The Pleasure of the Overstuffed

These days nearly every book I open floats the name Giordano Bruno before my eyes. Perhaps I also knew about him at some other point in my life but forgot? I am trying to explain why I wanted to name my son Bruno because of my unaccountable affection for the name, but yielded as everyone thought it a terrible idea. Pehrpas it indicates that what I really wanted was a puppy?

I know little about Bruno besides what I've gathered in scant reading, that some believe his execution for his beliefs in 1600 began modernity, that his work The Cabala of Pegasus influenced James Joyce, that he had formidable mnemonic skill. My impession is that he was one about whom people say, "he was too smart for his own good" and his death may have been indicative of his confidence's collision with his benefactor's belief systems and self-importance.

The paragraph below I excerpted from The Heroic Frenzies, which studies the dynamics within desire's alembic. It is so packed it nearly rips apart at the seams. I hope you enjoy the tension.

What a tragicomedy! What act, I say, more worthy of pity and laughter can be presented to us upon this world's stage, in this scene of our consciousness, than of this host of individuals who became melancholy, meditative, unflinching, firm, faithful, lovers, devotees, admirers and slaves of a thing without trustworthiness, a thing deprived of all constancy, destitute of any talent, vacant of any merit, without acknowledgment or any gratitude, as incapable of sensibility, intelligence or goodness, as a statue or image painted on a wall; a thing containing more haughtiness, arrogance, insolence, contumely, anger, scorn, hypocrisy, licentiousness, avarice, ingratitude and other ruinous vices, more poisons and instruments of death than could have issued from the box of Pandora? For such are the poisons which have only too commodious an abode in the brain of that monster! Here we have written down on paper, enclosed in books, placed before the eyes and sounded in the ear a noise, an uproar, a blast of symbols, of emblems, of mottoes, of epistles, of sonnets, of epigrams, of prolific notes, of excessive sweat, of life consumed, shrieks which deafen the stars, laments which reverberate in the caves of hell, tortures which affect living souls with stupor, sighs which make the gods swoon with compassion, and all this for those eyes, for those cheeks, for that breast, for that whiteness, for that vermilion, for that speech, for those teeth, for those lips, that hair, that dress, that robe, that glove, that slipper, that shoe, that reserve, that little smile, that wryness, that window-widow, that eclipsed sun, that scourge, that disgust, that stink, that tomb, that latrine, that menstruum, that carrion, that quartan ague, that excessive injury and distortion of nature, which with surface appearance, a shadow, a phantasm, a dream, a Circean enchantment put to the service of generation, deceives us as a species of beauty.

mudra

Unrelated observation: I like very much what Jodi Dean wrote on her blog the other day, "Fullness suggests totalitarian capture. Split involves alienation. More alienation could be a good thing." A parallax ax is as dangerous as it sounds! Long live studied ambiguity and the vertigo of inconclusiveness in which we flail when reflective thought accepts complexity.

for all eyes to see

"The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young."

Via bloodcore, via.

full of empty

parallax bats

How long ago were the wings of birds designated for angels, and the wings of bats, for demons? Given this demonic trait and the close association that bats have with vampires and Halloween in the West it seems strange that in other cultures, as in China, bats are associated with good fortune, to the point that in Chinese, bat and good luck are both signified with the word "fu."

I didn't notice that the Chinese Scholar's Garden at Snug Harbor has bat motifs incorporated in various architectural elements, when I was there I was too distracted watching bees drown in the Koi pond. I only heard about this last week after my son's class visited on a school trip, and got the educational tour which included commentary on the compelling belief that ghosts can only travel in straight lines. What about bats? I think they must be very capable of ample zig, zag and swerve to nab the mosquitoes right out of the air.

A while ago I dreamed that a friend and I were having a meeting with a tall charismatic Latin woman dressed in a red and white cheerleader's outfit. In an accent that sounded like Charo she told us she liked bats. Then bats emerged and began entering the walls and ducts of the building, incorporating themselves into the architecture, perhaps reshaping the building with the sonic visioning of space they are capable of, finding a depth in spaces that seem shallow, tight and claustrophobic, retuning and expanding the structure from inside out. Maneuvering in tight spaces.

~

It interests me that in the throng included in the Andreas Pavias painting reproduced in Friday's NYT the demon flying to the right of the Crucifixion becomes the focal point on the basis of the gravity of the contrast of its graphic, primitive treatment in relation to the homogeneous field of the human and angelic throng. The dynamism of its darkness seems to suggest we look deeper, and perhaps realize the part torment plays in the motion of things and consider the contraction that precedes a revitalization of space grown static. Challenges and troubles of all sorts set new things in motion.

I realize that I always envision the yin/yang symbol as frozen, but this week I saw it move. Perhaps it is meant to spin to depict the interplay of light and dark and the imbricated flow of one continually giving birth to the other. It has to spin, just as the earth does, night chasing dawn, dawn chasing night, with endless desire, even if some nights seem to last forever. At the boundary between one force and another, the friction alternately sparks passion, friction, torment and bliss belonging to each interface woven of the dynamic tension between compression and its release.

fun for the whole family

...But if one is really engaged in inner work, one cannot break the seal. Repression is inappropriate; it is repression which has, at least in part, caused the problem in the first place. But breaking out is inappropriate also. It is a terribly difficult situation. Some of the images used to describe what goes on in the alembic when things begin to heat up are pretty hideous, and very violent. Wolves eat Kings, the lions get their paws cut off, and animals scream in agony as they burn. These are very exotic, raw portrayals by the psyche of its own suffering when conflicts are contained within rather than projected outside.

Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas, Dynamics of the Unconscious, p. 274

locust pods

dark walk

morning light

Parallax Cats

In the middle of the night 2 cats yowled right outside the window and I woke up alarmed, listening to the strange sounds feeling one moment terrified and in the next sincerely amused by the fluctuations in their screeches. I wished I could just feel either terrified or amused, it was tiring to keep switching between the two reactions, there was something exhausting about being unable to rest in either view. The same sort of thing happened when I cuddled with my daughter on the couch, one minute feeling incredible tenderness and the next wondering what mischief she'd be up to when back in full drive mode. Something bothered me greatly about the slippage from one view to the next. I suppose its just how things are. Like this cat I held at the animal shelter, and who I'd adopt if not for allergies. One minute she cuddled in my arms, stretching her neck back to nuzzle her forehead against my chest, her long thin arms reaching up towards me. The next minute she had my hand in her teeth, with barely any pressure but enough that I could feel the sharpness.

I feel like I'm watching things spin, something like a revolving door, where one moment there's welcome and the next, divergence. Where one morning the sun shines crystal clear, seeming to illuminate all things as they emerge in their distinctly luminous orders, and the next morning, there's gloom, dissolution and too much tragedy.

I'm tired of the switching. If there is a parallax axe, what would it be? Something like *naked awareness* I imagine. Very, very naked awareness. And perhaps the purring of cats.

tooth to tooth

When I had a root canal at a dentist's in Manhattan, the Immigrant Song played over the sound system and the irony of that particular wail was not lost on me. Today it was Amie (what you want to do) when I sat down in the chair at Jennifer Lombardo's office, and of course I would like to do most anything besides have my gums numbed with that long steely syringe that stays in for about a minute while the medicine eases its way into the tissue. It wasn't so bad, though, I only felt pressure as the drill head did its electron-powered dance of destruction in the cavity of a top-right molar. I couldn't see what was happening in my mouth, but could conceive of the principle of pressure's implication in the creation of space. As when a tunnel is dug, the pressure of the implement brandishing its marks on matter leaves an opening behind it. And so she carved out this space in my body, then filled it with "resin," which she explained is a kind of plastic. I guess I'd rather be part plastic than part mercury and lead like in the old days. The really surprising part was how she hardened the filling by shining a light on it. Light as catalyst, why is that so surprising?

coordinates coordinated

An annunciatory monkey stands before a 4-headed figure bearing heavy black moustaches and eyes intensified with kohl. I found the curious menagerie spicing up a rug designer's etalier. The black markings seem so bitter and sweet, the white so deathlike and ghostly, it is hard to tell which has more, or less, life.

bounce back

Buildings receiving light reflected off the windows of nearby structures might feel somewhat validated, but maybe they shouldn't take the beam personally. Anyway they may be too distracted by an elevator's lift and drops or all the tickling feet on the stairs to even notice the passing ray.

calligraphy

prospect park

soft fall

There are times when some slowing eddy seems to still the flow of life long enough for a scene to take place, a scene offering something natural that seems perfectly odd, or something odd that seems perfectly natural, but either way, the motif floats to the surface long enough for a mermaid's vamp on the surface of the waves.

The small thing this time was a leaf that, among still, silent things, wove its way down from a very tall Oak on unseen currents, and for some reason this leaf, gently angled at the central vein and deeply cut with lobes, fell quickly whirling against the background of stillness, descending diagonally with surprising slowness across a chasm to nearly land among the branches of another oak, as if hoping for a foster home. Once on the ground, I thought I'd recognize it from its spectacular performance, but found it blended in with the multitude, browner and more dull than when it glided 100 feet above back lit by the sun.

Each leaf sweeps to earth a little differently, the fall a light touch on cushions of air. There is more anthem than renunciation in the soft slip, spin and pause of the drop. There is no hard-edged eternity, only Rilke's unending gentleness.

Here is C.F. MacIntyre's translation of Rilke's Autumn, one of the many poems falling out of the deteriorating collection I have. The last line was much better in German so I've included the original.


Autumn

The leaves fall, fall as if from far away,
like withered things from gardens deep in sky;
they fall with gestures of renunciation.

And through the night the heavy earth falls too,
down from the stars, into the loneliness.

And we all fall. This hand must fall.
Look everywhere: it is the lot of all.

Yet there is one who holds us as we fall
eternally in his hands' tenderness.

Herbst

Die Blätter fallen, fallen wie von weit,
als welkten in den Himmeln ferne Gärten;
sie fallen mit verneinender Gebärde.

Und in den Nächten fällt die schwere Erede
aus allen Sternen in die Einsamkiet.

Wir alle fallen. Diese Hand da fällt.
Und sieh dir andre an: es ist in allen.

Und doch ist Einer, welcher dieses Fallen
unendlich sanft in seinen Händen hält.

breakfast views: pangaea

some we didn't eat

It looks to have been a while since the street sweeper swept 14th, my son asked if the heap of leaves 2 feet out from the curb was the equator. No, the equator doesn't run through Brooklyn. Well, maybe Ridgewood, but not Park Slope. A 13th Street Ginkgo had lost all its leaves; the bare petioles of the leafless branches stitch a peculiar bluntness.

Meanwhile in Appalachia

Coal Country, a documentary about mountain top coal removal, airs Saturday, November 14th at 8pm. Channel: "Reel Impact" on Planet Green, a Discovery Channel (Find the Planet Green station in your viewing area.) The industry that destroys the landscape and poisons the water to the point that it dissolves children's teeth lowers the energy bills and employs many of the area's residents, according to the NYT article. Channel finder here.

Hypnagogic Vocabulary

I dozed off last night and awoke suddenly with a word on the tip of my tongue, panjunction. I dreamed it referred to the spot in the universe where all things meet, but it sounds like the name of a franchise that sells kitchen accessories.

More Gowanus Views

BAX has hung works by Angela Jimenez that portray South Brooklyn's most alluring subject. I think the widespread appeal stems from the Venice effect mixed with some cozy effluviana and a fascination with plastic surgery and embalming as the canal is not at all what it once was in either form or content. It has some serious industrial botox. Long ago the artery sheltered anadramous fish that sought fresh water for spawning, later dredged, shored up with concrete the channel became the mule of the brownstone builders and industrialists. Now, nifty condos and studio lofts later, the canal elicits devotion. One day I'd love to watch Miyazake's Spirited Away projected on its greasy green scum. Maybe the fish will come back, some already have.

I really enjoyed Angela's work, because like many I can't get enough of the Gowanus. It's creepy, scary, beautiful, monstrous, the last "brook" in Brooklyn. Historic essays by Victor Favorotino accompany Angela's Silver C-prints. I found them all interesting, but was most captivated by the story of the sailors kept captive on the cement ship. Double click the page below for details.

Mostly Air

Still thinking about Nothingism, from the other side now. Of course, there are times when one would never forgive oneself for doing nothing when one could have done something. That being said, given our hyper-controlling and yet inept tendencies it seems a little Nothingism might slow down the race towards the end of many species, if not our own. Might just leave a little clean air & water and a few fish for generations down the road to enjoy. But when most people try to do nothing, they lose their minds. I used to clean house for some of my English professors in college, and on one occasion the subject of meditation came up. They had tried it once and were vehement about how much they hated it. It's Nothing, Nothing!! they cried. For some reason, it was an unforgettable moment, and reminds me that just a few years ago meditation made me want to jump out of my skin. Nothing can be really, really hard, and the subjective, repellent.

Nadismo

I was so glad to realize the 24/7 meme had died, or at least been incapacitated, good riddance to all its overdrive, compulsion and mania. But I very much enjoy the idea of this Nothingism Club, especially when I hear the motto "Nadismo." It's an affirmation of laziness laced with more than a hint of Tropicalia and a dash of hobo autonomy. It's not nihilistic inaction driven by anomie but a defense of seemingly baseless spontaneous fulfillment. I hope the Nothingists save the world from human excess, but ambition and insecurity are strong opponents.

I suppose it's a bit naive to think one can save the world with some measure of Nothingism, but there's some truth in it. This is the anarchical Taoist Zhuangzi's assertion: "You have only to rest in inaction and things will transform themselves. Smash your form and body, spit out hearing and eyesight, forget you are a thing among other things, and you may join in great unity with the deep and boundless. Undo the mind, slough off spirit, be blank and soulless, and the ten thousand things one by one will return to the root—return to the root and not know why. Dark and undifferentiated chaos—to the end of life none will depart from it. But if you try to know it, you have already departed from it. Do not ask what its name is, do not try to observe its form. Things will live naturally of themselves."

~Chapter 11, the Zhuangzi (莊子 "[Book of] Master Zhuang"), 3rd century BCE, (11, tr. Burton Watson 1968:122-3)

A Necessary Tautology

Double click this list for a closer look into the basis of self-worth for this group of 5 year-olds.

Kinds of Thought

Spurred by much focus on Buddhist sutra as well as reachings in contemporary philosophy I find myself considering that there are at least 2 different kinds of knowing which reveal different reactions to phenomena. One might be described as epistemological knowing in which we intellectually create representations of the world, in which, as Levi mentions, we tend to overstate things or reduce the thing we attempt to describe. It seems this kind of thought is often driven by a reaction to insecurity or a reach for equilibrium it can't provide. It seems there might also be some kind of practically non-lingual ontological knowing, grounded in the body, and often in conflict with epistemological imputations, rich in things like intuition and the subliminal knowing of bodily memory. Of course none of these terms ultimately get even close to what actually happens in the complex workings of our beings, but I am reaching for words that can help to describe what kinds of balances have been struck when we reach maximal organismic efficacy, and what happens when there's a kind of insecurity that foments insecurity within an individual or in the individual's macrocosm, society. Trauma, stored in the body, distorts thought, so healing must require an ability to encounter the body's non-lingual and intellectually repressed complaint.

Observations

On the excuse of picking up medical forms from the doctor I was able to walk through Prospect Park yesterday in this eerie virtual weather. I hoped to swing by the fenced- off patch of ball field that's been popular with sparrows of all kinds but found it dead and silent, more evidence of virtuality. Sure I heard the Jays screaming but their calls always seems a little synthetic anyway, no offence to Jay lovers.

Somewhere almost lost in the closeness of the Jay's calls were the cries of hawks, a more delicate sound that comes to a finer, echoing point filled with height. Two hawks circled the Ravine East of the dog beach where I stood. They circled there for a long time, but the circle wasn't static, it eased around a little bit, grazing South, then lifting, then easing North. Of course there was no actual circle, this was only my mind filling in the gaps. And could you say that both birds were making one circle or was each making its own, which overlapped like a coil of wire pressed flat?

One of the birds dove and in so doing seemed to release the other from the vortex. The one remaining gradually flew higher and higher until it could barely be seen even though still in plain sight. Staring that way, I started to see the things usually filtered out of my view, the strange microscopically magnified looping strands mysteriously in my field of vision, snaking fuzzy ribbons of light and dark pulsating against the sky, abundant small whitish points resembling microorganisms. I guess I was watching so hard I started to see the inside of my eyeballs, saw the infinity within ironically begin to project its workings onto the infinity without. You know it is in fact a virtual day in those moments when the sky begins to quietly writhe with the pulsations of your own blood.

Walking 5th St. I found one of those bags woven of strong flattened plastic fibers, bags which my friend tells me are called vegetable bags in Colombia. Inside it scraps of paper inter folded, someone was throwing away their art, spiritual drawings, a blue goddess holding a green earth in her uplifted hands, a coiled black snake perched on an orange ball, 2 mandalas painted loosely with some sort of stamped marks. Out go the idols, just like the sand mandalas the monks toss to the wind. Also in the bag, an electric mixer, which I assumed was broken. I took the blender with me to give to my son who likes nothing better than dissecting broken appliances, but when I got home I found it worked. Inserting the whisks calmed the engine of the thing which spun too fast without their resistance. So for now I have 2 electric mixers. That makes 4 circles, and I'll just stick to that theory, because I know, if I test my hypothesis by sticking my finger into the silvery globe of speed, I'll be very sorry and in no mood for meringue.

Nina Power's Eye in NYC

I've been enjoying this post which allows a look over London-based writer Nina Power's shoulder as she visited the area. She's as handy with the camera as she is with Badiou and Becket, Sexual Politics and heaps of other stuff I have no clue about.

8th and 16th

Memorial for Suzanne Fiol

As the founder of Issues Project, Suzanne Fiol was one of Brooklyn's seminal dreamers, an advocate for sonic artists who, in exploring the power of their aesthetic medium, have frequently succeeded in transporting the human mind into ineffable realms that incorporate the signatures of intimacy, freedom, passion and spaciousness. Her memorial service is at St. Anne's this Sunday, where musicians and performers will begin a musical procession to the Issues Project Room in her honor. Information here.