Pimp

conciousness/subjectivity as being becoming non-being

A thought that's been zigzagging its way through my synapses for awhile now.

It's kind of like this -- there's stuff that has positive ontological "content". It "takes up room" in "being". Whatever that means. But this stuff is constantly passing into non-being, constantly ceasing to exist. I don't know where the stuff originally comes from -- the big bang? -- but it doesn't matter, it could never be comprehended anyway. The point is that subjective experience is the means by which this constant ceasing-to-exist happens.

So I'm looking at a computer screen right now, as I type, and this computer screen (whatever it ultimately is) has positive ontological content that is, right now, passing into nothingness. And that "passing into nothingness" = my perception(s) of the computer screen.

To put it another way, where does what we perceive "go" when we perceive it? Sure it "goes" into our memories to some degree, but that's just the trace of it. Where does the thing itself go? Nowhere -- it dissolves. Our perception of it is precisely that dissolution.

Water going over the edge of the cliff -- consciousness as that edge.

This is way too metaphysical for even my taste, but it's a thought that keeps bubbling up to the surface of my attention, so I'm starting to think there's *something* to it, even if the thought itself is functioning as a kind of metaphor for something I'm not fully aware of (like the metaphorical aspect of dreams).

is there anybody out/in there?

hello . . . ?

Dusty in here. Sheets over the furniture. Blogroll yellowing at the edges, absent-mindedly tacked to the wall.

The semester's over. Quite an intense race to the finish. And work got busy again.

Here's a diagram I made a few weeks ago, intended to incorporate certain aspects of Jack Spicer's Textbook of Poetry & the his Vancouver Lecture, in which he uses Christ as a metaphor for poetry (and poetry and the poet and the signified/signifier split, etc). His metaphorical series strike me more like conceptual puns than they do metaphors, though -- each item in the series overlaps the other on the surface (seems very much alike) but has its own set of implications that can't be reduced to any other item. And this slippage is constantly taking place, nothing stands still. Thus a diagram is probably the most wrong-headed thing one could do in repsonse to Spicer's poetics and this diagram certainly focuses on certain aspects of the "theories" from the Textbook while completely ignoring others. If I have time, I'll post some notes that attempt a more detailed explanation of the diagram. But right now the notes sound like something I handed in for class (which I did).

If anyone has sent me a message that I haven't responded to, please, please accept my apologies. I plan on performing a thorough audit on my inbox over the holiday.

In the meantime, I'll tape the diagram up here next to the blogroll . . .