Bubble Wars

Watch this with the sound off. Then watch and listen.

On failing to be properly apotropaic

(This one’s for you, Spike.)

If consciousness is both irremediable hypostasis (Nietzsche calls metaphor a “full jump into another sphere” and Lacan speaks of the invasion of the signified by the signifier–opposite moments of the hypostasis) then it is also apostasy. It is continual struggle against an accusative and accusatory other whose location it is totalitarian to define–or whose location defines the beginning of the slide into totality. Totality, and the ‘originary’ hypostatic/apostate situation of consciousness are both unspeakable terms. Language does not need the violence of poetry not to mean anything. It does not mean anything.

The demonstration of this fact about language is the following. Dualism as one world with two poles is not dualism. Monism–as no poles–makes no reference to empirical (-ly dual) data. Unism (the preference for one pole over the other) fails; dualism (as two worlds) fails. Unism fails on the obvious absence of the referent. Dualism fails on the phenomenal success of the signified, which (by pushing away, by being apotropaic) causes the failure of unism, which, by the supremacy of the referent, causes dualism to fail (since the referant is accidental and imperfect, effectively effaced). The double-failure (along two axes) proves not the content (gesture) of either referant or referent but their actions as such; their gestures are immanent. And yet both gestures cannot fail simultaneously, since the failures refer to each other. They are not contradictory, then, but succeed each other. It is on the mutual impossibility of success and succession that the concept of time, coterminous with the consciousness, occurs. Time cannot take place within time; it is exoteric to itself.

The above paragraphs are intended, however fantastic it may seem, to be steps in the direction of a politics of sorts. They address the question of the possibility of (not) warding off evil. They seek, by painstaking examination of the immanent (even where it transcends) to speak a language that does not bind; they seek (but do not achieve) a rigorous separation of ontology and casuistry. They insist, but they do so strangely. They almost certainly do not persuade, but they have not been able to avoid persuading. One who is bound by them would have to be bound by meaning in general, consciously.

Leif Weatherby

Today is 12.19.15.8.9 11 Muluk 12 Tzek

1631 shopping days until 4 Ahau 3 K’ank’in.

DESIGN FOR A NEW FLAG PIN

I listened, as I have many times, to NPR’s now traditional July 4th group reading of the Declaration of Independence before I took Annie Beagle for morning walkies. It took a couple of extra blocks to shake the red-whites-and-blue Blues hearing that recital engendered in me, to ease the knot of pain in my solar plexus.

It is better for me not to dwell too long on the ringing phrases of the introit not to a national Mass, but to what is essentially a list of complaints against “a long train of abuses and usurpations,” by a King named George, who, as they saw it, was ”…pursuing invariably the same Object…a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism…” whose government had “…a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” The small white male elite of these English colonies along the eastern seaboard of the continent of North America decided they’d had enough of King George and his rule. They saw the justification of their rebelllion against their lawful king not only in the ideals of the Enlightenment and the ideas of men such as Locke and Hobbes but also in English common law, in the Magna Carta and the ancient right of Habeus Corpus. They put their lifes and fortunes in the hazard, and pledged their “sacred honor” in support of this “Declarations of Independence” from the tyranny of a king named George.

Seven and a half years into the reign of a tyrant named George, I can’t see that the present citizenry and elites of the United States of America hold “these truths to be self-evident” in quite the same way these men did. It is better for me not to dwell on that, because, in this case at least, the truth truly hurts.

It is better for me to remember that on this day in 1845 Henry David Thoreau embarked on his experiment in living simply, by Walden Pond, on a piece of land owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is better for me to remember that on this day in 1855 Walt Whitman published the first edition of his Leaves of Grass. It is better for me to remember that on this day in 1862 Charles Dodgson on a picnic excursion told Alice Liddell a story that was published on this day in 1865 as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. It is better to remember the words of these who are my Moses, my Solomon, my Elijah, the prophets of my Torah and the writers of the constitution of my heart as much as Thomas Jefferson and the gaggle of “Founding Fathers” who edited his words into the proclamation that was not signed by most of them until August 2, 1776.

When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.

Thoreau, Walden

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, reexamine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . . . . . . . The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured . . . . others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches . . . . and shall master all attachment.

I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals, they are so placid and self-          contained,

I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied…not one is demented with the mania of owning things,

Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

…So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it trot away quietly into the wood. `If it had grown up,’ she said to herself, `it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.’ And she began thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying to herself, `if one only knew the right way to change them–’ when she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.

The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had VERY long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.

`Cheshire Puss,’ she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. `Come, it’s pleased so far,’ thought Alice, and she went on. `Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’

`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.

`I don’t much care where–’ said Alice.

`Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.

`–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,’ Alice added as an explanation.

`Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough.’

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. `What sort of people live about here?’

`In THAT direction,’ the Cat said, waving its right paw round, `lives a Hatter: and in THAT direction,’ waving the other paw, `lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.’

`But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.

`Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: `we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’

`How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.

`You must be,’ said the Cat, `or you wouldn’t have come here.’

Alice didn’t think that proved it at all; however, she went on `And how do you know that you’re mad?’

`To begin with,’ said the Cat, `a dog’s not mad. You grant that?’

`I suppose so,’ said Alice.

`Well, then,’ the Cat went on, `you see, a dog growls when it’s angry, and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.’

`I call it purring, not growling,’ said Alice.

`Call it what you like,’ said the Cat. `Do you play croquet with the Queen to-day?’

`I should like it very much,’ said Alice, `but I haven’t been invited yet.’

`You’ll see me there,’ said the Cat, and vanished.

Alice was not much surprised at this, she was getting so used to queer things happening. While she was looking at the place where it had been, it suddenly appeared again.

`By-the-bye, what became of the baby?’ said the Cat. `I’d nearly forgotten to ask.’

`It turned into a pig,’ Alice quietly said, just as if it had come back in a natural way.

`I thought it would,’ said the Cat, and vanished again.

Alice waited a little, half expecting to see it again, but it did not appear, and after a minute or two she walked on in the direction in which the March Hare was said to live. `I’ve seen hatters before,’ she said to herself; `the March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won’t be raving mad–at least not so mad as it was in March.’ As she said this, she looked up, and there was the Cat again, sitting on a branch of a tree.

`Did you say pig, or fig?’ said the Cat.

`I said pig,’ replied Alice; `and I wish you wouldn’t keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy.’

`All right,’ said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

`Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,’ thought Alice; `but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever say in my life!’

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland

Like Thoreau, I wish to live deliberately; I would do all Whitman asks, including stand up for the stupid and crazy, and also avoid respectability at all costs;  like Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat, I hope to disappear very slowly, and to end with a grin.

I don’t know that the pangs I feel in my heart today at the all the troubles of my people and my country make me a patriot. I don’t have much respect for commodified and monetized consumer patriotism, retail or wholesale;  I have contempt for patriotism as a defense of fear, rather than a defense of freedom from fear. What I feel today is a broken-hearted solidarity with all those who, to bend a Leonard Cohen line, try in their way to be free.