IN-DER-WELT-SEIN

Before words, before expressions, the phenomena first, then the concepts.

Lucien has come to an interm conclusion:  the whole starship log project is not very interesting.  First, a consensus has been reached regarding the general outlook or condition of the situation. That is, a way has been glimpsed or has begun to condense around various notions of how things are going. The starship log has been revealed to be a procrastination devise.  Second, the whole internet exposure thing is odd and causes too many perplexing issues.  Furthermore, the show-n-tell aspect causes a rather curious feeling of being wihout seriousness- serious being a type of responsibility- no, I want this word to also mean accountability-  and coherence, and not the general notion of ‘gravitas.’ So much is being said….there is such a proliferation of (and yes, the dreaded word) discourse. No, discourse implies a type of constency that I do not feel is there.  A  better word: Commentary. Not even exegesis- just Commentary. A type of chitter chatter which just re-hashes its own internal concepts- a type of talking to itself- with no real connection to what one could term the ‘phenomena’- or a perverted or better, a penurious remove from the goings-on. Commentary can snow-ball. It grows and grows (think of art-speak, or critical theory-type sloganism….think Judith Butler, bless her….). What the hell is being said? What the hell is being seen in these words? What are we talking about? And, moreover, what does all this mean? That is, all this unclear and confusing chatter seems to point to an problem. The problem seems to be that the pressumptions of what ‘is’ are just off. But, to maintain everything, all the chatter, the rug cannot be pulled-out from under all the people at the cocktail party. Thus, so much tinkering and pasting over things and pretending. Which leads to more and more commentary. Which removes one further and further from the splinter in the toe which is causing the pain. What produces the continued proliferation of commentary….all these books and articles…the accumulation of all this ‘knowledge’….all thoses dissertations….hum. I wonder.

I never got round to discussing Neurotic Time- I am not in that dimension. Je me sens las….lasitude, that is what I am in for the moment.

Proverbe: Sentence, maxime exprimée en peu de mots, et devenue commune et vulgaire. – Littré.

I jotted down the following on one of the numerous loose pieces of paper floating around with me: “‘Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions and where there is no vision, the people perish.’”  The sheet of white paper riddled with coffee rings was bound for the trash bin, but I got caught-up in the words and I slowed down and out of my housekeeping mode. Hum. Reflect upon it for a moment or two-  the meaning the words point-to. What an interesting and insightful maxime, no?  I wondered where I had encountered the phrase. The source of the citation is marked: ‘Proverbes.’ I went to my copy of the bible (a standard, French addition) and I could not locate the words of wisdom, at least not in French.

A quick search in the matrix and I found the English translation. In fact, the phrase is not a single proverb, but an amalgamation of two biblical phrases. The discovery sapped my enthusiasm- it seemed too precise and too good to be true, anyhow…Voilà the results of my brief investigation:

1). Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. – Joel 2:28

2). Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he. -Proverbs 29:18

Not quite the same thing….And the punchline of the second phrase did not fit-into my picture. Yet, I was still curious. I wanted to know where I found the recomposed proverb. Who made the mistake? Or the cocktail? More searching in the matrix and I stumbled upon the following:

“When some meet here in 1990 they will look back on what we did and say that we made the right and wise decisions. ‘Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions,’ the Bible tells us, and ‘where there is no vision, the people perish.’”  - President John F. Kennedy, San Antonio, Texas, November 21, 1963 “Remarks at the Dedication of the Aerospace Medical Health Center.”

Ah, hah! The source: a very clever speech writer in the Kennedy administration.

I hoped that I would be able to pull something out the biblical bag of tricks, brush it off and hold it up as a surprisingly insightful and very relevant bit of understanding. Nevertheless, the archaeological investigation was interesting. My source is disclosed.

Why did the phrase give me pause? First, it directed my attention to the bible and I wondered about how the book functioned – (in the general sense, not in the vien of ‘functionalism’)- to give people a sense of understanding. Yes, I know,  the bible is still taken seriously by a large part of the population of the world- but I would say that this seriousness is not the same breed of serious. To just attempt a simple clarification of this suggestion would entail a discussion too complicated and mined with bombs:  I would not like to walk into the fire of biblical hermeneutics.

Without a vision, the people will perish. Without a vision, things loose coherence. There needs be something that nourishes the type of vision a people- a person- requires to be sustained, or to sustain their being:  to make sense of things. To see- seeing and sight are what move a being to be (or, at least the human version of being). It is not the sight of basic sense perception, viz., without eyes I am blind, thus handicapped. No no. One could be blind and have a world overwhelmed by things to see!  Just as one could have ‘sight’ and be blind like a bat out of hell.

Sight is the whole that unfolds. The sight of meaning is an essential part of being. Again, not the ‘Ah-hoy, Hark! I sight being on the horizon, Cap’in’ ” type of finding or locating something via sight.  No: just Seeing that does not take sight to see–without it, well, being flounders.

I am still in my thoughts about what I termed ‘Neurotic Time’ – what do I mean?  I have a strong sense of what I am looking-at,  though only a vague sense of how to make-it more concrete by telling. I am still getting-at-it. It certainly has to do with vision. Or sight. Or blinded by a certain type of warped sight. I will  return to the idea of Neurotic Time. The Proverbial Prononciation Post is here to let it be known that I am still thinking and going-about things.

One thing is clear to me though: Without a vision there is no life, or a life worth living (or a living worthy of a life).  The lights are dimming-down and there is this wading about muddy shadows.  Phantoms? Deception? Resignation? Or, worse: masquerading? Sitting-around with Phantoms?  Either way:  there is nothing to see.  I am convinced of this fact. It is the real. It is, I venture to say, the current destiny. It remains to be seen if it is also destiny’s fate.

Getting from here to there in Paris intra-muros is accomplished, for the most part- and for the majority of people- by using the metro. The metro station is a subterranean planet of quays, tubes and connecting passages walled in glazed ceramic tile, all tied into the greater metro galaxy. And the tile is for the most part clean. In fact, the metro is turned-off sometime after midnight and turned-on again sometime after 5h. It is during this down-time that the metro maintenance legion is called-up to keep things tidy. And all in all, the mercananaries of neat do a fairly good job, despite the constant complaints that the metro is dirty. Of course the metro is going to be dirty! In the same sense that the sidewalk is dirty. Or that there is an inconvenient splat of bird shit located right there on the only free park bench. It is a metro. And it could be worse (have our complainers been been to Cairo?- no, there dirty transport would be a cultural trait, to appreciate and photographe – to ‘experience.’) The messy metro complaint is one of the many repeated enlightened ‘discoveries’ people hand-out for free. I would also include herein all findings on pigeons, rudeness, children and immigrants.

The observation that the metro is dirty- no, people use the word which means filthy- usually is a type of generalized aesthetic judgement on the activity of taking the metro, which depending on the case, is a deflection of one’s own sense of what taking the metro means, whether one has to take it or not. Funny, though, no one seems to mind the dog shit (la crotte de chien – dog droppings). For me, the Connecticut Yankee in the Court, the problem was the dog shit. It was appalling, but in a lurid and sensational way. Now, here is the topic of a great short story: Parisian dog shit, and the whole world that can be interpreted by the study of the phenomenon! In fact, come to think of it, I could choose, say, ten or twelve such phenomena and work-up a type of slow, heavy, vibrant hermeneutic for each one, and thus give, in the total interpretation bought-out over the bakers’ dozen demonstration, a certain idea of Paris- of France- of being Parisian and French. The exercise has been done before- it is passée!- je le sais bien!- and only is good for gift-giving; not reading.  The  passée works to which  I refer are just some university educated type of travel literature, though- and usually authored from the perspective of the macaca who slipped into the leftovers of a  salon société.  No no. You have to know how to do the tango- and this means having it in the blood: otherwise, the macaca remains a piece of furniture. To be sat upon.  It takes a type of skilled observing to understand France, or the Parisian variety of France. Nothing special, really- quite staid and mindful of habits.  Once one sees things,  well, then, it is quite clear that the species is something special, with a stubborn tendency for the highest and the lowest, all unfolding at once at multiple levels. The Parisian is also endangered! Or, my kind of Parisian. The down-’n-dirty variety and not the self-conscious variety. The new line is more in-tune with cosmopolites in other parts of the world- and desirously so. Idea for Chapter One: from Faeces to Species, or From Trace to Race.

The chore list of Parisian metro maintenance must include wiping down the tiled walls, because, as I mentioned, the walls are clean. The subway in New York is also tiled, but there the tile is poorly maintained and covered in a layer of sooty pollen and grimy dust stirred-up in New York’s queer agitation. Furthermore, no-one really cares. One can see where people unwittingly, to their surprise, or deliberately left their mark as they went about their way. Here is where a coat brushed up against the wall, over there a hand left a print, and further on a finger or two decided to express something in the grime, usually the name which refers to the larger body they are attached to, or a logo , and if one is daring, a banal naughty word like fucker or a hieroglyphic vagina or penis. Ah! The walls of the urban cave-man! Parisian metro station scribble is less symbolic: words, not pictorgrams, but just as familiar. The same ole’ recyclables. The preffered semantic is a small club of tired political-type expressions like Anarchy or, in the same breath, a sterile condemnation of media and advertising. These are passé: catch-up with the times. Of course some choose to be more specific: Down with Sarko! Which means what? Where is the call to action? Storm the Elysée and throw the Président of our Républic out the window? What do we do about Carla? Smash her guitar? I think Sarkozy is rather intersting and entertaining. And one would have a hell of a time pulling the guitar from Carla’s arms. I would be more weary of Carla. Bless her.

Like Parisian monuments- all scrubbed down and lit-up- the tile in the metro is shiny. It reflects the florescent light. Things are tidy: a very French thing-tidiness- but with no moral content, thankfully. Just show- which is better than morality. The tile is mostly an ordinary white- though at the Château d’Eau station the tile is grey. White tile usually is accompanied by some version of a design theme trimming the edges and borders and making it all seem orderly. And, of course, useful-  not just for show. Someone who is familiar with the metro will know on which line someone is travelling by the ceramic colour scheme and pattern. The line 12 has a green colour scheme: it is the Green Line. The tiles that frame the curved squared resevoirs continiously restocked with advertisement posters glued-up by the men in the blue suits with the big brushes, as well as the peripheries of the walls, are in yellow, for a station without a correspondence, or in green, for a station with a corespondence. The green tile is beautiful- deep and swirled emerald capped in clear glaze.

The trains shoot in and out of the tunnels on each side of the station platform. The entrance to the tunnels that link-up the stations are rounded and wide, as in the illustrations of the mouth of Jonah’s whale in the childrens’ bible my grandmother gave me to reward my sucessful completion of sacrement number two of our Eglise sainte, catholique et apostolique. Above the entrance- or exit, depending on your direction- to each tunnel, are intricate tiled mosaics indicating the final destination in which each train (or each of you) are heading. The original line opened in 1910, I believe, and was operated by a company known as the “North-South”- this fact can discover in doing a little observation archaeology and reading the ceramic designs for logos and initials. The 12 was then Line A, the first line the company opened, and it travelled between Gare Saint Lazare and Gare Montparnasse Each station between these two points has marked about the tunnels”Direction Montparnasse” or “Direction Montmartre” followed by a slim, pragmatic arrow that curves down the side of the whale’s mouth. After the Great War, Line A was stretched further up and down to its current length, and the two terminal stations became “Porte de La Chapelle,” to the North, and “Porte de Versailles”, to the South (though, the southern section was stretched a bit further at some point, and now ends at Maire d’Issy). The orientation indicators above the tunnel entrances after Montparnasse read “Direction Porte de Versailles,” and those after Saint Lazare read “Direction Porte de la Chapelle.” The curving arrow stayed slim and same, it just points to a different place. I very much like the arrow, and the entire fact that there are on each side of the station platform, embedded over the tubular mouth of the metro whale, adroit orientation indications, in sensible yet elegant tiled lettering of another epoch: self-consciously handsome while being all the while utilitarian and practical. And with a sleek attentive arrow.

Taking the metro is an interesting activity and I enjoy it, for the most part. I enjoy being in the space and the place of the metro maze. I think of it in terms of a board game I used to play (but was never really interested in) when I was young called Shoots and Ladders. It is all about into and down, through, up, along, up again, down again, and out. I must say that when it is hot and bothered and people are in fowl moods, I find it rather unpleasant- but even this reaction is interesting in its way. Being uncomfortable is a chore, but it is usually when things stick-out. Or in the case of the hot and heavy metro, stick-to.

Besides people watching- I thoroughly delight in surveying people entangling each other along the underground corridors of the metro. I also enjoy reading the advertisement posters, especially those announcing the spectacles at the music-hall cabarets, the boulevard theatres, or at the Comédie Française. Last Monday I was at the Bastille metro station and I noticed a poster announcing the staging of Molière’s “le Malade Imaginaire, ” which was the last piece that Molière wrote. It is also the play during which he died while performing- and it is most likely due to this morbid fact that I have retained any idea of what this play is about, or even that it is a play composed by Molière. I got to thinking about the play- again, not that I am very familiar with it. I have just a vague notion of the plot, but it deals with a hypochondriac bourgeois who is bedridden. Then there it the tile- -  I believe it was the title that prompted my thoughts. The tone of the phrase “malade imaginaire” is nice to hear in French- the tight sylablls of ‘malade’ and followed by the open-ended, airy, ending of ‘imaginaire’….the phonetic flows for thought. I then got to thinking about the magic metaphor of imaginary maladies. Of course, I also was thinking not just about the metaphor, but about the actual phenomenon of imaginary maladies: hypochondria or psychosomatic syndromes in all types of manifestations, from the ‘scientific’ to the common place general sense. Imaginary Maladies. A sickness of the imagination, or the understanding of the overall sense of condition. Being a condition, but a sick one- a malady, or seeing oneself in this way. I guess it could be summed-up as acting like a malady. Being a walking, talking malady. “Hello. I am a malady.” This is who I am. Or, no, would it be something like “Hello, this is my malady.” It is not I, but it is what I am enveloped by. This is how things are: Affliction. It is not the same really as being having been wounded in physical combat. In the metro, there are seats reserved for those wounded in defending the Républic. There are no special seats for Imaginary Wounds. There are also seats reserved for pregnant woman and the physically handicapped. Again, no one thought to reserve a place for the diseased spirit. And if a seat had been reserved how would we determine who has the right to stake a claim to sit down? I can see the ballooned stomach of pregnancy. I can see a person that is physically handicapped. I can see the white cane or when an older person looks like they need rest. How do I spot the imaginary pestilence? Where is the infection? What does it look like? And does it deserve a seat at the table?

Whether it is taken as metaphor or as a phenomenon, the Imaginary Malady connects into the notion of neurosis. Here, then, is a good place from which to get-back-at the subject of Neurotic Time with which I closed the previous entry in the starship log. So, I have a big cup o’ café and I am going to jump back into the stream of jibber-jabber and hopefully figure-out how to get-at Neurotic Time. What is the point of the exercise? (I admit, it would be more fun to chat about dog shit or public transportation….there are so many things to recount….and personal self-observations can be longwhinded and whiney- at least in regards to how I tend to speak about me, myself and I.) Well. I have a vague sense that I am in-volved with a type of living- or passing-of-time- that is, in some way, neurotic. All this needs to be (however briefly) explained. The term ‘neurotic’ needs to be fleshed-out, too, as I hesitate to use this term ‘neurotic,’ because it brings along the baggage of psychoanalysis, and I am very leery in regards to psychoanalysis as I am not sure what is the subject of the discipline. Furthermore, I do not think I am a pathology nor that I am unwell. But I do need some type of adjusting. I do not need to be adjusted- that is just the point. Hum… Perhaps the psyche baggage may be a good way of getting at things. Right. The first step for getting-at Neurotic Time is to survey Neurosis. And there no better way to go about it than a neurotic rant by the seat of my neurotic pants. I promise (myself) the next post will be much more clear precise……..Lets go-

Neurosis is a large issue. What is meant by neurosis? Even though it is a common enough  term, it is not exactly a clear term, not clear in the common general sense sort of way that, say, ‘red’ can be used as ‘that is a ‘red’ car.’ What if I said ‘that is a ‘neurotic’ car?’ The sense is not the same….

The etymology of the world is simple enough: it comes out of the Latin, and Latin, as was the habit, merely took over the Greek. The prefix neuro refers to the a cord or tendon: that is, the nerves. The suffix, osis, refers to a condition or the presence of disease (The analystist gives a diagnosis of neurosis). Right then: Neurosis is a nervous condition, or a disease of the nerves. The term seems to have been coined in 1769 by a certain Scottish doctor named Cohen to refer to what he termed “disorders of sense and motion” caused by a “general affection of the nervous system.” Cohen needed a word to interpret various nervous disorders and symptoms that he empirically observed but that could not be empirically explained with the tools or words he has at hand, that is, explained physiologically.

The term neurosis was formulated by our man Cohen in the larger going-ons of what may be referred to as the development or elaboration of a certain technical vocabulary that became the lingua franca of an emerging domain of study: natural science, and, in particular, the scientific study of the human organism: the body. Yet the physical, empirical study of the body as a biological thing- as a organism occurring in nature- was unable to explain the symptoms Cohen observed, which led him to the word “neurosis” to described some type of physiological manifestation that could not be explained physiologically. In his scientific doctoring, Cohen must have stumbled upon someone, or a series of someones somewhere, who manifested symptoms of a physical disturbance that Cohen pronounced to be the type of comportment caused by some disease in the interior workings of the body, in its nerves, or in its spirit or mind. It was a mental problem. No more demonic possessions. Nope. Sickness. Cohen connected the dots.

And here is where we make the jump, by say one hundred or so years, from Cohen’s Scotland, to the Vienniosse corner of the German world, during a period that can given a general temporal orientation by using standard political regime markers: the dénouement of the Hapsburg Empire, the emergence of the first Republik Österreich, the Anschluss, the emergence the Großdeutsches Reich and its spectacular disappearance twelve years, eight months and seven days later at the Bedingungslose Kapitulation. What occurred from the end of the Kaisers to the Berlin Wall is an extremely interesting stretch. It seems to me to be the last movement out of the social and political institutions of the Ancien Régime, as well as the revelation of the powerful forces of modernity, which taught both the ancient and the modern regimes a a thing or two: we are still reviewing our lessons, despite the fading of the obvious liaison with remarkably unprecedented events of the twentieth century.

What astonishment, awe and, well, disorientation for those who lived in such shifting quick sands. Imagine the Junker born in Preußen and who finished-up in someplace called Westdeutschland in a dodgy flat with a black and white television? Or the peasant born in a Rome ruled by a Pope who was forced to hand over the keys to the Quirinale to someone named Victor Emmanuel who declares Rome the capital of the Regno d’Italiainto, into which strolls some extraordinarily weird entity who calls himself Il Duce, and who makes a dangerously complete muck of things and is shot and hung upside down along with his mistress, after which our peasant lives in a Rome located in some place called the Repubblica Italiana. For those of us who are young and now living in North America or Western Europe, such dramatic shifts- at least in social and political regime organization- are not imagined as possible, or, better, probable.

Politics at the level of histoire événementielle is a somewhat superficial or generalized method of taking-stock of things, yet it does orient towards a phase of excellerated, radical transformations, which I am not even sure could be described, because they were moving everywhere and literally altered the configuration of the world. But here in this period there appeared on the scene an extremely serious and consequential way of thinking, especially in the German world (I am not trying to make connections between National Socialism and the fact that serious thinking was occurring in German-speaking universities- that is a different and very thorny question that has been hashed-out. It is also a political bomb, too charged and easily mishandled. Just an aside, though- French thinkers have a nasty little habit of hidding their debt to German thinkers via a sneaky type of slander that I find incredulous. Example: Bourdieu & Foucault- – the French think in German, as Heidegger noted. And, he is right, I must admit it and call a spade a spade). Psychoanalysis comes out of this period, and it elaborated a whole language for talking about just the sort of thing that Cohen was getting at with his make-up word ‘neurosis.’

So, from Scotland we move to Vienna where we find, of course, the Moses of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, busy at medical school researching neurology- the medical study of the nervous system. In 1885 Freud went to Paris on a travelling fellowship and studied, or observed, the experiments of a neurologist named Charcot who was at the Salpêtrière Hospital (the exact same hospital that I went to have my head stitched-up after my bike accident, and where I had to protest as Doctor Blasé suggested that some assistant, who barely spoke French, was going to stitch my face. Scandal ensued. Even the doctor performed a shit-job. Thankfully, Mathieu’s friend Carol works with Monsieur chirurgie esthétique des stars and Russian oligarchs, and he kindly repaired the hack-job performed by French social security). Where was I? Oh, yeah- Charcot specialised in the study of the type of behaviour that Cohen observed and attributed to neurosis, yet Charcot used the more refined term of ‘hysteria.’ For Charcot, the interesting element of hysteria was its susceptibility to hypnosis, which he demonstrated with patients on stage in front of an audience- all very much a freak-show (recall, we are in the preliminary stages of indentifying our contemporary freaks and perverts). Thus the behaviour caused by neurosis is what Charcot terms hysteria. So, who now arrives on stage – quite literally?: the shaking and howling hysteric, who was, usually female- but this is a whole other batch of apples. Funny to think about it though, in the ancient Greek the term refers to some type of malfunction with the uterus (thus, the hysterectomy).

Freud was impressed with what he observed at Salpêtrière. He returns to Vienna and decided to do what is now termed “switching-majors”: he leaves the research of neurology behind and picks-up the practice of medical psychopathology, which was not even comparable to what we would today consider a coherent discipline of scientific study (if I am right degrees did not even exist for fields such as medical psychiatry- these degrees are new things, too). And here is where my knowledge of the historical development of Freudian psychoanalysis comes to a halt. I have no idea as to how things went. However I have identified the key elements to continue along with my oversimplified exposé. Let me resume: Cohen gives us the disease of the nerves, known as neurosis, observed as a pattern of behaviour. Charcot studied the disease of the psyche and gives us the medical pathology of hysteria, which he goes about treating by accessing the psyche via hypnosis. Freud thinks this is all very interesting and takes a degree in neurology and psychiatry and sets-up shop in Vienna and goes about discovering the organisation of the human psyche, how it operates internally, and how human behaviour both conditions and results from this particular theoretical understanding of human activity, or functioning. Freud reveals his scientific take on the human being via certain clinical techniques designed to demonstrate as well as cure psychopathology.

To shoot straight to the point: the general discourse of psychoanalysis and its off-shoots has been caught-up into our way of looking at and understanding the world we live and ourselves. Yes, this claim is a flippant generalization that is impossible to demonstrate and defend in a paragraph or two on an Internet log. It just is a fact- well, more or less and within a complex development that weaves in and out of preceding ways of thinking about what a human being is, or is for, or how it functions, and what it is doing here, and where here is). Is it not a fact to say that the basic “I” structure is a self? We are all ‘selves’: I am my-self. You are your-self. We together are our-selves. My grandmother was not a self- she would had most likely thought of herself as a soul. Not a self-thing going around.

Well, the question then is what is the self that ‘I’ am? Is it possible to locate an answer to that question? To put it another way: I know that if I fall off my bike and split open my head, I go to the hospital were the doctor disinfects the wound, stitches it up, bandages it, and prescribe me pain killers and antibiotics. Yet, if I sit around all day and smoke fags, start and destroy the same project over and over again, isolate myself, have social anxiety issues, and feel like my head is caught in a tight metallic vice, and all my reading and education and experiences are not helping me to get a handle on the situation, I go to a therapist. Although I suppose that one could join an evangelical protestant mega-church, or seek-out a life coach, or take acting classes. If things are turn unbearably messy, I am bought to a psychiatric clinic. So, if I am in some ‘health’ crisis I seek-out two types of assistance. I am body and self, and each part of me has a dedicated support staff waiting to care for me, whether I am in a bike accident or come down with a bad case of diseased nerves. My ‘self’ can be ‘sick’ in two aspects. The corporal aspect is easy to understand. But, what about the other part of my self, what is this aspect? The activity of caring for the health of the self gives us the basic idea.

How is the hysteric to be understood, explained and cured? Freud thought that the hysterics were caused by some event in the past. He first hypothesised that the hysteric had been sexually abused. The ‘event’ of the abuse that had been experienced, most probably during childhood, had been lived, or suffered, but had been forgotten by the person, pushed aside somehow and somewhere. There is some place in the mental make-up of the hysteric a ‘memory’, which represents a nasty and traumatic experience. The memory exists, though it had been misplaced or lost. The hysteric is manifesting, that is somehow in a bizarre way, remembering, the trauma, but they do not know it, nor do they know why they hysteric. And it is not just the traumas of neurosis- we all have stumble upon our lost experiences in some may: ergo, the phrase “Freudian slip.” I used to refer to my friend Laurent, whom I have known for five years, as Florent, the name of a person with whomI had complex dealings, and had know for, say, a few months, yet years ago. I still muff-up, and Laurent is no longer understanding about it.

The job of analyst is to interpret the physical comportment, or other type of bizarre representation via activity, as indicating the presence of forgotten trauma experiences. The mission is to try to locate these experiences and reveal them- to bring them out into the light of reflection and understanding. Interpretation of forgotten memories set Freud on the trail of dreams. A dream, or what is dreamed, is a representation in or of the psyche, which symbolically relates to or connects to our waking experience and activity. Dreams speak the language of the psyche, the thing that is sick. The theory that Freud arrives at by studying the semiotics of dreams is then applied to the job of interpretating the psyche. Access to the psyche is through an interpretation of symptoms- anxiety, phobias, fears, obsessions, bizarre behaviour, etc., that are the causal corporal expression of the language of spoken by the psyche. The language of dreams thus opens onto a broad and deeper dimension. Upon seeing this terrain, Freud abandons the initial molestation hypothesis. An incident of an isolated act, no matter how terrible, is much too simplistic. Freud takes symptoms to indicate the presence of traumas of very complex experiences lived and located in the past. But sex does not disappear- it becomes the key. The trauma and resulting dysfunctional component essentially is an expression of the libido, or of sexuality writ large- the primary biologically element of the human being. Therefore, a type of innate sexual impulse was somehow and at some time expressed, a disturbing experience occurred (at a much more indirect level than physical abuse) and this experience caused trauma and was forgotten, but still somehow there in the memory, because it is causing symptoms.

What is the cause of the traumatic, forgotten experience? Our innate sexual biological essense as expressed in the activity of desire. We are born with a psyche full of natural, uncivilized, mysterios desire things that cause us to act, or to act-on-impulse. Over infancy and early childhood, the desires we have inside try to express themselves, or start to phone-home and locate the objects of their desire. But, the desire is forbidden fruit. The baby or toddler of even adolescent is reprimanded: we run straight into the wall of our particular cultural way of doing things that prohibits the fulfilling of such desire. We hit rules. You cannot caresses your mother’s breasts, and copulation is certainly out of the question. Neither can you marvel at or touch your father’s penis. You are forbidden to engage with your vagina, penis or your anus, other than for specific and necessary hygienic purposes. The desire impulse is censured, unfulfilled, and it is repressed. Thus our entire, uncivilized psyche is a system of impulsive desiring elements that make-up a type of symbolic libido economy. In expression (natural) of the desire, we are incessantly and repeatedly censured. We are thus socially potty-trained: tamed, that is, civilized, by the continued repression of the innate, natural impulsive sexual desire of our psyche.

Sex points straight to the notion of morality and sin. The psychic apparatus slowly takes-upon the space of the soul, and thus continues on a long discussion that seems to be located, from what I gather, in all the human cultures that are spread-out over the planet. In the West, the notion has been there from the start: the ancient world contained a diverse range of entities that existed in, with or around the physical person, clan, or group. The physical ‘body’ correlates to some other type of ‘body’ or ‘entity’ that continues on after the natural world- or is part of the natural world, or a supernatural dimension of which the ‘real’ flesh and blood world merely is a drab derivative. What counts is the other dimension- the location in it, whether in the ‘now’ or the ‘before’ or the “after’- usually it is where one is heading- destined to- that is the top concern. I do not know what to refer to this thing as- spirit? The Judaeo-Christian tradition, Freud’s tradition, has the soul, which is right there with and in the body. The body has its desires that move to do what such elements do: desire (and the soul had no say in it? – - it just becomes affected by the of behaviour of the flesh? I forget how it works). No matter. In both counts, the activity of desiring is socially undesirable and culturally repressed, that is banished or corrected via some type of normative crackdown. But, not so fastt Freud- and this is one of his big moves- shows that the raw impulses of the primitive psyche did not vanish into thin air. They are a biologically innate and natural part of existence. The hot potatoes may be domesticated, but they are still baking in the oven. How should we refer to the obedience oven? Or where is the furnace located? In the kitchen, of course, with the blenders, beaters, grinders, mashers, pokers and all the other tools of the cavernous canteen of the psychoanalytic unconscious.

I jotted down a phrase of Charlotte Brontë in a journal that is from, I believe, high school- so it must had been lifted from from Jane Eyre, which I read in Dr. Davison’s English class. It reads: ‘The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter — often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter — in the eye.’ I am not quite sure why I remarked the phrase, what, fifteen years ago? It most likely had something to do with the mystique and sensing that herein lied something profound way beyond the confines of my drab and rather maladroit high school dimension. Soul, Unconscious, Truth- I saw something there. Perhaps the word ‘eye’ was connected-up to Betsy’s pipe that we called ‘Betsy’s Third Eye.’

If today I were asked to give my opinion on what Brontë means, I would say that Brontë seems to be playing with the distinction between being conscious and being un-conscious- that is, asleep at the wheel, or worse, having lost consciousness: a dramatic alteration of mental state that involves complete or near-complete lack of responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuli. If I were just now encountering the phrase, say while leafing through the book at the library, my reflexive interpretation would go something like: the soul is an unfathomable, passionate matrix, on the waves of which I, as message corked in a clear glass medicine bottle, am drifting. Yet, though I may be gliding up and down on the seas of the soul- and most of the time I am rather helplessly just bobbing there- I can, nevertheless reflect on the horizon of the sea.

Freud did something along these lines when he deciphered the psychic workings of the self, the core of which is the unconscious. In some odd way, scientific inquiry unlocked a new type of soul or ‘life-energy.” Freud postulated the unconscious part of the human being as a sentient force of will influenced by human drive and yet operating well below the perceptual conscious mind. For Freud, the unconscious is the storehouse of instinctual desires, needs, and psychic actions. While past thoughts and memories may be deleted from immediate consciousness, they direct the thoughts and feelings of the individual from the realm of the unconscious. From my musings thus far, I could day that the unconscious has an essential tripartite structure. The primordial impulses or desires that seek and search pleasure, thus creating animation of some kind, which is the principle activity of the psyche. This activity is an economy of libido impulses that are repressed and tamed in socialization. The whole process of normalisation is what fuels the mysterious mechanic construct of the psychic apparatus. (It must be said that my sarcastic résumé does not take into account the very complex theory of the mental or psychic part of the self- there is the movement between various levels, the unconscious, the preconscious, the conscious- it is all very complex indeed).

The activity of understanding and thinking, of making sense of the self and the world- or of becoming a self- is fired by deep, inner impulses that react against, or interact with, the objective world via the interface of the physical body and basic sense perception. However, a self does not simply manoeuvre reality in constant impulsive reactions in timeless epilepsy. The deep, inner impulses have, over the process of delineation and repression, become represented in the mental world via the interaction with the objective, outside world. Desires have been sublimated and given some type of objective image. Desire becomes fixed. What happens, though, if the desire gets hooked-up to something that, well, it does not (really) desire? Or if things went wrong somewhere and the wires got crossed and one of the deep, biologically necessary impulses latched onto an object (wrong or right) and refuses to let go? Or the poor hysterics, who suffered some horrible trauma, and now their sexual mechanisms are misfiring? The desire force is either bottled-up, unable to go about fixing to its proper objects, or attached to some incorrect object, and the self starts to rot away in anxiety and neurosis. The unconscious system of stable representations and meaning is off kilter. The conflicted relationship with the father becomes mis-translated as a phobia of men with authority. Or, the tainted impulse becomes a unwieldy weapon, sticking to objects that have nothing to do with what it ‘really’ needs, and locking the self in a pattern of painful wanting and latching as if it were licking the flagpole in the school yard during winter: the hot, fleshy want of the tongue gets stuck to some cold, metallic, impersonal surface. Either one stays it out and waits for the thaw, missing arts and crafts or the school social, or else the principle calls the fire department and a whole mess of people get involved and one’s licking is exposed. There is the self that licks. Yeah, that one, right there.

One can freeze in place. The fixing becames fixation upon something. Which is just a derivate activity caused by some impulse missing the mark, or some twisted memory, or fear or shame or hate…..the list goes on and is well known…..Something in me is off and I am going around in circles licking flagpoles covered in frost. It is not that funny. It is much more serious than a hankering for licking flagpoles. The activity of lapping-up frozen flagpoles might be some type of occasional eccentricity, to be carried out in covert operations- like improper public genitalia exposure or kleptomania. Flagpoles are rather hard to come by, too. Depending on the geographical location, the supply would be quickly exhausted and one would have to travel further and further distances. Or, as in the case of flashing or shoplifting, if the secret symptom got out and came to the attention of the crowd, one would swiftly be taken into care and physically restrained by outside authority. Authority would have no trouble with interpreting the deeper workings of the self that goes about licking poles, either, as they can read the hieroglyphics of male generative power: the phallus, the symbol to beat all symbols.

Just as the hysteric, the pole licker or public pervert would cause too much trouble and would require intervention. The ruckus would trigger a response. The sick would be tended. Things get tricky when neurosis is just part and parcel to the pattern of everyday, normal life. The put-it-right people do not swoop-in and take responsibility for things when neurosis is disguised in the ordinary habitudes of the daily going-ons, when it is merely there keeping its hat on and the lid in place just enough to keep the demons from wiggling free. Debilitating neurosis is cultured in a banal Petri dish. Slow pain at the level of just-tolerable-enough breeds the world that becomes more and more monochrome. Time weakens down to a the repeating season when one just keeps bumping into things or showing up late after everyone is gone. Locked in this pattern, one is moving in the immobile and fixed there in the cross-stitch.

This morning, the one I am still in, the morning of the 27th of June, 2007, I woke-up in a full and fast start – or rather, I just all-of-a-sudden-was, lying there in a type of quick and vacuous lucidity.  It was an instant. And there was much going on all at once. I am not quite sure what to make of it yet. But I feel it, if you know what I mean.I remember thinking that I had never woken in this way and I sort-of just looked at what was occurring there: being wide-awake and right in front of a pack of very familiar looking thought-things spread out before me.. I was in some way engaged with each one because I saw each one as a vague entity right there along with the others, floating masses of marbled colours sliding over back and around each other in a Calderesque type of suspension.  Each one stood apart and had a certain familiarity. I had never seen then before, all together, not like this, right there moving in front of me.   So, that is what you look like? Or, better, that is what you are, after all?

These thought-things has a type of personality- they had a make-up and character about them. They were not just there as mere abstract, cartoonish ‘things’ or ‘creatures.’ Nor were they dreams. The dreams existed in the space, too, but they where dissolving the way images on damaged video melt, break apart and disappear. I had been dreaming, though, and I remember the dreams, which I will get to in a moment. The thought-things had a permanence and continuity that had nothing to do with dreams. No. They were not thought-things, this phrase does not get-at them. They were like components,  each with its own complexity and situatedness. And, oddly, a type of logic that made me regard them as having a personality, or personable characteristics – perhaps I could say they were these things there in front of me that had meaning, or represented some type of meaning-complex, similar to the way the gods personified emotions and moods. Yet, these were problems-before-me, and not moods- or, if they were moods, they are the type that have settled in and that colour the world by drowning out all colour. They were each one a complex situation of  and in my situation.

It was as if I had never been asleep, and I just was there in my bed, with my arthritic throbbing knees. I began to sweat. My involvement with what I was seeing broke with the distraction, from the outside, of my body sensations and then an impulse of getting the time.  There was morning light behind the blinds and I saw faded paint on the ceiling. The spectacle withdrew. I was overtaken with a sense of a grasp on whatever it was that was going-on and had been going-on with me. But, I was completely unclear, which was all right, and in fact, rather soothing. Nothing was meant to be clear-cut or explicit. The important thing is that there was showing-up.  What I noticed was there for disclosing.  I had made the personal acquaintance of things that I could now, vaguely, grasp: the shifting whats of the whatever has been going-on.

Like I said, I had been dreaming, too. The dreaming existed-in with the thought-things I was encountering.  All the images where moving together- though the thought-things were not dreams. They were real, and I sensed the difference.  I was dreaming of the lake in the town where my parents grew-up in Connecticut. The town is East Hampton, though it is not east, but west of the town of Hampton, which is some small village in Eastern Connecticut that has a house known as “the house that the woman built”. Why have I retain this fact, which I never knew I had?

At the time when my grandmothers where alive, when I was young and my mother would still visit my Aunt Liz each Wednesday, I remember driving to East Hampton, crossing the blue steel bridge in Middletown that was built by the Bill Aragoni’s father,  following route 66, rounding the curve where one of my grandfather’ truckers went over the edge, past the sigh that reads “East Hampton, Belltown, USA”, and by a lake, which can be glimpsed between nondescript buildings, the type that house pizzerias or video stores. In the centre of the lake, to the right, are two small islands, floating next to each other- rounded, pointed mounds, covered in trees and large rocks, the type of large rocks that I learned in grade school had been dug up and dragged from the arctic by expanding glaciers, and left behind as the ice receded, deposited in slow, jagged randomness.

The lake is named Lake Pocotopaug.  When I was young, and unable to get the pronunciation of the lake down, I called it lake Pok-a-Dot.  New England is covered with lake, ponds and rivers that are designated by what they now call “aboriginal” place names, such as Wononskopomuc Pond or Lake Chaubunagungamaugg. But, Pocotopaug was not so much a pronunciation problem, as it was designation problem. I was more confused as to what such a bizarre word meant or pointed to and could not get my mind around it. It was a nothing word.  When my mother told me that Pocotopaug was the name of an Indian Princess who had been sacrificed by her tribe to appease the spirit of the lake, I had no more problem with pronunciation It was the lake were Princess Pocotopaug was drowned.  The legend- there is more to it, but I forget- gave the whole image- lake, distant islands, dark water- a type of appeal.  I enjoyed to myself looking at the lake as we drove by, and thinking of spirits and Indian princess being drowned. All that glimpsed between pizza parlours and video stores.
Later, sometime, when I was old enough to be informed of, and be expected to adhere to, the facts, I learned that my mother had got it wrong as to the name. Pocotopaug is a word from the local Wangunk Indians and it means something along the lines of “the lake with pierced islands” or the “divided pond”. I wonder who enlightened me? I would say it was one of the many uncles or grandfathers or half something-or-others from within our tribe, during some picnic or wake (the funeral home was on a hill leading down to the lake).  There was no sacrificial Indian Princess, just like there are no Guardian Angels Santa Clauses, or other types of hocus-pocus. And, in any event, the lake is polluted because of the sewage run-off, which has contributed to a terrible problem of algae-bloom problem. And the fish are dying.

Lake Pocotopaug is not just a lake. It is a place, one of those places that was a type of vacation destination up until, say, the early 60′s’ when people started to be much more mobile- motoring about great distances in their new cars, or better still, jetting-off in big and fast planes to areas of the country that were once all very distant, yet are now much closer and, moreover, affordable.  I would say that it was around this time that the  ‘destination’ vacation emerged, and the further and farther, well, all the better. Places like Lake Pocotopaug are no longer desirable.  Just like the Frank Davis camp resort on the Salmon River, where my mother worked during high school selling their famous eclaires, Lake Pocotopaug was a left behind and over-looked part of the landscape. It was, in all respects, faded. The cabins around the lake, the small and simple camp-like hotels with canoes painted in Indian themes, the cracked tennis courts with no nets and the unkempt miniature golf course, all slipped into the background, lingering on in the level of slow decay, and taking-up a meaning of the past, or how it use to be, or what one used to do then, as opposed to now. These elements are the unused parts of another world, still there, still right in front of me, but from other time. This is what I began to find fascinating. If there is not angry water spirit to whom Princess are sacrificed, the lake is haunted by the memories of what used-to-be.

Lake Pocotopaug was the theme of my dream. Everything I felt or thought about it was present all at once in the atmosphere. In my dream, the lake was surrounded by a type of kiddie rail road, the type that are at theme parks and that you see photos of on brochures announcing fun for everyone. There was no train; only the tracks remained, worn and covered in weeds. I just observed these tracks. The rails were painted a faded red. Now, what are these tracks doing here?  I was then staring at a map of the area, the type of map one finds of a developed beach community, all little roads running in certain directions.  In the centre of the map here was bright star designating the house of some girl, or the family of some girl. I was going to go to this house to “block-up” the girl somehow, to scold her- she was somehow going against the community and she needed to be corrected.  I was not alone, but part of a group or witch-hunt.  However, I never went because the scene suddenly switched. I was no longer floating above Lake Pocotopaug. I was now at an airport. I had, I believe, been there for some time. I was sitting in the passenger waiting area. It was dark, yet outside the windows I could see the bright cement tarmac and blue sky. What was I doing here? I was trying to figure it out. Had I missed a plane? Was there are plane here? It was as if I had no place to go. Two people, middle-aged couple dressed for tennis approached me and asked me about the flight from Pittsburgh to Washington. I thought it was odd to be asking me such a question. I told them they had missed their flight- it had already left. It was somewhere at this moment that I woke-up.

As I mentioned before, the dream sequence was playing in a type of faded foreground through which I could see, or through which were revealed, the thought-things, all arranging, moving and soliciting me. The dream vaporised, or vanished- the veil I was watching the background through, on which the dream was playing-out, simply dissolved away, and what was left was the bright, bouncing entities of the background, all alive and engaging and somewhat strangely amusing. The colours were vivid: bright white light- it made me thing of the bright, lit-up backdrop of a Calder mobile at the Museum of Modern Art. In an instant I seized them somehow, or I connected to them- they disclosed themselves to me and I sort-of, in a way, understood them, but in the sense of just ‘getting-it.’ This is the moment when I was pulled out very forcefully and awoken. Energy moved quickly through me, but not really through my body, but all around and in me things were amplified.  I had been jump-started, or jump-startled. That is exactly what the experience felt like. I hesitate between the meaning that jump-started gives: resuscitation, re-energized, bought back to life, etc. And the meaning that jump-startled conveys: much of the same as jump-started but with an overtone of fear connected to anxiety. I used the word startled because the force I felt was surprising, frightening, overwhelming and, moreover and most importantly, shocking: in the sense of being shocked by being ejected or propelled from a car seat or; better from a carnival ride that abruptly comes to a halt.  This was the sensation of the animating force. It was as if in wakening I fell back to my self and then was thrown out of myself and propelled out of my bed and into the world of my apartment.

(Odd, as I write, Sunny and Cher’s “I’ve got You, Babe” is making its way over to me from somewhere outside in the street and Sunny and Cher are giving it more than just an encore:  the song is being played over and over…”I’ve got you to understand…I’ve got you to hold me tight I’ve got you, babe…With you I cannot go wrong…” Oh, here it goes again- from the beginning…”I’ve got you, babe…I’ve got to talk to me They say our love will not pay the rent I’ve got you to love me so” I wonder what is making this song to be played over and over again? What is it doing for someone? Or, what is some doing with it? Or, am I hearing voices- this would not be a far-fetched hypothesis…This not possible, here we go for a fourth encore! Is someone trying to say something? Am I not getting something, here- worse, do I start to think about signs and omens?! Please, if these sort of thing occur, not Sunny and Cher, this would be too painful.  Yet, it could be worse: John Denver could be singing Country Roads.  Have I angered the lake spirit and thus need to sacrifice an aborigine? No! This is not well: here they go for a fifth encore……. This calls for investigation and out-the-window snooping…………..I have confirmed the source: the girl across the street to the left on the third floor who has the parties and does just this type of thing- plays song after song, the types that are embedded into one’s memory by osmosis, and that the liquored-up have the bad habit of getting to singing. I should have known it was her. Now, this does provide me with a descent metaphor to work with in explaining my experience: the continuously looping scenario. This phenomenon has been occupying my mind lately, and I have some observations to make regarding the “press repeat and play” syndrome: for it is a syndrome, and it will allow me to transition from my morning experience into my discussion of neurotic time.

Getting back to my experience of this morning: My encountering with the thought-things. Wait, this does not seem like a useful term to use as the notion of a ‘thought-thing’ conjures up a more traditional notion of a ‘thought’ or a ‘mental’ representation with some type of meaning and intentional content, as if I encountered some kaleidoscope of magical propositions and I understood their meaning or significance. That is, that some deep, hidden truth was revealed under the veil of the dream. No, this is not at all what I mean, nor what I gathered from the experience. I am going to provisionally term the ‘thought-thing’: complex, coloured, moving, alive, clusters of Ways of going about. Ways is good. It works.

Again, I did not understand the Ways in a type as clear nor explicit. I just came a-way with a sense of their presence being there around me and with me; as Ways of the situation.  I also had the experience of, somehow, having caught sight of them, which allowed me to sense how the Ways are shaping the way-of the situation. Indeed, they are my way of going about my experience of living- that is seeing and understanding.  They are the ways in which I am attuned to (or tuned-in-to, or out-of, I am not sure which), how I encounter, and how I make sense of the world.

I am stuck in what I have designated as the  “press-play-repeat” syndrome. I fell into a narrative that plays over and over in my head, or that is projected ad nauseum onto the world (but, it is not the world, it is just something in it that has taken over, like a evil weed). Everything takes on meaning in the terms of this narrative. It has a plot, it has subplots, and it has roles and scenarios. It is, furthermore, portable and recyclable: it has countless beginnings and an endings, similar to the novels that allow you to pick a page to go to at the end of each section so as to finish the story with a different twist: but, it is still the same general story that is being told, and the fact that it is malleable makes it every more conducive to continuous re-staging. It staves off a conclusion.  Thus things play out according to the script, which is very well rehearsed. The general theme also, it turns out, is the quite commonplace one of being ‘without direction,’ but in a type of knowing directionless-ness- a feigned sense of being unable to cope, much like the comportment of a hypochondriac.  There is a shifty, rather bizarre way of knowingly acting out the pulling the wool over one’s eyes. This phenomenon is very odd indeed. Moreover, it is shameful to catch one’s self in its enacting, as well a embarrassing to admit to. It is the ‘woe is me’ attitude. This stance is a disguise.

By being directionless (or, being dis-oriented-ness) I do not wish to imply the notion of being lost. Lost suggests that a type nervous drifting about from here and there in world without a clue of what is occurring. Lost is failure to attempt to gain a clear understanding of my condition. It is consumed in a certain type of distraction that disguises as fulfilment and understanding. I am not reaching out for and grasping at odds and ends and trying to arrange some type of meaning bric-a-brac, that is I am not attempting to locate under something or in somewhere a value:  I am not in need of values positing. Nor do I need to dig down deep and obtain some level of self-awareness.  In any event, I am not sure what this notion of ‘self’ is, and I am very unclear as to the phenomenon of self would look like. I am not sure that an attempt to isolate and localise what it is that I “am” is viable. I am not convinced that it is possible to identify hidden causes, or ‘things’ at the level of a subconscious. No, lost implies being broken but continuing on with out really knowing what is going on. A type of groping in constant distraction. All that to say that I am hoping for neither an exorcism nor a revelation: this thirst seems to be more a response to what I gather being lost is like, and a reason to continue being lost, too, perhaps. In fact, I have somewhat of a comfortable familiarity with lost-ness, so it is not a problem. I am also thinking that being lost would mean I am needing to be found. That I am not even there. Perhaps one could say that I am at a loss. Or that I am lost in?

The issue seems to be how I go about seeing, acting and what then shows-up for me as being meaningful, or how and in what light things show up s being anything at all.  Here is where the Ways that I met this morning come into the picture. I experienced a shock, one that seems to be related to a type of ‘surprise’ or ‘startled’ reaction to seeing something that has been there but was going along un-noticed, or that was so obtrusive that it was all but impossible to see it. Getting into a type of distance with the Ways, allowed me to see that my overall sense, or habits, guided by the Ways, or, a certain way of the Ways, have created a core pattern that has slowly closed me off from meaningful activity and confined me to certain twilight-zones, each defined by a type of absurd distraction-device. The general sense I have is that I am caught-up into certain Ways of going about coping, encountering, seeing and finding meaning in (making-meaningful) the world and myself.  That is, I have a certain style of existence coated in a type of anxiety that I feverishly clinch to: I hold on so tight (but, to what, to the anxiety? Or, to a sense of potential missing of familiar anxiety?) This holding onto anxiety, in fact, this feeding on anxiety, causes paralysis. It serves as a type of fuel that maintains patterns of action: repeated patterns of going-about things. I am thus pre-occupied with anxious clinging and not letting go, which creates disorientation and disequilibrium.

The question then becomes:  What purpose is this pattern of activity serving? Does it have a purpose?  Why keep it around? Just for kicks? Thrills (this could be a hypothesis). What then, seems to be the issue here?  I somehow took two basic tasks, or situations, reacted to them in a problematic way, and allowed them to take on proportions that then took on the function of a type of existential chain weighing me down. I see what I did. I have no idea why, though. I just see it. Quite simply, I allowed one minor project to become a herculean task, one never to be completed, or continuously re-worked, so as not to move on afterward, because I saw no afterward. I was not “being” anything that directed me forward out and into something or somewhere. Now, this project-distraction-devise, or scandal, then coincided with a health problem that I let spiral way out of proportion. The affects were spectacular, to say the least.  Things in general became unbearable and overwhelming.  The dilly-dallying over getting things done and finding a next step, already a melodrama, ballooned into full-on invasion: my body and my mind were out of control- and there seemed to be no viable solution. I literally was trapped in a body that caused me pain, pain that make me frantic, and from there, well; it was all just a bunch of running in circles. Enough said- this is my narrative. Everything has to fit into this way I am arranging how thing were and are going, and why they are the way they are.

It seems that I desired it to become so to handicap myself, in a way. But I have a suspicion that I may have been playing around in a rather dangerous way too. Perhaps I just sort wanted to sit there helplessly and stare at myself without the faintest idea of what to do.  I became- I am still, to a certain degree- trapped in these two domains. They are, literally, like two cement blocks, each one encasing one of my feet. I am grounded, but I cannot move. I can see, but I cannot touch.  I have become isolated-off in a type of holding pattern of oddness. I am, in a way, or my behaviour in regards to these issue, is an oddity. In fact, I have the suspicion that I am rather waiting to see what I do next. I am an inverted voyeur. The funny thing about it all is that I posses every capability to correct the issues. In fact, I confidently posses skills that could be put to very good use, and to manufacture my own cheerfulness.  Yet I do not cultivate them, I let them linger on……….I allow then to go unexpressed, un-exercised. I thus remain inactive. I linger: I literally just hang about staring at the world as it moves along, month into month merging into year after year: it has been years. And this is where we get to the phenomenon of neurotic time.  And I will have to save the topic of neurotic time for another discussion. Time is up.

Bonjour, ma poule. He is in the bathroom, lying on his stomach, reading more Heidegger. The back is dodgy today and sitting in a chair is quite uncomfortable. The back, oh, the back- my maladie de Scheuemann. I never really told you about the back did I? Well, it is complex, but not life-threatening. As with many types of osteo-muscular complications, especially hereditary complications, there are many issue associated into one larger problem that one can never quite get clear about.

I have Scheuermann’s disease (or Scheuermann’s kyphosis) which occurs when the front of the upper spine does not grow as fast as the back of the spine, so that the vertebrae become wedge-shaped, with the narrow part of the wedge in front. The wedge-shape of the vertebra creates an increase in the amount of normal kyphosis. I also have degenerative disk disease and Schmodorls’s Nodules (I am not sure the spelling is correct) that is, many of my disks, especially in the thoracic region, are herniated up into the vertebrae and not out into the spine tissue (as in normal herniated disks) These nodules are a result of the kyphosis; the two problems usually go hand-in-hand (or disk-to-disk). I also have Osteoarthritis, and a certain form of it, known as Ankylosing spondylitis, which, as Christine would say, is “not cute!” (Though, I do not test for the gene, which caused confusion in the beginning, but I have all the symptoms, so I am treated as if I have it, at least for the time being. That is, Dr. Agnès Chabot, my rhumatologist – (though her speciality is the hand, not the back, and she is chef-de-service at Lariboisière in this regard- doctors and the French medical system will be the subject of a detailed analysis much later, but I do not have the time to get-into that complicated and annoying subject)- cannot say for sure that I have it, because I have been tested twice and they did not find the tracer gene. However, the inflammation, the fusion, etc., leads her to treat it as such, or to approach the issue as such, just to be cautious. In any event, Ankylosing spondylitis is is a type of arthritis that primarily affects the spine. In ankylosing spondylitis, the joints and ligaments that normally let the back move become inflamed. Since it is osteoarthritis, I also have, generally, joint pain, mostly in my knees. This is a side affect (rare, but not uncommon) of the Kyphosis- the joint pain shows up in my knees. It is horrible because there is nothing I can really do about it- the meds do not help. Also, a rather nasty rash much like that caused by poison ivy can appear on the kneecaps.

Enough of the hypochodiratic dribble (I really have to be careful, as during period when I did not know what was going on, I was continuously describing my issues…this discourse became old quickly).

So then, I also quite like being in the bathroom. I feel cooler, as it seems the heat of my body is absorbed by the tile and the ceramic. Furthermore, it is much like a cocoon. A closed-off region where I can slip into a calmer mode. And there is the smell of soap and bath products, inducing a sense of cleanliness.

The more I read of Heidegger, the more I see a way of coming to a rather interesting historical interpretation. I did not write that phrase correctly (journal writing via the keyboard is much too fast for reflection and, I believe, some induces simplification of wording. Yet, for mapping ideas, the keyboard is quite good, that is, when one has to just get-it-out quickly and in a flow, usually some simplified symbolic hieroglyphics to be deciphered later in deeper reflection).

I am trying to get my mind around Heidegger’s notion of space and spaciality. The section in Sein und Zeit in which Heidegger demonstrates space and spaciality is fundamentally unclear, so I am relying on Dreyfus’s wonderful commentary on Division I of Sein und Zeit.

Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is providing me with a base from which to approach his later thought, or the historical perspective of later Heidegger, which has greatly influenced my thinking. No, I should rephrase that, too: Heidegger is giving me eyes to see with, but these eyes, well, they are not what normally I would call “eyes”, not organs or biological entities to perceive- no, more a sense. I am still a neophyte when it comes to Herr Heidegger. Further, I was not trained in philosophy, though I do have a sense of the tradition in the West, as much as anyone who had a broad education in the humanities. I do become lost here and there, most especially as I do not know the intricacies of the details- and the devil is always in the details, or, at least, being away of the details and keeping one’s eye upon them.

There is much to say regarding Heidegger and how I am thinking in generally. Those of my friends who study Heidegger may find my observations rather banal (I am sure I will regard the as so in retrospect). Lukas is reading philosophy in Germany with a keen focus on Heidegger. He is much more knowledgeable than I, and our email discussions are most interesting.

Apologies as to the spelling and grammar- in fact, I cannot locate the spell-check option in this blog application, and as it has signaled that all my worlds are incorrectly spelled, I am just going to publish the post- I could be bothered, really.

I have finally decided to expose, or better, to join in on the massive show-’n-tell. What does this mean? Well, perhaps that I am bored. Perhaps too, that I am looking to procrastinate. Maybe I just want to try and communicate. But to whom? Or to what and to what-end? Well, these are questions that will work themselves out as things go-along, or if they even do go-along.

In the first instance, I would say that I am communicating to/with myself via the sensation that exposure, or certain exposure, brings: I am posting my meanderings out there in the electronic public thing. In theory, any one any where could read this, no? It is a funny type of fire side de chat. Come, let me invite you into my parlour and I will tell you how Iive. But, no one is there is the real sense: there is not physicality. I have not stage fright, which I most certainly would have if I had to read my entries in a Stade de France bursting  with internet users. And me in the center, with a bright shining light and reading into a microphone. Now, that woudl be something: it would be thrilling, too.

The possibility is still there, the stage-like or theatre quality, mixed with the intimate. I take stock of what I am writing because it becomes charged with a type of responsibility or seriousness that it would not have if, say, I were simply jotting down ideas in my journal with the good ‘ole fashioned tools of  pen, ink  and paper. Journal writing does not have the Peeping-Tom element that heightens the sensibilities- like changing your cloths amongst a group of strangers, say like in the locker room: there is just that added sense of being aware of things and of catching yourself being sensible at or too certain moments. Or being sensible to the perceived sensibility of others, given the situation.

I also tend to be less forthright with things when I write in a journal: I do not disclose, I re-write it as I want it to be- that is, I tweak things to make me feel better. (but isn’t this what we are always doing?) In a journal, I am not really observing things (not that some type of third person observation stance is possible nor really what is required or good). It just seems that I am making it my-way in the attempt to make-sense of it all and to somehow feel better,  as if I had some type of control over what is going-on. Electronic posting would seem to solicit the same way type of fabrication: but, that is just it. For me, it is the anonymous expose that makes me more inclined to take it all off, to try and get-at-it. It is more exiting to do it this way, no? It is more, say, honest, but not in the moral sense. Much more so than in keeping a dairy- the computer software of the blog people keeps changing dIary to dAiry.

I also tend to slip into the basic mode of the Diarist: a simple shopping list of events: today I did this or that.  Add to this laundry list of going-abouts I then attach (when deemed necessary) an observation of my emotion, or some type of observation,  or even a judgement of the event or of others. In this sense, I am gossiping to myself about myself. In any event, I do not find the exercise fulfilling: I usually tend to go about it in fits and starts. Perhaps it is just that I am not a very good journal keeper. Or diarist. My notion of the form never seemed to evolve out of the simple elementary school child “what I did today” or “what I want for Christmas” style.  Furthermore, and going-along-with  this elementary sense of the exercise as being something imposed- as a-task-to-do – is the more basic sense that I feel somewhat compelled to keep a diary or journal, or that I should be doing so: it is a good thing and sensible, what respectable and reflective folk do: what a certain type of person should do to have a sense of depth and a sense of sensibility- or being sensible. (nb: I sometimes feel this sense of duty to read the Economist to ‘keep-up’ on affairs, and this would connect to some type of being armed for making conversation. Though I do like to read the news, just not everyday). The dairy as task  is “my history,” and I can accumulate layer upon layer (or page after page) and stack them up somewhere and gaze at them.  Or, keeping a dairy is part of the ‘task’ (again, this notion of ‘task’) of  ‘getting-in-tough-with’ (with what?), or the way to get deeper into the mysteries of my-going-ons, the going-ons of the world and my epoch, or my Time and my Times.  It is some type of espionage, or inspection,  or discipline, of my actions (exteriour)  and my emotions (interior). Dairies in the sense of task are like confessionals. They are not really like stories. You are not supposed to be doing fiction when your do a dairy, you are supposed doing a type of auto-biography- a telling of the truth- that is why it is under lock and key: the truth is not to be told! Stories are much more fun, and, perhaps, much more truthful, depending on what sense of truth is being used.    Stories, though,  would be filed under the creative writing section of elementary school activities.  Not the “keeping your daily log” section- Yes!, that is it: in elementary school we kept logs. A further reason to not care for the word blog: it relates to a log.

All that to say that perhaps the added dimension of some other eyes will make things more interesting. A dairy is, essentially, for my eyes only: it is private. Lock and key. Remember the locked diaries that one was given as a youngster? The fake leather with gold embossing and the flimsy keys. “My Secrets.” And these things just begged for search and seizure!  Exposure! I confess! We always were trying to find so-n-so’s  diary (because, so-n-so always let it be known that such a thing existed, therefore raising suspicions- or temptations, a type of dare). And we did succeed at locating a few secret dossiers.  The exposure of  grade school dairies was without severe consequences- it was more of a property issue and respecting these rights: it dealt with private things and space and keeping your hands to yourself. It was equated to shoplifting or stealing. And punishement was usually involved, somehow, and shaming. The diary was to be regarded as a valuable, like money, and therefore all the norms applied to money were to be deployed. You cannot steal someone’s secrets, it is not your property, but theirs. In high school, though, the consequences were much more brutal!- but, in the cases I am thinking of, the persons wished to get caught.There are some very interesting stories to be told in regards to high-school dairy exposure, stories that evolved over months if not years, with spectacular grand finales.

Back to the justificatin of the exercise. Posting random thoughts on the internet via a blog (I mentioned my dislike for the word blog.  Lets just get it straight-  I really do not care for the world blog. And for one reason:  the phonetics of the word give me the creeps, in the same way that some people cannot stand the scratching of fingernails on a blackboard: I never understood this reaction and thought is was all just silly over-reacting). Yet I can relate to it in my reaction to the phonetics of certain words. Example: Blog. It conjures up a host of images that I do not like to associate with what blog is, or refers to.  Blog seems to feel like a mud puddle in a farm,  the trough in Charlotte’s Web. Mush. Or an entity on Star-Treck. Further, it seems to have been forced upon me as some type of phrase coined by by a group of people with their own silly lingo that is just plain silly, but then we are all forced to use it. Much like when some political group renames a street or a square after some hero of theirs. Usually the name is hard to pronounce, too. I feel infringed upon when these re-christenings take place. Here is a rather larger-than-life example-  the Bibliothèque nationale de France is referred to (again, depending on whom and where) as Bibliothèque François Mitterand. Well, it is not his library. It is the National library. Furthermore, the site is “Tolbiac” or “François Mitterand,” as regards the location or the physical building (much like a university building beeing named after a donor).  lt is not Mitterand’s library- his wife auctioned that off, along with his hat.  Not that I have anything against Mitterand. It is just that he gets in the way, and it is usually by others using his name, and not him. He is dead.

So, lets get on with it:  I renounce for my eyes only and I open it up to your eyes only, who-ever you are and where-ever you might be. Perhaps the for my eyes only via for your eyes only will aid in making things more clear via the stare factor.

* Last: The entries (as may have been noticed) are just flows of thought. They are not edited (unless things just make no sense whatsoever). I type very quickly, the thoughts just sort-of come out. I also do not like to go back-over. I am not completing my homework for the creative writing class that I am taking as a ‘fun’ elective to open-me-up to being creative and artsy.  I am just chatting away as the mind wonders.

* * Last & Least:  grammar & syntax (G&S) are very much not my thing. Neither is Spelling.  Nor again is “editing”- at least when it comes to myself and to what I say and write. Already the software is letting me know that I have misspelled many words, and it has asked me to reconsider my tense usage. This checking-up-on is annoying: I will have to disable the electronic grammar police. My dear friend Kate S.  tells me that I need to edit. Kate is the one to whom I submit things for proofing, things such as cover letters and those types of exercises, which I find to be very hard to pay attention to. She is  a good editor because she is not pushy or trying to make things un-my-style. So, that said, I do not really apologize in advance for my mistakes: in fact, they may be good, because if you (or I) cannot figure out the sense of the meaning, or if you (or I) – if we-  stumble upon a syntactic bump in the road, we will have to re-think things and take another look. All that is good. Once-in-a-while. If perturbations were continuous, then it would enter some type of  epileptic dimension or even the pathological.

Alors, ça commence….Et on verra