spikenard

In the beginning there was nothing. Then there was almost nothing. This happened to nothing because it was the beginning. As it was the beginning, nothing had started to grow old, nothing had started to harden and it hardened into little pieces of almost nothing. Nothing had started to curdle, mould, and crust. Now almost nothing was absolutely everything there was. As almost nothing was absolutely everything, it is difficult to say whether there was a lot of it or only a little. Almost nothing is the same as almost something.

In the beginning there was everything. Then there was a little less. This happened to everything because it was the beginning. As it was the beginning, everything had started to turn inside out into bubbles of almost something. The bubbles of almost something had a sharp acid action on everything. They burned and corroded, breaking everything down into gas and ash. Now breaking gas and ash down into light, light into fading and fading into dark, dark into almost nothing. Almost something is the same as almost nothing.

In the beginning there was no beginning. Then there was only myth. There could not have been any beginning at the beginning because a beginning is an event within time. To be an event within time means to have a before and after the event. This means that there’s always a beginning before the beginning and the beginning is therefore never the beginning. The beginning is only the myth of beginning. The mythic beginning is the arrest, the interdiction, and discredition of all previous beginnings. To begin is to end beginnings. To start is to stop. There has been no beginning. Therefore the beginning can now take place. Now.

my dear, dear, dear*, friend has recently written indecently nice things about me on hir blog so in the spirit of our mutual appreciation i send you in hir direction towards the incredible piece of writing by sarah kane that s/he just craves to share. a sharing about a craving that is not about sharing.

i love the tension in this piece of writing between perfect love and desperation. perfect love is always ideal love. it is always platonic love. the ideality of platonic love means that it is always outside a real relationship. it is always somewhat uninvolved in the process of being in the midst of each other. it invariably objectifies and instrumentalises the other person for whom ideal love is proclaimed. it becomes love about someone not love with someone. love without relating. the perfection of platonic love – its ideality – prevents it from being love at all.

the desire of the self for the other when absolutely and perfectly conceived can only relate to itself because it puts the other person beyond the possibility of relation. it can never relate to the finite and imperfect other person. it can only relate to the perfect other, the theological other, the non-existent other, the person whom the other is not. to the stranger stranger-fie-d (hated) by the impossible demands of perfection.

love celebrates the imperfection of the other but not the individual imperfection of the other. the hostility of individuality ideally conceived also has no place in love. love instead celebrates the negotiated imperfection of the other as part of being in the midst of each other. in the imperfection that one learns to  celebrate in exchange for the imperfection that the other learns to celebrate. not in the imperfection that forces one not to live (not to live when living with them, not to continue to not live with them – to urbanise your relationship of non-relation: to leave). so perfect love cannot be love but domestic abuse cannot be love either. those beaten without consent – or even without the power of non-consent – have encountered the individual beyond negotiation; beyond love; in the midst of evil.

there are those that leave because they cannot live but are not dead and do not want to die. there are also those that leave because they can only live but living is not enough and they do not want to live but they are not dead and do not want to die. they want more which is the same as wanting less which is more which is less.

[relax spike. take a breadth. abandon the severity of the principle of the excluded middle. all the contradictions of non-contradiction. the self identities that constitute the other as such. it's alright - don't become subject to the subject - play flirt live seduce and be seduced love.]

x

* thrift has no place when friendship is a gift that cannot be given away, that cannot bankrupt no matter how uneconomic an expenditure is attempted, that returns as it departs, that gives itself to the other as itself.

What do you write to the darK/ I’m not sure what kind of inscription makes sense to the future. The net is mostly made up of holes through which big blocks of text fall out of history. This has been personally apparent in that the server this blog is on has been down for a few days. Perhaps carefully stored lead engravings or two million mouldering paper backs is a better long term strategy.

Philosophy is not to insist on itself but to renegotiate – freedom, economics, history, democracy, justice, anarchy, right and wrong. There is nothing essential about them. They are negotiated, imagined, operative. If we try to avoid doing so then these terms philosophise us.

I am going grey as I study philosophy – philosophy makes your hair grey. I find myself being transformed into the image of the old white male patriarch. It may not be possible to recognise the weapons without practicing them well.

My imagination and flair fade with each negotiation of the canon. Ultima ratio regum launches a pathetic clown a few feet through the air into a net carefully placed to catch them. Privilege is not falling on your face – money is a way of outsourcing bad karma. The academy is a commuter service for intellectuals that trains people into and out of philosophy at the same time. In spite of my best intentions they succeeded in half teaching me the discipline of philosophy.

The questioning is undermined by the image of that to be questioned. The image may slowly become the thing, the order of the simulacrum encroaching to full effect.

Perhaps I can write under yet another pseudonym but

the only hope is to be shot while trying to escape my cellf.

Finalised by bullet dressed in a hasty drag

Bio-graphers will be shot, robbed, and captioned:

lost life drawing words of a literary figure