Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.21.1710042009260.9011@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: of thinking through years, the 'grasp' or the known'
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2017 20:11:21 -0400 (EDT)
of thinking through years, the 'grasp' or the known' http://www.alansondheim.org/found33.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/found16.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/found28.jpg - - - well, i wrote that in 1974, many years ago. well, that was 43 years ago to be exact. well, it was almost half a century ago. a lot of things happen in half a century. well, it feels a lot closer than that, just yesterday or even today, today in the late morning or around noon. on the other side of noon perhaps. well, that's what happens. that's always what happens. and it gives you pause. it gives anyone pause. it gives pause because it's that way, and you know implicitly, that the interval will grow every day. well, it will keep on growing, day after day. other things will intervene. other things will come along, it will become part of the usual course of history. well, by that i mean that things recede, no matter what, that people die, new people, new events, occur. it's always like that. well, as you grow older, you get to see this happen, history growing, everything forgotten, no matter what it is. and a half century seems an inconceivable amount of time. there aren't even that many century, it just seems to be overloaded, all of that. then you move away from these things, don't you. you move away because, well, it doesn't make sense to hold onto things, not under these conditions. so you move away. well, that's not entirely true, what is true is that you're moved away, you have no choice in the matter. you're a witness to the moving. well, there's no one you can talk to about this. that's true, it's cone constantly narrowing, separating from all the others. well, by death and experience. yes, and by enumeration as well, these things which come along, pass by. we mourn people and events no one else has ever heard of, no one else has been there, not now, not ever. well, this is the condition of the world, isn't it. or the condition of the world as we know it, these passings which are forms of universal decathecting, detaching, letting-go. well, all of that happens of its own accord, we have no say in the matter, then we'll be gone, soon, and we'll be part of this. well we want our names at the very least to be there, at least for a little while, on our passing. and our things, the care we've taken or not taken with our things, we want those to survive, to breathe just a little while longer, isn't that the case. well, i suppose it's the case, something else we have no control over, something else that's already evaded us in a perverse form of the future anterior, we can't grasp that. we can't grasp anything, can we. or we can grasp things, just for a short while, the shortest while, and the noise is always there, always moving, the incredible granularity of the real, and a kind of dust or sinter, we're there within it, there's no escaping. it's as if there's a calling or a calling-forth that we must answer, that's an imperative, that leaves us choiceless, not even the semblance of a choice. and that goes all the way back, i close my eyes, clothe my eyes, and already there are recessions, lapses, gaps in everything all the way back, 1974 or the subduction of 1974 or any other year, the grasping too is absorbed, vanquished, well, not vanquished, that movement though, always continuing, even the vanquishing becomes a whisper, a collocation of particles already separating, the buzz of gravitational waves, dark matter, neutrino transformations, anything we might name now, giving a name to something just as the names are already disappearing, already the uncanniness of unaccountable vanishings, and, well, that's one way to look at it, and ways, and lookings, disappearing as well, soon almost a century, corrosions of databases, sparks across any conceivable form of storage, all those useless protocols. well, just think, though, for the moment. that moment has already fled, what we're part of is completely determined, not by anything, not even by blind or mute mechanisms, not by automata or control, not by the dreams of eternal life or wars spanning galaxies, or federations across globular clusters, none of that. well, then it's universal momentum, it happens, there's nothing outside of this happening. well, that's exactly it, there's nothing outside of it, nothing inside of it, it doesn't matter where we're staying if we're staying. well, or when for that matter. well i remember, a few years back, neti neti, which i think of as not this, not that, but now i think, momentum. well, it doesn't matter what you think. well, it doesn't matter at all, does it, it's always already gone, this thought or that, this place or that, a splinter or fold in a piece of paper, the suspension of a vase by a spring, a sprig carried by a stranger, someone we have always known. well, we have always known this, haven't we. we have always known. this is the 'grasp' or the 'known.' - - - supplement then well, sometimes you walk about outside and it looks the same and different and you wonder why you haven't noticed this or that before, and 'outside' you think has nothing to do with you and then you think, well, it has everything to do with you. this is more of the 'grasp' and it has always been 'known' but now it's known in a different way and you find yourself finding yourself not so much here or there, but already fading, you hear the sounds of your absence. well, the sounds of everyone's absence, even your breathing has gone somewhere else you think. well, you think you're thinking or you don't notice what you have already known, your grasp already weak like weak theory, your grasp like glass, flowing elsewhere and not among your time. well, of course it is, but you know you have to wait. well, you have no time for that, the waiting, that is the sinter. you have no time for anything. - - - supplement then well, from a manual of key buddhist terms, lotsawa kawa paltseg, the two truths, a. conventional truth, which divides into 1) correct conventional truth and 2) incorrect conventional truth, and b. ultimate truth, and well now, the conventional becomes trivial, doesn't it, as it splits into truths and half-truths, falsities and rumors, innuendos and potentialities. and well then, the ultimate truth doesn't split, does it, there's no truth table here, there's nothing at all, you don't notice it, do you, it's always already been thus, it might not be there at all, it might be everywhere, it has no space, no time - now, you're going into mysticism, nonsense, metaphysics here, it's the last gasp, isn't it, it's the only thing you have time for, we're all like that, at the end of our rope, the chair's been kicked out from under us, we're in freefall, any nonsense at the end of the day, this is the 'grasp' or the 'unknown,' the retreat of the weakest, we're all alike, aren't we, or not at all, it's the logic of the thought that vanishes - 'unknown,' - - - supplement then well, a lot of things happen in half a century, they happen to us, they happen to most of us, all that passion, grasping, goals and outlines, all those plans and projects, endless lists and dates, the most heartfelt occasions, biographies, memorials, the unutterable - well, there's no same old story, no story here, no end to it all, only those beginnings, coagulations, no one remembers them, our tiny worlds, our eyes, what our eyes see and saw, what we thought they saw, well then, maybe they did, maybe they didn't, well, no 'grasp' now, no 'known,' i wrote that in 2017 - 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