All posts in category parts of the whole

a feeling for all living things

It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with the insects and the leaping frog, and the owl that hoots among the hills calling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth. If we could establish a deep, abiding relationship with nature, we would never kill an animal for our appetite, we would never harm, vivisect, a monkey, a dog, a guinea pig for our benefit. We would find other ways to heal our wounds, heal our bodies. But the healing of the mind is something totally different. That healing gradually takes place if you are with nature, with that orange on the tree, and the blade of grass that pushes through the cement, and the hills covered, hidden, by the clouds.

—Jiddu Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti to Himself, p 10

‘he walked arm in arm with his shadow’ (éric chevillard)

aural darkness in june. a way to refuse the heat. alice. another merciful release. a spiral of silence. another five minutes in this chair. jabès with his name in his pain but his pain with no name. writing about the book and its hold over us. the power of the word. meanwhile duras is looking at the time. ‘it was ten o’clock. in the evening. it was summer.’ and what could maria call the time opening ahead of her…’this incandescence, this bursting of a love at last without object.’

been here too long. here early / leave late / write in boxes / move on wheels back uphill. two legs, four legs, crossing thresholds over and over. sidewalks of daily desolation. tedium in quin’s ‘city where every street declares its defeat.’ consider bernhard and his ‘born barricade fanatics’—the shared ‘desire to barricade ourselves from the world.’

but then there is jabès in unwilling exile from his beloved desert. everyone in some form of exile—mental, physical, spiritual—feeling incapable of return. like robin about whom the baron thinks ‘there was in her every movement a slight drag, as if the past were a web about her, as there is a web of time about a very old building.’ and yet nora saying ‘robin can go anywhere, do anything, because she forgets, and i nowhere because i remember.’ because what bliss it would be to forget, right, to not always be dragging that chain of keyless padlocks behind. two (mis?)interpretations of another’s experience. dangers of outside looking in. but what of robin. what of robin. on the floor barking like a dog. a shattered mirror. surrendered to expectations. a final transition to conditioned response. or the ultimate shedding of humanity’s heavy carapace.

more data in the imaginary spreadsheet

Yesterday cigar-smoking man was again observed sitting in his chair and smoking. He had a bike with him, though a different bike from his original bike. Meanwhile, someone wrote the word ‘WEED’ in multicolored chalk on the brick promenade. There are now many tourists, both of the large and confused varieties. They approach anyone around them with desperate pleas for directions to destinations that tourists frequent, such as restaurants where they can attempt for a time to assuage their unending hunger. They walk around talking about when to eat, concerned that a late lunch will push dinner back too far. Managing one’s meals whilst vacationing is difficult. It requires careful planning and continuous discussion.

The fake pirate ship drifts into view and executes a tight 90-degree turn in the channel, as the few customers on board respond with halfhearted movements to the ‘deckhands’ capering to the awful pulsing reggae music. It may be an elaborate game of musical chairs, but the distance is too great to permit an accurate, detailed report.

A police helicopter incessantly buzzes overhead, an unusual occurrence in this sanitized sector of the city. Perhaps it makes the tourists feel protected.

One-sided exchange overheard between two restaurant employees who were setting up outdoor seating:

“[…]”

“No, I would say I’m spiritual, but I don’t believe in organized religion.”

On a certain bridge, someone scrawled ‘It feels so good to do it’ with spray paint. After a while, the graffiti clean-up squad covered it up with neutral paint. Several weeks or months later, the same scrawl appeared but this time it said, ‘It feels so good to do it again’. The clean-up squad covered that one much quicker, only for the scrawl to reappear a few days later as ‘It feels so good to do it again and again’. No one will win this war.

In Winterreise, Nagl has moved on from thinking his life is still lying ahead of him:

‘Now that life is no longer ahead of me, now that it’s really started, there’s nothing else but senseless thoughts. I’ve done everything almost automatically. I made it a point of honor to have everything I did look as if I wanted it. In reality, it just happened.’

Is it the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning.

1 Comment

by sean on July 24, 2014 • Permalink

Posted by sean on July 24, 2014

https://sd-stewart.com/2014/07/24/more-data-in-the-imaginary-spreadsheet/

bruno schulz and the need for connections

“Recently, I have been calling almost daily at the office. It sometimes happens that someone is sick and they allow me to work in his place. Or somebody has something urgent to do in town and lets me deputize for him. Unfortunately, this is not regular work. It is pleasant to have, even for a few hours, a chair of one’s own with a leather cushion, one’s own rulers, pencils, and pens. It is pleasant to run into or even be rebuked by one’s fellow workers. Someone addresses you, makes a joke, pulls your leg, and you blossom forth for a moment. You rub against somebody, attach your homelessness and nothingness to something alive and warm. The other person walks away and does not feel your burden, does not notice that he is carrying you on his shoulders, that like a parasite you cling momentarily to his life…”

—Bruno Schulz, “The Old Age Pensioner” in Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

a knoblike process

Creeping crepuscule, descrescent light, harbinger of dreaded return to EST, where darkness dampens day’s early end. Decumbent drone diminishes daily, drowsy in the drawing room. Sip long from murky melodies, muddy froth spilling forth in rivulets, dirgeful delights diverging in drone’s ear canals. Mellifluous miasma of musical melancholia!

Dismantling of outdoor seating commences! Desperate attempts to affect staring at nothing continues. Doctor Chumply the Mouth Breather appears, Mickey D’s in hand, heart-attack-in-waiting, following with tiny aggrieved steps the trail of nitroglycerin tablets strewn across the decking. Take the elevator, not the stairs, for they are locked, despite the sign in the kitchen encouraging good health through stairs-taking. O, Dr. Chumply, what will become of you, will you follow those tablets to the Haunted Wood™ where the witch stokes her stove as she awaits your fleshly delights.

[But Christine, what of loneliness, standing there behind the invisibility cloak, always working, always writing, what did engagement mean for you, O Invisible Author, did you drape yourself in a duvet woven with words…]

Glossary

lumpfish: Any of various fishes of the family Cyclopteridae, especially Cyclopterus lumpus of North Atlantic waters, having pelvic fins united to form a suction disk and a body bearing prominent tubercles.

tubercle: A small, rounded prominence or process, such as a wartlike excrescence on the roots of some leguminous plants or a knoblike process in the skin or on a bone.

Quick now! Homophone challenge question: would you rather your words resonate or resinate. Think about it while staring into the clouds.

Nod to From your favourite sky

2 Comments

by sean on November 6, 2013 • Permalink

Posted by sean on November 6, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/11/06/a-knoblike-process/

unsolvable word problems

the indivisibility of a single word leaves a remainder of yesterday. a woman is overwhelmed by the memories of the first time she ever did anything. a man has no recollection of the last time he did anything. a child does not appear in this story.

the indivisibility of a single word leaves a remainder of scent. all separate parts join together as a whole. name the value of a single part. prioritize a single recurring sensation. freedom to breathe in, a conscious act of breathing out. this is some semblance of life.

the indivisibility of a single word leaves a remainder of shadows. add up the things and people no longer here. also, the activities, the rituals. stretch a taut coalescence of the before over a bony skeleton of songs. e.g., little maggie and mathey grove caper in the yellow lamplight spilled across the hardwood floor, a dream of distance as anchors tug, hold fast.

the indivisibility of a single word leaves a remainder of dreams. of dusty corners. of regret. of a swallowing up. of a diving down. of a spreading out. of a lossless life. of listless eyes. of a luster tarnished by your breath. of every day, an ending, every day a sort of beginning.

the indivisibility of a single word leaves a remainder of nothing. fill in the blank to receive extra credit: _________________.

2 Comments

by sean on July 28, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in amateur mathematician flies into the sun, anchors, dreams, long division, memory, music, parts of the whole, senses, shadows, summer, sundays, the antidote is also the poison, words

Posted by sean on July 28, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/07/28/unsolvable-word-problems/

severed rat head portends…something…

The extreme is only extreme when seen through another pair of eyes.

If there’s a problem someone has studied it, but likely not solved it.

If you were to invite disaster to dinner, what would you serve it.

If everybody hurts, why do they keep inflicting more pain.

Are certain things actually bad for us or are we just bad at handling certain things…

Removal from one’s environment alters perception.

(But for how long. For. How. Long.)

Places feel a certain way and it’s hard not to notice.

Somewhere else slows time’s passing (is this why some people love to travel).

A wall is a wall until one climbs on top and then it is a perch.

The familiar done in new ways is better than the new done in familiar ways.

If you run in circles you always finish what you start.

The end of the world no longer frightens me.

5 Comments

by sean on July 2, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in amateur aphorist flies into the sun, i feel vagulous don't you, parts of the whole, the antidote is also the poison, the antidote is inside all of us, this is the explanation of a tuesday, words that make me feel better

Posted by sean on July 2, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/07/02/severed-rat-head-portends-something/

disordered chronology of movement

Failed recollections to begin with. Slow-creeping toward habit. A giant round metal head. Sudden velocity. Sudden inertia. Pavement merges with gravel. The emergence of a tentative consciousness, neither hard nor pebbly. Vexation of unidentified raptors. Vultures soar over open sore in ground. A blast. Winged assassins. New commonness of thrashers in the street. Feet to pedals. The river like a swollen artery choked with plaque. Ungroundedness. Slow mounting keen of a train not far off. Dream rivulets running off a dry and calloused cerebellum. The importance of a second floor. Eye contact with strangers. Avoid building awareness of a presence. A body imagined close, a body far off yet close, a body buried in dry soil, a body husking a soul. A dipping line, looming and drawing back, tangled in the hanging moss of a halting lifetime.

II.

The exultant dismissal of everything. A hitching-up of trouser legs above this rising level of foreign liquidity. A spreading out tempered by a wish to gather in. Weathering. Rusty rooftop with greenery. The futile accomplishment of deletion. Southern hospitality. Sensory overload. Sensory deprivation. Every atom split to populate a neverending shell game run by con artists connotating the building blocks of life. It’s so casual is what it feels like. An unseemly seeming accidental existence. And yet people fly planes. Against near-white skies. This is a reason not to listen to all the best songs in a row. This is the reason time means nothing. Look out, the fuse is lit. See how it sputters, this heat seen and heard, racing on its journey to a black-powder shattered shack. Every early morning blink of a first-opened eye, this fuse is lit. And wetted fingertips flutter to pinch it out quick.

III.

Bird on a wire, sing your song, lift your wing to the world. Swoop down and over this set of fleet footprints filled in long ago. Expectations of nothing can never be unfulfilled. It’s a something-nothing to believe in, at least. An anti-ideal to carry stuck beneath an idealist’s forever-sweating armpit. Relish the freedom of solitude in public places. Deny detours diverting detritus. Pick it up, handle it, determine meaning and value, discard when done. Don’t look back but for inspiration. Forward motion fuels freedom. Reminders come free.

2 Comments

by sean on June 19, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in aether, anonymuncule flies into the sun, birds, breathing rights, cycling, dreams, elaborating on the never happening, escape, everything is in everything, friends, giant things, i feel vagulous don't you, i'm glowing don't touch me, in-between, isolation, it's always the smallest things that catch in your throat and fill you with a bit of light, it's the end of the song play it again, lassitude, learning to fold the map of my avoidance techniques, let's all synchronize our watches to 00:00, let's pretend everything is new again, memory, nothing, other things, parts of the whole, philosophastering, real-time dilution of a previously useful system of categorization, restlessness, rivers, rootlessness, south carolina, stream of whateverness, summer, swirly patterns, the antidote is also the poison, travel, wednesdays are weird, where are all the decoder rings

Posted by sean on June 19, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/06/19/disordered-chronology-of-movement/

scatterings

i like to see chaos subsumed into order. long grass growing tangled then trimmed. but only in certain places, like next to sidewalks, not in parks where i am walking. no, not there. not when i am sitting facing a field and the man comes on his mower, chasing me away, following me through the park, more and more mower men, an onslaught of men joined in mechanised noise and motion. that is what i don’t like. i like to see spread-out papers form themselves into a neat pile or disappear into the recycle bin. bare surfaces. something emptied and discarded. this is not a manifesto, by the way. this is just a monday morning [note: it’s actually now wednesday—ed.]. a morning i rode in rain. traffic altered my route and i passed the central police station, a thriving death star hive, battered tie fighters buzzing in and out from the flight deck, looking to crush, to destroy, to subjugate the populace, meting out their brutal mutilated form of “justice” with truncheons and guns.

last friday was a special day for i heard my first wood thrush of the year. o, how i love the ethereal songs of the thrushes! there is no sweeter music in the forest for me. i used to wake to their flute music every spring and early summer morning, but no more, no more. now, if lucky, it is the much lesser song of another thrush, the ubiquitous robin. not to disparage the robin, but his song is nowhere near as transcendent as the wood thrush, the hermit thrush, the swainson’s thrush…

yesterday i went to a class that was like jungian personality types but with colors and a few more bells and whistles. i am blue-green and my conflict sequence moves from green to blue to red. there are all these diagrams that look like someone made them with a spirograph. they are quite pretty but i don’t know how i feel about being plotted on a triangular graph. there i am…a black dot straddling the line between two types, far off from my fellows (in the group report, i am a clear outlier, there are no other dots near me). there i am…moving across the color scheme as conflict escalates, crossing axes with impunity. look at me go…

8 Comments

by sean on May 1, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in bike commuting, birds, breathing rights, human behavior, human nature, mondays, neuro-nonsense, paper management, parts of the whole, pointless, police, proceedings of the society for the eradication of mower men, rain, strength deployment inventory, this is the explanation of a tuesday, tuesdays are generally neutral, wednesdays are weird, wood thrush, work

Posted by sean on May 1, 2013

https://sd-stewart.com/2013/05/01/scatterings/

metagrobolised

The air swelled with moisture. It was as if there was no room left for anything else in the air, and so it hung like a boundless and invisible damp rag over this world. The people were consumed with each other, like small fires at the point where the chunks of wood begin to no longer hold their shape, instead surrendering their physical form to the raging heat. Their borders crackle into fuel for an expanding future. Can you smell the smoke.

Somewhere a mallard quacked its indifference and from the shrubbery an itinerant towhee weighed in on the issue, which by this point was beyond anyone’s comprehension. Other voices in other languages chimed in as the wind rose to whip us all into submission.

All of this is noticed, all of this is free, things we see but cannot touch, the feeling of watching something out of reach, a sound unheard but by a few.

4 Comments

by sean on April 18, 2013 • Permalink