my nephew Jordan, The Destructive Character
It
could happen to someone looking back over his life that he realized that almost
all the deeper obligations he had endured in it's course originated in people
whose "destructive character" every one was agreed. He would stumble
upon this fact one day, perhaps by chance, and the heavier blow it deals him,
the better are his chances of picturing the destructive character.
The
destructive character knows only one watchword; make room; only one activity;
clearing away. His need for fresh air and open space is stronger than any
hatred.
The
destructive character is young and cheerful. For destroying rejuvenates in
clearing away the traces of our own age; it cheers because everything cleared
away means to the destroyer a complete reduction, indeed eradication of his own
condition. But what contributes most of all to this Apollonian image of the
destroyer is the realization of how immensely the world is simplified when
tested for it's worthiness for destruction. This is the great bond embracing
and unifying all that exists. It is the sight that affords the destructive
character the spectacle of deepest harmony.
The
destructive character is always blithely at work. It is nature that dictates
his tempo, indirectly at least, for he must forestall her. Otherwise she will
take over the destruction herself.
No
vision inspires the destructive character. He has few needs, and the least of
them is to know what will replace what has been destroyed. First of all, for a
moment at least, empty space, the place where the thing stood or the victim
lived. Someone is sure to be found who needs this space without it's being
filled.
The
dstructive character does his work, the only work he avoids is being creative.
Just as the creator seeks solitude, the destroyer must be surrounded by people,
witnisses to his efficacy.
The
destuctive character is a signal. Just as a trigonometric sign is exposed on
all sides to the wind, so is he to rumor. To protect him from it is pointless.
The
destructive character has no interest in being understood. Attempts in this
direction he regards as superficial. Being misunderstood cannot harm him. On
the contrary he provokes it, just as oracles, those destructive institutions of
the state, provoked it. The most petit bourgeois of all phenomena, gossip,
comes about because people do not wish to be misunderstood. The destructive
character tolerates misunderstandind, he does not promote gossip.
The
destructive character is the enemy of the etui man. the etui man looks for
comfort, and the case is it's quintessence. The inside of the case is the
velvet lined track that he has imprinted on the world. The destructive man
obliterates even the traces of destruction.
The
destructive character stands in the front line of traditionalists.
Walter
Benjamin-The Destructive Character
I am dead because I lack desire.
I lack desire because I think I possess.
I think I possess because I do not try
to give.
In trying to give you see that you have
nothing.
Seeing you have nothing, you try to give
of yourself.
Trying to give of yourself, you see that
you are nothing.
Seeing that you are nothing, you desire
to become.
In desiring to become, you begin to
live.
Rene Daumal
He flooded his memory with such sorrow
as to undermine his reason.
Pierre Klossowski--The Baphomet
Traveler,
when you pass near, do not, I beg you, offer me the slightest word of
consolation: You would undermine my spirit. Let me rekindle my resolve at the
flame of voluntary martyrdom. Be off!...lest I inspire pity in you. Hate is
stronger than you think; it's workings are inexplicable, like the look of a
stick thrust into water. Even as you see me now I can still make forays to the
very walls of heaven, heading a legion of assassins, and return to resume this
posture and meditate anew on lofty plans of vengeance. Farewell--I shall detain
you no longer, and that you may train and protect yourself, ponder the fatal
destiny which drove me to revolt, though, perhaps, I was born good!
Tell your son what you have seen and,
taking his hand, set him wondering at the beauty of the stars and the marvels
of the universe, at the robin's nest and the temples of the Lord. You will be
amazed to see him so amenable to your parental advise, and will reward him with
a smile. But look at him when he is unaware of being watched and you'll see him
hawk spittle at virtue. He has deceived you--he who is descended from the human
race--yet he shall deceive you no more; henceforth you shall know what happens
to him. O hapless father, be ready for these escorts of your senile tread--the
irreversible scaffold that is to lop off a precocious criminal's head, and
sorrow that will show you the way leading to the grave. Lautremont--Maldoror
I
was sent forth from the power,
and I have come to those who reflect
upon me,
and I have been found among those who
seek after me.
Look
upon me, those who reflect upon me,
and you hearers, hear me.
You who are waiting for me, take me to
yourselves.
Do not be ignorant of me anywhere or
anytime. Be on your guard!
Do not be ignorant of me.
For
I am the first and the last.
I
am the honored and the scorned one.
I
am the whore and the holy one.
I
am the wife and the virgin.
I
am the mother and the daughter.
I
am the members of my mother.
I
am the barren one,
and many are her sons.
I
am she whose wedding is great,
and I have not taken a husband.
I
am the midwife and she who does not bear.
I
am the solace of my labor pains.
I
am the bride and the bridegroom,
and it is my husband who begot me.
I
am the mother of my father
and the sister of my husband,
and he is my offspring.
I
am the slave of he who prepared me.
I
am the ruler of my offspring.
But he is the one who begot me before
the time on a birthday.
And he is my offspring in due time, and
my power is from him.
I
am the staff of his power in his youth,
and he is the rod of my old age.
And whatever he wills happens to me.
I
am the silence that is incomprehensible,
and the idea whose remembrance is
frequent.
I
am the voice whose sound is manifold,
and the word whose appearance is
multiple.
I
am the utterance of my name.
Anon.--Thunder,
Perfect Mind.
There
are rumors and ghosts in this land, and they are much revered. The tools, the
art, the building--these things stand in judgment on the latter races. Yet
there is nothing for them to grapple with. The old ones are gone like phantoms
and savages wander these canyons to the sound of an ancient laughter. In their
crude huts they crouch in the darkness and listen to the fear seeping out of
the rock. All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins
and mystery of nameless rage. So. Here are the dead fathers. Their spirit is
entombed in the stone. It lies upon the land with the same weight and ubiquity.
For whoever has made a shelter from reeds and hides has joined his spirit to
the common destiny of creatures and he will subside back into the primal mud
with scarcely a cry. But who builds in stone seeks to alter the structure of
the universe and so it was with these masons however primitive their works seem
to us.
Cormac McCarthy--Blood Meridian
I
am sorry they won't let you have your sloop again, for I scorn to do any one a
mischief, when it is not for my advantage; damn the sloop, we must sink her,
and she might be of use to you. You are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those
who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own
security; for the cowardly whelps have not the courage to otherwise defend what
they get through knavery; but damn yee altogether: damn them for a pack of
crafty rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen hearted numskulls.
They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference, they rob
the poor under the cover of the law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under
the protection of our own courage. Had you not better make them one of us, then
sneak after these villains for employment?
You are a devilish conscience rascal, I
am a free prince, and have as much authority to make war on the whole world as
he who has a hundred ships of sail at sea, and an army of one hundred thousand
men in the field; and this my conscience tells me: but there is no arguing with
sniveling puppies, who allow superiors to kick them about the deck at pleasure. Captain Bellamy--Rants
The
words of the English language are futile, but words are for everyday use. When
it comes my time to meet face to face the unspeakable vision of a happy life, I
shall be rendered dumb, but the rain of my feeling shall come in torrents Mary Maclane--The story of...
FORMLESS.--A
dictionary would begin from the point at which it no longer rendered the
meanings of words but rather their tasks. Thus formless is not only an
adjective with a given meaning but a term which declassifies, generally
requiring that each thing take on a form. That which it designates has no claim
in any sense, and is always trampled upon like a spider or an earthworm.
Indeed, for academics to be happy, the universe would have to take on form. The
whole of philosophy has no other goal: to provide a frock coat for what is, a
mathematical frock coat. To declare, on the contrary, that the universe is not
like anything, and is simply formless, is tantamount to saying the universe is
something like a spider, or spittle. Georges Bataille--Documents, Vol. 1., no. 7.
Dark
and puckered like a violet rose
it
pulses, humbly hidden in the moss,
still
damp from love that trickles soft
along
white thighs right to it's lip
Fecit
Little
drops like tears of milk
have
wept, beneath the zephyr blowing cruel,
upon
the pebbles of auburn marl,
obeying
the slope and heeding it's call.
Often
my mouth is pressed against it's hole,
often
my soul will yearn for a fuck with
flesh,
And
it takes it for it's dankest drip stone it's
nest
of
throbbing sighs.
Invenit
It's
the open olive in ecstasy, the blown flute
in
the air;
it's
the celestial tube down which all
fondants
freely flow;
Female
Canaan firmly moist and filled with
promise
deep.
Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine--The
Sonnet of the Hole in the Ass
Devisor
of the voice and of it's hearer and of himself. Devisor of himself for company.
Leave it at that. He speaks of himself as of another. He says speaking of
himself, He speaks of himself as of another. Himself he devises too for
company. Leave it at that. Confusion too is company up to a point. Better hope
deferred than none. Up to a point. Till the heart starts to sicken. Company too
up to a point. Better a sick heart than none. Till it starts to break. So
speaking of himself he concludes for the time being, For the time being leave
it at that.
Samuel Beckett--Company
Cellar. We have long forgotten the ritual by
which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and the
enemy bombs have already taken their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities
do they not lay bare in the foundations. What things were interred and
sacrificed amid magic incantations, what horrible cabinet of curiosities lies
there below, where the deepest shafts are reserved for what is most
commonplace. In a night of despair I dreamed I was with my first friend from my
school days, whom I had not seen for decades and had scarcely remembered in
that time, tempestuously renewing our friendship and brotherhood. But when I
awoke it became clear that what despair had brought to light like a detonation
was the corpse of that boy, who had been immured as a warning: that whoever one
day lives here may in no respect resemble him.
Walter
Benjamin--Reflections
Greece, mid 80s
It
is not easy to destroy an idol: it takes as much time as is required to promote
and worship one. For it is not enough to annihilate it's material symbol, which
is easy; but it's roots in the soul. How turn your eyes toward the twilight
ages--when the past was liquidated under the scrutiny which only the void could
dazzle--without being moved by that great art which is the death of a
civilization?
And so I dream of having been one of
those slaves, coming from an improbable country, barbarous and brooding, to
languish in the agony of Rome, my vague desolation embellished by Greek
sophistries. In the vacant eyes of the statues, in the idols shrunken by
sagging superstitions, I should have forgotten all about my ancestors, my yokes
and my regrets. Espousing the melancholy of the ancient symbols, I should have
liberated myself; I should have shared the dignity of the abandoned gods,
defending them against the crosses, against the invasion of servants and
martyrs, and my rights would have sought their rest in the delirium and
debauchery of the Ceasars. Expert in delusions, riddling the new fervors with
all the arrows of a dissolute wisdom--among them the courtesans, in skeptical
brothels or circuses with their sumptuous cruelties, I should have swelled my
reasonings with vice and blood, dilating logic to dimensions it had never
dreamed of, to dimensions of worlds that die.
E.M. Cioran--A Short History of Decay
What
is called Order, but is really nothing more than physical and spiritual
exhaustion, comes into it's own when what is rightly called mediocrity is in
the ascendent.
Genet--Prisoner
of love
If
you, an adult, wish to be consistent with the proposition you keep hidden
within yourself, you should trace this warning with charcoal on the foreheads
of expectant mothers; "Attention, here lies danger!"
The
greatest defense organization existing in the world is the one humanity has
erected and maintains in constant readiness against the threat of childhood.
Little
men and women, on their entry into the world are welcomed as enemies. War
breaks out between infants and adults, between constituted authority and these
proud battalions of minuscule people set out to conquer the world.
That humanity's heart is so dry, it's
imagination so spent, it's ambitions so meager, it's desires so limited, means
that in the daily war between infants and adults, the heads of adults are
wreathed day after day by a "base" victory.
Childhood---a continuous wave of
revolution, systematically crushed by those reactionaries, the grown-ups. A
tireless revolution and never disappointed, because it has no inkling of the
defeat in store for it. The rear guard does not see the trap into which the
vanguard gradually falls. Brave, trusting, the march has gone on since the
world began; the drying up of faith andĖ evaporation of illusions happen by
dispersion, like a river drunk by the sand.
The eternal dialogue between the
populace and government---an unanswered dialogue; the reflected image of that
other dialogue, much more grandiose, between childhood and adulthood. Both are
tragic demonstrations that every revolution is a wish---with no possibility of
fulfillment.
An illusory duty and solemn buffoonery
mask the humiliated sadness of this passage---from garden to cell, from freedom
to duty. Alberto Salvinio--The Tragedy of Childhood
Cynthia Lahti
By
giving up all hope
of
warmth, I murder
the cold.
How
good it would be if I could feel something
which
was neither man nor woman. If that existed I would
live
in it immediately. Perhaps then I would come to myself
---(or
to you)?
As
far as I know I have not received too much
from
either man or woman, but enough
to
feel it as a hindrance
My
intermittent efforts to be neither the one
nor
the other have not brought me any
results.
Why? Because I alone have taken
great
pains with it. I never managed
to
bring anything to a good conclusion on my own.
No
one with whom I can discuss it.
Which
is to say: no fellow sufferer. For only
he
could give me encouragement
to
continue in my efforts.
And
that is my quandary.
As
if my son were already ripe in years
and
approaching death, his eyes,
which
search for me just as I search for his,
intersect
those from the one casting looks
into
empty space. A notion which is still unclear,
far
too new to be defined.
Nevertheless
it crystallizes, looks for a place
to
reside in me and acts as a truism.
You
ghostly gaze! Shy and radiant,
wicked
with loneliness and humour; your sombreness,
seemingly
without beginning
and
thus without end, shines
through
my dream-lit rooms. I ask myself
whether
angels might have such eyes?
But
this shy smile soon disappears,
the
eternal youth of this unique smile
sinks
like the long, nightless July day,
this
long, radiant day
which
is never bestowed
on
us.
And
that is my despair.
After
forty three years this life
has
not become MY life. It might just as well
be
someone else's life.
Only
once the events stop repeating
will
it be my life.
And
that will never occur, until death.
And
that is my fault. My cowardice.
Sometimes
I find it embarrassing to hear
my
own breath. I bless the passing of time.
I
slowly feel myself turn white...
swimming
out into the whiteness...
so
as at last to see...the white image?
And
that is my imploring gesture.
Unica
Zurn Written in great anxiety
on February 24, 1959
All people are stuck in sexual sins
Everybody
is upside down in sin
Sacrifice
sex is Devil
Your
sin will find you out
A
septic tank has no love until you clean it
No
devil sex in Heaven
You
will have nothing with hidden sins inside you
You
do not love no one, you just sex them
Torture
sex is Devil
Homo
sex is toilet bound sex
Anon.--Berkeley
graffiti
In the bosom of the waters there is born another sun, light has eddies, it propagates dizziness. Whoever sees beneath the waters must often shield his retina. With each stroke the waters changes it's violence. But universes so new, so strongly imagined cannot help but work on the being which is imaging them in it's substratum. If we follow the images sincerely, it seems to us that the imagination destroys a being of earth within us. We are tempted to let a being of water be born in us. Melting into the basic element is a necessary human suicide for whoever wants to experience emergence into a new cosmos.
Gaston
Bachelard--Poetics of Space
"From
architectural and historical facts (as they are known) regarding the erection
of the plantation houses, we must borrow the bones of our structure--this
skeleton, however, can assume no significant or final reality til it is clothed
in the flesh of poetic perception. By this is not meant merely superficial
romanticism. The method of poetry is to abstract symbols from the stuff of
living experience; to embody these symbols in not only an emotive language, but
by means of the creative use of these symbols to subtly penetrate the tough,
outer skin of appearances, and give it a reality which is not complexly
sweetened or embittered by the perceiving mind, but more extensive in time than
reality that is immediately apprehensible: since now the elements of the past
and of the future play equal parts with that of the present. In the superior
reality of poetic vision we enter a plane where symbols have a life of their
own, and perhaps we transcend, temporarily and incompletely the limitations of
time."
Clarence
John Laughlin--Ghosts Along the Mississippi
I
remember when I was a young boy lying on my back in the grass, gazing into the
summer blue above me, and wishing I could melt into it, become a part of it.
For these fancies I believe that a religious tutor was innocently responsible:
he had tried to explain to me, because of my dreamy questions, what he termed,
"the folly and wickedness of pantheism"---with the result that I
immediately became a pantheist, at the tender age of fifteen. And my imaginings
presently led me not only to want the sky for a playground, but also to become
the sky!
Now that I think that in those days I
was really close to a great truth, touching it, in fact, without the faintest
hint of it's existence. I mean that the truth that the wish to become is
reasonable in direct ratio to it's largeness,---or in other words, that the
more you wish to be, the wiser you are; while the wish to have is apt to be
foolish in proportion to it's largeness. Cosmic law permits very few of the
countless things we wish to have, but will help us become all that we can
possibly wish to be. Finite, and insomuch feeble, is the wish to have: but
infinite in puissance is the wish to become. By wanting to be, the monad makes
itself the elephant, the eagle, or the man. By wanting to be, man should become
a god. Perhaps on this tiny globe, lighted by only a tenth-rate yellow sun, he
will not have time to become a god; but who dare assert that his wish cannot
project itself into mightier systems illuminated by vaster suns, and there
reshape and invest him with the forms and powers of divinity? Who dare say that
his wish may not expand him beyond the limits of form, and make him one with
Omnipotence? And Omnipotence, without asking, can have much bigger and brighter
playthings than the moon.
Probably everything is a mere question
of wishing,---providing that we wish not to have, but to be. Most of the sorrow
of life certainly exists because of the wrong kinds of wishing and because of
the contemptible pettiness of the wishes. Even to wish for the absolute
lordship and possession of the entire earth were a pitifully small and vulgar
wish. We must learn to nourish much bigger wishes than that! My faith is that
we must wish to become the total universe with it's thousands of millions of
worlds,---and more that the universe, or a myriad universes,---and even more
than Space and Time.
Lafcadio
Hearn--Of Moon Desire
Since
it was terror, and disturbance, and instability, and doubt, and division, there
were many illusions at work. By means of these, and empty fictions, they were
sunk in sleep, and found themselves in disturbing dreams. Either there is a
place to which they are fleeing, or without strength they come from having
chased after others, or they are involved in striking blows, or they are
receiving blows themselves, or they have fallen from high places, or they take
off into the air though they do not even have wings. Again sometimes it is if
people were murdering them, though there is no one even pursuing them, or they
themselves are killing their neighbors, for they have been stained with their
blood. When they who are going through all of these things wake up, they see
nothing, they who were in the midst of all these things, for they are nothing.
This is the way that each one has acted, as though asleep at the time, when he
was ignorant. Good is the man who will return and awaken, and blessed is he who
has opened the eyes of the blind.
Gnostic Text, Nag Hammadi Library
