I’m uncertain if the year has really started, but I am happy now to have my words. I scatter them around like salt on fresh snow. It’s fun to think and speak without being tied to class, although I am still thinking about class and especially this one class in particular, which I ended up dropping after the first day — years ago. The professor said something important, and I know it was important because I felt inspired and uncomfortable after he said it. He said that it’s ok for things to be seductive, but it’s usually not enough. Anything that is seductive will catch anyone’s attention. There has to be something else to it otherwise it’s empty, only able to hold attention until the next seductive thing comes along. Because we’re ravenous fucking humans. He was talking about art but I believe this can be applied to anything. I guess he just meant it helps to know why you’re doing something before you do it. “Why” can be obvious, it can also be something no one will ever ever ever ever ever get. “Why” needs to exist somewhere, as some type of code to check and recheck and update. One word, an image of inspiration, an instruction manual. But it’s funny and confusing and almost disordered because meaning isn’t always important and its inherent worthiness is always fluctuating, notably unable to be measured for that would be absurd. When meaning exists in the air to grab onto, that seems to be more impactful than garden variety mass indoctrination. Hidden in the words we use and the emphasis we put upon them, there is a message. For me it has been recurring nightmares of my teeth falling out followed by ruminating questions I think to myself — Is this real? What am I going to do? Do I need something new? The words follow the symbol, and (as Lacan says) the symbolic is “the language we learn to speak and it leaves traces…The unconscious — it’s that — it is that which we have to learn to speak, and therefore we leave it, by language, to suggest all sorts of things.” — Seminar XXV, The Moment to Conclude, 1978. (Why did Lacan speak like that???) I was taught to love words, but I was taught with an absence and rigidity of language rather than a welcoming exploration. For the same reason, the walls are always cold and the house is always adjusting itself. I feel like some sort of pseudo-archeologist digging at words and challenging myself to be less silent every day, to see what will come out of me and if what I am devoted to/entangled with will reveal itself to me (it always does.)
Back to the house noise, because at night things tend to sound different. Everything blends together and stands out at the same time. Geese overhead and then the train, and each sound like each other. And when I inevitably go to bed and dream of whales, their songs are influenced by the vehicles outside. The dialogue in my head mirrors overheard indistinct conversations — people repeating things such as “a secret plan” and “I have too many bracelets” and “this is a family heirloom” and “baby lima beans” and “hahahah HA.” Lately, before I fall all the way asleep, I have been falling halfway into a dream and then jumping/falling awake, which happens a few times and usually includes some aspects of drool and fear. I’m not going to spend any time trying to figure out why it’s happening because I don’t care to know why. Sometimes “why” exists to be ignored like old seductive things waiting to be relevant again. Is that sad? Does it matter? Do you see how I think myself into trouble?
What am I entangled with? More importantly, what am I devoted to? Sorting through my thoughts is like trying to find a radio station buried in an abundance of static. But I have to do it, and I have to do it before I do anything else. But I don’t have to do anything. I tell myself I do, or I say I do because it’s a habit.
Have to have to have to
I do I do I do
Yesterday it was difficult to finish a thought. Today is a bit easier. But there is no end to my natural train of thought here, just wondering when it’s acceptable to share the whys and when the noise is enough.
