Each of his steps asked the question: Was it there? Would it be there? Will it be there, awaiting anxious phalanges? Skeletal hands are greedy for meaty covering, ribs for insides, organs to fill the space with a prevailing pulsing back and pulsing forth, a digesting and a flowing and a pushing and a pulling and a straining, of consuming and excreting. A few slender and inconsequential leaves fell through the space around him as he descended the driveway, but he was concerned neither with past nor present. He wished only to convert the near future into the present. Would it be now! Would it be here! No! Rather, would it be about to be here! For were it to be here and now, he would already see disappointment’s shadow peeping mischievously around the corner of what would be. Sitting on the cusp of imminent satisfaction is the peerless position. Thus foreplay, and death. He nonetheless knew himself to be situated on a contingent cusp. Unnecessary, unwilled by any other-author. He knew that the satisfaction awaiting him in the mailbox was no more significant than the head of a long-forgotten figurine lying face up in a necropolitan cesspit, innocuously peering into infinite layers of cerulean refuse, while her former keeper sat in an office on an unimportant floor of an unimportant building in an unimportant city on an unimportant planet in an unimportant universe in an unimportant space-time fabric, in short, in an unimportant distinction of inside and outside, forgotten by what she thought might be friends. What she likes about being human is that she can take any part of her body, no matter how infinitesimal, and find waiting for her, she, the hominal hermeneut (or supernal astronaut, depending on your perspective) a microcosm of the infinitirety of the temporal and spatial cosmos. At this moment, an ant was positioning itself on top of another ant, in order that yet another ant might position itself on top of it, allowing their bodies to become a mass, a volume, a solidity where a moment before one would have found empty space. The individual ant had given itself over to a universal antishness, to a colony, becoming only an antish part of a pile of ant-bodies attaining a hanging twig, that ants might scamper across, their legs plunging into the bridge, poking, stabbing, and crossing over, dreaming perhaps of a bountiful ant-eater cadaver. An ant would never think of turning over to gaze upon whatever was scampering over what we call its thorax, on its way, unbeknownst to the bridge-ant, to the Canaan carcass, whatever stiffness or coldness the bridge-ant might sense residing in its exoskeleton. End consciousness and you’ve occluded the problem-pipe. An ant to turn around! No, we ants are made of stronger stuff than you man-bridges, crossing over to your fictional beyonds; a fresh ant-eater cadaver is always preferable to a parabolic nothingful bliss. It will be impossible for you to avoid the connotations and nuances of my mercurial and dexterously aimed truth-bolts. You will feel the meaning in your bones. You will feel your bones for the first time, for they will serve as a conduit for the truth of my words! Avoid the instantanious, friend. You will never see the truth, for the ever-deft hider-meister will never under any and all circumstances allow any pusillanimous milquetoast to behold the center; it will be up to you to imagine it, although you are not assured that it exists at all; we may be dealing with an ego-less egocentricity, consuming all light and matter as a black hole, imagined from afar, thanking your creator for having placed you far, far away on the chessboard of the universe from the queen. Perhaps if you sit as quietly as possible, she will not hear your impatient fear. His inspiration was the ant that gives itself entirely over to the cause, the cause lying always over the next leaf. Authors are lavish with their truths, one might even call them obsequious writers. Others are miserly. The miserly sort are preferable, who hold back what they mean with no promise that they mean anything at all, or who cause the insides of their readers to scream “stop”, while a newly formed entity within them, sticky and slimy like birth or a violent ejaculation, shrieks, “Behold what you were!”

l’architecture, la littérature, la mémoire et la mort

Architecture et littérature : l’architecture est la masse, la présence, mais la présence modifiée, formée par les humains, par la civilisation. Une colonne a un grand poids. Elle se présente où il n’y aurait rien s’il n’y était pas. C’est la substance moulée par l’humanité, qui contient en elle la trace ou la signature de la civilisation. L’architecture se présente d’abord ou principalement à la vue et au toucher. Nous préférions voir une colonne et un chapiteau plutôt qu’un arbre.  Pourquoi ? Il y a deux raisons : d’abord, la colonne nous rappelle que nous maîtrisons ce qui nous environne, que nous avons un chez nous, que nous y sommes maîtres, et que nous y sommes maintenant. La nature est maîtrisée dans la ville pour nous rappeler que nous sommes maîtres de la nature. C’est donc le pouvoir qui explique d’une certaine manière le phénomène de l’architecture. Et puis, nous aimons voir une colonne ou un entablement parce que ces choses-là nous rappellent des prouesses passé de notre civilisation, de notre communauté, de notre tribu. Chaque fois que je regarde le Mémorial Lincoln je ne peux que penser aux grandeurs passés de la civilisation américaine, qui ne sont plus, mais qui sont signifié par les monuments. La ville est donc pleine de mémoire. Mais en plus, les monuments nous rappellent de la mort de l’Autre, parce qu’un monument n’est nécessaire que si les exploits ou la personne qu’ils signifient sont terminés ou morts. La mort de Lincoln est présupposée par son monument ; le monument signifie sa mort plus qu’il signifie sa vie. On pourrait affirmer contre cet argument que la vie de Lincoln est aussi présupposée par son monument, et que la vie de Lincoln est signifiée plutôt que sa mort, surtout puisque l’homme prétendument représenté dans la statue est encore vivant, il s’assoit, il a les yeux ouverts, il est calme mais il vit encore. Mais c’est la mort qui avale sa vie. La statue nous rappelle d’un homme mort. Même un monument construit pour une personne encore vivante signifie sa mort, qui est en train de se passer à travers sa vie. Il n’y a pas de monument simultané qui signifie un acte qui est en train de se passer.

Operation Enduring Freedom was originally called Operation Infinite Justice. I ask you: Is Bush’s cabinet really made up entirely of adults? It’s hard for me to believe that someone over the age of 14 would even imagine of unironically calling foreign policy either of these names. It’s almost as if…