The Absinth Pages Yesterday

Christ someone has to stop this. I'm hearing my goddam obituary read in the laugh of every school girl's saturday. I can feel the blood shaking my hand. I can feel the blood shaking my hand. "Your insanity doesn't interest me."

The problems happen as I imagine them. I feel short of breath and then I am. I rolled up my shirtsleeves because I was hot and now they irritate my forearms. Christ I can feel my hands shaking. Christ.

Chris and his goddam insensitivity. Or did I imagine that. It was superfluous he said. It was superfluous. If I repeat myself one more time I'll turn schizo.

That's how it felt a moment ago. Two girls turned the corner and smiled. They wanted to sell something. I think I smirked or frowned. God these shirtsleeves are irritating. And they laughed. They laugh.

I twigged my legs then to the park. Nobody's turned up yet. Nobody I know. That's a good thing. I'm either hungry or very lonely. Surrounded by these goddam hypocrites enjoying themselves. It's goddam disrespect. A fly just flew past me. Hungarian mosquito season. It's possible that they only live a day. I can't remember.

Those school girls I was talking about. That's wrong, it's saturday. The day after tomorrow I leave and I won't have to see his laughing face. Though he's only standable when he laughs. Then at least I'm effective.

That bookseller was a screw. God, I feel downright awful. I think I'd better eat something before I throw up. Or does he even know when he's being insensitive. Steeped up in his own gloom to get home. I can't connect a damn thing with him and my hands are shaking like his do.

I left last night and I was feeling like this. I couldn't predict that I'd feel so insane. I couldn't predict that. What's a thing that repeats. It's a clover leaf that circles round to itself and so is he. And so am I.

Christ my hands. I hate stimulants. Why can't you feel a thing without it being so goddam oppressive. It was superfluous. I cut off the last letter and was left hungry without a home.

*

The absinth pages hit yesterday. To trevail and acclaim. The shake has spread to my neck. Christ I should eat something. The ducks are being fed by two goddam little glories. Let em. Let em be fed.

He said but who cares what he said. Leaves shake a little too when they're hung the same way my hand when I finally leave shakes. That was contrived. Shame.

But if I might be perfectly clear for a moment, it is time to be off. They hit yesterday as I said and I must be off like the rest. I came to the park to read and instead I let myself be affected. That was unwise. Not to mention tasteless. I don't care if I'm empty. It isn't any different from you.

Heidegger again

This is about how we misconstrue time in our everyday lives and thus misunderstand what it really means to exist. We look away from death, from what must be our ultimate end, and we thus live an existence which is always looking forward to moments and yet never noticing them when they arrive (lost, as we are, in still-looking towards the future). We are constantly awaiting things, but we forget them when they come. Time is 'used up,' it is set up mentally so as to be 'filled.' Thus, when Heidegger talks about 'anticipatory resoluteness,' he's indicating an 'authentic' way of living in temporality: we are to anticipate our death, become resolute about its impendence, and thus become resolute and (in Sartrean language) responsible for our choices in each specific moment and situation. The italics below are Heidegger's; Dasein, as I explained before, is 'Being-there,' and is just a fancy philosophical way of saying 'Man.' Hope this makes sense to you:


Thrown and falling, Dasein is proximally and for the most part lost in that with which it concerns itself. In this lostness, however, Dasein's fleeing in the face of that authentic existence which has been characterized as "anticipatory resoluteness", has made itself known; and this is a fleeing which covers up. In this convernful fleeing lies a fleeing in the face of death-- that is, a looking-away from the end of Being-in-the-world. This looking-away from it, is in itself a mode of that Being-towards-the-end which is ecstatically futural. The inauthentic temporality of everyday Dasein as it falls, must, as such a looking-away from finitude, fail to recognize authentic futurity and therewith temporality in general. And if indeed the way in which Dasein is ordinarily understood is guided by the "they", only so can the self-forgetful 'representation' of the 'infinity' of public time be strenghtened. The "they" never dies becasue it cannot die; for death is in each case mine, and only in anticipatory resoluteness does it get authentically understood in an existentiell manner. Nevertheless, the "they", which never dies and which misunderstands Being-towards-the-end, gives a characteristic interpretation to fleeing in the face of death. To the very end 'it always has more time'. Here a way of "having time" in the sense that one can lose it makes itself known. 'Right now, this! then that! And that is barely over, when...' Here it is not as if the finitude of time were getting understood; quite the contrary, for concern sets out to snatch as much as possible from the time which still keeps coming and 'goes on'. Publicly, time is something which everyone takes and can take. In the everday way in which we are with one another, the levelled-off sequence of "nows" remains completely unrecognizable as regards its origin in the termpoality of the individual Dasein. How is 'time' in its course to be touched even the least bit when a man who has been present-at-hand 'in time' no longer exists? Time goes on, just as indeed it already 'was' when a man 'came into life'. The only time one knows is the public time which has been levelled off and which belongs to everyone-- and that means, to nobody.

But just as he who flees in the face of death is pursued by it even as he evades it, and just as in turning away from it he must see it none the less, even the innocuous infinite sequence of "nows" which simply runs its course, imposes itself 'on' Dasein in a remarkably enigmatical way. Why do we say that time passes away, when we do not say with just as much emphasis that it arises? Yet with regard to the pure sequence of "nows" we have as much right to say one as the other. When Dasein talks of time's passing away, it understands, in the end, more of time than it wants to admit; that is to say, the temporality in which world-time temporalizes itself has not been completely closed off, no matter how much it may get covered up. Our talk about time's passing-away gives expression to this 'experience': time does not let itself be halted. This 'experience' in turn is possible only because the halting of time is something that we want. Herein lies an inauthentic awaiting of 'moments'-- an awaiting in which these are already forgotten as they glide by. The awaiting of inauthentic existence-- the awaiting which forgets as it makes present-- is the condition for the possibility of the ordinary experience of time's passing-away. Because Dasein is futural in the "ahead-of-itself", it must, in awaiting, understand the sequence of "nows" as one which glides by as it passes away. Dasein knows fugitive time in terms of its 'fugitive' knowledge about its death. In the kind of talk which emphasizes time's passing away, the finite futurity of Dasein's temporality is publicly reflected. And because even in talk about time's passing away, death can remain covered up, time shows itself as a passing-away 'in itself.'

A Few Quick Thoughts-Pieces,

because I too-much enjoy posting:

"A Common Enough Revelation"

A man was walking one day when he heard a sound that seemed to emanate from him, and this sound intrigued him. When he stopped moving, the sound stopped. He first imagined it was his shoes. But when he walked on the sides of his feet, the sound ceased. He wondered if it was the candies in his bag rustling in their packaging - but when he purposefully shook his bag, the candies made quite a different sound. Despite his investigation and the attempt to move the bagstrap, the sound continued when he walked.

Perhaps it was some echo off the buildings nearby, he imagined. It only occurred on some days, or at least he only noticed it a couple times a week. It would come when the rest of the world was silent, or when he at least could hear himself think. He thought of asking someone else about the sound, but decided it was too ludicrous. All the same, he quite wanted to know the sound's physical source.

It was a sort of whisk-whisk, whish-whish. When he would stop to listen for it, quite consciously and strained, he could no longer hear it. It was something in his movement. After hearing it a third time, on a third different day, he began to doubt his senses. Uncannily, it was indeed the same noise. It seemed to be something haunting him. He wondered if other people had noises like this, sounds which followed them unexplained wherever they went, sounds which fled to unheard corners as soon as they were sought out.

Why would a sound call and yet not want to be known? Certainly, all animate creatures make their noises for some reason or another, even birds, with all their incessant singing to and for no one. This sound called his attention. But it would not be found. Was this part of the neurosis of living? On this third time of hearing it, he chose not to seek it out, to just listen to what it was saying. Perhaps the mistake was to try too hard, perhaps the revelation would come of itself. He supposed others had come to this same conclusion, and perhaps that's how they learned to live with the sound. There was something so essential about it - it had first called out on a day when he was in a peculiar daze. It was a dreamlike sound, one which, in its incomprehensibility, carried terrific and secret import. It was like a spy. Whisk-whisk, whish-whish, whisk-whisk, whish-whish. He listened carefully, walked with the same constant stride, and was careful not to scare the sound away with his overcuriousness. The sound seemed to echo off his environment, and yet emit from him; it represented so much, and yet was obscure. Its lifeless resonance ached for compassion and discovery, but it was too shy for interaction. What did it mean? How had the others in his place dealt? What did it want from him?

As he bent to tie a shoelace, the whisks and whishs collided. The sound was made by the scraping of his denim pantlegs. With this realization, the rest of the man's questions fell away.


"The Problem of Being Born"

He enters the library and sits down at a desk. He takes off his jacket and nobody looks at him. I know this because I am there. He takes a sip from his water bottle and looks around to see if anyone has noticed his arrival. As I have said, no one did.

He sets about reading and here we lose interest. He matters to us because he was in momentary search of affirmity. One likes to be noticed. And hopefully it does not all come down to looks.

I have noticed him, but for what?- I do not matter. He pauses and brushes a bead of sweat from his face. The anxiety returns. Ah, rubbing of foreheads: to whom does happiness belong and is it available for all?