Distruments / The Ignorance of Youth

Name: Distruments / The Ignorance of Youth
Author: David Bussell

… for they are exiles, and ignorant of heavenly things…

VOLUME I: DISTRUMENTS

OR

‘THE IGNORANCE OF YOUTH’

To those who have changed my life, friends and strangers alike.

                      RD.
               ‘O scales of feeling.’

                        …
                ite sic Juvenalis
                 de omnes uno
              aeter)na trinita (s) in
                   e digneteur
                        …

                      MNP.
                ‘In whose language
                        Am I
                  If not in yours?’



             For A., undiminished.




                         6

VISCERA, ORGANS, EXTREMITIES: The Anatomy of the Text

I. OVERTURE OF THE TONGUE IN E SHARP.

The Particular
Silence
A Conversation Over the Telephone

II. CONFESSION OF THE LEFT HAND TO THE RIGHT.

A Monologue in Four Voices
A Prescription in Three Acts
The Door of Days
The Vertical Circles

III. JUDGEMENT OF THE EAR, WEEPING FLUID.

On Discontents
On the Horizon Line
On Aesthetic Education

IV. ARIA OF THE SLEEPING EYE.

Overheard in a Courthouse
A Conversation Best Had in Bed
Monologue for a Public Bathroom

V. THE ASS SPEAKS.

Notes/Admission
The Project of American Mythology
Twenty Five Scenes
Labor, Et Cetera
```
                     7
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Statera facta corporis. It is the crucified body which is a true balance, the body reduced to its point in time and space. – Simone Weil

THE PARTICULAR

and here we have particles, and here we have, and here we have --- wavelengths spinning and operating, vibrating and shooting off into the abyssal caverns of some delineated necessarily-enclosed space, theoretical or ‘otherwise’, supposed material ‘limits’, ‘borders’... a boundary border must be established, a categorization, a box of, a holding cell, a picture, a still to describe said space ‘completely’, ‘entirely’, in order to describe relations between space and other spaces, in an attempt to ‘conceive’, to ‘think’, to ‘access’ interdimensionality, truth in relation-to. this boundary-border, fictive, reductive, generated for human understanding, a container necessarily attempting to contain that which will not be contained, a formulated, fictional possibility-of-human-understanding, generated by human beings for said dream of knowledge of, control over, dominion over, life and its processes. this conceptual space, in reality necessarily infinite and unbound, an aplace, an aspace, possibly, in possibility can shoot off anywhere (in probability is probably improbable), warp, bend, shake, in any direction, composed of infinite other-spaces, other- forms, both perceptible and imperceptible to the eye and ear, directing beyond human conception of direction, organized beyond human conception of organization… word-language-definitions often fall short… if not always… of these particular particles in the particular… contort, assemble and disassemble, construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct in a perpetual statelessness, a mass of form necessarily formless, where the conceptual space, the human conception of space, time, otherwise, only fails, BECOMES THE POSSIBLE in its very attempt to conceive of, to cordon off, name and delineate… the conceptual container, which makes possible, and thus which limits what is IN ACTUALITY ENDLESS POSSIBILITY, which in turn acts on and influences the ‘real-material’, both conceptual in the way that we conceive of the world and the very literal world of the particular itself (that which we claim to see, touch, and feel, where we suppose the material is contained,

ensconced, constant… that our world is in existence), where our conceptual container of the worldly attempts to hold the possible, end the endless, make static the obviously-not- static, attempting to hold that which cannot be held, only perhaps beheld (for a moment of a moment of a moment)... this container generated by the force exerted by the human being in a pointless and stupid attempt to STOP THIS MOVEMENT, to empiricize and thus conquer, theorize and apply a structural rule upon the particular, apply a structural rule or law to that which does not STRUCTURALLY REMAIN long enough for a law to be imposed upon it, in one form, in one ceaseless interdimensional suspension... a break in the human conception of particular and the particular particular, as it were, limited by human knowledge, limited by the human definition of knowledge and knowledge formation, what it means to ‘know’, consciousness of human knowledge in its strange and multiple forms and the histories of knowledge necessarily beyond the petty conception of knowledge as a categorical and classifiable phenomenon… which in turn does and continually will influence the subsequent application of knowledge-accumulation methods and forms. THIS EXAMINATION, TO THE ROOT OF THE DEFINITION OF KNOWLEDGE, MUST CONTINUALLY OCCUR.

said particular movement and momentous truly revolutionary, in the full sense of the word revolving and changing sea change of moment by moment in the particular renders the very concept of direction and directionality impotent in its ability to direct and redirect beyond our ability to describe its direction, renders human ‘revolution’ impotent in our glacial evolution in the face of the ceaseless hyper-quick evolution of the particular... furiously and incessantly discontent-changing, aform- changing in such a way that the very particles that compose us are necessarily both us, of-us and beyond-us, two in three, as we are constantly changing, changing time, changing place, changing in our very corporeal makeup... whether we are conscious or not of this physical

phenomenon, whether our consciousness is changing as well, changing as the very particular particular flows through us, within and without us... human beings, a body- of-particles without constant particular assemblage, in a constant astate of disassembly and reassembly, an even- multiple-now astate of unmaking in chaotic (in the sense that our understanding is necessarily limited in being-a-part) relation to countless dimensions (‘visible’ and otherwise, ‘known’ and otherwise), clouds, fields, and groups and assemblages of other bodies-of-particles within said dimensions and otherwise, in various vibratory and energetic conditions, countless in the sense that they remain unaccounted for, perhaps unaccountable, existent beyond our limited ability to spell out time, space, count, whathaveyou, perhaps continually accumulating, growing, evolving, living, dying, perhaps beyond human conception and ability to conceive of life and death… chaos in the sense that we cannot generate a system to make sense of it, the particular happening… what is chaotic is chaotic in the sense that we cannot make ‘sense’ of it, what is unknown is unknown in the sense that we cannot ‘know’ it… this ‘sense’ and this ‘knowledge’, only in the strictest ‘sense’ of ‘knowledge’, and perhaps this strictness is an imposed limit upon...

To see a World in a Grain of Sand. And a Heaven in a Wild Flower. Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand. And Eternity in an hour.

chaos in the sense that particular particulars are potentially chaotic in their nature, perhaps truly unpredictable, unknowable, unsystematic in their continual unmaking of the very foundations of their existences, the very unmaking of themselves in their movement... and perhaps not - even this potentiality remains indiscernible… perhaps there is order even in the cosmic particular… order that is not of human hand, fate, blah blah blah, a greater rule applicable to the most microcosmic phenomena, to the spectrum of the universe. we can observe the past behavior of a particle (similar to that of human behavior, animal behavior) and

attempt to discern its next move, its future, et al... but even this will not be adequate… even in examining some impossibly full and complete history, which is in actuality never full, never complete, as it is always becoming and unfolding (again, impossible to bottle, this will be our hubris), even after the limited human conception of death and dying, the particle does not die, it changes form, it escapes us… the container always manufactured, always assembled by human beings, always falling short of the complexity of the myriad ways in which the particle may, does, and has related to a MASS OF HAPPENING(S) necessarily composed of infinite OTHER particles and OTHER spaces in OTHER dimensions in relation to said particle… in establishment, there is disestablishment… in matter, there is antimatter… in material, there is immaterial… even here, even now, I gesture to ‘other’ formations because my language is stupid, impotent in the face of this changing formformlessform… ‘other’ perhaps in the sense that they are of us, yet not of us…

why this attempt to dominate the particle? why attempt to ‘know’ it, subsume it, order it by human will and hand? why do we have to ‘know’? why this drive to and through ‘knowledge’? to make-sense-of, to bring-into-our- knowledge-formation, to bring-into-our-language? others, which are also of it, of us…

PERHAPS WE DO NOT NEED TO KNOW. PERHAPS THE VERY ACT OF QUESTIONING IS THE INSURRECTIONARY ACTION, THE VERY ACTION OF THE UNIVERSE, THE VERY POSSIBILITY OF THE PARTICULAR… WHERE WE CONTINUE TO ASK OURSELVES, WHAT IS POSSIBLE? TO ASK THIS OF OURSELVES AND ONE ANOTHER, AND CONTINUALLY ASK THIS OF OURSELVES AS WE IMAGINE OUR WORLD, LIVE IN OUR WORLD, INTERACT IN OUR WORLD.

in collision, in interaction, in relation to another particle, in the collision of space with space, particle with particle,

dimension with dimension (and the perceived separation, perhaps not collision, perhaps conversation, communication), and projection of the unbound particle in its potential-spin off into the distance... discerning the action before the action occurs is extremely difficult if not impossible, by human eye hand and apparatus, and if one or many do manage to discern this action before the action itself, it is that of pure dumb luck, historical research may only increase the probability of said dumb luck, of history repeating itself, of things occurring as they occurred again… BECAUSE THE ACTION IMPACTS AND CHANGES EVERYTHING IN EXISTENCE, ALTERING EXISTENCE IN SOME CASES BEYOND HUMAN RECOGNITION, EVEN IN REPETITION, SOMETHING IS NOT REPEATED, SOMETHING IS LOST, SOMETHING IS OFF…

WHY MUST WE DISCERN THE ACTION BEFORE THE ACTION OCCURS? WHY MUST WE ATTEMPT TO PREDICT AND ESTABLISH A PATTERN? TO EXPOSE THE MECHANISM?

a changing-existence in such a way that a tiny particle of dust is now floating in some corner or other of a strange library... but still composed of past, still composed of what was, yet utterly changed… perhaps unrecognizable to the human eye...

the possibility of necessarily ‘described’ made-linear made- one dimensional space, the human container, in the sense that said space is reduced and stripped of dimensionality, of complexity, of possibility, in the very establishment of said space, by ‘making possible’… when we attempt to acknowledge inter-dimensionality through human systems and use of formulae, two-dimensional, three-dimensional, four, five, six (how many? who knows, and does it matter?) when attempting to consider the condition (in actuality, the human-and-everything always-changing-yet-somehow-not condition, even if not strictly visible, accountable, observable by the limited human faculties that be, science,

systems of knowledge, et al, this condition, condition nonetheless), WE FALL SHORT IN THE ATTEMPT TO CONTAIN THE PARTICULAR, WHICH IS NECESSARILY UNCONTAINABLE, ANTICATEGORICAL, THE VERY SOLVENT THAT CONTINUALLY BURNS AWAY THE HUMAN ENDEAVOR, THAT EVISCERATES THE HUMAN COMPLEX OF SUPERIORITY, OF OWNERSHIP OF THE EARTH, THE MANUFACTURED ENDEAVOR, THE ATTEMPT TO REMAIN. OUR VERY ATTEMPT TO CONTAIN AND MAKE REDUCIBLE THE PARTICULAR TO FORMULAE AND HUMAN SYSTEM-THOUGHT BETRAYS THE HUMAN CONDITION, THE VERY HUMAN STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL.

THE PARTICULAR DOES NOT STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE, AS SURVIVAL IS NOT IN ITS VOCABULARY. IT DOES NOT LAMENT SUCH THINGS AS LIFE OR DEATH. THE PARTICULAR COMPOSES THAT WHICH IS WITH US AND WITHOUT US.

PERHAPS THE ACT OF QUESTIONING, THE VERY PROCESS OF INQUIRY, NOT THE SO-CALLED- AFTER-PRODUCT OF ‘KNOWLEDGE’, REVEALS TO US THE TRUTH OF THE PARTICULAR… A TRUTH THAT MAY NOT BE EXPLAINED EMPIRICALLY, A TRUTH THAT MAY BE SEEN IN GLIMPSES IN THE ART AND WRITING OF COUNTLESS THINKERS AND INQUIRERS… A TRUTH IN PARTS, A TRUTH IN THE PARTICULAR THAT CAN BE FELT, THAT CAN BE EXPERIENCED IN-RELATION-TO, THE CONTINUAL PROCESS- ACT OF IN-RELATION-TO...

this human-cordoning-off of the circumstances supposedly binding/containing/composing the condition-space and one’s very ability either within or without that space (whether or not one chooses to acknowledge the very

relativity that any sort of theorem that attempts to shore itself up with in some oblique gesture towards objective truth, some discernment of within and without, the very relativity present in each and every system, the spirit of the age in which it was developed, the mortal and fallible human beings who attempted to theorize against the MASS OF HAPPENING, attempting to render it solvable, contain-able, and the resources, tools, instruments, used to do so)... to act, to think, to exist, to know, within that space and other spaces, with and in relation to other thinkers, histories, lives, worlds of thought and experience, whose ideas necessarily relate to this very phenomena differently, throughout history, supposedly living and supposedly dead - -- while a fallacious attempt to ascribe, (and attempt to describe) --- in this attempt also creates a massive protean library of human knowledge all in reference, in-attempt-to- describe, this happening, a library which easily sloughs off such tired concepts as category and definition, in its very myriad attempts to ascribe meaning to this happening, contextualize it, consider it, question it, understand it, to relate to oneself and others in the midst of this happening, to feel and act and live in the midst of it

and there are forces acting on the particles, as the particles are both acting and acted upon, each living thing acting on the particular, as the particular acts upon it, projecting in layers, acting upon each machine of thought and perceptive ability, as each machine of thought and perceptive ability acts upon it, each and every force political… political in the sense that these forces exist and work at the level of nation, exerting power and dominion on others, taking the lives of others… as do the forces of prevailing ideologies and economic systems of value and worth in a world where capital threatens the very future of world, itself, in the massive macrocosmic sense of a world destroying itself… these forces, both material in the literal violence exerted upon and inscribed upon the bodies of oppressed peoples whom ‘worthless’ and ‘disposable’ and ‘wrong’ and ‘against truth’ is ascribed to, to the very microcosmic phenomena of a particle interacting with another particle in a library of

particles…. a library necessarily without borders, without categorization. as we read, study, and learn, as we change our minds and attempt to think inclusively, think and, think and, think and, we begin to realize that knowledge and the form knowledge takes throughout human history CHANGES, and we must take into account this historical astate of change… categories collapse and fold into other categories, thinkers work across disciplines, revolutionaries work across and collapse borders, civilizations fall, land is claimed and reclaimed, and the human being remains small, remains a part, remains incapable of controlling the fate of the universe, the particular particular… the human being remains fallible, remains mortal, remains subject to the supposed-death of the soul-container, the very container with its various appendages that we attempt to impose upon the world, make of the world, make in the world, make the world, with.

(WE FAIL. WE FAIL TO GRASP IT, PRECISELY BECAUSE THE PARTICULAR HAPPENING IS A TEMPEST MOVING AT SPEEDS, IN DIRECTIONS, IN DIMENSIONS AND FIELDS WHICH WE CAN ONLY BEGIN TO IMAGINE A MERE FRACTION OF, THE ENTIRETY OF HUMAN HISTORY, A GLIMPSE, A COLLECTIVE MILLISECOND IN THE MIDST OF THIS STORM. THE HUMAN CONDITION: A FAILURE TO COMPREHEND THE PARTICULAR. WE CANNOT COMPREHEND IT PRECISELY BECAUSE WE ARE HUMAN. BUT MUST WE COMPREHEND IT TO ACT IN LIGHT OF IT?)

each particle scatters and acts, expands and contracts, a pinprick locality, local in the sense that it is perpetually dislocated in a massive system that cares not for the stupid human quest for meaning, truth, attempts at resolution of and solution to the pathetic question of human existence. it cares not of what for, it acts, it moves, and continues to do so in strange fashion… rome falls, hiroshima, christ, alexander, whatever. it cares not for the human assertion of

power and dominance… this phenomenon perhaps not a compound, but inter-dimensionality being dissonant, disruptive, chaotic, an exposition of the compound into its truth of its parts and the parts of its parts, a compound which becomes another compound, breaks apart and particles disperse, becoming again, particles which are always working, always moving, vibrating, and thus apart, thus always becoming, thus not in existence long enough to even be a part… again, a blink, a break… a composition.

inter-dimensionality being the ex-position of truth, the breaking of truth at its foundation, dislocating and exposing the fallible beams that attempt to hold the structure and system of supposed human-knowledge in esteem. the more factors and dimensions and spaces considered, the more moments angles and movements considered, here, inquiry, here process, not disregarded as irrelevant or tangential, not disregarded as something not-related-to, something separate, something other, and not abstracted and made static-general… the very thinking of the thinker, the process of THINKING AS ACTION insurrected to be inclusive, insurrected to be continually-active and critical even-of-itself and its foundations, to say and and and and and and in the face of the unknown, to not seek to know, but to attempt to ask, to attempt, to consider the seemingly meaningless, the seemingly small (as the truth is in the particular), the seemingly WHATEVER, the seemingly disparate and scattered, the seemingly away-from-truth… and to continually reflect upon this action as action exponential. the more the thinker pushes their thought to actually think, the harder and harder it is to discern and ‘complete’ spaces, to discern and complete disciplines, to adhere to the rigidity of disciplinary thought.

the exponentially growing cube, each cube within cube within cube supposedly ‘contained’ (here visualized in the supposedly ‘visualize-able’ dimensions for analog), supposedly ‘organized’, human beings in our search for truth and meaning DESPERATELY NEED this space to be contained

YET IN THE VERY ACT OF ATTEMPTING TO CONTAIN IT, ASCRIBE MEANING TO IT, DESCRIBE IT, CONFINE IT, WE, THROUGHOUT THE RELATIVE PASSAGE OF TIME AND BRIEF HUMAN HISTORY, ACTUALLY BEGIN TO MIMIC THE EXPONENTIAL AND STRANGE INTERDIMENSIONAL GROWTH OF THIS CUBE, THIS SYNTHETIC GROWTH BECOMING OUR KNOWLEDGE, A COLLECTIVE ATTEMPT AT, A LIBRARY OF THOUGHT AND HISTORICAL MAPPING OF THE CONDITION.

… desperately needing to contain ourselves, for some delineation, for some self definition, for self categorization and categorization of life-as-it-were, some truth to end the process of truth, truth as a process, the search for a suspended moment in order to understand... but the borders and boundaries set and established by stupid and small human endeavor, the drive towards ownership of and assertion of truth as something that can be contained and held over others… the pain and violence inflicted by the conqueror enacting his will upon land and others take us further and further away from the truth in the particular.... this truth is within and without each and every person equally. the systematic borders and boundaries supposed by the human colonial endeavor (colonial sciences, colonial politics, et al) continually broken by symmetrical relations, anomalies, breaks in the system, human error, new development, discovery, broken by the very evolution of human consciousness and awareness of, by incorporation and use of new technologies and prostheses to inquire in a multitude of fields in different ways, the collapsing of fields and categories altogether into different ways of describing, feeling, becoming, new ways of saying, ways of thinking, knowing, seeing, and being... this, the endless possibility of the particular and the human history of the particular continually beating back the ideological violence of knowledge-as-colonization, knowledge-as-knowing-by- subsuming.

in short, the conception and practice of borders, categorization, and the attempt to domesticate life, knowledge, and world to end, is a colonial practice.

by supposedly ‘adjacent’ interests, seemingly ‘unrelated’ actions and reverberations of actions in the strangest and weirdest corners of the universe, not to mention individual and collective knowledge-building as a project both a part and apart of the particular... the particular in existence and the particular as human thought-practice, the libraries of particles and the libraries of human thought-practice… even now, the actions, sub-actions, sub-sub-actions, that reverberate and resound in the very action of action of action, the smallest movement or utterance, made by human hand, insect, gust of wind, the stirring of a particle... INFLUENCING THE ENTIRE MASSIVE SYSTEM in perpetuity, every essay, every idea, every story, every drawing, INFLUENCING THE ENTIRE MASSIVE LIBRARY in so long as human thinking and thought occurs as an action…

the particular even now unquantifiable, even now the invisible visible, even now not-human yet all-too-human, even now not possessed or dominated by any human hand, regime, or government, even now ungovernable, even now standing in the face of countless human attempts to control it, to submit the particular to the interests of ‘progress’, to possess and own all that is, was and will be… as we attempt to assemble poor systems of our own to compete with the particular, where there is no competition to be had. the particular is necessarily a part of us in our continued action within it, in its continued action within us, the particular always has been a part of us, moving us, animating us, moving without us, animating without us, the particular that we are always acting within, yet somehow without, precisely because the particular is as much a part of us as we are of it… the particular, the river of life… a process where no particle ‘is’, yet every particle ‘is’ in the constant-changing... happening happening happening, and something happening

within and without the happening… elsewhere… beyond us, within us, the unforeseen, unseen, unformulated-by- human-hand connections, constellations and relations of the particular with EVERYTHING that continually disrupt a supposedly definite and defined system/dimension/plane, the human, the known, constellations and strings continually escaping human grasp, and the human attempt to incorporate said strings and relations into a manmade system of ‘sense-making’, continually broken apart and exploded by particular relations that expose the fallible, the human, the break… human logic-systems continually broken by the truth of smaller and smaller and smaller, faster and faster and faster, continually escaping the grasp of the human ‘claim’ to knowledge, no matter how fast we develop technologies to subsume it, mine it, organize it, control it, defy it.

the human system, which necessarily is any system made by human hands, minds, and otherwise, attempts to establish a structural integrity that does not exist, as the structure is always changing, to provide answers and stabilize something inherently unstable, in its very process unstable, in its very process always-becoming… to assert meaning and a chain of logic and linear consequence, in an attempt to cease- becoming, to chain the particular to the in-vogue-human- definition-of-proper-possible, inserting a meaning-full- progression, a human narrative into an a-system where there is none, a a-system that continually destabilizes the human endeavor by the very nature of the human endeavor being composed of the very particular particulars that compose the particular.

one might then propose a theory of god and truth in the ‘particular’, of unceasing and infuriating contradiction in this endless loop of human failure and falling short of human potential, precisely because the human potential is necessarily infinite, as the particular is infinitely becoming and human beings are composed of the particular… while simultaneously, the human so limited by and bound to the container in turn bound to and by the forces exerted upon

it, time, gravity, earth-language, bound by a life-limit, gradual decay of the organism, no matter how far we are able to extend that inevitability with technology and otherwise… while the very container that composes the soul-holding is in itself composed of the soul of everything, composed of everything, everything being the particular...

are we then all not gods? are we all then not capable of tuning into ourselves, and thus everything, in this brief moment of life? are we then all not composed, not only in the image of god, but with the very stuff of god? god being the particular stuff that composes us and everything that is not us? are we not then, in our every action, interaction, and relation, speaking to and with god?

in examination, in inquiry after inquiry after inquiry, unceasing, always acting, always becoming, in whittling down, incising, cutting away and examining the particular in the particular, examining ourselves from the outside- inside-out… in turning away from the attempt to reduce the inexplicable to an explanation, of attempting to reduce the particular to a general formula or solution, the attempt explain the MASS OF system of particular-relation which is necessarily a system within a system within a system, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum, blah blah blah… to end this nonsensical process, knowledge made ‘logic-system’ and ‘reason-system’ so that singularity and truth might actually emerge by subjugating knowledge to the static-rational? by subjugating knowledge to a finite human-made stone- structural law of life and living? might BECOMING- ACTUALIZING in the sense that one might practice the active fission of thought, of thinking, of ideas, the fission of experiences, the whittling away of the preconceived notion of spaces, borders, boundaries, nations, of SELF... a practice that perverts the perverted attempt to subsume the particular into a theory of the whole, into a theory useable by a system to assert blanket truth, and thus assert blanket power… a practice that instead incises the whole as a devotion to the particular, the the act of cutting away, that asks, ‘what of the whole and its assembly? what of the parts

and their parts?’. we might ask ourselves… why do we direct our energy towards this need to explain, this need to solve, this need to stop questioning, to suspend motion, to arrive… when we could devote our time and energy to experiencing the motion itself, to process and inquire and question and (attempt to) tune into and move as the particular moves, and perhaps then --- learn, know, and think differently?

i propose the use of caustics, this process-caustic to burn away the spirit of the age (as blake once proposed), the spirit of colony and domination-over, the breaking of the stone tablet of law and reason as truth, the shattering of the conception of truth as product, until what remains is the becoming becoming, the particular particular, the repeated utterance, the vibration, the repeated question, the repeated act of questioning, as what remains changes, living, living, living, mapping, mapping, mapping, as we turn ourselves and our beliefs over, question the foundations of our-selves and our values, our reasons and our justifications for our behavior and inter-actions... our very reasons for living, and the means by which we live... and something else remains, the particular. (the document insurrected, content, form... the paragraph remains, the word remains, the letter remains, the sound remains, the vibration… the particular particular, the particle)

… we as human beings must come to terms with the fact that the world does not exist to to serve us, nor do others, nor may we bend the particular will to serve human interest and pseudo-progress, nor will the particular will be bent to serve human interest and pseudo-progress. that we stand worthless and without hope unless we change our way of seeing, change our way of thinking, and begin to imagine a world in which we all must work together to survive within an a-system that will always subsume and swallow the human attempt to establish itself, to conquer the particular, to stake a claim to anything other than the very ever- changing-shifting-particles which compose the brief human- corporeal existence, which is to stake a claim to everything and nothing all at once, and acknowledging the ever-fleeting

smallness of this form, of this body. that we are not destined to be great, to conquer and rule over the world, to become anything more or less than what we are. and what we are is of the gods, and we are gods. becoming even as we are limited by life, giving us life, the very thing that allows us to acknowledge them, even for a brief moment, the silent faces of the universe, ever present, listening, acting, organizing and collapsing, moving, breathing… in our becoming, and in the becoming of others, each of us a-part of the particular truth… and thus, we must come to see the importance of, and stake of, the becoming of each and every being on this earth. this is the task at hand...

why do we seek to disassemble the world, to take it for parts and use it to our ends, yet balk at disassembling ourselves and our conception of the world?

there is no border between human beings, between animals, between what are supposedly objects, each living, each alive, all in existence, buzzing and vibrating with atoms, particles, existence time and time again in the particular, energy never dying, only changing, folding over, emerging in another corner, birth in perpetuity. there is no great fissure or division between human beings in a hierarchical order of greatness or worth, this too a manufactured idea, a manufactured plastic-condition necessary for economic social and political oppression and subjugation, the suffering of one human being so another may prosper... rumi says for what cannot be seen, turn your eyes inward and look at yourself in silence… and we must see that everything is composed of everything, composed of itself, the particular particular. the further and further inward one looks, the deeper and deeper into each and every available human- made-system, both inside and out, and beyond the pseudo- border of such things... mapping histories, practices, behaviors, all that one can possibly consider, study, and learn from before the untimely and quick death of the body, the more and more one may see into this cosmic phenomenon, necessarily composed of particular phenomena, suns and stars dispersing rays, light, thought,

ideas, insight into the initial rupture, the initial break, the particular predicament, each reaching towards this massive system which in its very existence necessarily cannot be spoken, only spoken of.

there, we may see that each human system, of our ways of relating to that which we cannot truly understand, becomes an extension of the human being, of our reaching toward god. there, we may also see that none of these systems is necessarily greater than the other, and that systems created to impose suffering on some human beings while elevating others into the esteem of god are fallacious and violent lies, created for the benefit of the few, while casting out the rest.

perhaps it is this projected drive toward mastery and domination which in turn limits human knowledge- unbound, development-not-progress, self awareness as inward-looking… this turn towards the enslavement of others, competition, and enslavement of the earth to the ends of capital which in turn brings us, in each moment, catastrophic consequences?

PARTS YET BELOW

why can’t something that means more than us mean us? not necessarily be us ourselves, the very stuff that composes us, the stuff that composes not us, and everything in between? why can’t it inform and compose not only us, but our actions, but our relationships to and with each other, with the world, and with everything in between?

the particular: something so small and so present. it exists in the banal, in the everyday, so often unnoticed and forgotten, so often put at a distance, seen over and over again superficially (as a surface, as a bigger, as a whole, as a same, as ‘life-as-it-were’) until-we-are-with-everything-all-at-once- with-a-crack-of-thunder… suddenly aware, suddenly conscious of this phenomena, of being attuned to it and its myriad iterations… immersed in the particular peculiar

particular... this is where subtleties in the room, the scene, the supposedly-contained, the human experience become apparent, become exposed and clear, the falsehoods generated by the human habit of ‘supposing’ revealed, the human need to know and create dominion over knowing and knowledge as OWNERSHIP OF, POWER OVER to such an extent that we close ourselves off to knowledge and truth, to the extent which in attempting to contain the infinite possible we make the INFINITE IMPOSSIBLE, fall away… all of a sudden we are not contained, we are falling, we are one with the impossible possibility of being human, of being composed of the particular, of being of and not of the particular, of the weird-soul…

subtleties: where matter and the particular are acting AGAINST the human conception of the whole, acting against the human conception of the self as something static and determinable, surprising us in its unpredictability, revealing to us something infinite and mysterious about our- selves in the many-sense, locating us in this larger, massive, shifting framework, obliterating the border and boundaries of self and supposedly ‘otherwise’, of the visible being what is, the whole being body, whole being organ, whole being organism, and exposing the intricate particular… something existent in the space that is necessarily ‘supervisible’, everywhere and nowhere at once, seen but not ‘seen’, seen and unseen… something that is always changing, something that is telling us that we too are always changing, that we too must change and consider this change… our actions, our habits, our ways of being and becoming, our ways of thought and thinking.

it is our very brief acknowledgement (moment of super- sense, perhaps epiphany) of the existence of the particular and our existence as peculiar that breaks up our conception of things as they ‘are’ (things ‘are’ not, is is, and we attempt to time-locate), alters and changes our limited field of perception, asks us to ask ourselves, to ask of ourselves, what we are, who we are, what our purpose is, what our role is in the network of things, why this desire to remain, the

aspiration to life after death, the fear of death? … for there is life after death in the particular. perhaps all we must do is acknowledge our fallibility, our lack of control, our limits as human beings, and to turn inward to examine ourselves? to turn away from the aspirations of power, away from dominion, away from ownership… and again towards ourselves, and attunement of self, body, and mind to the vibratory frequency of the particular? there, may we not perhaps learn something of the world? there, may we not see, feel, touch, experience - the ineffable?

particles endlessly escaping and shooting off, firing, weird nerves that propel the human-body-machine forward, thinking-acting in some sort of oblique semi-hope, semi- knowledge, semi-awareness, of being-a-part, of something at once greater and less than oneself, at once impossibly big and ridiculously small (and the seeming-contradiction of everything we believe to be ‘known’ therein)...? this ‘immaterial’ of the soul, this material of the body, somehow together, and unable to describe it, ascribe it, ‘see’ it? as we have, in one hundred years time, witnessed that which cannot be cut into, by etymological definition, cut into, and thus emerges even further fragments? has modernity not revealed to us even more particular species? particular species of particles? smaller and smaller pieces? these species (the particular and anti-particular) and their organization/disorganization composing the entirety seen and unseen, negative space, positive space, compound space, as planes, fields, and in doing so composing the ‘whole’, or ‘complete’ spaces (in human boundary-making terms) where planes and fields interact to compose interdimensional existence.... Perhaps even something even SMALLER, even more indiscernible, even more essential, that we do not yet have the technologies, tools, prostheses, human-extensions-of, to even begin to grasp? to even set about attempting to know? there is always this intersection, the incision, the place where the four dimensions or planes meet, the known planes with the infinite other shifting dimensions, this small speck and the spirit of the age with the doorway into all that was is and will be, between what

we know and what we know, what we think we know, and the limited human ability to THINK AS ACTION, this hint at the infinite, which is, in actuality, in existence, in perpetuity, all around us, within us, without us, (supported by the very fallacious assumption of dimensions being closed, as we should all be well aware, if there is a presumption of knowledge or discernment of what is true, usually the opposite is true)… infinite.

‘it’, or ‘is’: the particular ‘happening’, generates and degenerates far beyond our faculties to comprehend, spins, vibrates, and moves at frequencies we sense but cannot in the strictest empirical sense, ‘know’, ‘categorize’… it betrays our very insecurities and worst fears in its perpetual a- existence, where theorists and scientists race to prove a closed room where there is none, no walls to be had, no borders to bind… to generate formulae for understanding something that is necessarily without form, something changing, shifting, shattering... the dimensions open and break and close and break in our experience of them, as do particular relations, as do our relation to them, our bodies being portals to other dimensions necessarily seamless and fluid, our bodies being in other dimensions but our experience of these dimensions as clumsy, broken, that of fault, error, that of being human, of being in and out of tune… that of being in other particular reactions that we consciously cannot grasp in the sense that we are a part of them, infuriatingly accessible and inaccessible in mere nanoseconds, in the blink of a blink of an eye we are returned to regularity, this regularity being a semi- consciousness, returned to relative unknowing, cast out of the kingdom of god and back into the worthless, dirty, meaninglessness of life… but this is only in and out of consciousness, in and out of phenomenal awareness. the condition remains, in the sense that it remains ever- changing, ever-present, remains in its shifting refusal to remain. dimensions fields and planes in existence, composed of particles and wavelengths, sounds, shapes, gestures, both inside and outside of us, crossing us, intersecting with and without our experience, intermittently ‘accessible’ extending

ad infinitum, this, the situational truth of the world, changing. again, we need not ‘see’ truth or ‘establish’ truth to be continually aware of it, to work and think and act in light of it. we have all seen this truth, felt it, heard it, experienced it… in our lives. we must only do the work of tapping into it, together, and processing and changing ourselves in the midst of it, this storm of in and out of consciousness and awareness-of, as it processes and changes, itself. necessarily, change is not a product… change is a process. and thus, this task does not end.

past, present, and future, all existent in the particular particular, immediate becoming and histories of becoming as the particular, which does not die, ‘it’ changes, passing in and out of dimensions (some of which may be independent of time in the sense that they are quite literally timeless, unlimited by, or without the dimension of time), dimensions that supercede the human definition and supposed ‘knowledge’ of space, how space can and may exist… which is also necessarily an unbecoming of something else, human hubris in the search-for knowledge, truth, and understanding, and a becoming, again, of something else… the NECESSITY for human beings to change-as-process as our world changes, change our minds as we quite literally change, change our minds in an attempt to endlessly be- coming, with every action, subaction, movement, submovement, change and eviscerate our habits and beliefs at the root. we cannot empirically ‘see’ this mass of happening, delineate this cloud of clouds... we cannot empirically ‘observe’ this becoming as ‘complete’ process... we cannot categorize it empirically or expose it by using instruments of quantification or qualification (necessarily QUANTI FICTION, QUALI FICTION), because it is ever changing, because it breaks EVERY SINGLE CONVENTION we attempt to assign to it, precisely because it refutes each and every attempt of human imposed-rationality to impose rationality UPON IT, because our rationality is small, limited, one dimensional, human, a-part… and yet we EXPERIENCE this phenomenon, as it vibrates and moves us to our very core,

moves our very organs and organ-systems and organ- system-bodies, changes within us, changes without us, changes us and our world… and our perception of ourselves and the world must change with it.

this rupture in the supposed real, at the border and boundary between the abstract and concrete, where time and perception fold over upon themselves to reveal the eternal truth of the human condition as in relation to the world, as in relation to the infinite, as in relation to the universe, in relation to the particular... as our very ability to perceive, perception and thought as verbs, our ability to stake a claim to some static form of knowledge or truth must CONTINUALLY be called into question, as the ground is always shifting, changing, becoming elsewhere, becoming otherwise... must continually change with even our most limited ‘supposed’ perception of the dimensions in which human beings exist and subsequent application of our supposed ‘understanding’ of these dimensions as physical, philosophical and political principles which we act in light of, act with, act with faith in, act with presumption of…

that in the brief epiphonic moments, the moments in which we are able to experience our intersection, our space, our small state of ‘boundness’ in relation-to the mass of ‘boundlessness’ of spaces and beings and particles interacting and intersecting with one another, with this universal alignment of clouds and becomings, the truth of everything in the particular is revealed to us. this experience accessible to each and every person, as each and every person is composed of it.

I propose that a theory of everything is impossible (in the sense that the possible impossible is quite literally made impossible in the very attempt to bind ‘everything’ to a single empirical system, logic chain, or formula), but that, simultaneously, a ‘theory of everything’ is quite possible and accessible to each and every person in the practical practice of AS MANY SYSTEMS AS POSSIBLE AT ONCE, a theory of the particular at the intersection of, the

incorporation of, consideration of, the constant and continued attempt to include, to say yes, to say and, yes and, and to consider and to consider and to consider, to think, to think to think, action, to think, to question (action) the very foundations of oneself and self formation, over and over again, to question one’s ideas of right and wrong, of propriety and impropriety, of where one thing ends and another begins… that one might stumble into the particular, into the break, that one might happen upon the happening, through the continual use of all of the faculties available to one, the library of human thinkings, in the brief wink of a human life, of all human life, in the shifting mass that concerns itself not with the human endeavor... that perhaps the library of all human endeavor, and the use and consideration of as much experience as possible, of listening to one-selves and other-selves, in the sense that listening is an unblocking, an opening up of perspective, an un- narrowing of, a way of thinking... to use one’s body as a medium, a channel, to inquire into one-selves, and to follow one-selves to the very particular truths that make up one’s own body…

THIS IS TO SAY THAT A THEORY OF EVERYTHING IS PRECISELY A THEORY OF EVOLUTION, A THEORY OF EVERYTHING THAT IN THE PARTICULAR IS ALWAYS CHANGING, AS THE PARTICULAR IS ALWAYS CHANGING, A THEORY OF EVERYTHING THAT IS ALWAYS QUESTIONING ITSELF AND ITS FOUNDATIONS, ALWAYS QUESTIONING ITSELF IN RELATION TO MOMENT BY MOMENT AND THE EXPERIENCE OF MOMENTS, THE HISTORIES OF MOMENTS, AND THUS IT IS SIMULTANEOUSLY A THEORY OF EVERYTHING IS A THEORY THAT DESTROYS ITSELF, INSURRECTS ITSELF, INTERSECTS ITSELF, IN ORDER TO CONTINUALLY BECOMING… THAT INSURRECTS THE VERY IDEA OF EMPIRICAL AND FORMALLY STRUCTURED LIFE AND REASON, A THEORY WHERE THE VERY IDEA OF REASON IS AN

ACTIVE CONDITION, A SHIFTING STRUCTURE ON SHIFTING GROUND, AND THUS NOT AN IDEA, NOT A STATIC OR STONE LAW, BUT A PRACTICE… REASON IN THE CONSTANT DISASSEMBLY OF ITSELF AND ITS FOUNDATIONS, THE REFUSAL TO ACCEPT A ROOTING, A GROUNDING OF FORMAL HUMAN LAWS, WHICH IN REALITY, DO NOT EXIST. EVEN THE LAW OF GRAVITY, EVEN THE LAW OF RELATIVE MASS, THESE LAWS AND RULES ARE OF THE PHYSICAL-CORPOREAL REALM, ASPECTS OF INTERDIMENSIONAL UNDERSTANDING… AND THUS MUST BE CONTINUALLY QUESTIONED AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT. NOTHING MUST BE TAKEN FOR GRANTED, AND NOTHING HELD IN ESTEEM. AT THIS VERY MOVEMENT, IN THIS VERY SPIN, IT MAY YET BE-COMING.

a thorough collapsing of the disciplines of science and art as constructed realms supposedly different or opposed to one another, as separate systems of human knowledge ‘accumulation’ and knowledge formation... this including theology, this including the political and social sciences, and thus the shattering of all systems and their exclusive practices and supposed ownership of system-specific knowledge through careful canonic-isms, technical-speaks, jargons, empiricisms, truth-isms, supposed holdings beyond collective blah blah blah... in the continual disestablishment of a system that destroys systems, that destroys itself, that holds nothing in esteem, that adheres to no rule and no authority, that rebuilds itself only in order to destroy itself again, to poke holes in itself and thus examine the particular particulars of its construction, of its formation… through perpetual inquiry, perpetual suspension, in becoming over and over again, may reveal the truth of everything as a process… a theory of everything, deriving from and in this very break from truth and establishment of any such theory seeking truth, and the very search for truth as a system of knowledge… a theory of everything being inextricable from

application and praxis, a theory here being a practice of practice. thinking as action, thinking as changing process inquiry into foundations of thinking changing process of...

and which methods, what method to experience truth without seeking? how does one happen upon the happening? which divining instruments to use? I propose that the experience is one-selves, beyond a conception of method as singular, self as singular, the body as divining rod, the organs as living beings, existent in changing circles, aligned to the matter and anti-matter soul of each and every thing within and without existence, aligned to the frequency, vibration, and chatter of everything… that we may attune the body, the organs, the soul… to EVERY THING THAT IS ALWAYS CHANGING, THAT MUST MOVE, PROCESS, LIVE IN THE PARTICULAR… and thus, the frequency changes, and thus, we must change. here i will not suppose a process. here, i will not suppose a path, or a way. but i argue that we MUST ATTEMPT TO CONSIDER EVERYTHING, that which we can ‘claim’ to see and ‘know’ and that which we cannot, even that which exists at the periphery of our vision, oblique sensation, strange feeling… that we must consider chairs, tables, desks, books, paintings, AS LIVING THINGS, with histories and lives of their own... and to treat each action, each interaction, each relation, even the action of supposed inaction, of sleep, of supposed stillness, of the micro-gesture of each and every moment refracting, projecting, refracting WITH THE UTMOST CARE AND CONSIDERATION, AS EACH ACTION IS AN INTERACTION. TO DEVOTE OURSELVES FULLY TO THE UNENDING TASK OF REFUSING TO REDUCE, REFUSING TO SETTLE, REFUSING TO ACCEPT AND DO WHAT WE ARE TOLD TO ACCEPT AND DO IN LIEU OF THINKING FOR OURSELVES, refusing by way of the thorough shattering and breaking of some separation, of some border between, between living and dead, between value and valueless, between definition and lack thereof, between meaning and meaninglessness, between light and dark, good and evil,

wrong and right, action and inaction, and the necessary DISSOLUTION of these concepts ENTIRELY. the caustic burning away of the desire to discern, the desire to solve, the desire to ‘know’, and what remains, what remains is questioning, what remains is the continual and incessant action of the particular, the vibration and life of the particular, what remains is the exponential truth of inquiry as process and practice, inquiry inciting more inquiry, examination, critical thought without discernible product or end, from the abstract general universal to the particular particular, in the massive web of particular relations, which seen at a distance may be seen as a cloud of sorts, expanding, contracting, relating, interacting, moving, vibrating. the intersection of interdimensional planes being the knife, the alignment and relation of spheres being the knife, the incessant particular particular being the knife, the critical and analytical knife, of faith, of science, of art, of practice, ALL OF WHICH, INSEPARABLE AS THEY ARE, must be used in collapsed coalition to disassemble and render these very categories and their supposition, used to justify the violent oppression of peoples on this earth by the powerful by way of one dimensional truth-assertions, IMPOTENT.

to separate and make hierarchical, human knowledge, to privatize and suppose ownership of, human knowledge, IS TO TURN AWAY FROM TRUTH IN THE PARTICULAR… is to turn away from the multiplicity and complexity of truth-in-parts... this, the categorical ESTABLISHMENT OF TRUTH, is done to limit and prevent each and every person, each and every global society, from truth in the particular, each of which should have the opportunity to, and resources for, inquiry into the particular - namely food, water, shelter, and access to the necessarily public archive of human knowledge and thought, uncensored, in its ever expanding myriad iterations. to expose these governments and truth-systems in their fallacious foundation and assembly, to EXPLODE the constructs that uphold imperialism, that uphold genocide and enslavement of peoples at the hands of other peoples,

that uphold the entirety of supposed ‘human civilization’ and ‘conquest of’... this is the task of TOTAL REVOLUTION WITHOUT ABATEMENT, of total transvaluation, total in the sense that the task is continued, that the process is without product, without end, resolution, or solution... of the continued incision into oneself, one’s world, one’s ideas of truth and untruth, one’s very conception of oneself, revealing the particular… as practice.

Man's disproportion.—[This is where our innate knowledge leads us. If it be not true, there is no truth in man; and if it be true, he finds therein great cause for humiliation, being compelled to abase himself in one way or another. And since he cannot exist without this knowledge, I wish that, before entering on deeper researches into nature, he would consider her both seriously and at leisure, that he would reflect upon himself also, and knowing what proportion there is ...] Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty, and turn his vision from the low objects which surround him. Let him gaze on that brilliant light, set like an eternal lamp to illumine the universe; let the earth appear to him a point in comparison with the vast circle described by the sun; and let him wonder at the fact that this vast circle is itself but a very fine point in comparison with that described by the stars in their revolution round the firmament. But if our view be arrested there, let our imagination pass beyond; it will sooner exhaust the power of conception than nature that of supplying material for conception. The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. In short it is the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God, that imagination loses itself in that thought. - Pascal

SILENCE

they spent a moment on the balcony - her head resting on her arms as she looked away, off into the buildings endlessly reflecting, filling the entirety of the horizon. they became this impossibly small becoming in the midst of it, in the sense that they could not cease this perpetual growth in the minutiae, in the margins of themselves and their consciousness, even now contained, of moment by moment crashing like the waves of yet another storm, evolving, changing, expanding and contracting... two cells vibrating, oscillating around this beacon, that is, that which is and was their love in the midst of the tempest of everything else, a brief transmission compressing itself and shooting off into the distance, a superimposition of relations jettisoned by that feeling, among light and shadow, where both gave chase and fell short, always falling short in an attempt to reclaim the passing of time in perpetuity... short of breath, short of expression, short of possibility... and worst of all, fate, this... this atomic moment detonating somehow (simultaneously) at the furthest and most intimate point all at once, at the vortex of sight, where everything seemed to collapse and turn over in one massive movement… a fata morgana, a serial reflection, each becoming yet another layer, arranged like a jagged pile of papers, each dependent upon the next, the event both beneath the water and above it, as some sort of new becoming wriggles in the between- line of history, between past and future... (if one screws up one's eyes and attempts to discern) a mutation crossing itself and stretching horizontally into oblivion, a sharp wavelength of sorts, rippling, again, cutting into sea and sky, a compression of symbols and figures necessarily nonsense, to ear and eye, and without comparable definition in the infinite library of sense-language. the image, its reflection, and the meeting place - the point-particle of relation - warped and stretched in a cartoon-ish beyond-possibility, beyond-holding, beyond-meaning.

their language necessarily reached for and attempted to inscribe this, (like an incessant swarm of insect-molecules) into their communion, silent speech between lovers, the furiously frictive act of consummation, almost a confrontation of bodies, buzzing, the regular-physical, all too aware of their gesticulation along and occasionally across that line, in that brief moment, two forces acting like sandpaper against this wall of immaterial stone, grinding away at it, working at it, an attempt to altogether subsume this compressed ineffable, to cross this border, to shatter it... and to finally collapse and fold… this project of three cities, one above, one below, and one between, two entities composed of masses of cells structured in organ systems pumping, flushing, eliminating, communicating, breathing and boiling over like a frothing pot - while conjuring a third, the unstable matter-ball of love and the infinite truth of god in the particular, in the mote, the almost indiscernible shift in perception... whole hosts of signifiers gesturing to one another within neural networks, couples shouting over summer traffic, buying bread from the bakery, shuffling home and using telephones... the entire body working, a hive of organs, sweating, becoming, struggling to communicate a moment that passes without meaning, without significance… a temporal border, which once transgressed by the very passage of time, shores itself up in the next catastrophic moment, a membrane of meaning perpetually opening, closing, relating... beaten back in a brief admittance… a chemical folding to be repeated ad infinitum… this, the project, this, the constructed, this, the perennial contradiction... as lovers laugh in the face of the cruel design of the gods. (the work of lovers is artifice. the work of lovers in the city is twice over.)

he sat opposite her at the table, reading. the sun was rising, and reflected off the surrounding structures. this part of the city composed almost entirely of windows… skyscrapers reaching upward and with enough sunlight in the right places made entirely transparent, spilling their insides like an exploded diagram, buildings at the moment of their collapse, the moment of their falling, always crumbling,

always failing, energy exploding outward, while simultaneously being enacted upon from all directions, gravity, wind, and god, the experience collapsing numbers, eroding stone, and all systems of counting, of reducing systems altogether, decimated... and becoming as a protean mass of happening. they were happening together, synchronizing and collapsing and building and collapsing, this project that refused to remain, like a sacred name spoken aloud and lost to sound, like two children building a sandcastle at the edge of the water, necessarily subsumed and taken back by nature, taken back by time, age, and the impossibility of becoming one, the impossibility of true permanence. they made promises over coffee and listened to albums, making more promises, adding to this tower of expectation and hope, this need to believe being fulfilled in the promise of unending promises, promising the future away with the present made eternal, that in continuance they could somehow bear the weight of living together and balance this weight between the two of them until some stupid death, until the falling away, the pendulum collapsing judgement into abyss...

this sphere of energy and light, this orange, yellow ball

at once a sun, a moon, and a changing star, expanding and contracting in the air, suspended away from time, yet wholly dependent on that which is still so bound to the world, that which is salt, sand, and dust… that which must submit to death and time...

particles endlessly escaping into the afternoon…

sculpt and tend to this love like some strange garden, a half flower, at once able to walk among it, like moving through a doorway forever on uneven ground, a doorway on a river, somewhere between this world and the next.

like a juggler with a thousand faces, catching, lifting, weighing, measuring, counting... animating spheres...

holding-history, knowing-moments (a world in a grain of sand, heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, eternity in an hour), the weird life-speck that vibrates and contains everything, is truth... as cities, as bodies, as arms, as instruments, things that exist in the material world having exponential properties, of expanding and contracting, of resemblance and refractive meaning, made by the living, made by the dead... appearing almost off, chains of relations... who is looking? the individual expands and contracts, consumes and excretes, takes on and off, learns and unlearns... as does molecule, so do the spheres of relation - between lovers, friends, family, as an orb of light and energy, unstable, glowing, responsive to interaction, engagement... weeping fluid, seeping memories, conversations, fragments of sounds, words... glimpses of content in intersection, relation, brief alignment... (de kooning)

a constellation of relations between people, things, places as unstable matter, as such composing an unstable plane or field that at once straddles our world and the next, the collective and the particular, these spheres and their discontents... all of which necessarily have lives of their own, histories of their own, documents of their own, fine grounds, layers, sediment, excrement (remains) by way of histories of relation, existence... borges' library, again, a serial, a series of code without key, compositions of masses of histories that speak by way of inflections (modal jazz), a note repeated, a ritual, a nucleus of life, appendage in rings and layers of sediment/sentiment, memories and stories made folklore, dancing around the life-connection, breaking of connection... oscillation around a core principle.... this being the symbols used to express the inexpressible, meaning contained in the symbol, itself. life force, the symbol, energy, the symbol, the atom, a library of fragments, and fragments of fragments... infinitesimal... etc, etc, etc.

moments cascading, shaking, and over-flowing into the already over-flowing river of the now... rumi says jump in.

solids, liquids, gases assembled and disassembled by way of the work of dreams and the labor of hands... blake's infernal method - the use of caustics to burn away 'false teachings', plastics... the active unlearning of the spirit of the time, the shedding of chains... 'they ask, what burns in hell?'

sculpting and shifting energy and matter in and out of what necessarily may be perceived by the limited faculties of the so-called-living... we do this with perhaps-knowledge of doing so, our interactions with energy and use of energy in the minutiae (micro-expressions of the face and body, sweeping movement of arm to open a door, et al.) how do we bring an understanding of the atomic into the world of the living? the precarious break? between the sensible and insensible? the break in the fata morgana delineating this now-place, necessarily not yet a place in the sense that it is still happening, still suspended... the air of possibility, the water of passage, the point of refraction being where the light hits the water, the real time splitting and meeting of the message, changed in contact with the ground... this another becoming, another event, horizontally (across the horizon line) something changes... almost chemical...

this is the truth the dead know - that matter lives again after the death of the body, the shattering of the self... the soul existent in the particular. we miss content in the quest for self absolution in definition, in large vessel, in a desperate attempt at holding, at making life still, at making life stay... a perverse drive to death mistaken as a love of life. self catching self. content and eternal life, true life, in the microscopic particles that compose, vibrate, and animate the death-container... and that disassembly of said container is yet another becoming in the endless serial of becomings, of the destruction and regeneration of cells capable of musicality in consonance and dissonance, composition and decomposition... energy that lives first and foremost, energy that does not die, only changes forms - we forget.

in one way or another, pointillism in cave art anticipates the atomic age - how do we visualize and conceive of something so quick, massive vibration sound, something so destructive, with the ability to reduce life to shadow faster than the speed of light? thus, an age of nanoseconds, information at speeds we cannot process, nonetheless digest, must we use machines to process? spheres which machines can make only poor imitations of, plastics of... the technology of pixels and particles... modernity in nanoseconds...

how can one love in the midst of?

A CONVERSATION OVER THE TELEPHONE

1: i wish to speak frankly.

2: only in marriage, darling.

1: well then, i shall speak of speaking frankly.

2: you watch your tone!

1: i meant no offense.

2: therein lies meaning, masturbating with the door slightly ajar…

1: you’ve made many assumptions about my presence in the past, of which, practically, no sense could possibly be made.

2: shit, sprinting through the streets of london… back then… (fond remembrance.)

1: and not much has changed since!

2: these things and more, i meant to discuss with you… or should i say dispose of? my recent foray into medicine… patience discharged… put upon… or is it put to bed?

1: your reason almost as filthy as your tongue!

2: we once had every inclination to examine the entry and the exit. we shall recover our urges. we shall! there must be a way out… (spasms, trembling.)

1: you do know that it was the pipes that were leaking... they wrote many stories… they found us out… the aqueducts a- cracking stone… (contorts.) in the papers… they spoke of...

2: (wearily.) and the empire expands before our very eyes! (gestures to empty room.)

1: oh, there are too many gods to keep track of these days. the same name every time! name… the same name… it gives me the worst kind of headache… the kind that you get from inhaling far too much spent gasoline…

2: (recites.) i open my bowels for him, and him alone. in the pews, i spread my legs and press my head into the wood like the broken bow of a ship cutting up against land. (end state.) otherwise, i’m stuffed like a turkey! dammed for months! the pits! (shaking and cursing.)

1: i confess, i have not ‘been’ in quite some time… i wonder when my second miracle will be accounted for…

2: what, the first being your birth?

1: and the second being my death, of course. it is only natural. naught holds the dust…

2: well you deserve to be kept waiting! (chortles.) i will inform the faithful of your minor sainthood upon the opening of the gates…

1: or the opening of the soil!

2: it depends on your perspective…

1: what harsh light! don't you think?

2: most of the time, no.

1: well keep on looking then! im sure we’ll find it around here somewhere!

2: (confused.) what?

1: precisely!

2: (motions) over there?

1: indeed, indeed!

2: why that used to be my arm! ten years ago to the day… it ran off with my mind… they were to be married, i believe… what day is it again? (1 is searching the room… not paying attention.) do you mind!

1: i don’t much believe in days… a leg, or two...

2: well you might learn to count before you speak! besides, i do fondly remember the day i lost it, or it lost me… or was it on purpose? regardless… i became towards myself… down, and away...

2: (detached, monotone.) apart from it, myself, the tumors of the garden and such… i simply refuse to join in any such party… and such… and such… and

1: i remain convinced that you are withholding the truth from me!

2: there are a great many things that i have forgotten since then, before then, between then. things that i have neglected to bring to bear… not yet… i refuse!

1: you didn’t tell me you had children!

2: there you go again. spouting off with your ridiculously criminal faucet mouth. tell me of evil! tell me of hate! tell me of truth! such deplorable rhetoric! i'm quite surprised you’ve made it this far along, seeing as you’ve been miseducated beyond all comprehension… (muttering, profanes.) faucet mouth.

1: i'm not the one walking around pretending to be a doctor! a prescription for everything, a new pathway, a new diagnostic assurance! the clothes you pretend to wear… liars are in vogue again, strutting around, and preening in their

pea coats… like you could ever belong! (sneers.) actors. carrying on as if you were!

1: (after a brief pause.) what does ‘deplorable’ mean anyways?

2: now you’re just mocking me.

1: i’ve yet to do much else… besides, we’ve been alone here for far too long… it passes the time!

2: who would come for us now? look! the lines on our foreheads, the spots on our skin… we have become quite the ragged bunch! not even the room will do much more than acknowledge us anymore. if that!

1: i could care less about the room and its favor! you don’t scare me! (gestures towards the walls aggressively.) back! back! the lot of you!

1: (back to 2.) do you remember the night we tore down all of the wallpaper? what a show!

2: i do, quite fondly. we become irrationally happy upon the irreversible breaking of things… engagements, promises, hearts… ir, ir, ir, in! (gleefully.) stupid logic!

1: (excited child.) oh, it has been quite some time since we’ve broken any hearts! can we do that again? again! again!

2: oh no, my dear. it is far too foolhardy to toil in such a field, at such an old age. we would be putting ourselves at risk!

1: at risk? of what?

2: corruption of course! stillwater infections. harmful, riddling bacteria, crawling about, in and out of our organs like worms devouring an apple! besides, we cannot bear to

carry much more, seeing as our hides are damp… as they are… dripping with the heat of passing life.

1: it is a disappointment. over and over again.

2: i know, i know. so many times, we put ourselves out, of house and home, into debt, into starvation, for what? we doll ourselves up with the last of our wares to stalk the grounds, each dying evening, hand in hand, smoking tirelessly into the sun’s final reproach. chasing shadows, we are!

1: it is an image, to be, to hold, i suppose.

2: just that. to think, of the suffering proposed at the long table… the board of invertebrates, clutching at their papers, white fisted, signing off on yet another motion picture…

1: we cannot stop watching, can we? we simply cannot! if we stopped, the screens would show. enough of the drowning, enough! enough of it all!

2: you are wailing into the wind again, my love. it is unseemly.

1: (anxiously spinning about. looks upward.) who is there? outside the window? outside the window, there?

2: hush, now. you are drawing on the walls again. there is nobody. nobody at all.

1: what kind of assurance can one make in the company of such shadows? they are always following us, whispering our thoughts… they know… they have always known!

2: your echo, or better yet, the tapes you have left behind. what comfort to a child other than to hear the voice of a loved one from beyond the grave? your hauntings may keep you.

1: i do not want them! they torture me… their voices… what i owe i cannot pay… at the wake of such a short life! i would be better off… stumbling and contained...

2: (abrupt.) do not speak it! you know that these things must exist to amuse the gatekeeper. you must continue to ask these questions, into me, into the air… soon, my innards shall fall from my anus, roaring, like the fiercest of tongues… light… smoke… do not answer! of this, ends are composed.

1: telling us, trailing off… you keep at it over there in your little corner… you keep at it, you! with your open mysticisms… i am far beyond such things. one might say i am… advanced.

2: (laughs.) yes, you certainly are! just look at your receding gums, the holes in your teeth. draw closer to the mirror in your nightgown, and peel it all back, go ahead and see for yourself!

1: i am prey to my own insecurities, your lips.

2: i have eaten you many times, and i shall eat you again. subsume you, inoculate my intestines with your scent. you shall return to me.

1: i heartily dislike the prefixes that tend to accompany your process.

2: so report me! write me up! i dare you! the authorities are waiting. put it in your ledger, your list of crimes committed against the state. i have studied my body for far too long… (remembers.) they used to study me there… under constant observation… i have never been above such things… (detached.) monitored for… abnormalities.

1: suppose there is no below?

2: suppose you have been walking for quite some time…

1: you would never leave me, would you?

2: i would not.

1: many tests, then… of the blood, of the nerves, of the stomach…

2: whether we passed or failed… it is beyond me! perhaps they were never actually monitoring us at all.

1: our systems were designed to collapse in the first place… (empty, flat.) i am tired of talking.

2: (confused.) nothing you say ever makes any sense! babbling on like a senile weaver, or better yet, a bottled babe.

1: suppose they are the same thing.

2: you go on and on… posturing. there is no real ground to any of it! i am waiting, patiently waiting, to hear the facts, to hear the sources, to hear the root of the problem! but instead i'm poked and prodded, like a balding lion being broken in at the public zoo… the children throw sticks and rocks into my den, but i am not perturbed! look! i can even balance on one leg! (performs.)

1: (applauds.) i shall clap for you… once again. good boy. good boy… we have trained ourselves to do many tricks, now, haven’t we?

2: yes, yes, indeed! sleeping and eating and shitting and pissing… walking even! we do it for them that are watching. them over there! (points awkwardly at various corners of the room.)

1: they must enjoy it, seeing our private parts laid bare… the many practices we conceal from our loved ones, but share with the faceless.

2: you mean they really don’t have faces?

1: when there is not another nightmare to be had…

2: i shudder at the thought! come now, let us take a walk. i wish to relieve this burden.

(1 + 2 circle the stage, the vortex pulling at their bodies, water down a drain. increasing their speed exponentially as they travel, spiralling inward.)

1: we pace as we pace as we pace…

2: i read once that such things are good for the heart and lungs. let's see if we can’t exhaust ourselves!

1: faster now, faster, faster, faster!

2: you move as if lightning were chasing you!

1: to the west!

(1 + 2 collapse in a pile in the middle of the stage, breathing heavily.)

2: suppose it was.

1: suppose it is.

2: let me see that contract.

1: (passes newspaper from pocket.) read it aloud! let’s see if your schooling has at least taught you how to perform!

2: (as the orator.) under what clause is the fourth act of the second innermost liability portent as it coincides with the judicial banishment of oneself from the land in the body paragraph of section twelve chapter eight the circuit court declares…

1: well, guilty, or not guilty! tell me!

2: is that even a question?

1: well, you did put it that way…

2: you never put things, anyways.

1: blah, blah, blah! look at your side of the room. its an absolute mess!

2: (attempting to keep up.) well, you should see your side of the room.

2: (dejectedly.) i am aching all over. hold me.

1: only if you apologize.

2: i do.

1: always in this embrace, we.

2: no one else would have us, no one else could hold us.

1: not even a shirt would do the trick.

2: (remembers.) shade of the river, in the august months, with a bottle of white wine, half submerged in the water. it is the warmest i have ever been.

1: perhaps, one day, winter will stop coming for us. perhaps, then, we may sleep, uninterrupted.

2: (sudden.) i think i hear the door now!

1: who is it?

2: who is there? outside the window?

1: (petrified by an invisible apparition. awful.) i see him! i see him! its him! chase him off! he’s breaking into our home!

2: (up in arms.) lock all the doors! draw the shutters! bring forth the furniture, the silver, we’ll demand a ransom! we’ll start a blockade! we’ll starve them out!

1: (suddenly calm.) be still… they are near…

(1 closes eyes, listens intently. light on stage is extinguished, and 2 exits, stage right. when light returns, we find 1, alone on stage.)

1: and who might you be? don’t you remember inviting us for dinner? the invitation? i suppose we did draw one up, didn't we?

you keep those suggestions coming! i suppose we did draw one up, didn’t we… (sighs softly.) come in then, just leave your shoes at the door.

(tearfully.) oh, long world!

we haven’t been outside for some time, seeing as we recently took our vows…

there’s certainly been no need for shoes in the bedroom!

no need for shutters either, eh. no need, no need indeed, no need. no need no need no need no need

(exclaims.) the curtain!

we draw quite the crowd, each and every night! there are many mornings upon which we consider instituting a small fee to show…

envy is accompanied by two colors, as made apparent to me.

who is there, at the window? (terror.) no, no, no, no, no.

we certainly have arrived! where shall i hang my helmet and silks? we are preparing for another revue, this time as lovers quarrelling at the derby… not often that the jockey fails to fuck the horse before the big race, you know?

     not ten years to the day. ten years. t-e-n.
                      not now. later.

the forest, just outside… he just stands there. gazing into the undergrowth. like something were approaching. i call to him, as the moon makes its rounds, as i am fearful for what will surely come if he beckons. but he is lost to me, lost to the world…

     alas… the company of another

just throw them on the ground. we haven’t the space.

he seems to have run off… he’s quite shy at parties you know.

(furious banging on door. chanting.) let them in. let them in. let them in. let them in. let them in. let them in.

silence, a portrait. (fearful laughter.)

(2 sneaks back onto the stage, tiptoeing, in order to surprise 1.)

1: (aware of 2’s clumsy footfalls.) stepping out from behind yet another on of your screens again, are you?

2: (with an air of disappointment.) there is no examination tonight, is there?

1: no, there is not.

2: i was preparing myself… for the test, i mean. i studied and studied, but i knew you would whip me, all the same.

1: (with false bravado.) you are mine, and mine alone… i promise you that! your language, your faith, your trust… all under my domain. when you walk, where you walk, i shall know. when you speak, where you speak, i shall know. do you understand?

2: yes, master.

1: serve me my dinner. our guests have come and gone, back from whence they came. just another unremarkable dream.

2: we’ve stopped remembering our dreams, haven’t we.

1: because they refuse to live.

2: your bidding, master. i bow.

(2 does not leave to bring back any food, but instead gets down upon his hands and knees in order to create a chair for 1.)

1: (sitting on 2.) upon your back, i can almost see the window.

2: (excited.) i knew it was there! i knew it! what can you see? houses? hills? mountains? trees?

1: nothing you haven’t seen in your sleep.

2: i have seen it…

1: out of the hole… where the organs find their relief.

2: wandering, wandering, water into the drain.

1: name name name name.

2: quite a game, all the same, quite a game.

2: i grow tired of you.

1: domination, submission, our circles… dancing in the ways that we do.

2: all the more fun to play alone. we stopped playing with them long ago.

2: they were not agreeable, no.

1: you may tire of me now, but you will come crawling back, later, in a new disguise.

2: which would you prefer? a salesman? a public official? perhaps a mother?

1: (off.) preferably something without a title.

2: how about this? (turns around, his back to 1.)

1: almost! move so that i cannot see you any longer, but you are still, with me, nonetheless.

2: i would take from you, first, your eyes.

1: (lovingly.) the very bits you love most about me.

2: becoming objects. i shall treasure them. put them in boxes, which i will carve myself. of wood, of salt.. i gaze at them longingly, occasionally holding them in my palms.

1: i have had enough of them and the trouble they have caused me. they are yours.

2: your arms, your legs, your eyes, your nose. i should desire them all, to wear them on occasion, when the moment suits me…

1: you have my permission. i would have my life taken but once.

2: … an empty chair remains. many revolutions around the sun, many beautiful boys stolen out from under it.

1: you speak of the light as if you enjoy such a thing!

2: never!

1: i would kill myself, then kill the sun, if i was able.

2: fly closer, then.

1: i can always trust you to provide me with surest advice!

2: in utmost good faith.

1: you may kiss the bride.

2: is there any other information you wish to reveal to me? before we depart, that is.

1: other than the fact that i am horribly impure, down to the clots in my veins, no. but that is an aside… just make sure it remains noted in margins.

2: well, that's quite a statement to make on the eve of our honeymoon! it almost makes me question...

1: (interrupts, impatient.) well, where’s my ring?

2: add it to the list of the things i have forcibly removed from my memory.

1: that would explain why you have no memory!

2: it would appear that way… but i do not regurgitate my food in such an unsightly manner.

1: but what about the children!

2: some things are harder to digest than others. their heads first.

1: many of us hunt the event for sport.

2: it dares not approach… not with the noise we are making.

1: be still… and who might you be?

2: am i that unrecognizable to you now?

1: holding the bow and arrow, you appear to me, more absurd than ever.

2: have you been reading again? i insist that you abandon that disgusting habit, and engage yourself with something more worthwhile… like digging holes.

1: i have far too many as it is. impossible to fill them all.

2: she adores them, that one, she does.

1: men go down, into the mines, to bathe.

2: we shit ourselves upon death… the final release.

1: i cannot wait to be clean.

2: do you hear yourself? tearing at your skin like a field mouse scratching at the closet door… one ought to wonder how you got in, and who you got into!

1: scrub, scrub, scrub. i would like one hundred sponges for my birthday.

2: is it soon? i had almost forgotten!

1: well, to be entirely honest with you, i'm not all too sure that i have one… we seem to have both come along around the same time.

2: let me check… the record… (stares at the wall.) it seems as though we are born at this very moment!

1: what a convenience! quickly! let us exchange gifts.

2: well, what did you get me?

1: what i can produce… not much.

2: have we absolutely nothing in this house?

1: (thinking.) i don’t remember purchasing a house…

2: you don’t remember much of anything!

1: (quite unsettled.) i thought you were the absent-minded one!

2: i forget. (mutters.) again and again and again and again

1: (rummaging through pockets.) i did bring with me… let's see now… the saliva in my mouth, the meal in my throat, an assortment of organs in various states of decay, the bile in my bladder, and the extremities i promised you.

2: well, let me have them then!

1: in due time. it is a delicate process, extraction. what did you get me?

2: it appears we brought one another just the gift we intended to give.

1: (in a hushed tone.) can i hold it? just for a moment?

2: (whispers.) can i see it, then?

1: it appears we have several instruments on hand…

2: to make music? absolutely splendid! the wait is finally over!

1: not before your examination, i'm afraid. we cannot commence without a thorough inspection of each and every one of your faculties. until then, a safe distance must be kept.

2: (whining.) can i see it, then? can i watch?

1: only from beyond the window.

2: (remembering.) it must have been me…

1: pardon?

2: nevermind. well, go on then! let me climb on top of your shoulders, to see if i can remove the bars from that damned door.

1: it is kept locked up tightly for a reason.

2: and why is that?

1: well, either to keep them in, and to keep us out, or to keep us in, and to keep them out.

2: that's quite a lot of fuss to make about an empty room...

1: it’s neither here nor there. come, let us try nonetheless.

2: (struggling.) i can't seem to move the bars! they're stuck to the wall!

1: stuck to the wall? what kind of nonsense…

2: ah. it appears they are painted.

1: another foil! we are the foolish ones. drawn in, yet again.

2: a lot of drawing to be done by a pair of terribly shaky hands.

1: the fear of inadequacy. in many fields, we encounter the opponent.

2: who will fire the first shot!?

(playfully.) let us hide amongst the reeds and observe.. duck!

2: (exclaims.) why that was close!

1: who ever said warfare was safe?

2: well, they have rules… don't they?

1: i wouldn’t hold my breath. no one is watching now. you would not eat, you would not sleep, and you most certainly would shit out your last upon seeing what can, and will, be done.

2: take my eyes, now!

1: no. you must watch.

2: (sudden terror.) wake me up! wake me up! this is a bad dream! wake me up! stop the game! stop playing! i quit!

1: it’s not a dream, not a dream at all! you will watch. and you will like it! this is what you asked for, isn’t it? a little

excitement? something to pass the time? something to prove yourself?

2: i am bleeding! i exist! i know! i wish to hide… and never come out again.

1: (disembodied.) that is not your blood.

2: (relieved.) oh. nonetheless, can we pause? i need to take a piss.

1: there are no breaks, no time outs. this is no sport!

2: well then… can we at least switch teams? i’ll hide, and you find me.

1: that won’t be hard.

2: you know me too well.

1: even without my eyes, i can still sniff you out. unmistakable.

2: what is it? the scent of sex? lust? beauty? desire?

1: the scent of decay.

2: (slighted.) oh well now that's attractive! just what i was hoping you’d say. you know, sometimes you speak of me as if i wasn’t there, and frankly, i prefer that to you speaking to me as if i was!

1: a ha! now we’ve arrived! time to get down to brass tacks.

2: i hope you sit on them! the village idiot, reciting those horrific idioms… (outwardly.) pay no mind! i beg of you!

1: (affronted, gestures wildly.) that's no way to speak to a doctor!

2: not every doctor knows their way inside and out…

1: now that you mention it, i'm still looking for a way back in… damn the movement! (mutters.) stupid wobbly time! stupid stupid stupid! (hits self on head repeatedly.)

2: (cutting.) your language is almost as clumsy as your bedside manner.

1: let us not speak of manners and suppositions any longer! this is why we become so disgusted by one another so quickly. we keep reverting back to the same tendencies, the same dispositions, the same behaviors. repeating, receding… beaten back by the enemy!

2: aren’t those all one and the same?

1: exactly!

2: you have your ways, and i have mine.

1: yes, well, your ways tend to be the same ways every time.

2: are you saying i no longer please you?

1: let's just say that you’ve become predictable.

2: predictable? in what sort of way?

1: in the sort of way that makes me wish you would go away… for good!

2: (frantically.) but what about our pact? what about the death you promised me?

1: it can wait. better yet, it can dissolve.

2: no acid strong enough to accomplish such a feat.

1: i will tear it apart with my own teeth.

2: (stammering.) i thought…

1: exactly.

2: i thought…

1: (a storm.) i will toss you from my mind, and out! out! out! into the rain! you will scream for me, but i will not come. you will thirst for me, but i will not come… the mountain pass… as it closes before your eyes… barred from its gates! i shall curse you… for three long years… you shall cross the arid plains, while the biting wind of your carnivorous drive tears at your skin… for three long years you shall wander, alone, before you find another. and even then, she shall not come close enough… none shall approach… an uneven contest… to attest to the love i have withheld from you!

2: (pleading.) please make the game stop… please make it end… i've had enough…

1: (increasing menace.) i will tell them about you. about your weakness. about your inability to satiate me. your transparent ways. and none shall desire you again. never again! (calm, flat.) i mistook you for someone else.

(2 begins to cry.)

1: (atones.) oh, darling! i'm terribly sorry. i didn't mean to hurt you.

2: (broken.) you went too far this time! you went too far! i can't take it anymore!

(2 begins to walk away.)

1: (abrupt.) let’s kill ourselves together.

2: (stops. turns head.) how?

1: let me see… we haven’t a rope, nor do we have anything sharp….

2: our tongues?

1: we’ve tried that. dull.

2: our hands?

1: i’ve lost mine.

2: how about we hold our breath?

1: well, that might work…

2: one, two, three, go!

(1 + 2 hold their breaths, 1 lasts for around 15 seconds.)

1: (sputters) that was abysmal! we can't even bring ourselves to stop breathing! (pauses to think) how about we stop eating then?

2: (releases breath, showing no sign of fatigue.) when was the last time we ate a good, full meal anyways…? and you! you were supposed to cook for our guests tonight!

1: but i thought you were cooking tonight! besides, they never come.

1: (after a brief pause, in which 2 begins sucking his thumb.) it's good that we’ve decided to refuse food. do you know what it's like to die of consumption? you swell up like a gigantic balloon and burst, with all the meals you’ve ever eaten still sitting inside you, rotting, just the way they were when you first swallowed them!

2: (skeptically) well now that's just preposterous…

1: look it up! but seeing as we don’t have very many books, you’ll just have to believe me.

2: i can't tell… whether or not you’re telling me the truth anymore.

1: just the way it should be.

2: all the same, you seem to be terrified of almost every ailment you’ve never heard of! regardless of whether it's real or not.

1: who decides whether or not an illness is real anyways? some sort of ‘licensed practitioner’? i met quite a few of those before i ended up in here, and let me tell you, they were completely out of their heads.

2: as out of their heads as you are?

1: (puzzled, remembering something.) how did we get in here?

2: it would appear to me that the question is not how we got in, but how we plan on getting out.

1: (taking control.) i'm the one asking the questions here! what did you do to get yourself admitted, anyways?

2: (unabashedly.) i throttled a horse.

1: and what were the charges?

2: perjury in the first degree.

1: nonsense!

2: and i could have sworn that you were the doctor, and i was the patient…

1: aha! now we’re getting somewhere! let's just skip right to the part where you admit that you are in fact insane, i can sign your certificate, and we can end this session, right here, right now. hell, i'll even give you a discount.

2: remind me what i purchased again?

1: my services! albeit for something other than psychological probing…

2: (understands.) i see. time to put on the rubber gloves then?

1: have you ever injected with a used syringe?

2: what, are you deranged!

1: some would argue.

2: i don’t want to feel anything when you touch me.

1: then this will do the trick. relax.

2: what did you say you got your degree in?

1: veterinary malpractice.

2: so you did throttle a horse!

1: that's quite beside the point.

2: the point is? and why exactly are we standing beside it?

1: in your arm. there we are, here we aren’t!

2: right there. i can feel it. over here. i can’t…

1: now, look at me. in the eyes.

2: (drowsily) okay.

1: i am going to ask you a few questions. you will respond with either a ‘yes’, or a ‘no’. do you understand?

2: (in a heavy stupor.) yes.

1: what is your name?

2: i cannot remember.

1: where are you from?

2: here.

1: when were you born?

2: just now.

1: what do you desire?

2: to see.

1: do you love me?

2: (confused.) what...

1: i said, do you love me!

2: (considers.) well…

1: answer me!

2: as a friend…. yes.

1: (curtly.) we are done here.

2: (pleading lightly.) don't… leave… me… not now…

1: (disembodied.) i have finished. your symptoms are clear to me, and thus, my work here is done. it is time for me to leave. you may get up.

2: (bolts upright, stumbles.) okay, okay, i'm sorry! i do love you i do i do love you i do! as a lover this time, as a lover, i promise!

1: ha ha! congratulations! you’ve passed the exam!

2: (claps hands with glee.) well, what’s my prize then!

1: a kiss!

2: (confused.) a kiss? what’s that?

1: i will show you. close your eyes.

(2 closes his eyes. 1 exits stage left, and brings a horse on stage to kiss 2 on the mouth.)

HORSE: you will remember me, this moment, if you remember nothing else.

1: there are limits to knowing a person.

2: how far will we go?

1: as far as we can walk.

HORSE: your legs are much shorter than mine.

2: i will compensate… somehow.

A MONOLOGUE IN FOUR VOICES

CHARACTERS (OF DISORDER)

PRISONER …………………………………..… (L) LIGHT …………………………………………. (Y) PROPHET …………………………………….. (E) MIRROR …………………………………….... (.][.)

SCENE.

THERE IS A ROOM. WHITE WALLS. SINGLE ACTOR, NAKED ON STAGE. UPSTAGE, RIGHT AND LEFT, THERE ARE TWO STREET LAMPS ACROSS FROM ONE ANOTHER, ON. SHOULD BE OF COLONIAL ANTIQUITY. THIS IS THE ONLY LIGHT SOURCE, THE HORIZONTAL PLANE. ACTOR STANDS CENTER STAGE TO DELIVER MONOLOGUE. DIRECTLY BEHIND ACTOR, UPSTAGE, CENTER, IS A FULL LENGTH MIRROR, SIMPLE FRAME, HUNG ON WALL. SHOULD BE LONG ENOUGH TO SHOW ACTOR’S ENTIRE BODY. ACTOR SHOULD FACE SAID MIRROR, WITH BACK TO AUDIENCE, UNTIL OTHERWISE DIRECTED. ANOTHER MIRROR SHOULD BE PLACED DOWNSTAGE, DIRECTLY ACROSS FROM ACTOR… EITHER OBSCURING THE ACTOR FROM THE AUDIENCE, OR IN THE AUDIENCE, AS FAR AWAY FROM STAGE AS POSSIBLE, SO THAT THE AUDIENCE MAY MOVE ABOUT THE STAGE AND REFLECT UPON ITS GAZE. THIS SHOULD BE A SPONTANEOUS DECISION, MADE JUST BEFORE CURTAIN. THIS IS THE VERTICAL PLANE.

THIS ACT SHOULD BE PERFORMED ON FLAT GROUND IN ORDER TO CREATE THE AFFECT OF DESIRE THROUGH (ALL) INTERACTION WITH AND OF THE SET PIECES DESCRIBED ABOVE. THE APPEARANCE OF THE THEATRE (WITHIN AND WITHOUT) SHOULD BE AN ACCOUTREMENT TO WHAT IS. THE ACTOR(S) MAY INTERPRET THE SEVERANCE/SEVERITY OF EACH CHARACTER (OR LACK THEREOF), AS THEY MAY.

NOTE: MULTIPLE PLAYERS MAY ENGAGE WITH THE CHARACTER(S) THROUGHOUT THIS DOCUMENT. L SHOULD BE INHABITED BY THE ACTOR WHO IS OCCUPYING THE STAGE IN BODY, AND SHOULD BE THE SOLE VISIBLE AGENT THROUGHOUT.

NOTE: BREAK TEXT.

L BEGINS. FACING AUDIENCE.

(L): (takes bow toward DC mirror, turns 180d CW and curtseys to UC mirror. speaks throughout with a hoarse and guttural voice, like cigarettes rolled with sandpaper.)

i’ve been living lost in this world for quite some time now, and i haven’t really seen an end to it, nor a way out of it… other than to break that cursed mirror clean in two. and now that you mention it, i don’t think i’ve really come across much of a beginning… i can’t quite remember… (commanding.) don’t you say? speak!

(.][.): (greets L. speaks throughout with fragile intonations, as if the act of speech is a disturbance in and of itself.)

it’s one big oblong pilgrimage to nowhere, if you ask me. hard to be certain of much of anything these days, but you can count on losing your ability to count them! the months that once moved in straight lines like some endless light start to circle about your head like vultures… you will carry me, with you, inside of you, won’t you? a stone… your last remaining companion, until you can no longer bear the burden of our likeness! you need me, just as much as i need you… all the way home, she told us, it was you, beside yourself. all along. observing, from a distance… if you screw up your eyes real tight…

(L): (heartfelt. squints and hops about the stage like a startled animal, unsure of where to look. returns to C, bewildered.)

(.][.): … you just might find a seat. they (motions to audience.), are testament to the journey as it is brought to bear, the cave and its unholy counterpart, where intestines unravel. there, beneath those twenty four ribs…

(L): (back at CS, claps hands in a gleeful stupor.) coulda sworn i owned ‘em, once… upon a time!

(.][.): (continues, with a playful smile to L.) … hush! this is the important part, so listen carefully. before you manage to speak, at such a young age that your tongue has not yet fallen ill, your torso begins to contort, as one and many, in a rather naughty ballet…

(L): (delighted at the use of the word ‘naughty’, blushes, and covers mouth.)

(.][.): (uninterrupted.) … pre-formed and practiced acutely, throughout and among the ruins of years past, present, and future. you shall view these happenings through my unforgiving lens… with the twisted scrutiny so typical of your type… with the awareness of death!

(L): (thumbs nose at mirror.) spill!

(.][.): (laughs, and continues.) i meant nothing by it! now if i may… this (clears throat and gestures to L.), is the mirage of the ideal, projected in a heated language of the senses, a language left to your translation, and your translation alone. absent a key to the chaos of touch, slowly but surely, the child discovers the eerily unrecognizable bars to its very own, personal, private, prison, with no warden, no rules, no religion… and that sentence just runs on and on, punctuation be damned! (aside.) in some uncertain way... you'll find yourself out in that orange desert, far beyond the county line, fifty miles south of such fallacious concepts as jurisdiction and law, lapping up your sweat like a parched bloodhound… in the sky… these constellations of relation without meaning… and by the third hour, you’ll start desperately praying for sleep to return to your side… like a lost toy... repose, that ruby faced angel, frantically scouring away at the real like a spot in the carpet… to make way for a derangement of the spirit.

(L) + (.][.): (silence.)

(Y): (inaudible, undecipherable, mangled… as wind. a transmission. around-noise.) let it be known.

(E): (should be read as one would read a sacred, yet profane, text… with distance and precision. while E is present, linguistic habit-reminders and colloquialisms of our first two characters should remain conspicuously absent.) a smiling messenger may appear… a man of many miles, bowing before your need. he may read to you from his scroll, in verse, to remind you of the lullabies of your youth, as his sandals dig into the coarse grain of the ground. you shall realize, then, that he is an apparition, and that he has come to your aid without once setting foot to soil. you have seen, and seen not. with this realization, you will arrive at the threshold of a blessed slumber, where paranoia abates like the last light of day into the horizon’s creased brow. the laughter and jeers from below your window will suddenly cease, and your fingers shall be severed at the joint. in the sound of his voice, you may find a path, burrowing deep into the sewers beneath the bastille, to the low-place, where fear and love embrace. they will beckon to you, for you, there, and promise to caress your skin in the ways you have always imagined, with the unmapped hand of a mindful lover. you may realize, then, that you have never been held before. you will hear them make this promise, and this is a promise kept, if you would meet such a love, at its precarious borders. just so, to be cradled in your warm bosom’s safekeeping.

(L): (shivers slightly, a disembodiment. nervously begins picking at skin on fingertips.) the way i see it, the moment you stop moving, time starts to tug at your ankles. that anxious thief of always, hard at work, drinking moonshine from the still of your swollen throat. swill, i swill, i swear i will! … to toil again, in the land of tomorrow… (to the left, the buzzing warm vibration… and to the right, the screams of those suffering in hell.)

(.][.): (more than happy to play along, tosses the ball back to L.) the clock, patient as ever, saw your intimate geography, the land of promise laid out inside you, the infant you buried alive, wasting away like a field of wheat beneath the

arid seasons of expectation and responsibility, where the ashes of language fall from the sky.

(L) + (.][.): (when two speak as one, a layering effect should be produced. this may be done by synchronizing tone, pitch, and time, with other players, offstage, or by way of audio recordings. as chorus of machines.) and in that trance, i heard a delicate voice summon a broken tone that was unknown to my ears, even in the earliest of my fevers. she admonished us.

(L): (assumes position of prayer. at actor’s discretion.)

(E): (taking on the namesake, a declaration.) your dreams reside in the angles of being. may you spread that house of venus wide and flat, where you shall lie with a giant scorpion. it will wound you in the night, leaving its stinger in your skin. you must act swiftly to remove its sharp organ, and suck the venom from that vulnerable hole, before it’s sour influence takes ahold of your body and mind. then, return the arachnid’s poison to it’s root. wear the stinger as a necklace, for it is the passe-partout. wait for five days, then reopen the caudal container. within its bulb, you shall find a ferment, an antidote to a fatal pestilence, the cloaked carrier of much sorrow and sickness about the land. pour this new liquid from the pendant into the soil, and by the end of the seventh day, the skies, once narrow, shall open up, and your wells will overflow with water. this flood shall furnish three harvests to mark the birth of a new time, and their bounty shall be shared, amongst all.

(L): (shakes head in disbelief, throws hands to ceiling.) well you’d best believe that i was as astonished as a herd of cattle at the face of it when i finally found out what was inside the big house!

(L) + (.][.): (whisper, suddenly aware of the sensation of being watched.)

you’ll hear plenty of them.

the voices, you mean?

(HERE, a short intermission should occur. actor moves to sit in audience, remains naked. length and contents of recess remain at actor’s discretion. there should be no other signs that there has been a break in the performance.)

(L): (resumes, colloquially. it is apparent that L. is much more relaxed, speaking without inhibition.) when you're out amongst the 'it is what it is' sittin' and stayin' ones, watchin' em stumble from the pub like ants from the colony at all hours of the day, kneeling in prayer and sayin' ten hail marys to the tune of ‘i ain't got a clue’. you see, the confusion went and took 'em over like two weeks without a single slice of bread to stop the bleeding…

(.][.): (skeptical.) you see, labor doesn’t pay in pathos…

(L): you almost want to hold 'em close, put a pair of socks on your hands, and sing ‘em a couple riotous songs about how they’ve got some kinda nerve! (laughs, banging on floor with hands.) drink! drink! drink! drink! (.][.): (blank.) common sense is only as common as the encounter of survival as necessity and the language used to contain that encounter.

which is to say, in short, pretty damned rare.

(L): there'll be people you meet along the way, crawlin’ here, there and back again on all fours like fork-tongued lizards, gasping souls who ain’t got a word in their dictionaries for the feeling of an empty stomach, not one. their icons will suffer for them. (spits.)

(.][.): (academically.) the split implying a separation of sorts, an incision.

(L): (continues, glances at UC mirror with a clenched jaw, pretends not to notice.) they're scared of possession, those amenable statues of stone…

(.][.): certainly meaning well in most circumstances, of course.

(L): (sputters, angrily.) … simply ain't had the godforsaken privilege of knowin’ the devil well enough to look ‘im right in the eye and refuse, outright! when you've walked down that line in august ‘til half past the witching hour, felt the flies and mosquitos 'round your head, noddin’ bacterial and beggin' you rather polite-like to join 'em in the swamp for supper, you ain't thinkin' bout who came first or how to frame up that picture just right. in fact, the door of your mind's about as wide open as a freshly slaughtered pig, and you're sure as hell bout ‘ta use every last part of it to keep you alive for as long as that summer air still makes your lips quiver.

(.][.): (mutters to no one in particular.)

(L): (chasing own tail.) the arrow is in your breath, and when they tie you to that post, they'll turn the bow around, and use your words against you. people have their desires…

(.][.): (reminds L.) in the moment!

(L): (suddenly, calm.)… and their reasons for keepin' on, but when it comes down to who's left and why, when the day is done, well, you only have yourself to answer to. and that's the sad truth of it all…

(.][.): if one were to put on the spectacles, it would become clear… (hesitates, self admonishment.) although i seem to have made one too many impressions, as it stands.

(L): … there's a certain kind of violence to the act of resistance, to the outburst of life, staggering about, babbling into a bottle, and all the while you’re knee deep in the

trough with your tongue caked in feed and faeces… a lot of folk out there don't wanna see, hear, feel, nonetheless speak openly about the matter with you and yours. they’ve already been told what they think about it, they already understand the comings and goings. they tell themselves that they already know your story, and beat you over the head with their vestal notions of who you are, and what you deserve.

(.][.): and all too often, when you try to be there, together, to sit down at that table with the elements in your hands, the markings of affliction, symbols carved in blood, undisguised on your palms… they’ll up and leave, sneering at you with a kind of disgust they only reserve for themselves, or worse, they'll string you right up for it. it's a certain kind of crime 'round these parts to unmask the decay, to raise the curtains on manipulation and pain… people like their bread and wine just the way it is. no need to tell 'em what's in it!

(L): (interjects, breathless, excited.) that's the beauty of these timeless politics, that is! sure enough, they'll slap a name and a number on your early corpse, condemn you for tryin' to do something with it, censor you when you speak about how they use it to keep you standing outside the gates of their ‘exclusive and splendid law’, and then they’ll kill you, right then and there, with the very words they oblige you to learn! wheezing and sick in your chemical bed! it's horrific! the gall! the impunity! we are still human, are we not?

(.][.): (with a concerned look on its face.) the state and its affairs… oh dear… you seem to be exhibiting symptoms… and when might ‘they’ happen to be?

(L): (defiantly, to mirror.) what would you know about death, anyways?

(L turns to face audience, showing back to UC mirror. a corridor.)

(L): (aside. hand cupped over mouth, moving as if to tell a secret.) as you may have noticed, i tend towards a wicked

and ruthless suspicion of faceless dignitaries and their countless marbled schemes…

(L) + (.][.): (synchronized.) … they came a’knocking and told you what you are, who you’re allowed to become, what your family is worth, and what you can and can’t do based on your signed, stamped, and sealed ‘legal’ classification before you had any sort of waking notion about what they were planning to do with all those designations! known to brand and sear backs with their terminology, they are! malpractice i tell you, malpractice! injected with their empty values and cultural antibiotics, prescription pills for obedience, outspokenness, and the maintenance of a mild mannered demeanor… and then, to finish off the yearly checkup, the cherry on top, this one… a rather probing analysis of the uncivilized behavior of your internal organs! and so, by the end of the surgical process, you sure as hell can’t be nothin’ else, or else you’re nothing at all! they have plenty doctors and officials to make sure of that… prepared to puncture the last bit of fleshy land left with a flagpole flying the faithful colors of the conqueror!

(L): (performs salute, clicks boots, and addresses audience, this time with the formality of a commanding officer.) rank and merit don’t just stick their necks out for any old run-of- the-mill partisan! you’d do well to uphold the order as it were, report rebels, spies, insurgents, terrorists, and guerillas, as well as any and all actions taken against the interior. keep your bunk made and your shirt tucked, and by all means be thankful for your life! if you have any wayward designs as to crossing the divine right of god and country, you’d best think again!

(L): (collapses to ground, exhausted.) i get winded just thinking about it! you may think they aren’t coming for you, not yet, that the blood on the streets isn’t yours…

(L) + (.][.): (words give way to low hum. dull, throbbing sound. players from beyond may build this wall. E speaks.)

(E): (severely.) you exclaim. it is far away. it is not here. not now. not us. as we breathe the toxic waste of industry. emergency stains our lungs. smouldering bodies in piles under the watchtower. they grow larger. still. masters of fire. masters of fate. to live and die in the shadow of automation. entire districts locked down and burning. education under military control. state authorized executions. a pattern. a history of enslavement. identify. examine. exterminate.

(L) + (.][.): (resume.) … soon enough, they'll be breaking down your door. you might be sharing a meal with friends and family, resting, playing… even working in the name of their society! nonetheless, they’ll sure as hell line you up against the wall like the rest, undiscerning, the muzzles of their rifles in your mouth, pistol butts in your chest. you can scream and piss yourself all you want, but that ain't gonna change a thing. it’ll be too late to protest.

(L): you’ll be lucky if you still have a name left to your name, nonetheless a home, food to eat, and water to drink… even luckier if they refrain from gunning you down like a rabbit in the middle of the road. instead, they’ll stick you in a work camp to count the bones as they emerge beneath your skin and the sores as they pepper your esophagus. not to mention the excrement, the flies, the beatings, and the mass graves.

(.][.): it's quite the equation. no easy solution to that one. (muttering, aside.) smear blood on the door.

(L): at best, the head authoriticians might only nail a couple numbers and an accusation to your breast. you’ll be tried in a kangaroo court, of course, on two counts. the same two counts, each and every time. conspiring against the state, traitor. conspiring with the state, heretic. you’d think they’d cancel each other out, but when’s the last time you saw someone argue with a guillotine? those brownshirts have been known to be real good at findin' reasons.

(.][.): especially when they’re working with their cassock’d brothers… or is that an outdated costume? anyways, you sniff out a suspicious trail or two of rhetoric and a rather iron-fisted taste for cleanliness, and you’re bound to find a couple copies of one good book or another…

(L): (baiting the line.) even if they let you keep your life…

(.][.): (hooked.) how much longer, really?

(L): you got somethin' they want

(.][.): information, a reputation, means

(L): they'll sit you down in that long hall, where you can't see nobody's faces

(.][.): but they sure as hell can see you

(L): two way mirrors like murderous radios

(.][.): (pained.) excuse me!

(L): (takes note of the offense. the game appears to end.) they'll torture you for all the answers you’ve got left in your pocket. and when you turn those pockets out, and show 'em real plain-like that there's nothing there, and there never was, they'll wring your neck like an infertile hen… with or without a warrant!

(.][.): at that point, it's all too late in the evening to play the fool. nobody’s taken the part, and there ain’t a single soul with an ounce of pity left, not a nickel to spare, no shelter to be taken, no empathy to be had. no way, no how, no left, no right left to live! the actors have long since chosen sides. the side of survival… reaction.

(L): (stumped. scratches chin, and begins to pace around the room.) let me give you a dry hint… each second to say is a second gone away… hmph… something of it...

(steps toward imaginary podium and dusts off suit jacket.) there's only one party to partake in, and you sure as hell aren't one of the few folks lucky enough to make a choice of living in ways, now are you? hiding in corners, accepting scraps, whimpering at the simplest displays of strength? it appears that i am the only one prepared to decide! (frenzy mounting, visible in eyes and audible in wavering of voice.) well, what will it be? to eat or to starve? to become an outlaw, or to remain within the walls? to kill or be killed? to judge or be judged? do you not want to be free? you must take your freedom from them! they are living in our homes, seducing your lovers, and feasting at your table! will you simply sit idly by, and watch, as your crops are razed, your livelihood stolen? exile or death i say! exile or death!

(.][.): (to self.) these questions just keep getting more and more foolish, now don’t they? at least they’re neatly packaged… i am rather bad at making decisions… but casting a ballot nowadays is like fishing for trout in a water fountain… well, i suppose i’ve been convinced! i do like the bit about eating, and i most certainly would prefer to be seated than to be sat on… those animals would ruin the tablecloth! … hm… we look so much alike, the candidate and i, come to think of it… not to mention the fact that we both speak and think in such a manner that, well, i am sure that no harm would come to me when the time comes to collect! my mother always used to say, we are safe in sameness. right she was, good old mom… (decided.) i’m sure they are guilty, i’m sure of it! my mind’s made up! (stumbles backwards, dreamily.) where i go, i shall go in comfort… such is the nature of being inside, where the air is always temperate, and there is a servant for every hand and foot in the ballroom! oh, i could dance! (clicks heels.) such delightful parties to be held, sleek metal airplanes to be flown high into the clouds, limousines in which to sip liqueur and herbs, gazing from the window upon the scene… i may never have to walk anywhere ever again! (L picks up mirror, and waltzes joyfully with it. they are pressed closely together, and for a moment, it appears as

though L sees something in its reflection that is uniquely repulsive. the audience only sees this engagement by way of actor’s facial, body, and spoken language. here, language shatters into sound, the mirror participates. actor should improvise a fitting way to dismantle the object.)

(NOW, actor turns and faces audience, broken mirror, in pieces, in hand. bleeding visibly.)

(L) + (.][.): (beyond the boundaries of warning.) the stage has been set, and your marrowless bones shall soon be swimming in the stock. they don't see you like you thought they would, like your mother once did, now do they? the jig of humanity is up, and laughter has become benign in the face of a much more sinister form of punishment…

(L): you'd better get the ridiculous idea that there's gonna be one last bacon and egg breakfast waitin' for you back in your empty cell out of your pennyweight skull, real quick like. you had a chance to ring the alarm, to wise up… and now they're simply gonna extinguish each candle, one by one, until the heavens weep and the land is enveloped, a thousand lights gone up in smoke… the body that once held your illusions, your hopes, your stories, torn from being. an orchestrated night against difference, executed by force, without a second thought.

(HERE, street lamps are extinguished. four voices should echo in space. tempestuous.)

ALL: you didn’t think you had much to lose when you had the immaculate conception of having, did you not? that wild hallucination of right, the passing fancy of purpose, of power, between your fingers… just so… where hope once took up fresh residency, in the eyes of a child, the womb of being has spilled over, a glass, emptying itself onto the soil, in the hands of the dead and dying… when it was convenient to see, you saw. when you were frightened by the heavy hand, you turned away in acceptance, in

endorsement. for it was not your blood, not your crime, not your time of dying.

A PRESCRIPTION IN THREE ACTS

CAST OF CHARACTERS (IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE)

audience (idea): a thick yellow balloon in waders. frequently barges in unannounced, shouting erratic figures as to the size and shape of many things, most of which, i am sure, are of significant concern and merit.

mirror (language): it depends on how familiar you are with the subject.

she / he (signifier): neither he nor she, she nor he. a series of displacements and reambiguations. although they appear as a severed couplet here (in hopes of not perilously over complicating things, and creating additional potentialities of and for mistranslation, beyond my already lacking pen), multiple actors may play these characters at once, on and off the stage, trading roles, while giving and taking dialogue and actions. here, these terms to be vehicles for code- switching. (whether or not this was, is, or will be successful as this document ages, i remain quite uncertain).

marionette (chiasm): (c) one side of a chiasm may shed light on the meaning of the other side or even the meaning of the centre when either is in doubt. (g) two halves of a chiasm separated by materials in between may sometimes indicate that the entire chiasm existed as a unit prior to the present writing.

poet (being): a topographic map composed of twine and texture. blind to the scene, offstage.

NOTES

on the application of anti-categorical solvents:

a redemptive and imaginative inquiry into and analysis of the pervasive abuse and devaluation of the ever-growing myriad iterations of language as protean, kinescent (becoming-movement) forms by systems of social and political oppression and their handlers... may yet insurrect the calcified ground upon which The English Language, as the painfully anemic phraseology of The Formal, The Professional, and ‘Respectable’ communication, rests, bloated, in its fortress. Capital E English, as a standardized, industrial relation, is controlled and regimented by the very institutions that retain power in the Act of Naming as the State of Knowing. those who continue to reinforce the static compartmentalization of colonial narratives (with language as proof, property, and passing), who profit off of (the) terms of speech, and their linguistic currency (as well as the occasions they are applied to and implied in…), would, in turn, see the birth of the political insurrectionist censored, and regions of radical instability, which threaten the neatness of its definitions, conquered.

‘Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its “general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.’

Michel Foucault, 1991.

SCENE.

AUDIENCE ENTERS SPACE. THERE ARE NO SEATS AND NO CONVENIENT PLACES TO STAND. DRESSES AND COATS LITTER THE FLOOR, MUST BE CAREFULLY SELECTED. CURTAINS OF DELICATE CREAM ATTEMPT TO COVER FOUR LARGE HOLES IN DRYWALL, AS FLOODLIGHTS STREAM THROUGH. HOLES SHOULD BE CREATED IN A STATE OF FRUSTRATION. IDENTICAL MIRRORS REST ON EITHER SIDE OF EACH OF THE FOUR WINDOWS. UPSTAGE, LEFT CORNER, A WEATHERED MAHOGANY DESK. SHOULD BE LEAKING FLUID, PREFERABLY MILK. BESIDE DESK, A COT RESTS ON THE FLOOR, WITHOUT SHEETS, STAINED BY SEVERAL ACTS OF DEVIANT CONSUMMATION. INCLUDE BLOOD, SPIT, SEMEN IN ITS BATH. DOWNSTAGE FROM THIS CONSTELLATION, A SMALL GAS STOVE. TO ITS RIGHT, A LONE WATER SPOUT INSTALLED IN THE WALL, LOW TO GROUND. CENTERSTAGE, A SOLITARY WOOD STAIRCASE, TREATED KINDLY. SEVERAL CONTORTED METAL STRUCTURES LITTER THE ROOM, DANCING AROUND STAIR. HELLBOUND, THEY WRITHE: BREATHING BEING, THE PAIN OF BEING LOVED.

(NOTE: A SMALL COMPARTMENT SHOULD BE MADE IN DRYWALL TO HOUSE MEMBERS OF CHORUS. IT SHOULD PROJECT INTO THE ROOM.)

THE FOLLOWING TO BE REPEATED UNTIL A STATE OF UTTER EXHAUSTION IS REACHED

ACT ONE: THE FAILURE OF LOGIC

however poorly she could claim to know of herself, her sense of dress could always be counted upon. she felt most comfortable in black and white, the oversimplification of feeling. when walking through alleys, at any given time of day, she could feel the eyes upon her thinly veiled skin, looking to peel her, back and away, into herself. she would give off appearances, sultry feelings that would emanate from her crotch, a dampness that spoke of approaching. and they came. all sorts: tall, thickly bound men, with their arms caressing the back of her loveseat, slender, blonde painters, with delicately layered hair, and a taste for arched backs. she felt them under her, above her, until she was estranged from any knowledge of where her body lay in relation to theirs. fire, then she released breath, from the furthest chambers of her being. here, stripped of her belongings, free from false appendages, she looked for permanence.

LONE SPOTLIGHT, HORIZONTAL FLOODLIGHTS ARE OFF. SHE IS SITTING AT THE DESK, CLOTHED IN A BLACK DRESS.. TEARING AT HER HAIR. PUNISHING HERSELF. SHE SCREAMS OUT FOR FORGIVENESS, BUT NO ONE WILL ANSWER. OUTSIDE OF SPOTLIGHT, HE IS SITTING ON THE BED, NUDE, WITH HIS BACK TO HER. HIS FACE IS SOLEMN.

MARIONETTE + POET: (as one.) and somehow, in the heaviness of those brief and uncharted moments (there were no numbers then, only water), she began to realize that her elemental sensibility was attached to the strings of a crude puppet, porous and poorly rendered, yet still able to crawl about on all fours and soil itself with relative ease. tuning in to frequencies most infrequent in the common spheres (far too high, far too low, far too vulgar, far too innocent, far too far, far too close, and most certainly not for the ears of civilized folk), she would play him, a chess piece on the mute table of her dreamscape. however, her smile slowly turned sour and electric, for as her impulses made up his material,

he began to clumsily regurgitate her emotions and words, a child spitting up the liquid of the living. her movement became his manner of speaking… they began to give one another to the world.

with place set, her wooden member would traverse the forking planes of their ruined past, this way and that, repeating itself and swaying like a bladder bathing in malt liquor (it simply could not understand the roots of her question, question, a subtle suggestion). while foraging in the patchwork coat she crafted for it, the puppet wept a dangerously stunted sensuality, a spruce severed at the hour of its trunk. as the years came and went (guests into the thankless dusk), her signal, mutated by an internal marriage of the angelic and the rectum (such is its saintly demeanor!), began to waver at the gates of their terrible union. at first, she was unsure of how to reflect on the immediacy of the three faithful acts of excretion (intestines often betray the present, tense). however, with the grotesque mirrors of time and place she taught herself to create with song and dance, the cynical, cyclical process of self-inflicted mimicry began.

SPOTLIGHT GOES OUT, FLOODLIGHTS BURST ON. SHE JUMPS UP FROM SITTING POSITION, STARTLED, AND ATTEMPTS TO CURL UP UNDER THE DESK. SHE IS HIDING HER FACE. HE CONTINUES TO SIT, SILENT. ON BED, BACK TURNED.

ENTER: a cast of FRIENDS. nude. can you believe it! here, of all places! their material sags.

SHE reluctantly crawls out from beneath the desk, does a short dance for them, spins twice, and rips off her dress theatrically.

FRIENDS, applauding and laughing uproariously, sit down, cross legged beside the bed. they begin to listen.

SHE moves to bed. HE remains motionless.

the sticky warmth between her legs as she straddled the bed tasted of corrosive religion, the bent metals of a gothic arch. she remarks upon it with the disassociated mind of becoming sex. these are the days, she knows, that she has no such name. she will not be allowed it, fiercely gagged and left, slumped over, in a grove of oak trees. the boughs descend in eversleep, to the slow rhythms of her pulse. they must be reaching out, to us, to me! it was not i, the one bleeding, she remembers thinking. the hair on my chest, genitals, shrug. my unwelcome guests. but what ugly paint, what ugly paint! in the house she has built for herself, far from here and her leaden flesh, detached mahogany stairs overlooking a precipice, at once shrouded and revealed. she would not have this gulf understood, the final sentence left unspoken through the executioner’s burlap shroud. a flat room, curtains in the breeze, a faint horizon line. march became matador. spread me, she whispers, for what sacred lack resides beyond my reach!

SHE is frenetic, reaching for bowls, matches, twine… they are worn on her hands, draped around her arms, mournful objects of many times past. suddenly, idle.

as SHE finishes this action, HE moves for the first time.

HE stands, and reaches for his clothes, neatly folded beside the bed. HE wears a naval sailors uniform, that of a low rank, a recent recruit.

after she has finished with him, she speaks a eulogy of leaving. i will not weep, for he lives, still! this sad hour’s serpentine embrace. cry out when it is over, whisper when it has begun again! his sinewy arms, rosaries draped over an indifferent headstone. she is surprised that he has not brought more with him, a devout servant to an order that demands he remain unburdened by such tchotchkes and false icons. he declares her toes new commandments. she

thinks of his as similar plagues. her leaning waist, as they brush shoulders, mimics his bent idea and she wishes that the saints of satiation would visit her, to cover her swollen body in wool blankets, and take her over the tawny mountains to the northeast, to see the ashes and oaks that revel in late autumn (why now? do we not touch? to be you, to be asleep, to be together. then?). then, she would be rid of his image (of this, and other things, i am, to a certain extent). a carriage filled with nightshade spice, my son, the lamb, this sacrifice is one of doubt, to receive and be received by all, but to see no longer. ragged oracle, grant peace to my impure stomach! settle this debt with your cavernous breath! whisper, refuge, here. what unknown decades of slumber, calendar months of peaceful naivete, where dreams hazard the spectre of awaking, are buried under such visible ribs! a fast of water and wine, a pilgrimage to becoming. there, seasoned lizards scale and stroke her steep gelatinous spine (the hole and the vibrating particle), a terminal plateau in the bleak houses of consumption and thought, where she has those self-sane visions of fire (a child is born).

INTERLUDE: each member of CHORUS should improvise a pattern of their choosing, as, collectively, they erupt into song.

ENTER: state of chaotic disharmony. continue as necessary.

SHE wraps her tired torso tightly in black leather as HE exits, stage left, tipping his cap to the ever faithful AUDIENCE.

such awaits the evening gown of the fishnetted widower. she wrestles her costume onto her torso, her arms steel hooks gifted by a lover she took in the hold of the last vessel, unlawfully taken into her bosom. she is a brutish voyeur. watch over me, my muscle bound sailor-brother, for i am sick, so on and so forth. just so, he carries on, dumping waterlogged bodies over the broken bow, for second

thought only comes if the first is not felt. as she re-envisions his compulsory obedience, another sparrow dies in her tarry throat, squealing final metamorphoses. what she has become, he has deposited inside of her, a piece of the wreckage, she clings to it, just so. to repeat the last word, my son, the lamb. but it is a false hope, i am afraid that i cannot bear your silent poison, she wants to whisper to him, but her chest is a red well of it, this saccharine dream, molasses of the mourning.

instead, she will say:

SHE bows at the waist, to light a gas lamp that rests beside her bed, holding it up to her face, rehearsing for her speech to him.

SHE: you shall not come home tonight, or any other night at all, for that matter. go live below my window, where i can see you, yet you may not touch my skin. there, and only there, you may announce your intentions. from desire’s weighted distance, we shall be together. at last. my thoughts and yours, darling. my thoughts and yours.

CHORUS begins clawing at walls. accompany this sound with a series of ‘damp whimpers’.

her charcoal observations are a poor replacement. at best, notes written by nervous, baby-faced understudies, childish wrenches thrown into the steaming machinery of his trivial power. he has failed to leave an indentation in her breathless bed, a sign of passing through, this particular port of entry, vascular damage.

SHE picks up a book with a smooth black cover from surface of desk.

SHE opens the book, and watches as its pages fall out. moving towards the stove, takes a metal lighter from her jacket and a cigarette from the case beside her bed. lights cigarette. smokes, continues thought.

the symbols she must decipher, engraved into her skin, a vector to the next tense, a well of feeling (one pretends to fancy oneself, as two pretend to fancy one another). still, she faintly cherishes bathing in his sacrosanct charity. each evening, he returns, solemnly dragging his face like a doll, a beggar before her milkless breast, and she, a priestess, expertly concealing her holy charms. fury, he approaches. amongst heaven spheres, a dripping carnivore in venus’ tenth house. she has no need for bread when she is sated by his wine. aching requirement, the fantasy of sound. pour me that ferment! from the grail of the weary soldier, laced with the playful powders of innocents and fools. together, resting just beyond the gates of law abiding reason... such silly creatures! who can afford passage during periods of revelation? let us drink each other in, a toast to what is outside, my humid thighs. i cannot see the difference between my hands and my ears, so i shall relinquish myself, wondering child, for my thought is in places.

SHE should pace around room, a frantic gazelle, moving about on the tips of her toes. repeating: ‘have you been here before?’ and ‘i must be mistaken, excuse me’ and ‘this wine is rather dry, you know’ and ‘you've had your turn!’ and ‘i hope i'm not getting in the way!’ and ‘where is the bathroom?’ and ‘you haven't by chance seen my shoes?’)

the chandeliers in the abandoned ballroom are bronze moons, dull and worthless. seen twenty years and she is saliva in my mouth. the tiles are a sweating, winding map of the gardens of passion that we waltz among, hip to hip, within our sheathed souls, and yet, we are each prepared to draw the knife to remain beside ourselves! i speak. do you remember when they used to beckon to us, as if they knew? she motions to me. i arrive, mouthing the word, yes. yes. yes. now i know, for i fear myself most of all.

great pain, oh great pain! a wax-faced mother laments through ever receding walls, but soon you will forget. remove yourself to a senseless state, frame the photograph

and... ah! she is surprised by failure as it deftly finds her insides, cracked lips contorted into a protest of hollow circles, from which the eight heads have leapt, a perfect diagram of inhuman proportion:

…

INTERLUDE: the following is to be intoned (in canon) until a cacophony of voices is reached by CHORUS.

i beg you step over my body

sorrow the event that refuses to end

still. (CHORUS moves to silence.) neither this, nor that. live to see first light, and you may yet learn to count such happenings in many different directions. i have brought you here to breathe sage and mint as they smoulder in chaos, cackling embers grasping at her heels, tempted into an poppied stupor by her azure nightgown, herbs of passion in the throes of stones. a carnival of lilies awakens the slumbering stream.

…

SHE collapses into a bed of ferns, placed under stair, centerstage. SHE should emote one part ‘the bewilderment of bumping into a taxi that begins to talk’ and three parts ‘the gladness of a honeyed cup of tea at the end of a long day’ at the sensation of their buoyant needles, supporting her back and neck with slight pinpricks, a touch that exclaims.

here, she listens to his soliloquy:

HE: i, still, am wondering whether or not i am lying more often than i can bear to admit. to lie would be to lie still. imagine, becoming that! the pawn encounters the process, and similar problems in relation… warden of jail and journey, hear my plea! a pleasant love, as such is its nature, is certainly perishable, and that of the inseverable bond, promised to your children to be without compare… well, it has never truly existed at all! so you would leave my side, create new endings, and have the gall to answer my every prayer, except for this unrelenting desire for the repose of death? saturn, you who would taxidermy one who has your lifeblood running through his veins, in your name i have forsaken water! i have forsaken truth! what say you now?

HE waits for the duration of a half rest, then continues. her tone is now inflected with a bitter and scornful edge.

SHE: in my stead, i leave three silver horses, manes tangled ecstatic who shall graze where each note is breathless, jazz emerging from juniper groves, a smoking essence cast up amongst the twisted ribs of its trunk. there, you shall walk free from worry. there, you shall find eternal shelter!

ACT TWO: THE MANY FACES OF SUGGESTION

TONGUE: language refuses to be taught. curiosity, the impetus.

NOSE: (snorts loudly.)

EYE: one big joke, isn't it! and seeing as i am attuned to such things as temperature and time…

NOSE: (presto agitato)

EYE: i cannot say that i am glad to behold such a scene ripe, piggish nostrils making a complete mess of my view! quick are the tricks of memory and forgetting my dear old friend the rather painful ways of seeming…

TONGUE: what an animal! he would shit the carpet if he had an ass to speak of however, thankful for the call to recess

(TONGUE speaks to audience.)

not for you, idiots! no sweet treats to occupy your tasteless skulls one organ to play or so you think! isolate, organize, identify tricks of lines and boxes

i am not concerned with the matter of the rest of things and thus i ask what is the matter of things that refuse to rest?

EYE: sounds like quite a lot of misinformation if you ask me going on like that about manners and thoughts can't make out much of a place for that kind of talk in a world like this the last time i ran into a thought escapes me although i'm sure it didn't amount to much well then! neither here nor there i would prefer not to discuss…

NOSE: (sniffles, as clear mucus begins to drip from its left nostril.)

EYE: well at least we know he's clean.

TONGUE: ah! i wouldn't be so sure! with all the propaganda and rhetoric floating around these days you're bound to catch a bout of something or other. no use in leaving the matter unexamined! we shall conduct a full and formal inquiry. the list of props is as follows:

two cassocks, black (for the both of us) two nametags, reading WILLIAMS and NOBODY (one for me one for him) ten piles of legal paper (to maintain our standing)

said paper should be covered with words that are either too small to read or too big to mean much of anything (preferably both) one sign to be hung around the neck of our suspect, reading OUTRIGHT HERETIC three pictures of the nasal cavity one pillory, to fit the crime a fancy certificate or two, acknowledging our outstanding fitness as executors of the pillars of law, right, and reason

EYE: some surgery!

TONGUE: (to EYE.) it has been done before. the trial itself being arbitrary but the important thing is to keep up appearances. the armies remain, the patriotic veneer polished to the point of perfection. the old war songs are sung…

EYE: being the insistence that it was all quite intentional. the empty intestines of a swan.

TONGUE: it is almost as if they have forgotten what they were punishing themselves for in the first place.

ACT THREE: I WAS MISTAKEN OR VIOLENCE BY OTHER MEANS

POET + MIRROR: (as one.) divining grey tomorrows... there, she meets her lover, artifice etched into limestone (embalmed as one. flesh and earth. a bronze energy), his fate apparent. she fixes herself atop the casket, containing what was before, and what is now in repose. a purple hand props itself up beside her. not hers, no matter. now. no matter. her slip is limp, her nipples alert. eyes at once open and closed, seeing what will come of westerly winds, hurling imprecise thunderbolts, the insult of faith in the throes of mortality.

SHE imagines aloud with bravado:

minor keys played by mockingbirds. how the storm gales deafen me!

LIGHTS malfunction and die momentarily, only to shudder back to life. salt falls to wounded stage. SHE yells abruptly, shakes herself, but cannot produce tears. STATE: your condition.

POET + MIRROR: (continue.) he refuses to beckon to her (or is it that he cannot?), and by the sea he was forty months absent. for each night of rest she wills herself to take, the fated twelve days of lashings. she wishes that she did not have to strike to herself, that someone else would come and punish her (they have no time for such playthings). for what crime? in what attire? in those precious minutes, they are together, poles of the earth connected at the core of its infernal being, a violet revolt. her axial intuition bringing to bear the artifice of seeing, and with it, being seen. she would prefer to devote her whole being to this communion, and to face it without such calming instruments. away with hands, legs, the pen, the paintings (tepid and still, these lakes, off feeling, sketch the gaping mouth)… her wrath direct in the

very destruction of her works. with each incision, a new topography, with each flood, a dispossessed nakedness.

MARIONETTE: (shrill whine, that of a drunk and dying table, being knuckled into kneeling by the second ochre cheeked act of a pain-giver.)

(for what crime?) (in what attire?) (at the cost of admission!). surrounded by thieves in an arid canyon, they poke and prod her parched yellow tongue with thorny sticks (a prescription in those days for the fatal disease of speech)… you avid witch hunters…

ENTER: smell of parchment burning. open wind, stage beckons.

i, nothing left to give! she moans slick oil, a sensual outpouring. the marionette struggles to its feet, drawing nine circles in the sand and standing in the tenth, there, summoned upon her shield. great arc, lawless body, recognize yourself! speak, and invoke the ever present light!

ACTIVATE: the metal sculptures surrounding staircase awaken. shaking their rusted legs, they begin to circle the stair, humming a baritone D. with each revolution, they spin double time.

GESTURE: fear as absence, fear in solitude. here, SHE may tear at curtains of window upstage. shreds of material, pieces of paper. MARIONETTE stands in front of mirror furthest from AUDIENCE, blank faced. director may emerge, SL/SR, decry said expression. actors + objects go on strike and VOICE: discontent. SHE grasps her hair by the fistful, her torso falling about her stomach, her lungs have been stolen.

ASYLUM: two ATTENDANTS (opposites) enter room through AUDIENCE, slowly wheeling a gurney. ATTENDANT LEFT hum harmony with sculptures ...

ATTENDANT RIGHT shout indiscriminate obscenities angrily. the gurney should squeak loudly as they pull it along. they hold her by the wrists (one in each hand), and strap her down. each press corresponding hand to her temples. SHE does not protest, leaving herself behind. her eyes are sorrowful. ATTENDANTS push her out of the room, through AUDIENCE.

MARIONETTE: know now that the pain you have inflicted will be born again inside your chest. you do not see bodies you stand upon! you, coward in your manicured palace, to close your eyes and kiss me would be two acts of shameful folly, o willfully blind one! (but at them I do look, and do not let myself be fooled, either by myself or by any other man) lay bare your weapons and discharge yourself from such false prisons as these! chains of your own making, in which you sit, bound, pleasing your own ear. lie naked with me, uncovered, and touch only to yourself. together, apart, we shall pass into stillness, subject to the troublesome pleasures of the senses. would this, then, become simple?

THERE the air shall be filled with silent speech.

WHERE gesture unbound may compose wandering symphonies of meaning.

CODA

a red fox / greets me / before / the door / of days even he / will not let me / forget / that life at once / alive / and lived / again

to perceive

as a child being among

books of leaves

labyrinths of redwood trees

such are the joys

of sight of sound of space

to love as you loved first your face a bouquet of roses bearing tears of bewilderment

these and other gifts i have brought for you

(to breathe as if each breath could falter in an instant)

mother remain beside me now

to feel the pull of a warm body in your arms the gentle caress of words spoken in silence

sing me the lullaby of life and living of death and dying

to laugh beside the burden of such things

simple as it was back then

the journey of becoming

again

suffer no more the mirrors turn you not i nobody turn exist to spin laughs round about to whisper aloud the madness of such things proof a stone passing are we not relics i cannot over left lift your to submit door to death? that cave of many shapes

where we must stairs take flight with haste breathe at once escape

where desire for the how the violence pendulum you of living hope resists waits past sense

six warm kisses a church bell becoming air the canal of glass gesture anima a voice my whole absent hand hollow there beneath your feet we thieves of found time bathe reflections under crystalline moons of our youth of our vanity through unmapped catacombs of fire we plummeted a portrait into a dreaming fever of perdition tracing the infinite line

vertical planes bodies bound at the waist choking on oil and salt nine circles overseen by weeping giants seventy lashes a punishment for blind sight our backs those barren canyons a reminder

the quarter place at earthen core where shame may show itself a blushing infant an echoing chasm of language

this nameless prison for and its cursed form it is fitting the low place and to be you the still descent to be asleep together adrift between thirty silver pieces frigid inferno upon your tongue and phosphorus sunrise a pounding furnace within your breast

behold this dark planet the rootless shadow of the spheres la porte de l’enfer six mouths of sin fallen angels a wide eclipse begging for fruit

THE VERTICAL CIRCLES

inshallah, love your mother. her lips dry licking two lacerations before the first days december bent like lonesome backs between the two protectorates; she looked into my face, her head covered.

my son, lost, in paris. my son, lost in america. my son, disemboweled in the catacombs of god’s country. my son, the lamb, and it’s bloated intestines. the mistake of execution. a hollow oak, costumed in noose-flowers, rotting beside these well loving words. tearing at the yellow corpse engrave now food to fester worms plate the jester in no such place. in no such place. we felt seven dead signs, for you could be one of mine, my child, the blessings of the living. you could be one of mine, my child, drawn from the book of the dead.

go now, go to your mother, and tell her of such things. of what could not be spoken before. it is too late! before! how beautiful is the now! she withheld hope. her bosom, a steep precipice. we lay in wait, many rooms. the mouth of saturn, the swallower of children. what nutriments could be carried, then, into the arid night? tense, our alert skin. well aware of what the winter held, well aware of what our hearts could not. returning a promise of safety. the gift of life, the unpromise. swing solemnly sodom, whistle the wind, summon satin visions, these frenzied murmurs, of salt, of soil, unsightly as they are! for we are being together, silver mouth, become my eyes, copper tongue, become my heart!

they listen as they creak and swoon, the blushing branches of fate, dance eternal! a calloused rope, a wooden chair. the harsh humors of her soul swim through the sephirot, prepared to take swift flight! into making. out of making. i saw her reach for me, the shadows of my face. inshallah, love your mother. to be aware of such things. inshallah, love your father. to be convinced they are true. a soft distance to see her beneath the tavern passing through any hole will do. she-moth of mortality railing against the receding lamp of

dusk her legs crossed, the dull embers of her face, as she weighs this heart… unsure of itself, leaden exile rhythms where things emerge from their frames she will unravel her garments turning burlap to velvet until there is nothing left but the peeling skin on her arms. hand me the bundle, actor of giving, soulful weaver, keeper of delicate afternoons. i shall care for his memory.

do not harm my child, harm me. do not take my child, take me. even if i am weary! even if i am unworthy!

the bare giving of one’s life, and the bare receiving.

may they that care for the sick feed on both ends. this cavern into which we retreat naked and howling nurse the lesions of my many lashes. lullabies sung into bowls moments while my arms remain mine, or among me? look, around! usher me in, away, the stand, away, the storm, away, here! how sudden, the illness. how arbitrary, our decision! to remain bound to such trials as these… what condition could possibly withstand the punishing blows of living? one that does not whisper life, itself look down my child in my arms there lies the open field gushing youthful exuberance into our soil. they bed her, captured her milk! penultimate collection of veins, draining into that chamber which contracts like a riotous drum… i could not find the source. i frantically searched her body. reason i pretend to find nonetheless i cried out to be her to the point of possession stolen fire bellow purple fists pushing back against breath i refuse to open air become still as she. i, a daydream. even the hours became fearful of my presence. in the company of a false flower vibrato that dripping honeysuckle trumpet i studied silently beside its ragged movements a beggar cloaked in the climes of the meadow. it died red spots in the heavy sun it died prune stalk in the smouldering rain of parts. i covered her with my shelter twelve bodies became centuries.

this hospice of the mind.

i awoke on the last morning to find myself over a mountain pass in the midst of a graveyard. fallow flesh and blood thick lies the low fog spheres of relation skin tight a healing film coarse backwards over roses to my feet limping a dagger in her yellow pit. i looked, there, for my daughters, for my sons, and i could not find their beds. i wished to check on them, once more, to see if they were asleep. each of the graves stared back, blocks of granite. nameless.

in my frustration, i struck the nearest stone, and it rung out dischord into the horizon vibrating as it struck the cooling ground. the sound pleased with me as it set. passing tenses echo across a solitary planet. who would dare interrupt silence but laughter? the things which we cannot hold. our chambered hands, the hung jury of our fingertips. i returned home, to caress pictures of many a birth, trace elements coupled with the illusive touch of her. what then could i contain against time? what then could time find to use against me? the salt of memory, the quarries within our stories told us turn your heads to what has passed and find that it has not.

the aural fragments reside neither here nor there, but in the passages between such spaces.

i looked, nowhere, for my daughters, for my sons, and i could not find their beds.

i wished to check on them, once more, to see if they were asleep. each of their lives stared back, blocks of granite. nameless.

of what music i hope to have made such small crescendos

110

X. ON DISCONTENTS

‘content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. it’s very tiny - very tiny, content.’ (willem de kooning)

i. discontents as caricatures necessarily composed of ‘detritus’... the wastes of what was… crumble, collapse under their own weight… the weight of translation, event exponents. (see shelley’s ‘ozymandias)

ii. discontents as necessarily paradoxical codification/decodification of the desiring act as ‘being in exile’ ("si je pouvais voir, o patrie!")… how do we speak of the space between events, the borders/boundaries of being together, being ‘here’? does this space ‘exist’? (the micro expressions of movement at once broken and breathing…)

iii. how do we draw information with the awareness that said discontents can and will be ‘absolved of their sin’ (become ‘content’)... as they are assimilated into digital and analog data-bases of ‘remembering’? (can discontent remember itself? archive itself?)

iv. discontent as a furtive ‘wink’ of information, energy… potential in its very kinesthetic unstatement, instability…

v. when information ‘settles’... and the ‘dust’ of its particles/particulars ‘clears’... discontents become ‘contented’ + colonize the false grounds upon which they ‘stand’ and ‘mean’, unmoving… (privatization of thought… colonization through interpretation…)

Y. ON THE HORIZON LINE

i. when and where does the subject stand/misunderstand the event and its visible/invisible horizon (on it, above it, below it, before it, after it… possible circumstances, and the ‘subject’s’ subsequent belief of, and in, circumstance, ‘being as’ and being convinced of... static locality/position as a series of stops... directions, ‘from’ one state 'to' the ‘next’... must be necessarily misconstrued)?

ii. does one’s experience of sense/nonsense 'have' to incorporate the process of 'naming' sensation (if not, can pain/pleasure occupy a different plane, as feeling becomes metamorphosis, the very movement of one’s notion of oneself… of being ‘in between’... what has 'from' become)? … the subject is dislocated (+ where does that point of dislocation locate itself?) from the body (in the act of viewing?), although still experiencing and processing (implied dissociation, asociality)... this, at once, the chaos of relation (when one is unable to relate/conversate with oneself…), and the paradox of the ‘nonexistent point’ (perhaps ‘molecule’ may be a more accurate term, throwing itself about, moving, creating heat, to maintain the structure of the cell…movement as, at once, death and life… can we say that such things ‘exist’, if they are so quick?)... a need for satiation that does not (now, did not) necessarily find itself in the subject's needs, wants, desires, drives (to live, to die, to fuck, to love, to leave, to eat, to sleep)… does that (volatile, yet vibrant) (varied, yet invariable?) molecular structure then immediately relate back to itself, and it’s inability to relate?

iii. in the act of stealing sense from nonsense...

iv. … the subject has stripped itself of its agency (socialized logic, economy), by its own agency (the irrational hand)… this (re)turn might imply a death (or folding over) of oneself into many, fragmented selves, by the last means of self agency, will, that the 'individual' self can identify as being uniquely of it’s own… suicide. conception of self as

individual (a deception... how could such a thing have ever existed?) requires one to have one’s back to the ‘event’ and its subsequent horizon… thus, the subject and its subsequent disillusion/dissolution, become the event and the horizon themselves… (an entanglement, in which, misunderstanding is critical… how else could one speak?) the 'subject' (if we can conceive of the term)... 'a part/apart', both of and from, said horizon, inextricable from it, yet drawn toward it… but the subject cannot draw it, nor be withdrawn from it…? (unless/until one finally drowns, exhausted by the waves… swimming toward the song of the siren… being unable to reach said point…?)

v. upon turning away, or attempting to do so (spinning, spinning, resistance to and rejection of 'the' event, 'the' self as 'entities'...) is it the horizon which ends, or is it the (... con/per/re/deception of... et al.) a viewer? ... this whirling locomotion (through the revolution of many selves)... moving, still... invisible to the eye, yet apparent to the nonsenses...

as if through a disconnected telephone… one hears the echo of one’s own voice, and obliquely moves toward oneself.

114

Z. ON AESTHETIC EDUCATION

Composition as inquiry into self... knowledge + (dis)harmony of the senses… the praxis of ‘Tasting’.
Benjamin’s bourgeois project of a(tune)-ing + Kierkegaard’s turn within the self, the at once becoming between the selves (past, present, ideal).
Kafka’s three figures past, present, future, being being pulled apart by its myriad iterations… the ‘terms and conditions’ of existence.
The function of physical necessity/excess of absence/presence as it relates to the ability/inability to imagine possibility. This is Kafka’s ‘gallery’.
What it means to be in a ‘listening position’, the orientation of the body in witnessing/participating in ‘event’. Sontag’s soft focus/hard focus, Weil’s ‘attention’.. What are we seeing, hearing, smelling, touching… what is seeing feeling hearing touching us? Where does one iteration of sense end and another begin? How are these lines drawn as politic?
Horizons of space-time + distance between selves as sound heard as a voice. A voicing, a chord, a melody, a song, an opera… so composes the city. An interlocutor between actions. This is Chekhov’s theatre… The voice of many thoughts travelling in and around the chambers of many bodies.... those screaming instruments…
The pores holes in the body at and through which information and data are received and expressed… at an atomic level the points of contact between being and other beings (ears, mouth, nose, fingertips… the body as cell, membran(c)e). Subsequently this information is processed, digested, excreted as nervous, digestive, etc… experience. (Such is life ‘after’ Hiroshima. Impossibly fast and brutally
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uncertain. The time disruption of nuclear reactivity leaving only the shadow of the weak-rational human instrument.)

Benjamin’s work of art in the age of as the supremely efficient body… the factory producing and reproducing the sentimental waste of industry, the icon stone of ideology made plastic, cartoon.
Capital as always at once eating itself and shitting itself out, the facsimile children of the constructed initial iteration of. Laborers wipe the asshole of the industrial body, whose bodies in turn are used as fuel. Goya’s Saturn, inverted familial relation.
The paradox occurring at the ‘imagined’ site of work in the body of capital. The worker, as such, is not considered to be living, or have ever been ‘alive’, constituted outside of the system of mechanical reproduction, having dreams, thoughts, feelings, sensations, that necessarily exist outside of the language of wage labor…
There are systems in place to placate these forms of deviant thought and behavior, otherwise known as the desire to live out one’s internal life, the life of dreams… necessarily noncategorical, chaotic, sensual, erotic... (which is acceptable only in accordance to the law of assimilation to life within the pre-existing social order).
Desire in relation to the material as capital. Ordered and used to withhold the means to life and thus mediate life itself… Thus the infinite is bound in and to the finite.
Desire as a perversion of self, as self inevitably emerges, even from the desire to destroy and mutilate oneself (to satiate the desire, to fill the need, etc.)... perversion as human experience meeting the social + its borders and struggling to liberate itself… the desire to death, as a birth into oneself. Can this be achieved through camp? In farce can one face oneself?
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The social repression of desire, emotion, that would outwardly disrespect the social contract and unbind the core values of society therein, preserves the order of the state.
Hierarchies of nation as forms of order that circle the monument of the social, attempting to preserve the stone statute of what it means to be human, the nationalistic commandments of life and the non-living… adherence to the iconographic ideal (what is to be desired) those that cannot or refuse to adhere are used as disposable labor by the mechanized state and become justification for genocide… the social and antisocial are established… the beautiful and the exiled. At the border, animal.
a(Forms) of order to exist as intelligence beyond sheer one and two dimensionality portraying existence as image and icon… in relation to the body.. In relation to the experience of the senses and the neurotic translation of knowledge existent outside of the established and dominant lexicon of language…. Nonsensical, composed of gibberish, thought in other organs. These a(form)s and their associative nebulae being between time, as their molecular makeup shifts and moves too quickly to become an established figure… this is the condition of being human… the pain of never knowing oneself, the self as duplicitous, never existing in one iteration long enough to be known… enough to despair a lifetime over…
(The janitor of the court, where does she live? In the body, where i must live. Is there room for her body there? My own? Why? labor attends to the house after the ruling has passed, into night. The bodies pile up like chairs. I must become smaller as the law bloats. The possibility of human life decimated by the decree against human life… becoming object, becoming strictly use.) The body too expanding and contracting… who may pass into society, citizenship? Why?
Much as social cues can be (mis)taken, so can bodily urges: the urge to defecate, the urge to itch, the urge to
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death. Urges and desire dislocated from the body as origin of sin… physiological responses to repression.

As what remains of the self, as in what remains of the self, as in what remain, itself. half life. Must one suppress the appetite? Must one withhold faith?
When desire is dislocated from the Selves in Time, it despairs this infinity of loss. When the potential for consumption is infinite, the finite is consumed by potential. Lust and gluttony become the self. St Augustine…
Simone Weil engages this through philosophical suicide and negation of the body (by way of Schopenhauer).. We are in debt to the immanence of living. Pray pray pray pray pray.
Ascent into the mountains of despair to sacrifice Isaac, there is the gallery. Once more, my son, the lamb (Kierkegaard).
In Kafka’s gallery, view of ‘true picture’, that is the relations of and between people and spaces… to become a key witness in one’s own trial. We may only glimpse (or believe we have glimpsed) this light, a better way of living… then we are returned to shadow… the overwhelming rule of law and the systems which enforce it.

K is neither devil nor god, neither Iago nor Oedipus, but rather harboring a fugitive. He is willing both to become (ex-social) and relinquish (social) himself in order to prove his innocence. K in relation to Arendt’s portrait of Eichmann…

In other words, he can only bring himself to kill a part of himself that was never his, and thus becomes himself in his dissent, excommunicating the poison religion of the state from his physical and psychological existence.

Echo and Narcissus - artifice as the echoing voice that leads one to oneself, the chambers of thought that refract brief light sources (fleeting, igniting and dying, light sources that ripple, that are displaced in each moment of becoming space, light sources that are sound, vibrant vibrations of heat molecules and movement)... bodies forever speaking themselves into existence, by way of silence, by way of screaming, by way of laughter, babbling…
To imply a being within god (Kierkegaard) is to imply a basic and nonexistent immateriality of being, as spirit that survives the death of the body… and this is precisely the problem. Thus, what survives the death of the body, the death of the self? Is this in fact the self? The essence of society?
In this trial, the trial of willing to become oneself, of the desire to inhabit oneself, to both delight and despair in the sensual life of the body, the will to life and the will to death are called in to questioning. (Marcuse) thus, futurity is the consequence of itself, that is the impossibility of becoming, itself.
Being within god as a question of faith in what is possible, a question of imagining beyond the considered possible, imagining a world beyond and outside of empire… while being contained in and by a vessel that is necessarily without god, without the ability to sustain itself by consuming itself on an infinite loop, (dis)metrically opposed to the system it must navigate, (dis)metrically opposed to the sustenance of faith, (dis)metrically halving itself over and over again… this is the half life of things where time acts as a corrosive force, as the continual decay of what remains of the self and body becomes the only constant… for we must take solace in the only guarantee, death and the ruination of the past (Benjamin’s Angelus Novus). Perhaps we have faith in this… that death resides within the body as a growing seed… the character of despair nurtures this death, and in the search for itself, grows into a tree. branches of the
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radiant senseless, screaming with life, screaming with death… heaving in the face of loss… the certainty of hell.

‘if you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? if we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.'

'nay, take my life and all; pardon not that: you take my house when you do take the prop that doth sustain my house; you take my life when you do take the means whereby i live.'

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
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122

OVERHEARD IN A COURTHOUSE

1: one might surmise that you are guilty.

2: as charged.

1: one might surmise that you are a liar.

2: would one consider a jester to be deceitful?

1: two might surmise that you are dead.

2: to this, i throw up my hands.

1: and i quote.

2: (recites.) why did you glance back? why did you hesitate for that moment? why did you bend your face caught with the flame of the upper earth, above my face? what was it that crossed my face with the light from yours and your glance? what was it you saw in my face? the light of your own face, the fire of your own presence?

1: and i quote.

2: it would appear… we, both, occupy that distant cave.

1: bound at the wrists by self interest. how narrow! how…

2: i felt the material grab me, fangs caught my skin. ragged now i am, as i appear, i dissolve, without much sound… a tired and dishonest solution.

1: when we tell our lovers what we believe they wish to hear.

2: there is not much to wish upon these days… such is life in the stockade!

1: (removed.) drinking our own sweat, piss, and blood… an ancient mixture… as it turns to a slow mud… the fates are spun… forever...

2: the elixir of youth. who would travel the world over for this!

1: greed does not come when called.

2: certain animals respond to the process of naming.

1: certain individuals, (whom i will refrain from naming), take a peculiar pleasure in proclaiming…

2: (interrupts.) ah, the vast unknown. a stopper, a cork, i pick at my meal with a dinner fork.

1: together, we salivate, when staring into the gape, the crevasse.

2: when we are gone, who will rule the land!

1: the concern of one whose cities bear his name. there is no question.

2: breaking and entering, with intention to maim… the list of accusations goes on! i stand, alone, these are the grounds for divorce… the sediment speaks, listen! as a solitary sin whistles over the dunes… there would be no trial. no need to speak. overturned with the passing of a seat. a burning warship, flung into the veil.

1: there, abandoned, lies the heretic. there is no need to drag it out, no need to get the public involved. bring yourself in, of your own volition, a dying fisherman skewered at the end of his own pole, and we will be saved much trouble.

2: seeing us naked, the end of our enclosure.

1: desire being inherently domestic, the leash of the text drags me right along.

2: enough of that then!

1: she knows of his ways, in the sense that they are both occupying the same skin.

2: i said enough!

1: (internal dialogue.) these infernal battles, taking sides within the mind... do they especially count?

2: to me they do, to me… yes! indeed. i am afraid that they might look at me differently. i certainly look at me differently.

1: what's the difference?

2: precisely the degree of indifference. it's in the way that we walk. the steps taken, left, right, remarked upon… as they are… unremarkable... one might notice certain parts out of place. a clenching of the cheeks…

1: (laughs.) carry on then…

2: well, you see, i would like it to be so that there is nothing to carry! no… that’s not right… a hole… a damp trench, filled with it, yet -

1: have you done much reading on the subject?

2: certain forms of examination, both between the covers and before. notice the subtle mouth, as it twitches upon the mention of her name, then refuse to be fed. no such spoon could be lifted! governance ground to an absolute glottal stop!

1: (connects.) the expressions, it lies within the expressions…

2: (spitting.) the undeniable fissure of consciousness. not to be controlled, not to be taken lightly! we too, take note of such things, that which we cannot say.

1: ah. is it that we are too weak?

2: weak! indeed. but not a weakness of will… perhaps… the weakness of worlds… for as they exist, they exorcise themselves of themselves, pores burning oil into the half-life, otan mi yimneh… one must not part another from the past without preparation.

1: the chemicals encircle us, leaving an indelible burn on the insides. we are trackers of our own. we hide and we hide… such terrible small games are these, these ruminants against the frost. one ought not to expect too much of life, these days. the arbitrary...

2: i do often debate, i must admit, whether i should begin to swallow my tail, to end the cycle of deceitful anecdotes, or to start from the head and work my way downward, rendering my body rightfully stupid! no... i should let them all in, to ravage what remains of my flesh, that ruined state.

1: one practiced in the craft of discipline, such as yourself, still feels the need to hire another?

2: i confess, that pleasure, for pleasure’s sake, passes the time well enough… i call, i respond, i call, i respond… but those mossy hours, neural networks that once spawned symbols, begin to spew nonsense. what comes after decay? moreover, what comes before? flagellation?

1: you’ve begun to develop a relationship with yourself, i fear, and a parasitic one at that!

2: i am overgrown. such is the relation between the crown and the sky. deceptive, at that, a foreground, a background, a foreclosure, a disclosure… suppose you are in a constant state of prevention, the divided run towards hell. seeking

shelter in the colorless light! oh, what shall we do! what shall we do next! what have i done before? none of it has worked… i have placed myself under siege, many times, in hopes of drawing myself out… each portrait older than the last… (despairing.) naught is mine! oh naught is mine!

1: consult the text!

2: there is not much novelty in the act of finishing, i'm afraid. days pass, wigs i have worn... flogging my memory like an olive branch. foolish promises... i have made too many, yet known so few. i wonder what they will think of me then, when they are close to death… my lovers, i mean. i was unable to please, to satisfy, to provide any sort of consolation against the inevitable! some prize i was... a product destined to be returned to the ground. not even plastic! unable to give enough, being everything all at once.

1: a fata morgana on the horizon.

2: i come in three different disguises, and leave on such uncertain terms as i once arrived. but which form of love speaks of certainty? a child may fit a square peg into the plaything, but joy remains relegated to the friction of the act itself…

1: speak clearly! is it a carnal fantasy which you move towards?

2: somewhat selfhood, the exponential negation. to be brought so close to reassurance, on the bow of the ship, that one’s back becomes the storm itself... boisterous and beaten back in the face of nothingness… i would cast myself, from myself, down, upon the rocks. becoming suspension… to lament eternally at the gates of the body…

1: the words which you pronounce, suggest mummification… (suddenly aroused.) to be embalmed precisely at the moment of death! a thousand impressions brought to bear in the ecstasy of the crucifixion!

2: a sort of fixation on that which moves, yes. a tireless splinter, encased in resin, yet teething on the very material which binds her! … trailing off one too many times… intersections of sharp angles. one seeks out the smooth stones beneath the waves… alleviation in the elongated, opaque… gestural sensation… the surface... yes, she paints amber oceans, each. only the refraction of light pertains to change. a limb moves through it into the unseen...

1: (mumbles unintelligibly.) 2: do i speak out of turn?

1: one speaks not of what is fit for notation.

2: my notebooks remain empty. i do not write, spare what is necessary.

1: a laughable statement! what is necessary?

2: (laughs.) yes! what is, is indeed…

1: (scoffs.) some self aggrandizing judge! let it be heard! through all the land! many in more austere garments than yours have put it upon themselves to decide who deserves to die…

2: i deserve to die! me, first and foremost! i am first in line to receive these portents! an omen of one’s disgust at oneself… a wheel’s agonizing rotation… again, and again, and again! (exhausted.) … i desire… i perish. let me die… let me all die.

1: give your confession to me, my son, and god shall absolve you of your weight.

2: does she charge by the hour?

1: one might surmise that you are guilty.

2: to this i throw up my hands.

1: other such gags have been tied off. weight. measure.

2: (choking.) it is a matter of frames of colorless light, the moments where the speech of one’s surroundings is compressed into square feet…

1: we test the water, to taste, to touch.

2: i once had a recurring fever dream, as a child… i would close my eyes, and encounter the container, a flashing outline… from which it’s offspring would emerge exponentially, breeding sameness, inextricably bound to the initial structure. the family continued to bulge, bacteria under the scope… until my heated visions began to enter the first frame…

1: these buildings hold onto themselves by repeating numerical signatures.

2: a door on its hinges, squealing like a stuck pig under the swinging blade of gravity. many formulae i have been taught to explain what i do not wish to.

1: a name for your condition… this much i have been withholding from you… if you are prepared to hear it…

2: an eclipse of myself, which i do not wish to discuss. what comes before my face, i am not concerned with.

1: ah! you should be! how else could such a stoic nose, such aqueous marble lids be sculpted? not some fate beyond history, i daresay?

2: (laughs.) you challenge me! for better, for better, i suspect that you would not be surprised if i severed my traits from myself? in an attempt to streamline the system, so to speak.

1: to feel, to think, to fool, to be fooled?

2: which game shall we play last? 1: whichever we failed to play first!

2: a girl in a nightgown, her hair mahogany obscured. at the windowpane. she would ask, what lies beyond the horizon?

1: she is lucky that she does not topple from the tower, to drown in filth!

2: you imply a vertical axis… to abandon worship for false prophecy… i would be glad to pass into such a sublime death. (salivating.) what low satisfaction!

1: sublime indeed… for your looks certainly cannot claim the right to beauty!

2: (drool drips down from the jaw.) i need not another voice of criticism… the sirens that fill my thoughts are more than enough.

1: upon the shore, upon the shore.

2: yet another fever, of faces. which resemble my own, none of which resemble my own. sketches of the grotesque, between the wall and my bedside… such large cities, bourne of incestuous gaze.

1: i look backwards…

2: yet another form of misdirection. i present to you the evidence: one locked doorknob, not to be dislodged, two, scratching at the walls, curious rats they are…

1: we rest in the water, to examine the floor.

2: a state of suspension, yes, as it once was, yet would deny. there are some places we have gone to, people we have become, that seem to escape us…

1: we would not have them at our table, no. the deceitful traveller and his wandering fingertips! he must love the mast, dammit!

2: often, one finds that a hand travels farther than it’s executive officer.

1: it must be put to death! a rogue agent, in our midst! high treason! to the gallows with you… all of you! (to no one in particular.) diplomats.

2: it is rather laughable, upon examination, how often our initial repulsion remains cloaked in transparent silks, as it wades into the lake…

1: the first time you came into my presence, i regarded you, a sun in no such orbit… you, held space, without a tether…

2: drifting further and further away from the mechanism… no station to be had, kept, or held… as a child, once, i behaved without noticing. these costumes brought me the night, in a wicker basket, where i lay in wait, to be touched, to be caressed… to play as one would act, in order to receive the lover’s reward.

1: (continues.) … you sat in silence, under the stoplight of my lungs, your skin an incubator, holding my organs aloft for all to see. none have lived in my throat since. none shall.

2: i, now, charon.

1: you, now, me.

2: wait your turn!

1: i am afraid this relationship has become… rather unprofessional. no more the lower being…

2: treat me as you would an infant.

1: no infant with such presence! in adoration i take my leave, a part, adieu! (laughs, blows kisses to the audience.)

2: oil, dense, atop the water.

1: we do not fit.

2: it is quite all right.

1: no time to cry out.

2: quite right… you are…

1: shortening your words.

2: without flavor, to be swallowed in kind.

1: i wonder, with each tasting, what resides in the mixture.

2: once, it was impossible to kiss, without exposing oneself to the weather.

1: i have yet to walk naked into the water.

2: perhaps it is because you have yet to be clothed.

1: oh, what to wear, what to wear! a paradox hung, a bird on a wire. such smooth execution! suppose we refuse the accoutrements?

2: one as god’s instrument, practices in vain.

1: no end state for this soul, constant reckoning… acting as a receiver for raw rhetoric becomes rather exhausting. (listening.) hark!

2: (purrs.) one must find ways to play in different enclosures.

1: what if they found out? suppose someone told, and you were exposed… think of the backlash! your mother, father,

your brother… many directions for laughter, there are, think of your image!

2: i move too quickly to be captured, bottled, sold as a fragrance, the fleeing scent of a lover’s hair beneath the wind… reside, closer to me, yet at a distance. for as you come closer, you appear much larger than before.

1: some sort of scare tactic it is… the approach, the exchange... do you charge or retreat, upon admission of faith?

2: the borders of the battlefield seem to be obscured. there is no reason to kill, but that itself is the very reason one must kill… oneself, that is!

1: you seem to waver on the cusp of the act.

2: inside my stomach, you may find, many deaths. (remarks.) a cancerous joke!

1: i can see it now… they bring bundles of food, spiced with their distended sympathies... you invite someone in, and they start furiously rummaging about, as if they’d lost something of their own amidst your piles of papers.

2: adoration often comes with, and from, the desire to consume.

1: thusly, i find myself often attracted to various cuts of meat… as they hang in shop windows.

2: public execution! we would travel many thousands of miles to attend a true spectacle, would we not?

1: and pay a fortune, at that! (mimics excited toddler.) again, again, again! (claps with delight.) shoving treats into my wet mouth, while tricks are done for me! what season, what solace!

2: (as a good sport.) place your bets here! place your bets! tragic accidents, public humiliation, indecent exposure, scandalous behavior! we cannot wait to get our hands on what they represent to us.

1: i assure you, i meant no harm… i came only to see myself.

2: when all that can be torn down has been ripped from the rafters…

1: the curtains rise, and voila! we are left to reconcile all this scampering about, the physical depreciation…

2: for what it's worth, we are rather low these days… what do they call them? ‘useless eaters’? or is it ‘bottom feeders’?

1: either way, we’re sure to be carrying something that isn’t ours.

2: well that would explain the vomiting spells! my oh my, your methods are unusually effective! i can hardly bear the look of you!

1: i move about on my toes, in order to remain hidden.

2: so shy, skulking about in the shadows! reveal yourself!

1: i am afraid that you might not like the look of my face… despise it even. not to mention my unwieldy skeleton… i have corners! the horror of jagged angles!

2: i did not expect softness, nor did i desire kindness.

1: it was my mistake, to approach with affection. i should have arrived with indifference.

2: the beloved desires not, to be noticed.

1: do not look at me.

2: i hear your voice, but other movements resound as well! such sweet syllables… singing the song of your skin.

1: close your eyes!

2: i have not yet opened them. prepare your presentation.

1: these, and other gifts, i have brought for you.

2: (aside.) the dowry must include a leash.

1: i shall relay the message.

2: (making conversation.) find yourself in between often, do you?

1: to be interrupted, preferably amidst bodies.

2: dead or alive?

1: the warrant simply provides that we inspect the house.

2: for clues then… ah, a mystery!

1: here, it comes…

2: so you’ve solved it then. well, that was quick. propose another game, before our contract slits its own throat.

1: at least, then, we might lay hands on one another.

2: i don’t suppose you intend to cuddle with me now, do you.

1: i tried playing nice. the whole operation was rather ‘relegated to the surface’.

2: i would much prefer you alter my outsides than dig away at my innards.

1: but, you see, that’s where all the sweetmeats lie… such delicious bits… your stuffing would taste quite nice served in a broiled cavity… i tried my hand at cooking for quite some time, but i found myself much more adept at eating, you see… i am not much for looking these days, rather dissecting… small bugs, insects… palatable in the eye, platable for the tongue… have you ever been eaten? the intentions of others… who knows what they want from you… it is not friendship… just one bite… i shall take my portion… my fair share...

2: (shocked.) get away from me! you… you… frenzied animal! we have rules... regulations... parameters! keep your distance! have you no decency? i’ll have you court martialed!

1: my instinct, first… to feed… before i am fed.

2: (pale. backing away, towards R wall.) enough courtship! i’ll call the police! the military! the fire department! i’ll write the governor! they’ll all be after you, just you see!

1: i am tired of seeing… tired of sleeping… we shall be together… at last.

(1 steps out from the shadows.)

A CONVERSATION BEST HAD IN BED

1: i know that i am foolish.

2: for what?

1: for loving of course!

2: how does one pronounce such a sound?

1: (contorts mouth into a grotesque snarl, then moans loudly.)

2: what a performance!

1: (takes a bow.) and that, is how it’s done, ladies and gentlemen.

2: you certainly are a crowd pleaser.

1: i’d do anything for them. (motions to audience dramatically, bows once more.) my life, my blood… my cup overfloweth.

2: stealing kisses again?

1: (sarcasm.) i’ve been caught! alas! another punishment, i presume? the wheel? the stocks?

2: many simple machines exist to discipline.

1: spin me! spin me! whee! what a joyride.

2: (suddenly morose.) one ought to hope for a swift ending. what once was in the throat, emerges, a wounded bird… she stifles her cry, as her tongue is taken for trophy…

1: (comforting.) you’ve yet to find work to suit your disposition is all! perhaps a jailer? or a pallbearer?

2: you know damn well that pallbearers don’t get paid a shiny penny… besides, i’ve been a prisoner for far too long. i wouldn’t know how to play the part properly.

1: we can only hurt ourselves.

2: that's the ticket! if only someone would throw a meal or two our way…

1: if only! i can see it now… life expanding by the seat of our flatulent pants… oh how we could pack it in! juicy organs, covered in their drippings, sordid sweetmeats, dusted with powdered sugar, and the stuffing! oh the stuffing!

2: (salivating.) our hands wrapped around a cow heart, or better yet, a chicken liver… many delicacies selected by the butcher, only the most precious, tender cuts, moist in our mouths…

1: (suddenly self aware.) quick! it is dying! something to tide us over.

(1 + 2 pick up a fistful of dirt, and shove the grit into their waiting throats, gorging themselves with sand.)

2: i can feel a whole desert awake inside me.

1: it shall pass.

2: (groans loudly.) i don’t know if i can outlast it this time!

1: come, stand beside me. we are among them.

2: who? 1: them! 2: when? 1: here! 2: now?

1: at dinnertime. or was it lunch? all i know is that it's time to eat. and last time i checked, you haven’t worked a day in your sorry, miserable life. no wonder there’s no food on the table! another missed appointment!

2: (looking down, sorrowful.) no one taught me how to use my hands.

1: what, you never learned to sow your seed yourself? don’t you have any interest in self preservation? survival? masturbation?

2: i don’t know anymore.

1: put her to work! it’ll be the factory line for you! what is in it, we’ll never know! rows, and rows, and rows, all marching right along… you’ll have a hand in it, undoubtedly, and you’ll be quite lucky if you get to keep the other!

2: oh we have fought, often enough to know better.

1: (ignores this slight.) how does it feel, when you are walking, say, on a crowded street in july… the pavement is sweating you out, and you’re unable to keep your eyes from wandering. each passersby who passes by, you reach out to them, your eyes speaking help. they notice your pain in moments, only to turn away. again, and again, and again.

2: don’t remind me! don’t remind me!

1: you remember to do the things you were told. to eat, to sleep, to keep yourself up. but instead, you choose to forget. months where only water passes your lips, like a muffled secret. you grow withdrawn, keeping away from windows. you beg to be broken into, to be ravaged, a market in the evening hours. you are at a close.

2: my skin, then, began to fall off in patches… my teeth, blackened pools. i thought it had begun… waiting for hours

and hours on end, at the windowsill, waiting for the sky to open up! take me. take me where i stand! for i am nothing!

1: i will not.

2: when i reveal to you my expanse, laid bare, the hidden child… you will laugh, and be reminded of the days you spent, observing me and my poor reason, my foolish movements… the hate that was borne inside you, your dormant pregnancy. tell me now, and end this guessing game! i am beyond consoling, beyond oblique reassurance.

1: i will not.

2: to be met with silence.

1: i answered the door, and no one was there. i thought it strange, for the briefest of seconds, then closed the gate. just to be sure. back inside the house, a queer suspicion arose inside my chest, expanding like a balloon of whispers. i began to check the locks, draw the curtains… as night grew nearer, my terror crested like a wave of white phosphorous. i knew i was being watched, that he was waiting for me… to emerge.

2: this is why we keep such things inside! come closer. nearer to me. we shall fight him off together!

(1 + 2 stand back to back, center stage, trembling.)

1: i can’t shake the feeling that we look ridiculous in these costumes.

2: but we aren’t wearing anything at all!

1: exactly.

(a rumbling noise can be heard, offstage. then a scream. a mother who has lost her child.)

2: what was that!

1: morning has come. one of us must take a rest, or we shall both nod off, and become rather vulnerable.

(two scatter, bump heads, collapse into a heap, jump back up, cross paths, and hurry off… opposite exits.)

142

MONOLOGUE FOR A PUBLIC BATHROOM

1: it must be horrible to be an astronaut… to have to attempt to control yourself without gravity…

2: one short release, into the endless night. the tether… it is time, isn’t it?

1: shall we inform them? our partners, that is. the few, the many. no more than...

2: this job requires but five fingers. prometheus, alone.

1: all the better. it complicates things much less. otherwise, you’d worry about a botched job, an incision out of place… if you want things done properly...

2: you simply loosen your grip… it’s like falling from any poor ladder. one ought not to climb so high in the first place, to get one’s hopes up.

1: i would look for a damp hole instead… blind and warm, to collapse into… age me quickly, and be done with it!

2: it would surprise me if we could find the stomach in the first place… head, shoulders, knees, and toes… something's missing!

1: (trembling.) i’ve never been very good with heights...

2: (chuckles condescendingly.) hold your breath! you might just float away.

1: ha! each encounter more disappointing than the next… do you think it's a question of novelty? i could have sworn this tale told before… twice, three times over!

2: that, and an inability to act! the cast is quite inhibiting. they tend to speak in absolutes, and stumble at the most

inopportune moments… quite a rag tag bunch, they are. children, all.

1: you’re still just as terrified as you were when you arrived, aren’t you?

2: (statuesque.) i must insist that i cannot insist upon much at all.

1: ah, the aggressive disbelief. the cause worth fighting for! even the pantheon would be unable to stand without its pillars! of minor metals, at that...

2: once, i lay as loudly with my arms, as you do with your mouth… long ago… forbidden icons!

1: not much left keeping you on the rickety rungs, now, is there?

2: each time someone calls, i laugh to myself, curling my toes… ever so slightly… come to think of it, i cannot remember the last time i heard laughter… became it... they come and go so quickly! there almost isn’t a spare moment sideways to glance…

1: i miss them. we miss them, don’t we? it has been hard to pretend in such crowded solitudes.

2: perhaps we knew all along! the naivete, the presumption, that somehow, somewhere, someone would stay… a small, invisible comfort. a foolish comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. the illusion has become harder and harder to maintain… the aging face… is a screaming one at that!

1: it would appear that we are both small and invisible, but, try as i might, i simply cannot find the couch! a short rest… just a short rest… a brief lullaby… (souring.) some respite!

2: the worst part… sitting down, sleeping… movement disbarred… that’s when the temptation is the strongest…. it

is almost as if our bodies are calling to us, from a state of waning consciousness… out at sea, the whisper coming in waves… to the shoreline… the siren’s call… i can hear it now… beckoning…

1: still, we crawl.

2: this must be why we are never seen! so low to the ground...

1: i have no desire to meet the sun.

2: oh, no. not a good friend to have. not at all! almost certain to always look you right square in the eye and give it to you right then and there! ... all the things you already knew but would rather not have spoken in your presence… (scoffs.) truth be told!

1: that seems to be what we are all right! only useful to point out our very uselessness.

2: my body, a house… begging to be possessed… to be owned… to be known…

1: (annoyed.) i’m standing right here! hm… maybe they would do it for us. just a little anaesthetic… to be held close, while we are letting go. perhaps i would make an exception… for the short bite of the needle… nothing else. inside of me…

2: at least for a moment, let us examine our wares, the state of it all… step back, away from me. where memories reside.

1: (frantically.) it is empty… the archives… ransacked! we have none! (settling.) perhaps someone will come calling with a box of them, one day… i wonder what form they will take… pictures, postcards, paintings…

2: what is bothered when we bother to sit down and have a conversation together…?

1: we cannot keep them… from melting in our hands.

2: like waking from a long dream… a garden path covered with snow. take off your gloves… taste with your fingertips. being of the next life… inform the next of kin… so on and so forth.

1: i hope we have been good. that somehow, we will know just when and where to place our boots… when it comes... i hope i have not troubled another soul… disturbed her grave… sometimes, my thoughts… i am not sure if i have killed myself, and myself alone… or, if in killing myself, i have simply killed the people i love the most.

2: do not let them touch me. i am sick. do not let them play with me, i am perverse. do not attempt to love me, for i am unlovable.

1: stay away! (cowers, covering eyes.) don’t look at my face!

2: i shall close my eyes, in order to see you in the light. in order to see you as you are.

1: well, there i was, i was, was i not! am and am no longer! i could not possibly imply or identify a sort of progression in your maths, but to and fro, there we go, one plus two plus me plus you... i suppose you must take their word for it. i prefer small numbers and big blankets. odds don’t favor horses, nonetheless human beings! especially on winter mornings such as these.

2: it is becoming more and more difficult see where we are located in all of this.

1: that is the point! exactly! we are undercover.

2: no, no, you see, there is no point in the map. perhaps we’ve missed a turn or two?

1: are you in the map, or on it?

2: don’t question my direction!

1: so we are lost?

2: it would appear. (points abstractly.) but look, i can see where we used to live! such shells litter the ground.

1: where else could we possibly be further from now? we have taken the old embattlements with us! you never know when another skirmish could pick up… at any moment! that’s why i prefer the company of trees… ha!

2: we cannot possibly comprehend what happens to a ship when it sails beyond the horizon.

1: it becomes three ships. it's just that only one can be made sense of...

2: to pursue each corner of the compass rose, beyond the world from whence it came.

1: precisely, detective! a body dispersed… wishful thinking, wouldn’t you say?

2: i did. i’d rather speak to the wind!

1: (hurt.) well, i myself find the whole concept bunk, and completely ridiculous at that! besides, who wouldn’t want to return home every once in awhile? i find myself staring at the same objects over and over again, especially this ragged old sack right here! (points to chest.) it is almost unavoidable… each time i examine it, i find another wretched screw out of place… a stray mark… an obsessive painter, see.

2: the last thing i’d like to do is go back. when it's all said and done, when i have sat under many a tree, without water, without food, for as long as i can bear... dying under

a fig would be quite… the shade, cool against my breast… watching the constellations trace their usual curves… i would like to bring myself as close to the brink as i possibly can, so i won’t be as frightened when the time comes for me… it will be a calm breath… out.

1: it is the shore of some expanse of ocean… i cannot remember it’s name.

2: so many of our lovers have floated in salt.

1: there was nothing more that i enjoyed… than the feeling of being wrenched from function… the noise carried me, there… emotions became blinking lights in a dark room… unaffected, i… from the storm, violently tossed onto the sand… i spun, in sound.

2: we are too terrified to take medicines these days… the side effects alone… enough to make you wish you’d taken more than enough!

1: scouring the shelves for silence… i could find none.

2: i need a cigarette.

1: (muttering.) i often wonder how much you need me!

2: in passing, a fancy.

1: (mimicking.) welcome! welcome to our home! come in, come in. please, take off your shoes at the door… there, there, that’ll do. we wouldn’t want you tracking anything in, now, would we?

2: (sarcastically.) i can think of quite a few unwanted things i’d be ‘tracking’ in with my sagging ass, some of which, i’m certain, are highly contagious.

1: (concerned.) keep your distance! insurance is hard to come by when disease is concerned… i will take all

necessary precautions. the last thing we need is an epidemic! think of the payments… and there are only two of us!

2: an efficient one at that. bankrupt and on our deathbeds… what a way to end the call! besides, i’ve had my eye on the ground for quite some time now. it’s no matter, no matter at all for me! just the way i like it… (aside.) did you know that you can identify an animal by its stool?

1: (playfully.) where does a bear usually sit?

2: closest to the door.

1: a whole forest of depravity! i shall remain on the outskirts, peering in through the undergrowth… that’s a good enough view for me!

2: ah, but you’re one of us! you must travel on, inward, with me... i insist… we shall welcome you with open arms… besides, there's nothing quite like being well received.

1: i prefer the window to the aisle. you never know what might be waiting on the wing.

2: on, in, beyond, you can’t win! to be stepped on, or to be stepped over?

1: either way, you’re on the floor.

2: (laughs heartily.) that’s why i quit drinking, you see… you wake up the next morning, red faced, and stapled to the ceiling! everything goes up and over, and soon enough, you’re flailing about in the current like an ordinary seaman! toothbrush and all!

1: (mumbles.) much better to be ordinary than to issue the ordinance…

2: (assumes the position.) by the king’s english! what say you? open the latrines!

1: or do you mean the english king? how do i say i?

2: there’s only one king, you see? that's why it's so effective. just you, me, and the royal we. purple welts all around. some might say the bruises are a badge of honor!

1: (put off.) a stupid joke. you’ll make sure to give him my regards, now, won’t you? some colors do not fade…

2: to victory! in the name of the crown! lay waste to heretics and savages, the crusade must go on! all bowel movements must come to a halt, of course. it’s a simple manner of respect due to the church… would you prefer to pay in coins, confessions… or perhaps you enjoy more devious means?

1: i simply cannot wait for him to declare my freedom… either that, or to hand me a laxative. or is that what confession accomplishes? if so, sign me up!

2: someone simply must decide what is too little, and what is too much… and who is on either side of the dollar. he has instituted taxation upon language and liquor alike for a reason… you simply can’t have both!

1: i suppose you know when you’re picking it out of your teeth, now don’t you? ... there’s as much, if any, to jam in your gullet in the first place. an expression, an entree…

2: the empire doth provide. toast and spread to your liking! a kind word here or there, to assure you that you’re in the right, just when you began to think otherwise… and off you go! back to work!

1: and juliet is the sun! (takes piece of toast, and greedily butters the face, prepares to devour… before noticing.) ah, wait… you’ve been here all along, haven’t you?

2: proudly waving the flag of the new republic! or do you not like shakespeare? (gasps.) or do you not like toast!

1: (looks intently at the slice of bread, then consumes it in a single bite. with mouth full, speaks.) plenty of time for romance in the high court, isn’t there?

2: those afforded certain privileges by the state often have a spare hour or two to anguish over the petty crimes of passion… occasionally, we swallow…

1: once you have eaten, then you may speak. (swallows.) much better. although i am certain to experience a fit or two somewhere down the line…

2: i am well known for making syntactical errors before breakfast… (to self.) and profaning the cross when faced with a particularly fierce bout of hemorrhoids!

1: you are well known for many things… unsavory things… your waking hours spent tinkering with distant war games…

2: i prefer my sugar with tea, if that’s what you mean! it’s your turn!

1: throw them both overboard!

2: more high treason… you gladly take what spare bits you are given, then complain about them! spoiled steak, spoiled nation…

1: i would rather be mute.

2: (removing the disguise.) i cannot play this part much longer, it is getting quite exhausting. spies… agents of the state… against the state… so many damned crimes! burn it all! burn it all!

1: balancing on the edge of yourself… well done! it is not you. unfortunately, you’ve made quite a scene. now it is

time to be punished. relax, lie back. i shall shave your head for you.

2: like those before me.

1: yes, yes indeed. it is rather tiresome to invoke the capital letter.

2: staking claims! ah! whereas i barely have the wherewithal to maintain my own state of being! in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, where there is no court to appeal to, one looks to the end.

1: it is not shameful to admit one’s incapacity, one’s filthy position, one’s lack… (covers mouth as if to whisper.) or even one’s indigestion! nor is it necessarily shameless…

2: we are pacing, back and forth, somewhere in between the two cities… no man’s land. the roads are long and winding, filled with checkpoints… one might see one’s lover off in the distance… heat rising from the cracked earth…

1: it all sounds so disrespectful! a land filled with women! psh! tattooed!

2: in the astute garden beyond man as we are inclined to know him (giggles, continues.) and his designs on power, monopoly, mating… perhaps we should find a process… where one looks not to the end of things, nor to conquering the urges of the moment, but instead to the reverberations of action… at the movement and its subsequent undulations, as they relate to the other instruments in the symphonic arrangement! one ought not to play music in a vacuum, nor declare reason in one, either… (gesturing, intones..) vibratory thought...

1: (appalled.) have you no decency?

2: one may observe some sort of law or rule… but not for long. we notice, we react, we forget. such is the sensation of irritation… discomfort.

1: (itches back of neck.) i might serve to abolish as many rules as i possibly can!

2: a sea change of heart! i can see... my lover waving, to me!... from where i sit… the lighthouse i have known… oh, the fates, oh, the stars! ten years gone, and odysseus has finally returned to my side!

1: it has become quite apparent… a ghost in my bedroom… a declarative statement… that if will ought to be imposed, one might depose oneself.

2: a strange way of putting it… (scratches head.) but i believe some sense has been made…

1: a disbarring of sense! locking oneself out of the courtroom! one may walk away from the gates of the law if one wishes! spending one’s whole life travelling through, terrified of the echoing footsteps behind her…

2: suppose it was someone following you?

1: suppose it was me following myself! the judge, the jury, the plaintiff and the defendant… all occupying one seat!

2: j’accuse! it must be a crowded case if it has come to that… sounds quite uncomfortable. it is rather hard to shit and swallow at the same time!

1: i cannot steal, i cannot be violent, i cannot move!

2: the incarceration of the organs… the prison, as a series of islands…

1: all of which are inhabited by jailers of the most vicious uniformity! (stops self.) i am over exaggerating… alas.

2: (remarks.) it is pointless to speak dispassionately of all things… you, at once, predator and prey… to your own predisposition.

1: (embarassed.) pointless i am, pointless i was, pointless i will become. remind me, if i ever claim to have any sense of direction… give me a swift kick in the pants.

2: lord only knows what will reside in those pants next time we see one another!

1: ha! this much is true. my indecision… and subsequent fear of indecision… get the best of me. poking holes in myself and the like… it is far too enjoyable… i have begun to draw curves instead of lines… many processes i have disavowed since the first failure of knowing.

2: we shall try them once, try them twice, and try them again, a third time! a severity of circumstances, met with the absence of a roundabout way around. from point a to point b, from point a to point c… from which distance can one best examine oneself?

1: we sit down to take the test. it is clearly demarcated as a test. one is the test taker, another is the overseer. who is sitting and who is standing?

2: regardless, i would enjoy sitting down, at least once…

1: it must be a nice feeling… like the pole ends of a magnet mocking one another…

2: at the exact hour of enjoyment… they plan to kick back and make something of the day. color it a certain way.

1: such habits are hard to break!

2: houses filled to the brim with yellowing newspapers, covering the walls! one would only have to light a match…

1: it is too late to change, now that we are as old as we are… so set in our ways… we would have to come up with a whole new catalogue of faces to make! think of the labor, the inventory, the shipping…

2: running the business of appearances… now there's a profit to be made! to act a certain way, in a certain light, wearing a certain skin, in front of a discerning set of the right people… voila! you’re a matinee idol! a star! a diva, a darling… more daring and dutiful than uncle sam himself!

1: (quips.) if he was wearing mascara.

2: (daydreams.) all of the most fashionable clothes, the adoring fans… aisles and aisles of lovers, waiting for you to fall into their arms… (swoons and staggers backwards.) imagine being held so tight!

1: the skin on my face as tight ripe as an apple before the backside of september!

2: stretching to the moon and back! your ass coveted by collectors around the world! … your sphincter… spit shined and up in lights!

1: the spectacle extends to its foreseeable end… to become a mantlepiece, a taxidermied corpse, on display in a museum!

2: i believe you mean a mausoleum… but nonetheless! underground, overground, the folks in europe will pay a prime price for the right piece of meat… as long as you are properly billed and managed of course… for a certain rate of compensation… i can provide such a service…

1: (cutting.) do they like their humans served rare, or well done?

2: somewhere in between. they would much prefer to see themselves in you rather than see you in themselves.

1: it's hard to discern much of a difference when you haven’t eaten in weeks!

2: those folks tend not to be guests of ours. they can wait outside. just not outside here.

1: how far outside must one go?

2: far enough away so you are not seen, heard, smelt, dealt, done, did, or will do! sleep, die, just do it away, away from here! (notices.) … i have a sneaking suspicion that you are not where you belong… you, who i thought you were not… too quick to retort, too wary of the way of the land… the way things must be done… you see… there are certain ways that things must be done… or else.

1: or else what?

2: a great many other things. hangings, executions, gas chambers, the guillotine, firing squads… public humiliation if you’re lucky… to be of a minor disturbance.

1: they still show those on the television, don’t they?

2: they do! not all things must be done behind closed doors. sometimes, we must remind the public of the consequences of their actions. hold up their loved ones as an example… by the napes of their necks… disobedient animals!

1: yellow stars on our chests, bells on our shoes… you can hear us knocking about from miles away! a bunch of court jesters, we are, until the king has had enough of our antics.

2: clowns fallen out of favor… unless you are of their stock, they’ll toss you right in the stocks! soon enough!

1: i have heard that a proper king never witnesses an execution...

2: … he only witnesses the cry for mercy.

1: this is why i prefer the drawn out chord to silence.

2: not even an opera in his native tongue will save you now… when the song ends, the light is extinguished. no questions asked, no answers given. the divine right to death, rightfully yours.

1: (distant.) a thousand candles, up in smoke.

2: (wary.) i’m certain you’ve said that before…

1: i often repeat myself, with severity. when discussing matters such as these that i insist upon being pungent.

2: when was the last time you took a bath?

1: it must have been some weeks.

2: (to self.) disgusting, ill mannered, impudent brute…

1: it is hard to focus on oneself when one is attempting to examine many parts.

2: (thinking aloud.) when one is burning alive, like so, the stake is the only solution.

1: my science, your sin.

2: they are high, you are low. you ought not to speak so loud, if you knew what was good for you. 1: (gazing upwards.) as the moon approaches.

2: it draws near, in disregard, as to it’s usual angle.

1: the horizon does not end where our sight wavers.

2: the face that does not face us. 1: we are not alone.

2: what is this you were saying about bars?

1: hush! look, out! the sky is still. it is we who are obscured.

2: i can only see through the pain… our lives… blinding.

1: see to it that it soon ends.

2: see to it that soon, we end. together.

NOTES / ADMISSION

1/10/16 Virginia

this work affected…. it is as though i am the disease… the illness, unto myselves.

devotion to loved ones (l, c, j, b, am, a, hm) borders on the fanatical… an inappropriate belief. i am terrified that these relations will eventually be ‘exposed as fraudulent’ (a constant fear)... that they do not feel the same gravity that i do towards them… that i am simply projecting images, characteristics onto them… that i am indeed, unloved… an overactive imagination… or is it simply (hyper)active?

c and i had a long talk this afternoon about his writing, how he is struggling with event description, particularly with writing on dreams… he calls his work ‘flat’; he often finds himself working representationally, with the focus of vision. he is convinced that he has not yet found his voice… i am sure i am not much help, considering… i am not quite sure that i have one of my own! prone to mimicry, dependent on emotion, with a stocky build… the list goes on. we discussed fragments, the raw incorporation of experience deemed ‘unfit’ for publishing, disjointed and ‘unfinished’, and the refusal to censor l. scream of the flesh, of decay / dorian gray / that which breaks the mirror (what is against expectation, against logical interpretation, against the normative outfit, what is uniform)... i particularly enjoyed a vivid description of his, during the period of our conversation in which we rehash our most recent dreams… one of coming to the south to live for the summer (his was a very o’connor image of life below the mason-dixon line, filled with farmhouses and skeletal union soldiers.)... his dreams are vivid and he remembers them with a fervor that makes me appreciate our friendship, both as writers and as hooligans!

lately, i have been reading sontag’s journals (which has encouraged me to continue this internal correspondence), melville’s ‘pierre’ (a laborious endeavor… lately, i have not been particularly taken ‘there’ by novels, but within his prose lie several extremely clever movements… particularly the portions on love and it’s many faces… 37, 41, and 51 in my edition… reminiscent of munch, bacon… depictions of emotional metamorphoses as portrayed by bodily/facial con/distortion… love as horror), genet’s ‘the screens’ (in which his discussion of holes, their filling and emptying, remains quite pertinent.), beckett’s ‘disjecta’ (the title of which became the inspiration for ‘distruments’), and baudrillard’s ‘the conspiracy of art’ (ruminations on and condemnations of contemporary art, art for profit, and closed circle creation, in such scathing and concise criticisms... he is taken with fb., and that in itself was cause for further inquiry… the painter who dances.) ...

i have also been particularly fascinated with several poems… hd’s ‘eurydice’, sexton’s ‘suicide note’ and ‘wanting to die’, hughes’ ‘kids who die’, and mary barnard’s translations of sappho. most of the literature i have been perusing lately has been recommended to me by l, who is an insatiable reader… i have never been able to keep up with his appetite for text!

last night, i wrote a suicide note, then quickly retracted it. i wonder if i would feel the same way about suicide itself (not that i am brave enough to actually do it).

i would walk into the desert, lie down, and wait… until i was empty.

this silence… a bitter wind…

i have also (recently) been able to (somewhat) quiet the voices of my usual vices… alcohol, cigarettes, stimulants… (love for d. plays a prominent part in this…) i find that my attention wavers frequently while under their influence, that i lack the ability to communicate my thoughts in the ways

that i desire to, and that my body takes a heavy toll after just a couple hours of use. before bed tonight, i went down to the cupboard and frantically scoured the shelves for pills to take, to numb out a particularly painful conversation w j. i could find none.

i am too sentimental… drawn time and time again back to memories of connection… recently, i have not found… such moments, a rarity for me… i wonder if it occurs otherwise for j? or if he is simply not concerned with such things… tonight, he told me that ‘there is no obligation to forget anything… but when the whole world is moving you…’ perhaps i don’t sense this as keenly as he does? or perhaps i am not being moved? …

1/11/16

(it seems as though i cannot watch just one film, or read just one text, at once… a life of conflating things!)

[sic] (marx’s 18th brumaire)... in each scene, who is working, and who is not working?... and why?

(above) paintings of pieter brueghel the younger

it must be horrible to be an astronaut… to have to attempt to control yourself without gravity.

i often think of things in terms of reasons to write/paint, and reasons to stop writing/painting.

c recommends alberto moravia (writer of la conformista!)

delve into the welles / shakespeare connection…

silhouette outside the window, curtains drawn, standing in wait. one big knee head on top, caricature.

i still love a just as much as the first day i saw her… does that make me a fool? is not being able to let go just hurting me? hurting her? the last thing i would ever want to do… yet i feel as though i am doing just that. the first touch became the greatest, most joyful pain, of my life… the closest i have ever been… a wound that remains open, a wound that i do not wish to heal… then came the bickering, the jealousy… the petty crimes committed behind closed doors…

it has been three years since a sent me this letter (12/22/12)... it was our first written communication. sometimes i think she knew before i did… all those years… gone…

David,

I didn't expect you and you happened fast. These four months happened fast. So much has happened and I feel like a completely new person in a lot of ways. I feel a lot more like myself, like i'm coming into myself and it's relieving. Maui was hard for me. I felt disconnected a lot. Still do sometimes. It's hard learning how to be where you are, completely. Sometimes its easier to just sink into not being there, not being present. The numb aching sadness that is seeing what could be but feeling this block between you and it.

But I feel like i'm really learning at this school. Learning how to be around myself and take care of myself. I want that for you so much. When we were in the woods talking there was a moment where all I wanted to do was shake you. Shake away everything that makes it so you can't see what an amazing person you are. I know this is hard, all of it. I care about you so much Dave and I wish I could make things okay. I wish I could make you feel like yourself and be okay with yourself. I don't know how to do that other than listen to you, anytime. And talk with you. And hug you. Hugs are my thing too. I'm here and I want to enjoy what I can. I want to enjoy little things you. Like watching

good movies and reading books and poetry that makes us want to talk until late late late at night. Drunk laugh with wine in the freezing snow in the woods. Snow fights in the woods behind the library. Lying down and feeling snow fall on your face, watching it coat the interlacing tree branches. Meeting your brother. If he visits before the school year ends we can take him to our lake. I fulfilled my fantasy of stealing plates from the dining hall and smashing them against rocks by the mods. It was wonderful so we should do that too. We should start using the DAC more next semester. Watching snow fall outside the big windows in the painting studio. I'm really excited for snow, if you couldn't tell. I want to travel with you too.

We have a lot of memories together. I remember the first time we met. The first day of workshop we were standing in a circle playing some game. I said I liked reading, you asked me what books.

I remember the first time we really met too. Goose bump skin, swimming in green tinted water. Looking at you and thinking that it probably wasn't a good thing that I felt drawn to you. Dropping rocks in the water with baby James- you'd catch them and he'd smile.

I remember the first time we kissed and the second. We established that it was a one night only thing and that made me a bit sad but I understood. So it took me by surprise when you leaned down and kissed me quick as I stood outside your doorway. My back hit the wall and you pressed into me. It was a good kiss.

So much of me is still wrapped up in you. A lot of pieces to pick up and it's important to me that we do, it's important to me that you're in my life. I don't know what the future is going to bring but i'm excited to find out.

I think there will many more letters to come. Many more years that we're in each others lives.

Alana

1/12/16

woke up this morning and began another play… need to return to the kabbalah, and reexamine some principles that i would like to butcher…

sontag:

‘opposite of hide oneself is not show oneself (which is the same thing, inverted) but something beyond showing or hiding (shamelessness or shame).’

‘hiding and showing are both primarily self-regarding attitudes.’

‘imagine an attitude in which one’s total attention is fixed on an other (not just to see one’s own image reflected in the eyes of the other), an attitude in which consciousness of self (though hardly self) is obliterated.’

‘is this the aim - to abolish consciousness of self.’

… part of the enjoyment of reading sontag’s journals lies in the illicit voyeurism of simultaneously being (a)part and being given access to her innermost thoughts and influences… as she and the reader are at once both the navigators of her fragments... but this is not what captures my attention… it is her chaotic, scattered, fragmented process of dis-sight/insight that is almost comforting in its human-ness… the patterns of obsession and dispersion, the periods in which she exhibits certain behaviors, then begins to name them, incorporate them into her body of work… it is a sense of closeness, to be near… the building of worlds through the spheres of internal experience and processing. the quotes above are behaviors that, in naming, she is in a way both dismantling their power as abstract movements of

energy and focus, but at the same time, in their vulnerability, become accessible...

update: first draft of play is complete... title: ‘possession’? another relatively short one act, about twenty pages or so… i have stopped writing notes as to the settings of the conversations, as well as character descriptions, or even character names… they now exist as 1, 2, 3, et al… my process is on the cusp of a sea change, i can feel the fissure in my language… i am becoming more and more conscious of the work that i am doing (i cannot tell)... and that seems to be an omen for a deviation to come, which i wish to be as open towards as i possibly can. i will not prepare for anything… i refuse... i am scared, almost, that maybe x has broken a spell, a connection inside me, exposed me, left me vulnerable… but i know that this is a foolish fear (or is it? a poor attempt at comforting myself)... i am afraid that maybe my ability to write will change, be extinguished… the sort of oblique style in which i have been… much of my performance work seems to be in its waning stages. perhaps it is time to pick up the paintbrush again…

*revisit toulouse-lautrec, bacon, vaserely’s ‘bihar ii’ (1945- 58), miro ‘dutch interior i’ (1928), wyeth’s ‘night hauling’ (1944), kubišta’s ‘kiss of death’ (1912), chagall’s ‘self portrait w. muse’ (1917-18), baziotes ‘figure with arrows’ (1936-39), sandro chia, max ernst, hamon’s ‘the fortune tellers’

texts to purchase

broken bow (a tragedy), ernst toller (1900) the works of brecht essays by sara ahmed fata morgana, breton communicating vessels, breton nadja, breton the works of zara neale hurston the works of baldwin (a’s recommendations) the passion according to g.h., lispector

the tomb of boris dadovich, kis (l’s recommendation) how it feels to be forcibly fed, djuna barnes

films to watch

works of jean cocteau works of george semsel ‘coeur fidèle’ (1923) - epstein ‘six et demi, onze’ (1927) - epstein ‘andrei rublev’ (1966) - tarkovsky ‘ivan’s childhood’ (1962) - tarkovsky ‘the mirror’ (1975) - tarkovsky ‘geheimnisse einer seele’ (1926) - pabst ‘intermezzo’ (1936) - ratoff ‘m’ (1931) - lang ‘pandora’s box’ (1929) - pabst ‘the threepenny opera’ (1931) - pabst ‘the testament of dr. mabuse’ (1933) - lang ‘correo de indias’ (1942) - neville ‘alexander nevsky’ (1938) - eisenstein ‘¡que viva méxico!’ (1932) - eisenstein ‘purple noon’ (1960) - clément ‘spellbound’ (1945) - hitchcock ‘the birds’ (1963) - hitchcock ‘branded to kill’ (1967) - suzuki ‘the inextinguishable fire’ (1969) - faroki

: in relation to above, paintings and drawings by picabia (transparencies) + paintings of remedios varo (aside)

finish derrida’s ‘the truth in painting’

‘i write scripts to serve as skeletons awaiting the flesh and sinew of images.’ - i. bergman

Apenas un delicuente (Hardly a Delinquent) (1949, Argentina) Die Mörder sind unter uns (Death is Among Us, English subs) (1946, Germany)

Døden er et kjærtegn (Death is a Caress) (1949, Norway) No abras nunca esa puerta (Never Open That Door) (1952, Argentina) En la palma de tu mano (In the Palm of Your Hand) (1950, Mexico) Une si jolie petite plage (Riptide, or Such a Pretty Little Beach; English subs) (1949, France) El vampiro negro (The Black Vampire) (1953, Argentina) Victimas del pecado (Victims of Sin) (1951, Mexico)

i enjoy photography much more when it doesn’t hide its mad desire to be objective, to objectify the human form and/or when it looks to the essences of objects in relation to their histories of use/disuse… and instead creates a soft focus in form and/or content… how does the everyday function? is the work unafraid to be banal, depict circumstance? (vadas) is it afraid to acknowledge itself? or is it looking to conveniently gloss over the political and airbrush the particular to improve the ‘aesthetic quality’ of the whole, of the image itself? (conversation w. ap., appeal to ‘mass sensibility’...)

‘the spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual excess produced by mass-media technologies. it is a worldview that has actually been materialized, that has become an objective reality.’ guy debord (society of the spectacle)

the potential energy of b+w painting and film - evokes an impossible past through ability to ‘memorialize’ perspective, while simultaneously cloaking itself in a direct, paradoxical relation of visible/invisible light/darkness that can often serve to obscure movement, objects, bodies, and allow for techniques like layering of film strips, corrosion of film, mise en scene, in such a way that the eye adjusts for contrast and brightness rapidly, yet struggles to identify the ‘borders’ or ‘boundaries’ between one object and the next, one body and the next, one scene and the next.

revisit ‘hiroshima, mon amour’ (resnais) - 1959

‘what remains of a couple when it’s gone? a small collection of souvenirs: phrases, images, sensations. these fragments persist long afterwards, as vivid as they are completely and radiantly meaningless, as if they were signs that will one day reveal their secrets.’ hannah black (the loves of others)

‘when i pronounce the word future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. when i pronounce the word silence, i destroy it.’ wislawa szymborska

i have imprisoned myself, with, by, around, and within, screens. my poems, plays, reference journals, workbooks, notes, articles to be read, do not exist physically.... must work on this. it is almost too easy to relegate text to immaterial dimensions... touch!

in the winter, everything is painful against my skin.

had another brief conversation tonight with j. he was terse, repeating himself. it seems as though it was just yesterday i was visiting… we are drifting further and further away from one another… i am on a piece of the wreckage of it all, calling out to him… my voice, a chamber of echoes.

‘the fall of the house of usher’ (1928) - epstein

“break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.” derek walcott

i am still such a child. quick to anger, quick to envy.

1/13/16

‘hour of the wolf’ (1968) - bergman ‘cries and whispers’ (1972) - bergman ‘los olvidados’ (1951) - buñuel ‘l’atalante’ (1934) - vigo ‘zero de conduite’ (1933) - vigo ‘the man who left his will on film’ (1970) - oshima

poe’s love letters

food as sexual encounter… my convenient replacement for perpetual inability to relate to sex organs…

‘i know that you felt too deeply the nature of my love for you, to doubt that, even for one moment, & this thought has comforted me in my bitter sorrow — i could bear that you should imagine every other evil except that one — that my soul had been untrue to yours.’ poe, letter to annie l. richmond (11/16/1848)

1/14/16

conversation w. c last night about joyce and how words ‘sound themselves out’... experience of spitting, being spat upon, words sputtering like an empty tank of gasoline… when read aloud, once becomes drunk, mute, embarrassed, without having to put on language as a disguise… they become themselves…

‘before the time goes by, beyond which there must be no thinking…’

often feel reluctant sharing thoughts or feelings, (especially theories and inquiries that i have been formulating/dissolving) w. people whom i do not feel are ‘trustworthy’, ‘worthy’ or who ‘would understand’...

… that it is not mine… only mine to communicate w those around me… i am scared that something might be ‘stolen’ from me…? a piece of work, a secret part of myself… i do not exist long enough, in such a way, to be taken, to be taken from… but there are many times that i feel and have felt as though i have been taken for granted, taken at face value, reduced to being an object, a body, a container…

b recommends: ‘my own private idaho’ (1991) - van sant

excerpts from conversations w e.

to undulate, waver, fail, often! /... even stones move… tablets corrode… / the (uni)forms we wear… implicate us. (marx’s 18th brumaire)

sometimes… when the work is in progress, it is hard to be precise… a project… we ask, where do imprecision and humor enter, exit?

in being against a symbolic order (which in our very being against, we are being apart of)... we are inquiring into our own polemics, binary notions, biases, in a language which codes itself in opposition… / creating new words, sounds, movements… to describe emotions yet unnamed… / the boundaries of what lies, within, without… that which lies is is a lie in itself…

who, what, could be so still, other than what is dead? who, what, could move so quickly, other than what is dying?

maybe there are ‘things’ which ‘work’... ‘things’ that do not attempt to demonstrate ‘fixed points’ (stagnate/locate), but instead… become verbs themselves?

nonsenses as radical economies of thought and language… colonial forms of logic reach toward, but cannot touch… / what cannot be colonized, co-opted? what does not exist in the way existence is defined?

where am i… located in your experience, located in your language (philip)

(need to work on terms for ‘fragments which experience, feel, hurt’)

why not describe the ways in which we have been? / … who is declaring the way things ‘should’ have been, what things ‘should’ mean… the languages we ‘use’, as a means of corralling meaning itself, ‘fixing’ it… what does it mean to be beside language, beside ourselves, in a way that creates a fissure in focus… to break the soft mirror? driving language to the end of itself, where it collapses, folds in upon itself, admits itself… the trouble of ‘naming’ / relation as paradox… being apart, a part of…

movement and stillness necessarily ‘opposed’? / habit perhaps… as a reduction of sensation to principle? where does unthought occur? where does it live? / on the fringes of definition… crawls the word and its context… what may work in one phraseology, may find itself surrounded in the next, without a shovel, defenseless… the holes we fall into when we attempt to posit ‘stable climes’... in which logic may function, may become applicable, beyond the circumstances in which experimentation occurs… the law abiding citizen… what is the (dis)function of being undependable, unstable? breaking with(in) purpose… / logic as a ‘form of currency’ / … a reluctance to conceive…

on photography, teju cole:

'an image depends radically on context, on how it is placed but also on who is looking at it.’

‘what then are we to do with this devious tool? one option is to resist the depiction of violence, to side with the reader who protests an unpleasant photograph and defends the bounds of good taste. but another — and to me, better —

option is to understand that the problem is not one of too many unsettling images but of too few. when the tragedy or suffering of only certain people in certain places is made visible, the boundaries of good taste are not really transgressed at all. ‘‘we all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others,’’ la rochefoucauld wrote. what is hard is being vividly immersed in our own pain... we must not turn away from what that kind of suffering looks like when visited on ‘‘us.’’’

‘the frankest representations of war, and of disaster-injured bodies, are of those who seem most foreign, therefore least likely to be known. with subjects closer to home, the photographer is expected to be more discreet.’ - sontag

‘the camera is just as capable of lying as the typewriter.’ - brecht

‘she interrogates the ‘owners’ of the english language. philip first asks, ‘in whose language / am i i am / if not in yours.’ the instant shift from ontological question to affirmation in the second line privileges the ‘i’ not as a unitary, autonomous cogito but as activity engaging in a process of identification at once open to doubt and certitude, a process registered in the way the questions in the poem, which can be taken as straightforward or rhetorical, are posed…’ naylor on philip

l on the three laughs of beckett: the idea is that the ethical laugh and the intellectual laugh are aimed at that which isn't good or true, in that there is an acknowledgement that these qualities exist but are absent in some way, or at least subject to privation... the dianoetic laugh is aimed at the perceived 'powerlessness' of the other two laughs, their recognition of absence but their disavowal of agency and retreat into irony… making the absence perhaps, present…

kant: ‘in everything that is to excite a lively convulsive laugh there must be something absurd (in which the

understanding, therefore, can find no satisfaction). laughter is an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing. this transformation, which is certainly not enjoyable to the understanding, yet indirectly gives it very active enjoyment for a moment. therefore its cause must consist in the influence of the representation upon the body, and the reflex effect of this upon the mind…’

adorno: ‘in the face of beckett’s plays especially, the category of the tragic surrenders to laughter, just as his plays cut off all humor that accepts the status quo. they bear witness to a state of consciousness that no longer admits the alternative of seriousness and lightheartedness, nor the composite comedy. tragedy evaporates because the claims of the subjectivity that was to have been tragic are so obviously inconsequential. a dried up, tearless weeping takes the place of laughter. lamentation has become the mourning of hollow, empty eyes. humor is salvaged in beckett’s plays because they infect the spectator with laughter about the absurdity of laughter and laughter about despair. this process is linked with…a path leading to a survival minimum as the minimum of existence remaining. This minimum discounts the historical catastrophe, perhaps in order to survive it…’

beckett: ‘the bitter laugh laughs at that which is not good, it is the ethical laugh. the hollow laugh laughs at that which is not true, it is the intellectual laugh. not good! not true! well well. but the mirthless laugh is the dianoetic laugh, down the snout — haw! – so. it is the laugh of laughs, the risus purus, the laugh laughing at the laugh, the beholding, saluting of the highest joke, in a word the laugh that laughs – silence please — at that which is unhappy.’

affirmation as resignation.

there is no redemption, nor do i desire such a thing.

c recommends eloy urroz, ‘the obstacles’

"you speak to me of narcissism but i reply that it is a matter of my life" - artaud

l on the calcification of relations: badiou, for what he's worth, talks about relations always as (being) mediated through certain events which disrupt being (et. al, as you know)... and so, of course, fidelity to certain events becomes the cornerstone for these sorts of last relationships with people, be they lovers friends or fellow fighters, etc... or all three i suppose... but of course, this notion of fidelity is in itself a tricky thing…

the rare moments spent w l., c., b., j. … are good. they fill me with a certain warmth… whether it is just a simple message, a long letter, a piece of unfinished work, or several hours of conversation… i inhabit, nothing… where? … it is, in so many ways, alongside them, a strange geography… that i have been able to continue… i am in debt... my life, i continue to give and take, in trust… my family… i do not know what the years will bring, but i open my arms to them, my loved ones. to slow moments…

b: ‘on the horizon of event’ reminds me of ‘queer phenomenology’ by sara ahmed… she is an expert at giving compliments…

1/15/16

‘you try to be as close to the thing (that is the source of your rejection) as you can be. you try and demonstrate that you are normal even when your desires take you away from the normal. the normal is certainly formal. you assume that this approximation might be rewarded with recognition: oh, you too, you are just like us; after all, you are just like us. you mime in the hope that those you mimic become approving of you; that they might register your becoming with

approval. this approximation is often vain or in vain. you are repudiated, still. you fail to be what you aspire to be… as a requirement or a compulsion: you must identify with the very thing that rejects you in order to be in the world at all. the all registers here as necessary for being. of course we don’t always do what we must do. but the effort not to identify with the universal comes with great cost: you are identified as doing “identity politics,” too attached to your own particulars. your very existence is then explained as an over-attachment to existence; as coming at the cost of the universal, to those whose entry into the room is not barred by the how of their appearance.

in one of the notes above, i refer to the example of the veiled muslim woman, as the one who cannot be accommodated by the universal. she must transform herself in order to enter the room. the white man can stay wearing what he is wearing: a suit say, a tie, say. the white woman too can wear what she was wearing. her clothes; they are particular, yes, preferences, choices, but she does not have to give them up. some differences become idiosyncratic. welcome; come in, come in.

an aside: whiteness is often performed as idiosyncrasy. differences: individuated, quirky, not expressive of anything other than yourself. this is how: when white people are violent they are usually described as loners. their deviation from the promise is exceptional.

whiteness: universal. to leave this universal for those who have already entered it: to become a loner. those who don’t enter it: to become relative, or a relative.

so: brown: relative. brown: you can enter the universal if you give up your relative.

and so: only some differences become attachments that must be given up. other differences are welcomed by the very requirement that some differences are given up. for

those who have to give up something to enter something: your entry is melancholic. you are giving up the very thing that renders the room not open to you even when the room is understood as open to you.’ sara ahmed

1/16/16

les enfants du paradise (1945) - marcel carné

finish benjamin’s ‘work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’

i know nothing of goodness, nothing of what is pure… only what is filthy and foolish!

hierarchy of the image… in direct relation to capital as ‘beautiful’ object, ‘beautiful’ body… where does desire situate itself w/in the painting, w/o the painting? is the viewer the desired? implications of ‘distant’ gaze, looking as ‘from’ the horizon, instead of toward? (later works of turner, esp involving bodies of water + ovid exile)... berger on nudity/nakedness… is the viewer bare? what has been taken from the participant, what remains… the negotiation/conversation, as communion… where does he enter? bred in one’s mouth, one’s eye? relation of consumption to (‘being of’), (‘being (inside) of’) . extended periods of begging oneself to intervene (suicide, the remainder), then sudden bursts of exaggerated humor…

a clearing of the face…

the act of bathing as mimetic… immersion in one’s own fluids recognized, enhanced enjoyment of one’s own body… the warmth. contact with both water and air horizontally (whereas vertical engagement would imply ‘entering a body’ of water…

nuances of one’s dress in direct relation to desire for periods of contact… w/ material, w/ others… (wearing a silky, flowing top… a shirt buttoned to the top…) in the winter, my back, in particular… on pins and needles…

reluctance to wear, be worn… internal.

the sound and image of collapsing ‘like an old sock’ (whoomp, womp, homph)

potential character: the impostor… marbled flank, salivating at his thoughts… a bloated balloon of baloney! each word more fallacious, red faced, and vicious than the last… consumes next to no fiber… connoisseur of wine, can pair practically any bottle with a cut of the cow… a swelling mass, incapable of arresting itself… what is pulled into his field of gravity? a swallower of people, jupiter in an armchair… works as an overseer, a manager… sentient. when he is accosted, accused… all at once, a regurgitation of excuses! kept in his throat… the apologist of many synonyms! cannot identify where he begins, and the world around him ends, so he simply becomes it! bumbling, rumbling, stumbling, fumbling, jumbling… an umbler.

1/18/16

the innocents (1961) - clayton

work in the style of symptomen codex / materia medica, intermittent bouts… descriptions of patient’s struggle w/ symptom, paired with body part, process, system. action, occurrence in mind, physical manifestation, description of internal manifestation.

1/19/16

n on carmichael and violent resistance:

‘the colonial regime is one of utter silence: the colonized can understand the word but never have it, it is never theirs. but when they try not to speak, when they do not exist in the colonizer's world of their own accord, then it is an outrage.’

aristotelian character, obsessed with being ‘one step ahead’, or ‘ahead of the game’... a fresh youth playing wisened philosopher, sure of oneself, on steady footing. constantly looking for someone to ‘play out’, or to expose as ‘naive’ or ‘foolish’, when this very act renders one nonexistent… obsessed with speech, goes on long winded monologues… ‘how do you not already know?’ … believes himself to be in on some mystical ‘trick’ or ‘secret’ that no one else knows about… when that very trick is hubris. wears flamboyant and horribly clashing colors, loud high voice, sarcastic, makes frequent comments about other people and their bodies, their appearance… unaware of himself to such an extent that he comes into and out of painful physical ailments, his body, in such a manner that he is convinced he is being possessed, haunted by demons, spirits... paranoid, afraid of being ‘discovered’, or ‘found out’... having his ‘secrets revealed’... hiding sex, things that are taboo, fear of being ‘improper’. obsessive when it comes to physical appearance, routines. very regimented, yet collapses his patterns the moment they begin.

‘fando y lis’ (1968) - jodorowsky

1/20/16

‘you only like what you see’

story about children meeting, being unsure if they should be friends, wary of one another's’ intentions, sharing toys.

sins committed to/for/against memory… a spring of consciousness… a winter of the heart.

and not one scream of same…

1/21/16

a great many things have come to an end…

180

THE PROJECT OF AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY OR THE FUTURITY OF WHITENESS

KM . “the uniform was their own state costume; war was their poetry; the small holding, enlarged and rounded off in imagination, was their fatherland, and patriotism the ideal form of the sense of property.”

CR . “because white men can’t police their imagination black men are dying.”

TA . “the ‘white race’ must be understood, not simply as a social construct, but as a ruling class social control formation.”

MT . “tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly: ‘well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. all i know, is, it suits tom sawyer.’ … if he hadn't run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.”

IH . “every sunday morning i can hear the old sisters say hallelujah, hallelujah, trust in the lord to make a way, oh yeah i hope that he hear their prayers 'cause deep in their souls they believe someday he'll put an end to all this misery that we have in soulsville.”

FM + SH . “debt at a distance is forgotten, and remembered again.”

HM . “even though white is often associated with things, that are pleasant and pure, there is a peculiar emptiness about the color white.”

AC . “if this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? the workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd. but it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious.”

BH . “southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the root.”

HA . “when i speak of the banality of evil, i do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. eichmann was not iago and not macbeth. … except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all. … he merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing.”

184

VII

it is this man who is truly dangerous to the survival of those who must again and again bear passage and cross into each atomic moment of this heavily guarded modernity... whose twisted logic is both condoned and championed by the laws and culture of white america… the man who does not consider, nor is he forced to consider, the means by which he is allowed to live, nor does he consider the means by which he receives his ‘superhuman’ power under the state: the power to kill without punishment.

VIII

it is by way of this permissive forgetfulness that the white men of empire fashion themselves into their own false gods.

perhaps, then, the great wealth, the gold of nationalism lies not in the ground, but in the metaphorical pocket of the ruling elite. this gold, then, would be the unconditional devotion, loyalty, and unwavering commitment of the white subject to the colonial project. the soldier who will kill on command to preserve order, to preserve whiteness, at the border of good and evil, of black and white, of light and darkness, of heaven and hell. this is the allegiance the white man feels to his family, his image. this is the allegiance he must be taught to feel toward his god, to his country. there is nothing more dangerous to the caste of whiteness than the dissident to whom it grants citizenship. and thus, it is the task of each person with any such opportunity, such given fortune, mobility and ability under nationalism (the means to maintain the body and the mind, of food, of water, of shelter, of economy), to undergo a rigorous self-education against formalism and against nation. for, within the systems of both public and private education in the united states, it is extremely difficult to demand such an education. at the

university, one must at once demand it of oneself and of those around them. the sphere in which this colonized classroom operates, however, is easily identified as a continuation and organ of the authoritarian regime into which students are indoctrinated at birth.

formalized education, as such, is the american rite into adulthood, of citizenship in the name of whiteness, a rite of passage and acceptance of responsibility to uphold the established order, a rite into the system and machine of global capital. one is taught only what one needs to know in order to act thoughtlessly, to execute the orders of those above without considering what those orders entail. just so, the opportunity to receive even this education, the education of form, is rarely, if ever, afforded to those below the poverty line (and furthermore, rarely afforded to those who are not predestined to become stewards, the caretakers of nation, those who either were not or are unwilling to uphold the values and standards of state-ideology created in the image of the white god), living in areas where federal and state funding are lacking. this restricted economic mobility and race based discrimination (rooted in access to education and economic opportunity, ie the means to live and continue living in modern american society), then, are both directly implicated in the politics of who is afforded what care, what quality of life, what quality of education, in what neighborhood, and why. the ability for the person of color, of difference, to advance, to afford life, to pass into cultural capital, is placed directly in the hands of the new colonial subject, gifted with a free pass into higher education and life in a management position, little to no interest in critical thought, and certainly no interest in relinquishing his riches.

without the myth of gold, what would become of colony? the dream of purity would be without value, without meaning, without icon. if it is god above, surely, we pray to gold below. it is a quick and ruthless slight of hand to offer to the young student (if one can even afford schooling, one often must work while attending classes), particularly one who struggles to afford food and housing while studying (and who struggles again under immense debt upon leaving the university), and who receives little to no support from the administration, who see the student on financial aid, the student wearing the same clothes to class each day, as nothing more than a number, a graduating statistic. the professors who labor in and out of the classroom for these students receive similar treatment. the task of working with a class desperate to engage, to learn, while being pressured from above to teach material proper, and to press upon students the importance of professionalism, workplace readiness, and enlightenment philosophy … while wanting to give these children the resources they desire to pursue their personal education … the system of capitalism could not continue to be reborn at the hands of god, the isaac of the everyday, if there were no heirs to the throne, no businessmen with degrees at the ready, no old money in pocket, no one to accept the managerial task. and thus, this is where one of the most immediate and volatile struggles against imperialism occurs. in the classroom.

XII

those with the keys to liberatory knowledge, with experience in dealing with the demands of capital, the demands of the state, in the face of the task of cultivating an education, a life, of books, of craft, of thought, of feeling, for oneself and oneself alone … are those with the power to teach subversively, to speak and listen, to teach and be taught, to study with, alongside, those who come to class asking for more.

this demand, that is, the demand for the learning of forms and structures of self and social (and their intricate relation), the demand for critical thought, the demand for resources, for passion beyond the standardized, beyond the regimented march of manifest destiny in the state issued textbooks, beyond the authoritarian stance of teaching as a passing down of knowledge, beyond the lecture … is a terrorist demand. it is a demand in direct opposition to the state, which is to say, the state of things. it is a demand for a decolonized education, as a right … under a regime of totalized knowledge where white history is taught as truth and the histories of students of color are taught as an elected course (if they manage to survive the incessant protests organized by concerned white parents). when the status quo of murder and theft is not only questioned, but the questioner is in turn handed the necessary tools to critique and combat nationalism, learning and critical thinking become an act of treason in the face of what is expected, in the face of what one is taught to do. and at once, a rupture. the ability of the student to demand such an education, and the ability of the teacher and the student to undertake such a risk, to openly denounce the behavior of the system which has neglected to tell the entire truth, a system that betrays itself in its exclusive and fallacious curriculum, a system that regularly chooses judgement at the hands of the few over justice in the mouths of many, this ability, the ability to commit suicide, is called into question.

XIII

the becoming of suicide, social, political, philosophical, and otherwise, does not simply occur on the plane of the literal, the plane of the real. The taking of one's own life, or perhaps, in the very same sense, the giving of one's own life to decolonial studies (to the task of life as it exists in the immediate sense, in the hearts and minds of those around the student… to become a student of history and culture international, to think in ecosystems and constellations of

thought that obliterate national borders, demand the abolition of prisons...) is no easy task, nor is it simply defined. this, then, is a radical reallocation of devotion, reallocation of interest, concentration, and time to oneself in the present tense … in direct and defiant opposition to the interests of the state, that is, the interests of the economy of survival, the economy of desire, the aesthetics of whiteness, the interests of the nation of the future. philosophical suicide as the decolonization of thought. the transvaluation of values in a climate that executes dissidents. in the discussion of education, as such, subversion occurs, then, first, with the immediate outcry of those who cannot appear, conform to, accept, this aesthetic of power under the tyranny of white nationalism. these are the revolutionaries of each moment as it comes into being, and this is where revolution occurs, on the frontlines, in the existence of that which is other to whiteness, which is in protest to the imagined future of american nationalism, in protest to the imagined past. however, these students often face the same violence in the classroom as they face on the street, walking to the grocery store. precisely because the state is watching, this violence is met with apathy, pity, or empty encouragement on the part of the liberal faculty. the white professor continues to teach the bland lecture series on romantic poets as ur fascism raises its ugly head once more … precisely because the state is watching, the white fraternity of literacy, language, and education prospers, passing of the stone of law from the ass of the high court to the waiting mouth of the graduate-to- be. the student of today who engages in espionage, that is, looking back, studying history, critiquing culture, finding patterns in system processes, and rendering nationalist rhetoric impotent, is increasingly under the heat of this surveilling eye and the violent hand groomed to execute all in existence that is not made in its image. the withdrawal of state and federal funding, of alumni donorship, of investigation and monitoring of activists by the university and federal agencies… here, the ability to exist, nonetheless to study, is directly controlled by one’s ability to work, to labor, to conform to the expectations of the liberal marketplace, which is to say, to appear as white as possible,

and advocate and support state interests. and if one cannot, does not, will not accept this empty means of citizenship, one no longer has (if it was as offered as such in the first place) the protection of the state.

XIV

here, again, we encounter the constant politics of visibility and performance, how one is seen by the state, if one is seen at all, and how surveillance impacts the life of the subversive, and seeks to take the life of the subversive. essentially, what the state demands of the stateless, is to assimilate or perish. In the case of the outlaw, both pseudo- choices become death. to assimilate, to conform to the will of god, to sacrifice oneself at the altar of nationalism, is to kill both the inside and out of the dissident, who cannot appear as, nonetheless become, the ahistorian of whiteness. however, to perish, which is the death penalty of the social, the exile of the exile, and at once the death penalty of and for the body… appears, at this point, to be the choice of the choiceless, which is to say, a decision that is made as a pretense for existence as one truly is, as one’s heart, body, and blood speak. as one belongs to oneself, and shares oneself with those whom one loves. thus, the insurgent against the state must learn how to move in the shadows, if one has not learned already, how to steal from the thief of always, the machine of capital.

intellectual theft, as an act of insurgency against the state, and by extension, the university, necessarily incurs this leap of faith, this philosophical suicide. this jump into nothingness, into dying, which is to say the jump into what one knows so well, yet that which one cannot bear to face alone… as such, requires the support of a community of dissidents. this community, attempting at once to operate within and without the system of capital that is ever present,

must also be able to provide and sustain the means to commit this act. at risk of overstating the point, food, water, shelter, and books. it must also task itself with the continual critique of its own existence, of its own ways of teaching, listening, speaking, and working, as again, the system of capital is ever present. this is the trick of formal knowledge when bleached, when emptied of experience, of the learning of the moment. the task of whiteness, itself, then, is to make the object of its inquiry entirely transparent, to see through, to penetrate to the other side of difference, to empty the container of all that does not conform to the hypothesis. this, then, is also a false sense of mastery, a false sense of knowledge accumulation… truth without organs. to drive through, to desire singularity in such a fashion that the object of critique is so thoroughly obliterated in such as fashion, is not to attune any sense, and it is certainly not to listen. it is to speak with such force as to silence an entire room, but the action functions only to drill a hole in a block of swiss cheese, which is to say, prove pointless, as it has already been done several thousand times, without much in the way of results, nonetheless knowledge of what lies on the other side.

XVI

this mastery in driving, in believing that one knows, has known, has learned, so thoroughly, keeps one from listening, keeps one from relation in space and time. again, the classroom. again, the teacher at the podium, again, the students in the audience. it is this formula, this rigid structuralism tied to knowledge accumulation, tied to the economy of experiencing, that stands between insurgency and education. the single orator, standing before the crowd, makes his speech. it is caesar, it is the presidential candidate, it is the elected voice of the many. this is and once how and where the current climate of american pseudo-democracy stands. the belief that one holds knowledge is the hubris that draws one closer and closer to the sun, to the eye of empire. it is a building upward, a vertical hierarchy of worth, of

value in experience that acts first and foremost… the theatre of oppression, the theatre of cruelty. the same tower built by the hands of slaves and laborers, leers down at them, dare they sin, dare they do other than repent, other than pray for admittance. this orator stands as a monument to the fiction of capital, a stone pillar that upholds the law, just as the judge within hands down the final decree of death. this fiction, that one man could hold within him the future, the potential for the freedom of all man, is a fiction that both judeo-christian religion and capital share, the illusion that survived the schism of church and state. for who could deny that they are not one and the same? the mythos of capitalism, the mythos of imperialism, is the enlightened colonist, it is the white subject, bent on saving the world, saving the savages from their sin against god, their transgressions against the state. the rational man. he believes he can civilize them, bring them into the light, bring them into the church. he builds the mission, the temple to his god, on their land. he brings his people, to tell the stories of their savior, to build the city of his dreams, the city of solomon and david. he kills without question, because he kills for god.

XVII

this, the ultimate sin, done in the name of purity, done in the name of the divine, brings us the white robes of christ. it is this myth, and the subsequent interpretation of this myth by capital, that allows it to sleep without interruption, its conscience undeterred, its breath still and constant. the conviction that we are doing right, that we and we alone are righteous in the eyes of god. what the imperial mission, what modern american society lives without, is a myth of its own. the new colonist is an american lazarus, risen again, yet a continuation of the former. the white subject is nothing new, for all that he can only recite the same narrative, reproduce the same image, repeat the same history. he is no more or less enlightened than his forefathers, if only because he obediently follows in their crimson footsteps. the legacy of superheroes, the cartoons of empire, in pictures, text, and

song, allude to the same whitewashed savior, the greco- roman christ risen again in america, the founding father, the son of god … who is an amalgamation of twelve poor readings of the nietzschean ubermensch and racial scientism, not to mention a whitewashed version of christ, himself … at once hercules, superman, john wayne, and elvis... the elite white man unconcerned with time, and unconcerned with economy. he owns these things. he is endowed with these things, as it is he who has created them. he simply enforces this law, the law of his nature, the law of his land, as it is his debt to society, his debt to god. for he is often depicted as a god, if not god then the son of his flesh, half god, half man, or he simply descends from the sky. his debt to god, then, is a debt to himself, a debt to all that he has created in his name. And he is celebrated for this, revered for his war crimes, his unceasing ability and willingness to murder, steal, and get away with it.

this myth, so caustic, bent, and corrupted by the passage of time and poor translation, the pastors, politicians, who have taken this, the christian myth of the second coming to heart, has become a prayer into the future, not a history of the moment. what the american mythology functions as, if it can even be called such a thing, is a ahistorical banner for production, a piece of propaganda that is endlessly bought and sold, reproduced, repackaged, and sold at the price of admission. he has flown through the sun, come to know what lies beyond … and watch! as he carries the dying star, a cool stone, back to earth. it is the flag on the moon. it is beautiful space. it is what is done for the world that the children of america’s children will live in. christ’s white robes, the robes of the saint, lifted into the annals of history, the immortal who oversees all life, all transaction, all murder in his name, are the manifestation of whiteness as true nation, racial purity as godliness.

XVIII

the white subject, the man who sees his desire fulfilled in each moving picture, each song, each advertisement, each symbol, each word, is cast as this ubermensch, the demagogue of american popular culture. this figure, both tragic in his inability to do the good he has promised to those who are less, have less, can do less than he, and heroic, in his ability to engage in physical feats far beyond the capacity of a mere mortal, is the embodiment of what myth has become in american society, which is to say, the reduction of aeschylus’ tragedy… to a commercial for bleach. to men idealized, with the power to not only destroy themselves, but those around them. In ovid’s metamorphoses, the gods are rapists, murderers, and mutilators of those who get in the way of what they want. this power, in actuality, is often extreme financial mobility, access, political influence, and the privilege of appearing as a near-doppelganger to the ideal of aesthetic whiteness, thus gaining access to the divine right reserved exclusively for those in possession of this arbitrary distinction.

XIX

however, even these men, in their idealized, cartoon-like characterizations and very real incarnations, cannot possibly conform to the standards of empire. they are depicted as and are historically impotent, unable to deal with the responsibility that their miraculous transcendence to the kingdom of god has dealt them. They are indulgent, spending money frivolously on suits, cars, sex. They are time and time again found guilty of corruption, rape, and crimes of war and wealth. they are greedy and selfish, seen time and time again to choose their interests over the common good. they fall, victim to their desires, their weaknesses, their vices. they are, in short, human. even in cinema, the twisting of myth into commodity form, something so loved by spectators the world over, cannot

stop itself from depicting the white gods, the superheroes, as mortals, as people.

these superheroes, historically white, endowed with the necessary instruments to singlehandedly stand up to capitalism, stand up to the state, often fail to do so. they are tasked, much as hercules was, with a series of increasingly difficult distractions, supervillains, abstractions of the nightmare of the imperialist, a grotesque frankenstein made in the toxic waste of a powerplant, a mutant lizard in the sewers, the undead, the grotesque. this thinly veiled anti- blackness is an a constant hint in these ur-myths, adapted to a modern context. these beasts of the underbelly of industry, are depicted as unfriendly, alien, deformed … as the polar opposite of the desirable hero. this fight, of the image of good, against the image of evil, of lucifer against christ, burning as it ever was, occurs under the watchful eye of the law, as the state police, federal militia, and the full force of nation are often called to aid and abet the superhero in their quest to exterminate the super villain, a disfigured genetic message, an abomination of god’s will, an experiment gone horribly wrong.

XXI

the ubermensch under capitalism is tasked with combatting blackness, combatting islam and judaism, killing off all that is not god, himself. this is the will of god, the will of the lord and savior. god, in this sense, is the text, the law, it is the adherence to given interpretation without thought. biblically, god’s word is handed down by the disembodied voice, the burning bush, the sign taken as message from above. the danger here, although implied within, is worth restating… god’s word is left to the interpretation of the one who believes he has received his vision. this claim to vision, or claim to knowledge, demonstrated by illusion, by ability

to enact the ur-myth, is the lifeblood of american nationalism. it is the task of the institution of education, to properly groom and situate the white man to his condition, to situate others in relation to the condition of the white man (in order of importance and value of life), and to make him fervently obedient... to place the fear of god in him, before the law.

XXII

in the ur-myth, superman receives only himself, his own word. he answers to no one, other than his own idealism. he is the all-powerful colonist, sent from another world, from the sky, alone, endowed with the ability to put the earth on its knees. he is the pastor of the congregation, the shepherd of the pastoral green, and thus, the demands the attention of the entire world. as he slowly learns about his past from the artifacts and icons that remain intact from his destroyed homeland, he begins to doubt himself, doubt his ability, and doubt his mission. preventing this self education, this knowledge of self, is paramount to maintaining compliance. for if self knowledge is self doubt, then to leap, to jump off, to cast aspersions on oneself, into one’s own existence and reasons for existence, the past of the land, the past of one’s family, the genealogy of one’s own existence, is to be noncompliant. it is to demand more than the myth of whiteness, that is, to demand truth. it is to recognize and study the complexity of one’s heritage, of one’s existence, of one’s beliefs… of one’s relation to and in the world. it is to see that the mission of purity and future homogeneity forged by nation is an impossible future, a poisonous rhetoric, a justification for and of murder and genocide … that death is present in this, the room of the past … that which has passed, yet, remains.

XXIII

the superhero, or the colonial man, has been pitted, whether or not he is aware of his task (this is the americanized myth of sisyphus told via plato, one who rolls stones up a hill in a cave, in competition with his own shadow, to build a city he cannot afford to live in), against blackness and difference in the marketplace. he fervently believes that he is against … in competition for his life, his land, his home, ownership and protection of his woman … he has been presented with his potential worth, which is to say, immortality and adoration, in cinema, in representation in media, in the executive of industry, of the overseer, of the manager of labor. he, then, sees only in black in white, in a paradox of extremes. what is good, what is bad, what is sin, what is salvation… His vision does not see color, and thus, he misses the complexity of the situation. he misses the experience of having to act, the process of having to think for himself, to examine the rupture, the break, in his consciousness… between him and the world, the past, the present, and the future... as he has been gifted with the template for effective action, that is, social and political advancement. he does not and has never known difference, he has never been forced to do so. It is negotiated for him by the state, all he has to do is carry out its orders. he has never known death, because he is the executioner, outside of himself, by way of his duty in the name of the white god. perhaps this then is the myth of immortality, the myth of cultural immolation, where the icon burns into that same endless night. there is much endless night. he has never had to act on his own, only in coalition with the means provided to him as a birthright. he has never had to operate without his status, his superpower, his privilege. He need only react, and be assured redemption. in films, the superhero and the police force often come to work as one, or are depicted as working towards a similar goal, ridding the city of evil, which is of course an impossible task, seeing as the city was built and operates using those self-same means… seeing as evil is not a question of black and white. in the american city, the superhero is the rogue policeman. this sense of evil present,

this sense of darkness, is projected violently outward. he is that dangerous presence. the furtive gaze that is returned when he passes is not one that glimmers with the same hate he holds in his voice, it is one of fear, for he can take the lives of those that he deems unfit to live, for the state, for god, without apprehension, without thought. in image, he is an agent of god. In action, he is an agent of systematic genocide against all that is not white.

XXIV

the topography of american desire, as it relates to whiteness, coincides inextricably with an abysmal lack of imagination on the part of the white subject. (insofar as the state of culture is concerned, in the mind of the contemporary cinema-goer, beyond the hierarchies of value and skin graft images served to the subject, without process, without historical awareness, and most certainly without critical thought) popular film and television serve to provide a meal of impossible proportion, a rotten fruit torn from its root, filled with palatable whiteness… the subject eats heartily, content with the sudden appearance of a feast, albeit a feast without much nourishment at all. quite simply stated, the desire of the white american spectator will always be satiated, through culture, criticism, and the eventual production of more culture (if it can be called such a thing). furthermore, the courts of legality,publicity, and pseudo- criticism that stand menacingly behind each licensed production continually reaffirm and justify the circulation of these propaganda images. the question, however, remains…what will we do after the orgy? once we realize that the promise of these images cannot be fulfilled?

XXV

in the dream of whiteness, the ur-myth, the same image is produced, over and over again, rendering the image empty and meaningless, and thus, pure, cleansed of its discontents,

baptised in a still water pool… an aesthetic sense so bankrupt, so full of itself, and so devoid of complexity that each character has come to resemble the last, in both image and action. the only variable in the equation is the degree of spectacle, which only seems to rise to the occasion obscenity, aplomb, and fervor with each historical incarnation of these figures. thus, whiteness accomplishes its own end, to repeat itself endlessly, which in turn gestures to the message implicit in effective production of capital, generate waste from the waste of what was without thought. again, the emphasis being on production without thought. with each cinematic appearance of the superhero, a storyline is inevitably distorted, repeated, washed out, and cashed in on, complete with enough special effects and computer generated imagery to actualize the ur-myth, that is, to make it appear possible. the making of the superhero story itself is proof of the ability of capitalism to carry the propaganda of whiteness to that very end, with enough money spent on the project to finance a war. and make no mistake, these films are a war. the images produced and exported by whiteness are its legacy, both its means and its end to power, and the desire to maintain this power is the very nature by which the drive to (re)produce the image of power occurs. at this site, insurrection.

XXVI

the creation of images, text, myths, and stories that disavow the shorthand american tragedy, complicate it, cast those who survive and thrive in the face of whiteness, written by those who tear at the fabric of the bleached robe, who dare to scream, laugh, cry, and live in the wake of this genocide state, are indeed the hope of what humanity (remains) we share. the humanity that sees color, that must. the humanity that questions the anti-black, anti-difference rhetoric of whiteness, hate and nation, that must. the humanity that questions knowledge production and dissemination, that must. the humanity that studies the web of relations between peoples, between lands, the spaces between here

and there, right and wrong, america and otherwise, and pulls apart such distinctions. this is the task of the dissident in the wake of philosophical suicide in america. there was never a choice. it was to join or to die, and those who could not join, would not join… proclaimed dead and damned. this is the task of those with the ability to seize an education, to dissect the relationships of command that dictate american life and death, and to share that education and its resources, to use it to dismantle the machine of nationalism that chooses judgement over justice, that places its faith in books of the dead, instead of in the hands of those who labor under their weight, and inscribes its testament, not on stone, but into the bodies of those it has murdered. this is the bloody history which lies, buried alive under the myth of capital… superman’s world did not perish alone, nor was there just one superman. he is just that, because he carries his world in his chest, on his chest. the ubermensch, destroyer of worlds, the perverse napoleon afflicted by gallstones, atlas after eating. capitalism, quite simply, would not allow it, that is, a death by old age, a city taken into itself by time. no, the turnover is too quick. the market shifts far too abruptly. the narrative always has room for more, more characters, more cities and worlds to consume, more interpretations, more assimilation.

XXVII

the economy of desire, or the ways in which one looks to another, for reassurance, for companionship, for intimacy, for nourishment, for the fulfillment of that wanting vehicle ... this structure, as a means for perpetuating colonialism, is at the core of building a better, more compassionate white supremacy, and as such, must remain uncompromised ... its violent integrity and commitment to an ethos of racial purity at all costs maintained and shored up by money older than the house it resides in. this desire, as a machine produced by cultural signs and signifiers, directly translated, lies in correlation with the aesthetics of whiteness as they

relate to survival, passing, and ability to sustain oneself, to sustain the drive to life.

thus, the economy of desire is (re)configured as lust after commodity, a fetish only to be satiated by the passionate friction of the abject against object, hunger and thirst for the embodiment of images of value, and simultaneously, for the embodiment of images that have been deemed corrupt and worthless by capitalism. The perfect embodiment of whiteness as a means to survival, a means to safe passage through. it is this very extremism that collapses the cultural arbiter of value, which is to say that the image can never be inhabited, it cannot be penetrated, only depicted. again, none are free under the rule of the white nation-state, none are free under the rule of capital.

XXVIII

as capital slowly folds over onto itself, there is an abrupt shift in what sells and what doesn’t. this should not be mistaken for a change in value, values. it is a change in what is openly desired, what is coveted, what must be possessed (to remain in the liberal right)... as the market diversifies, quite literally, with the same slick smile, and opens another door, to another room, furnished differently, yet somehow still the same… it has no windows. this does not signify a structural change, but instead, signifies a willingness to commodify bodies that do not conform to whiteness differently, a willingness to kill by sleight of hand, to at once tokenize and nullify difference. Assimilate or die. this, again, is nothing new, as much of what is considered white culture continues to be derived from, stolen from, the imaginations and work of artists, thinkers, and writers of color. but the businessman that is the colonial graduate, savvy as always, sees a way to appear more inclusive, appear revolutionary, appeal to the student, the consumer, the spectator. this marketing of persons as a pseudo-inclusive identity politic, of taking advantage of the marginalized look of the season and introducing the new model to the bacchanalia that is the

excess of the executive, of the executor, is no liberatory movement. it is a gesture emptied of emancipatory potential. much in the way of the student being able to teach for a day, then returning to the assigned position, it is a role playing game. this session of performativity, put on for the eyes of the wealthy white patron, is nothing more than an extension of the carnivale of the everyday, a freak- show for the amusement of those seated and eating. It is an excuse for downward laughter, for trickle down economics to litter gold coins on the ground for the starving participant. knowledge is withheld, wealth is withheld, power is withheld, authority is maintained.

XXIX

in many senses, the field of industrial culture (perhaps it is now a stadium, complete with a jumbotron) operates as the body of faux democracy, as those who bear witness to the spectacle are always voting, as they are always spending. each film, each production, each performance is met with domestic box office results, justifying the decision, justifying the project. the purchasing of a ticket to the experience, a copy of the experience, the object, the obelisk, a facsimile of the facsimile, the ideological container, offers endless reproductive potential. the need for cultural criticism is dead (and as such, it is needed, now more than ever). sales and oblique ‘reviews’ determine whether a piece of artwork is effective, successful, good, not inquiry into the work, studying the means of producing the work, the values of the work. when faced with the behemoth that is the super- culture of capital, the billion dollar industry of mechanical reproduction of imperial propaganda, what can be said for it? and furthermore, what can be said against it? the conglomerate of hollywood, the sole titanic producer, distributer and exporter of american cinema is perhaps the most prominent figurehead of the project of whiteness, the most profitable, the most ever present. american cinema is the purveyor of the ur-myth, the dream and manifest international representative of the immortal white aesthetic.

it is told over and over again, the same stories of whiteness doomed to tragedy, to loss, to death. yet it is the very form that keeps the legacy of whiteness intact as it appears in the history books it has printed for its posterity. The reproductive machine reinforces the narrative value of the myth specifically by and through its endless repetition… it becomes immortal in its continual birth and rebirth. what is behind the curtain, however, as the propaganda film is projected, the train of unthought, is just that, what is projected onto the screen, what is projected from the nightmare of history that the white subject refuses to awaken from... the projection is carried into waking life, carried into walking, carried into looking at those around him, carried into a reality which appears to him now, as a simulation. this life, the life of dreams, the life of what he is unable to fulfill, unable to actualize, is actualized for him, paid for, and placed in front of his television set.

XXX

there is yet another contradiction to be spoken of. the images that whiteness produces of itself are inherently different, other, than that which whiteness claims, claims to uphold, claims to own, claims to be. how could it be anything else?

if whiteness is other than itself. whiteness is other to itself.

XXX

the colonial subject, provided with all of the necessary accoutrements to life, stares up from the screen, incredulously. who, me? who else? within this project, a seed of guilt, a seed of knowing, the human, the thinker behind the spectacle, a seed that feeds off of the exclusion of all that cannot cross this border into the american nightmare for profit, all that cannot pay the price of admission into the

theatre of whiteness. A seed, that even in its most ignorant formulation, knows it is undeserving of the gifts bestowed upon the white person by the myth of whiteness, knows of the industrial cruelty made necessary to preserve the quiet white life, security. this seed, however, rarely blossoms into the subversion of the privileges bestowed upon the very skin that protects it, to become an insurgent, an agent against colony. how could it? how could he? a whiteness that admits its own bigoted judgement, its own inability to meet justice in that field, its own instability in the face of the representation, which is not, in fact, representation at all… in the face of the impossible purity of knowledge and value it so claims to produce and ingest? it would be a rejection of divine right, rejection of the privilege of poorly embodying the values of nationalism. simply put, if this were to occur, and the handlers of capital were to bring themselves to trial, there would be no multi million dollar film, no spectacle at all. celebrity culture and its empty infatuations would die. this, perhaps, is the great jest of white capitalism, insofar as it is completely bankrupt, yet rich beyond its wildest dreams. a system of cultural economics run entirely on debt to an imaginary future. the purity of the stories, of white romance, of white post apocalyptic survival, of white class revolution ... the narratives and icons sold by media magnates to multiplex theaters across the country, across the globe … exist only in the sense that they are empty containers. they tell stories that lie flat, sucked dry of moisture, of life, of meaning … characterized and populated by people who are not as they appear, or perhaps they are … or are meant to be. they are given meaning by the cultural economy that at once enables and justifies their existence. it is the same cardboard cutout, the same smiling face, again and again, an advertisement to join the body without organs, the professor without students, the priest without congregation... the white actor, or agent, whose case manager is the film executive, has no more agency than the international spy, reprised and revered across the european world and beyond. the conditions of their employment, which is to say, fame and visibility in the factory of cultural reproduction, intersect directly with their adherence to the narrative of

nationalism, however abstracted or obscured. a spectacle with no audience, insofar as there is nothing to be heard. an empty container, a white flag, contemporary visual art. there is no border to abolish, there is no transgression to commit … there is only the blank screen, and behind it, the corpses of those whose lives are taken to stoke the furnace of empire.

XXX

however, the happening, the event, even as another is produced by the tongue, escapes. the past, tense, hears the plea of the present, yet it cannot respond. it calls out, but its mouth has moved. with movement, travels sound. it has become the hand on the shoulder of the now. in disjointed conversation, one at once finds the death of context and the life of the subconscious. thoughts, intentions, traits, are revealed. they are… betrayed. people's words conspire against them. to the best of our abilities, we attempt to use language… we even go so far as to call it our own… but language inevitably ends up using us. without fail, we cling to our words, our letters, our books, our stories, with such fear… that we will not become ourselves… that we end up giving ourselves away. what is said in passing … is just that.

206

Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.

208

TWENTY FIVE SCENES

I. They are smoking cigarettes outside the cafe. The air is thick and wet. He is wearing green rimmed sunglasses grey jeans, and his arms are covered. ‘I don’t like being seen,’ he says. Something about her awful smile… turned up, as if by some invisible force. ‘Let’s go inside, I can’t bear it’. Perhaps she swallowed a spider the night before… she can’t stop massaging her neck. ‘I need a drink.’ He gazes over her shoulder across the street. A woman with short blonde hair and a full face is taking pictures against the brick storefront. She notices him and quickly turns away. ‘The sun knows everything…’, ‘It is pointless to run…', ‘I heard it before anything else…’

II. He knocks his boots against the stairs outside his apartment. The sun has just pushed its way behind the complex across the street. The wires on the telephone poles dangle, pointless and empty. He reaches into his pocket for a cigarette… ‘She was truly impossible,’ ‘Her painless eyes,’… ‘Always failing…’ Somewhere around the corner someone is making a speech… asking for money perhaps. He tunes in like a soft radio. ‘You haven’t changed…’, ‘I’m sorry about before…’ The sound crackling through the air as if perhaps everything had suddenly split open, leaving current stranded in the still heart of the day… then pushed back into becoming by some electric pulse. The organs rising up and out of it. The anus at once a mouth. ‘I can feel my life fading, pushing away,’… ‘My thoughts are dirty, and I can’t rid myself of them,’… ‘This season of control’… ‘You never call me anymore…’ He spits and ashes the cigarette on the guard rail. ‘The city is thinking of us.’

III. On the train there is a woman with a boil on her cheek. It is violet at its apex, and it slowly fades into a greenish- yellow around the edges. She itches it periodically. I have my notebook open, in an attempt to edit an essay. ‘The

words never come out right’… ‘It's all screaming, she said’… The way she moves her hands reminds me of Alana, three years ago like she was someone else… picking at some old wound that kept getting bigger and bigger and standing in the woods facing a mass of trees with howling mouths that kept opening wider and wider. ‘I don’t love you anymore,’… ‘I love him,’… I couldn’t understand what she was saying. The words wouldn’t carry in the wind and it sounded like she was humming. ‘The air gets so big…’ ‘I can’t help it…’ There were tears in her eyes as she smoked, her hair catching movement in every direction. all on end and ‘It’s okay,’ I kept saying, it's okay. ‘It’s stupid, anyways.’ Her lips trembled as she managed a slow smile. ‘I remember how things didn’t make sense’… ‘A storm of consciousness…’ ‘After that, life became a shadow,’… ‘Words were just words…’

IV. The noise sounds like static from a television. The two missionaries stood in front of a massive brown organ, laughing to themselves about their book. There is a veil before us. Someone keeps clapping and a glass shatters on the cement. I could imagine both of them in some obscene pornographic talk show about bad thought. The one with blonde hair was beautiful and light, her cheeks pink like she ran everywhere she went. She motioned for me to sit down on the bench next to her, and I did. The park was empty, save the three of us and some yellowing leaves on the ground. Cian was drinking red wine from the bottle on the other end of the bench, looking for something. She smiled again, and reprimanded him like a mother. I couldn’t tell if she was attempting to convert us, kill us, or both. My tongue was sour and prickly like I had been eating crabapples. Later that fall, we stood under the awning outside her apartment while I smoked cigarettes. I asked her to marry me. She told me she was married to God.

V. At the river there are naked students everywhere. Classes have ended and there is music on the inlets. I sit on the

rocks in my underwear drinking white wine from the bottle… at once two things in my mouth. I have always been drawn to bitterness, it is growing up reading the Torah. But I need the sweetness now more than ever... life is not enough anymore. In this moment I feel a sudden panic, a black terror that everything is missing and that I must find it all at once… my hands clutching at the sand beneath them… I sink furiously, swallowing over and over again. ‘In a graveyard there are thousands of churches…’ ‘How can anyone pray to so many gods at once?’… The color red like eyes closed against sunlight. ‘I loved her, and then nothing’.

VI. He is biking slowly up the hill to the cathedral. He is not wearing a shirt, simply because the sun is up. There is no other reason. ‘Self law is all I have, don’t you understand?’… ‘Anna, I can’t see the end anymore,’… She called earlier that day to see if I was around. Her house has a spiral staircase at the door, leading up to the kitchen and the adjacent rooms. ‘When I’m at your house, I feel like Jacob,’… She smiles. ‘Who is that?’ We talk about angels for some time. The women in my life are all angels. Someone takes a picture of her leaned up against the countertop. We are drinking as the sun melts the window in front of the dining room table. Every window in her house leads outside. We climb to the roof and pour orange juice and champagne. The day is like a violin with broken strings. ‘‘There is still time,’… ‘We can sing together’,… ‘Please don’t leave’…

VII. The sun has set some time ago, and he is in his room shaving. The kitchen, the bath, the bed, all past this one door. A point as if marked on some forbidden and strange map. ‘It makes things easier,’… ‘Less to worry about,’... ‘I prefer not to,’... The voice stops abruptly. He cuts his neck, and washes the shaving cream and blood away with cold water from the sink. The building is silent, save for the couple making love down the hall. She gasps. He moves toward his desk, nervously dancing a cigarette in his fingers.

He is writing, but he cannot bear to leave his mind. His arm severed from it. ‘It is too painful… below the neck, I am dying,’ ‘Yet… somehow… I feel nothing…’, ‘Can you lose something you never had?’, ‘Still, I lost you’... The street below rises loud as the hours pass, full up with weekenders and drunks. The light at the intersection flashes on the wall… green, yellow, red. If he focuses softly enough, he can hear music in it, somewhere. The words come painlessly, and not much else.

VIII. T is sitting on the corner in front of the liquor store, adjacent to a Jamaican restaurant… I come when the sun rises and the doors open. He rasps, ‘the usual?’ I nod. We walk inside and I buy a pint of whiskey. As soon as we step back outside, he puts on his glasses and adjusts his shirt. It is unbuttoned down to the stomach, and he cuffs the sleeves twice. ‘So many children,’… I nod. We walk down the side street that connects to the campus of the university, and open the bottle. We take turns taking swigs as I shake two cigarettes out of the pack in my jacket pocket. ‘It doesn’t make sense anymore… the whole city is changing’… We talk about music for awhile. His old apartment building is now a dormitory. ‘I can’t shake the feeling of being unwanted’… ‘so I drink’. We reach the end of the back path and we part ways. ‘I can’t go back,’… ‘She loves me too much’… I purse my lips and look up at the space between two buildings. In these moments…

IX. She is sleeping on the bus stop bench. Her stomach falls over the lip of it, and she snores loudly. As I cross the street, she wakes up. ‘It's time already?’ I laugh and we get sandwiches together. The morning heat is in full. ‘They won’t let me sleep in the park anymore…’ ‘I saw them beating a little boy there last week’… ‘The children all gathered around.’ ‘We have nowhere to go…’ I don’t know what to say, and my eyes are always empty. ‘My son is in Cleveland… I think I’ll call him today… He’s a good boy.

They grow up so quick…’ A police car stops at the bench and a man gets out.

X. He is walking downtown, long after business hours have ended. This part of the city is empty in the evening, spare the occasional banker on foot. They walk quickly, carrying their briefcases close to their chests, glancing over their shoulders every once in awhile… ‘We’re being followed… just not by someone… so to speak’. He carries his field notebook, attempting to write as he walks. He has been working at this for quite some time… every step, every letter, carefully synchronized. He gazes into the empty storefronts… a tailor, a flower shop… there is a red light inside, drifting out from one of the back rooms. He stops and asks a question. These are the conditions for falling in love, for burning it all away. She held his hand, all on end, the moments were clear and cut fine from the whole. The red of the stoplight… that's what it was. They pissed in a parking lot by the river… it felt like someone was watching them all the time, even though everything was closed. At the end of the night they curled up in her bed together and kissed for a moment. ‘A brief candle, knowing someone’... ‘We never spoke’... ‘He was a thief from the start’...

XI. The diner was open all night. On Third Street, splitting the up and down of the city. The center of things, hot coffee and placemats full of paper advertisements. Cian and I walked in drunk, with a bottle of whiskey in a paper bag. It was all we drank in those months… it was almost winter then. We sat in a booth and I slurred my thanks to the waitress. She frowned at us upon seeing the bag, but brought coffee to the table nonetheless. Every moment in that frame needed a cigarette, the first drag over and over. A reel stuck on the same image. Scattered applause. Old pop music played over the jukebox, and the grey bearded man who always sat at the same table was there, drawing in his notebook. Cian looked up occasionally. ‘It is so hard to go on…’, ‘we had nothing to say to one another… the

arrangement was understood…’ The next morning we dressed up in our suit jackets to steal some of the croissants they put out for breakfast at the Jefferson, just a few blocks down from my room. ‘For an hour or two, we can pretend’… ‘They had an old scroll in the library, but the writing was too faded to read,’… ‘I brought back some orange juice…’

XII. Alejo arrived in a station wagon, pulling up into the alley beside the stairwell. I hugged him as he pulled a cigarette from his jeans and lit it clumsily. ‘How was the drive?’ He grunted and smiled. Later that night he and Anna fucked in her room. He didn’t come back until the next morning. We played guitar and got drunk on port. She listened politely. In the last afternoons, he shat blood. He was sick then, but he got better in New Orleans after the summer ended. ‘It was the bugs that made it unbearable…’ ‘Everywhere… crawling…’, ‘I crushed one in my fist… there was nothing better to do….’

XIII. Cian and I walked on the train tracks during the worst days. I wanted to kill myself, but I couldn’t decide how. I am horrible at acting… so I walk. We wore white t-shirts and jeans. I had a pair of army boots that I loved even though they were a size too small. The toes were covered in paint. We were drinking wine. Halfway to the beach, we came across a small set of tents off to the side of the tracks down by where the creek runs, separating the rail from the city. A tall, thin man emerged covered in tattoos. He asked us for some cigarettes and water. In the middle of his chest was a swastika, and both of his forearms bore the SS insignia. He seemed agitated. ‘It felt more like a robbery… like they were taking our time away from us’… ‘We tried to stop them, but they threw the books in the fire… our bodies…’ I nodded quickly and continued walking. He shouted at our backs. There were turkey vultures circling overhead… ‘They smelled something we couldn’t…’ ‘There is always something burning…'

XIV. We were passing through the edge of the city into the farmland and woods. I sat in the bed of the truck. It was getting cold. The trees whipped past and began to fold into one. He pulled into an auto parts shop for coolant. I desperately wanted to leave, but I didn’t know where we were. Time was somewhere else. He kept not coming back; Cian cracked a couple jokes on the passenger side and turned on the radio. Something about nuclear weapons, then Billie Holiday. He left it there. Her voice filled the air like a plate with chipped edges. Earlier that day Cooter took us to his secret hideout by the James. He said it was a place where they held Union prisoners during the war. To get there you had to walk along a wall that rose high above the ground. I was drunk and felt sick. When we finally passed over, we were atop a concrete building without roof, the insides all hollow with thick pipes sticking out of the ground. It looked like you could impale yourself on them. ‘It's a long way down,’ he said. I agreed in silence.

XV. There was a fire at the station. Someone lit a cigarette out by the buses and tossed it absentmindedly into a pile of trash. The television said ‘... Two inmates still missing,’ or something like that. There were police cars parked outside and the air conditioning was broken. A man in dirty jeans asked me for five dollars to get to Newark to see his wife. I stood in line trying not to cry. Smoke started to fill the room, and a baby wailing. Its mother rushed out of the building, and other people began to follow. I felt the need to stay. One of the cops came in and said it was just a paper bag. Someone finally turned the sirens off. There was a man sweeping by the vending machine with his head down. I needed to get out of town. On the bus I tried to write, but nothing. It all came out stupid and unreasonable. The little things we do to hurt ourselves. I didn’t want to come back but I did. I carried my luggage down East Grace Street, past all the beautiful houses, the families with beautiful children. I wondered what they thought about. If they were ever

worried or scared. I suppose we all are. My arms began to shake. Something else…

XVI. Clifford heard our performance from down the hall. It was loud, we broke things, and yelled at each other. I don’t know why we did it… maybe it was the tension between us. I loved her in some uncertain way. He spoke with us, asked us about the things we cared about. On my birthday we drank up on the terrace by her apartment. I couldn’t stop that night. I always want to forget birthdays. We held hands and kissed. By then I had left a long time ago. We reluctantly smoked and sat down because it got too hard to stand. We kept drinking, and soon the entire city faded away… it all became lines, noise, and shifting ground…

XVII. We painted for a long time. I took some pills and bought drywall from the hardware store down Broad, dragged it five blocks inside. She was from Georgia and kept talking about it. I let her borrow some of my paints. It was a Sunday like everyone hates. Something is always ending.

XVIII. My mother called and told me that my sister was back in the hospital again. She asked me to come home. I needed to come home. I was at the edge of the Bottom, looking down, standing in front of the outdoor market around midnight. A dark blue circle, opaque, with a trapdoor in the center, on the surface of everything like a big sticker. It wasn’t her voice. There were the whites of someone’s eyes inside and I saw a lighter flick. It started to rain, and the insides of my shoes slowly filled up. I wanted to laugh or cry or something, but I couldn’t. In those days nothing would come out. I couldn’t piss or shit either. I kept everything to myself. I had to hold myself together somehow, so I kept everything inside. The phone was still on but I stopped paying attention. Someone was working on the rail above the train station, and it looked like they were floating in the air somehow. Sparks rang out from under the

metal contact, lighting the air by the bunting that covered the facade of the building. There were lines in the air. I started walking back.

XX. On the train back down the Hudson, I remembered kissing her in the soybean field. Her lips were warm. We walked all night, barefoot through the river. The rocks cut the bottom of my feet. As the sun started to rise, we sat at the end of the road and kissed.

XXI. In the graveyard there was a statue of a woman clutching a gravestone with a cross protruding from it. Her face was turned away, and she couldn’t get to the stone without climbing through some of the brush that now enveloped the circle. A maintenance man slept in the passenger side of his car. As she passed, he raised an eye towards her face. His cheeks were covered in pustules, and his right eye was swollen shut. She wondered if there was something there. The other man lay in the grass overlooking the river, smoking a bent cigarette. The day was moving slowly through the trees.

XXII. On Brown’s Island there is an empty stage where sometimes shows are put on when the weather is nice. As I walked down the paths, red flower petals littered the air. I was thinking about something that I can’t remember anymore. The paths led down an old canal where stillwater pooled and there were growths on the water. A mother pushed her child in a stroller. At the end of the path there was a small cafe with umbrellas by the edge of the water. There was a man sitting at one of the tables, reading a newspaper. He looked up at me from across the canal and smiled.

XXIII. I was running and dancing down the street. It was lined with houses full of students and families. I wanted to

recreate a scene from a film that I had just watched. I was going to meet a friend, but when I got there things weren’t the same. ‘I’m sorry... I can’t tonight… I’m changing too quickly…’ I ran down the side of the road by the movie theater. There was a great line outside. I ate dinner with a man I didn’t know in a kitchen down by the bridge where the neighborhoods start. There was a party on the other side of town. When I got there, everyone was drunk. We were all kissing and our bodies spilled out onto the balcony. The night air was calm and I was in love again. I wanted to know everyone. Later, the police came, and I slipped out the back with several students. We shared cigarettes on the avenue and parted ways.

XXIV. ‘You can never be too careful,’… Cian and I sat at the cafe smoking cigarettes. He brought a book, and I was attempting to finish a poem. ‘There’s nothing good to write anymore…’ ‘The memories fade too quickly’. We sat under an umbrella as people walked to work. We both rolled cigarettes from a thinning pouch. I was drinking black coffee and working quickly. In those days I needed something I didn’t have. I ached for it. Down the street, a beautiful woman in a black dress passed silently around the corner. Her brown hair caught the light for a moment. I was sweating through my shirt. As I finished my cup, the garage down the street opened up.

XXV. ‘It's all leaving’, she whispered from the foot of the bed. ‘Everyone is putting on their shoes.’ I sat at my desk, looking out the window, smoking my last cigarette. She stood up, looked at me, walked over to the door, and left.

A. There is another memory that I have forgotten. It begins in the middle, painfully. We walk somewhere. With lovers, friends… everything is alone together, like the song. I can’t stop listening to music, being a part of things. I am writing on the street, there is a man on the ground, surrounded by policemen. The old buildings are being replaced. Someone is singing out the window of a third story room, and I look up. The city is always fucking and folding in on itself. It is too hot to be outside. The rain stops and starts in fits. I pass two lovers, moaning, with their heads in their hands. Everywhere there are fountains. People sleeping under the awnings of storefronts, passing in and out of life… some shaking door… I am sweating under it, weaving my movements into some unknown directive. A professor is screaming and making his speech in front of the library as the students kiss passionately inside… someone is knocking on the walls, over and over again. It lives in my throat… and again in my mind...

220

Behind Joy’s Creek, There Lies Ophelia, Marooned

Incapable of her own distress wearing the un-mask of Orpheus Ophelia succumbs to the knife of time and its infernal direction: lost love’s Loneliness. yet she is asked to produce just one more ballad-song the conductor nods his edem-ic head (long since claimed by evil design) a silent command: play a-long play a-long

The band strikes up a wanton tune for from Sin, they could not abstain without the watchful eyes of God brothers against His brow-beaten campaign forlorn Ophelia, sullen charge, numbly takes up her lute to roll through thicket-thorns of the great dismal swamp into eventual sickness and disrepute.

Pockmarked and ill she lies still painted open in the fen beetles rustle and stir beneath the carpet her resting body in the golden reeds waiting for the next life, in order to begin again cloth’d in muddied wedding dress as the band soldiers on whistling her fate under murd’rous breath for soon Ophelia shall be gone a funereal March, an impending Death (A Rite witnessed betwixt one world and the next)

she knows it cannot be long her mouth yet wrinkled by age now, closer comes the whisper closer than ever before breath weak as it meets the wind and this chapter ends at the turn of a page forbade to visit her faithful partner she floats in Misery’s early grave love’s fated Kiss to forever mourn.

Soft wanes the afternoon as her hair soaks up the basin dry Ophelia becomes porous filled with stillwater and decay once lit by ephemeral glow now weathered to the eye she engraves her heart, an etching of great Pain into the eternally receiving Heaven-sky its orange warmth sets slow on Evermore arms receding into ether and there is naught a soul to call to aid to cure such an unsightly Fever the union band passes her by too far out of reach as a figure of speech for desperate voice to cry thoughts betrayed over hill and under foot moving clay at thunderous pace the earth beneath her shook like ribb’d timber, Ophelia into sleep did fall in her lace gown, destined to ne’er be given away the spirit of her lover, she could now recall beaten, upon the shore:

Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down, Darkness be over me, my rest a stone; Yet in my dreams I'd be nearer, my God, to Thee

The lament touches her beneath sallow complexion a suggestion brought to bear in her mind such divine suggestion! for deep amongst the cypress and pine a lone sound escapes from Ophelia’s lips a moan of pain and sorrow a moon once shared now eclipsed with only her own dwindling life left to atone for grief undue in place of her body was the lute heartstrings woven with sinew.

Ophelia, try as she might could not make these illusions real in desperation, relieved of her pride before Death did she kneel it came to her swift as shade in the evening disbelieving, Ophelia came face to face with her reflection, unyielding the violence of her body cross’d with the day’s dying light last thought lost to words as she passed, once more into the endless night.

god’s hand unsure

as her mouth slips under-water so shallow so shallow

224

INTERLUDE

i continue to lose myself in the middle of things

this season of control

226

THE PLOW

Written on December the 7th, 2013, in the History Archives of the New York Public Library.

Present: Vasily Oprichnov Semyon Zemshinov

(The stage is lit on the left side by a lone desk lamp. Oprichnov is dressed in a stiff collared shirt and sits in a wooden chair at the desk, absorbed in work. Zemshinov enters from the right, clothed in a muddied linen shirt, and sighs as he kicks off his boots.)

Oprichnov: (poetically consumed) '... and they were picked by the hand of God, free to their hearts’ desire.' (noticing Zemshinov's entrance) Do you think I have done right by our father?

Zemshinov: (in a tired appeal) How could you ask me such a question?! He has no interest in endeavors such as ours, and in fact, He has no interest in any endeavor at all. This I know, if I have received some sort of education. I have plowed his field as merrily as my faint pulse would allow at the estate, and have not scarcely touched the samovar that sits perpetually in wait in that Vasilyevich’s household. His three youths watch me through the window, and they wonder as I once did if their arms would ever bulge with the veins of a workman. They are not predisposed to planting seeds. When they are called to prayer, they leave my side willingly and enter into the warmth of his halls. Only then does the hay upon which I wish to rest itch at my skull.

Oprichnov: (continuing his angry speech) The man even refused to name us, so we had to take it upon ourselves! Do you remember that day? You left for your apprenticeship under Prichnov, and I in turn left for Moscow. The road from our childhood home was two days long, and I felt the headwind peel the overcoat off my body. I never asked how

long your journey was, but I knew you had arrived safely when I crossed into the city. Two men clothed in black asked me my name and my service to Tsar Ivan; I had no answer, but I answered all the same as I crossed myself. Your words flow through me sometimes, dear Semyon!

Zemshinov: We walked briskly, but I felt lightened by my breath in those days - the tobacco smoke burdens one's step in old age. My path took me through the peasant commune, just outside of Novgorod. There I saw gypsy women, standing like trees without bark - petrified by their bodily functions in the snow. They felt nothing, so it was not right for them to possess their clothes in Ivan's wake, but their existence somehow continues to this day - without scarves to shield their nude curves from winter's stinging bite. The tsar's woodsmen toil as I do in the fields, but to clear the land of these souls. (distracted.) I seek to feed lost souls from the soil, as I am no longer able to find my own mouth.

(Zemshinov strips off his muddied attire, and prescribes himself a glass of vodka - a daily ritual)

Oprichnov: (noticing Zemshinov's behavior, and chiding him for it) I will never understand why you attempt to rid yourself of your code. You should have gained so much from your experiences…

Zemshinov: Father refused to teach me the scriptures, dear Vasily. These are words I can speak, but will I ever press a pen to paper? Your chains are self imposed, locking yourself in a room like this... (Zemshinov only now realizes the hopeless nature of his appeal, and ceases to speak).

Oprichnov: Why do we argue so?! I only approach you with love in my breast, and it is just so that you turn your back to me. If we pray in separate rooms, what good is the blood we share?

Zemshinov: I would ask you the meaning of the name you argue under, since it is self imposed and you have placed it first and foremost before the blood of which you speak - it is just as well that I had no choice in mine. You forget that my stories can only be told to the ear.

Oprichnov: Go on then. My meaning was predestined.

Zemshinov: For God's sake! I will speak to those whose canals are not clogged by their own pointless rhythms!

(Zemshinov enters a trance of sorts; in his opportunity to tell, he forgets his current state of despair and exhaustion. To Audience.)

My name came before Joseph's dreams. Or at least so they said. They being the children of course, I often forget that I am speaking aloud. To raise my voice now... My first night on Prichnov's land; it was the last dinner of the harvest. I came as his wife's lungs first gave out; it was also the night she was admitted…

Oprichnov: Admitted where?

Zemshinov: Do not interrupt! Besides, it matters not. (Continues.)

Prichnov forgot his responsibilities, as the feast he prepared burned - and his three daughters cried out in hunger. He drew his horses to him, and rode off to meet one of yours in Moscow with the ailing woman. You did not see his face amongst the crowd, fixed in a grimace that crushed his teeth into gum. You would have known.

I pulled the blackened meat from the oven, and attempted to salvage a meal for the little ones. We sat at the empty table, with both heads missing. The daughters kept looking over their shoulders, as if someone were to arrive at any moment. When they finally lowered their shoulders in peace, they asked me my name.

Oprichnov: (in excitement) You said! You said!

Zemshinov: (now patient) I told you, my little anxious one, that I did not yet know my own tongue.

Oprichnov: I just wish I knew what you would have answered, that is all. I only desire to see… I must have heard…

Zemshinov: We know your story. They know your story. Let me speak.

Oprichnov: (submissive) As you did not know yours, I will hold mine.

Zemshinov: (unconvinced) Very well.

My lips were sealed with the gunpowder of a thousand soldiers, and trampled underfoot by the hooves of their steeds, so I only shook my head. Their open lids saw, then, and did not need to hear. I had no records or receipts to give them, as you claim to have given to the highwaymen who assaulted you… that is to say, a sacrament taken into one’s mouth...

(Oprichnov tries to interrupt and speak out for the Tsar's men, but he finds himself unable to vocalize his thoughts)

... Ah! Very good. Very good, dearest. The papers are not as well versed as the intuition. As the smoke rose from my pipe, I saw it. Saw it and Him, father was finally home for the first time with our mother and the day's bread - and he spread its fruit in the abundance before us. You were full, as was I. Prichnov's table, in order to adequately share the wealth, was cut into quarters, forming His burden. As our father was, I then saw you entering Moscow; entering his absent shell. This was our connection you spoke of.

(Oprichnov tries to vocalize his thoughts again, but finds that both his mouth and eyes refuse to open now.)

Only with a distance of almost three days and nights could we see each other as we truly were. If only... Our father used to make us eat on our knees, so you know not of the holy table at which Prichnov's children sat in company. They rose in height, and their legs extended to touch the stone floor, as mine did. They spoke only, 'Semyon', and cried without any further sound. I left the bread untouched, as my fill no longer came from the wheat - I knew I only had to harvest His crop.

(Oprichnov is seen to scramble for his books, knocking over the lamp. The books are gone from the desk; he gasps in fright - clutching his throat. He then runs from the room, leaving Zemshinov in the now empty room, laughing heartily, with light surrounding him from all sides.)

232

MUTE AND STUMBLING, THE EVENTUAL CRAVING

purpose is consumptive. the human body is designed for the impossibility of self sufficiency, that is to say, it can only eat itself for so long. then the hunger arrives. between meals, the passing of time. the thought of death. the habits cultivated in the spaces between survival serve to amplify this need, this want of satiation. the trick of hope is that it lies in the next meal, in the next hour, through the next door. salvation somewhere else. and so the body wanders, headless and dripping, into the chambers of occupation. the lives of others. upon contact, the human must use all senses and nonsenses at its disposal in order to ascertain whether or not the other is fit for consumption. ideology, religion, sight, smell. an autopsy of the living. the predator circles the prey, just as the teacher circles the student... although, at first, who is who and what goes where is not quite clear. the human in question is designated to fit a purpose, fill a hole, enact a fantasy, as seen fit by the one with the open mouth. they must be outfitted as such, with the life of dreams, with the costume of the flesh. the punishment must fit the crime. in this circle is where lovers are created, desires, once sublimated, are actualized, and humans, once civilized, become the animals they sought to domesticate. at first, one cannot be shaken from the suspicion that this is all just a game, some bizarre passage into mutual relations, into care, both given and taken, the potential for symbiosis. but one never feeds off of the other in equity. then the fantasy would die. the fantasy of worth, of meaning, of individuality. the questioner, out of the eternal womb, must be in possession of some divine connection, some gateway to eternal human truth, some blood of the gods, a messenger at once mortal and forever. this base fallacy lies at the essence of the myth. the questioner then becomes a picture, a statue, an icon, whose role precedes the process. the questioner stands away from the table, in the corner, amongst mirrors. tricks of light and shadow. believing oneself to be the master of one's own life. perhaps the greatest delusion of all. in meeting, the two engage in a ritual of knowing, the bringing together of forms

of deception and illusions which lie formlessly. sniffing each other's asses. ash, smoke, and dust. particles fine and indecipherable, as if they were symbols written in a language whose ephemeral translation has been lost to the digestive tract of time. and it has. this dance as old as time itself, yet so is the myth of truth. truth burns in the stomach. and so the rhetoric of the trial returns to the body. it is a question of food. it is a question of water. of who stands in the way. of who is standing on the way. of who will lead the way. of who is the way. the questioner only emerges from behind the mirror when the student has wept, pleaded, begged for mercy... been broken, like a dog. the vulnerable flesh of one who was once faithful, once loyal, once loving. now asking for death. there must be, at least, this violence. the violence of living, the violence of dying. the struggle of two irreconcilable urges, the same urge, to kill and be killed. each step towards knowledge, a step backwards into the abyss of the unconscious, each syllable spoken an invocation of being and a knife suspended in the air. as if language were in defiance of all that stood before it. this attempt to reach out, to communicate... nothing more than a hand around the throat of the defendant, a desperate attempt to suffocate and suspend time, to suspend the ruling... until further notice. once this spell of perverse love has been revealed, uncovered, as a means to an end, a meal to a movement, as a means to postpone the end... then, and only then, may the feast of bodies begin. it is a sound. salivation somewhere else.

LABOR

in the not so perilous drive toward repetition, the et cetera et ceteras and blah blah blahs and passings into and out of time the unfittingness of the moniker spoken, once more the icon makes an appearance, as a token fragment, chewing, always chewing on some parcel and spitting the impenetrable meaning… those always attempting penetration, the crude act, drawing from the soil, of the soil… the stupid fertility, blah blah blah biological imperative, blah blah blah, thought traps porous as the want to believe, the want into faith, the violent mythology of it all… the not so elaborate card trick of value, always this not so, not so living, not so dead… to be given to one or the other is the nucleus of the spine bending in sleep… the rapping of the door, giving way to deviled shirts. At once no one enters the room and the entirety full, thousands of elijahs pouring into the environs… forever heating long past, err, long past that. Consumptive and stewing meat slurring and shouting from rooftops as the impossible passes by once more pacing the streets like a ghost without a map… stupid to attempt, stupid to signify, stupid to locate such a place. Pointless exercise, commence, commence, commence. murder, shadow, shadow, shadow… living out beyond the body all worst fear embodied the stupid fucking fallacy of it, makes me hateful and withdrawn. That insidious me, always cutting and reserved and adjective adjective adjective. Stand in stand out, this door always fucking cutting me cutting me up so i cut in the air in retaliation no longer a scream just a moan elongated… gesturing to something else, always gesturing forward and backward and directionally broken and bent around these rings which… ah why continue. A bowel movement, good enough reason as any. Losing and gaining urges some pile hidden somewhere selected letters. I am only talking to you because i have no one else, yes, i am alone. Claiming purpose in my study, of books, of letters, of songs… no purpose, only lies to preserve aspirations. See, i wish to be better than myself, more infinitely possible, and yes, living in possibility without dropping out again. Body body body

again the precious cargo being jostled is spirit, is soul, and my sole purpose, if any, is to rid myself of it. I have tried the austerity of fasting, for thirty nights… for i must be less than christ, more hateful, more of the submissive devil falling in my thirst for spirit. I would sacrifice my body for the promise of continuance, for my case to be furthered, postponed, pushed back, thus allowing for my mind to continue its weak plotting in liminality, in perpetuity. For i do not truly wish for myself, i wish to be the door, at once the gate between past and present and future, to be object. I have long since surpassed my subject-desire. I betray myself in the last sentence. I must establish i, further i, to the reaches of my imagination, i conquer worlds in my mind. The outside is pointless, a stupid exercise, yet i move through it in each waking and dreaming and everything moment, the fluidity is infuriating. Like trying to bottle an ocean, i overwhelmed, i drown, is is, is simple as this. Gesture gesture gesture, the great accomplishment of taking up space. Each being not much more than this, but we claim otherwise, great gesticulation of the spirit, great conquering of the body, great conquering of societies and civilizations… she spoke of the mud, thick soup of elements composing this around and around and she understood. She had reached the bottom, but dramatized. Hard to avoid the want to dramatize. To make big, to make important, to make people want to see. I desperately want their want, i crave it. To make my struggle seem important, bigger than it actually is. I am small, lost in some pinprick locality, spiralling in confusion and neurosis while the metric tonnes drop their weight from the sky… the entire sky laughing as it plummets as we tremble and tell stories… i suppose the desire to preserve humanity, the idea of it, whatever… that there was some moral logic or great progress, great, great, great… the gold plated accelerationist stamping letters over and over again. Stupid studio production stupid stupid stupid! I curse, i repeat, i sin, i submit to my desires, my weight, my past dragging me down and killing me with my stupid fucking decisions bottled, i not the ocean, i, i, and that is all. Two of me, none of you. And thus i win. See? The stupid fucking game, stupid stupid stupid. I am done

pretending, done trying to magnify, maximize, m, m, m, muted pleasure forever! I struggle to press into lines, press into some neatly ordered tyranny of thought i punish myself… yes, i punish myself and relish it. I become two, separating the oil and water of my soul. Need not the wine, need not! I show myself i need nothing, no one, no two, no three, no food, no water… i punish myself forever and thus become myself and the pathetic fallacy of the world is revealed to me… bodies burning and faces contorting in silent screams, the entirety of human history a wildfire, burning burning burning… and yet i laugh in its face, i laugh at all, at all i care! I care somehow and i love, but this furious burning! I lost my place… knights and soldiers and armor and valor and blah, blah, blah.. Impotence blah blah blah… fear of impotence, infertility, what stupid fucking generation…. Hahahaha witless witness or something… i have to play otherwise i will die and whatever else. Not of death, but of possession. Still this perverse ownership. I need to own the body in order to become beautiful… not your stupid idea of it, only the ladder knows. The ladder tells me of beauty. Laughing as below the great flood flushes the giant enema of life and life never again. Almost repeating ad verbatim. Just say it again, and again, and again, and again. Tell me you love me and love yourself. Tell me at least this and my work is done… your adoration and love i will take it and etch godhead into hahahahaha i apologize. Its funny, its good to joke! I need to tell you, i must, of the pressing importance of faith. In these times, times such as these, when violence and the errant wills of men rule the earth, you must believe! Faith is the step, no leap, just a step. Sore in lies, only bruises the great blotchy purple of existence i am hit again! It hits and hits! Sorry. Not funny anymore. No more jokes. If i could make you laugh, perhaps meaning. Early knew about comedy. Laugh at yourself, and the world will be revealed. Looking inside my own body, at the hideous pulsing, the rhythmic joints and pumping of organs, the thrusting machine pushing itself into existence, i see world. I see great extension, phantom limb, phantom arm, phantom stage. Laugh as you build and watch others use what you build to execute the idea. The idea being slaves,

others. Others and others and others, building the columns of new empires, blah blah blah. Periods periods and periods of regurgitation endless vomiting of the animal out of the voice mouth of reason.. Whatever. Fuck. i want to be great but reject greatness. I want to rule over myself but submit to the chaotic intonations of my body. I tone and atone. I kneel and kneel and kneel at its feet but it laughs out of a severed neck. The sky is dark and a child is born blah blah fucking blah. I curse to diminuate, to distance… i fucking justify myself because i can. I dont care what you think. I do. What does it matter. I kill spiders in the drain and shiver as the day turns. The rotting milk. Shut up! Ill stop now. I promise. What keeps me is the ambition… i’ll say it again. If somehow i can become a god and live forever… its just going about it the wrong way is the problem. The mad ship circling and circling, i laugh and have a drink below deck. I live forever in laughter… i laugh at despair, in its miserable face ha ha fucking HA! I have won out, its the papers great papers that confirm my victory. I kill them i kill myself, i slash at the portraits, all of them. I make the portraits, i make myself, all faces mine. I own the forever holding and thus i own nothing. I cant keep going like this, i cant. I must remind myself what happened last time… but no more of that. I must leave something before …. Thats it. I struggle to speak of violent acts out of fear that they might come true. I study the violence of history but the child in me believes, furiously believes that it must stop, that killing may end, that god may leave us all once and for all, and thus leave us to spend sweet unending days that never turn. That’s it. Beneath it all an idealist, a double agent… all is parsley and salted water. I drink and drink and become all the more deluded… bloated in the night the stupid fucking endless, i gather myself quickly and slip into a choked dream. My clothes are my demons and they are so fucking awful. They are searing the air and vibrating and they hear everything. We are so stupid we want to draw a line between what is living and what is dead. Nothing is alive and nothing dies. Is that simple enough? I worry myself over precision… no neat or easy way to divide, to incise, to begin the surgery… so i mutilate my body… i only trust myself to

kill myself, yet i let everyone around me kill me every day… infuriating, fucking infuriating. I need a cage around my cage, a selective barrier membrane around the permeable malleable flesh, i bang with a hammer i scream i judge on my flesh. Me no one else but i bear my death on the inside and i keep it secret. I wish it was my sole will but the great block is that there are many causes, many active causes, half dead and dying the half lives quarter lives, bending and breaking and particular separating into grains of sand and grit harsh particles laughing at the statue, laughing at the painting, the monument, the icon, what we do not know, dust, salt! She said salt, and she understood. It has a taste, it has a purpose. The scale balanced with water and salt. All scales within the body, measuring, coordinating… you mustn't let it dry out too quickly.. no … you mustnt get too greedy, no you must’nt must not… see the particular? I laugh when i see it because it is so dumb and boring! Boring and cutting boring and cutting boring hahahaha i have to use the words for the meaning, see? People use words. I get useless when i get too close. I need the distance, i must maintain it, otherwise i shatter and fall apart. Please dont get too close, please… too close to understanding. Look it in the eyes too soon. I turn inward, turn and turn again, inward outward aboutward, arrows riddling me arrows riddling. They are asking questions, whispering and asking, questions i cannot answer… impostor impostor impostor. Posing, situating in situations, ending in all endings to end all endings! I need something neat, but i said near. Betrayal, i betray myself in my speak. You see how useless it is to maintain these things? Undyingly unendingly useless to maintenance, to press against the walls of the house, somewhere inside there is a woman tearing at the wallpaper and screaming. We decorate to make it look pretty on the outside. We decorate to make it lovely. At least love my death! At least this… so stupid and general… bigger smaller bigger smaller, escalating climbing, descending… see this trouble with directions, heights and longitudes and latitudes, the surface is deceiving as a circle but the square expands it. Early fascinations only accelerate and pummel the breaks. Perhaps the most intelligent thing to do is to hold silence…

that makes no fucking sense. Forget this later, or not. Obsession with forgetting, single space, double space, it holds in body in breath in mind, regardless of memory it remembers. Singular definitions uphold reason but so much more punitive and down down down banging on the floor… and everyone hears the noise. Speak up! Speak up damn you! Or die or something. I laugh, i die, blah blah blah …. I have nothing smart to say anymore, no more mystical great propositions to propose, all of my ideas are dead, the generative potentiality lost to time. HA! I will never write again, never read again, i will break my symbols in half and scatter them indiscernible on the ground. Irascible, eviscerate, something about merciless evisceration. I meant as in geometric balance, weight, measure, what have you. color , what a stupid word what a base fucking word. Big words to forget, expansive words whatever… such a tired block i lift i lift i lift. I’m tired of having to explain this to you, to myself. Old age does that to an animal… crawling into the shade to die. The muted resonance of inquiry bouncing off stone. Not so severe is it? Not so important the question the anxiety the fear of loss and the punishment of dreaming… so struck down and low the hands reflect off of mirrors and into the air and everything is always dancing. Reduce and make sense. Constellations and and and and and and this and this and that. The greatness of the human machine is fatigue, laziness, indulgence. We have generated humanity to justify our impulses, our inability to become factory. A promising economy undermined by the unstable core that generates and collapses under the weight of its own reason… in tiredness, in sleep, in weak mind, there we become great, we become wondrous beings, in the sense that we are full of wonder. We have exhausted the boundary and god rushes in to greet us. I protest until i collapse into a great big nothing. We banal routine everyday nothings. The nothing special days filled with slowness, in particular are the greatness of great big lazy futility. Submitting to our mud purpose, the collapsing of ladder and line up down across unable to maintain the inability is the victory against god and the demands of debt… we come close to the face and shatter

into impossibility… return, return, return… i eviscerate my soul and return to my body. The better, truer of the seasons, winter. The superficiality of warmth, the freedom of warmth, fades into the milieu of failing light. It is as the world cannot support the weight of itself. There we survive, and live off of the fated scraps. There is no energy for the violent externality, but only the preservation of the internal… the cave sealed and eventual suffocation… the natural death of the fire. What was stolen returns to… no demons, not that. No demons and no perilous struggle… the dangerous freedom of the mind broken by the lack of window… no screen, no reflection, no pool of water… it lives forgetful of the body, and thus preserves it in its forgetfulness…. I beg you to love me, and you turn away, dear reader… hahahahaha i had to. I had to. Even now, i laugh at my own bad jokes. It is a way of comforting, a way of telling and telling off. I tell myself these things sometimes, as a way of lighting. I do not depend on the sun, no… the world is too inconsistent… only i am dependable enough, sure enough of this inconsistency to live free of place… yes, i know of my birth, but i do not know it, nor do i wish to. I generate myself, and myself alone… a closed circuit of disingenuous intention. This is why it is always preferable to live underground… my feet are too ugly and numb… too far away from the core… away from the beginning, worms in the fruit of my life…. The world causes chaos and disaster… i turn away from you, i turn away from everything, i break my bond, my debt, i become animal, become object, no longer like you. And thus i am ruined, the ruins of the past, the history of everything lives inside me, as it does in you. Do not think better or worse of me for this, i am as much a fossil as a breath. Renounce and access, renounce and animate the spine. Much of great modernity in the cartoon, the impossible truth of the body brought into being by the body… image of the body expanding and contracting too fast contorting snake writhing in rubber something like that. I try i fail i try again, process. I must make this much clear the gesture is the mind of the hand, i blame the eye, i blame the mind, but the organism is the hand, closest to truth hand, reaching, always reaching. In

my externalities, in my farthest from, i am closest to, father, mother, father, i am clearing the malfunction. Technicians fiddling with knobs, lots of gears and mechanisms jolting halting and smoking endlessly. If not this then that, if not, then. I establish logic, i take a step, but what step into the falling? Careful exploiting my circumstances to the least, least work, least effort. I shorten, i contort, i elongate, i become exploiter of that which exploits myself, doubling down, stuttering in rapid oscillatory movement. The colors simplify and movement becomes an exercise of the joint. I send nerve through habit of nerve sending, letter with contents laughing. You open the container of importance and receive babbling. You must laugh at this or die, or not laugh at this and die. Are these options? Choices? Indiscernable. Words too small, letters too tight, condensed pressurized contents in a capsule whatever, shoot off into space, whatever, fuck. Two frightened animals convulsing, blood flowing, hahahaha… erotica! Or what. Epiphany or what… something gets your blood flowing, to get your blood flowing… big cinema, big effort in some maximal climax, life in the atom, living life in the atom… fiddling with the unstable core… we are not machine enough! Machine enough, then. Become machine enough. Task out, task in, input output blah blah blah ha ha aha, see? The relegated human error, we have designated boxes for human error. Mistakes become precious when mistakes are no longer made. We no longer live careful, assurances are made. Big state becomes big. We watch it grow and our pupils dilate, desire in, desire out. Oh how beautiful the vehicle… how salacious and tight… liquids as lubricant, endless lubricant. Water the source, salt the mistress… together, life. I thrust myself into and out of existence, not concerned. All around certainty, clarification, and thus the quality of the object. In some ways life giving, and others, life taking. Thus, the trust into life the thrust into error, the thrust into the urge towards definition, defecation. Effective same. But cause? This is the frustration. The cause of my frustration. Less laughter, more applause, if you will. Not long enough for cause, the gesture does not extend it gets throttle choked i put my hand around my own neck and

throttle myself, in the stemming of the blood, truth. I throttle myself until my limbs turn purple, my instruments disabled and lost. Not the erotic image. We see the machine in coalition with other machines in the orgiastic composition, the throbbing orchestra, but now logical severance. Cause mutilated in synthesis drive to death cause death effect. We see drive simultaneous to desire and the itemized nature combusts and differentiation becomes extremely difficult. In desiring oneself, one desires the eternal unification with oneself only possible in death. The limit is drawn at the present and all encompassing present. Thank god for the stupid thesis. I contract, i expand, i accommodate the demands of my body, made on my body, enforced by the rotting corpse of society…. I’m not even going to bother laughing at this point… i dont care enough to laugh. To laugh you have to want to preserve some sense. Bottling bottling bottling, drinking is still the same act, unless my skin has somehow changed properties. Awful circumstance made public condition. The subject makes others pain, makes other devil. Makes outside hell. I make myself hell. Outside i am seen. Inside I am under the whip. There is no victory in a world already living in the wake. In the wake of human made skin turned inside out, possibly flayed even, and the organs made outer world, drained, cauterized, made senseless, turned weapon. Empty made organ made body mud. Any violence directed outward is great crime. Violence directed inward is truth. I stray badly because i am bad. I am not-right-person, not-yet-person, perhaps never-person. I see people all around me, deserving of peace i cannot give myself, cannot find myself. Thus i stand on the side of the exiled, those punished, violated, on the hell of earth. For life at peace is not truth, it is life of ignorance. If peace exists, it lives in a wink, a blink of an eye in some brief moment of synthesis in the atmospheric violation of mankind, the rape and murder of sense and kindness, the alienation afforded by great progress, and the willful forgetting of forever-children. I seek peace, but reject it. I seek communion, but reject god, reject myself, reject the world. I refuse it all, and in the place of life i suffer the awareness of death from outside of myself. Perhaps this is

life, in my terms, in my small world… but it affords no rest. No prison but the promised land, no land at all. If i touch, am touched, it is for a brief moment, by the laughter of god. Already it is living in everything, a fool is the one who claims it was he who made the chair. Groveling under it, cursing under it, sneering under it, whatever. Operating the object, myself, i ridicule the machine, the tools, the mad circumstances in which i assemble it, rearrange it, and claim purpose for it. If there is blame to be had, i gladly take it. If there is wrong that has been done, i place it on my name. I do not seek to prove myself innocent, i refuse and burn that endless task. I instead seek responsibility. I am that devil, the murderer, the idolator… it matters not. The truly guilty claim innocence, claim ignorance, claim lack of knowledge. I seek peace, but i seek it through the violence of truth. The truth that riddles the body and brings one as close to death as possible. The death of the senses, the death of desire, the death of pleasure, the death of death itself. I would conquer my body and my body alone, and free my soul from the necessary prison, move from the inquiry into what is necessary, into the inquiry of what is to be done. What is to be done is what is done again in not doing, in the belief of inaction becoming neutrality. She was wrong about neutrality being the present state, it is not neutrality. It is true violence. It is true action and relentless murder of oneself, one must kill oneself at every possible moment to make becoming possible once again. It is relentless movement, it is protest against stillness, protest against belief, protest against faith. Faith is an accommodation for those too weak to go up in arms against god, to create insurrection against god. Such an insurrection would require that one become a god oneself, and truly create, create and generate and do battle against both god and devil, both good and evil, to insurrect established value, to burn and burn it all away, until nothing remains but the essential, but the will to survive. A belief, itself, i am sure, but the will to survive is what truly ties the body and soul together… if we can locate one true desire-drive, it is this. In order to accomplish this impossible feat, the body and soul must be perfectly intertwined, the machine must operate

itself to the point of which thought is distributed throughout each organ, memory resides everywhere at once. The futility of the desire-drive toward survival at once apparent and the prerequisite for the examination of futility. In order to, think, in order to, play, in order to, insurrect. If what, this, binding becoming of things. Even the molecules of a chair resist separation, effort, force, requisite in taking apart a machine, a thing, a life, as in building. Directing this violent examination of life-world internally, becomes truth. Directing it externally, at the world, at others, becomes genocide. I must make this clear, I repeat myself, in regards to violence. At each moment, one stands before the gates of hell, one’s own body. Hell is oneself. One must descend into the sacred-profane, one’s own body, and reach true bottom…. Or risk committing the unforgivable crime of violence against another. The history of the false gods is riddled with senseless violence against others… the history of the true gods is told through the violence of truth directed inwards, the interrogation in which one discovers their guilt, their complicity, their cruelty, their selfishness… the early gods punished others. The gods of modernity punish themselves to free themselves from the punishment of the old gods. The weight endlessly transferred, deferred, the blame handed down… for genocide, for enslavement, for cruelty… One does not survive this unless one reads history, unless one locates themselves within the massive historical body, and gives one’s life to remembrance. It is much easier to speak remotely… to see remotely… otherwise… and this, the duty of the thinking-becoming organism.

246

FRAGMENTS

as the night grew, gorging itself on the light, his sense of the grotesque in turn swelled. the sense that something was wrong, off, hung in the air like a swarm of insects, impossible to bat away, to redirect. perhaps knocking away a small group, but like the vicious hydra, recovering exponentially. in his attempts to analyze and disassemble the atomic predicament, each atom in turn split and the mass grew, crowding him further out of life, further away from god. this fury driving him into oblique insanity, away from communal life, away from relation and understanding. when he spoke, his words came out like impossible directives, mislocating with forward and backward movements, oscillating and jagged gestures that cut into the air and formed indecipherable symbols. they looked at him and he became acutely aware of each and every eye, growing in the darkness like an unceasing watch, the eyes necessarily seen and unseen, not only of that small room of the immediate, but of the entire world, the reverberations of his actions, vibrations upon the vibrations, events upon events in this unceasing thunder, an earthquake of calamity, of each and every action motion and movement, gesture made violence, of painting with a torrent of blood upon a canvas already soaked to the brim with it. this panic within him, rearranging his molecules, altering his genetic makeup, surely tearing him from himself and making him into creature, making him grotesque, mutilated, deformed.

…

stumbling now, nearing exhaustion, the perfect state. the falling away of the intensity of feeling, away from the precipice, away from the massive inertia, away from the confrontation of life and having to live, day in and day out, swearing and cursing at the strain of the necessity of every day, the pissing, the shitting, the eating, the sleeping… cursing and swearing away each and every action that clearly laid out his limits, the limits of being human, of being animal, of being of. he swore away the body as he walked,

swearing it all away, condemning himself and condemning everything and the subsequent condemnation of himself being against everything, as he must thusly condemn himself... unable to subsume self into the whole, unable to integrate, assimilate, become agent of, always apart, playing a part, not contained machine, but as machine in hateful service of some larger system, paying service and tribute to the wickedness of mankind and nature, sworn to service, sworn to this in so long as life is lived, the toll of his life demanded… being brought to his knees time and time again by this, his small life, small body, and small limitations, unable to surpass, to escape this life of sin, without taking this life, his own, before it is taken from him, torn from his grasp... his sweating machine in the perpetual factory, producing, excreting, consuming… no matter now, no matter...

…

passing immediately through the inside and returning to the outside. the sanctity of broken inhabitance, like seeking sanctuary in a church, the body running from itself within a larger body that breaks and is broken again in nuclear perpetuity, no house, no home, away from all sense of comfort and rest, necessarily always walking, running, traveling in the midst of the ruins of each and every moment. only outside does it make sense, only from the outside, to examine the condition of the body with the patience of a doctor or surgeon, to examine the defects, anomalies, and perpetual illness, and subsequently prescribe remedy, the condition, existence, subsequent self medication and the putting off of death, ritual of prayer and practice driving the devil away, the inevitable devil stepping across the threshold into the home. this futility of beating back the eventuality, this drive to life and life alone so long as life is defined as survival and nothing more, to live and truly live in the face of ending in so far as endings can be conceived of, the purposeless resuscitation and care for and of the body becoming an all consuming occupation, absorbing the life energy of the soul, taking from it precious time and

feeling, the death container knowing all, taking all, and demanding all, continually striking down the aspirations of transcendence, of the going beyond. all subsumed into the larger suffering, all folding in to the condition, weighted, chained, and broken in the prison, dragging the legs and arms by ball and chain, each extremity roped and tied to the root of the plant, all attempts at escape punished. eating dirt, broken and broken on the eternal ground of the soul rooted in body.

…

they talked throughout the evening about things without consequence, as talking often is, where the manner of talking is actually the way of consequence, and the parenthetical intermingling, what is said is altogether unimportant. how it is said, the position of the saying within the larger body or structure of the conversation, the hintings, slips, mouthed shapes, and broken things being the actual way of speaking. often there is deception in this way, that the contents of words, of the assembled meaning, the purposeful organization of sounds and syllables being of the utmost importance, of some sort of tapping into logic and rationality, some greater reason necessarily providing insight through the insertion of definitions and information supported by verifiable background, into the animal moans cries and hisses of hate, confusion, and consumptive instinct. he was terrified to want anything, terrified to need anything or anyone, and terrified of this seemingly uncontrollable desire, something so far out of the realm of predictable regularity in life and self law that it became an opening, a potentiality altogether unaccountable, unaccounted for in its chaotic formation. he may be able to discern those by patterns of mannerisms and appearance that he may experience this feeling of anxious lust, idealistic love, and desperate sensation for, towards, but even then, this pattern continually broken by a new formation, a sublime encounter. it brought him time and time again to his knees, the unpredictability of falling in love, the unpredictability of the unassuaged consistency of the inconsistency of his

obsessions, forever changing and increasingly unmanageable, as the weight his mind and illness required him to lift became all too great for his body to carry.

…

perhaps he had something, possessed some knowledge, perhaps even the way of possessing the undesirable self

…

it was this unbending drive towards self discipline, towards punishment, the need to be punished, either by oneself or by another sensing his distance from all that was human, from all that was right and normal and just and good, his deviation and his perversion far and away from the kingdom of god, that broke him time and time again. it was no outside hand, it was his own, reaching inside his chest, breaking the continuity of and rearranging his organs, time and time again, throttling himself in dreams, his purple hands burying themselves into the veins of his neck, this erotic suicide, this being driven out, as the sensual bliss of the exile from nation, from home, from the body. condemned to it, over and over again, he the judge, he the jury, he the executioner, sentencing himself to death, to discontent, to a life away from the simple pleasures of life and living. there was no great reason for this action, none that he could readily identify. perhaps this was the break. he told himself, whispering into the late days of long unbroken fasts, of taking nothing into his body, nothing into his mouth, drained of will, each process grinding to a halt, his pulse faded and slow, that he would kill himself to be closer to god, nearer, my god, to thee, this insistence, this urgency like a chant, a prayer, a hymnal whispered, growing, vibrating, pulsating to a scream that spasmed and ripped the whole body in two and revealed its contents to the air, like some sort of strange and dissonant music, heating the body with fury, with the anger of the soul, the humiliation and hatred towards the body, that of the soul being brought into this dirty world, being brought down and away from

the immaculate state of disembodiment, and firm entrenchment in the primordial mud of the material, of the living.

…

she smiled at him, her eyes like candles. as the night passed, a slow fading, a passing back into the impossibility of everything, the impossibility of going on, of moving forward, of the continued sustenance, of some sort of sustainable way to live into the unending futurity, unbroken save for death, unbroken save for some unpredictable event that would extinguish it, this fever

…

but none greater than the sin in the direct violence of lust, of hatred, of desire making being into object, of hatred making being into object. sex and war, a bacterial culture, a compound making elements indiscernible in their chemical makeup, technology of human design intermingling with the endless metamorphoses of the design of the gods, we, the brutal, ugly dogs plucked from life like toys for the enjoyment of the gods, seared into this violent coupling, we, the confused and uncertain inheritors of this legacy of bloodshed, rape, murder, abuse, and theft... this, the spirit of his time, this, the awful sexuality that he so often did battle within himself, and did not, could not, bring himself to bear, to manifest or express that feeling, that calamitous struggle, that ferocious want, outside, to the world, for fear of hurting the ones he loved... such a fear of action, of movement, of expression beyond the most contained safety, this turn inward in the face of the endless violence becoming and becoming again a tempest all around his body… to even be self contained, to obliterate this desire, for it would be an act of war, an act of violence against the very necessity of violent action, of the incessant human clamouring, the noise of civilization and the endless toppling of regimes, the claiming of land, the claiming of the body of another, of desecration, of the insurrection of and against the life of

another, against the entirety of human history. and thus, it must be contained, suppressed, extinguished, the lifelong duty of killing desire, of killing the body, its instincts, its urges, unlearning the human… an act of war again, a war against action, a war again inside oneself, a becoming other to oneself, becoming object to oneself, eviscerating and tearing oneself from the world. the act which necessarily punishes the criminal, punishes the wrongdoer, punishes the heretic… punishes oneself, obliterates self. no matter, no matter... it would be to go against time, against life, against the will of the gods.

…

for even thinking these things, for feeling them and seeing them play out, this possibility, in the eyes of his body, gleefully projecting, absorbing and displaying each fantasy, each possibility of every moment, of a sensual, intimate life in the world, away from the world no longer, this breaking of and from the repressive room of the mind and of expectation, of these chains imposed by this self law he could not break, by this threat of violence he made to himself, silencing and extinguishing all want, by wanting to break, he could not break... breaking it, he could not break, breaking it....

…

he felt the scream in his throat palpable... his entire body pressurized and consumed by this unceasing train of thought and feeling, barraging him from all sides, hitting him like a group of unknown, unseen, assailants, an attack he could not fend off, precisely because it was occurring from the inside out, driving him from the inside, out, fists pummeling his cheeks, nose, and chin, knives impaling his torso, chest, and stomach… he had to become smaller, he had to shrink, he had to disappear… to drive them from him once and for all, drive himself from himself, his soul from body, or perish, or eviscerate all memory of himself, all that could and would incessantly remain, namely himself,

namely himself as he appeared to the world… eviscerate, evisceration… totality. silent, unspeaking, a face entangled in some internal battle unknown to the rest of the world, only revealing itself in brief moments, where the lips, eyes, and brow toss and turn in a sleepless night.

…

became a sort of affirmation, a grotesque unveiling at the intersection of violence, the past upheld in perpetuity, the foundations of this marble city bathed in blood, trickling down into the river, becoming one with life. the cruelty and immediate glorification of cruelty. people interacting, communicating, without this alarm, without this fear of impending catastrophe. it was as if they were able to speak some common language, tuned into each other, calm and pleasant, not into this awful frequency of screaming and hyperaware activity. they were able to waltz slowly, as he tore at the skin on his face. the internal quivering, the suspicion, extending from the irritated esophagus down to the anus, made his condition a circuit of unbroken solitude, unable to extend expression of life outward by any means. by shit, by speech, by sound… all utterance stifled. unsounding, this quiet suffering, an accusation echoing into nothingness, resounding without source, without beginning, untraceable, unabating.

…

with each passing, the awful almost-hatred and prickling sensation... the closer he came in relation to those who moved seamlessly in and out of his life, leaving only traces in minutiae, thumbprints, expressive minor gestures of facial muscles being pushed and pulled, contorted in emotion and subsequent attempt to conceal said emotion… the further he indeed became from becoming human

…

some impossible spectator, condemned to witnessing life, being as he was just outside of the event itself, through some window or other looking in on the great party and dance of things

…

Distruments / The Ignorance of Youth

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