Reverie III.

"A Poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude ..."

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Floating on the surface of the wine-dark sea, Odysseus defied a god. Submerged, I defy ... A boatload of reading has left me with words and more words, time to spend ruminating, re-crafting others' moments.

I like to defy and argue, in the light of morning. But in the bleu du ciel (Bataille), or "the weight of primary noon" (Stevens), I find myself at a loss. When the sun is high in the sky, and my shadow (my second self, that seals up my discourse in a vault) beneath my aching feet -- then I swallow pride and listen ... to the voice of assholes.

Some people never shut up. They spit saliva laced with the semblance of words, and they deserve to have their tongue split, like some fellow from a lesser caste reciting the Mahabharata. These are the people who often get the most attention. Those with wisdom ... those for whom love is an option ... They are the ones who often retreat, when they should be spilling their bright illimitable souls to ... ME.

I'm listening to Bruce Springsteen now. A certain woman that I loved, long ago, couldn't stand him. But I find myself taken back (via "Thunder Road") to a moment at the top of a water tower in Sayrevile, NJ, when my little lady and I tossed beer bottles into a cemetery, laughed and fucked and had a blast. I loved her not, and she was immersed in some sordid family saga. But the wind rolled back her hair, and I was luxurious in my response. How much has changed! Chasing the Promised Land. It's been found, luxuriated in, and lost. So much the better.

Perhaps I'll put on some Beatles, and recall the lady who gave me a sense of forlorn love. A diner in Edison, NJ ... some quotes from Burgess (The Long Day Wanes) and a little footsie under the table ... Prophets crowd around in moments of joy -- with his finger ever at his lips, bidding us: Go fuck yourself -- AND SO: I have a memory of a motel at noon (yes, midi), where, with the aid of some scotch, I made a move ...

Hegel comes in somewhere. "The life of the spirit is not the life that shrinks from adversity, but in utter dissolution, finds itself" (Phenomenology of Spirit). Yes, I got his message. It took about a year, and some time at NYU, to get the sense that words are here for us to manipulate. I understand Hegel, Derrida, Heidegger, Plotinus, as well as the next guy ... Because I am able to work the words, motherfucker. Always the words.

Wifey-knifey came in (Where are you, Thomas Ligotti?) and extracted some pineal organ, rendering me a Christian ... Holy shit. I learned much in those years: the trinity is a trope for personhood; Christ is a lost soul who lived his poetry, knowing that writing is a dead man's task; the world is an arena in which most die and few laugh; and that I am a spectre of my childhood, haunting my own dreams. Thanks, God.

Some time elapsed. Amy, with the tiny feet and hair that forever effaced her pretty face. I know I was distracted, but Porphyry attracted me more than your luscious cunt. Funny how age gives us to think ...

And then: Marilynn. Silence decrees that the aged satyr speaks not. About her. A dirty word.

April. April. April ... Thrice in honor of the sacred number ... the triad, the tripod. But you need no invitation. Your name resonates and my love for you is timeless. In true Edward fashion, I shall give you a quote, as I fail in my own words, when you are around ... my light, my love, my little spark of eternal desire ...

"Serene will be our days and bright,

And happy will our nature be,

When love is an unerring light,

And joy its own security"

(Wordsworth, "Ode to Duty")

Another Fragment

"I admit that the sense of the beautiful, when it is developed by culture, suffices of itself even to make us, in a certain sense, independent of nature as far as it is a force. A mind that has ennobled itself sufficiently to be more sensible of the form than of the matter of things, contains in itself a plenitude of existence that nothing could make it lose, especially as it does not trouble itself about the possession of the things in question, and finds a very liberal pleasure in the mere contemplation of the phenomenon."

~ Friedrich Schiller, "On the Sublime"

Never have I experienced nature as something distinct from the contents of my mind at any given moment. Whenever I have been conscious of observing natural phenomena, it has always been for the sake of a mood, the desire to actualize my mood (so to speak) by way of symbols derived from supposedly external nature. Never have I sought to "posses" natural beauty, for it has always been my state of mind, at any given moment, that has rendered nature beautiful to me -- or not.

The desire to "possess" beauty is a desire born already of a malfunctioning personhood: the one who has a void to fill, as it were, and seeks to fill it by taking hold of something possessing an existence independent of himself is already caught up in the throes of an existence that has ceased to be self-referential, and therefore, meaningful. It is important to note that the terms person and individual are interchangeable, synonymous (notwithstanding attempts, mostly by theologians of personhood, to differentiate the two); the individual is one who is incapable of being parceled out to various contexts, for the sake of an end or purpose only tangentially related, at best, to his own desires. The person is the foundation of his own existence: that which, when tampered with, causes the entire meaning-producing edifice to crumble.

The demise of the truly ethical is traceable to a demise of genuine respect for personhood. Not -- I insist -- a respect that flatters as it subtly demands more of the person that is possible to give, without rendering the person a means to an end (however desirable for the stunted or weak among us). Nietzschean "supermen" or Randian heroes are not devoid of ethical insight or capacity. A highly developed conscience begins at the level of the "I" -- the ego, the willing power that draws breath even when exhaustion seems like such a welcome escape from the demand of personal cultivation.

"It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak."

(J. S. Mill, On Liberty, ch. 3).

A strong conscience develops "naturally," i.e., without demand from others. I was about to write "guidance" ... for even guidance (especially when it comes from those in power) is a subtle, insidious demand. No one, in good faith, can be a conscientious person if he or she is constrained by expectations to be so. This, of course, is a regurgitation of Ayn Rand, and other thinkers who have celebrated the glory of the person throughout history. I shall go further, however, and insist that a cultivation of personal "atmosphere" -- i.e., a maintenance of certain styles of thought, of aesthetic appreciation, of self-presentation -- is necessary if one wishes to rise above the ever-ascendant mediocrity (as Mill recognized) that plagues our society.

The style of contemplation that can immediately inject the contemplator into the atmosphere of the thing contemplated is the healthiest kind. Last night I witnessed a performance of Janacek's Sonata for Violin and Piano. Only by returning to an earlier period of my life -- a wainscoted room in which I labored over similar pieces, trying to sharpen my virtuosic blade, intent on conquering such a glorious instrument -- was I able to inject my own person into that performance, and experience Janacek's fine work not as one desirous of possessing his power, but only of one who has found his niche, and is perfectly content to allow other "world-historical beings" (to borrow Hegel's phrase) to be.

It was not, as the believers in Fate or Divinity might say, meant for me to be a concert violinist. No: I was simply meant to contemplate the phenomenon.