They have still not come to take away the other single bed. A part of me likes it here.
In the past month, Paul and I have hardly been more than an arm’s length away from each other. I am sleeping in his part of the bed and that comforts me somehow. I guess if I can’t rub up against his skin, the next best is to sleep in the place where his skin was, or something like that. I have not actually felt like doing a whole lot these past few days. I tell myself that I am missing Paul, but it is a lot of things all wound up together : being alone in an unfamiliar place and starting a new project about an emotionally demanding subject.
I circle, looking for an entry point; perhaps a spiral is a good metaphor. I think, “Tomorrow will be better.” I want to set a schedule for writing. Almost a whole liftetime of being self-employed and I still have no sense of schedule. I imagine a routine will help me not feel so overwhelmed by time.
Empty time – nothing. That is what I came looking for, to explore and find words to describe -a texture, a shape, what does nothing feel like? I tell myself that I must not worry about making something out of all this, that I must for now, not be afraid of nothing. If I want to know nothing, well – DO nothing.
Easier said than done. I think of the american artist, who works a lot with time and living spaces, can’t remember her name at the moment, (Andrea Zittel) living isolated for long periods of time on an island she made and designed off, was it Denmark? who for years wore only felt dresses that she made and mostly, I am thinking about a work she did on a residency exploring her use of time. She did whatever she felt like at the moment, turning all routine upside down – even eating and sleeping patterns. I can’t remember what form the actual work took in the gallery.
I will create my own order in this chaos. Each philosophical theory that I read about seems to be an attempt to either create order out of chaos, or to describe the chaos of the universe, which is the same in some respects.
I want to put nothing into the middle of this chaos versus order picture. How do you explore nothingness without falling into it? Would that be as my intro to philosophy writer describes – spinning in the frictionless void? Lost in words. There is definitely potential to lose myself in this project.
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Hi again…your comment is awaiting moderation…what does that mean?…I’m tempted to reply to your philosophical queries…nothingness, um? not sure (of course) what you are investigating…for Sartre the experience of “nothingness” was the experience of being oneself a freedom (a “no -thing”),,,definitely a temporal experience for him (an experience of oneself/consciousness as a temporalizing of itself, an opening onto the future that is always in progress and can never catch itself in the act) so you might like that…I can explain it further if you want…if one senses that one can lose oneself in that it is for Sartre the result of the fact that consciousness cannot possess itself,,,that it only IS this no-thingness or opening onto the world, this freedom….(Have you read La Nausea?)… for Heidegger this opening onto the world (intentionality) was linked to words as an expression of this primordial disclosedness/openess/a positing of something rather than nothing, which for Heidegger was death as the ultimate horizon of being. Heidegger has a book on poetry you might like….? As you know I like Levinas who moves the discussion of intentionality and of time away from the being vs non-being or perhaps as you say order vs chaos thing…for him meaning has always been linked in Western philosophy to being (or its absence/negation/the “nothing” that cannot BE)… for him words are not just about being carriers of meaning (or of being) they also bespeak a materiallity (sound) that moves us or affects us, as does a sensible enjoyment or suffering…like Deleuze or Nietszche but for differnt reasons he is not intersted in negation//nothingness but in expperience as a plenitude…this also has a temporal dimenson that I can explain further if you are interested…thanks for the philosophical jump start….What about Barthes book on photography, Camera Lucida…? this is also about time but I think it is also about writing as an impossible art (like photography) insofar as it cannot “say” the experience of time…he writes that he wanted the book to be a “wild phenomenology” ….I have a paper on Levinas and Barthes on time if you are interested….take care…hope you get a chance to hook up with Alex and Anna… John