It is sweeter to wander with the wretched and outcasts than to sit crowned with roses at the banquets of the rich
Elisee Reclus

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Lines written at home while waiting for vegetables to roast

When core portions of what we refer to as 'our self' change, it's very odd. Or, it is very disorientating. Do we have the idea for the change first that leads us to do so or do we change and then become aware of the change? I suppose it doesn't really matter because once we've changed, once something previously hidden has bubbled up to consciousness, we are stuck with it. There is a definite sense of no going back. In same way, there is no way to become virginal again.

Like any reformed smoker. Like any revolutionary turned reactionary. Like any prole turned nouveau riche - we are going to want to go on at length about it all until the novelty has worn off.

I feel the same way about my throwing caution to the wind. Although this is imperceptible to anyone who knows me, it feels to me like I am a maniac running loose in the world, the applecarts upset hither and thither. Whether this is positive or not, I can't work out. It could also be the process of ageing whereby taking risk comes more simply from sheer boredom and weariness with what has become to be mind-snarlingly familiar, oh so familiar. It's not risk, it's longing for escape, for novelty. Or maybe, more charitably, searching and wishing for something deeper, something very subtle and known.



The Edges

With this in mind, I have become interested in edges right now. My edge, your edge, societal edge. Aside from my other key question 'what is political in these times'?, I wish to understand the bumping we all do into edge questions, the questions that challenge our risk taking. My biggest new edge breaker is the desire NOT to be anything for anyone. I do not want to be anything for you. This is because I have no desire to be anything anymore for myself. There will only be disappointment or pain if you tap my edges to make sure they are there (for you), impose sharper edges and cut yourself there.

Difficult then is negotiating the relationship between the edge of not being anything for someone and the freefall that results from that determination. Also the loss...

Although I despise people who act without hesitation, I like to act by keeping running. In this way my edges are blurred but are existent. This motion blur is great as it denies assumption. Like the words 'I', "is' or 'was', the static person is all assumption. I find some freedom in honesty but much more so in acts of self-conciously communicated presumption, acts that are ready to be affirmed or denied. In fact, there maybe something endlessly optimistic in this approach. And optimism breeds possibilities, which is my favourite design, state of mind and/or prone position. For possibility reminds me of love, which speaks to me of revolution, which informs all my edges.



Frayed Knots

Returning to my changes, that may or not be impatience or world weariness, my slight lack of caution can seem to me something like a blunt instrument that I swing around my head. Like the abovementioned idea of change, where we don't know if it comes first or second in 'real' terms, I don't know, or more accurately, I can't actually feel if I now make blunders with people or if it's merely an act of history. After years of going with my trusted and cautious sense of flow, something that in fact could be mere suppression of agency, I now have abandoned some of this flow for tsunami of blundering through here and there on my way. I have tried to drop passive-aggressive for aggregate passion. People seem to like it, but then people seem to assume that this is me in totality. That is disorientating because it's a bit impatient of them, a bit lazy.

I have recently watched a few people have the rug pulled from under them. It's been sad, emotional but illuminating. I could hazard a similar movment for myself in these days (albeit unaccompanied by acts of betrayal and selfishness). Less having the rug pulled out from under me, as watching it unravel and fray and knot in unknown but fascinating patterns. That's when I turn these writing tables on myself and begin to question the assumptions I have about who I am, What is scary is that this is sometimes more a question of 'who I represent ' for other people filtered through the question of being for other people and not being as or for myself.


Macrocosmically, these words are always tinged with edges of sadness for the humiliations of the world inflicted upon all, rich and poor, stuffed or starving. Microcosmically, conceived via feelings of sadness for the conflict between these edge-words, my subjectivity, my communicated 'reality' in these well-chosen lines of typing and the 'reality' of my passions, the secrets we share when you and I deny representation in our moment of pure silence (together). Words are no longer shared between us in this longed-for state of edgelessness.


And in this image (!), I run forward, always...to find the revolutionary silence. To find possibilities that corrode edges.

And it is in these dynamic leaps forward that I find that I cannot wait. And so I act because I cannot wait.

If I can no longer wait for revolution it is precisely because it is not a question of waiting anymore for it's obvious that the revolution is dead and so long may it live!


And so here ends these mere words...

Sssssshhhhhhhhh!



X

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

XXX TILL THE END

THE RUINIST said...

and IT NEVER ENDS


a good thing