The goal is to join together people to examine the justifications for a belief I have: progress is the nature of language. I hope this is not an original thought because if it would be its examination would have to rely on the unlikely coincidence that the right people would find me and join me in a sustained way despite my strenuous use of language. I further hope that people do join and, if so, that they  join in the spirit of amateurism. Why the latter? Because my belief entails – or so I believe – that any true communication presupposes that amateurs, if sufficiently motivated, can contribute to it (call that “the grounding principle“).

Let me not get ahead of ourselves though: before we can get to the goal we have to cover our preliminaries. In this case, we have to establish a common context (a mental meeting place if you will) where we of course may see things differently but not because we see different things. This is the starting point as individuals can only come together after having established a common context i.e. after having formed a community. I know all this begs the initial question. That shouldn’t be an issue, I spoke of my belief as a belief and we have time to come back to whether it is justified or not (so I ask you to apply another corollary of my belief – one coined by Grice – “the principle of charity“).

The following three objectives are set for individuals aspiring to be part of this community:

1. Accept the assumptions and goals set forth above,
2. Understand the basic prior art i.e. relevant philosophy,
3. Acquire the ability to integrate the prior art with the goals.

I will start with 1. and 2. as they can (and probably need to) be acquired in parallel. So let’s explore, in a very rough way I admit, what these two objectives concretely mean.

‘Accepting the assumptions and goals set forth above’ means that:

• you are interested in a potential link between progress and the nature of language,
• you have understood and can illustrate from the above my bias in this matter,
• you are willing to suspend your judgment on arguments for the time being.

‘Understand the basic prior art i.e. relevant philosophy’ means that

• you are able to pinpoint the basic claim to fame of following thinkers:

1. I. Kant, H-G. Gadamer
2. J. Habermas, J. Rawls
3. D. Davidson, P. Grice
4. C. Darwin, H. Kyburg

• you can understand why they are in four categories, and,
• you can inter-relate the main themes of their respective works.

I have purposely limited the number of references omitting people such as Wittgentstein, Gigerenzer, Kripke, Quine and Mead. This mainly to make it easier for me. ‘What’s next?’, you ask; ‘Patience!’, I answer. So get to it, read them or read the mostly reliable wikipedia sources on them. There’s no such thing as getting unmediated access and making up your own mind.

The third objective only makes sense after reaching the first two. One cannot progress by jumping to the conclusion. One needs at least four different movements to climb higher and this specific one is only the first of them. If I am right then, at the end, cultural optimism is justified. Not too shabby, eh?

I would welcome any sign of life (whether ‘hit-and-shut-up’, comment or like) but will not be stopped by feeling alone as I am anyway in the company of great men. I might be stopped by being bored though.

When the Boston Marathon bombings happened, I think my reaction was probably similar to most people’s. I was horrified. I’ve been at finish lines as both a runner and a spectator. They have an unbelievably positive vibe. Just about everybody there is personally invested and the people who aren’t are volunteering to help others and are usually very energetic about it. It seemed particularly vicious to wipe all that out with what seemed to be random violence.

Adding to my horror was a little exercise I did. In an attempt to properly empathize with the people affected, I pictured my last finish when I was able to find my wife, my brother, my mom and my sister cheering in the crowd as I crossed. That image is very positive and burned into my brain (I hope) forever. Superimposing the films from the bombings over that image in my brain was too effective, too emotional, because I assumed some poor soul didn’t have to imagine it. Some poor soul probably lived through it.

When I pulled back from that terrible image, I thought of all the ways people would be affected. I eventually realized I didn’t really hear anybody mention the runners who didn’t finish. That’s probably appropriate. They probably consider themselves lucky. I’d imagine most of them felt a little disappointment, but focused their energy on finding their loved ones and getting back home safe. Still, I felt bad for them.

You may know the Boston Marathon is a race for which you have to qualify to register. It’s not easy. A typical marathon runner trains for four to six months for a race. That means anybody in the Boston Marathon had that amount of time in for their qualifying race and then again to properly prepare for the Boston Marathon itself. That is a terrific amount of running that probably required blowing out at least two pair of running shoes.

That’s a hell of a lot of training to have your goal pulled out from under you. That’s why I found it so grating when news announcers kept saying that several thousand of the “recreational” runners had not yet finished the race when it was stopped.

Recreational? Screw you. Somebody my age has to run a qualifying marathon in about three hours to qualify for the Boston Marathon. That’s roughly seven minute miles for 26.2 miles. That is incredibly impressive. When I ran a half-marathon in Detroit, I had an 8:17 pace and finished 80th of more than 800 runners in my age class. That’s more than a minute off the qualifying pace, not to mention the fact that even if I could find that extra speed, I would have had to run the race that fast a second time to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Knowing that, calling anybody running the Boston Marathon a recreational runner seems to only reveal the speaker’s ignorance.

I know these things seem to be of negligible importance compared to the things we did care about, that did get covered and did talk about from that day. Negligible might seem to be overstating it. That’s the main reason I waited two weeks to write this piece. But as a runner who knows a little bit about what it would take to participate in that event, I wanted to say a few words on behalf of a lot of people who lost out on a small thing that may not be all that small to them.

I’m also a runner who knows that people often don’t just start running to get in shape. A couple years ago, I felt like I was probably either depressed or on the verge of depression. In my personal and professional life, there were things I felt I needed to be doing but felt like I was almost physically unable to bring myself to do them. It felt like failure heaped upon failure, but week after week I wasn’t really doing anything about it. It brought about a good deal of self-loathing.

One of the ways I eventually fought this inertia was to make a list of things I wanted to accomplish. I made them all fairly frivolous so that if I wasn’t able to accomplish them, it wouldn’t have the double whammy of failure compounded by an impact on parts of my life that mattered to people other than me. One of the things on the list was to register for and finish an organized race, ideally a half-marathon.

I knew to accomplish this I’d have to train for about four months and it would require a big commitment of time. The strange thing was what I was most worried about was all that time alone. All that time with potentially nothing to think about but things I wasn’t doing well or should be accomplishing. Did I really need more time to worry about things already keeping me up at night? Thankfully, it didn’t work like that. I almost never thought about those things on runs. I thought about things I wanted to be doing. I had ideas. I took in the scenery, looked for funny anecdotes that I could take from my runs.

I have no idea if I’m overstating the role running played in the difference between how I feel now and how I felt before I started. I guarantee you, though, that it played a role. That’s what I can’t stop thinking about when I think of the thousands of runners who didn’t get to finish that race. Simple probability tells me there were people who used running to pull themselves back from what felt like an edge, but didn’t get to finish as they had hoped.

I confess that just like everybody else, I feel incredibly bad for the victims of the bombing we’ve seen in the photos and read about in stories. But I must confess that my mind always wanders a little further to the runners who had that finish line taken from them. I confess I hope one or more of them somehow stumble across this entry and take heart in somebody putting to words that they lost something that day, too.

As if I know the only one watching me am I; compelling me to do, comment on doing and reflect on the commenting – all at once. Not – also not a word to lead a sentence with, I might add (and just did: add that is) – particularly an attraction people will pay for. Not even an attraction people won’t pay for. Not even one to ignore. Just something not to notice. What if, then again, what if such and such?

What if somebody halted and stood watching there as if there was something to see? One begets none but two is the start of a great many. Mice maybe but why not also some awe. Ha-ha! The thing therefore is to do your tricks; get somebody to stand still. Over and over again until somebody cares enough to stand still. And that is not my story because if I do the same I am the one who will always be there to get bored and to state just how bored I get. Mighty bored.

“Middle C tells the story of this journey, an investigation into the nature of human identity and the ways in which each of us is several selves, and whether any one self is more genuine than another.” (Middle C, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2013, front flap of hard cover wrapper)

No more quoting, no more thoughting; so hurry along to your destiny whether it’s line T on the underground or a train to la-la land. Forget about me and my 20 to 40 years I still need to spend without finding the stamina to argue Pirandello is, and always will be, the one of the many selves. How this makes me my own observers, none of which will stand still either as none of me can be bothered. Not now and not in any of the next decades.

My story is a non-story that none of me is willing to write.  Quote that.

I can find an ending though. And another. And another. Every ending creating a new me. For instance that ending that is ending in a me writing on ‘that’. How the that of pointing (Davidson requires at least one other to stand still for pointing to make sense but Pirandello makes it possible for that other to be one and the same one who is pointing) and the that of the sentence within the sentence starting with ‘I say that’ are in fact the same that. The same ‘that’ and the same pointing only to something in another world. One world this world where that dog licks his genitals and another world that world where this sentence licks her own meaning. Kripke made me see this: that ‘that’ is like the drawing of a rabbit and a duck. Escher but for real.

Getting somewhere.

My brother-in-law wears a pony tail and pooped my party by saying that all that is co-incidental for in French one that is that and the other is ‘que’. And he is right albeit only on that. Not that any of me have the time or drive to argue for that, I guess you might think: “On what?” But let’s stick to that as it is the ending of the me I was in the process of creating. Truth – by the way – has no value in the other world where only consistency rules. It’s not like the me I am creating can ever exist as in this world I can only do this particular trick once. And in this world truth counts for everything.

Logic always holds but never applies. Some things are false but nothing is true. Meaning truth cannot be our compass but falsity is. I can create this ending but I know the conditions for achieving it are not met. Not. In this world of negatives we can only create positives (some of which will turn out to be false positives like the ones that assert undeniable truths).

And unfortunately -  still – of all positives that are created most are false. Why? Because we want to stand still and admire a trick that always works and (false) consequently will always work. What we need is a repetition that is not.

Therefore our heroes are such that they are always one.

So that’s my story or at least one of them. Sorry there is so little his in it.

]]> http://heteronomy.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/sunday-stories-gass-if/feed/ 0 guidonius http://heteronomy.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/weekly-confessional-good-dog/ http://heteronomy.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/weekly-confessional-good-dog/#comments Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:43:03 +0000 mattintoledo http://heteronomy.wordpress.com/?p=10659 ]]> I confess to being very relieved this weekend when I found out my brother would get to keep his guide dog after it was retired from its work duties. He’s had this guide dog for the past eight years, but when he first received the dog the organization who trains and finds home for these dogs said they typically go to a new home after they retire. The reasoning behind this is the retiring guide dogs are often reluctant to hand over their duties to a new dog.

Guide dogs give up a lot of what we think of as “being a dog” to do their work, and to respond to that sacrifice by taking them away from their home for their final years seems almost too sad to bear. Actually, knowing my brother and his family, it would have been too sad to bear and that’s why they’re keeping him. It appears the organization he uses to get his guide dog has relaxed their policy somewhat, and if the owner can care for the dog in its retirement years, it is up to the owner whether they keep the dog or not.

Unfortunately, many people who need a guide dog are alone and/or on a fixed income and cannot care for a second dog. There was one such woman at the guide dog facility when my brother trained there eight years ago. He said she was openly weeping at her loss. I can’t help but wonder how the level of trauma compares for the dog being taken away from its owner.

I’m very happy for my brother and his dog, though. His dog is as wonderful as you’d imagine these dogs to be and has grown at least as protective of my brother’s family as he is of my brother. Now he gets to live out his “retirement” with the family he’s known his entire life and will get to enjoy life as a “normal dog”. For example, when he visits my house in retirement, he’ll be able to play with my black lab mix with abandon. This is a treat he was often unable to resist even when he was supposed to be working.

This is where it ends. Where I start yet another life filled to the brim with dreams that, if not frustrated, will get frustrating. So much is true of any tunnel: that if there is no light at the end of it, it is no tunnel (regardless of timeless logic which may always hold but which in time never applies.

“(..) you always lose at solitaire, she said, smiling a rare, mother-made smile: crosswords are never completed, only given up, and card games like these are never won; that’s why I play them.” (ibid., p. 631)

The truth in this book has been ample and like that word it feels amputated as if the truth in this book is a phantom joy, the sensation of excitement felt in what is no longer there. Cut and left wet, moist with tears for what cannot be; a be that stings, a life that stinks.

“But every dark is different. Some darks may be boundless, stratospherical, pure, but I prefer mine circumscribed like a corset, and where, if I had a soul, it would be squoozen, and where, when I’m found, I’ll be identified as the remains of a child, doubled over, waiting to be born.” (ibid., p. 635)

Why write? Why write at all?

Not just for somebody to read, that would be to end it and anything that ends defeats the purpose of starting. No, writing is not just for reading; writing is for reading that engenders writing that – when – read inspires new writing, really totally new writing. Why? To start all over again. Not two movements and one synthesis but four and no reconciliation. The title of the next should be The Ladder. To where? Up. With whom? Alone but all alone as in all together alone. There’s comfort in that, in letting go of the finality and letting go of originality (Scylla and Charybdis?).

“Poets are neither born nor made nor found in a field like the ash of a fallen star. There are no poets, there are only poems. But in my youth I wished to be a poet. Then I might write poems. Beneath a tree. On flyleaves. I would breath them down necks shaped like swans or like similes; I would sing them to empty skies and cause larks. I would wear my hair long, wind ribbons round my throat, lounge in gardens, affect TB, smoke incessantly, drink something green. Yes, how to be a poet, that was the problem.” (ibid, p. 638)

Be stings.

To want to be somebody – let me try to be smart – is the problem: why not be somemind? Man, that’s corny! Indeed, but why not true? Why do we want to be somebody? Because they told us to be somebody. They told us to build personality – ma non troppo – and then convert it into matter such that we matter; after all, the only thing that matters is matter. And this may be corny (as well as are the couple of thousands google hits that it gets when flanked by 2 times “) but it is true of all things spiritual that end somewhere (and therefore begin somewhere because this vice is totally versa) as all endings are material.

There are only poems; poets are co-incidental. They pluck what others grow. I am a poet even if I never write a line that’s more than pure twaddle. And you can’t take this from me, not even by leaving me alone.

“But twiddlers don’t spot twaddle; that’s why they are twiddlers; it’s well known. And how in the worn round world can I, having written twaddle oafter twaddle, have the forewit to correct it? Haven’t my habits worn a trench for me higher than my head? Ah, this dim point of view weakly replies, I borrow my standards from the poets I have read, and that’s how I recognize my twaddle as twaddle, and that’s how I learn to correct it – my twaddle in time and due course resembling twuddle, perhaps, the twuddle of the poets I prefer.” (ibid., p. 640)

Ah, Kohler, again – and again – and again, close but no cigar; steps but no ladder; tunnels but no light. Progress is what is lacking: from twiddle to twaddle to twiddle again and on to more twaddle but the middle twiddle is not one and the same twiddle as the first twiddle – not in quantity and not in quality. The middle twiddle is twuddle and when the first twiddle is twuddle than the middle twiddle is tweddle and so on and on it goes.

[And yes, by the way, as remarkable as ancient twiddle may have been ... it gets dated and over time becomes twaddle as all past distant twiddle is doomed to be twaddled as all future distant twaddle would - if seen know - would be seen as best twiddle ever.]

Tones is what creates personality and personality creates tones and in the universe of tones matter doesn’t matter, only we do. Opaque? Sure it is.

“I didn’t understand then (I wasn’t as quick as the slick brown fox) that poetry was the inside of history, was the interior of the text, was the present alive in what had passed, was what sustained itself through every change of tense. if the poet wonders where yesterday’s snows have gone, he is really mourning the melting of the drift he’s standing in, feeling the clod claim his soggy shoes; (..)” (ibid., p. 642)

That’s why I hate people insisting on proper use of tense. They have us build walls between past, present and future (and within the past, within the present and within the future). Progress is a timeless, universal, yes, necessary concept even if we are in time. We in time, our tones are timeless. Nothing falls, nothing rises; there is just continuity.

Flux. Flow. Let’s  call it the Fu Flux Flan and join it – better than joining the PdP. Quoting begets misrepresentation.

“because the dark which appears when consciousness clicks off returns all mind to matter (..)” (ibid., p. 644)

Only consciousness doesn’t, click off. Matter turns out mind but once the genie is out of the bottle, there is no returning, no cycles, nothing goes round neither comes around.

Let me finish my twaddle with some of Gass’ twiddle:

“Or shall I, like the rivers rise? Ah. Well. Is rising wise? Revolver like the Führer near an ear. Or lay my mind down down by sorrow’s side.”

[The End.]

“Early in life, I learned to fear my birthday. Later, Christmas would follow close behind in the measured amount of my dislike. Finally, every holiday, even the Fourth of July, my former favorite, would fill me with apprehension. But it was the onset of my birthday which made my palms sweat.” (ibid., p. 604).

This is a day for me where (when?) I am off; like: milk off, like: not turned on. This is the day I should need to quote from the best piece of prose I ever read. Luckily I am off: it spares me the frustration of not being able to do justice to what has to be quoted, so allowing me to cover my disability with inability. Read it, few friends, and weep because it is all that is wrong about the world and it also has the essence of what is good about this world. Charity as in hypocritical keeping up appearances and the Gricean principle of charity trying, even if flat-out failing, to understand.

This is not it but it is something which is neither false nor falsch:

“Gift giving! golly gee! It proves how much affection can be purchased with a chocolate bunny, or a bra with nipple peeps, a fake-fur coat, clean used-once used car.

Okay. How much? Never enough.” (ibid., p. 606)

What I wanted to quote was before and after but I’ll be damned if I reproduce every sound – certainly when I am doomed to put in dissonant on dissonant. Just know: this is where I came and after this there was just the panting that comes after the deed is done and the kerchief filled with the kind of sticky that, stuck in textile, you love to rub to make it gel.

“Some things are amazing. Without lifting a finger, you can be born a Protestant.

It never happened to me. I was spared. But I have read books. I have been to the movies. Birthdays, like weddings, anniversaries, baptisms, bar mitzvahs, wakes are occasions to retie family ties, renew family feuds, restore family feeling, add to family lore, tribalize the psyche, generate guilt, exercise power, wave a foreign flag, talk in tongues, exchange lies, remember dates and the old days, to be fond of how it was, be angry at what it should be, and weep at why it isn’t.

All this is frosting. Let’s get to the filling.” (ibid., p. 607)

We have it ass backwards. We are made to live for occasions and, occasionally, we live. When the latter happens, there is the former to mess it up. We have it all ass backwards. We think we’re invented under logic whilst logic is in fact invented by us. We believe that what is necessary must have been there before us whilst the only thing fundamentally necessary is that we are there to label things necessary. And, as we nitwits didn’t discover not nearly half of it yet, we make up these occasions celebrating … yeah, what? Anything not to have to deal with the future.

“I pretended to believe and they pretended to believe me. It is the paradigm of successful human relations.

Okay. That’s the first layer. Now for some pudding.” (ibid., p. 609)

What can I say? A whole empire of capital has been built on networking make-believe. It makes you hope it all is a sham; if only to be able to expose the leaders of the gang and have them spend the infinity they invented listening to their talk of theory and to the gossip they invent to ensure nobody listens to us. US! Plain Old Temporary Suckers who think they are not here for something grand, who spell mistery with an ‘i’ (knowingly, because fluent in German amongst other things).

Occasions to display good intentions are however non-intentional displays of occasional goodness. The spirit just can’t be drawn out if it, not even by calling spirits into play.

“My balloon had burst, yes, but in nobody’s face, so I should not try or tempt fate and expect to escape every oncoming commemoration as easily. Instead, I should spend life standing still, and exhale slowly only out a window in a wind. Then nothing might inflate. Nothing break.” (ibid.,p. 614)

One page after this it ends. The principle of charity has been killed, charitable people will henceforward rule the world of ritual charity. The world of tough love. The negation of charity’s principles because charity aims just at an understanding which is denied in favor of support, help and ultimately always the love which is tough enough to do the necessary which is naught else than what happens to be the easiest. Who can spare a couple of bucks? Anything to avoid the risk of taxes – “Fuck if I’ll share responsibility. They can have my shitty uneducated time; that’s at least worthless to me too.”

“So I was defaulted into the duty, though I threw my own tantrum, a doomed and futile gesture, because there was nary a friend, by this time, to call on, nor a relative nearby whose help might be enlisted, hence I had to be the goat – Benedict Iscariot, the duplicitous double agent. The feeling became useful later when I tried to understand the ambivalent emotions of those who fingered friends to punitive authorities and gave up loved ones to their fate.” (ibid., p. 619)

So the principle of charity survives even if we are still stupid enough to let the bastard network rule. Stupid enough to let these bastards persecute us whilst we are alive (with their occasions, their nitpicking about dress & spelling). Even stupid enough to let them haunt us as we are finally ready to die (persecute those few loving us into feeling the need to keep us beyond the time when there is still something that can be called ‘us’).

I don’t know whether this was better or worse as the foregoing. I know it wasn’t good.

At least next week it ends on some post-auto-coital self-congratulation.

Then the dog won’t have ears anymore until another baby is born.

[Continues (and ends) here.]

There is a local bar I go to a lot. Most of the time when I go there, it’s to place a takeout order and have a beer while I wait. The other day, I walked in and the bar appeared to be full to capacity. The only empty stools have drinks in front of them or jackets on the back of the seat.

So I planned to just stand as I waited. But a woman sitting at the bar noticed me waiting and said I could sit in the seat next to her, as there was nobody sitting there. I asked if she was sure, because there was a half full glass of wine and a jacket on the chair. The jacket was hers. the wine was her friends. It was fine if I sat down. When she explained why she had been reserving it, she trailed off and part of the reason for her trailing off may have been that she spilled her friend’s wine as she was moving it.

This situation was ripe for discomfort from my perspective. First, she had apparently not wanted somebody sitting next to her but after seeing me, had changed her mind. Potentially flattering, but not a situation I’m particularly keen on being involved in. Secondly, the spilled wine was to the right of her and I was on her left. I kind of felt like I should help with the cleanup, but a) she had it under control and b) it was pretty intimate quarters for two people to be doing the job. Therefore, I awkwardly sat in my chair trying to look appreciative for her having opened up the seat for me. Finally, when somebody spills wine all over the bar, there is a natural assumption that they are drunk. One of the least appealing conversations to have is with somebody who’s drunk when you’re sober.

A couple minutes after I sat down, her friend came back. This second woman immediately asked me if I was somebody named some name I’ve since forgotten. Nope, I wasn’t. Well I was a dead ringer for him. Again, my ineptitude at small talk was exposed. I’ve never had a clue as to how to respond to the “You know you look just like (enter celebrity)?” Uh, thanks? But this wasn’t even a celebrity. It was just some guy they knew.

Resume sipping beer, watching the TVs behind the bar. Another couple minutes passed and the first lady, the one who let me sit down, left to go to the bathroom. The second woman asked me if I was a social person or if I preferred to just be left alone. I figured this was kind of in response to my somewhat uninterested response to finding out I was the doppelganger of some dude she knew. Not wanting to seem rude, I said “sure, I’m pretty social”.

With this opening, she asked if I was from here and that progressed to typical chatter about where we lived, where we were born, where we worked, etc. She knew a couple of council people in the city where I work. I realized I was in a conversation I had literally no interest in being in, and was happy to extricate myself from when my order came up.

Here’s the thing, though. When I sit down at a bar by myself, I am not actively opposed to striking up conversation. Sitting down at a bar, after all, is kind of a social invitation, isn’t it? It seems like it unless you’re also reading a book or otherwise making it clear you don’t want to be disturbed. Even then, wouldn’t that be better accomplished at a table in the corner?

My problem isn’t being closed off to potential conversations. It’s that oftentimes the conversations people start up just don’t interest me. This isn’t a complaint against the potential conversationalists. It’s a confession that I’m apparently not a very generous or imaginative conversationalist when it comes to speaking with strangers.

I further confess that I’ve been doing these storytelling confessions to get back into the habit of setting a scene with my writing. I apologize if it feels like you’re being subjected to this practice as opposed to included in on it.

Technically it’s a Monday but Jesus died in order for me to be able to call it Sunday. There is such a thing called serendipity (yes, it’s a thing, you can even kick it around although you don’t need a garden to do it in and it will not break windows – it could break hearts though, he added mellowly). I am reading Kripke and although that is not strictly a proof for what I just said, it does lend it – all in all and as per the below – more plausibility.

“She preferred me to begin at the base of her neck. I preferred to begin a bit higher up, on the shoreline of her hair. With my right forefinger slanted slightly to bring the nail into play, I would inscribe the course of a river – so gently, so slowly, it might have been a tear’s trail – running its convoluted way the length of Lou’s back, semicircling a buttock, and concluding in her crack, at a fulfillment one might call a delta.” (ibid., p. 554-555)

What joy is this which ends in mere tranquility?“Well, my language gives the game away. Orgasms pass more quickly than most pleasures. Last less than a length of licorice. Only illusions remain. The great moment is but a string of grunts. (..) Language is always honest. Language does not lie, only its users. I think barrel suckers say that about guns. Notice how ‘lover’ is mostly spelled by ‘over’ and ‘sex’ is two-thirds ‘ex’. If fucking were pretty it would have a pretty name, like ‘meadow’, like ‘gazelle, or ‘paramour’. If fucking were so fundamental, then it would bind us more dearly and devotedly together, as its gestures pretend, instead of driving us away from one another, into our own close satisfactions or the sullen distance of our discontents.” (ibid., p. 560)

This most definitely from this world. The other, quoted before, from the other. The former lengthy, crude – abbreviated with a cruel (..) for illustration; the latter floating and through its bitterness somewhat sweet. What unites them but some element of serendipity? And, enter Saul, can serendipity be necessary?

Let’s see (a long meandering quote this one):

“Rivering was a recovery of composure, a return to normalcy, the revival of connection; for a river has a course which natural laws exist to determine, and a goal – that same mingle in the sea we call climax – and a renewal, too, when the hand which holds the finger returns the tip to the foothills of the head in order to begin again: the Chattahoochee maybe.

The Chattahoochee tickles.

The irony is – and ‘irony’ has ‘iron’ in it like a bar – that the transcendence some lovers feel they have attained in their most melting moments, their triumph over biology, over merely doing the soggydoggy, is more than a fugitive and futile illusion, for this lie – which suggests that you together have overcome lust – this falsehood is the unhappiest of merry hee-haws, since your screwing servers fertility first, foremost, and finally – the f-word knows who its kin (other fatuous fictions) are – yes, the crude and common action, which it so appropriately names, fosters only progeny; it aids, it abeds, that most common of miracles: kids.

After the kids came, Martha no longer did.” (ibid., p. 562)

This river of words ends in this last filthy sentence which, like a crack, connects the other world with this one. Hell, but is it not also the other way around (if the mind is connected though not to be equated with the body, shouldn’t the body be likewise different but connected to the mind?). The rivers suggest as much even if they end at not in the crack.

“Naming is the first condition of history. Repetition is the second. My finger forms a familiar line. Naming is knowing, all right, because the name is what we know.

So what. Lou left. There was no more garden for my rivers to irrigate.” (ibid., p. 563)

That’s his problem; Kohler’s problem, Gass’ problem, who knows, who cares? When the body cannot get back to the mind, i.e. when this world does not affect the other, then the mind gets stuck in its own other world and that’s just as healthy as getting thrown into the hole. Long term isolation just breeds that most common of tragedies: disappointment.

“I preferred to buy candies which were wrapped, not just because I loved the wrapping, which I saved when I could, but also because I liked to study each piece, arranging them in rows, in more complex configurations, concealing them in innocuous little boxes, and hiding these about my room with the uncanny skill of a secret agent. From such unseen places they emitted an energy only I could intercept, and I fed on them in this fictional fashion before I finally swallowed them, which I did eventually, consuming only one at a time, however, and at decent intervals, never as a feast, an orgy of incontinence, a vulgar glut. In fact, although each time, before my purchase, I imagined them all in my mouth at once, pornographically commingled and surmounted, one by another, I had to force myself to eat them before the end of the week arrived, when I would acquire, as was my comforting and oppressive habit, a fresh batch.” (ibid., p. 573)

The operative words being “only I” - only I, only I. Restraint is what undoes us all. We are taught restraint by those who are restrained and who make us make pleasure into an appointment thus leading us straight, and so very unlike rivers, to disappointment. We construct our private language which requires us to split our personality such that we can live in our world, our other world, where only I exist to damn the others. Even sweets we make sour.

“Thus the pain which pleasure is accused of covering up – such pains of the spirit as melancholy, helplessness, ennui, which can fill life like an atmosphere, all the hurts of the unloved, the loneliness of rented rooms, the emptiness of the stored bowl, tarnish on an idle knife – are themselves a response to the fact that life without candy’s secondary pleasures (..) is bleaker than the moon (..) so we all require a spoon or two of sugar to sugar the sour truth that sugar is a necessity, that simple sufficiency is insufficient, that most prizes feel like penalties (..)” (ibid., p. 576-577)

However depressing that may be it is an effect and the cause lies exactly one quote ahead: only I. First there is a splitting of the mind and the body and then the mind starts craving bodies. It can be filled like a leaky barrel with water, water and more water, endlessly, without satisfaction. Dualism has it wrong, and its offspring – materialism and idealism, yeah, both – have it even so much wronger.

And this is where it leads, aunts like Lucy Pimber: virtuous, restrained and capable of supporting the worst violence as it will never live up to the violence they imagined in getting even. Charity compels us to understand them even if charity is the very concept they will rape in the ass given a chance by mentioning the word without using its principle.

“Do what you want; I won’t argue, I won’t resist, but I won’t change. She was stubborn in the way she maintained her privacy. It drove both of us bananas.” (ibid., p. 589)

Only I, privacy, restraint and – add a pinch of salt – merit – to make it last. Their other world is underground like a maze of tunnels which do not intersect: each aunt of the same polarity until there is a bigger cause – a person to follow – a magnet and then it explodes in this world. The root cause not being the person to follow but the followers who are ready for him – who knows, next time, her; that would at least be some kind of progress in hell, a she-devil.

“Her employers would be anxious to be rid of her, yet they would feel guilty, too, for she had served them well – wouldn’t they have to think? – over many years, unstintingly, without complaint; moreover – wouldn’t they have to believe? – she had become impossible by inadvertence, not by design, by dint of her devotion. Yes, that discomfort would produce, I thought, a lot of praise.” (ibid., p. 594)

And this is how the root cause takes root, by merit and by guilt about its innocence. We need to eliminate those minds by connecting them back to their bodies because if they have it their way they will eliminate our bodies to be sure they’re rid of our minds.

Too long this, remember the masturbation metaphor, we were close to coming and then hideousness popped up in this – my – mind and it left me pulling harder until the skin hurt which made everything soften up. Who wants to fuck the other world when this world is still like that?

[Continues here.]

As time approached to leave the restaurant, she theorized that it didn’t make sense to drive an hour to Detroit in case we dropped whatever we were willing to gamble quickly. We should just go to the casino that was five minutes away and literally on the way home. Whatevs.

It was immediately clear that Ohio’s enforcing its non-smoking laws in the casino was a humongous advantage over the casinos in Michigan (which are exempt from Michigan’s non-smoking laws). Once you’re over that refreshing novelty, though, it’s just another casino.

So, like we always do when we hit a casino, we searched out the video poker and each plugged in a twenty. My credits were gone in literally less than five minutes. My wife didn’t fare much better. So we each threw in another twenty. We may as well have lit those on fire as well. On the third twenty (which hit our allotted gambling amount for the day) my wife, who was playing “Deuces Wild”, hit four deuces for 1,000 credits ($250). Look at that! Gambling IS fun!

My luck had remained unchanged, though, so with my budget blown I was just sitting and watching her try to hit another big hand. Now flush with cash, she announced her “cash out” point (the point at which she would cash out rather than go below this point) and gave me the last twenty we had brought. Not far in, I was dealt two aces and two fives.

Typically, I would hold both pairs and hope for the full house but this particular game’s odds paid very well for hitting four aces. Not only that, but having a pair of aces paid the same as two pair. Knowing this, I used my dabbling in game theory and probability to surmise I should hold just the aces. When I was dealt three fresh cards, two of them were aces. Four aces for 800 credits ($200). I swear to God I was more excited that my playing the odds properly paid off than I was about the money. The money was nice, though.

Now, here’s the reason I dragged you through that boring “I hit at the casino” story. The joy of hitting was incredibly fleeting. We hadn’t even cashed out and my wife pointed out a small list of things we needed or wanted that would absorb these winnings. This was a little deflating, but not as much as the realization that this list could easily grow to include any winnings we could reasonably expect. If we each hit for three or four more four of a kinds or whatever, home repairs, cars, student loans….all could rise up and make themselves known as the responsible way to spend our winnings.

I’m glad we hit for monetary reasons, but I’m also glad we hit because it had the paradoxical effect of showing me the pointlessness of gambling – even aside from the odds being so heavily against winning. Even when you do hit enough to walk away with more money, it’s always just money. There’s always places it needs to go and having unexpected amounts just highlights those obligations. If you ignore them, it’s just a new source of guilt. It’s possible I would’ve paid the amount we had budgeted for the day just to avoid the realization of what feels like a neverending queue of collectors making demands for our gains.

Not only does the house always win, but the house is everywhere.

Reading The Tunnel is like excruciatingly slow masturbation; maybe the kind of masturbation you would apply when you’re miserable to the point of thinking ‘well, let’s at least try to masturbate one last time’. First it takes a long – with a long ‘o’ kind of as a long sigh – time to get it stiff. Then, from time to time, it feels like you might actually come so you jerk harder but you don’t come. You start to wonder whether you haven’t started something you can’t finish before something else finishes you.

And then you’re here:

“Ah, Martha, my ex-in-lax, I have my own hole now, your cunt is not the only cave. Even in death, the ceremony said, if need be. Even in death, the Führer’s followers proclaimed, if it came to that. And they knew death would be where he’d take them: that land that needs no promise. He gave them triumph, exultation, purpose, a sort of secular salvation.” (ibid., p. 462)

And doesn’t that sum it up? We educate people to want things beyond mere survival, beyond fucking out of reflex - jenseits is the short word for it.  And then, educated, we face disappointment like we would face being rejected after we had finally summoned the courage to ask her out in public. And disappointment raises its right arm and clicks it heels and we damn education and mirror disappointments’ arm and heels. But we can’t go back to innocent bestiality, education is a lot like HIV, so we live with it like beasts and live with guilt and exactly that makes us superior because it sounds so much like philosophy that at least we have that going for us.

Jesus! Jenseits. Whatever

“Identifying with the victims, and hence engorged by pity, writers on the Third Reich – before my example – have never troubled to put themselves in the villains’ place, to imagine the unimaginable – it is easy to be a victim, you don’t have to do a thing, you simply weep and bleed – but, ah, the beater, to be the beater is not a role whose easy mastery is readily admissible; (..)” (ibid., p. 463)

It’s easy to read this as satire but I didn’t read it that way. I can see myself in the we and I sure can hate the moralizing left wing bastards for which misery is always inflicted and wrongdoing always a choice. I can see myself torturing them. See myself telling them this is their last shot at masturbation. I’d never torture them because I hate seeing pain; I wouldn’t be able to stand a single tear; I would get a head ache from their screaming. But I can see myself torturing them because the fuck they don’t understand, the fuck they don’t try to understand, the fuck I know half of them is capable of torture if that is what it takes to move on with their agenda. Educated innocence they think they have. The fuck with that.

“I am an intransitive man. I’m reconciled to it. Even my husbanding has no object. With my tunnel I have committed the ultimate inactive act. After all what is a useless hole? I can honestly say I accomplished Nothing.” (ibid., p. 468)

We educated them. We gave them democracy. Then we’re surprised that they vote for populists. We don’t understand it, we don’t understand how people incapable of torture seize the opportunity of inking in the circle that matches their very own frustration. We give them a tunnel and are surprised at their vision. We call them them so we, as incapable of torture as they – not a bit different from them then, may feel different and better at inking our circle (the right circle even if it’s on the left) and, with that, they won because we won because they’re not a bit different from us then. And that’s the truth.

“In short, if your will is thwarted, switch it to a wish, then will that someone fulfill it for you.” (ibid., p. 472)

What unites us, makes us stronger. What unites us, is that there is a they. Ceteris paribus this works, vice versa, for them. So we wish us a leader. They wish us a leader. We wish them a leader. They wish them a leader. Then we both watch for it to unravel. What else can we do? What else can they do? After all we’re both somewhat civilized, educated, disappointed, frustrated; wishing for the sun to set and evening to set in over our land, so we may go to sleep and forget all the promises we can’t keep and we feel responsible for even if we didn’t make them (after all they made us).

“(..) Planmantee said, we shall solve that, we are able, we shall create an international ghetto – call it, what a comedy, call it Zion – we shall surround it with Muslims, we shall sic the Jews on the Arabs, bang they may bang all they like at one another bangedy bang-bang, who will care?” (ibid., p. 489)

It might still work if we find an alternative for oil and all. Let’s not deal with possible worlds though, it’s messy – requires even more education and see where that got us in the first place: the modern world!Where every solution comes in two’s, two states, two enemies, too bad.

“Our shit is fucked.” – might be the most contemporary phrasing of the foregoing almost 900 words – and we could leave it at that if we could leave anything at that – which we can’t so we might just lash out, inking our circles as good citizens do – and hating the people who ink the other circles.

Remember though: ceteris paribus! The rest can’t be the same because the others are the same. That exactly is the threat we fight most against: that the others are the same. Understanding that changes the conditions as understanding changes, always, the conditions – and that’s cultural optimism which is certainly possible in a world even if we are moved to make it as impossible as possible in this world.

One state, why not?

Two. One. Zero. Lift-off!

“Bigotry is directed towards persons. It does not believe in abstract universals. Bigots, as opposed to racists, achieve scope by hopping from particular to particular like a toad from pad to pad across a pond. Bigots also consider themselves empiricists. Their attitudes are based – they believe – purely on experience. They believe in the signal instance, outstanding examples.” (ibid., p. 523)

Bigots are the silent majority behind the racist minority. They don’t believe in statistics, probability calculus, correlation because they have had enough education to know that more education just means more frustration. They’ve had enough of education. This they is a soft they because it is a very inclusive they, one that includes me and you and that we can all understand. What matters is being punched in the face. Who cares about the proper reference population and incidence of being punched in the face. Let alone the proper reference population of the punchers.

It’s not natural. It takes effort and we’re tired enough already.

“Maybe that’s the way they do things where he comes from, I said. Yeah? Well he’s not where he came from now because he came from there, now he’s here, and now he has to do what we do or repack his camels and go home, my dad responded. Or git. That’s what he actually said. With all his smokes.” (ibid., p. 523 as well)

We might resist more education but we sure can increase our sophistication: as long as the different tries to be the same it is all right. But sophistication breeds sophistication and one horn leads to the next (things in two’s, remember):

“Because if we were each as identical twins, I would scratch your face to hate the scratch which spoiled your looks and improved mine, while you would say the scratch set you apart and mad your more interesting, and gave you a purpose in life: to scratch me back a thousand times.” (ibid., p. 533)

So doomed if we do and doomed if we don’t.

Except that we’re not doomed so the reasoning must be false.

[Continues here.]