of thinking through years, the 'grasp' or the known'
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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
