Word Things

Keith W. Faulkner. Deleuze and the three syntheses of time argues

Words become symbols; language is symbolic: although words are not things, and things are not words, the principle of reality applies to them both as if words enjoy the same reality as things.

and this is how the argument is set up

How can language acquire a "reality" if it remains outside the realm of objects? As we have seen, the indication of reality accompanies a psychical discharge. While eating, the mouth and the stomach produce a discharge signaling the reality of food; while speaking, a physical discharge occurs in the mouth signaling the reality of language. In this process, as in the process of hysterical symbol-formation, the symbol completely replaces the thing.

The question arises that if words can be considered to be like things, how can things be like words? The key may be in approaching words and things as "events."

One need not revert to a theory of signatures or a reification of symbols, one can sense the pressure of a thing upon its environment much as one can sense the energy of words.

And so for day 463
20.03.2008

See also day 65

Contrasting Pairs

Instead of an Index of First Lines, one wishes for an index of concluding lines.

unbeingdead isn't beingalive

from e.e. cummings 73 poems last line of poem 31

And so for day 462
19.03.2008

Fluency and Literacy

The following, rearranged as verse, strikes one as more than just a call to pay attention to oral dimensions. It is in a sense a call to overcome self-censorship in order to become engaged.

What you think, you can say.
What you say, you can write.
What you've written, you can read.

Educational consultant, Carmel A. Crevola

What is read animates what is thought.

And so for day 461
18.03.2008

Teachers?

From "Love and Literature" in Texts & Pretexts: An Anthology with Commentaries by Aldous Huxley.

[...] Isolate a new born rat, then, when it is mature, introduce it to another rat of the opposite sex. It will know exactly what to do — will behave as all other rats behave.

Not so an ape. Instinct does not tell it how to behave. Congenital ignorance is the condition of intelligence. The ape is intelligent, therefore knows fewer things by instinct than does the rat. It is not born with a knowledge of normal sex-behaviour, it must acquire this knowledge from its fellows.

Now if the simple sexuality of an ape is an affair of education, how much more so must be the complicated love-making of men and women ! Literature is their principal teacher. Even the most wildly passionate lovers have studied in that school.

Apart from literature there are exchanges that pass mouth to mouth, hand to hand ...

And so for day 460
17.03.2008

Sex, Youth and Experience

"Child of All Ages" by P.J. Plauger collected inn The Best of Science Fiction of the Year #5 edited by Terry Carr features a female protagonist that manages never to grow up yet is wise in the ways of the world.

"No, what a minute. You brought this up," she persisted. "Look at me. Am I unattractive? Good teeth, no pock marks. No visible deformities. Why, a girl like me would make first-rate wife material in some circles. Particularly where the average life expectancy is, say under thirty-five years — as it has been throughout much of history. Teenage celibacy and late marriage are conceits that society has only recently come to afford.

She looked at him haughtily.

"I have had my share of lovers, and you can bet I've enjoyed them as much as they've enjoyed me. You don't need glands for that sort of thing so much as sensitive nerve endings — and a little understanding.

Part of the charm of this passage is its forthrightness.

And so for day 459
16.03.2008

To describe, to emote

Thomas McNamee in Alice Walters and Chez Panisse concludes the "Death and Life" chapter with a description of the 1987 San Francisco benefit, Aid and Comfort. As the last lines and the concluding sentences of the chapter, they are designed to reveberate:

For the finale, Chanticleer, San Francisco's highly regarded all-male chorus, sang "Lean on Me," as the hundreds of volunteers poured onto the stage to join them. The audience stood and sang along, many in tears.

simple clear note

And so for day 458
15.03.2008

Keyword: lover

Thomas McNamee relates in Alice Walters and Chez Panisse in the chapter "Very Sixties" informs readers about California usuage.

Long before cohabitation was common anywhere else in the country, unmarried couples were openly living together in Berkeley. They didn't call themselves girlfriend and boyfriend, or companions or partners. They used the word lovers.

Which calls to mind the character of Billy Lee Belle in Peter McGehee's Beyond Happiness who while back home on a visit shakes the family tree in conversation with an older cousin:

"Why? You don't mean to say that you and Boy Calder were lov—"

And there it stands suspended, unconfirmed but true. And full of power.

To this day it's the word I prefer.

And so for day 457
14.03.2008

Dual Sense Appeal

The Firework-Maker's Daughter by Philip Pullman

[...] down a little winding alley full of crackling smells and pungent noises [...]

The chiasmus (sound smell, smell sound) is arresting. So too, the not often combined senses of smell and hearing.

And so for day 456
13.03.2008

Out of Time into Memory

Ellen Frye in Amazon Story Bones has a passage that cries out for an annotation by a scholar of botanical history.

A river that brings us sweet water, quince trees, apples and pears. The land's rich here. Stony, but rich. the wheat grows high, the tomatoes grow red, the melons sweet. The gods are good to us.

In this fictional world, tomatoes grow in ancient times in the Mediterranean basin. This is not the case in the actual world since tomatoes were introduced after contact with the New World. I like to think of this distance between the actual and the fictional as a trope that supports the book's concluding theme that Amazons are everywhere.

Much like a cornucopia depicting fruits and flowers out of season reflects abundance, the transhistorical reach turns the telling of old myths and the wish for survival into a future possible.

And so for day 455
12.03.2008

Iridescent Scales

A scrap from 1991

P. rent the necklace. The beads and pearls scattered. They picked pieces to be hidden in medicine pouches. Y. picked up the thread. Tied it into a fly. went fishing.

A scrap that wants nothing leaves nothing to waste.

And so for day 454
11.03.2008