From the pages of another lover

My answer itself will be a sign, which the other will inevitably interpret, thereby releasing, between us, a tumultuous maneuvering of images. Everything signifies: by this proposition, I entrap myself, I bind myself in calculations, I keep myself from enjoyment.

Sometimes, by dint of deliberating about "nothing" (as the world sees it), I exhaust myself; then I try, in reaction, to return -- like a drowning man who stamps on the floor of the sea -- to a spontaneous decision (spontaneity: the great dream: paradise, power, delight). 

But such recourse is futile: amorous time does not permit the subject to align impulse and action, to make them coincide: I am not the man of mere "acting out" -- my madness is tempered, it is not seen; it is right away that I fear consequences, any consequence: it is my fear -- my deliberation -- which is "spontaneous."

In the lover's realm, there is no acting out: no propulsion, perhaps even no pleasure -- nothing but signs, a frenzied activity of language: to institute, on each furtive occasion, the system (the paradigm) of demand and response."

Excepts from:  A Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes

At the tip

Ein Herausfallen werden wir nicht auf Zehenspitzen über.

#J

When people speak of beautiful sunsets I think of you. When I read poems, and stories  or when I return to the pages, and seek new ones in hopes of  another beautiful encounter, it is also partly the thought of you I intend  to revisit again and again.

You, whom I do not tell that all night long

I lie weeping,

You make me feel alone. 

(Rilke) 

Whe smiles make a spectacle of stupidity

It is not that I cannot accept arrogance, I know in reality, this and vanity are difficult to overcome, but I hate it when people forego humility altogether.

It is easier to scoff at what you don't understand than admit the fact that you do not get it.
Sometimes the condescending smiles, in reality, we know are masks to our own embarrassments.

There is virtue in humility.

In Stasis

You/ are a too-difficult dynamic system/, a product of the unintended/ perturbations of our initial conditions. / You puzzle me. 

This is the condition:/ stuck/ in hyper-sleep,/ in semi-dream/ caught in the unawares/ or at least I tell myself while/ I know, deep within, I am conscious./ Of the pause:/ of the artificial equilibrium we effect through the opposing of the only forces within me,/ acceptance and denial. /

But no, these words are too much/ so I try to be mathematical about it/ to have an excuse for not knowing/. But it turns out, I know the numbers after all,/ I haven't forgotten./ 

The problem is in the eyes,/ also in stasis/ as if to protect the owner from destruction/ so I cannot tell the difference between infinity and zero.

Running 1

Literally, not figuratively.

For once! And in hopes of strength for what may be the trade-off for foregoing the figurative.:)

A poet once said that 'rapid motion through space elates one', it is true and so I will keep this physical pace, there is no arguing in these terms materially.

But in cases of dreamy encounters, I think I'll wager hanging around sometime. :)

Hypnagogia

Because I rarely get to sleep, I know that people know that when I talk about dreaming, I mean it in the figurative.

I have wondered about limits too. What is the limit to the dreaming? They say we are only limited by our imagination, all the possibilities we make are of ourselves.

I have often doubted this, knowing that there is a danger in all kinds of dreaming -- that of the inability to wake up, and face what reality awaits us. Of course the other alternative is to make the very dream a reality -- a fairy tale affair, those things in the books.

Yet in this slight mockery is masked my envy for those who actually make it. I was once used to getting most things I wanted - needed. Now I see myself, as if from afar, falter in most steps I take. I feel the very dream I nurse is that which burdens me with the realization that I am not as good as I want to be, need to be. Yet I also find that I cannot let it go.

I wonder if this means that I now encounter something infinitely bigger than myself, huge enough to limit any further step.

Or if this means that at last, I'm finally dreaming about something real, important - that this can take me further.

I feel small these days, I can only hope this means that I'm finally dreaming big enough.

Note to Self

First thing to do after all the craze is: run.

Note 2

There are so many things I would love to say to you.

But never mind, you seem to be no expert in semantics, and I've practiced enough polemics to succeed in convincing myself that there is heroic value in staying away when one is not needed or when it is harder to.

Note 1

Alright. I will admit to this one inconsistency:

when girls tell you to leave them alone they usually, actually want you to -- need you to -- do the exact opposite.

Love as War 3

You will know that it is you. The subject, the center, the cause of this war. The prize of victory, the possible world after.

But I want the feeling to come to you in the quietest hour. I want the fullness of it, the completeness of it, to touch your soul.

Love as War 2

In this battle, the tragic end is not perishing but survival. To be left, after everything, in the middle of the ruins, by oneself. You've survived but you're all alone.

The real triumph in the war of love is death - a particular kind of death. This is because on the one hand, death can be the loss of oneself in vain. But on the other, if we get to be really really lucky, we die for another - we empty ourselves for the sake of another person. And: if we get really really really lucky, the person dies for us as well. The war is not a war of killing but a war of dying to be renewed: to be out of oneself to an other.

That's a little wonderful thought.
Imagine yourself getting to war, trembling, crying, afraid.
Imagine losing all your vanity in the process. Imagine realizing that the enemy must be a friend. Imagine getting back with another.
Imagine yourself emerging from the war with your heart whole. Intact.

It shall be glorious.

Love as War 1

Love and war are the same in that if either is to be real, there may be same casualty. This gives very good reason to avoid both, while possible -- to refuse to take part in what may be so great but taking.

But when all else fails, at least choose which battles are worth your heart.

Roses are red

Of course you've heard of it - you've probably said it too: we paint life with our colors. It's wonderful, happy and merry and bright.

My own life, my love, my being, I'd like to be like the roses- see the petals? All the possibilities - one by one, each more mysterious than the last. And how wonderful too, the glorious pink, the reds, the white, the occasional blue or yellow - all the beautiful colors telling of each part of the dreams we nurse.

But these days I am closer to the absolutes. Just black and white - happy or sad, feeling either good or bad. Just that. But quite honestly, I'd prefer to see all these in all their fancy hues - it'll be more exciting to be in between, to be free from being stuck in one extreme. But these days things are losing their meanings. I am blinded. I do not know what this is.
Is this knowing - realizing the truth for the first time? And so is this white - the fullness of colors? Or the other extreme - black, the absence of light? Either way, I am growing blind. I can no longer tell the blue from the red, the green, the white.

This makes me very sad. I am desperate.

Please, please save the roses.

Affects of Light

That we should battle with insecurity is quite unfortunate. That we should have these bouts within ourselves is even worse.

But what are insecurities but failures in the visions of ourselves?

On one hand I realize that I must contend with the forces of better claims than mine - theirs are perhaps more beautiful, fancy, fine. On the other, I realize that being and receiving should not stop with the senses. In this insistence I find hope, for who can really say that their vision is necessarily better?

Some nights I dream of rainbows too - with tinges of red and yellow and blue.

Easy. Easy, tiger!

There is no more room for audacity. So be still, my beating heart.

I lost the war?
Perhaps.

I meant to wave a sign

At this point what I think is this: you shall never know. And for and with good reasons.

Understand this, that signification is a ritual that constitutes what hope for survival remains. It is, in war, a convention. A demand (a word we overuse).

In so many levels, the imposition of the meaning or the assignment of the special truths ( a word I use loosely to mean my own), is both answering and asking certain questions. We ask without asking, we answer without clarifying recognition.

Now this is all we are, all I am. A confessor hiding behind the signs barely imbued with relations of feeling. The narratives created, the meanings designated and ultimately, the signs created surpass the temporality of its maker. Signs, at once freeing and reducing - these are all I have.

Then you will, you shall, never know - because if you do, nothing will remain secret -- nothing secret will remain.

Unfortunate, to have the feeling of freedom at last but to have to resist . What realizations of the thousand things that can be done. But alas, I imposed on myself this condition: to be trapped in a war where every word must be an enigma.

I will signal to the moon from now on.

What can be told over dinner

But my love, it is not that you have to be the most intelligent.

It is not the ability to read books that I am after. I can read these titles myself. Nor is it the ability to solve the most complex math problems, because perhaps I can do that myself as well.

No, it is that you should be capable of love, that means overcoming your vanity, and mine. It is that you understand, the way that I try to, the complexity of the person, the mystery that envelopes the human mind. It is that we know the challenge of trying to communicate what is of the self to the other - to extend the possibility of being one.

No, it is not your intelligence I should be after, but a certain largeness of mind. Large enough to admit, we may never fully understand.

Ink Running

Who says that the only way to rid ourselves of the mistakes is to erase?

No, I shall write you off, write you down, the aspects of you, one by one, little by little - until you are no longer part of me.

And then I will flip the pages for a better chapter. :)

Verbal Left-overs

I wish you knew just what words meant to me. If you did, you probably wouldn't throw your phrases left and right the way you do now. You leave me hanging.

I feel each statement is a question I cannot answer but which you insist on asking me.

The truth is, the answer is up to you. I know what these words mean, I feel them weighing on my shoulders. But how much of yourself are you really communicating with these sentences - are all but a left-over of another ideal, another love?

Strikes

There are times when I ask myself: why should I be afraid of thunders and storms?
Fear and courage do not make any difference. The lightning will strike wherever it will.

But that's it then, the answer. The uncertainty of it all is a constantly-posed danger. Worse, we've seen and we know what may happen and what have happened before. And how can we un-know anything?

Even as we know the chances they'll hit us, we're still afraid, because the end precedes the warning. The thunder only comes after the lightning had already struck. Too late?

Something I'd love to say in person.

It isn't that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you.

It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.

The possibility of life between us.

from On Lies, Secrets, and Silence by Adrienne Rich

Selected Prose 1966-1978

YOU SEE

You are so beautiful

and that makes you

even more terrifying

than the monsters

inside my mind.