Reflections

These are non-fiction writings, often written in moments which I'm trying to capture, dealing with emotions evoked by those moments, thinking about and working through various things. They are also generally intended to have some stylistic value, but as with most of the work available for viewing here they are first drafts (or rather writing not intended to be redrafted) so they may be awkward at times.

-----

One gets the feeling they are in a world in decline - not in the fasicstic sense, the senes of a desire for a return to a golden age - but a world that has been endlessly hurtling towards this twilight since history began. Hurtling along the 401 to Toronto, staring at the same moon billions have stared at, I am overwhelmed with a sadness - a sadness at an end, a sadness brought on by yearning. Yearning for friends, yearning for a better world, yearning for history, to hell with the time-frozen edifices that dot the landscape like standing stones. All the wonders of our age have failed to usher in the good life. Health, wellbeing - physical, spiritual, social, intellectual - all these things we are excellent at propping up as they fall, but we cannot build them on strong foundations - so alienated are we by the great cybernetic spectacle of post-historical capitalism.

-----

[The cat] is conscious. I can see soul in his eyes, the mischievous glint of che vuoi emanating from his gaze. He is staring at me, now squeezing his eyes shut in concentration. What is it like be him? I cannot doubt that he has as much an inner world as I do, the same fundamental spark of being that lies somewhere, so we are told, in the pineal gland of each living thing. Not a machine then, at least not one of clockwork - a machine that whirrs and hums somewhere inside a coat of winter sky, behind those yellow eyes. What power have we to name him, the animal without language. The animal whose silence is that silence of eternity, and now that God is dead, who gives us right to fix his name. Any word is a killing word, not just your name, little mouse.
How much does he know? I feel that he must even know more about me than I do about him, when he gives me that look. There is no hole on the back of his head, I run my fingers along it, hoping he will enjoy it. I cannot get a single glance in. Even when his mouth is open as wide as it may, his fanged jaws, their killing nature saying - "we take the place of the words on his tongue." - I cannot see what he might say with them. They do the work, if we will let them. Words and teeth.
Now his back is turned to me. He has curled himself away, sleeping - and is totally inscrutable. Where is the normal vulnerability that sleep brings, encased in this little beast of prey. Not here, that is all I can say.

-----
Che vuoi - the eternal question, the absence at the core of my being. I am truly constituted only by that call into the void, the call to the other -
"What am I, to you?"
What does it mean to love when all you are, in your core, is a question? If deep down inside you there is only emptiness, only an excess, a lack, pulling inwards, then how can you love another person? I cannot give myself to the other if there is nothing inside me to give. Even the inside, this does not exist on its own. The house has no interior without the world around it, without the wind to batter its walls, the rain to run down its roof. I am in my own house, always looking out the window, always looking along the horizon to see the clouds - to see a stranger at the end of the drive, clouds high above her, wind cascading through her hair and dress in ripples, who will come knock at my door and tell me what I am; tell me of the tall grass on the lawn, the peeling paint on the walls, the bright yellow door that matches her bright yellow dress.
In fact, even this is not quite right. I want someone who will stand by my side and ask the question with me, who will hold my hand, and stare into the setting sun, and say "Who are you, really?" - because this is the irony, that only this person will be able to cut to the core of my being, the person who is asking the question, only they will be able to speak to who I really am; they will already know. They will know that I am a question, a question who, when answered, will vanish into the wind.

They ran their fingers through my hair, and softly asked me who I was, and that was all I needed. I wish I could have told them that they were exactly right, in that moment, and that that was all I really needed - the question endlessly asked that I was always asking myself, my true name the question itself.
-----

Ivan and his friends smoke cigarettes in the attic. I should hate the smell but I don't. It reminds me of being at Nicky's as a kid, playing video games, inhaling the smoke from his parents cigarettes as we played halo together. I look out the window into the canopy of the tree outside. It looks flat, framed like a picture by the edges of the window. It is cooler than it has been in days, and the wind is softly blowing. It is the summer of 2020.

-----
Fascism and Cycling - myth of the old, cult of the new
Cycling is the ultimate expression of all those modernist impulses that lend themselves to fascism, in a way. It is both an expression of a sort of traditionalism, and yet also a worship of the newest technologies. It is man totally in control of his own destiny, hurtling forwards into the future, ready to be scattered across the pavement in death at any moment. Action is the paramount focus, all theory is in service of action, all aesthetics the futurist movement of the sleek frame and taut-spoked wheels, whirring and whizzing, rubber against steel against steel controlled by flesh. It is an activity that lends itself to victory, that lends itself to competition, the strong triumphing over the weak.
(Perhaps, instead, I am thinking of the Fascist co-option of futurist principles)
-----

on urges to catalogue, and the speed of time

i want to have a library. digital, analogue, microfiche, ancient scrolls, punchcards - to store knowledge. Not data - but knowledge. I want it ready to hand, zuhanden - a totality that appeares without theorizing, always retreating into the darkness even as i browse it. i want things around, kept around, in case i need or want them, in case of forgetfulness or need to reference. as soon as i am finished with one work, i move to the next - adding nodes to the network of references and connections in my head, the smaller library which aspires to the larger one. how a larger library can be anything more or less than a fuzzy projection of the smaller library is perhaps opaque - but nevertheless, i want it.
alongside this urge, sometimes behind it, pushing, sometimes ahead, pulling, there is always the idea that I ought to complete the library - an impossible task, to be sure - but one which finds solace in the supposed theoretical possibility of the completeness of a definitive core or canon - what Ought to be read, what the library Ought to have on its shelves. so much to do in so little time. and this idea forgets, it forgets one very important thing - that inside each of the books is a library itself, and that once one has read the library, catalogued all the books, connected as many nodes as possible - then we will find ourselves where we started, and know the place for the first time - or arrive at something even less.
everything new works its way into everything old, so that, at the end, everything will be in one place, the place where it started. the circle closes, and every point on the circle becomes at once the beginning and the end, and it will have always been closed. so we should, instead of running along it at breakneck pace, stand at the point on the circle that we already occupy, and touch it, gently, like the tangents of translation.
postscript, authorial note: what emerges here is a sort of hegelian zen, which is a bit unexpected but I guess makes sense.

-----
a spontaneous affinity - a fondness, a connection, one that arises in a sheerly contingent way, not as a necessary result of a closeness or proximity but instead utterly ungrounded - the groundless ground of pure affection qua affection, not attraction per se, in the way that attraction is attraction to a person who is an anatomical sturcture, a collection of body parts - neck and arms and legs and wrists - but affection for, affection around, a warmness that arises paradoxically from the utter lack of friction in our interactions, meshing like gears, turning around in gentle smiles and repeated jokes, cyclicality, eternal return of her face in my mind, hand on your shoulder - not at the beginning or the end but finally to be in the middle, in the process, midway through a dance from the infinite process, oscillating back and forth to the true infinite, and to fursichsein - her head on my shoulder for iself, in itself, with no other determination, being and nothing at every moment interspliced as my heart beats, arteries emptying and filling, careful not to disturb the fragile progression towards our self-comprehending concept, homogenous mass of unity and difference - absolutely unknowing in each others arms.

Exit