Two more posts

Fucking fuck, I thought I'd have ran out of scheduled posts by now. I suppose there must be some that I've readied for months or even years in the future, that seems like something I'd do, and I think I even remember doing it.

What really freaks me out is how I talk of myself in the past tense. I can't believe how I really believed that I was going to do this. And that it was right. That by now I wouldn't be here. Well I guess the person I was already is dead, because we change utterly in the blink of a moment and Hume knew that, and I'm thinking of a quote of his involving darkness and something about a pool and memory, but the closest thing I can find is this:

"I desire those philosophers, who pretend that we have an idea of the substance of our minds, to point out the impression that produces it, and tell distinctly after what manner that impression operates, and from what object it is derived."

which I know is close but that isn't it at all. It reminds me of how I felt back then, actually. So many ideas and memories rushing, tearing through my head in a maelstrom and I couldn't hold on to any of it, yet it all was so significant, every scintilla blasting through and out and beyond my reach.

I was am, I am were, I will be not am or even is

And where were you?

Imago [ekphrasis] [A house fixed and strangled with ice in the centre of a frozen lake

Something resolves,
a patch of darkness
curved against a margin,
angled in the palette of a mind,
already so formed like years of minerals
blanketing a riverbed.
Clad in amber,
shrouded in light and memory.

The Fifty Year Sword, Page 62

                                           "and she
felt bleak,
                "as if a thousand
                                            "vengeances
upon vengeances were dicing her
suddenly
                "into hail.

First Quartet

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
                                   But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
                                   Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush?


-T.S. Eliot

The Creaking Space

Mariana,

I know how much the light dying makes you groan,
how the yellow hues of dusk smother the air of your room,
decay your heart whilst your senses
dilate hideously.

I remember writing this post too. It still holds true, I think. As for the link with Plato and all the Greek, I'm not perfectly sure what idea had formed in my mind with all that. For some context on the 'fig tree' - thank god I can offer at least that - here's the extract from Sylvia Plath's novella The Bell Jar that I had in mind:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

[we recall- ] "write I still all one, ever the same"] [Plato [O] [ | ]

Maybe I should think of writing like Plath's fig tree, and each line, each verse, each word is a seperate snagging branch and I could write a volume of variations on just one poem I am trying to get perfect. And maybe that's what any poetry collection is.

Ἑρμογένης

ἔοικεν.

Σωκράτης

ἴθι δή, ἐπίσκεψαι ποῖ βλέπων ὁ νομοθέτης τὰ ὀνόματα τίθεται: ἐκ τῶν ἔμπροσθεν δὲ ἀνάσκεψαι. ποῖ βλέπων ὁ τέκτων τὴν κερκίδα ποιεῖ; ἆρ᾽ οὐ πρὸς τοιοῦτόν τι ὃ ἐπεφύκει κερκίζειν;

Ἑρμογένης

πάνυ γε.

Σωκράτης

τί δέ; ἂν καταγῇ αὐτῷ ἡ κερκὶς ποιοῦντι, πότερον πάλιν ποιήσει ἄλλην πρὸς τὴν κατεαγυῖαν βλέπων, ἢ πρὸς ἐκεῖνο τὸ εἶδος πρὸς ὅπερ καὶ ἣν κατέαξεν ἐποίει;

Ἑρμογένης

πρὸς ἐκεῖνο, ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ.

Σωκράτης

οὐκοῦν ἐκεῖνο δικαιότατ᾽ ἂν αὐτὸ ὃ ἔστιν κερκὶς καλέσαιμεν;

Ἑρμογένης

ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ.

Σωκράτης

οὐκοῦν ἐπειδὰν δέῃ λεπτῷ ἱματίῳ ἢ παχεῖ ἢ λινῷ ἢ ἐρεῷ ἢ ὁποιῳοῦν τινι κερκίδα ποιεῖν, πάσας μὲν δεῖ τὸ τῆς κερκίδος ἔχειν εἶδος, οἵα δ᾽ ἑκάστῳ καλλίστη ἐπεφύκει, ταύτην ἀποδιδόναι τὴν φύσιν εἰς τὸ ἔργον ἕκαστον;

Ἑρμογένης

ναί.

Σωκράτης

καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων δὴ ὀργάνων ὁ αὐτὸς τρόπος: τὸ φύσει ἑκάστῳ πεφυκὸς ὄργανον ἐξευρόντα δεῖ ἀποδοῦναι εἰς ἐκεῖνο ἐξ οὗ ἂν ποιῇ τὸ ἔργον, οὐχ οἷον ἂν αὐτὸς βουληθῇ, ἀλλ᾽ οἷον ἐπεφύκει. τὸ φύσει γὰρ ἑκάστῳ, ὡς ἔοικε, τρύπανον πεφυκὸς εἰς τὸν σίδηρον δεῖ ἐπίστασθαι τιθέναι.

Ἑρμογένης

πάνυ γε.

Σωκράτης

καὶ τὴν φύσει κερκίδα ἑκάστῳ πεφυκυῖαν εἰς ξύλον.

Ἑρμογένης

ἔστι ταῦτα.

Σωκράτης

φύσει γὰρ ἦν ἑκάστῳ εἴδει ὑφάσματος, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἑκάστη κερκίς, καὶ τἆλλα οὕτως.

Ἑρμογένης

ναί.

Σωκράτης

ἆρ᾽ οὖν, ὦ βέλτιστε, καὶ τὸ ἑκάστῳ φύσει πεφυκὸς ὄνομα τὸν νομοθέτην ἐκεῖνον εἰς τοὺς φθόγγους καὶ τὰς συλλαβὰς δεῖ ἐπίστασθαι τιθέναι, καὶ βλέποντα πρὸς αὐτὸ ἐκεῖνο ὃ ἔστιν ὄνομα, πάντα τὰ ὀνόματα ποιεῖν τε καὶ τίθεσθαι, εἰ μέλλει κύριος εἶναι ὀνομάτων θέτης; εἰ δὲ μὴ εἰς τὰς αὐτὰς συλλαβὰς ἕκαστος ὁ νομοθέτης τίθησιν, οὐδὲν δεῖ τοῦτο ἀμφιγνοεῖν: οὐδὲ γὰρ εἰς τὸν αὐτὸν σίδηρον ἅπας χαλκεὺς τίθησιν, τοῦ αὐτοῦ ἕνεκα ποιῶν τὸ αὐτὸ ὄργανον: ἀλλ᾽ ὅμως, ἕως ἂν τὴν αὐτὴν ἰδέαν ἀποδιδῷ, ἐάντε

 

My breaths are shallow enough to drown in.
I only need an inch of water to stop me breathing,

But you compose an ocean.

His atoms unthread,
disperse.

Perhaps they lost the strength to continue.
Or perhaps, seeing her, they found
that apart, they could catch her rays
like leaves unfurling to the sun.

Okay a new one. I recognised the quote immediately, although it didn't much matter since I actually remember when I scheduled this post to begin with. It's the opening of Danielewski's novella The Fifty Year Sword.

The word 'ghost' comes from the Old Norse geisa to rage, Gothic usgaisjan to terrify (hence we get 'ghast'); outside Germanic the derivatives seem to point to a primary sense ‘to wound, tear, pull to pieces’. It's thought to have pre-Germanic origins but the sources are hazy; the word's haunted by the phantom of some other past, but we don't know the origin. We never do.

It's interesting that the sense 'pull to pieces' comes up. I think of the German der absoluten Zerrissenheit, a phrase Danielewski/Johnny left untranslated in House of Leaves. I also remember the torn up text of the Esau and Jacob chapter, and that old Hebrew word vayitrozzu which comes from the amazing root rzz meaning "to tear apart, to shatter". Finally I remember Sappho, all her destroyed papyrus manuscripts, left littered in rubbish heaps with IOUs and store records, waiting in the dark to be read again, reread in its ghastly half-rotten visage and its fragments, all of which becomes some kind of uncanny beauty that I still can't place my finger on.

Oh, I remember one more thing. A poem I read once, about a ghost in a house , by the sea if I remember. Lingering for days with a friend. More than a friend. More than days. It was a long long time ago. I don't remember any of the words. But I remember having read it, I remember remembering it, and something of that ghost and her house remains or lies dormant or reappears before me now, and I know she never really left me, and she was with me, in every moment, every glance and inhalation, every season, she was always there behind my eyes, on the tip of my tongue, always alone yet never gone.

"Maybe because the history of any ghost story is a ghost story unto itself, which is to say another story completely"[-

Perhaps it is significant that remnant and revenant come so close to touching one anothers' reflections,

                   and find themselves within a memory
so, so long
                                                                                 
                                                                                ago, which takes on some other form, in its half-
resolved indifference, like smog creeping into a
                                                                               forest,
                                                                it distorts.

In a conversation, or a moment, I find such joy or profoundity that I don't want it to end. I suspect the hours ahead, what unravelling or tarnishing they threaten. How can I make this moment last? This moment, I hold onto, in holding gone - as a flake of frost melting in the vice of my grip. I whisper, this moment happens. This moment happened. This is all and this is fixed. Wherever I am, wherever I will be, there will have been this moment. Inviolable. Frozen and never stolen.

But I do not know.

And I wonder, if I died, now, would it last? And if that moment were my last, would it take precedence over all before it, all future breezes that were annexed by its finality? Or would it like a passing day, the ghost of May, go? And would any and all go with it? Or in my cessation the time could be fixed like amber, the world contracted with the close of my eyes, the sound of a thousand tomorrows and yesterdays snagged by a noose just grazing against the bottom of my ears. Something lost, something found, somewhere out there, a world resounds. Is this finality?

Angles not Illuminated

Your wrist could erase worlds,
a flick of this and
your fist could close around the breath
of so many stayings.

There is no space to dwell
where your fingertips eclipse
every other happening.

Traduttore Tradittore

Odd that I scheduled two posts on the same day. Also, I've noticed that the times I was scheduling them at tend to be at midnight, which I guess is the default, but then the recent ones have fluctuated a lot. 20:08, that's 8 minutes past 8. No idea what that's about.

Again, I don't know the source of that quote. Usually I keep them in speech marks like this " not 'inverted commas' like I did there. The 'every breath a death' thing reminds me of something I said in an earlier post, but I can't find it right now. I do remember thinking with a sudden clarity about inkblot patterns - or at least what I thought was a clarity. Something about the pattern of an open book looking like a Rorschach page. It's weird that some of these got so romantic, really, because I know I didn't have anyone in mind when I wrote them. And a 'Rorschached face' is what, make up and tears? My own sight being clouded by my own tears? Something else? I don't know what I'm looking at.

[Deluge ['[...]my life | Is every breath a death: and thus, unknown'

The sky is clear as any November cataract,

Scorching blue haze over the streets.

But it begins, with no creeping of cloud

To rain

From the empty sky.

Icy prickles crane heads upward
And no answer falls with the water.

And do clouds obscure our eyes as we rain fears,
Or are we then, weeping, more than ever,
A taste of that great clarity
That cavernous sky?

Sorry about the lack of response, I was caught up with a surprise bit of coursework that had slipped my mind. I don't remember the actual writing of this last post, but I do recognise a lot of it. The words in the title come from Philip Larkin's poem 'Mr Bleaney'. Despite its sort of nursery rhyme sounding name, like all of Larkin's work it has a lot of depth to it.

As for the rest of the post, I'm pretty sure that's my writing. The phrase "vast abrupt" sounds familiar though, but I couldn't find anything by googling it. Maybe it's just familiar because I half-remember writing it.

My room was a mess back during my episode. I'd broke the latch on my window and rainwater kept falling in, seeping into the nearby wallpaper until it got distended and colourless. I'd stopped showering and I couldn't tell if the stink was from myself or the room and all the shitty food I'd left festering in the bin. I didn't really have much of an appetite, even less the desire to go out and get food or order it by phone, so what little I did had mostly ended up there.

Eventually I got tired of shivering and taped the window shut, but the heater's over-active in my room, and it gets really stuffy once the sun starts beating down on the room through the glass. I spent hazy patches of time asleep, day and night. It didn't really matter when. It's amazing how much you can sleep if you get into the habit of it. I was happier not to be conscious anyways.

"From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow"

Don't worry, I have a source for that one; it's one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets.

"But if he stood and watched the frigid wind | Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed | Telling himself that this was home, and grinned, | And shivered, without shaking off the dread | That how we live measures our own nature, | And at his age having no more to show | Than one hired box"]

I seem to see my shadow stretch in yellowing light, and all my breath departs without even one deliquescent cloud.

No, the air in this room is warm and stale. No wind has disturbed it for decades. No other face has stained the dust on the windows.

A vast abrupt turns my stomach.

I think I figured out what happened.

Back when I was at my worst I found I could schedule posts to auto-post in the future, i.e. after my planned death. So that's basically what that's doing lying around there. I remember my fingers hitting against the keys, but I'm a little hazy on the details, so your guess is as good as mine on the post. There are a few references to Nordic myth in it, and I do remember having some airy, empyreal concept I wanted to realise about knowing and not-knowing. At any rate I must've wrote it up in about five minutes with no editing so don't expect some deep subtext.

It looks like I have quite a few more posts lined up. Again, I don't remember much of the details of writing them, so I'll put up what explanations I can as they come rather than read them all up now. Like a conversation with myself. But then, that's all this blog is, right?

I didn't post that.