Nature Sensitive 11/13CHNS

[by EƖȺmore]

   In Amsterdam,

there are whirls of cold wind that would unroot one
Amsterdam's not the the place for crybabies, nor for the very holy
as there's no space for resting melancholia,
the weather won't allow it - a whirl would swirl one's mood
and dry out the spirit
   And, then again,
there are the dripping drops pointedly reaching the back of your neck - at anytime,
regardless of precautions or conventions
   In Amsterdam,
there are whirlwinds
that could sweep the blood out of your veins
and wipe out the will to and thought of fare well;
   there is a specific whirlwind
that could make one blush, as it'd flush the blood in the cheek.
only a leaf to squeeze on, roll upon and engulf - that's the only salvation.
   swallowed by whirlwinds, getting carried away.

Ψυτάλλεια, Μονότυπο #66

ο σαμσών ρακάς τα βάζει με τα θηρία

Ένα από τα λιγοστά μυθιστορήματα που έχω διαβάσει δύο φορές ήταν το βιβλίο της Σώτης Τριανταφύλλου, Σάββατο βράδυ στην άκρη της πόλης. Με την τελευταία ανάγνωση του να έχει λάβει χώρα προ δεκαετίας, είχε έρθει πια η ώρα του αποχαιρετισμού.

Στα χέρια του Σαμσών Ρακά θέλω να πιστεύω πως το βιβλίο μετατράπηκε στο ακριβώς αντίθετο του: από ένα έργο εφήμερης νεανικής απόλαυσης σε ένα έργο η απόλαυση του οποίου θα διαρκέσει στο χρόνο. 

Σε έναν τόνο πιο προσωπικό, ας σημειώσω και τούτο. Με μεγάλη μου χαρά σας ανακοινώνω πως διαθέτω πλέον και παπούτσια, ευγενική προσφορά του δημιουργού της Ψυττάλειας:

Τον ευχαριστώ γι’ αυτό καθότι είναι ο πρώτος που το σκέφτηκε μέσα σ’ αυτά τα χρόνια.

Απόσπασμα:

Το μυστικό βάρος των τρελών

φυσάμε ξεφυσάμε

δε βγαίνει ο βράχος από μέσα μας

οι τρελοί

γεννιούνται από τις πέτρες

που πετάχτηκαν ένα απόγευμα αφηρημένα

από μια παρέα παιδιών

καθώς αυτά συζήταγαν με πάθος

να φτιάξουνε μια συμμορία

κι έτσι δεν κατάφεραν

να κάνουν γκελ στη θάλασσα

δε γκελάρουν όλοι οι άνθρωποι

να προσέχετε τις πέτρες

που πετάτε

Steppenwolf

Julio Bittencourt

What keeps humanity back and tortures the unique individual; meaning humanity’s greatest hope. The individual who is solidly convinced that suffers endlessly; individuals who believe themselves to be the most unlucky of all they ever met. The one that thinks is cursed by God, or any other superior forces.

Ø  A lie; a lie designed by God, the only God, to trick the believers.

The household budget became even smaller; so now the maid was dismissed; an enormous, thick-boned charwoman with white hair that flapped around her head came every morning and evening to do the heaviest work; everything else was looked after by Gregor’s mother on top of the large amount of sewing work she did. Gregor even learned, listening to the evening conversation about what price they had hoped for, that several items of jewellery belonging to the family had been sold, even though both mother and sister had been very fond of wearing them at functions and celebrations. But the loudest complaint was that although the flat was much too big for their present circumstances, they could not move out of it, there was no imaginable way of transferring Gregor to the new address. He could see quite well, though, that there were more reasons than consideration for him that made it difficult for them to move, it would have been quite easy to transport him in any suitable crate with a few air holes in it; the main thing holding the family back from their decision to move was much more to do with their total despair, and the thought that they had been struck with a misfortune unlike anything experienced by anyone else they knew or were related to.

Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis, 1914.

Despair

mindazonalta

Are you familiar with the frightening sensation of melting, the feeling of dissolving into a flowing river, in which the self is annulled by organic liquidization? Everything solid and substantial in you melts away in a wearisome fluidity, and the only thing left is your head. I'm speaking of a precise painful sensation, not a vague and undetermined one. As in a hallucinatory dream, you feel that only your head is left, without foundation and support, without a body. This feeling has nothing to do with that vague and voluptuous weariness by the seaside or in melancholy dreamy musings; it is a weariness which consumes and destroys. Mohamed Bouazizi poured inflammable liquid over his body and set himself alight outside the local municipal office, his act of protest cemented a revolt that would ultimately end President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's 23-year-rule  No effort, no hope, no illusion can satisfy you any longer. Shocked witless by your own catastrophe, unable to think or to act, caught in cold and heavy darkness, solitary as in moments of profound regret, you have reached the negative limit of life, its absolute temperature, where the last illusions about life freeze. Αστυφύλακας των ΜΑΤ, 27 ετών, αυτοκτόνησε με το υπηρεσιακό του πιστόλι στις 3 τα ξημερώματα, στις τουαλέτες των κεντρικών γραφείων του ΠΑΣΟΚ στην οδό Ιπποκράτους, όπου εκτελούσε υπηρεσία. The true meaning of agony, which is not a struggle of pure passion or gratuitous fantasy, but life's hopeless struggle in the claws of death, is revealed in this feeling of great weariness. One cannot separate the thought of agony from that of weariness and death. Agony as struggle? But with whom and for what? The interpretation of agony as an ardor exalted by its own futility, or as a battle whose aim is itself, is absolutely false. In fact, agony means a battle between life and death. Since death is immanent in life, almost all of life is an agony. I call agonic only those dramatic moments in the battle between life and death when the presence of death is experienced consciously and painfully. Απεργία πείνας ξεκινούν από την Τρίτη 300 μετανάστες  True agony occurs when you pass into nothingness through death, when a feeling of weariness consumes you irrevocably and death wins. In every true agony there is a triumph of death, even though you may continue to live after those moments of weariness.

There is nothing imaginary in this turmoil. Eight Algerians in total have set themselves on fire since January 12 Every agony bears a conclusive stamp. Isn't agony similar to an incurable sickness which torments us intermittently? Agonic moments chart the progress of death in life, revealing a drama in our consciousness caused by the disruption of the balance between life and death. Such moments are not possible except in that sensation of weariness which brings life down to its absolute negative value.

Frequency of agonic moments is an indicator of decomposition and ruin. Death is something disgusting, the only obsession which cannot become voluptuous. Even when you want to die, you do it with an implicit regret for your own desire. / want to die, but I am sorry that I want to die. This is the feeling experienced by those who abandon themselves to nothingness. The most perverse feeling is the feeling of death. Imagine that there are people who cannot sleep because of their perverse obsession with death!

How I wish I did not know anything about myself and this world!

Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair, 1934.

Do you know my poetry?

“… a conversation that Blake, approaching death, had with his old friend, Henry Crabb Robinson, in December of 1825: “On my asking in what light he viewed the great question concerning the Divinity of Jesus Christ,” Robinson reported, Blake “said; ‘He is the only God.’ But then he added — ‘And so am I and so are you.’ ” The language of nomos (in this case, of religious order) is adopted, but only to impress upon the listener its partiality, relativity, and distortion. The “law” is stated in order to transgress it explicitly. “I am the only God and so are you,” spoken by a London engraver, would not make quite the same impression as “He is the only God. And so am I and so are you.” Rather than megalomaniacal or fantastic, Blake’s way of making his point is antinomian.”

Kripal, Jeffrey John, Reality against Society: William Blake, Antinomianism, and the American Counterculture, Common Knowledge - Volume 13, Issue 1, Winter 2007, p. 100.

II. Thanatos

Allan Hise - Jewish cemetery

 “Ζούμε στην Εποχή του Πτώματος, της Κωματώδους Κατάστασης και της Χίμαιρας. Αυτό που είναι σημαντικό τώρα, δεν είναι τόσο πολύ αυτό που συνιστά τη ζωή, αλλά μάλλον τι εννοούμε με τον θάνατο. Τα νεκρά σώματα δεν αποσυντίθενται (αν πλαστικοποιηθούν), τα νεκρά σώματα μπορεί να επανέλθουν (αν διατηρηθούν σε κρυογονικές συνθήκες). Και τα σώματα σε κωματώδη κατάσταση μπορούν να διατηρηθούν στη ζωή με υποστηρικτικά συστήματα. Τα σώματα γίνονται όλο και περισσότερο υβριδικά συστήματα ανθρώπου - μηχανής. Οι μεταβατικοί χώροι πολλαπλασιάζονται εκεί όπου νέα σύνορα και όρια συνεχώς επανασχηματίζονται, επανακατασκευάζονται και επαναξιολογούνται. Τα σώματα είναι ασαφή. Η Fractal και Phantom Σάρκα, πολλαπλασιάζεται. Δεν ξέρουμε αν είμαστε εδώ ή εκεί, αν είμαστε ζωντανοί ή νεκροί και ίσως αυτό δεν θα αποτελεί πια σημαντική διαφοροποίηση!”

Stelarc, συνέντευξη στην Άννα Χατζηγιαννάκη

http://news.kathimerini.gr/4dcgi/_w_articles_civ_2_05/09/2010_413513

 “You know, Plato says philosophy’s a meditation on and a preparation for death. By death what he means is not an event, but a death in life because there’s no rebirth, there’s no change, there’s no transformation without death, and therefore the question becomes: How do you learn how to die? Of course Montaigne talks about that in his famous essay “To Philosophize Is to Learn How to Die.” You can’t talk about truth without talking about learning how to die because it’s precisely by learning how to die, examining yourself and transforming your old self into a better self, that you actually live more intensely and critically and abundantly. So that the connection between learning how to die and changing, being transformed, turning your world upside down, inverting your world the way in which that famous play by Ludwig Tieck** highlights so that you actually are in a different kind of zone, you have a new self.” […]

 “The conversation with the dead is one of the great pleasures of life. My God, somebody who is sitting there reading Chekhov, Beckett, reading Toni Morrison – you are not in any way dead, in many ways you are intensely alive. I mean, when my dear brother Simon reads Wallace Stevens in his wonderful book Things Merely Are, he’s very much alive. It’s impossible to be dead and dull reading Wallace Stevens’s intricate and subtle plays of mind. So it’s true that you might be socially isolated because you’re in the library, at home and so on, but you’re intensely alive. In fact you’re much more alive than these folk walking the streets of New York in crowds, with no intellectual interrogation and questioning going at all. But if you read John Ruskin, or you read Mark Twain, or, my God, Herman Melville, you almost have to throw the book against the wall because you’re almost so intensely alive that you need a break! It’s time to take a break, get a little dullness in your life, take Moby-Dick and throw it against the wall the way Goethe threw von Kleist’s work against the wall. It was just too much.”

Cornel West

http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=1277

http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=1280&page=2