Two out of three

"I thought I saw you in my tea leaves, I thought I saw you in a forest flame" -Owen Pallett from "Great Elsewhere"

"The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself." -Merleau-Ponty from Phenomenology of Perception

(these are the two men rocking my world right now. I can't stop listening to Heartland and I'm compulsively reading Phenomenology of Perception like a dirty novel between fucks and cigarettes)

my body's all juiced up on whiskey and you,
you are across the city and there are no hands on the curve of your back
there is no language circling the fine hairs at the nape of your neck
your eyes are not on me.
my face is all torn up and I'm pulling at scars on the backs of my hands
hardening each day callouses are unavoidable
like children wandering aimlessly on streetcars
and coffee buzz paranoia in the foggy streets
empty like me.
we are lazy ecstatic together.
your body is so familiar under my mouth
that it becomes strange in frequency,
like a word swilling around at the back of my throat
becomes foreign when you realize these parts randomly collide,
when you realize [noun] can't curl into [verb] like Whitman's do.

I cannot suck I suck
out

that's where you are rooted in me,
dug in the back of my skull, warm and
perpetually wet.

Just watched this film "Taxidermia" by th Hungarian director György Pálfi. It was really amazing. Amazing ideas, visualization, production. I'm going to write a long review of it at some point when I get the opportunity to watch it again. If you're a fan of darkly humourous, surrealist, generally fucked-up "horror" cinema, please please watch it. It's not so much a genre film so its not easily classified as "horror," but it is disturbing. And there is lots of body-grossness-awesomeness going on. Fuck. Another item on my list-of-things-to-write-about-purely-for-the-sake-of-enjoyment. A friend of mine is also interested in assembling essays on Mad Men (for a book, not for a book, for pleasure, whatever). The idea has nestled itself in the back of my brain and I'd like to write something on that, too.

Sometimes I stretch my body's limits to see how much it will take before it revolts. I'm pretty sure its a bad thing that I can separate the cognitive and the sensible so easily, wilfully. Over the past year I have developed a very difficult relationship with my body, which is what makes reading existential phenomenology so interesting. I like to tease my body into corners. The prof teaching us Merleau-Ponty quoted Pere Ubu today, which instantly makes him even more awesome. After the lecture, my friend said somthing like "we don't talk with language games; every body has its gestures" etc. So the problem that comes to my mind, especially in the context of feminist philosophy and post-feminist theory like cyborg theory is how to reconcile phenomenology - consciousness as/of your body in-the world - with technological advancements that continue to redifine what it means to be "embodied." Although Merleau-Ponty would probably say that computer-communications are an extension of our bodies, incorporated into our bodily experience like other "habits," I'm kind of worried about the implications. Haraway and Merleau-Ponty go really well together. I guess the main question on my brain is, if my consciousness necessarily involves my body in relation to the world, what happens, phenomenologically, with internet-communications? My body cannot interact with yours, so there is always this inability to communicate, purely on a bodily level (in addition to every other theory that posits an irreconcilable divide between the subject and other). And how does this affect the subject-object dialectic? If you - reader - are never more than an object to me on the other side of a screen (because, by virtue of you being a 'conceptual/imaginary' rather than 'real' audience) how can I ever write honestly to other individuals not as objects, but as lived-body-consciousness'? I'm rambling and anxious. I feel restless like I'm waiting for something. There is way too much shit to write and research and so little time/life to do it. And (this is especially what I love about Merleau-Ponty) it is also necessary to just be in the world, to just sit down and shut-the-fuck-up. A lot of philosophy majors seem resistant to Merleau-Ponty, I think its because he is very simple. His dialectics are circular and always point back to the same simple advice for living. I like that he de-emphasizes the cognitive....(which is ironic considering his method...). Whatever, its a weird paradox.

BLAH

I'll start posting poems here soon.
To, you know, "lighten" shit up.
Although 90% of my poetry is anything but "light."

Can't you just feel the self-derision emanating from me tonight?
Sweet dreams and such. x

I'm still a little bit drunk, forgive me. My favourite part of life and every day is that first hour before I have to do things, when I sit on the floor of my living room with a cup of coffee, chain smoke my lungs away, write emails, read new things, sift through the many un-read google reader items. My cats are always a little bit hyper and over eager in the mornings. I'm always a little bit stuffed up and groggy. My apartment is really fucking amazing. Really. The big window in the living room lets in this gorgeous blue-gray light. My apartment is always very very warm. A t-shirt is sufficient and you still feel cozy. If I've forgotten my medication I'm a little bit dizzy, a little bit tight in the chest. I'm surrounded by little single shot bottles of rye that my good friend Shawn brought over last night before we ventured out for beers and onion rings. I'm not close to many people but the ones I love, I truly love. And there is no shame between us, and no desire to lead a poetic life, only to talk about the pitfalls of analytic philosophy and punk sub-genres.

I'm going to read and review poetry submissions for the journal this morning. If I had to review the prior paragraph I would say "Feels incomplete. What is the point of these statements? Not a lot going on here" and then I would write a "no" underneath that. But I'm not writing poetry and I'm not concerned.

One of my favourite songs ever. Not much makes me this happy.

I think reading Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception will probably change my life. Like Lacan, Haraway, Hegel, Spinoza and Nietzsche did (and in that order, reversed). I'm into grandiose statements. I'm into philosophy that makes me feel grandiose and alive. I want to write a paper on phenomenology and Emily Dickinson, I think that would be very fun. Merleau-Ponty died of a stroke while reading Descartes. That is too perfect.

This year there are a few things I want to do. I don't understand why people get sappy and set up goals in January. I'm moderately sappy all times of the year. But I've been contemplating goals and here are some of them: read all of Being and Time. thoughtfully, carefully, and with help from secondary sources and online lectures. I am impatient with Heidegger but I think if I give the bastard some real time we'd get along okay. Start listening to more poetry, because it soothes my soul, yeaaaah. Regain all my French. Start getting poetry submitted to print journals and generally just write more poetry. Cut out superfluities. I'm generally good at cutting things out. But I want to really learn what needs to be cut and what should be nourished. I'm bad at editing.

My laptop is still a few hours away, now fixed and fresh and waiting to be transported back home by my most generous brother. Lack of a computer for the last month means that I am behind in reading blogs, behind in television, behind in internet-mediated information. But as a result, my mind is clear and fresh and I am stuck in books. Today I went to this antiques store to buy an old vintage clock I've been yearning for since December. The [very] old man behind the counter has thick red fingers with gold rings on each and asked me if I like Oscar Wilde. We talked about Oscar Wilde's time in prison and the fairy tales he wrote. Alone in this peach coloured room full of expensive and inexpensive furniture smelling of old life, he read "Ballad of Reading Goal" from a bright pink 1972 pocket edition of Wilde's collected works. He read softly in a shaky voice but with a beautiful consonance.

Another goal for this year is to be more kind to strangers.

Everything feels good.

I love love love and hate this city and I don't want to leave it, yet.

I hope you are all well.

christmas brain food.

I had a terrific Christmas. Once everyone is gone and there is no longer any pressure to be a "happy family," I realize that I am indeed part of a relatively happy family and enjoyed my day. The day itself always feels anticlimactic and emotionally draining. I really enjoyed seeing my Dad for the first time in a long time. He was really really nice which made me feel guilty about the prior post and my general bitterness. People surprise me, sometimes. My favourite presents: the Sartorialist book, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer - which I read in a few hours and want to read again - and the origami crane my sister made for me. Here is a portion of an essay I just wrote that I am incredibly pleased with. On Whitman and Heidegger's "Thinker as Poet" and of course I had to throw some Lacan in there:

Whitman's manic desire to consume and be consumed by everything - and his inability to achieve either - exemplifies Heidegger's quote: "Thinking’s saying would be stilled in its being only by becoming unable to say that which must remain unspoken" (Thinker as Poet). Part of the function of language is to play within and expose its own limitations. Language does not only function superficially as self-contained and transparent, but also in relation to this limit or its ability to expose this limit. Formal experimentation is one strategy of playing with and around the inability of language while simultaneously exposing the lack underlying what is made visible. The malleability of poetry in particular draws attention to this semiotic and material limit. That which visibly manifests itself is also the symptom of a residue, of something that cannot be expressed in language. For Heidegger, "What is spoken is never, and in no/language, what is said" (Thinker as Poet). A similar thought is expressed in Whitman: "Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,/Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn" (Whitman 22-23). Thus, what is said includes the content of the language as well as what is lacking in the language; Leaves of Grass performs this relation and the inability of language. This discourse reveals the limit of the language (what is lacking, what remains unspoken because it is untranslatable) in dialectical relation to the words used and the relationship to the speaker as creator and conduit of 'Being.' What is seen (the content communicated) emphasizes the absence of the unseen (that which necessarily underlies what is visibly and materially taking place). The inability of language to succinctly express experience and realize this desire results in a struggle with and against this limit; therefore, the subject matter of the poem is not only what is said but the issue at stake in saying or not saying, and the problems of language as a system of representation. This reality motivates Heidegger's statement that "such inability would bring thinking/face to face with its matter" (Thinker as Poet). Thinking is a process that struggles to explicate itself through saying; however, the subject of thought cannot be confronted directly, in language. The best and only strategy for negotiating this problematic is to play within the limits of the language itself in order to expose the contradiction inherent in the process of thought and its communication. Thus, Leaves of Grass succeeds because it communicates the vitality of life while sustaining the contradictions inherent in the process of channeling thought into language.

Lacan's distinction between the symbolic and the imaginary realms exposes the function and 'inability' of language within Whitman's poetry. The Lacanian reading reveals the misrecognition that occurs through linguistic expression. Whitman's desire is expressed in language that cannot grasp what he desires and how he desires. Explication of desire in language results in a hierarchical systematization of that desire which results in the subsequent annihilation of that desire. Desire fails when it is [mis]recognized, and thus the untranslatable essence of Whitman's experience - the component that underlies what is communicated - must remain unspoken in order to for the 'Being' of the poem to be realized. This process reveals that desire itself is structured; desire is not free of form. If, according to Lacan, "the unconscious is structured like a language," desire too is structured like a language, but is not a language and cannot be explicated via language. This desire "is without name - it is a word unsaid,/It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol" (Whitman 68). Whitman swings between a desire to consume and a desire to release (sensually but also within language and the construct of the poem) because he recognizes that desire is extinguished through explication. This is one reason why Whitman advises against "tak[ing] things at second or third hand...looking through the eyes of the dead...[and] feeding on the spectres in books" (Whitman 22). His attempts to mediate his desire through verse to the reader necessarily fails. This is the "paradox of desire at its purest: in order to sustain itself as desire, to articulate itself (in a song), a piece must be missing" (Zizek xviii).

I feel ridiculous, my head has been swimming and murky for the past week. I want to have electric-shock-underwater-half-asleep-when-you-crawl-into-bed-with-me-early-in-the-morning sex after I (exhausted and half naked) curl up and doze off to the sound of you and your stoned friends murmuring delightful things in your well designed living room painted neutral colours. You and your chocolate stout. You and your extremely long fingers. I'm nervous to see/talk to my Dad and his wife for the first time in a while. I am afraid. I feel afraid around my family because I know that nothing I say would even crack a hole in their shrink-wrapped shell minds incubated in religious juices. Religion works so well, it sucks up everything like a vaccuum, all doubt condemned, everything soaked up and churned out and half-digested. Syrupy faith. You can't reason with faith, which makes it very powerful and stupid. I am so absent from everything except my body. It keeps producing things and moving along streets and I'm watching it with a stupid fucking grin, feeling like a brain-in-vat staring dumb faced at my own flesh that is unwilling - incapable - of not moving. I'm tricking everyone! No one knows that I am so incredibly removed from myself and others. Sometimes when we fuck I look down at my body moving and I am impressed. I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay. Write, write, repair. Know your language, know your neighbours. I want writing just for me. I want hard copies of everything. I am afraid of losing or wanting to lose because that's easier. I want paper cuts and ink stains and callouses on the inside of the ring finger on my right hand. I want you to suck the blood from my paper cuts and read me the 'Grand Inquisitor' when I'm leaned against the wall and you are deep in and the street-lamp-light filtered through blinds cuts up your hard, angular body. Condemn me. I feel close to you and only you.

*I forgot to credit these:
the first is Francis Bacon, the second is an unknown source re-posted from another blog (and I don't remember, I'm sorry).

One fun thing I like about working at the library is finding scraps of paper and peoples private lives in books; inscriptions, lists, notes in the margin. I have been collecting "found papers" since I was 14. I have a binder, a box, and a notebook full of other peoples random trash. I don't know why I find it so interesting. Tonight's lists:

1.
quit sdtt
alone time
quit gf
more alone time/cry
gain confidence
work out
stand up to family
find yourself
sing
travel
get priorities/goals
kali

the only thing with a check mark beside it is the first item.
this one makes me feel that everyone everywhere is exactly the same and want the same things when they think no one is reading. and to put "find yourself" on a to-do list is ridiculous, stupid, charming, sad and lovely.
i don't know what sdtt is.

2.
pity/fear - green
catharsis - green
hero - yellow
ontology - blue
truth - red