Friday, March 17, 2006

"making surrealism each one's Other"

"Surrealism -- we cannot sense its destination otherwise -- is and has always been a collective experience. This is its first trait. Here we may suspect that Andre Breton's role was different from the one that is recognized through admiration, affection, or personal ill will as having been his. He was neither a master nor a guide, neither the leader of a party nor the head of a religion, any more than a simple arbiter or genius who would have taken the place of all others through his innocent superiority, founding a coherence and an existence where, without him, there would have been only the stirring of a few dreams or a configuration of ardent wishes. If he was predominant, he was only so outside the group, through his books, his prestige, and his radiant authority: his manner of being truthfully present everywhere. Perhaps, however, within surrealism, he had the particular power not of being the *one* any more than the others, but of making surrealism each one's Other, and in the attraction of this Other taken as a living presence-absence (a *beyond the day* at the horizon of a space unknown and without a beyond), of living it with friendship in the most rigorous sense of this exacting term: making the surrealist affirmation, in other words, a presence of a work of friendship.

Were the surrealists, then, no more than a group of friends? And should their mutual understanding, as well as their separations, be considered simply as the vicissitudes belonging to human relations, where what is involved is first a question of persons? Not in the least. Let us try to understand this more fully. Surrealism is always a third party in the friendship; an absent third term through which passes and through which issues this relation of tension and passion that effaces characters as it gives rise to and motivates initiatives and attractions. Whosoever falls short of surrealism (its coldest rules as well as its most burning affirmations) falls short of this friendship and excludes himself from any possibility of encounter, no matter whether he be companion or brother. It is not in the name of betrayed friendship that the exigency in play strikes those who place themselves outside the game; it is rather this exigency itself, making possible or impossible the relations that the rapproachements, encounters and exchanges determine at the level of the everyday, that leads them to a rigorous friendship, but a friendship always revocable, always short of what the surrealist demand might ask of it."
--Maurice Blanchot

Short Shadows*

1. Short Shadow

Under this equally
Sheltering image
We call each
Across
An ageless debris
Under this equally
Disturbed blue
Of a clear window it is early
Afternoon
Light fills the
Shelter of this image

Branches and we also
Have shadows shelters
For time
For we can not see an idea
Of our entire home
For time what we can not
Feel
Its windows
An idea of cities
Too immense for this

We also have shadows
We are also
Immense caressing
This particular night of
Ideas
Have you ever felt this if
You have ever
Felt this
The windows the
Thing in a dream
Is conspicuously invisible

A miracle of homelands
Shadows make their
Course
To shelter the passing
Windows of projections
He also
Makes images
Of things which could only exist
As images immense and
Uncapturable
Therefore locating

Uncapturable as
The memory is a thing and
Not a thing the
Mother of us all
Uncapturable as lips flee
All aspects in the dark
Of what we are

Or pretend is power
And not tenderness this
Feeling returns
Of the shadows of things
Crossing the sun
A cathedral in
Our dreams what won’t be
Imagined
This place without
Place
Makes for us
Other aspects of home

2. Address to Still

When is still still still?
After an advent of space
Nether of rust
Need
Of erase

Procure a feel
For paint immensity strips
Down
For a while in the light
Various stripes

Pushing at an edge of
Eye
When is eye eye?
When
Is eye still still?

We emerge in this immense waiting

3. That Shadow Portending
to Gregg Biglieri, Rob Halpern and Nick Lawrence

That shadow portending
Pretending
Out of the corner of the mind
There are
Stakes in the something
That also is

Pointing to our bones while
We fidget
Them like money
Pointing to
These breaks in the eye
So distant to be here
And vastly
Unawakened by crude

Commons of this cleave
Penury smudging the sight
Fickle and fiery
Is every loss gained
O pointing, portending
Economy’s effusive brains

4. Over-looking

Epilepsy flees this memory pad
Capitulating to an appearance
Of cartoons

As they flit over the face this is first
This grace
A counterfeiting of false flames
Aflicker in the eyes

A virtual snowfall
As they fell flakes engendered eyes
They have visions that this mountain range
And its shades
Will all have reverted to dust already

Over-looking untenable graves

*Short Shadows was composed Spring '05.

Lower Limit Hypnotic*

1. Eye Fixation

Would you like to find
a spot you can
look at comfortably
as you continue
looking
at that spot for awhile
do your eye-
lids
want to blink
will
those lids begin
to blink together
or separately
slowly
or quickly will they close
all at once or flutter
all by themselves
first
will those eyes
close more
and more as you get more
and more comfortable
that’s fine
can those eyes
now remain
closed as your comfort
deepens like when
you go to sleep
can that comfort continue
more and more
so that you’d rather
not even try
to open your eyes
or
would you rather
try and find you cannot
and how soon
will you forget
about them
altogether because
your unconscious wants
to dream.

2. Hand Levitation

Can you feel comfortable
resting
your hands
gently on your thighs
as therapist demonstrates that’s right
without letting
them touch each other
can you
let those hands rest
ever so lightly
so that the finger
tips just barely touch
your thighs that’s right
as they rest
ever so light
do you notice
how they tend
to lift up a bit
all by themselves with each
breath you take do they
begin
to lift even more
lightly and easily
by themselves
as the rest of your body relaxes
more and more
as that goes on
does one hand
or the other
or maybe both continue
lifting even more
and does that hand
stay up
and continue lifting
higher and higher
bit by bit
all by itself
does the other hand want to catch up
with it
or will
the other hand relax in your lap
that’s right
and does
that hand continue
lifting with these slight little jerking
movements
or does
the lifting get smoother
and smoother as the hand
continues
upwards
towards your face
does it move
more quickly
or slowly
as it approaches your face
with deepening comfort does it need
to pause a bit
before it finally touches your face
so you’ll know
you are going
into trance
and it won’t touch
until your unconscious is really ready
to let you go deeper
will it
and will your body
automatically take a deeper
breath when that hand
touches your face
as you really relax
and experience yourself going deeper
that’s right
and will you even
bother to notice
the deepening comfortable
feeling when that hand
slowly returns
to your lap all
by itself
and will your unconscious
be in a dream
by the time that hand
comes to rest

*Texts lifted from Milton Erickson's *Hypnotherapy*

Sunday, March 12, 2006

A Total Sense of Sense


for Paul Sharits

"Seeing, at last, your mind as it must be at times in unendurable anguish, a series of events leading to that sense of self as burden, artaud making art of it, misery, saw your minding of such in my own horror, shocked, shaking my head a crazy catalogue of images, classical symbols, cartoons of grief -- but it is not always so and it is that lack of it which has to stand for joy in the absence of blessings -- and there are, in rare instances, blessings and you are often there at those places and I have a total sense of sense and you are absolutely cream, having to step on plastic flowers, my mind bursting, blossoming -- someday I will tell you my dreams when it is quiet and I am more willing to let the tragic have its due warmth -- that comes later; now I am content that my dreams were dreams."
--Paul Sharits, 1966

“This very task of destruction poses again, in the last resort, the question of a pure immediate violence that might be able to call a halt to mythical violence. Just as in all spheres God opposes myth, mythical violence is confronted by the divine. And the latter constitutes its antithesis in all respects. If mythical violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them; if mythical violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates; if the former threatens, the latter strikes; if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood.”
--Walter Benjamin


In these greatnesses these smallnesses great blue an instance
Of standing armies and waves opposite
Blue law of blue undreamt

Stick to everything no thing plastic flowers absolutely cream
The colors you see you see to hear
Of standing armies and standing waves
The law new law of red not sensed

Like the fourth clause of Augustine
No man should punish who does not love already in his heart
Is thus unpunishing
War could then be just (only contradiction is just)

Of a proposition red made blue blue made red
Wholly of another law unwoken in these tones
No man should punish who does not love already in his heart
Is thus unwarring
War might then be just (only con-spiration is just)

In this dream of armies the war of the sky
And the earth again elemental gigantomachia machine
His white eschatology Benjamin or Augustine
Whomsoever loves eternally holds no peace for the just

Only for the wicked conserve the pieces
The pieces again alighting our time
On earth tears shed mantles between men
Partition apart a Messiaen of varied light

And colors like tears begin
The colors of a cabinet
Cubby-holed to see sound appear
The colors you see you see to hear
A non-sense of number
“A total sense of sense”



Float tones a thing of forms the thinking does for war war also does

A thing of bones to think the flicker oxygen takes hard to hover pink
Float tones a thing of forms the thinking does for war war also does

More disgust by anthem the wind what earthly sense is this to flower
A thing of bones to think the flicker oxygen takes hard to hover pink
Float tones a thing of forms the thinking does for war war also does

False flowers to flower the false a thing of tones to put pieces in
More disgust by anthem the wind what earthly sense is this to flower
A thing of bones to think the flicker oxygen takes hard to hover pink
Float tones a thing of forms the thinking does for war war also does

The inside again brains emote this thought of tones a might of babes
False flowers to flower the false a thing of tones to put pieces in
More disgust by anthem the wind what earthly sense is this to flower
A thing of bones to think the flicker oxygen takes hard to hover pink
Float tones a thing of forms the thinking does for war war also does

Each misses each like tears asunder the tears of all invested by when
Cunnilingus a lingual thing reconciliation born in the where of red
Born out by the multiple mind wind more disgust by anthem the wind
The mind’s alibi each tear discloses the in itself one-by-one the for
For each frame is when where we are in sense to be total to be a piece

Cunnilingus a lingual thing reconciliation born in the where of red
Born out by the multiple mind wind more disgust by anthem the wind
The mind’s alibi each tear discloses the in itself one-by-one the for
For each frame is when where we are in sense to be total to be a piece

Born out by the multiple mind wind more disgust by anthem the wind
The mind’s alibi each tear discloses the in itself one-by-one the for
For each frame is when where we are in sense to be total to be a piece

The mind’s alibi each tear discloses the in itself one-by-one the for
For each frame is when where we are in sense to be total to be a piece

For each frame is when where we are in sense to be total to be a piece






Wage the each instant the occurring born in where the wager of each at piece a now so there

Stained to a voice stayed to a touch of them flowers the wages of them to recover each sense of when

Of wend the total doing our pieces go to light surrender red defender defender red

Of blue of blue the opposite is when pure means of will to render wind

To wend the opposite to encounter frame my number your number sympathetic share

Conspire tears of blue of blue or tear here

In the inside of the face

Swelled then the opposite is when flowers bend urgent flowers mind content to render
them

Alone alone one one each each all all

One one one two two not two bluish fog of war so blended frame

Your frame of when your frame of when your frame of when your frame of when rushed to blue vertical red horizontal hold to defend

When frame is where number frame is where number frame is where number wends and split

The each for the all all of a piece the each for the each out of place to move space the each

To piece end war to piece piece end war end piece end piece war end war piece don’t end red don’t end don’t end red don’t end blue reconcile don’t end wend don’t end when to not stop the tears a furtive reel

A feel for sense of number for sense of number when a sense of when is enough

Conspire tears of blue of blue or tear here

In the inside of the face

Swelled then the opposite is when flowers bend urgent flowers mind content to render
them

“Take me
[understanding] from grief
and take me
to yourselves from understanding
[and] grief.
And take me
to yourselves from places
that are ugly and in ruin,
and rob from those
which are good even though in ugliness.
Out of shame, take me
to yourselves shamelessly;
and out of shamelessness
and shame, upbraid my members
in yourselves.
And come forward to me,
you who know me
and you who
know my members,
and
establish the great ones among the small
first creatures.
Come forward to childhood,
and do not despise it
because it is small and it is little.
And do not turn away
greatness in some parts from the
smallnesses,
for
the smallnesses are known
from the greatnesses.”

In these greatnesses these smallnesses great blue an instance
Of standing armies and waves opposite
Blue law of blue undreamt

War could then be just (only contradiction is just)