could it think the heart would stop beating

the dangers of decay are the dangers of a sentimentalized fear

mysticism is psychic holography

lifes goal seems to become as rotten as possible so that when one dies theres nothing left to rot

i have no rest from a consciousness that primarily seems conscious of itself as conscious of an anarchically diffuse and paltry consciousness

i must tremble if the possibility of play no longer attracts me

the plant intrudes in the human and speaks inside

dying is a mode of seeing the invisible

holding within word

languages of earth

the only legitimate autobiography would be one with dozens of prefaces introductions forewords postfaces prologues preambles epigraphs afterwords prolegomena conclusions postscripts addenda with little consistency (thematic stylistic chronological …)      no body to speak of

hornbook of sadoo hirpyz

for those new to planet earth

and

wishing instruction in the ways of the human

a brief version of a multivolume treatise on the practice of law

to prime students in the application of dimensions and the geometry of time

through case studies

in this age of relentless and pervasive light sound communication our craving for the darkness of incomprehensibility increases commensurately

i do not renew i denew  i am full of denewments

transcendence is the mathematics of the souls geometry

writing literacy from literacys grave

the world              make your voice count

i                             0 17 81 257 912

today's topic

today our topic is language.  again.  i realize our topic was language the day before and the day before that and the one before the day before that and the one before the one, the one twice before the one, and thrice, and so on past numbers into the realm of infinite words, a realm that has been rumoured to be mythical but has not yet been proven by scientists and others given to proving or trying to prove or seeming to prove to be so or wholly so.  now in all these lessons in language – which consume our days to such an extent that we could say our days are nothing but these lessons – in all this time – which could be said to be such a continual consumption that it subverts itself and is hardly time but far more words – have we learned anything?  that we even have to ask the question is disturbing and this feeling too we wonder about – wonder many things, but as an instance, whether the disturbing nature of this question is in some manner related (and, if so, how) to time … and, since time is only numbers and numbers only words, more fundamentally to words:  in other words, whether language, though seeming to teach, actually doesn’t.  but this could be a difficult thought – perhaps the most difficult – as haven’t we devoted history (and its associates:  civilization, culture, war, government) to developing language to teach, as a sort of replacement for nature, as nature seemed not to teach anything (or at least anything we liked).  so language, in offering the possibility of teaching something (or at least something we liked), is turning out to teach us nothing and nature (though who among us could speak authoritatively of nature now, since nature too has simply become another word) is turning out (at least as fully in memory as language is in hope) to have offered us something to be taught.  but all this seems simultaneously too binary and confused to coalesce into anything we might rightly call a lesson.  yet we began by not calling this a lesson but a topic and this is an important distinction.  a lesson aims to teach us something, while a topic is simply a topic and has no aims other than itself, which is to say no aims.  perhaps this is the frustration – we want language to be a lesson while all it has the capacity for is being a topic.  or is it the topic?  to speak so definitively seems problematic, raising a grammatical issue of whether the definite article is appropriate in matters outside the specific, sensuous, and prosaic.  we can obviously say – see the cat over there – without raising too many issues.  but as soon as we ask whether language is a topic or the topic, whether that is a point or the point, the’s inadequacies reveal themselves.  which should not stop us from asking, some of you might say, even as others might say these problems and limits and questions have already been discussed and yet we still are here, we still go on, language still is language.  so what can we conclude?  nothing, certainly.  but perhaps something, just to give us a little morsel to chew provocatively even if it should give us some digestive issues or make us throw up or possibly kill us.  or if something is a possibility, are not all possibilities possible and so we could say nothing certainly and everything possibly and something not at all.  but this is hardly satisfying.  don’t we want something?  yes, we could say, with perhaps almost as much certainty as nothing.  and so here it is:  this something, which has already been offered, and is here again today, with our barely even having noticed.

mysticism iii

to say all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well – neither as a joke nor a commonplace, a comfort nor a privilege, a ruse nor an experiment, but as an acceptance of the all one cannot know … what is this other than a calm absurdity, a replete and resplendent reason?

it is easy to see existence as a jewel, naked in the night and possibly eternal, civilization as a process of time covering up the jewel with fabrics, analyzing the covering, the fabrics, enchanted with the growing bulk, enamored by the changes, the colour and texture of the fabrics replacing the colour and texture of the jewel.  if art’s trick is to show the jewel using the materials covering it, mysticism's might be to remove the materials and know the jewel cannot be shown and that the jewel itself is this inability, the removal a rough simulation of the jewel.

so mysticism is associated with what has been called the negative way.  and all this is is or may be a removing and simulating and not showing.

society – which we could say is also devoted to removing and simulating and not showing – is the positive way, for it removes and simulates and doesn’t show what mysticism doesn’t reveal.

mysticism is perhaps the one unique element of humanity, the core of consciousness, allowing as it does humanity to imaginatively step outside itself – whether through nature, god, art, technology – and doubt reality’s weighty structures and so create spaces – however transient – of grace and, if grace is capable of entering reality’s structures, possibility of form.

if mysticism is oriented to language in silence, community in solitude, light in darkness, inhumanity in humanity, is it not an experiment to find a way through or around the problems that pervade us, seeing no evidence that social-political struggle – regardless of the ostensible goodness to any of its claims – effects at best anything more than a displacement of problem to problem.

everything constructive i have learned i have learned from the mystics in their immense deconstructions, which make scholarly deconstructions seem like décor alterations in a room in versailles and the knowledge of the learned and experienced like dusty wall hangings.  all these other paths, rife with cleverness or utility though they might sometimes be, all seem the same in their unmitigated support for or rebellion against the given world.  but the mystic path, being not a path but a placement in a flow and flows, provides alternatives to the given world and its endless injustices and so – through awe, passion, doubt, plurality, play – subverts it.

one mystic says, i am the universe – what do i have to fear?  another – hide your boat in the universe, then the thief cannot steal it.  the only safety of the soul is this:  the i - which appears at first and for long and chaotic periods as the ultimate non-safety - is recognized as a ruse, doubles, balloons to margins slightly larger than the entire universe, bursts, and disappears in itself.

mysticism is creedless, has no tribe, no fads, hardly a history or purpose, no hierarchies, no alliances, no wars.  mysticism does not contend or claim.

it is not as if mysticism would eradicate flesh, but that it would renew it through greedless gazing.

if mysticism can be said to be oriented to death, is this not less because it sets too little or too much store by life and more because, in an age which does, it sees no use for life?

there is a place for laughter in mysticism, a place where mysticism itself disappears.  and in this disappearance mysticism may be most truly itself.

voices speak in the night of the question, this night that, once entered, encompasses the day.  what is mysticism but a clearing of debris for entering, a clearing of noise for listening, a clearing of thought for translating?

all these other modes of knowledge to which humanity is addicted and for which vast resources are required are modes of building and willing and desiring and endless separations and unions.  but mysticism sidesteps, like a flower on the edge of battlefields, a vision on the edge of screams.

to self-identify as a mystic has a certain discrediting quality to it.  to be a truck driver or banker or scholar or cleaner or even a poet is to be a truck driver or banker or scholar or cleaner or even a poet.  but to be a mystic is not to be – and this is what a mystic is.  so we see mystics hiding, sometimes in poetry, sometimes in thought, sometimes in children, sometimes in shape or flowers or death or a smile.

andre the giant and the strawberry

andre the giant and the strawberry

(the coloured version)

Andre the Giant punted down the Clem, Ms. Katonic in tow, trafficlight green chemise unruly, Winners’ briefs unsoiled, fluffy socks from mocked aunt in Devonshire, quite deceased.  

The Clem, since it was circular, and thus knew no destination, was a favourite spot for lovers who, loving love, knew no destination too.

Boys were known, being boys despite the second sex, to hide in bushes round the bend of the Nodens, and display penises through the prickles, to their own bemusement and lovers’ shame.

The sun that day seemed beyond itself, as if it had read the most esteemed literary and scientific descriptions of itself, and attained a new consciousness, affecting its reflections.

The mocked aunt was not from Devonshire but Bocking and was infamous in certain basement ecclesiastical circles for her fluffiness and how she somehow transmigrated it to her socks.

A renowned incident occurred some years prior, and was reported, involving a Lucia Haddlewich and a Milton Brubblewich and a sandwich and an ostrich and a pickle and a punt.

General Paint (a nickname) was the lead boy and had become accustomed to vulgarities, some say, due to a father who had used zucchinis for what God, if there were one, had not intended.

Continuing the speculation of a solar literatus, the sun’s favourite lines from our terrestrial ball about itself all had to deal with anthropomorphisms; it had to laugh, if it could, which it couldn’t.

Ms. Katonic hailed from Catatonia; her father was a sociopath, her mother a homeopath, she herself a taxi driver who’d met Andre through a poet in a backseat, rather squished.

Being round and flowing into itself, but not a moat, the Clem was a minor curiosity for fluviologists, who flocked to punt and wonder, though General Paint and his penises made many flee.

Sometimes though the boys would put out pickles to sub for penises, dressing them with alfalfa sprouts and little hats of cocktail umbrellas, and give them names, then eat them.

Beyond itself yet notwithstanding the sum of itself, the sun performed its duties without any lone or clump or crowd of clouds, meaning punters and penis boys were sunned and, being summer, warm.

They had not got it on much, the Giant and Ms. Katonic, in the backseat, initially, squished, due less to any chemical incompatibilities and more to a sort of caesura that came between them.

Haddlewich and Brubblewich spent a night in jail, the ostrich in a morgue, the sandwich in General Paint’s anus, the pickle in a punt in a bobby station, a bobby at the bottom of the Clem.

General Paint procured his penises from Margrit and Margrit got them from her cousin who got them from a Presbyterian who got them from an Oxford don.  He got his pickles from the store.

The sun that day rose higher than it usually did and saw with eyes more perspicaciously the randomness of humankind and stretched its fingers so it almost lit the bobby at the bottom still.

The other punters thought Ms. Katonic might be playing a game, the way we do, like water skiers but horizontal, like funalicious in the Clem, and Andre the Giant her gracious host and driver.

Circular rivers, wrote Dr. Slev D. William Blot-Hrag, in Fluviology Today for Fluvies (Fluviologists being taken), I propose are deltic aberrations of rhithronal stridulations. Little more.

Paint’s favourite had been the one who when she saw the penis (the extra large kind) pushed her man from the punt and punted frantically away, crashing on a little isle, impaling herself on rocks.

Consciousness, being preferred by humans as a human attribute (though defined by them in terms favouring such a preference), may not be solely or predominantly such a thing, thought the sun.

The sock mocked Bocking aunt was the mother’s sister and Ms. Katonic had met her only once, in Braintree, with spray paint on her hands, at a rave.  The socks started coming then.

There was a way (counterclockwise) to go round the Clem but those in the know would do the other way so that General Paint and his boys would focus on the others, drawing ire from the others.

The boys in the bushes with their penises and pickles weren’t against love, technically, in its romantic guise, but more for love, realistically, as a rupture in the flow of things.

What if I, the sun continued, did the same to them, and solarpomorphized the human, and said the human lacks my consciousness, which it does?

So was the perfect venue not that river, uncertain, gentle, and without impatience, for their exploits, love and boys and punters, a distributed collective quest under the rosy rolling sun?

Ms. Katonic and the Bocking sockist hadn’t hit it off in Braintree, but with the drugs and the blood and the Catatonia connection, who would?  The socks came anyway.

You’d think, of course, that the penis- and the pickle-flashers through the bushes would be nabbed by the bobbies and settled down, the way society’s supposed to do.

You’d think they’d get families and put penises in homes they’re made for and let the fucking lovers on the Clem do the googlies and the sippies and the touchies and round and round once more!

The socks came, though Ms. Katonic didn’t often, and she’d put them in a box or give them to Goodwill or feed them to her dog … but here, towed in the Clem, she wore them.

The Clem had a reputation naturally.  All things do.  General Paint was underplayed to newbies.  Locals went the other way.  Bobbies got paid off.  All things worked together the way they do.

Andre the Giant, despite his size, was gentle, while Ms. Katonic, despite her size, was not.  When they found each other on the channel ferry and shared a moment, she promised him some socks.

But what’s happening up there? With the sun?  Let’s ask it.  Well. The usual. Not much. Been reading a western. Doing a bit of thinking. The usual. Some anger management issues. Going down.

The aunt, after all, was not known for sizing, but fluffiness, so the socks for Ms. Katonic, in abstract surprisingly, fit Andre’s feet quite well, and Ms. Katonic got rid of socks, and Andre gained some.

We have one only, but there are many, and some have wondered whether they all think the same or, like us, if a certain inscrutability exists from star to star.

Science says, of course, that stars don’t think but science does, rocks don’t think but people do—thoughts worthy maybe of consideration.

The sun that day shone lightly on the punters who, except for Andre who required a special punt and was the talk, being large, interrupting more than the boys the quiet quests of love, only wanted love.

When the Bocking socker heard of her niece’s demise she didn’t weep (she was British) or think of travelling to the Clem to see the body but made more socks than ever, sending them to Andre.

The Clem was a circle as we’ve said, but the boys were stationed in the bushes round the bend of the Nodens, as that was most fortuitous for shocks and fleeing and various exchanges.

More rivers should be circular, argued Dr. Blot-Hrag, and engineers should get right on it:  dams and projects, federal funding, work and progress, now’s the future, begin it yesterday.

The Oxford don wasn’t always careful or consistent, nor was the Presbyterian nor the cousin nor Margrit nor the boys nor Ms. Katonic; who is?

The Clem rose slightly with Andre’s tears, for they were large and many, and he had never loved before, but now he had and she was dead and he was weeping and she was towed and she was dead.

The sun glanced at its continual descent—that slide of spherical proportions that slides eternally away from science—and said, It’s been a day. With me, it’s always been a day. Always is a day.

The boys were known, led by General Paint (that bastard), to drop the used penises in the letterboxes of the punters whom they considered, after voting, were most likely to succeed in love.

The Clem, since it is circular, and thus knows no destination, is a favourite spot for lovers who, loving love, know no destination too.

Andre the Giant is punting down the Clem, Ms. Katonic in tow, trafficlight green chemise unruly, Winners’ briefs unsoiled, fluffy socks from mocked aunt in Devonshire, quite deceased.