Interpolating desire

I

Excuse me, I say, repeatedly

(how presumptuous to call you out like that)!

You turn, aborted from your womb.

I can’t see and I can’t find my glasses;

I can’t hear and I can’t find headphones…

can you help me… No?

You’re too busy… Texting.

I cannot find my life either;

not to mention my death.

Have you found yours?

I’m authentically unexamined.

I’m a virtual nowhere man.

You like the Beatles?

Everyone is supposed to respect what they did,

but who honestly does?

Truth be told, I’m an aesthetic heretic.

Are you going to burn me?

It is important to be earnest .

Can I be with you?

Can I even call you… To action?

(What is that these days: can you Google it for me?)

 Or am I being like a telemarketer… Worse?

This isn’t the usual time for a call!

(You don’t have to tell me twice!)

‘cause there will be no enjoyment;

That’s the one thing I can promise.

These are untimely meditations…

 II

…I know: there are so many things I don’t know

am I philosophic?… Ingenious?… Average?… Crazy?

I’m sure I have a disorder — I hope it is a new one…

maybe I have syphilis… Profound people used to have that.   

 I’m not profound, and don’t get laid enough anymore

what do you think… Do I look intellectual?

I watch TED Talks? I support all the causes.

I love the Other… and I will love her difference,

(by my last statement I  acknowledge feminism)

as soon as I know what difference is.

 These are questions we can defer!

My ideas are, indeed, worth spreading,

even if you don’t think so…

You’re always unsatisfied…

What do you want from me?

 I’m only ideological!

You could have refused;

I didn’t make you turn, around!.

hopefully?      

III

Silent? And you look so amiable!

And you’re hot too.…

 Damn… And I’m not that bad looking?

We could have fucked, once , twice… Three times?

I’m just lying to you and myself;

we probably would have humiliated each other,

and maybe we would have both gotten off,

but fortune controls half of what we do,

and she is a woman, so who knows.

I would have tried to make sure you enjoyed it.

(I think I know what I’m doing…

 You would have told me otherwise?)

I may have even slept with you,

I get very warm though, and I kick…

And I get up early in the morning.

(Oh the dreaded morning!)

I could’ve made you fried eggs and toast,

and I could’ve given them a smile of a child.

It  would’ve been like the movies,

except with all the parts you don’t see —

a virtual encounter more real than the dreams we live,

sleeping together in the world day to day.

We could have made it a more permanent thing,

keeping it casual , of course.

I mean if it developed into something else…

I guess I would be all right with that

but I’m just super busy …

So I thought maybe…

No. You’re not the one.

After I had so much investment!

We were going to be Facebook friends (with benefits?)

I’m sure we know some of the same people,

I think I’ve seen you before?

Have you seen me?

IV

It’s a shame really; absolutely tiresome.

I had plans; we were going to network.

Love at first use…

Is it me? Am I less than nothing?

Are you the void?

Can we create a harmonious antithesis?

Is anybody anything anymore?

What is a man? What is a woman? What is a thing?

You still don’t want to define them together?

Have courage to experience perversion virtually.

Are you : a symptom? A fetish? A commodity?

Or am I experiencing commodity fetishism?

Don’t you know it’s Valentine’s Day?

Fine ! I will sit by myself.

 My mood is black, apparently,

like the coffee we steal from poor children,

in order to save them from poverty.

I guess narcissism really is idle talk.

I drink my opaque coffee, in our evening land.

Looking at our digital image in a Styrofoam cup.

Together we make a reflection beyond binary.

I have doubts, naturally, you have yours too,

because fantasies are the real shit of life.

But, of course YOLO! And so I am alive. For now.

Happy Mother's Day; or the best philosopher!

The best philosopher I know

So it’s Mother’s Day. And I thought I would explain why my mother is the best philosopher I know, but I hope my readers will permit me an important excursus, which will shed light, I hope, on the principle argument

.

Yesterday, I had the misfortune to learn that several of the older residents of the apartment building in which I live, who also have disabilities, grew up in institutions. As a disabled person who is very young, one hears of institutions, but one cannot imagine them. For better or worse, right or wrong, they are socially constructed, though with considerable evidence, as horrible instances of oppression, injustice and abuse. To me, they have always been the unspeakable nightmare — the ineffable yet ever present perdition, against which I have been, albeit with considerable help, crafting the salvation of a' ‘normal' life’. Though I knew of'' institutions' as some perverse and daemonic Platonic form of social discrimination, the notion that someone I knew, however remotely, could have been subjected to that, in the far too recent past, made me nothing short of physically ill. I cannot presume to imagine the full extent of   this experience, but I imagined being African-American and seeing a museum exhibit of that odious trade which  is a salutary scourge for anyone tacitly or explicitly espousing the moral superiority of the' benevolent white race'. I imagined those shackles rubbing my joints raw, the hot sun burning my flesh, as though I actually were the raw meat people treated me like, and the poison of the whip's teeth that ripped my back to shreds, as well as renting my self-respect into countless miniscule pieces.

As fanciful or, indeed, disrespectful such similes may seem to some, metaphors often have an uncomfortable truth. It is a monstrously ironic fact that those institutionalized for the alleged  reason that they could not contribute to the labor market, often engaged in slave labor within the context of institutionalized life; and in many cases, they provided exemplary, though fetishized and exotic, case studies for the evolving logic of capitalism. And this was, of course, in a time when the barbarity of slavery had long since been abolished, while politicians and social engineers sang the siren call of enlightenment. At the same time persons of color, women and gay people were gaining long-overdue rights, many disabled people were unnecessarily confined to institutions against their will. Regrettably, many still are, or many live in conditions far worse, even in self-proclaimed progressive and multicultural societies.

I expressed repugnance to an older disabled person, against cowardly parents who opted for institutionalization. She, fortunately, was not raised in an institution because of her courageous parents, who chose not to surrender her to the care of the state. She advised me not to judge. “That’s just what was done”, she said, “and the great majority of people thought they were doing a kindness”, by abandoning and renouncing their children. How could they have the knowledge required to raise a child with a disability? Who would want or deserve such a burden? This task requires state efforts and expert knowledges.

While I'm not denying the difficulty of making decisions regarding your child's future or the power of social coercion, there are right decisions and there are wrong ones. She compared it to the south, and said that the vast majority of people supported slavery, as the morally justified discourse & practice. Without an arrogant overestimation of my moral judgment, I would consider my life not worth living, if I relented, for one instant, on being an abolitionist, and my entire life has been about trying to stay just ever so slightly ahead of the warm winds of change and peace. The Good and the Right must be the final arbiters of history, otherwise humanity becomes, not the goal of philosophers, but the gossip of the relativist. One may feel the breath of life, when listening to the soft and often muted voice of reason within our hearts. So I think those parents should feel great shame at what they did. Moreover, just as I must remember, as a' white man,' that all of my privilege rests on the beaten backs of''' colored races',’ the walking man’ must remember institutions as one of the often forgotten malignancies of the dialectic of Enlightenment.

Also, this is why a have little patience, for those who have internalized their oppression, and so advocate and accommodating politics toward the able-bodied majority. I refuse to be involuntarily disabled, and so those who wish to capitulate to the able-bodied majority can be a uncle Toms, if they want, but freedom has never arisen from acquiescence. I have no truck with resignation, since it is only by following the example of Rosa Parks that we now have, in Ottawa at least, fully accessible transit. It is only by being’ out’ as disabled persons that we have gained the right to be out in public without shame or fear. For this reason I both desire and demand liberation by any means necessary, and I would gladly join the ‘Crippled Panthers’, if there were such an organization.

Thankfully, though institutions were waning considerably, my mom said no! She said no, even when many of my relatives thought institutionalization was still something that you did. So the first thing I owe to my mom is freedom in a literal sense, and for that alone I have inexpressible gratitude. More broadly, however, growing up my mom ceaselessly rejected the notion of an institutionalized life, while still working tirelessly to accommodate my physical needs, in a way that is both extremely effective and caring, demonstrating her fantastic skills as a mother and exemplary professional skills as a nurse. I swear sometimes I think that my mom believes, rather than presenting a handicap, my disability gives me some kind of super power; I was never prevented from doing anything, or expected to do any less. Consequently, our home remained a loving family, and I never felt like I turned my family into a micro institution; for if anything, I was expected to do more. So thank you, mom, for the more abstract freedom to not be subject to the "subtle racism of lowered expectations”.

More broadly still, there is one last freedom for which I must thank my mom and that is the freedom to learn how to be great, a large part of which I learned from her. My mom is the best philosopher I know. She is immensely courageous, wise, caring, just and truthful, dare I say to a fault. She fights for all people and is a mother too many, proving that motherhood is a subject position, rather than a biological role. She is authentic, dare I say to a fault, and I have learned just as much from her weaknesses as I have from her strengths, since she’s always insisted that parenting is a dialogical process of mutual learning and improvement. She strives for excellence in all things, and she rarely gives up on her own dreams or the ones of those she loves.

So I guess what I’m most thankful for is that my mom made sure I was pragmatic yet, unlike so many disabled people, not severely touched by the scars of cynicism. The best freedom she gave me out of all of them was the freedom to imagine. I can know that a better world is possible, both for myself and for others, because together my mother and I work to make that dream a reality. My mom is my best friend, since she is many things to many people, and she remains an ageless lover of wisdom and a true citizen of the world. Happy Mother’s Day to, my mom and all moms.

What is humanity: The love that moves the sun and all the other stars

What is humanity?: The love that moves the sun and all the other stars

dedicated to Benjamin Booi, a future philosopher

To my beloved parents, friends, care workers, colleagues and teachers, who have helped, either in the past or in the present, to make this one of the best and most curious days of my life, having completed my MA thesis with distinction, let me extend my sincerest thanks and gratitude; for contented as I am, I have received quite enough praise. If it is, indeed, true that I have done well, despite often succumbing to vice, it is only because I have been properly supported, taught and loved by the many diverse people in my life, who have enriched it with their innumerable virtues and beauty in all its senses. I would be nothing without the extraordinary persons and marvelous things that make up my world.

All the talk of’ negativity’ in philosophy often makes us forget that contingency ought to ignite an inextinguishable fire of gratitude within the hearts of the women and men, who are fortunate enough to dwell on this earth for all too short a time, and whose capacities are often unnecessarily limited by chains of  injustice. Though my flame often waivers, almost to the point of oblivion, it never truly goes out, since I always have access to the twin illuminations afforded by both reason and love. I see this in books and art, perhaps too often, it’s true, but I also have tremendous resources, as I engage in open dialogue with the persons around me. For every person is a library, the extent of whose catalog one can only begin to understand, and at that, with tremendous interpretive effort and humility. Every sentient being, as an epistemological resource, is to be treated with the same respect that we lovers of wisdom treat canonical texts; both have resources we can only begin to understand, and both require extreme patience and care.

As I move forward, hoping to teach, but knowing that is unlikely, I feel obliged to give thanks for my tremendous education (formal and informal, undergraduate and graduate. I see the pursuit of reason and beauty as a tremendous gift, since my parents were told that it was likely I would not speak. This rather dire scenario aside, it genuinely horrifies me to think about what my life may have been like without constant attempts to engage in dialogue with being, in order to question concepts of beauty and truth, historically conditioned though these questions are.  As Plato knew well, knowledge cannot be separated from virtue. Our thoughts about the world must  cause us to act with love, contentment, humility, patience, constancy, and bravery within it. Only then will we commit to caring and justice, which can have extraordinary and unforeseen consequences. In my education, I have found this, and I can only hope to improve the world from what I have been fortunate enough to learn. It’s not an exaggeration to say that, were it not for the humanities, and those interested to teach them, I probably would have ended my life in a manner far less poetic than that of Socrates. So I owe to my education, my life in general, as well as what little beauty and wisdom I have gained. Being gay, I find it comically ironic that Sophia is my most constant, though admittedly not physically satisfying, lover and beloved. And she will never desert you, for as long as you live and, perhaps, after you die.

And so, Benjamin, you rightly tell me that the history of political thought is boring. Okay. I’ll concede that the first time it often is. And you make the somewhat more dubious claim that, you simply will not like classical music, as aesthetic preferences are simply a matter of choice. God knows, just like you in second year, my initial erotic liaison with Lady philosophy amounted to the worst kind of sexual encounter imaginable; I was equally and simultaneously, bored, frightened, confused, tearful, indignant, and wrathful, as well as many of the other vices about which I had to read. And as you know all too well, from being my colloquially Platonic friend, my second encounter with Plato, though Grecian in inspiration, was anything but Platonic, in both senses. But as time passes, a thoughtful life, in my youthful yet considered estimation, is one full of innumerable consolations and pleasures beyond the transitory. This is to say that a thoughtful life need not be and, indeed, must not be, austere, tiresome or lugubrious; on the contrary, we ought to derive great pleasure from it. It is from my sheer love of pleasure and, thus, sheer love of love, for all things and all humankind, that I pursue wisdom. I hope this is not, primarily, for my own satisfaction, but out of devotion to the quest for truth and the challenge to understand others, as a committed, though temporary, citizen of the world.

I am not here to tyrannize or judge anyone, knowing all too well that approach to education and friendship is extremely ineffective, unhealthy and painful. Everyone is a miracle, while having to do very little, in order to deserve love, grace and forgiveness, whether one believes in Christianity or not. I simply think that everyone’s life could be more still, having beauty and truth, if we find unique and ever-changing ways to serve its manifestations. Whether, for you, this involves reading Plato and listening to classical music, I cannot say. Yet I do urge you to give both a sincere try; for we are both highly erotic men, in the broad sense, so I can only presume that, as I was, in time, you will be drawn to the beauty you may find contained in these things, and so many others, as we both hope to live different lives, which, though they may diverge are, united in the pursuit of justice, excellence and caring.

You’re already so far on the way to being perfect, just by being the authentic, compassionate and engaging person that you are. Yet here is some humble advice from an aspiring philosopher, who, as a lover of wisdom, must acknowledge that he knows nothing. I am not much older than you, nor much wiser, so we are both bound to make comic and tragic errors until we die — such things comprise the wonderful drama of life, which is far greater than any of the classics you will read. Yet always be sure that you are the author of your own life. For when you seek approval from the many, surrendering the copyright of your narrative to convention, you become a slave to vices, particularly narcissistic inadequacy and capital accumulation. So take time to pen your own pros with thoughtful precision, since then you will begin to possess more peace. This is why I truly believe the unexamined life to be not worth living. And why you should never stop being an enthusiastic, though reasonable, optimist. “Be in the world but not of the world”.

Never let anyone tell you to not have fun or that they have a right to judge you, since they don’t. You probably don’t need my advice on this, but it’s always good to hear, as well as great to put on paper, that no one is more perfect than she who loves with a sincere heart and is curious with the same. Run from needless conventions, as you would a fatal disease. Always take time to listen to your conscience and consider the advice of other people seriously. This requires that you take time to get to know them, and most importantly, yourself. Put down your cell phone. Smell flowers. This is what I’ve learned in school.

Love yourself, whenever people won’t; love truth wherever people don’t. For in doing these two things we experience the full extent of humanity and the humanities. For as St. Paul says, “if I speak with the tongues of men and Angels and have not love, I am nothing. And, as Jesus says in the gospel, “the truth shall set you free”; so the greatest gift you get from a humanistic education is brief moments in which you experience peace, having felt “the love that moves the sun and all the other stars”. Why Plato chose the sun to represent the concept of The Good is that it doesn’t discriminate, no one can deplete its power, and it never tires of shedding light or giving us a sense of peace, when we feel the warmth of its illumination.

The Smokescreen of Ideology: Huffing and Puffing about Health and Choice.

Now that, divorce, homosexuality, transgendered identities, and even  to some extent sadomasochistic behavior and other "sexual perversions" are becoming increasingly mainstream, and thus under the purview of heteronormative neoliberalism, there are few acts that remain legal that can be called deviant. Before there were more symbolic prohibitions, which could incorporate a measure of transgression and, thereby, enjoyment, but now that pleasure seeking is built into the symbolic regulation  of the neoliberal culture itself, in an effort to create, increasingly singular identities, to which products can be marketed (i.e. running shoes for the specialized athlete, LGBT vacations, disability culture, self help books for the Caribbean Canadian, visually impaired, transgendered lesbian, who can't find a man, because she has bipolar two and an eating disorder), it is increasingly difficult to find pleasure in anything, because this is a desire and satisfaction, which further our alienation from ourselves, each other and our bodies is so totalizing. Smoking is interesting, and I must stress that I smoke and for that matter drink about once every four months, because it is wholly within the capitalist order, while being one of the last legal actions, apparently worthy of approbation, the extent of moral evil grows every day. Meanwhile, often people who sanctimoniously decry smoking as perhaps the last and greatest of our common postmodern transgressions, and secondhand smoke as illuminating the unethical disregard of “smokers” for their fellow human beings health, forget the catastrophic devastation we cause to our fellow human beings, at home and abroad daily, to maintain an average Weston person in the lifestyle to which she has been accustomed  cause, probably, at least five people in the global self TO DIE, if not more, not to mention the horrendous suffering we cause to our fellow species. And the devastation people continue to cause in the world by irresponsible sexual choices, including, sometimes, abortion, but the sexual choices, of whatever sort, are framed in the rhetoric of choice; for those are considered acceptable choices, whereas smoking is framed in the rhetoric of an agent responsibility to others, because it’s not deemed an acceptable choice. I’m probably more likely to get injured by people drinking excessively around me than around people who are smoking.

I know the health implications, but the event scenario of the addict does not always hold true. But it is largely a mechanism to control, with Christian undertones, that’s with one taste of the of the forbidden fruit, whatever that it happens to be, one will fall into perdition never to return. The smoker is also interesting because he is one of the last openly discriminated identities, which is fascinating because most of modern prejudice happens at the level of disavowal. “I know very well that new Canadians are immigrants just like I was, but, nonetheless they are stealing my job. I know very well that persons with disabilities should have the same opportunities by right, but to provide them with opportunities is too expensive, in times of economic austerity, when we increase military spending” the ironic thing is that the ideology of health and wellness has made very few people more well. It produces a dialectical opposite, obesity, as we pursue enjoyment not only by acquisition of capital, but particularly by one of its related outgrowths in increased regulation, domination and desire to perfect our own bodies\minds which has led to an increasingly oppressive normative standard with two primary goals, insofar as it is also ever adaptable to particular subjectivities. Not only do we have to aspire to achieve a global norm, we also have to choose particular norms for our kind of human being. Not only this, but according to Dove’s most recent commercial we ought to love ourselves, in our singularity, and if we don’t enjoy this pleasurable narcissism, there is something wrong with us, for after all, everyone is special, and every life worth living. We must do this for as long as you can! Apparently it does not matter whether you enjoy your life or live an excellent one; all that matters is that you live, or more precisely that you live while appearing to enjoy your life, lest you disturb others’ faith in the belief that believing in the pursuit of enjoyment is beneficial. This is really quite pointless, since as we prolong our lives the prospect of aging, on account of rampant social neglect of the elderly, is looking more and more grim with each passing day.

The fact is that health and wellness is a neoliberal marketing scheme that puts extreme pressure on persons with disabilities to conform to their own standard of well-being, while excluding them from the ideal normative standard. There is very little government funding for me to obtain the health desired of the neoliberal subject, and as such you could argue that my body is always “criminalized”. By smoking, very occasionally I take on the criminal subjectivity of disability, born of the confrontation with death that it represents, because I make people deal with the supposed horror of an innocent disabled person being assisted in “perverse” activity. Therefore, through this perversion I can subvert this consumptive ideology through consumption itself, thereby effecting a negation of negation, transcending the dialectic of desire, and thereby carving out for myself a space of sexual and political freedom, which I longed for when I came out of the closet, but perhaps I was born too late for that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGDMXvdwN5c

Thoughts on Valentine's Day

If there's one passage I find truly beautiful in the New Testament it is this one,owing to truly beautiful language, rare for St. Paul, personal implications, but most importantly,  political ones.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love (agape) [openness, self negation, freedom, “Platonic love”], I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love (agape), I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love (agape), I gain nothing.Love (agape) is patient; love (agape) is kind; love (agape) is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love (agape) never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly,but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love (agape) abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love (agape).(1 Cor. 13)

 Today it's Valentine's Day, which if I'm being honest, used to be my least favorite day of the year. I'm sure I'm not the only single person who pretended not to be bothered by IS whole affair, even though some part of them was. For of course "the concept of love is merely a byproduct of heterosexual capitalist oppression". But then Graham wished me a happy Valentine's Day, and pointed out the obvious fact that we should celebrate all kinds of love, including, but not limited to, romantic relationships. In ancient Greek there are four words, encompassing different aspects of the surprisingly vague and discursively powerful English term "love". Let's appropriate "Valentine's Day" from the capitalist order, and use it to explore all kinds of love uniting humanity, from which we can begin to think about an egalitarian notion of emancipatory collectivity, rather than production and exchange. For the first time, I am happy to be single: first because no human being ever is single, and second because I am in a vast network of caring relationships, to which I'd be happy to add a romantic one, but I don't find it essential. I thought the adage that you can't love someone else until you love yourself was complete bull , but slowly, through much work, I'm starting to believe that is true. I love all my friends, and family. I'm grateful for them every day. Happy Valentine's Day to everyone, whether you are in a relationship or not. May we all explore the wondrous phenomenon that is love, because it's all we have to do in our short lines.

call me, maybe?: Postmodern ethics of solicitation, a commentary (in honor of GG McDonald).

In today's postmodern melange, one can never fail to ignore the power of the call. Indeed, it is the ethical matrix, it is thought, through which one can hold of viable ethical position while still rejecting now outdated pretensions to a quasi-Hegelian Kantian inspired vision of a priori ethical truths that give way like sand castles of ideology against the tidal wave of Derridain diffarence. "Call me maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen captures the essence of the postmodern ethical situation.The song , though appearing simple, in proper dialectical fashion, reveals fecund wisdom, in its profound frivolity;thus she portrays the profound interiority and gaiety of the postmodern condition. In this, one cannot help to recall echoes of Nietzsche, who speaks ad infinitum about the solitary play of the Overman. Call me maybe also offers us a florid account of the experience of alterity at the heart of the cosmopolitan Zeitgeist, to which we as thinkers (in the post Hegelian sense) are constantly addressing ourselves. Finally in the constant quest for desire, it's blockage, and our inability to signify the object petite, one sees how Jepsen gets at the heart of the poststructuralist psychoanalytic project, and in so doing uncovers the true problematics of the Big Other.

I shall now demonstrate this through a hermeneutical analysis of the first verse and chorus, as well as notable lines. "I  threw a wish in a well\don't ask me I'll never tell\I look to you as it fell\and now you're in my way". What is this but a salient encapsulation of both Lacanian theory and the residual longing for a Hegelian dialectic of  recognition. She throws her desire into a well, in order to conceal that enjoyment from others, but she cannot conceal it; for she looks to him as it falls. I think there is an element of performance for the Big Other. His gaze is entrancing; he represents both a literal erotic object and the power of the symbolic dimension: our desire to possess the phallus and have it possess us. The call is an ethical one as well: the solicitation of the other that she cannot ignore; for in that very difference, she is imbued with ontology. She recognizes alterity to be constructive, isolating & exhilarating. It is an imperative that is (super)natural, yet cannot be ignored

She continues: "I'd trade my soul for a wish\pennies and dimes for a kiss\I wasn't looking for this\but now you're in my way" what is this but of further articulation of the power of desire, and further the castrating power of the Other, as experienced through civil society. The experience of alterity he causes is so great that she is willing to engage in a Faustian deal, if only to have an authentic ethical/erotic encounter. He is in her way; she wasn't looking for this, but nevertheless this authentic encounter with Being happened. The unfolding of truth — a revelation of the true authenticity of being à la Heidegger. She has a true experience of holiness in the religious ex-essentialist sense: for in the other she sees the face of God. Through that Kierkegaardain encounter with ontologically constitutive agape, born of extreme alienation, she affects a Nietzscheain leap back,so that she may leap forward into the postmodern. But because this process is never complete, and thus can never be signified, as such, it always remains tentative.

"Hey I just met you\and this is crazy\but here's my number\so call me maybe". Camus famously said art is merely philosophy expressed in images. I can think of nothing that captures the postmodern condition with greater laconic joy, poignant brevity, and elegant perspicacity! For hers is an ethos of SOLICITATION qua solicitation. She does not demand; she merely asks. She recognizes the insanity of such an encounter, but in the face of such nihilism, such sheer contingency, she prospers. She makes no demand of others or her environment, she merely has the courage to pose a question, all the while willing to stake her being in the quest for recognition. She achieves self transcendence by reaching out for the other. In so doing, she destroys her fictive Imago, in the existentially fraught and truthful quest to reach her ego ideal and break through the bond of the symbolic order, as well as the hyper repressive power to enjoy by restraining from enjoyment, or still worse enjoy through narcissistic domination, either of the self or of the Other. "Before you came into my life\I missed you so bad." Does not this speak of the gap in the chain of signification; in other words does it not identify the heart of the poststructuralist's project — the inability to complete the semiotic chain and the ultimate anxiety over the collapse of language. The desire/encounter that is always with her but to which she will never be able to give up proper appellation. Disembodied subjectivity without a suitable circumscribing symbolic matrix. In line with Hannah Arendt, she does not have the audacity to ask what a human being is, since that would mean she would have to occupy a transcendental position; she merely asks who a human being is, and how we are constituted by our historical experience – how our ontology is shaped by multifarious appellations that reveal new horizons of beings within Being.

Is not a condition of modernity a "call" with a question-mark? Does not Carly Rae Jepson capture this truth with poetic grace and piercing perspicacity?

silence is love

I

what is love, if not a linguistic chasm?
The void which no verbs can vault,
the eternal song with no melody,
a soul image through a glass darkly .

The most useless of human things,
yet the thing by which we all move;
a god still arresting restless mortals,
dragging us to death & deification.

Witness the cybernetic carnal age,
where beauty & harmony are quaint.
when painters prefer ideas to paint,
the waste of passion is all you can see.

Life is a tacit technological aberration,
as we experience  sensual incarnation,
with no words wasted on the ineffable,
and no courtship given to the uncatchable.

Would that muses still haunted men,
kindly they carried insight's burden;
we would take that well sung journey,
through hell, heaven and circles of stars.
II

Living with you in fields of asphodel,
all the while crying Et in Arcadia Ego,
and we would become most natural men,
noble savages, on a pilgrimage to Cythera.

you could be the shepherd of admiration,
and I could feel the warmth of your skin,
we two baptized by the autumnal sun,
you, the star steering me back to myself.

The sunset a canopy, golden foliage,
 upon your hands, playing up your arm,
prancing with peaceful poignancy upon you,
erasing old and creating new bright beauty.

And then you get up from your repose;
you stand before the sun, screening light,
flesh surpasses cold & cracked marble:
for it doesn't have depth of delicate color.


Which blooms like cherry blossoms in cream
nor does it have mellifluous color of voice,
low and sonarus as silk summer winds—
your magnificent matter, the vehicle of form.

Then you would speak to me so wisely,
holding my face in your heated hands,
our compassion blooms like the Lotus;
flowering forth from the fountain of egoism

Kissing me in fields so gently & sweetly
drinking Hyacinths’  nectar  from warm lips
as I brush away laurels from your soft hair,
losing my fingers in its supple honey.

Afraid to yield to conspicuous comfort,
a pleasure beyond even indolent gods,
to hold you for one moment in the sun,
to unite with you in transcendental solitude.

To know what is soft and firm in you,
and have you know the same within me,
to see every flaw as the highest adornment;
every virtue as flaw compared to the whole.

to experience every moment as eternity,
and to experience eternity as a moment,
to look back at our infinite peaceful past,
to gaze forward at our fecund future.

to know that neither can capture a glance,
nor can they understand volume of touch,
nor summarize the soft sound of smell,
nor paraphrase the hug of kind words.

Night falls on gracious & gentle love
Guiding my wandering wayward soul;
I dive into the Odyssey of your being,
sailing boldly on the ocean of your eyes.

Is this unrealized and unbridled passion,
tales of heroes after the Greek fashion,
O muse, I swear this to be most false:
it is the pairing of Athens and Jerusalem!

For by embracing my beautiful beloved,
over time I take a most peaceful flight,
from both past and present pagan worlds:
instead of willing power, I will being.

and then to see you as stained glass,
filtering multifaceted light of salvation:
God lives! He burns brightly in you
his manifest kingdom your embrace .

And to fall into the sublime depth
of beauty and truth remembered,
in the quiescent form of your  light
that you give to Earth by being of it.

In enjoying graciously flawed flesh,
housing such are hidden gentle spirit,
it takes one glance to become immortal,
to possess knowledge transcending opinion .

In this crucifixion by love I am broken,
so that I may rise to the happiest life;
I have let you loose and lacerate my soul,
so when the scales fall,  I have a living Requiem

III

But in our age muses no longer sing,
and I cannot be your modern lover,
we write not of inner transformation,
but the power of external experience.

I can't be your masculine ancient mate,
for love is now something exchanged
since one may create but not change,
history by a Arcadian excursus in verse.

Love is a t pure goddess who shines,
a good qua good, the efflorescence of light,
against the protean  character of death
she makes all that is melted into air solid

what to do when the muses fly away
remain silent. Don't possess. Enjoy.
I remain silent, on your behalf:
It takes more love than 1000 lines.

love is a kind of penetrating silence,
of which no subtle words can sound,
but in my eyes is written everything said,
and your every small smile is my sonnet.

In not knowing your fallible flesh,
do I not know the immortal part of you,
the part which vanquishes concupiscence,
the noble part that orbits the stars.

Light, which has and shall not ever, injure,
the passion pushing all persons to good,
the laughter in the Onyx of modern twilight.
Hold this in me, and see it everywhere.

The allegiance of your courageous heart,
 I cannot begin to understand, but look,
for a person whose eyes sing to you like mine,
who estimates you with brightest benevolence.

This meek shadow is all I can say;
it is the greatest embrace yet smallest,
but I think if God is, indeed, love
then The Word will speak from silence.

if love is silence, must the muses sing,
since ineffability is human freedom?
In negative capability we become gods,
and rest from love and apotheosis.