a man yells

in my direction

—spare some change?

he wears a kilt

—hey, dude

over jeans

—i ain’t doin’ so hot

& work boots

—dude

he must weigh

300 lbs

—talkin’ to you

& keeps a dog

—you glasses-wearin’

by the fur of his neck

—motherfucker

i stepped thru the bubble

two streets ago

i can tell, now:

the cleanest storefront

offers cheesesteak

with waffles

& the men inside

stare, transfixed

behind their paper-bagged

beers.

i hide my map

& turn

the corner.

finally, a familiar face:

the benjamin franklin

impersonator.

His brush dipped in water, the Master practices calligraphy on a wooden log. As he moves from symbol to symbol, his previous inscriptions dry and fade. Every word is absolutely transient. And yet, he continues repeatedly to trace the outlines of the same words, as if mad with a delusory promise of permanence. But he is so implacable, so calm, steady. Transience is no objection, for the Master. In fact, far from an objection, transience is actually the condition of his art—for the log is finite, and permanence would bring an end to his practice. That his words fade makes possible their ceaseless re-inscription. A repetition almost mad, wholly Sisyphean, completely allegoric: is this not the nature of all action? That the implications of our actions fade means that we can continue to act. For if it were otherwise, we would suffer the endless consequences of an initial upsurge into the world—like a pebble dropped into a lake so impossibly still that it sets off an endless cascade of ripples. On the contrary, we seldom paint as if on a blank canvas. Instead, to act is to rearrange a collage of paint, to graffiti a gas-mask over the almost reverential solitude of a previous work. It is to re-inscribe oneself on top of one’s past selves. It is to constantly re-create: to ceaselessly become, not ex-nihilo, but rather as if by means of the broom with which Bacon would cover a canvas with washes of colour before setting to the task of actually painting on them—as if there could ever be so neat a separation between one and the other. Life, just like the canvas, and just like the Master’s log, is finite; and everything we inscribe upon it, every movement through it, is marked by an unavoidable transience. The rhythms of love are also marked by a similar finitude, a fact Sappho knew well in forsaking the tears of her lover and calling for joy to take their place. But—oh—how difficult it is. The task, then, is not to lament this fact, but rather to celebrate it. And in so doing, we place ourselves among good company: Sisyphus, the Master, Bacon, Sappho. Living, thinking, painting, loving—respectively. This is always easier said than done. Always. But that doesn’t make the insight any less important. Or any less necessary.

Of course, one can go too far, setting finitude in harsh relief against the rapturous luminosity of infinity. This is the Christian error: painting life with the brush of dim regret beside which the hereafter is made to take on a redemptive quality. No longer, on this picture, need we celebrate finitude. It is, instead, something to trudge through on one’s way to infinity. It stands testament to the importance of Deleuze that he was able to place the two on equal footing. But I digress.

There is a fine line between totalization and absolute negation. I’m watching a movie about solitude and self-denial, defined by two characters: a monk and his disciple. As the disciple matures, he falls in love with a woman, and wants to renounce everything in the pursuit of her. The Master tells him that lust is the desire to possess, a desire that can lead all too easily to the intent to murder. It struck me as Buddhist hyperbole. And, sure enough, the disciple does forsake his Buddhism for his love-interest, a broken endeavour that leads to disappointment and, ultimately, murder. But how is it that one translates so easily into the other? It’s 5AM, and I’ve been on a bus for almost 8 hours now, so these thoughts are probably incoherent. In any case, this movie recalled another, a particularly mediocre, made-for-television comedy in which a husband obsesses over the fidelity of his wife, an obsession that leads him to install a tracking device in her phone. The morale is a familiar one—and yes, one more prominent in Proust than in bad film, but so be it: you can’t ever reach total security; it’s wholly elusive. You’re suspicious of your spouse, so you follow her around. You see her eating lunch with someone else, so you try to overhear a conversation. Now you’re really worried, so you start to read her e-mails. Listen in on her calls. But it’s never enough. You can’t ever get inside the mind of another and so you can’t ever totalize his or her activities—it’s an endeavour doomed from the outset. At a certain point, you need to just be able to let things be, to renounce your maddening drive for total security, total possession, and let things take the course that they will. In the movie (the first one), the disciple strives for this totalization, but his love-interest denies it outright: she opts for another man. And there it is: the desire for possession, denied its object, falls back into the intent to murder. In other words, when you can’t totalize, you negate. He can’t have her, and so he kills her. I like this lesson: maybe it’s misguided to monitor everything, to route your home security through your smart-phone and maintain a sleepless vigil for the sake of your car, maybe it’s misguided to want to know everything your significant other does for the sake of your jealousy—because this desire for totalization can turn too easily into its negative opposite: negation. Totalization is ceaseless, never-ending, impossible: you can never have enough security cameras, you can never know enough about your spouse. And the sleepless desire for more is hounded by its dark counterpart. So the morale is: relax. I guess. I don’t really know anymore. I can’t sleep.

i tried to build

a glacier in my chest

out of the scraps

once left there.

as if ice could work

that way.

but cracking feels a lot like boiling, these days

                                      and there is

                             a puddle around you.

Today:
I have messy hair,

and a scratchy throat.
The skin behind my left ear is itchy,

and I don’t know what to do.
I ate a banana.

I drank a beer.
I put on a record,

I lit a candle and waited—

     but nothing

     happened.

Today:
I decided

that I should start

transcribing my thoughts,

but there’s never enough time.
Make some, I told myself.
So I made some tea,

and I put on a record—

     but nothing

     happened.

my mind’s cloudy

and filled with the words

of thinkers, long dead.

(not mine, these thoughts.

not ours, this moment.)

too cloudy, i think,

to write this poem—

so, instead

this will be a message:

i steal glances

even when i shouldn’t,

and lie always in wait

of a twitch—

half mechanical,

all sentiment.

it’s just such a shame

that my thoughts are less

continuous

than my bathroom visits

tonight

and that my nose

won’t stop running

for anything.

caught forever

between past and future,

i’ll draw the latter toward

the former

and hope to somehow

in that movement

find the present.

sometimes

as i think

i pluck

the eyelashes

from my eyes

idly.

i should

probably blow them

from my fingers

like wishes

to be made.

perhaps then

they might

end up

elsewhere,

instead of

just collecting

underneath

my chair.

It struck me, just now, the way the one trajectory of which I was once so certain has recently bifurcated irremediably. Divergent flows: I follow one, she the other. But over time, we’ve began to crystallize, like twigs touched by the first breath of frost, growing in significance. What was once an unthinking denial is now a consistently conscious series of decisions. And as is its nature, consciousness recoils at the horror of having to confront that which has always underlain it, that which has always silently shaped the guiding banks of its river. Forced into daylight, this realization is sickening. How much really can change before understanding is allowed to regain its footing.

Every movement has a history, and is, to some extent, pushed in a familiar direction. But every history is broken. Every break preceded by a fracture. Every fracture by an intention. And every intention by an accident. For thus is the nature of living. I used to wonder what might happen, but I’ve learned to know better. So instead of calling you, or her, or even my grandparents, instead of struggling, straining for clarity, I’ll just sit, as if in defeat. Benadryl. Hummus. Reactine. Cats and patches of missing hair and prickling spots of red. I need sleep. But I also need to answer these e-mails. And to have something insightful written for tomorrow. I do wonder whether or not these reflections might suffice. Perhaps. But I’d rather retreat behind the veil of objectivity, submitting something wholly impersonal.

Rilke wrote: “A  person isn’t who they are during the last conversation you had with  them—they’re who they’ve been throughout your whole relationship.” I used to cherish the line. But I don’t know. Is it not all but a series of conversations, anyway? Is it not all a trajectory of accidents? I don’t really have the slightest idea as to how others might operate, but I do yearn to borrow their eyes, whenever I can. This is my interest in art: I don’t want to know what the artist sees, I want to see along with her. This distinction involves everything. Because we’re often wrong, but that judgment remains meaningless in the absence of a genuine attempt to bridge perspectives, to grasp not the what but rather the terms of the why. Without this adoption, without trading glasses, we’re often left angry, hurt, alone, and self-righteous. And everyone knows that it’s the latter condition that precedes and makes possible the intensity of the former three. Therein is the insight, I think: we stick to the shoes on our own feet, when authentic intertwining is about precisely the opposite.

It was a sad day when I realized I could type faster than I could write. Because now I need somewhere to put these thoughts, somewhere that doesn’t exist between covers, inside a drawer, preserved in its air of nostalgia.

we have holes

in our faces and asses

in and out of which

the world passes.