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

Category: Shorts

  • 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

  • [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.

    j.a. van wagner

    2024.07.01      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.

    John Van Wagner

    2024.09.30

  • 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

  • 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, 

    John Van Wagner

    ©2024

  • 21.08.20

    21.08.20

    Character who admits to resolute hylozoism. To be seen in his life and works. 

    “All things are full of gods” — Thales
    j.a. van wagner

    ©2021 2021.08.20

  • On Certainty in the Dream

    On certainty in the dream

    (

    Every moment is a moment of collapse. Hemmed in by the available choices. Exactly what you can’t put your finger on. But remember, the dream has been made for you. Here comes the tailor, he sizes you up. Looks you up and down. No one is terrified of the choice they know you will not make. What if that choice, normally invisible, shone out of the back of a wardrobe, or in a far corner of the yard? But only for a moment, and you must have mistaken it for the flit of a bushtit’s wing. But you’re out, scooping up the dog’s shit. It must have been a veritable flurry of bushtits…

    ©2022 J.A. Van Wagner

    )

    j.a. van wagner

  • The Whatever

    the whatever

    You say you are going to unearth it, the whatever, where it lies in state beneath the
                                               but they get the idea. 
    You are going to name it, bring it to light! 

    You hurry eastward down a well-lit avenue with the second-hand perambulator you’ve bought for hauling, nodding all the while at the others as they pass, two and three abreast, in their going-out clothes, pushing their perambulators, wheeling their whatevers in the opposite direction. You are by now so late the streets are cold. 

    With all that creaking of wheels and doffing of hats, doffing of … who is it wears hats these days? … and compliments exchanged (those beautifully-chromed wheel spokes! how well turned-out you look!), employing only safe words from one of the other centuries, no one thinks to ask:  How is yours? 
    No, it is clear to them your perambulator is empty. 

    Is it because you are late, because your perambulator is in disrepair, or because of your many failed promises? Haven’t you been saying for how long now? that you will

                         though for sure, you are fooling no one . 

    It’s not any lie you’ve told, it’s not your furtive gait nor the tell-tale fingerprints left in the clay of your dissembling,  yet it’s as plain as


                    In shame you arrive at the plot where you last

                                 where it is, where it is still, undisturbed in its slumbers, if you could say such a thing slumbers, if it has not been your own feckless slumber hanging over it like unrained rain.

    j.a. van wagner ©2022 2022.01.16