Unconsciously conscious, this is how the day begins, a slight opening betwixt the two, just big enough to peek through into pre-consciousness.
Colours evoke and revoke simultaneously, what they give they take away. My mother is a colour, red perhaps; my father the colour brown, the sky quail egg blue, the moon yellow-white-yellow. The strongest colours are those that signify nothing, have no colour yet evoke a palate of feelings, moods, evocations, senses. Colours do not exist outside they’re evocation, they’re sense, the moods and feelings they evoke; juxtaposition, nothingness, my mother, my father, quail-egg blue, yellow-white-yellow, brown.
Blazes Bowman: legs gone palsied re-crossing Liffey, Portmanteaux worn skivvies inward out, woollen under-linen to dress-side; billfold stuffed with Queens Pinot; Irish turbidmoyle bluebells side-grave; bedside manor inexcusable, monks’ chips and suet; surplice worn over shoulder and rector, speyside frowned upon for Mort on salt; Irishman oddment, such calumny and prescience of mind, threadbare homily and Quaker’s roil.
I am a phenomenologist, not a Husserlian or a Merleau-Pontyian, or a Getafe smoking Sartrean, though I do enjoy a Blond Gallicises occasionally. I do, however, have a penchant for Absinthe and green tea. I have been known to wear culottes before July and a sou'wester, sometimes a Trilby without a hatband when it’s uncalled for and unfashionable to do so.
Mired in thought I sit in front of you, not a moment’s reprieve from the thought that thought the thought antecedent to this thought, to and fro, back and forth, the seamless thought that thinks in the dark, awaiting the march forward that will bring an end to the mire and fen. I thought an answer, but I was sorely mistaken, the thought I thought, the one antecedent to this one, was mistaken, a thought, thought out of line, a thought without a thinker, mired in the slough and peat, such is my Gomorrah in life, my fen and spoil.
My own experience with psychoanalysis has taught me what I think I say I say is often mistaken, a faulty transcription of a symptom, a manifest expression of something inexpressible. Within (or outside) the inexpressible lies the etymology of the symptom that is the expression of the expressed; the expression of the yet-to-be; the inexpressibility of expression. Free-association is the evocation of the symptom (the faulty transcription) of the inexpressibility, the manifest latency of rebus, dream and memory. Joyce, in his masterful use of stream-of-consciousness, expressed this inexpressibility, the night-terrors and shades, the hurt and anger, the cuckoldry that lies veiled behind the faulty transcription, the yes behind the I think I say what I say; the Heideggerian unconcealing, the expression of the inexpressible, an evocation of the symptom of the unconscious wish, the yes concealed behind the no.
There is an evil genius living in my shoulder and in the corset of my back. He is the villainy that crushes the discs in my neck, the degeneration; the ramshackle. I awaken with the bones in my neck tamped like sheared nails, my postured limited to crouching and hunkering. I am a curvature. Should this continue, which it will regardless of my writ to the contrary, I will surely curve into a perfect C, thereby dispensing with posture once and forever.
...these are burrow-thoughts; out-thoughts, the afterglow once the pain has subsided; blue red thoughts, yellow green, blue; afterthoughts thought in blue, yellow, green…once the pain has subsided, ebbing...
This is all new to me, this newness. This is not what I supposed it to be, not even close. Why this and not that, or that and not this? I am stymied. Why is it that one thing is this and another that, or one that and not this? I am confused, addled, not quite with it. Where to begin when all the beginnings are the same, identical and interchangeable? This is not supposed to happen, this battlement and confusion. I once saw a man with a pole for a leg; he scrabbled across the top of the pavement like a match, a fiery cockscomb in his wake. When I asked him why he had a pole for a leg he answered, because there were no new legs to be had, so I jimmy-rigged this one out of a mop handle and yoke. I see, I said, not wanting to make eye contact with him, a mop handle and yoke, very industrious indeed. He winked at me, the folds in his eyelids snapping, and headed up the pavement, his pole-leg waking and corseting. I looked down at my legs, the left one then the right and said, I’m close, very close, but not quite there, not yet at least.
This is the new world, the same old new world they promised us, the one they made out of string and clothes pins. This is the same old world with the same old promises, the new world that they promised us, the one they made out of string and clothes pins. This is the world they built out of electronic money and banknotes, pork bellies and hedges. This is the world they built out of sneakers and handbags, the world they built on curved spines and missing fingers. The world they built out of towers and shinning glass, out of slums and barrios. This is their world, not mine.
Colours evoke and revoke simultaneously, what they give they take away. My mother is a colour, red perhaps; my father the colour brown, the sky quail egg blue, the moon yellow-white-yellow. The strongest colours are those that signify nothing, have no colour yet evoke a palate of feelings, moods, evocations, senses. Colours do not exist outside they’re evocation, they’re sense, the moods and feelings they evoke; juxtaposition, nothingness, my mother, my father, quail-egg blue, yellow-white-yellow, brown.
Blazes Bowman: legs gone palsied re-crossing Liffey, Portmanteaux worn skivvies inward out, woollen under-linen to dress-side; billfold stuffed with Queens Pinot; Irish turbidmoyle bluebells side-grave; bedside manor inexcusable, monks’ chips and suet; surplice worn over shoulder and rector, speyside frowned upon for Mort on salt; Irishman oddment, such calumny and prescience of mind, threadbare homily and Quaker’s roil.
I am a phenomenologist, not a Husserlian or a Merleau-Pontyian, or a Getafe smoking Sartrean, though I do enjoy a Blond Gallicises occasionally. I do, however, have a penchant for Absinthe and green tea. I have been known to wear culottes before July and a sou'wester, sometimes a Trilby without a hatband when it’s uncalled for and unfashionable to do so.
Mired in thought I sit in front of you, not a moment’s reprieve from the thought that thought the thought antecedent to this thought, to and fro, back and forth, the seamless thought that thinks in the dark, awaiting the march forward that will bring an end to the mire and fen. I thought an answer, but I was sorely mistaken, the thought I thought, the one antecedent to this one, was mistaken, a thought, thought out of line, a thought without a thinker, mired in the slough and peat, such is my Gomorrah in life, my fen and spoil.
My own experience with psychoanalysis has taught me what I think I say I say is often mistaken, a faulty transcription of a symptom, a manifest expression of something inexpressible. Within (or outside) the inexpressible lies the etymology of the symptom that is the expression of the expressed; the expression of the yet-to-be; the inexpressibility of expression. Free-association is the evocation of the symptom (the faulty transcription) of the inexpressibility, the manifest latency of rebus, dream and memory. Joyce, in his masterful use of stream-of-consciousness, expressed this inexpressibility, the night-terrors and shades, the hurt and anger, the cuckoldry that lies veiled behind the faulty transcription, the yes behind the I think I say what I say; the Heideggerian unconcealing, the expression of the inexpressible, an evocation of the symptom of the unconscious wish, the yes concealed behind the no.
There is an evil genius living in my shoulder and in the corset of my back. He is the villainy that crushes the discs in my neck, the degeneration; the ramshackle. I awaken with the bones in my neck tamped like sheared nails, my postured limited to crouching and hunkering. I am a curvature. Should this continue, which it will regardless of my writ to the contrary, I will surely curve into a perfect C, thereby dispensing with posture once and forever.
...these are burrow-thoughts; out-thoughts, the afterglow once the pain has subsided; blue red thoughts, yellow green, blue; afterthoughts thought in blue, yellow, green…once the pain has subsided, ebbing...
This is all new to me, this newness. This is not what I supposed it to be, not even close. Why this and not that, or that and not this? I am stymied. Why is it that one thing is this and another that, or one that and not this? I am confused, addled, not quite with it. Where to begin when all the beginnings are the same, identical and interchangeable? This is not supposed to happen, this battlement and confusion. I once saw a man with a pole for a leg; he scrabbled across the top of the pavement like a match, a fiery cockscomb in his wake. When I asked him why he had a pole for a leg he answered, because there were no new legs to be had, so I jimmy-rigged this one out of a mop handle and yoke. I see, I said, not wanting to make eye contact with him, a mop handle and yoke, very industrious indeed. He winked at me, the folds in his eyelids snapping, and headed up the pavement, his pole-leg waking and corseting. I looked down at my legs, the left one then the right and said, I’m close, very close, but not quite there, not yet at least.
This is the new world, the same old new world they promised us, the one they made out of string and clothes pins. This is the same old world with the same old promises, the new world that they promised us, the one they made out of string and clothes pins. This is the world they built out of electronic money and banknotes, pork bellies and hedges. This is the world they built out of sneakers and handbags, the world they built on curved spines and missing fingers. The world they built out of towers and shinning glass, out of slums and barrios. This is their world, not mine.
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