j.a. van wagner :: wordobject :: imagetime

Month: November 2024

  • Introduction (ongoing)

    introduction

    welcome to my book.

    Clicking below will tell you something about what’s here and how it is.

    To restore silence is the role of objects.

    S. Beckett, Molloy

  • solipsis on writing with aside in the form of a parable

    solipsis on writing with aside in the form of a parable

    Concerning one who has written of oneself time and again in the guise of writing of the writing one has done; how one felt concerning it, how the writing seemed to examine itself, in serial fashion, up and down, forward and back, in both retrograde and inversion, transposing animals, plants, minerals, all the kinds of things; never, though, for the sake of themselves, but always as something or another thing that could be written; as examples, as lessons on the more obscure points of writing, delivered with morals on the conduct of writing laid out for the reader, oneself, in diagrammatic, almost geometric, form, with abundant prescriptions for future writing as well as proscriptions laying out what to avoid, having in the past failed to avoid pitfalls, gaffes, awkward constructions, bland gestures, and so forth, in an attempt to answer the child’s question in the story of the child and the father, in which, and here is the story, the child, suddenly nervous about receiving a splinter from the table at which they are eating, asks the father if it is safe to touch, and the father, gently taking the child’s hand in his, places it on the smooth surface and explains that yes, it is safe, the table is smooth, you see, because it has been sanded; but the child is not satisfied, withdrawing its hand, and asks the father, why isn’t everything sanded?

    2024.07.17

  • [objections]

    [objections]

    From this, the writing I do daily, hourly, I wish to banish all objects!  Though these are indispensable.

    It is not so much concrete objects, though they disarrange my dreams, as it is the idea of the object in general. 

    What is an object ‘in general’? I don’t believe there is such a thing, unless it is the idea as an object, which it certainly is; therefore ‘ideas’ are to be banished if and when they are objects. So, as long as an idea is not an object, it is admitted. These are to be the conventions.

    The urgency is, to catch the idea unaware, in so raw a state it is prior to formulation, perhaps even without form; to trap it in the midst of its interminable migrations from place to place (even if  ‘place’ is admitted to be an object). 

    An idea born and buried in a place need not be an object, even if embedded in the object of place; but of course, this idea can only be a certain kind of idea which is not really an idea but a transient blur, a semaphore. 

    Certainly this sort of thing that is not a thing might be termed an action, which action can only be a thing if it undergoes the gesture of naming — I must, if I can, refrain from names. 

    The object of the name is one of the most fundamental,  most disturbing of all objects which, when bestowed, signifies the greatest of falsehoods and the broadest of generalities, where the more honest act would be to uncrook an index finger accompanied, at most, by the word “that” —  an ornamental utterance — while pointing to the thing which is actual. 

    I have no objection to actual things, as long as they are not named; nothing can be said about them with authority since they alone constitute proof of themselves. 

    As I probe my reasoning, admittedly shallow and void of the proper vocabulary for dealing with these matters, I observe that I object most vehemently to inaccuracies and lazy colorings in the giving of names to concrete things, and to those lies implicit in the production of categories, attached, like remoras on a shark, to things in general. 

    I feel justified, I think, more or less, in this blanket rejection of language, based on the consequences wrought by it on an apparently suppliant world. 



    Poor world, poor shell, pasted all over with spurious labels moistened by unknowing tongues! 



    Lies, errors, rumors attach to every word, even here —especially here— my crimes embedded in every finger tremor. I can never claim immunity from harm brought by anything I might write, even as daily, hourly, with every word, I try to inter the bodies I continue to invoke, calling out names that do not name, pointing with a grunt of blackened figures that are not objects but have become, in some way I cannot comprehend, heliotropes, admirals, mice, balloons.

    2024.07.01    jvw   from object-in-progress

  • Three Nails Fallen Beneath The Church Door

    three nails fallen beneath the church door

    In order to get at the truth we have to go through the nail. If the nail has fallen, so be it — it’s easier to treat with contempt. This same mocked nail, with some considerable effort, was meant to be driven into the church door; yet there it is, futile nail, now bent perhaps from its encounter with the church and its door, hewn from god knows what dense interlocking grain of what tree they, the committee, thought best represented the heavenly fortress lightly sketched out in the books, a matter of a few words per passage; words intended to invoke, and then to chasten, and then to forbid — what is a nail to that? (here the text commends laughter) — so it happens a man in the best least moldy trousers he can muster out of the closet, or tempt out of the recesses of a bottom drawer, comes to stand before the committee, or no, an unaffiliated group of individuals gathered together in hope of a cure — in this report it’s an Easter at Lourdes or the ancient Santuario at Chimayó — a man we now think may have been hiding a nail, or nails, on his person, in the folds of this jacket, with frayed sleeves, drawn from retirement; he was not searched before entering the place, they did not apply their electromagnetic wands to his person, they let him in because he might conceivably amuse them with his tractates, drawn from sources other than the Heavenly, not even figuring in any book; he is to stand before them, literally clothed but effectively naked, juggling clandestine nails with the fingertips of his left hand while sweating through his tongue like an overheated dog, tongue lolling lopsidedly (added opportunity for derision); they would even pay to see that, if only he would not speak. The man, while gesturing toward the unaffiliated and speaking perhaps some words anyway, is really aware only of the church and its door, the door and the church and the nail, or nails, of which two are supplementary in case of failure of the first, and in another pocket, just now a freshly invented pocket, a roll of weatherproof parchment on which is inscribed in black lettering an extensive document; many individual letters compose it, thousands, of diverse shapes resembling nothing so much as black bent spikes; one can hear, almost, the clatter of letters failing against the ears of the congregation, striking and rebounding against the ears of the tribunal to fall in reformed shapes onto the unheated stone floors, bent outlines crawling as though in defeat toward the solace of a crack, or yet a page will do, a thousand nails in service of any available tractate; the atmosphere is diffuse, light stained somber blue, or purple, scattered in all directions, the perspiring man in the shapeless, threadbare jacket utters at last a few amusing words; sparse laughter among the skeptics.

  • Tall Men With Hats

    tall men with hats

    Or if mad, be immaculate.

    You think of a beginning initiating with a distinction or a division but it could as easily begin with an inequality, even if initiating a beginning is already a beginning begun, with two lengths of something mysterious, of which one length is shorter or one is longer, but, there being only one, something has happened so that it, beginning, comes out not equal to itself and themselves; but this does not explain the incident of that beginning arguably happening, yet who determines that not–happening is insufficient, or why insufficiency needs to be answered, or why it must be answered in the peculiar order of a thing happening before the answer to the insufficiency, instead of vice versa; such are instances of the numberless objections that cannot be scythed away.

    To answer to objections one goes on answering until the objections go away, but to be sure they are gone one goes on objecting until the answers have abated, though it is not as though there are no more objections. One goes on objecting in the absence of answers to the objections so that there will be no more answers, or so that they will not be heard over the objections, and over time the objections grow quiet, if only that they may hear the answers that might one day begin again to be given, if only that one may go on objecting if only that one may go on answering, for in the absence of both answers and objections what can there be but quiet, quiet persisting in quiet for the sake of calm, for the sake of distinction from the other that it is not, so long as within the quiet there is not still an objection, or not still an answer, for which one eternally listens.

    From the totality of the person one would like to take away the body to see what remains of one’s enjoyment, to see, within one’s brain, how it is, though we are told we cannot remove the body without removing the body of the brain, even experimentally, though we try to guess at the deep delight of such a brain, if left alone, though we are told even to be alone is to have a body, so we would like moreover to be without, in order to see what it is to be without; but they deny us this as well, for some things here and there are inseparable, of which a final separation, or a final distinction, must remain unknown, which seems to put all of the unknown into a lone unknowable, much as we may labor to cleave away its parts, apart and apart; still something unmistakable is left.

    2024.09.28

  • Reading Without Comprehension

    reading without comprehension

    : orbiting this crouched, silhouetted figure, a world not in the least understood;  stratigraphy jumbled by maps of unreliable or possibly reliable reports, advertisements, editorials; a statistical canyon of total isolation in which demographic man is pictured in dense upwellings of flavorful, cherry-tinted data columns, rising, falling — would a story be advisable, really, now, when story does notever but beguile — or/and is silence better? for instance the little vegetable plot, the room in darkness, neighbor pitted against neighbor, ascending derangements, provenance of the tomatoes in midsummer — one does not speak but for fear of the moment they come to blows; a precarious intolerance in beribboned pinafores; this zero-sum game is to win, to lose, at top one header, two columns, footnotes;  games recommend winning, or the fugitive life in wartime, huddled in the umbra of one’s silhouette until the end blows over and is no longer the end; but BEWARE, the storm outside the door rattles the panes, drawn to your name; signature streak of a white missile; 89 trackers blocked from targeting but what of the rest; this weather idles for as long as it takes for the mouse to pop out; all frontiers are taken, no shelter, no here where one used to lunch; WHAT ABOUT, suggests your silhouette, a philosophical position you may adopt while in the meantime your house is blown down; what about beauty or love or something; what’s not won, not lost? — relax: devise a new pastime? — but your telomeres are nubs, recombinant options for your DNA are out of moves; wait there, in your silhouette, as you hoped one day to wait in his, in her, silhouette: featureless, safe, or take up arms; WE, together, look for silent intervals to shore up the bones, attempt a return to the interstices, but our hips have lately grown too wide; this, our nightmare, you dreamt last night: We Are Too Much Alike, the little one knows amounts to no more no less than what the other, give or take;

    The roster of things always more or less, always give or take; things; soon between our silhouettes the Paradox Of Intolerance arises in conversation and is implied in conversations in which it does not arise, an undercurrent perhaps, a basso ostinato; how tolerant shall we be of the intolerant, or how intolerant while remaining tolerant in the main, or shall we be the intolerant of whom the tolerant complain; but seriously, how tolerant of the tolerant are we expected to be, it’s intolerable; can we take Voltaire seriously when he suggests we tend only our own gardens; who has a garden but the renter, on his corroded fire escape, the owner, in her disused backyard; are these plants healthy or even edible; we are hungry, if only we hadn’t opted for decorative flowers, aromatic herbs; we pass through a room, through the yard of our plantings; visions disrupted by the music, so-called, of a neighbor in heavy boots stamping up below, closer, louder, grilled meat from next door, oiled silver smoke; could we bear children, watch them germinate, waft in the wind, watch oblivion and sun curdle their seed; try to intervene? never helpful, not effective either; we have to let go; where have they gone? are there better words, do words miss the mark that weaponry attains?: forged iron, rhetoric, an armory stocked with shadow-epithets; hidden in the dim, cut off from disturbing influences, beneficial influences ; what influence could be beneficial, you can’t imagine

    Apprentice Comprehenders sit before a screen, vague, of blurry text, reading the few words in a moving slot of light

      •  time grows thick, the wick burns down; sounds of marching, odors spreading, harsh lights maligning the night sky, from across the hall, down the street, from next door, the ceiling, in the dark room; down, comprehenders, follow down the only page there is, the skipping slot of light, down the page, across the border, the next life, the only life, better next time, give or take, 

  • Thubes and the Japanese Satirical Transportation Network, plus Notes

    Thubes and the Japanese Satirical Transportation Network; plus notes

    Going to meet X. Down into Thubes underground. Ramps this way and that. Growing uncertainty as to whether have reached the right platform. Signage to unfamiliar destinations; so much new construction since last was here! The matter of tokens: these, too, changed; what’s acceptable >> much more fluid. Barter; even livestock: kittens. These set mewling into cardboard boxes. Sets of teeth stacked on shelving at back of agent’s booth; sandwiches, snacks: dried fruit and cheese cubes. Trade. Still, have not the required. Search pockets. Samaritan among sparse stream of travelers offers twenty-three dollar note: crude pencil sketch amalgam of unknown political, corporate figure?, and “23”. Enough, fine, accepted by agent. Pass turnstile as travelers behind unload for offer sacks of potatoes, imported feathers, eggs, jewelry. Further: ramps down, across; bridges, walkways. Through corridors. Train arrives, trains, always on opposite track, too short for platform; run, run, up stairs, down, over walkways, leap multiple steps. Once on platform, sprint to opposite end. Old bones, bruised ankles, accumulated strain on joints. Forget such pain; illusory!

    More signage, crossed ramps, unfamiliar destinations. On train at last, stand at pole, watch stops skim past. Never stop at stops: stations, only vaguely familiar, bypassed. Train on, on, through dark of tunnel, emerges in bright leafy suburb, far past. X forgotten. Can’t think who was, is, X. Must be still to know. Travel, might be, erases reason :: movement displaces destination. Though, shrink at thought of arduous return: what corridors, ramps, what stops bypassed; for X, toward X; or if not X someone as good as X; or if not someone then somewhere X; no, original place of descent, chance of reemergence just there, lies under erasure:

    System, entire Thubes construct, engineered by Japanese corporation as entertainment genre mocking American urban transportation. Ritual occasion for polite laughter. Attempts accuracy in every aspect; or yet, possible, may be earnest simulation out of respect, curiosity; but system only gains real character as failure of replication in important details. Maze-like aspect, for one, exaggerated; swinging bridges and rope catwalks, artfully obscured sight lines, unreadable signs in flickers of alien script, contorted, glossy, tile-lined corridors;

    NOTES:
    Invocation of details to make one world distinct from another; of worlds, its Words. Words, constituting description of system, accounting for, being vital to, physical architecture. Details of decay, worthy of Lebbeus Woods, architect of dissolution. Never the pristine beam but the corroded. Never the vertical but the oblique. Ever the sagging Word, and its physical correlates: telltale of dream-objects composed from descriptions, as opposed to, v.v., descriptions from prior objects. Few, now, of the latter. Poverty of, might say, texture, of description-descripted objects. Akin to scotoma-space: a void in scintillation.

    Thubes, the ghostly center, as though city replaced city. Thubes a word held in reserve, yet viral, omnipresent. When think “city”, “Thubes” displaces. Yet Thubes-word never uttered, nor ever is uttered inner-thought of Thubes. Inner lips mime “Thubes” yet these recursive lips, too, stilled. Transportation system encapsulated in “Thubes” an internecine struggle between Word and Thubes, replacing Word and word. As well, all candidate Words displaced by “Thubes”. In sum, all else stilled than Thubes.

    To speak, try; stop; try; at last stop. Catwalk, up ramp, down, corridor, too late for trains, for X, give any token to appease:

    j.a. van wagner ©2024 2024.11.14

  • Not a day goes by

    not a day goes by

    Not two, not a week, not a month, not two, but the telic moaning: I can’t, how, it’s the end, forget it.
    What it is, is that you will have been doing being for yes, that many years as you have had, from your beginning, up to now, allowing for a little forward projection, with its underlying uncertainty, but that the next step could be the chasm, more; that between steps lies an obscurer black, between strikes of the metronome, for example, or if a tolling bell, then in the lull the clapper swings free, as if in unstruck time lies time’s true nature, an open swing of unpredestinated air, assload of unmarked passings wherein one grew, budded, blossomed, withered, fell, of which every formulation is a mockery; and this ceremony of names only hollows further the stations of the way, where it was used to be said, the stations of the cross, with a verse for each to toll out its suffering, constituted of moans and cries, again: I can’t, why; then why not; then how; as the wormy tide of dirt rises unstoppably to obscure the peculiar grammar of this church, stifle its clanging.

    j.a. van wagner ©2024 2024.11.14