dot the i

"And there where there is improvisation I am not able to see myself" (Derrida) and "I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think" (Lacan).

hey, are these statements just meta-references? or, are these statements testament to one big meta-reference- our "reality"? (yeah that was seriously a joke.)

i feel derrida is purposely objective in his statement. it is this constant deflection of the self that allows for his explorations to " map the unmappable". yet i feel lacan's statement exalts subjectivity as an inevitability, a constant almost. i will definitely have to read more lacan to find this to be true. nevertheless, i find the primary difference to be that of "objectivity" and "subjectivity". lacan likens thought to a locale of difference, meaning that being and thought are almost dialectical opposed. this is dangerous territory but let me continue.

derrida is objective about going about subjectivity. lacan's statement is more riddled with the question of being and thinking i think to prove the point that our subjectivity is "overdetermined", and i mean this in Althusserian way. yet i said earlier that i believed lacan proposed being and thought as dialectically opposed. conundrum? so far, yes. this is a s.o.s.

"If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended
That you have but slumber'd here while these visions did appear."

fragments and storytime

everybody loves a "true story". capote's in cold blood "actually happened". would you believe the inhumanity, the humanity? reject the dialectial steam that plagues your blogging. it is difficult. what gets the lasting image- the image a reader is left with, the most prominent, permeating image? employ a question to answer. a lot of things, an infinitude of things, a post structuralist would reply. find a grounds. how does an image on the screen affect our textuality? that is determinant on whether a viewer is actively viewing or passively viewing. can the same grounds for interpretation apply to "reading"? it is a type of viewing. can you passively read something? or more aptly, can you passively interpret textuality? abandon the rhetorical first. i can't; everything is rhetoric. enter the circus of celebrity. images speak louder or can speak louder than the speaker. or a speaker's speak is louder than speaking. how do you know what you are trying to say. i don't know until i say it. do make say think?

The Red Sled

Goddamn that red sled. It’s staring at you like it’s been waiting. For how long, is not up for speculation at this moment. What a horrible sight it is. Stand there, don’t move. You can’t move, both your mind and body are suspended by the sight of the red sled that rests unnaturally against the stacked firewood. Who put it there?

You return to your family cottage every summer with the wife and kids of course. How can you pretend like you don’t know about it, the red sled? The way it just sits there is almost like it knows you better than you know yourself. It’s undisturbed, almost peaceful yet wholly malignant. Think to call for the kids, your wife, remember what brought you out back in the first place. You are pathetic, don’t move.

This place, your summer escape, your parent’s summer escape, your grandparent’s summer escape, is filled with memories. Yet one important memory you’ve seemed to forget. You made it passed that memory, triumphed over it you can even say. You managed to succeed in life, graduated from Yale, fell in love, had two sons of your own, and return here annually.

The red sled doesn’t belong in your life, the new life you had to make for yourself to climb out of the guilty hole you dug. Now fall back into that hole. See all your triumphs in reverse like you are descending down a well with tiers that demarcate each triumph.

It is you driving with family aboard the station wagon, your sons quarrelling in the backseat. Your wife is beautiful, her hair flows out the car window like it was made of gold. It is sunny; summer vacation is here. It is you in the delivery room for the second time, two brothers you think. When your wife cries it is so perfect, you faint. You wake up and feel this is the proudest moment of your life. It is you at graduation, searching the audience with diploma in hand and seeing the tears in your parents’ eyes. Keep falling down deeper.

There he is, your brother, the boy you’ve managed to forget. He wasn’t at your graduation, your wedding, wasn’t there for the birth of your two sons but he is here now. It is winter time and he’s dragging along his favorite sled. You would both go to the top of the trail and much to your mother’s dismay, catapult down the ice and snow. But it is especially cold today and icy. You tell your mother you fell off the back but you know, only you, know the truth. You see the snow plow at the bottom of the street and watched your brother descend down the trail, right out of your life.

It wasn’t the red sled that killed your kid brother. You killed him, then buried him. He wasn’t there to witness all your triumphs, your success. You never let him.

Your wife puts her hand on your shoulder. Climb out of that hole for a second time. She’s frightened when she sees your face. She puts her arm around you and walks you toward the house. You look back over your shoulder and expect to see the vile sled, but it is not there.

where is my mind?

"We have no language-no syntax and no lexicon-which is foreign to this history; we can pronounce not a single destructive proposition which has not already had to slip into the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations which it seeks to contest" (198).

perhaps this is the most digestible sentence if i take it out of context. so in order to fully understand my reality, break it down, I am simultaneously, doubly recreating it and henceforth have contradicted the very nature of contradiction. system shutdown.

wel come the random

as testament to saussure and structuralism, i magically summon the powers of the surrealists. take the automatic writing techniques of soupault and breton, not exactly something radically new at all. they wrote les champ magnetiques jointly finishing a chapter a day. they rejected the "arbitrary" meanings assigned to the "signified" objects in search of... well, something else that i'll just say lies beneath the surface. it was more of a means to reaching what was once previously unknown to the author. think of a sought out, thought out, systematic form of negative capability.

exquisite corpse was another technique used to liberate the imagination and rid us of the shackles of a "syntagmatic chain". it is sort of game yet it is inquiry-based, think mad libs. endeavors to find new meanings through word, or maybe just nonsense depending on how you look at it.


czech filmmaker jan svankmajer's dimensions of dialogue,watch both parts. if someone could offer up a compelling synthesis of this short i'll be more than willing to buy them a coffee. it's on you tube.