Tribe Dream & Theory

Kathy Acker Empire of the Senseless, two passages juxtaposed. First about skin inscriptions:

Among the early Christians, tattoos, stigmata indicating exile, which at first had been forced on their flesh, finally actually served to enforce their group solidarity. The Christians began voluntarily to acquire these indications of tribal identity. Tattooing continued to have ambiguous social value; today a tattoo is considered both a defamatory brand and a symbol of tribe or of a dream.

Makes me wonder about the marks left by vaccination or the lesions of Kaposi's sarcoma. Badges of progress. Signs.

Earlier in the novel:

I've always wanted to be a sailor.

The demand for an adequate mode of expression is senseless. Then why is there this searching for an adequate mode of expression? Was I searching for a social and political paradise? Since all acts, including expressive acts, are inter-dependent, paradise cannot be an absolute. Theory doesn't work.

Theory might play. Like a drunken sailor.

And so for day 227
29.07.2007