"At the limit of these polar terms..."

Symbolic Gesture <--------------------------------------------> Ethical Undergoing

At the limit of these polar terms we may site the undecidable by unsighting. In the most extreme cases of psychotic withdrawal it is unknowable the reality of language and perception, or to what extent a subject is "acting". For Lacan of *The Psychoses (1954-1955)*, psychosis is always a question of articulation and to whom (what other) the subject speaks, imagining, intending however falsely, this speaking. If acting assumes truths against Truth (if one can act like another, or assume a role, they *are* that other, as "real" as that other) then it is neither ironic reflection or mystical/occult undergoing/withdrawal I am trying to locate discretely per se. But a chiasmus of experience and non-experience, sense and non-sense where this criss-crossing serves the ethical, social and political. An exterior beyond intersubjectivity, in other words. An exterior at a limit of interiority...

I associate... (What Tomb)

I associate
I

I diassociate

Eyes
(not)
Eyes

Helpless, eyeful

Tower

The child

Does not free
Me

When I am

Warm
I gaze

To paralyze
Or unray

Of what diassociates

The mouth

The fingers in the mouth

Of diassociation

What gaze
Misapprehends

Light

Becuase light

Thinks us too quickly

The genesis
Of this

Setting

(What gazes).


Print of spirits trees each
Idem spoon spoon idem spoon
Correlate correct the specimen death
Spoon vision specimen to blend

And blur persistence red
Persistence of vision distended
To burn, a print of the eyes
Not what they see alone

Retinal the socius calamity
Event calmity event intermit
Tint, to have reflected
Is not to yet reflect

Or be reflected, to be
Reflecting not yet, correlate refract
Vision to blend, pin brightly the
Specimen, autistic art each idem deathly.

Her Then (Reprise)

Her then then process reverses

Her then
Then process
Reverses

Her
Then then
Process reverses

Her
Then
Then
Process
Reverses

Her then
Then
Process

Reverses
Her then then
Process

Reverses
Her then then process
Reverses

Her then then process reverses

Her then

Then
Process

Reverses her

Then then
Process

Reverses her then

Then process

Reverses

Her then

Then process reverses

Her then

Then

Process

Reverses her

Then

Then

Process

Reverses her then

Then process

Reverses

Her then

Then process

Reverses

Her then

Then

Process

Reverses her then

"who'd died, yet who wasn't allowed to be really dead" (For a Radical Interior)

"In the hospital one has a strong sense of corpses floating up through the bedstead. Besides which I had a view of the morgue, people marching in and out with little coffins, in and out.
So I made believe that I was a little boy who'd died, yet who wasn't allowed to be really dead, because he kept on being woken up by telephone calls from the Royal Dramatic Theater. Finally he became so impatient he lay down and read a book."
--Ingmar Bergman on *Persona*

Next Breath Best Breath

For Arthur Russell

Your dreams
Come, near to you

Them, for
The child distinguishes

Between inside
Outside, the clouds

An argument like
Music we are here

Things can't help
Happening, where

There was something
There was something,

Proceeding to
Proceed, praising

Parsing, crossing
The syllogism of her

Brow, the bow
Given to Bach,

The lyric must return
Nearer than thought.

A Work of Withdrawal

To Kyle Schlesinger

Defaced: to occult

I propose to write a longer text that I would subsequently "withdraw" from the world: thru burning or blotting out, through an erasure inverse of the text's creation; not merely a crossing out but a coming into the world in reverse...

The more I come to value this text as part of my "experience" the more I can only imagine will its destruction be valuable to myself spiritually and emotionally, if not non-experientially. Erasing "me" -- a document of me: or a document of spiritual "work."

How to record the appearance and disappearance of spirit -- "materially"?
How to undergo an occultation, a withdrawal for revelation?
These questions are primary, if not too preliminary...

To lose my face.
To save the face of the Other, of others.
To save by losing and lose by saving.
To face-up or off with this paradox of saving, of response-ability.
To deface (should we also re-face, o-face, ab-face, pre-face, sur-face etc.)?
How to (face) lift to come (face) down?
Coming face-to-face by turning away, by separation, apartness, *Kadosh* (holiness).

Burning in reverse, erasing in reverse, striking-out in reverse, despairing in reverse...

Acconci Beyond Acconci (For a Radical Interior)

"Possibly, in earlier pieces, I used the body as a proof that "I" was there -- the way a person might talk to himself in the dark. So, with that assumption -- that the body was analogous to a word-system as a placement device -- there was an attempt made to "parse" the body: it could be the subject of an action, or it could be the receiver, the object (it should be noted that most of the earlier pieces were kinds of reflexive sentences: "I" acted on "me."
--Vito Acconci

To Edvard Munch

Scratch out all
But her
Literal
Whisper
The kerchief
Blood to
Paint blood paint
To erase all
Face
Her hands all
The details
What
Life corrupt in-
Corrupt
To erase the
Literal paint
Scratch out
Or cover
The details
Evoke
The literal death
Her then
Then process
Reverses