under pressure
by nina puro
Yes, I did know I was being used, & how. That’s one
of those songs someone’s singing each second.
A seed-tray sprouts in the shed’s darkest corner. Friday ten kids
got shot. Tuesday a hurricane unshucked trees to matchsticks
of those songs someone’s singing each second.
A seed-tray sprouts in the shed’s darkest corner. Friday ten kids
got shot. Tuesday a hurricane unshucked trees to matchsticks
two counties over. Just now I danced with a girl & when
night breaks, she’ll find another. I can’t align with why I should hurt
my way up… nor why we ache to rely, & to believe for a moment
time’s malleable, & grows back green, & to forget hunger’s tender
night breaks, she’ll find another. I can’t align with why I should hurt
my way up… nor why we ache to rely, & to believe for a moment
time’s malleable, & grows back green, & to forget hunger’s tender
current. Slow star, quick blade. Night doesn’t fall
or break: it seeps like blood plumes in water—as silt,
as cream, as madness seeds wind. Books are a sheaf
of corpses in the language of the victors. I’m to want to ink
or break: it seeps like blood plumes in water—as silt,
as cream, as madness seeds wind. Books are a sheaf
of corpses in the language of the victors. I’m to want to ink
my name on one in order to eke out my clearing. Houses are hollow
reliquaries built from books. I’m sidling toward the door, a curtain
of 4/4 pulsing at my heels. I throw my career under a bus
whenever possible, but I’ve never wanted to carve my love
reliquaries built from books. I’m sidling toward the door, a curtain
of 4/4 pulsing at my heels. I throw my career under a bus
whenever possible, but I’ve never wanted to carve my love
into bark. Others have. Men on mountaintops blazed paths
with their white names long after people palmed caves inside mountains
& blew red powder to show where they’d pressed. One removed;
one accrued. Most of what I think about is how to get smaller
with their white names long after people palmed caves inside mountains
& blew red powder to show where they’d pressed. One removed;
one accrued. Most of what I think about is how to get smaller
so there’s more later. Good days, I’m frightened by this terrible tenderness
tendriling in me: what’s not discharged festers. Maybe I’m not cruel enough
to claw my way into the junkshop’s interior, but I can’t help dismantle the empire
when I’m this stricken: knotting & unknotting my scarf, trailing my trauma
tendriling in me: what’s not discharged festers. Maybe I’m not cruel enough
to claw my way into the junkshop’s interior, but I can’t help dismantle the empire
when I’m this stricken: knotting & unknotting my scarf, trailing my trauma
to the chip aisle again. I know this: bad nights, every angle’s a wall & shadows blur
but what seems set against us is only itself, breathing quiet. Listen. If trees could talk,
they wouldn’t. That sigh isn’t tree. It’s wind. Driving, your oasis is heat: you’ll have
responses to this & the responses will have responders— the reams of ancestors
but what seems set against us is only itself, breathing quiet. Listen. If trees could talk,
they wouldn’t. That sigh isn’t tree. It’s wind. Driving, your oasis is heat: you’ll have
responses to this & the responses will have responders— the reams of ancestors
floating between us are who should be addressed. They can’t be repaid. I’ve this long
white debt. Various vistas will sweep around us, glow, get razed.
I should maybe go West for a bit. I’m sorry. The aftermath
of destruction is predictably peculiar. A hurricane, for example: after a flood,
white debt. Various vistas will sweep around us, glow, get razed.
I should maybe go West for a bit. I’m sorry. The aftermath
of destruction is predictably peculiar. A hurricane, for example: after a flood,
fires start. One goes back. One’s never done.
Monday, July 4, 2016
a body
by al-saddiq al-raddi
translated by atef alshaer & sarah maguire
The body of a bird in your mouth
breathing songs.
Raw light spills from your eyes,
utterly naked.
You must breach the horizon, once,
in order to wake up.
You must open window after window.
You must support the walls.
I let alphabets cling to me
as I climb the thread of language
between myself and the world.
I muster crowds in my mouth:
suspended between language and the world,
between the world and the alphabets.
I let my head
listen to the myth,
to all sides praising each other.
And I shout at the winds from the top of a mountain.
Why does my tongue tell me to climb this far?
What is the distance between my voice and my longing?
What is there?
A body transcending my body.
A body exiled by desire.
A body sheltered by the wind.
translated by atef alshaer & sarah maguire
The body of a bird in your mouth
breathing songs.
Raw light spills from your eyes,
utterly naked.
You must breach the horizon, once,
in order to wake up.
You must open window after window.
You must support the walls.
I let alphabets cling to me
as I climb the thread of language
between myself and the world.
I muster crowds in my mouth:
suspended between language and the world,
between the world and the alphabets.
I let my head
listen to the myth,
to all sides praising each other.
And I shout at the winds from the top of a mountain.
Why does my tongue tell me to climb this far?
What is the distance between my voice and my longing?
What is there?
A body transcending my body.
A body exiled by desire.
A body sheltered by the wind.
Sunday, July 3, 2016
reception
"sadly. . . we often have negative associations with the bodies that bore us. those of us that have been assigned female frequently feel boxed into being valued for the the sole abilities of making babies and sexually gratifying men. male assigned folks likewise face the threat of being targeted if they are seen as feminine. out of these very real concerns, many of us have come to associate letting go, giving, and admittance with danger.
this misconception can actually make us more vulnerable to outside influences. the walls and rules we create to protect ourselves may also be blocking out nourishing energies that we need, not only to survive, but to thrive and to grow. pulling this card is not an indication that you should allow anyone or anything into your life. . . hold your own hand and open up to deeper intimacy, while distinguishing what is actually dangerous from what just feels emotionally vulnerable. . . this is a great time for you to heal misconceptions about creation and mothering."
"your creative energies will heighten when you seek out and receive things that feel good. don't get stuck in social ideas of what sex and sensuality are supposed to look like. . . our world is generous in its complexity. . .
receiving has often been associated with weakness. it is actually the sturdiest of endeavors."
-the collective tarot
///////////////
"for a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. the shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. to someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction." -cynthia occelli
Friday, July 1, 2016
mysterium tremendum
quotes from jacques derrida – the gift of death
the genealogy of responsibility that nietzsche refers to in
the genealogy of morals as 'the long history of the origin of
responsibility' also describes the history of moral and religious conscience –
a history of cruelty and sacrifice, of the holocaust even (these are
nietzsche's words), of fault as debt or obligation, a history of the economy of
'the contractual relationship' between creditors and debtors. These relations
appear as soon as there exists subjects under law in general, and they point
back in turn 'to the primary forms of purchase, sale, barter, and trade.'
/////
god is the name of the possibility I have of keeping a secret
that is visible from the interior but not from the exterior. Once such a
structure of conscience exists, of being-with-oneself, of speaking, that is, of
producing invisible sense, once I have within me, thanks to the invisible
words as such, a witness that others cannot see, and who is therefore at
the same time other than me and more intimate with me than myself, once I
can have a secret relationship with myself and not tell everything, once there
is secrecy and secret witnessing within me, then what I call god exists, (there
is) what I call god in me, (it happens that) I call myself god – a phrase that
is difficult to distinguish from 'god calls me,' for it is on that condition
that I can call myself or that I am called in secret. God is in me, he is the
absolute 'me' or 'self', he is that structure of invisible interiority that is
called, in kierkegaard's sense, subjectivity. And he is made manifest, he
manifests his nonmanifestation when, in the structures of the living or the
entity, there appears in the course of phylo- and ontogenetic history, the
possibility of secrecy, however differentiated, complex, plural, and
overdetermined it be; that is, when there appears the desire and power to
render absolutely invisible and to constitute within oneself a witness of that
invisibility. That is the history of god and at the same time secret and
without any secrets. Such a history is also an economy.
//////
The smooth functioning of such a society, the monotonous
complacency of its discourses on morality, politics, and the law, and the
exercise of its rights (whether public, private, national or international),
are in no way impaired by the fact that, because of the structure of the laws
of the market that society has instituted and controls, because of the
mechanisms of external debt and other similar inequities, that same 'society' puts
to death or (but failing to help someone in distress accounts for only a
minor difference) allows to die of hunger and disease tens of millions
of children (those neighbors or fellow humans that ethics or the discourse of
the rights of man refer to) without any moral or legal tribunal ever being
considered competent to judge such a sacrifice, the sacrifice of others to
avoid being sacrificed oneself. Not only is it true that such a society
participates in this incalculable sacrifice, it actually organizes it.
//////
the concept of responsibility, like that of decision, would
thus be found to lack coherence or consequence, even lacking identity with
respect to itself, paralyzed by what can be called an aporia or an antimony.
That has never stopped it from 'functioning', as one says. On the contrary, it
operates so much better, to the extent that it serves to obscure the abyss or fill
in its absence of foundation, stabilizing a chaotic process of change in what
are called conventions. Chaos refers precisely to the abyss or the open mouth,
that which speaks as well as that which signifies hunger. What is thus found at
work in everyday discourse, in the exercise of justice, and first and foremost
in the axiomatics of private, public, or international law, in the conduct of
internal politics, diplomacy, and war, is a lexicon concerning responsibility
that can be said to hover vaguely about a concept that is nowhere to be found,
even if we can't go so far as to say that it doesn't correspond to any concept
at all. It amounts to a disavowal whose resources, as one knows, are
inexhaustible.
/////////////
I am responsible to any one (that is to say to any other)
only by failing in my responsibilities to all the others, to the ethical or
political generality. And I can never justify this sacrifice, I must always
hold my peace about it. Whether I want to or not, I can never justify the fact
that I prefer or sacrifice any one (any other) to the other. I will always be
secretive, held to secrecy in respect of this, for I have nothing to say about
it. What binds me to singularities, to this one or that one, male or female,
rather than that one or this one, remains finally unjustifiable (this is
abraham's hyper-ethical sacrifice), as unjustifiable as the infinite sacrifice
I make at each moment. These singularities represent others, a wholly other
form of alterity: one other or some other persons, but also places, animals,
languages. How would you ever justify the fact that you sacrifice all the cats
in the world to the cat that you feed at home every morning for years, whereas
other cats die of hunger at every instant? Not to mention other people? How
would you justify your presence here speaking one particular language, rather
than there speaking to others in another language? And yet we also do our duty
by behaving thus. There is no language, no reason, no generality or mediation
to justify this ultimate responsibility which leads me to absolute sacrifice;
absolute sacrifice that is not the sacrifice of irresponsibility on the altar
of responsibility, but the sacrifice of the most imperative duty (that which
binds me to the other as a singularity in general) in favor of another
absolutely imperative duty binding me to every other.
//////
paradox, scandal, and aporia are themselves nothing other
than sacrifice, the revelation of conceptual thinking at its limit, at its
death and finitude. As soon as I enter into a relation with the other, with the
gaze, look, request, love, command, or call of the other, I know that I can
respond only by sacrificing ethics, that is, by sacrificing whatever obliges me
to also respond, in the same way, in the same instant, to all the others. I
offer a gift of death, I betray, I don't need to raise my knife over my son on
mount moriah for that. Day and night, at every instant, on all the mount
moriahs of this world, I am doing that, raising my knife over what I love and
must love, over those to whom I owe absolute fidelity, incommensurably.
////////
mysterium tremendum. A frightful mystery, a secret to make
you tremble.
Tremble. What does one do when one trembles. What is it that
makes you tremble?
A secret always makes you tremble. Not simply quiver
or shiver, which also happens sometimes, but tremble. A quiver can of course
manifest fear, anguish, apprehension of death; as when one quivers in advance,
in anticipation of what is to come. But it can be slight, on the surface of the
skin, like a quiver that announces the arrival of pleasure or an orgasm. It is
a moment in passing, the suspended time of seduction. A quiver is not always
very serious, it is sometimes discreet, barely discernible, somewhat epiphenomenal.
It prepares for, rather than follows the event. One would say that water
quivers before it boils; that is the idea I was referring to as seduction: a
superficial pre-boil, a preliminary and visible agitation.
On the other hand, trembling, at least as a signal or
symptom, is something that has already taken place, as in the case of an
earthquake or when one trembles all over. It is no longer preliminary even if,
unsettling everything so as to imprint upon the body an irrepressible shaking, the
event that makes one tremble portends and threatens still. It suggests that
violence is going to break out again, that some traumatism will insist on being
repeated. As different as dread, fear, anxiety, terror, panic, or anguish
remain from one another, they have already begun in the trembling, and what has
provoked them continues, or threatens to continue, to make us tremble. Most
often we neither know what is coming upon us nor see its origin; it therefore
remains a secret. We are afraid of the fear, we angish over the anguish, and we
tremble. We tremble in that strange repetition that ties an irrefutable past (a
shock has been felt, a traumatism has already affected us) to a future that
cannot be anticipated; anticipated but unpredictable; apprehended, but
and this is why there is a future, apprehended precisely as unforeseeable,
unpredictable; approached as unapproachable. Even if one thinks one
knows what is going to happen, the new instant of that happening remains
untouched, still unaccessible, in fact unlivable. In the repetition of what
still remains unpredictable, we tremble first of all because we don't know from
which direction the shock came, whence it was given (whether a good surprise or
a bad shock, sometimes a surprise received as a shock); and we tremble from not
knowing, in the form of a double secret, whether it is going to continue, start
again, insist, be repeated: whether it will, how it will, where, when; and why this
shock. Hence I tremble because I am still afraid of what already makes me
afraid, of what I can neither see nor foresee. I tremble at what exceeds my
seeing and my knowing although it concerns the innermost parts of me, right
down to my soul, down to the bone, as we say. Inasmuch as it tends to undo both
seeing and knowing, trembling is indeed an experience of secrecy or of mystery,
but another secret, another enigma, or another mystery comes on top of the
unlivable experience, adding yet another seal or concealment to the tremor.
Where does this supplementary seal come from? One doesn't
know why one trembles. This limit to knowledge no longer only relates to
the cause or unknown event, the unseen or unknown that makes us tremble.
Neither do we know why it produces this particular symptom, a certain
irrepressible agitation of the body, the uncontrollable instability of its
members or of the substance of the skin or muscles. Why does the irrepressible
take this form? Why does terror make us tremble, since one can also tremble
with cold, and such analogous physiological manifestations translate
experiences and sentiments that appear, at least, not to have anything in
common? This symptomatology is as enigmatic as tears. Even if one know why one
weeps, in what situation, and what it signifies . . . that still doesn't explain why the lachrymal
glands come to secrete these drops of water which are brought to the eyes
rather than elsewhere, the mouth or the ears. We would need to make new inroads
into thinking concerning the body, without dissociating the registers of
discourse (thought, philosophy, the bio-genetico-psychoanalytic sciences,
phylo- and ontogenesis), in order to one day come closer to what makes us
tremble or what makes us cry, to that cause which is not the final cause
that can be called god or death . . . but to a closer cause; not the immediate
cause, that is, the accident or circumstance, but the cause closest to our
body, that which means that one trembles or weeps rather than doing something
else. What is it a metaphor or figure for? What does the body mean to say
by trembling or crying, presuming one can speak here of the body, or of saying,
of meaning, and of rhetoric?
/////////////
everyone must assume his own death, that is to say the one
thing in the word that no one else can either give or take: therein resides
freedom and responsibility. For one can say, in french, that at least in terms
of this logic, no one can either give me death or take it from me. Even if one
gives me death to the extent that it means killing me, that death will still
have been mine and as long as it is irreducibly mine I will not have received
it from anyone else. Thus dying can never be taken, borrowed, transferred,
delivered, promised, or transmitted. And just as it can't be given to me, so it
can't be taken away from me. Death would be this possibility of giving and
taking that actually exempts itself from the same realm of possibility that
it institutes, namely, from giving and taking. But to say that is far
from contradicting the fact that it is only on the basis of death, and in its
name, that giving and taking become possible.
//////////
I can give the other everything except immortality, except
this dying for her to the extent of dying in place of her and so freeing
her from her own death. I can die for the other in a situation where my death
gives him a little longer to live, I can save someone by throwing myself in the
water or fire in order to temporarily snatch him from the jaws of death, I can
give her my heart in the literal or figurative sense in order to assure her of
a certain longevity. But I cannot die in her place, I cannot give her my life
in exchange for her death. Only a mortal can die, as we said earlier. That
should now be adjusted to read: and that mortal can only give to what is mortal
since he can give everything except immortality, everything except salvation as
immortality.
///////////
in order to understand in what way this gift of the law means
not only the emergence of a new figure of responsibility but also of another
kind of death, one has to take into account the uniqueness and irreplaceable
singularity of the self as the means by which – and it is here that it comes
close to death – existence excludes every possible substitution. Now to have
the experience of responsibility on the basis of the law that is given, that
is, to have the experience of one's absolute singularity and apprehend one's
own death, amounts to the same thing. Death is very much that which nobody else
can undergo or confront in my place. My irreplaceability is therefore conferred,
delivered, “given,” one can say, by death. It is the same gift, the same
source, one could say the same goodness and the same law. It is from the site
of death as the place of my irreplaceability, that is, of my singularity, that
I feel called to responsibility. In this sense only a mortal can be
responsible.
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
vase
by kazim ali from the fortieth day
he wrote to you once, night's cold i,
storm-broken branches,
here in this room on the galaxy's edge.
he wrote to you twice, sun-yellow dusk,
midnight enameled vase,
snow-blue shelf in the sky.
he wrote to you three times,
and the nothing inside flew up,
a listless prisoner, tethered, a spy.
he wrote to you once, night's cold i,
storm-broken branches,
here in this room on the galaxy's edge.
he wrote to you twice, sun-yellow dusk,
midnight enameled vase,
snow-blue shelf in the sky.
he wrote to you three times,
and the nothing inside flew up,
a listless prisoner, tethered, a spy.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
state of exception
quotes from state of exception by giorgio agamben
“what the law can never tolerate – what it feels as a threat
with which it is impossible to come to terms – is the existence of a violence outside
the law; and this is not because the ends of such a violence are incompatible
with law, but because of 'its mere existence outside the law' (benjamin 1921,
183/239). the task of benjamin's critique is to prove the reality (bestand)
of such a violence: 'if violence is also assured a reality outside the law, as
pure immediate violence, this furnishes proof that revolutionary violence –
which is the name for the highest manifestation of pure violence by man – is
also possible' (202/252). the proper characteristic of this violence is that it
neither makes nor preserves law, but deposes it (entsetzung des rechtes
[202/251-52]) and thus inaugurates a new historical epoch.”
“in an extensive study published in 1980, h.s. versnel
attempted to answer this question by proposing an analogy between the
phenomenology of mourning – as attested to in the most diverse places by
anthropological research – and periods of political crises, in which social
institutions and rules seems suddenly to dissolve. Just as, during periods of
anomie and crisis, normal social structures can collapse and social functions
and roles break down to the point where culturally conditioned behaviors and
customs are completely overturned, so are periods of mourning usually
characterized by a suspension and alteration of all social relations. 'whoever
characterizes the critical periods as. . . a temporary substitution of order by
disorder, of culture by nature, of kosmos by chaos, of nomos
by physis, of enomia by anomia, has implicitly characterized
the period of mourning and its manifestations' (versnel 1980, 584-85).
according to versnel, who here cites the analyses of the american sociologists
berger and luckman, 'all societies are constructions in the face of chaos. the
constant possibility of anomic terror is actualized whenever the legitimations
that obscure the precariousness are threatened or collapse.' (585)”
Monday, June 27, 2016
quince tree
by louise gluck from the seven ages
we had, in the end, only the weather for a subject.
luckily, we lived in a world with seasons --
we felt, still, access to variety:
darkness, euphoria, various kinds of waiting.
i suppose, in the true sense, our exchanges
couldn’t be called conversation, being
dominated by accord, by repetition.
and yet it would be wrong to imagine
we had neither sense of one another nor
deep response to the world, as it would be wrong to believe
our lives were narrow, or empty.
we had great wealth.
we had, in fact, everything we could see
and while it is true we could see
neither great distance nor fine detail,
what we were able to discern we grasped
with a hunger the young can barely conceive,
as though all experience had been channeled into
these few perceptions.
channeled without memory.
because the past was lost to us as referent,
lost as image, as narrative. what had it contained?
was there love? had there been, once,
sustained labor? or fame, had there ever been
something like that?
in the end, we didn’t need to ask. because
we felt the past; it was, somehow,
in these things, the front lawn and back lawn,
suffusing them, giving the little quince tree
a weight and meaning almost beyond enduring.
utterly lost and yet strangely alive, the whole of our human existence ---
it would be wrong to think
because we never left the yard
that what we felt there was somehow shrunken or partial.
in its grandeur and splendor, the world
was finally present.
and it was always this we discussed or alluded to
when we were moved to speak.
the weather. the quince tree.
you, in your innocence, what do you know of this world?
Sunday, June 26, 2016
so this is summer
sticky, the three mile walk home tonight. reminded me of what i love, the heat in darkness, the humid damp sticking to skin, smells of flourishing green, mulberry trees, people sitting outside, laughing.
this walk was different though. fireworks on display for thirty solid minutes, echoing off downtown buildings, reflecting in tall windows, the sky an aftermath of fire.
i wanted to think of myself, i wanted to think about what this aloneness makes of me. tried calling friends instead, then family. six calls, no answer. it's saturday night but days blur. had to check the calendar to be sure.
i wanted to think of myself but i thought about her, so young. the parental inclinations rise but quickly disintegrate. i want to protect her but i am missing important identity arguments. still.
at the gathering, which was like no other i'd been invited to, intimate and emotional in a new way and i too am a participant (despite, again, the identity arguments). i too feel responsible for her care, feel responsible and so rage against the violence that put her at the center of this. i want to protect her and everyone that came before and will come after. we all know this is not the end of the story. justice near the core of this pain, what its lack does and undoes.
tonight sparks protectiveness in the older ones, the actual parents, and in this case, coincidentally those with some status, wealth, institutional sway. i am not naive, i know their struggles are so enormously different than mine. i catch another's eyes amidst the amplified exchanges, know we are hearing the same nerve pressed, though felt in our own distinct ways. respectability gets us nowhere, those politics leaning towards the system like an invitation to be swallowed. yet they too, must stay in the middle of the room, they are part of the landscape, desire. we talk daughters and granddaughters and peers. in obvious fashion, one male voice positions itself highest, talks loudest, interrupts, drones on and on.
walking home, trying to think of myself, thinking of her. then thinking of two others, spirits without bodies. i look for them everywhere: bright neon signs at the museum, booming from the southern lake, patterned shadows of fence, sleeping orange day lilies. how can i protect them? i cannot.
i entered the empty locked house, walked up the stairs, shin splints. suddenly! the lightning and thunder at once, so close. rain sweeping through windows into the rooms.
back down to the door, i yell for gus in the sudden storm. he does not come, my voice does not carry, the downpour is too loud. i cannot protect even the smallest ones, the one i am responsible to, and for. quickly i shut all east-facing windows, then the northern ones.
so i have protected myself without knowing, just barely made it inside, unaware of the weather on my heels. i am lucky this time.
* * *
the storm has blown, another day has turned with the hour. my fur-soaked cat is back, full of affection. everything outside drips in excess, the stickiness has subsided with a long cool breezy moan.
again i sit with tobacco, days beyond my self-imposed limitation. i am not yet ready to let go of certain things. this seems obvious.
on the porch, i try again to think of myself. try to write to myself. for myself.
* * *
here is what i remember:
pregnancy. my body's rejection. self turned inward, unwilling.
i remember the blood exiting me, so solid, an egg.
before that, in the bath, a metaphysical conversation. why this and why now?
two years ago, i heard it clearly. i want to think of myself. yet.
thinking of myself always points me to others, so much to offer. but not this way, not like this.
i think of myself now and am struck. urges: to shelter, guide, protect, nurture. to mentor, care, extend, grow with. it is not biological, not premised on shared blood. no, i want deeply to be of use, to stretch myself differently, to defy the conventions and expectations of notions like body or family or love.
i don't want to think of myself, really.
right there, the way out unfolds.
i want to give whatever i can, i want to foster others. i want to say the longest, biggest YES that i can imagine. i want to be a parent.
!!!!!!
this walk was different though. fireworks on display for thirty solid minutes, echoing off downtown buildings, reflecting in tall windows, the sky an aftermath of fire.
i wanted to think of myself, i wanted to think about what this aloneness makes of me. tried calling friends instead, then family. six calls, no answer. it's saturday night but days blur. had to check the calendar to be sure.
i wanted to think of myself but i thought about her, so young. the parental inclinations rise but quickly disintegrate. i want to protect her but i am missing important identity arguments. still.
at the gathering, which was like no other i'd been invited to, intimate and emotional in a new way and i too am a participant (despite, again, the identity arguments). i too feel responsible for her care, feel responsible and so rage against the violence that put her at the center of this. i want to protect her and everyone that came before and will come after. we all know this is not the end of the story. justice near the core of this pain, what its lack does and undoes.
tonight sparks protectiveness in the older ones, the actual parents, and in this case, coincidentally those with some status, wealth, institutional sway. i am not naive, i know their struggles are so enormously different than mine. i catch another's eyes amidst the amplified exchanges, know we are hearing the same nerve pressed, though felt in our own distinct ways. respectability gets us nowhere, those politics leaning towards the system like an invitation to be swallowed. yet they too, must stay in the middle of the room, they are part of the landscape, desire. we talk daughters and granddaughters and peers. in obvious fashion, one male voice positions itself highest, talks loudest, interrupts, drones on and on.
walking home, trying to think of myself, thinking of her. then thinking of two others, spirits without bodies. i look for them everywhere: bright neon signs at the museum, booming from the southern lake, patterned shadows of fence, sleeping orange day lilies. how can i protect them? i cannot.
i entered the empty locked house, walked up the stairs, shin splints. suddenly! the lightning and thunder at once, so close. rain sweeping through windows into the rooms.
back down to the door, i yell for gus in the sudden storm. he does not come, my voice does not carry, the downpour is too loud. i cannot protect even the smallest ones, the one i am responsible to, and for. quickly i shut all east-facing windows, then the northern ones.
so i have protected myself without knowing, just barely made it inside, unaware of the weather on my heels. i am lucky this time.
* * *
the storm has blown, another day has turned with the hour. my fur-soaked cat is back, full of affection. everything outside drips in excess, the stickiness has subsided with a long cool breezy moan.
again i sit with tobacco, days beyond my self-imposed limitation. i am not yet ready to let go of certain things. this seems obvious.
on the porch, i try again to think of myself. try to write to myself. for myself.
* * *
here is what i remember:
pregnancy. my body's rejection. self turned inward, unwilling.
i remember the blood exiting me, so solid, an egg.
before that, in the bath, a metaphysical conversation. why this and why now?
two years ago, i heard it clearly. i want to think of myself. yet.
thinking of myself always points me to others, so much to offer. but not this way, not like this.
i think of myself now and am struck. urges: to shelter, guide, protect, nurture. to mentor, care, extend, grow with. it is not biological, not premised on shared blood. no, i want deeply to be of use, to stretch myself differently, to defy the conventions and expectations of notions like body or family or love.
i don't want to think of myself, really.
right there, the way out unfolds.
i want to give whatever i can, i want to foster others. i want to say the longest, biggest YES that i can imagine. i want to be a parent.
!!!!!!
Saturday, June 25, 2016
the reason why i am afraid even though i am a fisherman
who is there
to witness the ice
as it gradually forms itself
from the cold rock-hard banks
to the middle of the river?
is the wind chill a factor?
does the water at some point
negotiate and agree to stop
moving and become frozen?
when you do not know the answers
to these immediately you are afraid,
and to even think in this inquisitive
manner is contrary to the precept
that life is in everything.
me, i am not a man;
i respect the river
for not knowing its secret,
for answers have nothing
to do with cause and occurrence.
it doesn’t matter how early
i wake to see the sun shine
through the ice-fishing hole;
only the ice along
with my foolishness
decides when
to break.
Friday, June 24, 2016
"Undr"
from the book of sand by jorge luis borges
i must inform the reader that the pages i translate and publish here will be sought in vain in the libellus (1615) of adam of bremen, who, as we all know, was born and died in the eleventh century. lappenberg found the text within a manuscript in the bodleian, at oxford; given its wealth of circumstantial detail, he judged it to be a late interpolation, but he did publish it as a curiosity in his analecta germanica (leipzig, 1894). the opinion of a mere argentine amateur is worth very little; readers may judge these pages as they will. my translation is not literal, but it is faithful.
thus writes adam of bremen:
. . . of the several nations that border the wide desert which lies on the far shore of the gulf, beyond the lands where the wild horse mates, that one most worthy of mention is the nation of the urns. the imprecise or fabulous reports of merchants, the difficulty of the road, and the depredations of nomads prevented me from ever reaching its borders. i know, however, that its precarious and remote villages lie within the lowlands of the wisla river. unlike the swedes, the urns profess the true faith in christ, unsullied by the arianism and bloody worship of devils from which the royal houses of england and the other nations of the north draw their lineage. they are shepherds, ferrymen, sorcerers, swordsmiths, and ropemakers. the severity of their wars almost entirely prevents them from tilling their lands. the plains and the tribes that roam them have made the urns skillful with horse and bow. in time, one inevitably comes to resemble one's enemies. their lances are longer than ours, for theirs are made for horsemen, not for infantry.
as one might imagine, the use of pen, inkhorn, and parchment is unknown to them. they carve their characters in stone, as our forebears carved the runes revealed to them by odin, after having hung from the ash tree - odin sacrificed to odin - for nine long nights.
to these general bits of knowledge i will add the story of my conversation with the icelander ulf sigurdarson, a man of grave and measured speech. we had met in uppsala, near the temple. the wood fire had died; the cold and the dawn light were seeping in through the uneven chinks in the walls. outside, the gray wolves that devour the flesh of pagans sacrificed to the three gods were leaving their cautious spoor upon the snow. our talk had begun in latin, as is the habit between members of the clergy, but soon we had passed into the language of the north, known from ultima thule to the markets of asia. this is what the man told me:
"i am of the line of skalds; the moment i learned that the poetry of the urns is a poetry of a single word, i went in quest of them, in quest of the route that would lead me to their land. not without weariness and labor did i reach it, one year later. it was night; i noticed that the men i met along my way regarded me curiously, and i could not fail to note that i was struck by an occasional stone. i saw the glow of a smith's forge, and i entered.
"the smith offered me shelter for the night. his name, he said, was orm, and his language was more or less our own. we exchanged a few words. it was from his lips that i first heard the name of the king who then ruled over them - gunnlaug. i learned that he had fought in their last war, that he looked with suspicion upon foreigners, and that it was his custom to crucify them. in order to avoid that fate, which was more fitting for a god than for a man,i undertook to write a drapa, a laudatory composition - a sort of eulogy praising the king's victories, his fame, and his mercy. no sooner had i committed the poem to memory than two men came for me. i refused to relinquish my sword, but i allowed myself to be led away.
"the stars were still in the sky. we traveled through a stretch of land with huts scattered here and there along the way. i had heard tales of pyramids; what i saw in the first square we came to was a stake of yellow wood. on its sharp point i could make out the black figure of a fish. orm, who had accompanied us, told me that the fish was the Word. in the next square i saw a red stake, with a disk. orm said once more that this was the Word. i asked him to tell me what word it was; he replied that he was but a simple artisan, and did not know.
"in the third square, which was the last, i saw a stake painted black, bearing a design i no longer remember. on the far side of the square there was a long straight wall, whose ends i could not see. i later found that it was circular, roofed with clay, without interior doors, and that it girded the entire city. the horses tied to a wooden post were compact and thick-maned.
"the smith was not allowed to enter. there were armed men inside, all standing. gunnlaug, the king, who was suffering under some great affliction, was lying with half-closed eyes upon a kind of dais; his pallet was of camel skins. he was a worn, yellow man, a sacred and almost forgotten object; long, time-blurred scars made a tracery across his chest. one of the soldiers made way for me. someone had brought a harp. i knelt and softly intoned the drapa. it was adorned with the tropes, alliterations, and accents required by the genre. i am not certain that the king understood it, but he gave me a silver ring, which i still possess. under his pillow i glimpsed the blade of a dagger. to his right there was a chessboard of a hundred or more squares and several scattered pieces.
"the king's guards pushed me back. a man took my place, but he stood as he offered his own poem. he plucked at the harp's strings as though tuning them, and then very softly repeated the word that i wish i might have caught, but did not. someone reverently said now, meaningless.
"i saw tears here and there. the man would raise his voice or it would grow distant; the nearly identical chords were monotonous, or, more precisely, infinite. i wished the chant could go on forever, i wished it were my life. suddenly, it ended. i heard the sound of the harp when the singer, no doubt exhausted, cast it to the floor. we made our way in disorder from the room. i was one of the last. i saw with astonishment that the light was fading.
"i walked a few steps. a hand upon my shoulder detained me. a voice said to me:
" 'the king's ring was a talisman bestowed upon you, yet soon your death shall come, for you have heard the Word. i, bjarni thorkelsson, will save you. i am of the lineage of the skalds. in your dithyramb you called blood "sword-drink" and battle "man-battle." i remember hearing those tropes from my father's father. you and i are poets; i shall save you. now we do not name every thing or event that fires our song; we encode it in a single word, which is the Word.'
" 'i could not hear it,' i replied to him. 'i beg you to tell me what word it is.'
"he hesitated for a moment, and then said:
" 'i am sworn not to reveal it. and besides, no one can teach another anything. you must seek it on your own. we must hurry, for your life is in danger. i will hide you in my house, where they will not dare come to look for you. if the wind is with you, you shall sail tomorrow to the south.'
"thus began the adventure that was to last for so many winters. i shall not tell its hazards, nor shall i attempt to recall the true order of its vicissitudes. i was oarsman, slave merchant, slave, woodcutter, robber of caravans, cantor, assayer of deep water and of metals. i suffered a year's captivity in the mercury mines, which loosens the teeth. i fought with men from sweden in the militia of mikligarthr - constantinople. on the banks of the azov i was loved by a woman i shall never forget; i left her, or she left me, which is the same. i betrayed and was betrayed. more than once fate made me kill. a greek soldier challenged me to fight him, and offered me the choice of two swords. one was a handspan longer than the other. i realized that he was trying to intimidate me, so i chose the shorter. he asked me why. i told him that the distance from my hand to his heart did not vary. on the shore of the black sea sits the runic epitaph i carved for my comrade leif arnarson. i have fought with the blue men of serkland, the saracens. in the course of time i have been many men, but that whirlwind of events was one long dream. the essential thing always was the Word. there were times when i did not believe in it. i would tell myself that renouncing the lovely game of combining lovely words was foolish, that there was no reason to seek the single, perhaps illusory, One. that argument failed. a missionary suggested the word god, which i rejected. one sunrise, on the banks of a river that widened into the sea, i believed that the revelation had been vouchsafed me.
"i returned to the land of the urns, and with difficulty found the poet's house.
"i entered and said my name. night had fallen. thorkelsson, from his place upon the ground, told me to light the candle in the bronze candelabrum. his face had aged so greatly that i could not help thinking that i myself was now old. as was the custom, i asked after the health of the king.
" 'his name is no longer gunnlaugh,' he replied. 'now his name is other. tell me of your travels.'
"i did so in the best order i could, and in verbose detail, which i shall here omit. before i came to the end, the poet interrupted me.
" 'did you often sing in those lands?' he asked.
"the question took me by surprise.
" 'at first,' i said, 'i sang to earn my bread. then, from a fear that i do not understand, i grew distant from the singing and the harp.'
" 'hmm.' he nodded. 'now, go on with your story.'
"i complied. then there fell a long silence.
" 'what were you given by the first woman you slept with?' he asked.
" 'everything,' i answered.
" 'i, too, have been given everything, by life. life gives all men everything, but most men do not know this. my voice is tired and my fingers weak, but listen to me. . .'
"he spoke the word Undr, which means wonder.
"i was overwhelmed by the song of the man who lay dying, but in his song, and in his chord, i saw my own labors, the slave girl who had given me her first love, the men i had killed, the cold dawns, the northern lights over the water, the oars. i took up the harp and sang - a different word.
" 'hmm,' said the poet, and i had to draw close to hear him. 'you have understood me.' "
i must inform the reader that the pages i translate and publish here will be sought in vain in the libellus (1615) of adam of bremen, who, as we all know, was born and died in the eleventh century. lappenberg found the text within a manuscript in the bodleian, at oxford; given its wealth of circumstantial detail, he judged it to be a late interpolation, but he did publish it as a curiosity in his analecta germanica (leipzig, 1894). the opinion of a mere argentine amateur is worth very little; readers may judge these pages as they will. my translation is not literal, but it is faithful.
thus writes adam of bremen:
. . . of the several nations that border the wide desert which lies on the far shore of the gulf, beyond the lands where the wild horse mates, that one most worthy of mention is the nation of the urns. the imprecise or fabulous reports of merchants, the difficulty of the road, and the depredations of nomads prevented me from ever reaching its borders. i know, however, that its precarious and remote villages lie within the lowlands of the wisla river. unlike the swedes, the urns profess the true faith in christ, unsullied by the arianism and bloody worship of devils from which the royal houses of england and the other nations of the north draw their lineage. they are shepherds, ferrymen, sorcerers, swordsmiths, and ropemakers. the severity of their wars almost entirely prevents them from tilling their lands. the plains and the tribes that roam them have made the urns skillful with horse and bow. in time, one inevitably comes to resemble one's enemies. their lances are longer than ours, for theirs are made for horsemen, not for infantry.
as one might imagine, the use of pen, inkhorn, and parchment is unknown to them. they carve their characters in stone, as our forebears carved the runes revealed to them by odin, after having hung from the ash tree - odin sacrificed to odin - for nine long nights.
to these general bits of knowledge i will add the story of my conversation with the icelander ulf sigurdarson, a man of grave and measured speech. we had met in uppsala, near the temple. the wood fire had died; the cold and the dawn light were seeping in through the uneven chinks in the walls. outside, the gray wolves that devour the flesh of pagans sacrificed to the three gods were leaving their cautious spoor upon the snow. our talk had begun in latin, as is the habit between members of the clergy, but soon we had passed into the language of the north, known from ultima thule to the markets of asia. this is what the man told me:
"i am of the line of skalds; the moment i learned that the poetry of the urns is a poetry of a single word, i went in quest of them, in quest of the route that would lead me to their land. not without weariness and labor did i reach it, one year later. it was night; i noticed that the men i met along my way regarded me curiously, and i could not fail to note that i was struck by an occasional stone. i saw the glow of a smith's forge, and i entered.
"the smith offered me shelter for the night. his name, he said, was orm, and his language was more or less our own. we exchanged a few words. it was from his lips that i first heard the name of the king who then ruled over them - gunnlaug. i learned that he had fought in their last war, that he looked with suspicion upon foreigners, and that it was his custom to crucify them. in order to avoid that fate, which was more fitting for a god than for a man,i undertook to write a drapa, a laudatory composition - a sort of eulogy praising the king's victories, his fame, and his mercy. no sooner had i committed the poem to memory than two men came for me. i refused to relinquish my sword, but i allowed myself to be led away.
"the stars were still in the sky. we traveled through a stretch of land with huts scattered here and there along the way. i had heard tales of pyramids; what i saw in the first square we came to was a stake of yellow wood. on its sharp point i could make out the black figure of a fish. orm, who had accompanied us, told me that the fish was the Word. in the next square i saw a red stake, with a disk. orm said once more that this was the Word. i asked him to tell me what word it was; he replied that he was but a simple artisan, and did not know.
"in the third square, which was the last, i saw a stake painted black, bearing a design i no longer remember. on the far side of the square there was a long straight wall, whose ends i could not see. i later found that it was circular, roofed with clay, without interior doors, and that it girded the entire city. the horses tied to a wooden post were compact and thick-maned.
"the smith was not allowed to enter. there were armed men inside, all standing. gunnlaug, the king, who was suffering under some great affliction, was lying with half-closed eyes upon a kind of dais; his pallet was of camel skins. he was a worn, yellow man, a sacred and almost forgotten object; long, time-blurred scars made a tracery across his chest. one of the soldiers made way for me. someone had brought a harp. i knelt and softly intoned the drapa. it was adorned with the tropes, alliterations, and accents required by the genre. i am not certain that the king understood it, but he gave me a silver ring, which i still possess. under his pillow i glimpsed the blade of a dagger. to his right there was a chessboard of a hundred or more squares and several scattered pieces.
"the king's guards pushed me back. a man took my place, but he stood as he offered his own poem. he plucked at the harp's strings as though tuning them, and then very softly repeated the word that i wish i might have caught, but did not. someone reverently said now, meaningless.
"i saw tears here and there. the man would raise his voice or it would grow distant; the nearly identical chords were monotonous, or, more precisely, infinite. i wished the chant could go on forever, i wished it were my life. suddenly, it ended. i heard the sound of the harp when the singer, no doubt exhausted, cast it to the floor. we made our way in disorder from the room. i was one of the last. i saw with astonishment that the light was fading.
"i walked a few steps. a hand upon my shoulder detained me. a voice said to me:
" 'the king's ring was a talisman bestowed upon you, yet soon your death shall come, for you have heard the Word. i, bjarni thorkelsson, will save you. i am of the lineage of the skalds. in your dithyramb you called blood "sword-drink" and battle "man-battle." i remember hearing those tropes from my father's father. you and i are poets; i shall save you. now we do not name every thing or event that fires our song; we encode it in a single word, which is the Word.'
" 'i could not hear it,' i replied to him. 'i beg you to tell me what word it is.'
"he hesitated for a moment, and then said:
" 'i am sworn not to reveal it. and besides, no one can teach another anything. you must seek it on your own. we must hurry, for your life is in danger. i will hide you in my house, where they will not dare come to look for you. if the wind is with you, you shall sail tomorrow to the south.'
"thus began the adventure that was to last for so many winters. i shall not tell its hazards, nor shall i attempt to recall the true order of its vicissitudes. i was oarsman, slave merchant, slave, woodcutter, robber of caravans, cantor, assayer of deep water and of metals. i suffered a year's captivity in the mercury mines, which loosens the teeth. i fought with men from sweden in the militia of mikligarthr - constantinople. on the banks of the azov i was loved by a woman i shall never forget; i left her, or she left me, which is the same. i betrayed and was betrayed. more than once fate made me kill. a greek soldier challenged me to fight him, and offered me the choice of two swords. one was a handspan longer than the other. i realized that he was trying to intimidate me, so i chose the shorter. he asked me why. i told him that the distance from my hand to his heart did not vary. on the shore of the black sea sits the runic epitaph i carved for my comrade leif arnarson. i have fought with the blue men of serkland, the saracens. in the course of time i have been many men, but that whirlwind of events was one long dream. the essential thing always was the Word. there were times when i did not believe in it. i would tell myself that renouncing the lovely game of combining lovely words was foolish, that there was no reason to seek the single, perhaps illusory, One. that argument failed. a missionary suggested the word god, which i rejected. one sunrise, on the banks of a river that widened into the sea, i believed that the revelation had been vouchsafed me.
"i returned to the land of the urns, and with difficulty found the poet's house.
"i entered and said my name. night had fallen. thorkelsson, from his place upon the ground, told me to light the candle in the bronze candelabrum. his face had aged so greatly that i could not help thinking that i myself was now old. as was the custom, i asked after the health of the king.
" 'his name is no longer gunnlaugh,' he replied. 'now his name is other. tell me of your travels.'
"i did so in the best order i could, and in verbose detail, which i shall here omit. before i came to the end, the poet interrupted me.
" 'did you often sing in those lands?' he asked.
"the question took me by surprise.
" 'at first,' i said, 'i sang to earn my bread. then, from a fear that i do not understand, i grew distant from the singing and the harp.'
" 'hmm.' he nodded. 'now, go on with your story.'
"i complied. then there fell a long silence.
" 'what were you given by the first woman you slept with?' he asked.
" 'everything,' i answered.
" 'i, too, have been given everything, by life. life gives all men everything, but most men do not know this. my voice is tired and my fingers weak, but listen to me. . .'
"he spoke the word Undr, which means wonder.
"i was overwhelmed by the song of the man who lay dying, but in his song, and in his chord, i saw my own labors, the slave girl who had given me her first love, the men i had killed, the cold dawns, the northern lights over the water, the oars. i took up the harp and sang - a different word.
" 'hmm,' said the poet, and i had to draw close to hear him. 'you have understood me.' "
Thursday, June 23, 2016
last days
by mary oliver
things are
changing; things are starting to
spin, snap, fly off into
the blue sleeve of the long
afternoon. oh and ooh
come whistling out of the perished mouth
of the grass, as things
turn soft, boil back
into substance and hue. as everything,
forgetting its own enchantment, whispers:
i too love oblivion why not it is full
of second chances. now,
hiss the bright curls of the leaves. now!
booms the muscle of the wind.
things are
changing; things are starting to
spin, snap, fly off into
the blue sleeve of the long
afternoon. oh and ooh
come whistling out of the perished mouth
of the grass, as things
turn soft, boil back
into substance and hue. as everything,
forgetting its own enchantment, whispers:
i too love oblivion why not it is full
of second chances. now,
hiss the bright curls of the leaves. now!
booms the muscle of the wind.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
disembodiment
quotes from between the world and me by ta nehisi-coates
"and you are still called to struggle, not because it assures you victory but because it assures you an honorable and sane life."
"my experience in this world has been that the people who believe themselves to be white are obsessed with the politics of personal exoneration."
"'to do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law.' [Solzhenitsyn] this is the foundation of the dream - its adherents must not just believe in it but believe that it is just, believe that their possession of the dream is the natural result of grit, honor, and good works. there is some passing acknowledgment of the bad old days, which, by the way, were not so bad as to have any ongoing effect on our present. the mettle that it takes to look away from the horror of our prison system, from police forces transformed into armies, from the long war against the black body, is not forged overnight. this is the practiced habit of jabbing out one's eyes and forgetting the work of one's hands. to acknowledge these horrors means turning away from the brightly rendered version of your country as it has always declared itself and turning toward something murkier and unknown. it is still too difficult for most americans to do this. but that is your work. it must be, if only to preserve the sanctity of your mind."
"disembodiment is a kind of terrorism, and the threat of it alters the orbit of all our lives and, like terrorism, this distortion is intentional. disembodiment. the dragon that compelled the boys i knew, way back, into extravagant theater of ownership. disembodiment. the demon that pushed the middle-class black survivors into aggressive passivity, our conversation restrained in public quarters, our best manners on display, our hands never out of pockets, our whole manner ordered as if to say, 'i make no sudden moves.' disembodiment. the serpent of the school years, demanding i be twice as good, though i was but a boy."
"if my life ended today, i would tell you it was a happy life - that i drew great joy from the study, from the struggle toward which i now urge you. you have seen in this conversation that the struggle has ruptured and remade me several times over - in baltimore, at the mecca, in fatherhood, in new york. the changes have awarded me a rapture that comes only when you can no longer be lied to, when you have rejected the dream. but even more, the changes have taught me how to best exploit that singular gift of study, to question what i see, then to question what i see after that, because the questions matter as much, perhaps more than, the answers."
"and you are still called to struggle, not because it assures you victory but because it assures you an honorable and sane life."
"my experience in this world has been that the people who believe themselves to be white are obsessed with the politics of personal exoneration."
"'to do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law.' [Solzhenitsyn] this is the foundation of the dream - its adherents must not just believe in it but believe that it is just, believe that their possession of the dream is the natural result of grit, honor, and good works. there is some passing acknowledgment of the bad old days, which, by the way, were not so bad as to have any ongoing effect on our present. the mettle that it takes to look away from the horror of our prison system, from police forces transformed into armies, from the long war against the black body, is not forged overnight. this is the practiced habit of jabbing out one's eyes and forgetting the work of one's hands. to acknowledge these horrors means turning away from the brightly rendered version of your country as it has always declared itself and turning toward something murkier and unknown. it is still too difficult for most americans to do this. but that is your work. it must be, if only to preserve the sanctity of your mind."
"disembodiment is a kind of terrorism, and the threat of it alters the orbit of all our lives and, like terrorism, this distortion is intentional. disembodiment. the dragon that compelled the boys i knew, way back, into extravagant theater of ownership. disembodiment. the demon that pushed the middle-class black survivors into aggressive passivity, our conversation restrained in public quarters, our best manners on display, our hands never out of pockets, our whole manner ordered as if to say, 'i make no sudden moves.' disembodiment. the serpent of the school years, demanding i be twice as good, though i was but a boy."
"if my life ended today, i would tell you it was a happy life - that i drew great joy from the study, from the struggle toward which i now urge you. you have seen in this conversation that the struggle has ruptured and remade me several times over - in baltimore, at the mecca, in fatherhood, in new york. the changes have awarded me a rapture that comes only when you can no longer be lied to, when you have rejected the dream. but even more, the changes have taught me how to best exploit that singular gift of study, to question what i see, then to question what i see after that, because the questions matter as much, perhaps more than, the answers."
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
0
quotes from the ravickians by renee gladman
"i want to raze one city block of my mind, to open up the entire avenue for what is to come. for this purpose, i will relinquish the area i have dedicated to the study of maths, and, rather than find some cranny for the displaced information, i will let it go. yes, for about two hours - after this procedure but before i enter the performance hall - i will have an entirely empty corridor in my mind. empty. beautifully empty. of course, the danger is with the inevitable desire for more emptiness, which makes one attack other parts of one's mind. the compulsion is not unlike what follows the moment where you are conscious of the entire surface of your skin and there is one small patch over which someone has run her tongue and, above that spot, blown a bit of air. the cool of it. how you want to extend the feeling, so turn to other neighborhoods within you or beg the lover to move on with her tongue. how impossible it is, though, to make any more feeling than you already have. you run the risk of going utterly numb."
"why when i say dahar do you say 'yellow'? i know that word. the air here is not yellow. it is dahar (yellow). if you are engaged in a translation and discover that a quality you need to convey does not exist in your language, the language into which you are moving, do not pick the next best thing. sometimes you will have to put a '0' there; this will indicate a hole.
the ravickians know about this. if you do not acknowledge the ignorance you bear, then the places where you have facility in speaking will seem crowded and dull. this is not new: you need nothing to see something, which is the theory behind white space.
nevertheless, the day is beautiful for one who is returning to her intimates. i walked these same streets almost a week ago, but with my old mentality - 'without an actual boundary to cross, i will never reach you.' i did not arrive anywhere. i passed places that i thought could have been for me; i walked up to their doors, but never entered them. at the market i thought, 'this is a logical place to be.' but after visiting a few stalls, still empty-handed, i decided that i was not there. i was not at the bank to withdraw money for bills. i did not buy a hammock for my garden. jili harass did not meet me at cafe balva for an interview. the opening of the sisi sondergaard exhibit at fog gallery did not occur for me. nothing has happened for weeks, though i struggle to prove this. people will never believe you are 'without events.' and that is why decay is slow, and why it is not devastation."
"you cannot enter a place without proving to the occupants that you have a body. not just to display the limbs and skin you carry around with you, but to prove you are in a dialogue with them."
"when there is so little left you do not give it all to one; you fight to keep that thing in the mainstream. what could be worth that kind of sacrifice, literally ridding your house of its first step?"
"little has been said about ravicka's future, in whose hands it rests. if the adage is correct, then it should be with our young. but what allows one to grow old is stability and recognition. we have not had those things."
"i reach out with my mind to grab the misrepresentation before it penetrates him and remember how the outside confuses me lately. events do not unfold, as they should - the simplest, most benign gestures often ending in sadness. even when you are discussing the health benefits of tamarind you look up and find tears in the other's eyes, that person no less confused than you."
"the blinding, pent-up of trying to get a message to the next place, what we will become bas devrojalijin (after the rain). of moving so quickly from where we are that the words are erased by force of trying. stopping and changing the mode of transportation is the only way to convey the message, looking beyond matter to do so. . . i have a poem:
i was once
i was once in a movie
a great
house
isolated
by fire
the heat
a voice of
leaving
called out
but did not speak
the space
behind the voice
years before
i saw the imprint
cousins, when you are writing it is always the other place that haunts you. the place you just were. for most of my life i have regretted the decisions that saved me. yes, these last-minute departures have made me safer in the world, but my days pass as if i am missing something. the gossips say it's impossible to hear happy stories is ravicka. in belgium, they're saying this.
but receiving - whether it is by listening or reading - is a matter of waiting. we know this.
i have made a habit of staying in one place and looking outward, through screens and other people's books. i have tried to be ready."
"that it is there the archive
and fandwej the real
smolder inconsequently
for now
it's now
that worries him"
" against
a rush of water
something broke
was going
too fast
and nothing
did appear
that was not
annihilated
by the present
still the pails
going after it"
"fataki is not alone in his fever; i don't mean to isolate him. we are all doing our things more erratically, easy to attribute this to the despair. but why surrender the idea of permanence? must we lose faith in structure. . ."
"time falls on it
and us differently
we cannot stand
the mess it makes
ignoring the safety
between people
how it became its opposite"
" standing -- is it that i'm
standing
is it you
who are next to me
in front of me
this food line
for individuals
where are we going
did i come with you
so the bell rang
and we
congregated here
with our notebook-pails
reaching
we were moving
you said
we were
moving
the steps
represented years
our people
fell off
entangled streets
a hand
reached out"
"-thirsty
-thirsty
-hunger and thirst
-my shoes conforming around my feet
-lefits' is through the next corridor
-one should lean on another's shoulder
-to show we have been brave, amini?
-to emphasize the extravagance of our walk"
"-my thanks to the poet of architecture
-but you are trying to say
-that i want to be here more
-you and ana patova, except her ambivalence
-the place she has gone?
-away with her thoughts
-we miss her already"
"-i am always concerned for my city
-yes, if you would allow me, you walk hesistantly toward it
-you would like me to be a guerrilla, sirin cucek?
-of sorts, luswage amini. if anyone can preserve these walls it is you
-but who is our enemy?
-that which is on the other side of our walls
-is not that us?
-we are pushing against a counter force
-at least, that is what we believe we are doing. can we trace this story to its beginning? to the moment of inheritance?"
"i want to raze one city block of my mind, to open up the entire avenue for what is to come. for this purpose, i will relinquish the area i have dedicated to the study of maths, and, rather than find some cranny for the displaced information, i will let it go. yes, for about two hours - after this procedure but before i enter the performance hall - i will have an entirely empty corridor in my mind. empty. beautifully empty. of course, the danger is with the inevitable desire for more emptiness, which makes one attack other parts of one's mind. the compulsion is not unlike what follows the moment where you are conscious of the entire surface of your skin and there is one small patch over which someone has run her tongue and, above that spot, blown a bit of air. the cool of it. how you want to extend the feeling, so turn to other neighborhoods within you or beg the lover to move on with her tongue. how impossible it is, though, to make any more feeling than you already have. you run the risk of going utterly numb."
"why when i say dahar do you say 'yellow'? i know that word. the air here is not yellow. it is dahar (yellow). if you are engaged in a translation and discover that a quality you need to convey does not exist in your language, the language into which you are moving, do not pick the next best thing. sometimes you will have to put a '0' there; this will indicate a hole.
the ravickians know about this. if you do not acknowledge the ignorance you bear, then the places where you have facility in speaking will seem crowded and dull. this is not new: you need nothing to see something, which is the theory behind white space.
nevertheless, the day is beautiful for one who is returning to her intimates. i walked these same streets almost a week ago, but with my old mentality - 'without an actual boundary to cross, i will never reach you.' i did not arrive anywhere. i passed places that i thought could have been for me; i walked up to their doors, but never entered them. at the market i thought, 'this is a logical place to be.' but after visiting a few stalls, still empty-handed, i decided that i was not there. i was not at the bank to withdraw money for bills. i did not buy a hammock for my garden. jili harass did not meet me at cafe balva for an interview. the opening of the sisi sondergaard exhibit at fog gallery did not occur for me. nothing has happened for weeks, though i struggle to prove this. people will never believe you are 'without events.' and that is why decay is slow, and why it is not devastation."
"you cannot enter a place without proving to the occupants that you have a body. not just to display the limbs and skin you carry around with you, but to prove you are in a dialogue with them."
"when there is so little left you do not give it all to one; you fight to keep that thing in the mainstream. what could be worth that kind of sacrifice, literally ridding your house of its first step?"
"little has been said about ravicka's future, in whose hands it rests. if the adage is correct, then it should be with our young. but what allows one to grow old is stability and recognition. we have not had those things."
"i reach out with my mind to grab the misrepresentation before it penetrates him and remember how the outside confuses me lately. events do not unfold, as they should - the simplest, most benign gestures often ending in sadness. even when you are discussing the health benefits of tamarind you look up and find tears in the other's eyes, that person no less confused than you."
"the blinding, pent-up of trying to get a message to the next place, what we will become bas devrojalijin (after the rain). of moving so quickly from where we are that the words are erased by force of trying. stopping and changing the mode of transportation is the only way to convey the message, looking beyond matter to do so. . . i have a poem:
i was once
i was once in a movie
a great
house
isolated
by fire
the heat
a voice of
leaving
called out
but did not speak
the space
behind the voice
years before
i saw the imprint
cousins, when you are writing it is always the other place that haunts you. the place you just were. for most of my life i have regretted the decisions that saved me. yes, these last-minute departures have made me safer in the world, but my days pass as if i am missing something. the gossips say it's impossible to hear happy stories is ravicka. in belgium, they're saying this.
but receiving - whether it is by listening or reading - is a matter of waiting. we know this.
i have made a habit of staying in one place and looking outward, through screens and other people's books. i have tried to be ready."
"that it is there the archive
and fandwej the real
smolder inconsequently
for now
it's now
that worries him"
" against
a rush of water
something broke
was going
too fast
and nothing
did appear
that was not
annihilated
by the present
still the pails
going after it"
"fataki is not alone in his fever; i don't mean to isolate him. we are all doing our things more erratically, easy to attribute this to the despair. but why surrender the idea of permanence? must we lose faith in structure. . ."
"time falls on it
and us differently
we cannot stand
the mess it makes
ignoring the safety
between people
how it became its opposite"
" standing -- is it that i'm
standing
is it you
who are next to me
in front of me
this food line
for individuals
where are we going
did i come with you
so the bell rang
and we
congregated here
with our notebook-pails
reaching
we were moving
you said
we were
moving
the steps
represented years
our people
fell off
entangled streets
a hand
reached out"
"-thirsty
-thirsty
-hunger and thirst
-my shoes conforming around my feet
-lefits' is through the next corridor
-one should lean on another's shoulder
-to show we have been brave, amini?
-to emphasize the extravagance of our walk"
"-my thanks to the poet of architecture
-but you are trying to say
-that i want to be here more
-you and ana patova, except her ambivalence
-the place she has gone?
-away with her thoughts
-we miss her already"
"-i am always concerned for my city
-yes, if you would allow me, you walk hesistantly toward it
-you would like me to be a guerrilla, sirin cucek?
-of sorts, luswage amini. if anyone can preserve these walls it is you
-but who is our enemy?
-that which is on the other side of our walls
-is not that us?
-we are pushing against a counter force
-at least, that is what we believe we are doing. can we trace this story to its beginning? to the moment of inheritance?"
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