/warnell/Do not add up

:: Do not add up

8.

New -- Added to our ever expanding line of items for sale: A glue for words which is not a word. A grammatical fix-it-all for cementing concepts together.

9.

Some rain signifies some other rain. Other rain, sometimes, but not always, signifies some people's ideas about rain, and then some other rain signifies destruction immediately followed by creation. The problem, however, arises when it stops raining and we are left with a puddle; indivisible.

10.

I think that it would be a good practice for lovers, after they split up, to inform their ex-lover's new lover of that same ex-lover. For, after all, who knows anyone better than an ex-lover. The split would, of course, have to be of an amicable nature, but otherwise I foresee no problems arising in the immediate implementation of this plan.

11.

When writing I always want to include my own ignorance of a subject as well as my knowledge of it. I want to include the sort of ignorance which allows one to learn more about the topic. For often times, I feel that I pretend to know more than I actually do and thus preclude further learning. I lose all of my teachers, for they think that I know all of what they might say. I must remember to be honest about my own knowledge; to be authentic to it. This is quite difficult, for it means that I must judge myself and my eyes are often fun-house mirrors. But just because I do not know a subject completely does not mean that I cannot speak or write of it. For after all this, it seems that if I knew any interesting subject completely then that knowledge would have to encompass the entire world.

12.

Are we poets of seeds or poets of full grown forests? Both are needed, both lead to radiance. Are we poets of potentials or poets of actualities? I would say that Muriel Rukeyser was a poet of potentials and possibilities whereas William Carlos Williams was a poet of actualities. The one seeks to allow for many directions, many alternate worlds, leaving us in a suspended superposition of states, and in this is the radiance of a seed. The other seeks to find the radiance of the tree that already stands in front of some actual person's house.

13.

How long is great sex? Maybe a half hour. It's strange that such an important, tangled act takes such a short period of time. This proves that the length of time that something takes does not correlate with its importance -- a day can be filled with one long important thing or ten short important things or nothing important at all. Well, that's very obvious, but what I keep trying to make obvious to myself is that anything can become important, I just must evaluate it in such a way. I must choose the material for the photograph of my life. The material may not be as important as the individuation which is required in order to choose it, but I'm not old enough to say.

14.

Why do we need to write? This must be just a partial answer because I can only write for a short period of time before I begin to feel disconnected and alone. But on a broader note, I want to say that there are only partial answers. Many have tried to create a complete answer, but by the very nature of language a choice is made between possibilities, distinctions must be drawn. Language is not like natural light (containing many frequencies from red to violet). Language includes and discludes -- in everything I write I want the statement, "but this is only a partial answer, this is just the part of X which got me off enough to choose it" to be implied. But now, because I was not sure that that would be implied and because I felt that I had to explicitly state it, I have forgotten what I had to say about writing. It has passed out of view. Perhaps this is part of the partial answer about why we need to write: writing allows me to come back to my idea about why we need to write and by implication it allows me to come back to any idea without appearing to break the continuum of the idea. Thus, I may have much more complicated ideas in writing than in speech because I can come back to the written idea whereas I cannot come back to a conversation because I do not have a record of its history.

15.

What is the purpose of non-sense? One of its purposes must be to show the contrast-class of sense. In effect, non-sense shows humans that sense is possible. Another purpose of non-sense must be to divide de Saussure's paper: the sound and the meaning. In this way, non-sense is a surrealist piece of paper which shows us that meaning is possible.

16.

Just wait, an old Irish lady will adorn canyons with myths. It is very difficult to imagine; we don't usually think of myths as objects. She was holding one such myth when she fell down the linoleum stairs and it shattered. (The last sentence is the one that interests me most. In this sentence the old lady is transformed from a goddess/crone into an old lady in a house. Nietzsche to Bowie "More idols than realities." Ohh, how hard we try to hold people high as gods, goddesses, and muses, but also how hard we try to recognize and remember their humanity. This must be one of the many paradoxes of love -- we want our lovers to see us as amazing divine beings, but we also want them to be with us everyday at the grocery store and endure our morning breath. In that same sentence the object of myth gets something of a tangible form: it shatters -- therefore it is hard, possibly glass, no, no, no, it is ceramic -- blue Chinese ceramic from the Ming dynasty that the old lady's mother-in-law bought in Peking in 1924 while she was doing a comprehensive study of Chinese architecture.)

17.

Digging between forms: shifting the objects which I lay my flowers upon -- an artist fills empty books with these objects which are plucked from ordinary life; when he is old he has an encyclopedia of all that has ever turned him on.

18.

Why do we write things down? (More partial answer -- I still don't trust you to understand that the fact that this is a partial answer is always implied.) We write because we are forgetful; our brains grow, fill with ideas, and then we slowly unload them. Perhaps art is the trace of this growth, which would be forgotten if it were not recorded. Maybe most people are artists but they forget to record the growth of their thoughts and so we say that they are not artists -- though they may very well be artists lacking the final step of art. This endless recording of ideas encourages more growth, it challenges us to think more about those ideas. Writing also does something else which encourages thought -- it purges us of our thoughts. Once they are out and written down our brains can feel safe in throwing them out of our phenomenological scope -- after this great purging of ideas we are able to see more clearly, for those old thoughts do not get in the way of our sight any longer. This catharsis allows a little silent space in the brain to open for new thoughts, for new growth.

19.

All of us were working on notes for bigger things -- airplanes and submarines, paintings and novels. I was working on the perfect note -- first I had to find the perfect pen and the perfect store at which to buy that pen and the perfect time to buy it at and which cashier to buy it from...

20.

Coil a forest around your pulse; now wrapped in wood; shrouded in something that could not possibly shroud you. I mean you couldn't really coil a forest around your pulse, but it's a nice poetic image, or at least, I like it. It's nice to be a poet, but also nice to know when the poetry becomes too pure, too poetic, too meaningless or impossible.

21.

I am asking for synthetic papers as opposed to analytic ones. Analytic papers merely say that the set of X includes, as elements, a, b, c, d, etc. In effect an analytic paper only gives us the tautology that X=X, or that a book, when analyzed, means exactly what that book means. A synthetic paper would say, "Yes, a, b, c, d, etc., are members of X. But look, a variation of b is also a member of Y. The b in X and the b in Y are connected by n." It is this n which is the essence of a pure thought. This connection between two sets or books or paintings or ideas becomes an element in the set of the writer's connective thoughts. It is this set of connective thoughts and this way of thinking which allows a person to interpret the world and to connect two varying ways of description (i.e., poetry and philosophy).

22.

23.

If I develop a point of view then I must deny all others, right? But is it possible to place myself in a superposition of states such that I could view every position, every posture towards a thing, but keep each of these positions as possibilities, refusing to assign a truth-value to any of them? Probably not, I have a position, a context, but maybe a context which changes -- maybe I become the leitmotif of my own life -- signifying something which changes slightly, but always retains a substrate of sameness. Slowly, slowly, the possibilities shrink and I am all one within my own mind.

24.

In a light like you do -- ohh please hope for many things like all that is within the uncreated light emitting from one soul but expanding to create both the fact of universes and the doubt that those universes exist.

25.

There are the qualities and benefits and limitations of every thought, but there is also a diagonal thought which includes elements of each of the original thoughts, but which differs from each of those original thoughts. Therefore, the set of thoughts is infinite.

26.

There are two sorts of experimentation: there is one sort which is experimental for the individual who is doing the experimenting ("I have never thought [drawn, written, loved, etc.] like that.") And there is another sort which is experimental for all of humanity ("Nobody has ever thought [drawn, written, loved, etc.]like that.") To develop we need to experiment individually, but when we are mature we may experiment into the absolutely unknown, undone depths.

27.

28.

The way in which we are taught to be male and female seems to be that males are taught to always want sex and females are trained to always want to cuddle. This seems to be a great source of confusions; it makes boys not know when they want to cuddle and it makes girls not know when they want to have sex. But I think that it does something stranger: it makes men not know when they actually want to have sex and women not know when they actually want to cuddle. Is this possible? A way of teaching us to want things in such a way that we don't really know when we want them.

29.

I have borrowed someone else's mind to write this. Does the preceding sentence have meaning since you do not know whose mind I have borrowed? Does my original mind seem initially borrowed to you such that you could not distinguish between my mind and another's borrowed mind? Let's say it were possible for me to borrow your mind to write this and then give your mind back to you so that you could read this. Would you know from the content and form of this paragraph that it had been written using your mind? Let's say that under certain circumstances you would know that I had borrowed your mind. What sort of things would I have to write for you to know that I had borrowed your mind to write them?

30.

I cannot write in the forest, at least, not in the deep forest -- it is too distracting, too forest-like, it has too little language within it. But I can write on the edges of the woods; in the transition zones, where human civilization meets natural civilization (at the edge of a parking lot which borders the forest, on a patio that looks over the forest, on a sidewalk that goes through the forest, etc.). I can write where there is an interface between the linguistic and the non-linguistic, this is the perfect place for me -- where there is too much civilization I get an overload of linguistic symbols, where there is no language I have nothing to write (except for the fact that I am in a forest). A prose requires an humanity and a nature to feed it.

31.

An embarrassing fact: I am often bored in the forest. Why is this and why am I embarrassed by it? Maybe the reason that I feel bored in the forest is that I do not have the skill to perceive the forest. I have not been taught to read the forest. I do not have and have not been taught the words with which to perceive and describe the forest. Sure, I can enjoy the forest, for a while, but I do not have a rich enough vocabulary with which to describe the forest, in all its subtlety, to anyone including myself. I can point out a pine and say, "That's a pine." But I don't have a subtle enough vocabulary with which to describe the abstruse differences between the pine on my left and the pine in front of me -- I can describe very roughly why they are different, but I do not have the language with which to describe their complexly faint differences. Without this subtlety of language the world is able to become just a blur and a blur is boring. But this is something we have been taught: we have been taught that everything must be able to be talked about. So, while I have not been taught the language with which to perceive the forest, maybe that language is not to be found, maybe there is something in the experience of the forest which is essentially ineffable. But I do know that we can try harder to develop this language, to develop a language capable of going deeper into the delicate changes within the forest. Maybe a good way to start would be to start reviewing the trees as we review art, then we would have to come up with some criteria with which to review them, and that criteria might urge us to look deeper at the slight and cunning changes which occur in nature. And why am I embarrassed to be bored in the forest? I am embarrassed because I was taught that nature is a wonderful, interesting place that can reenergize the soul. I don't think that we are taught well enough why nature is a reenergizer of the soul. Maybe we just don't have the words to answer that question and maybe we never will and maybe we should just try to experience something which we cannot talk about.

32.

The tenseness of a number or a variable is that it means one exact thing and is not interesting by itself without any context to hold it. The tenseness of broad concepts like "consciousness," "love," or "justice" is that they mean many things and must have only a working definition. Maybe we could speak of a variable of a broad concept -- like "an x of consciousness."

33.

I got a fake I.D., though I am 21, just so that I could drink under someone else's name, just so I could be bad under someone else's name, just so I could do something that no one else would ever know about, just so I could have a secret, just so I could pretend. The pretense of what we are is all that we are.

34.

I heard someone say that the self is inextricably linked with language. I didn't really agree, but I think I figured out how you could say that:

35.

Does the person feel that he does not believe how he is feeling or that another person will not believe how he is feeling? I'm going to now proceed to spend my life trying to feel in such a way that I will not believe how I am feeling.

Do not add up :: *