I wonder if bad eyesight is caused by a disinclination to see the look on other people’s faces. We blur sight and retreat to senses which are less susceptible to duplicitous signals. So, the eyes atrophy or wear out with misuse.
When I take off my glasses, I end up listening more closely. Then the Other listens more closely too. And all they can see in my own blissfully blurred face is a good-natured ignoramus, which tends to awaken a spirit of charity, if not downright pity. Thus, we both become transfigured so long as at least one of us remains blurry.
The centrality of myself remains stubbornly pre-Galilean. *
What I “know” of another person is only my story of the story they tell about themselves.
Our personalities are merely characters in imaginary dramas. When the drama shifts, the personality shifts. If the drama ends, “we” end. Hence, we cling to dramas.
The imaginary voice is speaking to an imaginary person. The “I” and the “self” that are being addressed are both part of the imaginary performance.
Yes, it’s an inquiry into myself, but it’s not about “me”, as in my personal history or problems. It’s about the common momentum of thought that runs “me.”
If we make this conscious distinction between thought and being, then we are able to move in and out of the shapes imposed on perception by thought and language. This allows us to remain somewhat aloof from who we think we are.
Whatever we are, we’re not found in passing thoughts. They are merely the traces of our passing.
I learn from everything that goes wrong, and everything is always going wrong. *
I don’t write because I know something. I write because I don’t. *
But it’s not like I’m trying to do something. It’s more like something else is trying to do something and “I” keep getting in the way. And all this tripping over myself to avoid what it wants looks like “effort.” It’s a seductive pretense.
Writing happens when effort fails.
The only light the “I” produces is the light of its own combustive friction. This friction is produced by trying to avoid the revealing light of awareness. This friction is the cause of Hellfire. Hellfire is the light of heaven burning away.
Self-discovery is the discovery of nothing.
Self-discovery is the exploration of the cosmos, because the discovery of my absence is the discovery of everything else. But we turn our backs on this larger Being merely because it disturbs the small image of who we thought we were.
Writing is neither a means to an end, nor an end in itself. There is a third possibility. Writing is merely what happens when I’m learning. It’s a necessary corollary of the process, but neither a means nor an end.
If a necessary corollary to something larger is repressed, then the larger thing also can’t form. But we still can’t focus on the corollary as a means towards the larger thing.
I say things after I already know them. I know things silently prior to speaking. I speak in order to hold the surface image steady against a barrage of anomalous information.
Remember when I found you in that long, white hallway? There were no obvious lights anywhere, but somehow everything seemed brightly lit, without any shadows.
The majority of the crowd in the hall was drifting past us in small groups, linked arm-in-arm — probably families and friends, or communities, or economic associations, moving at a fairly steady clip. A few loners were running and bumping into people. Lots of “excuse me’s” and “hey, look out’s” could be heard.
I asked you to stand to the side, because that woman to the left just about ran you over, remember? Of course, I was joking.
I introduced myself as a janitor. Not really part of the crowd. But I’d been working in that complex for as long as I could remember.
Perhaps I’m a spirit, because nobody seemed to notice me. I pushed my invisible broom up and down the various corridors, without paying much attention to the hubbub or what this place was all about.
But after what seemed like several thousand years of sweeping floors, I got a little bored. And I got a little curious about the nature of this complex or whatever it is. You were the only ghost like me I’d ever met. You seemed familiar to me. I saw you on the margins of the page, not quite sure why you were here. I told you to join the club. I said, I think it’s time for me to lay down my broom and start exploring this place a little more. I asked you to join me.
So, we picked out somebody at random to see where he was going. Let’s not bother with describing him, other than to say, he walked alone (which was somewhat rare), early middle-aged, somewhat stooped and nervous, constantly checking his watch. Oh, and he was carrying a backpack that looked fairly heavy. That should suffice, we’re not building a character study. We only wanted to find out where everyone was heading.
Now and then we’d pass someone moving in the opposite direction, almost always mumbling feverishly to themselves. Everyone would try to get out of their way. They had bad hair, which seemed to make people nervous.
It was a non-descript hallway, as I said, except for signs that appeared at every turn, or T, or four corners. The first one we passed said, “just around the corner!” But usually, the signs were more specific.
For instance, sometimes the crowd would move slower. Especially if we came to a juncture. The first one I recall was a four corners – left, right or straight. Our man stopped to consider his options.
The sign to the left read, “This way to Profit”, and a portion of the crowd in business attire — using their briefcases as shields to push through the traffic jam — went scampering off in that direction, talking into their cell phones nonstop.
But we couldn’t see anything different in that direction. It looked like the same white, featureless hall. And we saw another sign at the end of the corridor, but it wasn’t possible to make it out clearly.
To the right, the sign said, “This way to Life Everlasting!” And a portion of the crowd started heading in that direction, walking arm in arm with their children. And others walked alone with their heads bent in solemn procession. And yet that corridor also looked exactly the same as the others. And the man we were following went straight. We thought, maybe we should have picked somebody more interesting. But that wasn’t the point of the trip.
On one level I’d say no, because the Self is merely the means by which the body refers to itself. So the Self isn’t delusional from that perspective, because the word and image are grounded in a real referent (the body). However, this projection of a bodily image quickly morphs into a sense of Self that controls the body, or is trapped within the body, as if it were a spirit or separate entity. This is where the illusion starts.
The brain tends to be imagined as a seat of consciousness (also semi-independent from the rest of the body) – wobbling up there like a big, fat turkey on a telephone pole. But this image of a body/brain dichotomy easily morphs into a projection of an even more independent-seeming “mind” drifting above the body like a balloon on a long string. And this “mind” tends to become a synonym for the Self, which sits at its desk behind the eyes and acts like a CEO of the in-corporation, or an overlord of sorts. The varieties of imagery are endless. And even among atheists, this Self tends to take on the qualities of a “soul” as well, a lively essence possessing or inhabiting the body.
But these are not minds, Selves or souls, but merely images — masks that have lured this bodily intelligence into dreams of an autonomous existence over and above the comparatively material level of biology. They are deceptive illusions of minds and souls, illusions of identity. Read More »
Is it too small a story to say I do things independently, as if I were an outside agent? Is it more reasonable to say that it’s the environment that thinks through me and through every tree, bird, person or breath of wind, each an energetic and idiosyncratic manifestation of earthly intelligence?
This body becomes an aspect of its surroundings the moment the assertion of my differences ceases. if I’m not constantly thinking about myself, I dissolve into the world itself.
It requires a story to create a sense of independence. Relax for a moment and I disappear. But disappear only as something alienated from earth and others.
You could tell the story that the woods “inspire Me”. But that’s a story that misses something large. Inspiration IS seeing that tree’s connection and inseparability from intelligence. Intelligence arises between you and me, between trees and me too, and the little stream below where I sit carries the voice of my own intelligence.
This may sound fanciful, but it’s a more practical vision, a more factual one. Less dependent on an imaginary being who somehow “sits in” this body, who carries the name “I”, a little director I used to call “Zingryo” as a kid, sitting on a throne behind the eyes. He is “me”, and when he thinks about himself he is thinking about an Other of sorts, as if this Self he is thinking about were somehow still outside him, always one step removed, as Beckett observed.
Goofy as it might sound, I’ve been trying to do something for 40 years that is almost impossible. I’ve been grinding my teeth on this thing against all good advice, pouring all my energy into what probably looks like an obscure and meaningless (or maybe just confused and confusing) thing.
The Buddhists say that the truth can’t be spoken; that words are a distraction from what is real, because language is a virtual reality that convinces us that it’s not virtual. So language is essentially a delusion, which can never help us encounter what is real. Reality is found off the page, not on it.
And the same goes for thought and feeling and imagery. It’s all a kind of curtain that pretends to be showing something beyond the curtain, where in fact nothing at all is found. We make up everything.
Look, the Buddha knew his shit. And I’m not disputing what the Buddhists say above. In fact, it was my starting point, not as an idea or belief (because I’d never heard of Buddhism), but as a terror. If for some reason you suddenly learn that you’re trapped behind a film of language, feeling, thought and imagery and that everything you experience is imaginary, then there is no “getting off the page” into reality. It’s like being stuck in a hall of mirrors. It’s not a choice.Read More »
This essay is fictional. Not in the way fiction is usually defined. But this voice – anyone’s voice, even a scientist’s voice – is the invention of a framework that puts experience in a particular slant and color. And there’s no way to avoid this.
Nothing can be discussed or known without being painted in some fictional color. Even the colorless voice of a realist is a fictional application of colorlessness.
Phrases like “everything is this…” and “nothing can be that…” sound reductive and dogmatic. But in this case I’m talking about what can’t be known, not what can. Reality is unknowable. Stories are all that’s known.
In other words, claiming to know anything conclusive about the nature of reality is a sign of bullshit.
And knowing what is bullshit is a fundamentally different kind of knowledge. It’s not reductive, but expansive, because this discovery releases perception from cages of certainty, and awakens a questioning or metaphoric spirit. Read More »
Negative Geography 