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

Category: Hybrid

  • 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?

    j.a. van wagner

    2024.07.17

  • 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.

    John Van Wagner

    2024.09.28

  • 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:

    John Van Wagner

    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