Dear diary,
When some people take possession of an apartment, it seems that they boast or broadcast their ownership of the place by galumphing about inside of it: stomping on the floor, slamming doors, sitting down with a thud. Even when asleep, they snore so loud the whole neighborhood can hear.
I myself am the opposite. I think the best way to make one’s ownership known – to prove you belong in a particular locale – is by maintaining harmony with its surroundings. (The motto should not be “I dominate” but rather “I fit”; or, better yet: “I lift”, which is to say: “I sublimate; I lure all proximates to apotheosis: onward & outward.”) So I slink around my home with the grace of a dancer. I walk with a silent, smooth spring in every step, like one dabbling in ballet. Classical ballet, not that modern shit: fuck that. (I’m joking: I love both classical and modern ballet; I just couldn’t resist indulging my inner Frank Booth, mimicking what he says in the film Blue Velvet about Heineken beer in favor of Pabst Blue Ribbon.) And when I use the cupboards in my kitchen, it’s like the kitchen and I are the selfsame living being: my arm and its doors form one sole organ, so our opening & closing resembles the undulation of gills. Sometimes I’ll stand there for hours, just breathing & thinking: I am the kitchen creature. Thou shalt have no other sea beasts before me.
My thoughts coil around like this because it’s hard to power though these final hours. “These last three afternoons?” you ask; “What! are you planning on getting crucified by imperial forces & then breaking death on Monday?”
“No,” I answer: “nothing so simple as that. The truth is that we’re selling our apartment and moving to a new shed up north; and the closing lawyer-fest for these two events is on Tuesday morning, so Monday’s the day we’re transferring all our belongings; thus Sunday becomes the Day of Purification, where we have to clean the whole house in hopes that it will please its upcoming overlord. So that leaves Saturday & today (the day I am writing this minced obscenity) to fill with fear. That’s why I’m talking to you right now, dear diary, instead of—”
Here the imperial forces drag me away.
So that’s why I’m upset about the rudeness of ownership – & by rude I mean loud – pertaining specifically to condominiums. For, all last night, the neighbors were continually banging on their floorboards. At 2:00 a.m. it sounded like they were hosting a tourney of child-slave racing: there was much trampling as of hoofed squidlings intermittently jangling. Brief bursts of clambering. And then at 3:30 a.m. there was a series of mega-blasts upon our shared frame’s structure, as if a pile driver were being used purely on a whim, to pass the time. (A pile driver is a device used to drive piles into soil to provide foundation-support for cathedrals.) & this was accompanied by the shrieks of jungle birds; but I know from past experience that they’re not birds — it’s the child-slaves again. Then finally I was reawakened at 5:15 by the sound of clawing on our bedroom wall. That’s another wall that we share with these expletive neighbors. I know the noise wasn’t caused by rodents, because when I got out of bed & drew nigh unto it, I could hear girly voices sing-song chatting with each other. So, yet again, it’s the child-slaves at work. They’re probably assembling counterfeit jewelry.
All this racket occurring during our final nights in this apartment makes the thought of translocating to a fresh home all the more appealing. And our new place has its own boundary: it’s an actual house; so we won’t be sharing walls with any more slavers. Instead of having six additional abodes connected physically to our unit, and six more across the drive, and six more at either side, and an entire nother complex of apartments cater-cornered to that, we’ll now have just one house north, south, east, & west of our own. And both latter houses are buffered by our big backyard, as well as our respective front yards and a spacious rural street.
So my prediction is that our new long-range neighbors will all own super-loud automobiles with bass-heavy speaker systems that will blast subhuman modern pop-rap at ungodly hours, thus nullifying every soundproofing boon of distance.
MORAL: The rudeness of one’s neighbors increases proportionate to whatever effects exist to counter such rudeness.
*
But now I am inveigled, by your mentioning of counterfeit jewels, to ponder the notions of truth & falsehood. (I’m just writing aimlessly here: free-associating, to expend nervous energy; so why not scour this allurement for some trace of tedium?)
We have these two words: truth and lie. I know: that’s actually three words; but the word “and” doesn’t count: it’s part of the gray gulf fixed between real & fake news. (Let us replace it with an ampersand.) Now, what does it mean to “tell the truth”? It means setting the purely binary toggle switch of lingual composition in the position labeled…
What should we label the DESIRABLE side of lingual composition’s purely binary toggle switch? “Accurate”? “Empirically verifiable”? “Mass-consensus approved”? —Already I’m having a hard time defining the concept of actuality as opposed to bad stupid falsehood, because we all want truth to stand for reality alone—that is, reality untainted by any respective subject’s lens of perception—and yet, the only way we can communicate (this IS a problem of communication, dear Mr. Fucko) is subjectively, by way of each of our own respective lenses of perception. Moreover, all the words that comprise our language, which alas is also truth’s language (we share this wall), were either hatchings or live-births of subjectivity. (No abortions, no stillbirths; the like are impossible, in this wan world of words.)
So how do we transmit truth, if all language is a lie?
Am I going too far already? Are all our words lies, indeed? Is the tongue really “a fire, a world of iniquity” (James 3:6)? I feel like maybe I’m wrong about that. Let me investigate. If some words are true, which ones might they be?
The word “brick” is true, because there’s only one type of brick. And the word “sun” is true, because nobody doubts the hell that obscures all our dreams. Likewise “coins” and “prayer” and “donkey saddle” and “river” and “river nymph” and also “river nymphet”. They’re all true words.
And then the lying words are “Devil”; “gift bag”; and “democratic outcome”. And of course “Bible”. And “faith”.
I’m just being fun on purpose, here. I’m being a smart-aleck. I’m not solving anything. I’m not even trying. I should return to the question, refocus, and play dead again:
What’s the problem with truth? It’s the thing that few can doubt has actually occurred. It IS. I repeat: it is! For example, it’s TRUE that hard-shelled worms were chasing me in my dream last night. Everyone knows this to be the case.
See, that’s another joke. No one but I myself understands why all that commerce went down in last night’s dream. Your own dream, whatever you say about it, was a lie. The truth is that hard-shelled worms were chasing me through a mansion in the desert. And you, yes you, were cowering in the alcove, holding a sign that claimed “I am currently dreaming something else.” You were floating in an ocean of alternate facts, admit it. But just because you closed your eyes to the reality of MY dream and created your own sub-dream within, where you were captaining a ship of ox-eyed River Nymphs and heeding the lullaby of the Sin Siren, doesn’t change the fact that my sleeping mind’s reality transpired in actual dreamtime.
I guess I just can’t take this topic seriously. I see truth as a language game: something that we all agree to participate in, or else we “break the rules”: and that’s called lying. Truth, like love, must be tested. It’s not for any one person to officiate: all of society must decide. If REALITY were a subjective being of its own, then we could simply ask REALITY itself what the truth is; and REALITY would answer “Bryan’s right – those worms were hard-shelled and fast-spawning.” But because REALITY is not something that speaks but something that IS and must be experienced by its own fragments; then what we wish to assert about it as “indisputable” must be agreed upon by all paying participants. And the problem is that, unless you block a soul’s volition, anyone, at any time, can always refuse to participate in this game: anyone can dispute the “indisputable”, and we’re left in a stalemate.
Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so
Only what nobody denies is so. (“Song of Myself” §30)
Right up until the instant that I die, I’m going to repeat “I’ll never die.” And once I’m dead, some liar might spit on my tomb and say “Well that proves HIM wrong.” But if you stop spitting on it and actually read my headstone, you’ll see clearly why I called you a liar; for it says: D’ailleurs รง’est toujours les autres qui meurent. (I copied my epitaph from the grave of Duchamp; I’m told it means: “Besides, it’s always the others who die.”)
No comments:
Post a Comment