You and I and Words

Was it you who spoke the words that things would happen but not to me
Oh things are gonna happen naturally
Oh taking your advice I'm looking on the bright side
And balancing the whole thing
But often times those words get tangled up in lines
And the bright lights turn to night
Until the dawn it brings
Another day to sing about the magic that was you and me

Things will happen. Things are happening. And, yes, naturally--they have to happen this way. What's natural about the situation? I don't know. I don't know. Looking on the bright side? Yes. I think so. At the moment, the bright side is that there are words--lots of them. The words spew forth, yes, naturally. It's like there is no fabrication involved anymore; they are there, always. Dawn? I don't think the words will bring the dawn--I think the words keep the hope of dawn alive. There is a difference; an important difference.


Cause you and I both loved
What you and I spoke of
And others just read of
Others only read of the love, the love that I love.

Yes, we loved--both of us. But, we didn't speak of it. We didn't speak of it and that's the reason that we can only read about it, just like everyone else. Others read the words--the natural ones--that flow from what we both loved--from the non-thing that gives rise to all these words. If we had spoken about it, it woudln't exist. If we had spoken of it, others wouldn't have to read about it; but more importantly, it wouldn't be ours--it would be something altogether different.



See I'm all about them words
Over numbers, unencumbered numbered words
Hundreds of pages, pages, pages forwards
More words then I had ever heard and I feel so alive

Yes, the words are unencumbered. They come without burden or restriction. In fact, the words are the burden. The words are the burden of every day, every second. The words plague me. I have to work to crack myself open--to puncture every hidden space to bring those words to light--to let them breathe--to make them earn their existence. The words are coming, and the words are the burden. Almost out? No. Not even close. The words seem endless. And, thus, so does the burden.


You and I, you and I
Not so little you and I anymore
And with this silence brings a moral story
More importantly evolving is the glory of a boy



The silence? Don't get it confused. There are words. There will always be words. The silence doesn't signify the absence of words. No, the silence signifies the inability--my inability--despite the endless burden--to speak of what we loved. In this way, the silence is the reason for the words. The words are the silence.


Cause you and I both loved
What you and I spoke of
And others just dream of
And if you could see me now
Well I'm almost finally out of
I'm finally out of
Finally deedeedeedee
Well I'm almost finally, finally
Well I'm free, oh, I'm free


Others dream of it, but I am not so sure I don't either. But, don't worry, make no mistake, I'm not free. The words are free. The words come with ease. But, if the words are free, I am the opposite.


And it's okay if you have go away
Oh just remember the telephone works both ways
And if I never ever hear them ring
If nothing else I'll think the bells inside
Have finally found you someone else and that's okay
Cause I'll remember everything you sang

I know, it has to happen naturally. I know. I know that the silence--even if it doesn't mean the absence of words--might mean the absence of ringing, and even singing. I know the bells will sound for you again--you know how to sing too well, to call too well, and to play all too well. But, that doesn't mean the words will stop. It doesn't mean a double silence. No, the words will always come--keep coming--gush forth onto the page. With those words--with every letter--comes the hope of inseminating the page--the hope that someday the page will give birth to what we sang of--what we loved. It is admittedly a hope against hope. But, like I have explained, even if the words are free, I am the opposite. The words have me--possess me--so they'll keep coming, into a dawn that is nowhere--no how--in sight.

One more

Excuse me please, one more drink
Could you make it strong? Cuz I don't need to think.
She broke my heart, my grace is gone
One more drink and I'll be gone

Excuse me, not to interrupt--but one more. Yes, one more will do it--I'm already dizzy and this one will take me to the edge. What edge? The one where thought stops. I'll go over the edge where my body will finally force my thinking--my concepts--my brooding--my analyzing into submission. Excuse me, just one more, that is all I need.

Why? Well, my heart is broken. Wait. That is too strong. Or, maybe it is too cliche. Why? Maybe because my salvation--the means of grace--has left? I don't know if that is it either. Why? I think it is this: knowing the hope of that salvation was doomed to fail from the beginning; knowing there is no grace for the temporal space which my heart--my-non-self--occupies. I guess I know that my longing for grace was equivalent to my longing for pardon from my condition--the temporal one. I wanted to be pardoned from it--cured of its disease--made whole through unity with another. Is that why it involves my heart? Yes, sir, it is. Thank you for asking. I thought maybe that was the means by which I could be pardoned. I thought maybe her and I could confer upon one another the grace of salvation through moments of incision, confusion, and, yes, the disappearance of thinking. When thinking stops, time has no hold. Yes, I know. When thinking stops you are dead. They are similar. But, I think I thought that salvation could--would--bring time to a stop without killing me.

So, one more drink. One more is all I need to beat down the circle and fall asleep. One more and I'll be okay until the sun rises tomorrow. One more, and I'll be gone. One more and I'll move, but I can't promise I will move on.

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop:

He said, "So what's the big deal about this one?"

"Well, she was a walking balance in purity and desire. You know? There was something pure--something consciously naive--something selfless. I trusted her. I really did. She was younger than me, but I don't know if that was it. She was one of those people that is born with an old soul, and because of it stays young and uncorrupted much longer than most of us; maybe forever, I hope so anyway. Yet, she was a fanatic for desire. She bathed in it; slept in it; let it permeate her every thought and movement. She was ravenous and insatiable. I'm not just talking about the bedroom either, Old Man. I am talking about allowing desire to overtake you in a way that splits you open at the core, leaving you to be overwhelmed by existential absurdity and the height of ecstasy. She had that. She let it have her. Desire carried over into everything she did--every way she related to me. It would dominate our conversations of love, religion, literature, people, and death. Desire would waft in the air of all these places; intoxicate the water that nourished our relations--every word, every phrase, ever word, every wink. And it all carried over into our love making--into passionate, expressive, verbal and non-verbal, deep, painful, open love-making. The kind that leaves you breathless for days. The experience of coming so close to someone else's soul--so close to the infinite abyss that they don't know how to give you directions to because they have never experienced it--never seen it--never known how to explain to anyone something they know they know is not there. We would come to the peak--to the edge--of that infinite--of that mixture of two untouchable spaceless, atemporal realms. In those moments--in those seconds--I hoped so hard, so expectantly, so wishfully. In the moments and days afterward I wept over the impossibility--the absurdity--of such an endeavor. Why so broken up? I guess alot of it is knowing I'll never know how she did it--how does one balance such naivete, such kindness, such purity with the waves and waves of desire that pour over and in every second? How can desire permeate every parcel of her Being while she stays so young, so beautiful, so exquisitely generous? How can the absurdity of Being not corrupt the Good? She's a walking non-answer to this question, and that's why there is no just forgetting her, it, all."

"Okay, son, sounds like a mouthful. You need another drink?"

I didn't respond.

Transitions

There is that constant transition--the one which births language again and again, day after day--that transition from me to an-Other (imagined or not, but mostly the former). I am trapped as a wave between two nodes that I don't think truly exist. Down in me--in the infinite that holds nothing--there is a crying--an urge--a desire--so before me and so ahead of me that I can't put into the words--cannot birth into the child of this longing. The world will never see it, and neither will I. This child--my word--is inadequate for carrying the space from me to anywhere else. But, words always are--that's why we turn time and again to either the Word, or that which we believe is beyond words (love). Sometimes, we even put the two together. Despite the inadequacy, that desire never leaves. Most days, times, moments, we hope--expect--through that desire. This day--this moment--it has absorbed--overtaken--submerged--not the desire--but the expectation.

Response? I don't know. I guess I'll do what is familiar.

Dancing in the play of images, logos, and ads--losing myself in a circle of sounds, one with a catchy beat and lots of smoke. Filtering in and out of a crowd sheltered in semi-darkness; a crowd longing to peak at the light only through the filter of perpetual shadow--covering--dark. Finding solitude and solace amongst those hidden, undisclosed spaces. The ones not exposed to either the light, nor to infinite. What more do you want? What more would one--could one--think to do?

Miss

I am missing. I am missing one. One is missing me. Does it really matter? Yes. What is both parties agree? Even better.

Stopping? No.

Love? Perhaps.

I miss. I am missing. Is that your fault or mine? Is there anything either of us can do about it? Probably not.

So, let's miss--miss one, and allow one to miss us, so as to fulfill our selves and hope for something different. Missing means desire is unfulfilled. Missing means we still hope, even when we know hope isn't appropriate. Miss without thinking; miss without reflection. Just miss and don't stop to ask what it means. Time--as it does--will take care of the rest.

Missing

Miss. To miss. Missing.

I am missing.

We automatically think of the active sense of this sentence--I am missing. I miss something. I miss someone. I had something--experienced something--and not it is gone. Thus, I miss it.

I am missing.

I miss.

Do you miss something that was present and now gone? Or, are you missing from yourself? Have others sought for you with no success?

I am missing.

Could it be both simultaneously?

I miss you. You miss me. Is this union? No. Fulfillment? Of course not. Desire for something beyond--something out of reach--something unattainable? Yes. Maybe that is the beauty of missing. Maybe that is its tragedy also.

Maybe. Probably. Hopefully.

Options

Together or separate? Which is better? I don't think either work, and I don't like either option. Is permanent liminality possible? Can we be perpetually caught between separation and companionship? How am I to love you without leaving you either lonely or still--one is solitary, the other silent. Would you rather be alone or not speak? Would you rather bathe in a self-hood without target, anchor, or direction out of which to create, cultivate, and process; or stay still in a silent stillness akin to death? Are these really the only two options? I hope not. But, I know not. I'm sorry. I wish I could do better.

So, what does all that mean?

It means that despite the cliche nature of it all--I wish I could be your hero. I do. I wish I could take your breath away and willfully permit you to take mine. But, I am afraid that would smother all the gray areas about you, and about me, I find so desirable. I am afraid that decision would smother the desire that spurs both of us on--that means we are the mutual heaven-makers for the other. I want to give you what I don't have. I want to receive from you that which I know you don't have. But, would giving it mean the end of it all--of that circle of desire that gives us the temporal fragmented lives we enjoy? Would it mean death? I couldn't bear the thought of killing you, even if I wasn't existing to realize what I had done. So, I won't. So, I'll stay here in the ambiguity of the circle. Please don't hate me for it.

Take my breath away; this equals love. Love is willfully giving one your breath? Willfully submitting to the finality of having no breath--of death? Strange, don't you think? So, Freud was right, the death-drive is intimately related to the experience of pleasure.

What should our response be? I don't know.

I do know that death seems to be something in which I do not want to wallow; something that repels me. If Freud was right, I think Heidegger was right too--instead of reveling in death, why don't we revel in dying so as to revel in life? Let us revel in the ambiguity, the indefiniteness, the uncanny experience of waiting for an end that is so foreign, so other, we don't really know how to think about it. In short, let us revel in the dying, not death. Let us relate, communicate, and try in a space which emanates gray, while providing the place for endless movement. Let us move in between poles--between the desire for love (death) and the bliss of finite freedom.

I can be your hero baby? Really?

A friend told me once that there are no heroes. I don't know if that is true. What I do know is that it is more fruitful to hope for the impossible, unexpected, unthinkable hero--the one that can provide love apart from death--than to rely upon, or hope for a hero within the field of our experience. The lab 'hero' should be reserved for those that provide us with the presence for which we hope, without the death which we fear so absolutely, so definitely.

Love and Space

"I can be your hero baby
I can kiss away the pain
I will stand by you forever
You can take my breath away" -Enrique Iglesias, et al.

"Man is reluctant to accept that his life has come to a conclusion in that most important respect, that his hopes have been fulfilled. He hesitates to look death in teh face, and there is little that comes so close to death as fulfilled love." --Ivan Klima




Born without a choice. Thrown without a word. Running towards nothing.

These conditions--those of existence--equal isolation. They result in alienation not only from one's self, but also from all others. Is it possible to not be alienated from others when you are alienated from yourself? In this case, alienation equals isolation. So, at bottom, we hope to find ourselves. And, we think we'll find it with another. It is as if our desire--the one we didn't choose--the one with no beginning--is somehow instinctively directed at another as it searches for itself. It bellows silently--"If you overcome isolation, you will overcome alienation." It drives us to believe that if one can have an encounter, they be will his or her self for the first time.

This is why death and love are so similar. This is why death and love are always blurred to indistinction--why completed love is indistinguishable from death. Why would else would love involve one person taking another's breath away? In any other context taking someone's breath away means ending their life. Death is the end of desire; fulfilled love is meant to amount to the fulfillment of all desire. The problem is that it is in the hope--the space--where desire moves that life is lived.

Alienation is a fact of existence we owe to time. Isolation is a fact of existence we might owe to death. Love isn't overcoming either of these. Love is recognizing one's interior infinite within, moving in, within, and between the endless space in which the insatiable desire for fulfillment dwells and the infinite abyss in an-Other. Love--eros--Revelation--is never a substantive, nor can it be configured in the past tense. Love is a verb we can conjugate only in the present because it signifies the endless quest for presence--the quest, doomed to failure, to give the present of presence to an-Other and thus to receive it in return.

"Perhaps, it occurred to me, I was in some new space. I'd entered the place where oblivion was born. Or despair. And also understanding. Or perhaps even love--not as a mirage but as a space for the soul to move in." --Ivan Klima

Stretching

Stretch me out. Stretch me out in the in-between--in the interim that perpetually lies between longing and completion. Stretch me out--pull me and push me--back to where I never was, toward where I'll never be. Stretch me out, and let me lie in the ambiguity--let it run all the way.

This is where I hope from? To? From my natality to my mortality? From the immemorial institution of my desire to the end I'll never know?

Stretch me out and leave me here. I don't want to fix it. I don't want to exit--I love the desert of the surreal gray. I love it as much as I will ever be able to love anything. I want to wallow, if just for this moment, in the indiscretion of not-knowing. Leave me here and don't suggest a solution. Leave me here, and if you are going to stay, at least stay silent.

Encounters

At the bottom of all our hopes lies a yearning for encounter. -Ivan Klima

What depressed me were certainly not doubts about the rightness of my choice, but the knowledge that I'd made a decision once and for all. I suspected that for me the most blissful prospect was not so much having the person I loved permanently by my side as a need, from time to time, to reach out to emptiness, to let longing intensify within me to the point of agony, to alternate the pain of separation with the relief of renewed coming together, the chance of escape and return, of glimpsing before me a will-o'-the-wisp, the hope that the real encounter was still awaiting me. -Ivan Klima


At the bottom of all hope--that endless circle, the one like all circles--without beginning and without end--is the desire for an encounter. It is the desire to know an-Other, and more importantly, to be known by an-Other. What is strange about this desire is its whence--its originless origin. We fight, scratch, claw, paradoxically, even to the death, to be recognized as an irreplaceable, singular one. Without one's irreplaceability, they are as good as dead--a subhuman entity incapable of true living. Without one's singluarity we are just a machine carrying out meaningless functions within a mechanical world. "NO!" Even the non-believing souls cry this--bellow it from a hidden place--"I am more."

This desire--the one for an encounter--is born out of this fierce defense of singularity and irreplaceability. It is that singular, non-replaceable infinity that longs to be found. It is like an egg waiting to be pierced by that one--one in a million--one of trillions--swimming head--to be punctured so as to give birth to life. We believe--in a place so secret not even we have access to it, from a past we were not privileged with experiencing, in a present we did not choose, in a future we will never see--that if we can have one encounter--if even one eternal moment --that life will be born; life will be experienced; we will become what we supposed to be all along.

But, what is paradoxical, excruciatingly paradoxical, about this desire--this circle--is that it is its spinning that makes life possible. If the circle doesn't spin there is no desire for encounter simply because there is no "is". If the circle stops moving the conditions for any encounter are vanquished. Yet, as long as the circle spins--as long as that desire burns within one's soul--searing scabs and scars along the outer membrane of the secret space--the place where an encounter might take place--it will long to be understood, to express, to try to explain the secret that has no words.

Escape and return. Longing and fulfillment. Yearning and rest. This is the cirlce. This is the pendulum in which desire swings.

To choose once and for all? To claim I've had an encounter? What kind of fool would I be to make such a claim?

A greater fool for never trying? A greater loss for never trying to somehow lead another down the winding, impossibly hidden, spaceless space of the infinity in which I reside?

I can't answer that. Can you?

Thus, it is no coincidence that eros and revelation are two sides of the same coin. Revelation--the Word being communicated. Eros--communicating something so secret--so precious--so vulnerably personal--without words. Both involve the uncovering of the Infinite. Both claim to lead to an encounter--to a meeting that couldn't, wouldn't otherwise be possible. Revealing the Word with special words, and revealing one's self with no words. Revealing--physically and not. All of it is in hope for an encounter. And, both spawn words--writing. Which is itself the only way to life--the immortal kind, that is.

When I can't write anymore I'll die. But I'll die loving. -Ivan Klima

Scabs and Scars

Scar. Scab. Scab. Scar. One comes sequentially after the other, and not exclusively. Scabs lead to scars; but, other things lead to scars too. With scabs however, it is a matter of only a replacing the "r"--the "are"--with the "b"--the "be". Strange, don't you think? That the constant pain of healing flesh morphs into the constant reminder of hurt and pain with only the change of "r" to "b". The change happens when the present--the presence--of "are" is changed to the general--the universal--the "be", being, to be. "I am" to "to be". The particular--the scab--the trace of pain--of a mark (even in which the memory of the blow--the incision--or the scrape has been lost) is one short consonant--one short constant--from the universal inadequacy and impossibility of healing. Time means scabs heal. Time means there will always be scars.

Transitions

There is that constant transition--the one which births language again and again, day after day--that transition from me to you. I am trapped as a wave between two nodes that I don't think truly exist. Down in me--in the infinite that holds nothing--there is a crying--an urge--a desire--so before me and so ahead of me that I can't put into the words--into the child of this longing. This child--my word--is inadequate for carrying the space from me to anywhere else. Words always are--that's why we turn time and again to either the Word, or that which we believe is beyond words (love). Sometimes, we even put the two together. Despite the inadequacy, that desire never leaves. Most days, times, moments, we hope--expect--through that desire. This day--this moment--it has absorbed--overtaken--submerged--not the desire--but the expectation. Response? Dancing in the play of images, logos, and ads--losing myself in a circle of atemporality, one with a catchy beat and lots of smoke. Filtering in and out of a crowd sheltered in semi-darkness, a crowd longing to peak at the light only through the filter of perpetual shadow--covering--dark.

Episodes

Just then, Saint Augustine wandered back into the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop. His beach shorts dripped sand on the floor as he sauntered over to us. The venerable Saint had been lying on the beach too long, as his face and neck (left revealed by the V-line of his white Big Dog tank top) were bright red. As he sat down, MP took another bite of his croissant, letting out another orgasmic sequence of sounds. "Ignore him," I said. LN proceeded to fill in SA on our conversation. He listened for a while, seemingly taking it all in as she told him about solitude, and language, and death, and the rest. Then, he excused himself.

After a bit, SA returned with an iced coffee and appeared ready to talk. "You're are right, to a point. All of those experiences--those experiences of finding one's self where their self ends--are solitary. I know firsthand. But, I think there are intermediate states--experiences that stand in between that loss of self, and the mundane everyday dispersion we all know so well. These states parallel death and ecstasy in that language is at least partially suspended, or at least unnecessary.

"Hmmmm, that's good. So good. Oh wow, god that is amazing." MP was enjoying his breakfast once again, and had obviously distracted the poor Saint.

"Please, pay no attention to him." TL said.

"Yes, please continue," I told him.



Gathering himself, he went on. "You see, there are times when you sit with people in mourning--times you enjoy the presence of others after the death of a friend, or a family member, or during some other form of tragedy. There are times when that loss--that hurt--that pain-seeps into the fiber of all of you in a way in which you share it. It is endemic to all of you, in that instance, within that space. The phenomenon has struck you in a way that permeates every thought, every breathe, every passing second. And, in those times, you can catch seconds or moments when you sit with others--silently--and share a space that is secret--one that you couldn't explain or show or introduce to anyone else--even if you wanted to. It isn't death--and it isn't even the complete suspension of language--but it is one of those rare human times where being together doesn't involve speaking to one another."

At this, he took a sip of his coffee and itched his now worsening sun burn.

"But, that isn't all. You can have the same sort of experience for altogether contrary reasons. Think of those times with good friends, maybe before you have to scatter and leave one another to return home or move on with life or what not. Think of the times you sit and share a meal, have some wine, and let the evening pass from sunset to warm summer darkness. Think of how the world floats away--the cares, the worries, the tomorrow--even if just for a moment. Think of the way you laugh so deep you all cease thinking and cease speaking as the laughter invades you. Think of the times you sit, silent, enjoying the few breaths of satisfied existence--in warm air, after good food, among people in the world you don't have to speak to in order to communicate with. It is at those times that selfhood and presence don't have to be solitary, but they are always temporary, and always fleeting. There is no planning either type, no holding onto them, and no formula to create them. They are events that happen to us, together, which fall out of our control. They are events that have us, possess us, and thus reveal ever more clearly that those few breaths of being-together--of Ostian community--are not ours. That is, we are not our-selves--we are always given to ourselves."

"Oh god. Hmmm. Ohhhh. That is good." MP finished his scrambled eggs and bacon.

Episodes in a Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

Sitting on the shore of a semi-deserted beach, watching the sun rise over another day of concealed chaos, wondering if I can turn the wonder off long enough to enjoy a loud silence apart from myself. Listening to a voice I know I will never know is there, knowing it probably isn't; allowing the heaviness of the meaninglessness to seep in to scurry off the naivete, without allowing it to stop my breath. Trying to reach the impossible balance in a place that doesn't exist wherein "I" stop--language stops--thinking stops--consciousness stops--where it fades into a backdrop with no center--the Idyllic with no Idea.


Thinking. Language. Thoughts.

Representations. Concepts. Intentions.

Wandering back to the Smoke-Filled Coffee shop so as no to too get lonely, only to find myself resenting the bodies all around me. I unexpectedly ran into friends--good friends--the kind that involve memories, laughter, smiles, and nostalgia. We sat. We talked. MP, TL, and LN were in good form, and soon the conversation led to "things of meaning."

I told them, "Religion and philosophy are concerned with Presence and Time. We desire--long for--hope for a time when time will cease--when it will stop--hold still--and "I" will be present. We long for that time when the world disappears--when thinking--language--representation--concepts--all stop and me and myself are finally one in a way that no longer requires process, development, or further journeying. We want time to stop, but we want to be present when it does."

MP took a bite of the full breakfast he had ordered: "HMMMMMM. Oh yeah, ohhh. It's good."

We ignored him.

TL chimed in, "I think you're right. This is what the myth of love is about; this is what the mythology of sex describes. We want to find ourselves in one--find one that can make time irrelevant--hold our identity stable so that there is no flux--no danger of it being taken away--permanence. In sex, the world disappears for a moment, or a couple if you are lucky. The room spins until it finally no longer exists. Time wisps away until you don't know how long has passed. All that you know is your body and their's--you are present only to them, and thus, to yourself. Time and space cease, the world liquidated into the breathing, feeling, overhwelming pleasure--and the climax. You are dead. There is unspeakable--inexpressible--silent experiences that transcend time and space. In those moments, there is no thinking--no language--no "self." No, the self ceases and thus, for a few moments, you are free to become your true "self".

"The problem," LN said, "is that it is always fleeting. Eventually, the room comes back--you see your shirt on the lampshade, your partners knickers on the windowsill, and you stare at the ceiling as the world, as language, as time, and space filter back--forcing yourself to vanish once again. You stare at the ceiling, breathing heavy in someone else's arms, wondering why it can't last forever and why the stopping always has to stop."

"It's the same with death," I said. "Death brings the end of language and yourself. Death, sex, love, and union with God--they aren't all that different. They all long for an experience of self--a permanent, whole self--in a phenomenon that requires the self to die--to cease--in order to experience it. And you know what else: they are all solitary endeavors."

I told them how Buber and Levinas taught me that love requires two people to ignore the rest in order to enter into a worldless vision of their selves. I told them how Heidegger taught me that death is always only my own--and thus, I am always alone. Mystical visions--union with God--are solitary journeys that involves one single soul.

Why does self-presence require the death of the self--the time where language--consciousness--thinking are no longer? And, why does it always involve the disappearance of the world--why does it have to be so lonely?

I don't want to tell you a story. I don't want to engross you in a narrative with a beginning and thus with an end. I don't want a happy ending, nor do I want a tragedy. I don't want to leave you on your seat, or in tears, or angry beyond words. I don't want you to lose yourself in the time of my narrative--in the time of the narrative--only to have to re-emerge again when the pages run thin and the night gets dark. I don't want to change your life. I don't want to you to change mine. I don't want to invent characters with idiosyncracies, or a setting with character and vibrance.

No.

I don't even want an audience. I don't want an ear, or many ears, or fans, or readers, or you.

Episodes in a Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

SA left me thinking a bit. Thinking about "things that matter" as they say. Thinking about the circle--the ring--the one that centers around nothing (like all circles I guess).

I sat and sipped my espresso. I sat and looked at the bodies scurrying about under the guise of the ubiquitous sun beating down on the shiny beach. I wondered if it was still possible to "confess" like the Saint had done. Was it still possible to find the place that doesn't exist? Possible to see the cut inside of me where the circle with no space started?

It's funny, you know. Funny to think these thoughts in this electric world; funny to know that as I think them my audience is both infinite and nothing all at once. Who will read it? Who reads it? Probably no one--probably not enough people to count as someone. Yet, who reads it? Everyone: my-self, the thoughts, the interior that is neither inner nor outer, the Other I confess to, the one that hovers over me with an all-knowing gaze--I am torn open and available to all. I am brought within a matrix of an infinite sea of information--the identities and ipseities of the confessors melting into one transcendent source of unavoidable gaze. There You are--looking into me. Here, "I" am, unable to look away, and more, unable to stop writing--to stop confessing--to stop telling You of the utter lack I feel in every breath.

It's funny, you know. This transcendent matrix of digital flows that we all confess to--the one available to all those seeking salvation--all those seeking rest--all those wandering in the desert of interiority. Come, all you who are heavy burdened--find your rest here.

I guess that is the only rest we have left. I guess we can hope to rest in thee as nodes in a changing network--one in which we are thrown about--incised--exposed-vulnerable--and ultimately, just like the venerable Saint, always left wondering when the tears, the blood, the desire, and the hope will cease turning inside the ring--the spaceless space--and come to a full stop. Will it be in death or in You? I guess we'll never know.

Episodes in a Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop: SA

I saw Augustine one day. He was drinking a latte. After a minute filled with hesitation, disgust, admiration, and total bewilderment--I walked up to his window-side location and asked if I could join him. The Bishop was actually quite fashionable. He told me how global warming would be the end of us all. We discussed how Internet had changed our perceptions of reality, communication, and such. He told me why he thought Obama wasn't as revolutionary as we might have hoped.

After a bit of enjoyable conversation and surprisingly comfortable laughter, I asked him about his confession--the famous one. I wanted to know if he felt like it did any good--did it help? "Were you able to stop being such a question to yourself?" I asked. "Were you able to find the rest you were looking for?"

He was a bit caught off guard I think, and then a bit guarded. He thought. He mumbled. He looked. He breathed. Then, he told me, "I didn't find any thing in particular. I was confessing to a God who already knew everything about me--what good could that do? He didn't learn anything. Did I? Well, I didn't learn my "self" if that is what you are wondering. I didn't collect myself into the eternal rest I was looking for. But, I did find something else. I found the spaceless space. I found the place inside of me where I am not. It's a place hidden--I won't say it's deep, because it is spaceless, this space. I won't say it's hidden, because a spaceless space can't hide. I won't say it's secret, because it is a place where I don't exist--how can I keep a secret I don't know? But, I found it. I found the place inside of me that is no place, no space, no circle, no ring, and no time. At first I wanted to fill it; to fulfill it. But, over time, I realized a timeless, spaceless place can't be filled. Then, I wanted an answer. I asked God how he put it there? How he put himself there, in me, in a place where I am not. God didn't answer. I tried to remember why and how it got there, but my memory had no recollection of any of it. How do you find a place inside you that isn't a part of you? A place where you don't know? A place where knowing doesn't help?"

All of this was getting to be a bit much, so I told him I had to go to the bathroom. In the urinal I actually pissed a bit on my belt, but not too much. I was hoping for two things: a) The Saint would be gone when I got back, or b) he wouldn't see the piss on my jeans.

When I returned, he was still there. I didn't get a word in edgewise when he started again.

"With that confession I learned something, but I didn't learn it about me. I learned something I don't know and something for which there is no answering--even from God. I learned about the space, that is not part of me, that makes time go. It makes temporality--your life--every instant--absent. I met the motion, the circle, the place, the space, the temporal, Time. I met the one that makes every now disappear as soon as you try to say it. I met the space where the present slips away into the past and the future never arrives. I met the emptiness that makes the absence of your life continue to run."

"Wow," I said, thinking about dinner. "Was it worth it?"

"Worth, I don't know. I'm not sure worth matters in this non-place. But, I tell you what--it was nice to meet that place inside me where I am not. You know what I saw when I got there?" He said this leaning in, and very excited.

"What?"

"I saw the most beautiful emptiness. I saw a glimmering absence; a bewildering space otuside of space. A time that stands still outside of time. And, you know what? I saw the most vile, most irrepresentable, most indescribably disgusting ring of nothing--pure nausea--pure death--the instant of non-presence--the instant of existence vomiting its hope--the place of tingling hopelessness.

It's there, it is there that I found myself. Well, I found that there was no me to find.

And, I realized something: If you or anyone else tries to get near it--to fix it--to fill it--to see it--life, hope, time, trying, desire, joy, ecstasy, thought is annihilated. I found the non-self that makes the self of time and space continue.

Don't go near me--the non-me--there. Don't try to inch close to quench my desire. Don't promise me you'll find that non-space to make it face the light. Don't hold a knife to the non-me and try to remove it. Leave it. Exit. Don't think it. Don't approach it. Don't look for it.

Let's all be embarrassed about it together. Let's agree to let ourselves die--each one of us--each non-self--in that non-place, so we can go on pretending to live. Let's allow time to swallow us--abandon us--push us into oblivion--and in the meantime we'll hope beyond hope--beyond tears--beyond blood--beyond space and time--without words--without writing--that the non-self we have agreed to abandon will end up being the Good we all dream of, and not the Devil we feel lurking in places we don't have."

"Okay," I said. Thank you. I appreciate your honesty.

We had a few beers that night, and some more laughs. We didn't talk about whatever he was talking about. For that, I was grateful.

Let the ambiguity run all the way. No harnessing. No conditioning. Let it run from the beginning to the end. From the first shock of breath to the shock of its absence. Let the ambiguity make you shiver; let it ride throughout your fragile body and rivet you in each moment. Let the ambiguity overshadow, overcome, and overwhelm. Don't run. Don't duck. Don't hide. Don't shy away. And most of all, don't try to comprehend--don't try to understand--don't try to reduce--just let it ride. Let it throw you back on your throwness and shove you forward into your still undisclosed self. Yes, let the ambiguity run. Let it run from beginning to end. From the immemorial time of creation's dawn to the ineluctable end of its apocalypse. From the time you hear the call, to the time you answer the call. From the time of invisibility to the time of impossibility. Let's let it take us into the rush of the sea--churn us, flip us, bewilder us, and confuse us. Let's have it. Let's have it all.