Daily PlegmRegurgitation

I remember a teacher I once had (or did I merely dream this teacher into existence, as her tendency towards expository confabulation, was so perfectly rendered in ludicrous detail?) Who claimed that Louis XIV was an obsessive masturbator, whose 60-70 daily onanism sessions, eventually caused him to contract syphilis and die. She attributed, this apocryphal version of his demise, to the existence of tiny spirochetes which lived under the Monarch’s frequently manicured, but rarely washed, fingernails, and which were transferred during masturbation from his hand to his genitals, invariably leading to his death. Of course, the story was ludicrous, but if one accepted the correlations implied by the details, then it followed logically, that the end result was believable.

She reinforced this relativistic logic when she asserted, on another occasion, that London had, in fact, been completely destroyed by the German Blitz in 1940-41, and that it had to be rebuilt, entirely of marble, like some Borgesian fantasy city—no doubt, the same one housing the transcendent Library of Babel, but that is another story. Moreover, she went on to claim, quite shamelessly, I might add, that thenceforth, London was known as the City of Marble, an appellation not to be found in any history book. The reason for this is simple: London was not destroyed by the Blitz; and those sections that were leveled, were not rebuilt solely of marble.

The lie which sticks out most from that time, however, was her claim—made brilliantly, with straight face and bogus, unverifiable, vaguely attributed, ‘newspaper sources’—that after the bombing of Hiroshima, woman all over Japan began giving birth to creatures which resembled fur covered Dolphins. As she said this, a single tear trickled across her cheek. An audible hush silenced the room, reinforcing the sense of urgency and the notion that in this sanctified cavern of truthfulness, we were getting an accurate retelling of how the world actually was, as opposed to how it was often represented.

Perhaps, if the latter had only been intended metaphorically, it might have been true, but her motives—whatever they actually were—appeared to owe more to self-aggrandizement than to any desire to speaks truthfully about the past. These narratives, of course, were quite brilliant, but as they were presented as verifiable facts, in the environment of a classroom, I found it hard then—and still find it difficult now—to ignore the context and interpolate it within the pristine rhetoric of literary theory. While the latter certainly has a valid place in conversation, as well as in written form—as it offers valuable insights into the nature of representation of the distorting effects of signs—its use as an all-purpose justification for something presented as an ontologically and epistemologically coherent ‘truth’ about the world, IE a series of ‘facts,’ has to be differentiated from metaphor. Only if her intention had been to deceive us as a type of performative aesthetics concerned with the nature of truth, could such fallacies claim to be ‘Art.’ Otherwise, as Gertrude Stein might have said, had she been imbued with the spirit of Yogi Berra, ‘A lie is a lie is a lie.”

On one level, to say that lies are not lies, is sort of equivalent to the claim, once made somewhere, at some time by somebody, that monkeys do, in fact, speak like humans, but only do it when they are sure that we are not listening; there is, always an element of indeterminacy but some scenarios are more likely than others. This is not to say that truth is absolute—except perhaps in the sense that certain empirical statements, or hypotheses can be true, and factual (but these are truths limited to very specific things, and do not apply, in a literal way, to matters of interpretation extrinsic to the strictly Euclidean notions of facticity, and even then… )—but that it is contingent, which is still distinct from the syncretistic notion that all truths are equal to each other. The latter, is valid as a way of accepting the epistemological diversity of any given situation or object, but cannot be fairly construed to apply to all ontological questions. This means that, although the what is indeterminate sometimes—as is its relationship to the why and how—the essential whatness of the first can be construed with some accuracy, all things being equal, when the other two conditions can be placed within specific parameters that are not simply subject to any and all contingencies.

What this means in English, is that, for example, the Atomic Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. It also means that the Holocaust refers to a series of atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi’s, and other parties, upon the Jewish people, before and During the Second World War. However, the details surrounding the motives behind the first, and the complex reasoning involved, are contingent, as is the Byzantine and disturbing historical precedents for the second. Neither of these things, of course, can subtract from the horror arising from each respective episode, or their own distinct qualities and time frames; but, in placing them historically, there is always the imposition of one narrative framework over other competing historical paradigms. This does not mean however, that one could—as many Holocaust deniers have attempted to do, for example—simply use a different method of structuring such events to claim either that they never happened, or, that as remembered historical facts they are so different from any of the prevailing, and closely related, historical models, that the element of “atrocity” can simply be disbursed within the narrative codes of literature and history. Such sophistries—and the intellectual subterfuges that they endorse—are often used as a prelude to insisting that the collectively remembered horrors, of events, like the Holocaust, the dropping of the Atomic Bomb, or innumerable other acts of violence, genocide and power politics, be finessed into abstractions rendered unstable enough to be called fiction. To do this, would be an assault on the possibility that anything can ever be communicated as truth, and a license for any and all revisions of history to claim equal status ontologically. In other words, it would be a lie masquerading as a variation on the Fairness Doctrine.

The latter, of course, refers to the implementation of a well-intentioned attempt by the FCC to insure that Television networks—who are often beholden to large corporate and even government sponsors—gave equal time to other points of view. The reality is that, while it was a more inclusive approach, it was soon manipulated by those very parties, whose excessively one sided narratives it was supposed to ameliorate, and thus transformed into a multi-fringed assortment of differing viewpoints and ideas that tended, in practice—and perhaps by design—to present those versions of reality that were given airtime, as being on completely equal footing with one another. If such a spectacle sounds democratic, the reality was that it tended to present only specifically acceptable variations on already conventional points of view, thus contributing to an already lopsided playing field by giving viewers a false sense of the range of available positions. In this way, it actually contributed to the ‘naturalization’ of already well-articulated ideological positions while submerging those whose frame-of-reference was too heterogeneous for the artificially circumscribed parameters of mass media.

In sum, history is mediated by ideology, but is still more than a mere outgrowth of it, despite the fact that the flavor of a period—and the corresponding perception of its texture—is derived from the colored lens that informs our awareness of it.

And Now, onto something more basic.

I remember a dream I had once, where I was standing in a small room surrounded by a tremendous crystalline obelisk, festooned with serrated needles jutting out, like octopus tendrils, in every possible direction, in a beautifully interconnected lattice of knife-like projections, reminiscent of the top of the Chrysler building if it were viewed through a mirrored prism. These coral-like stalagmites seemed to cover almost every inch of the room I was in, and only with great effort was I able to negotiate my way back out of the still opened doorway without being nettled or stabbed. It only occurred to me later on that the entire scenario was really an ornate reimagining of the effect that gout was having on my ambulation, and even if not intended so literally, could be conceived as an allegory about social and epistemological constraints. It both literalized the potentially painful consequences of movement—as even the slightest jostling of, or pressure on, the effected limb, or digit, created a sharp and deeply felt throbbing that was similar to the imagined pain of being stung by the crystalline tendrils of a science-fiction jellyfish—and provided a blue-print for the complex trajectory involved in pain avoidance. Moreover, the morbid sense of limitation imposed by this apparatus of thorny needles, was overwhelmingly oppressive; its corollary being the tacit threat of ostracism that acts as an invisible network of nettles in maintaining the parameters that define complex relationships in an hierarchical society

One may at first object to such a severe and reductive model of social interactions, but a closer look at the dynamics inherent in the latter, would amply prove my point. Firstly, it is well understood that one way of enforcing social contracts is through the tacit threat of consequences for non-compliance. The worst of these is ostracism, since, as inherently social creatures, we tend to abhor the effect that this has on anyone unlucky enough to be cut off from the main lines of human circulation. Only those who have cultivated a taste for solitude—which is probably not a large number of people, as we are genetically infused with a desire to communicate with others, language formation being only one example of the necessity of interaction with others—as adults, and maybe those of protean willpower, would perhaps be immune to this sort of covertly dangled type of punishment.

Thus, the ‘needles’ remain as a potentiality—an invisible presence whose sting is only felt when one has incurred the gout-like wrath of the majority, for violating ordinarily unexamined aspects of the social code. Such punishments—if they can be called that, as they are more similar to the consequences of a sadistic game, where the odds are stacked in favor of the ‘social order’ against the lone individual—are more terrifying for not being codified, and therefore not imposed programmatically but with an arbitrariness that makes them unpredictable. One does not really know exactly when he/she might run afoul of the gatekeepers, whose main purpose it seems—one rarely acknowledged consciously—is to expose those who violate all manner of normative mores, even in the most minor of cases, to the fullest non-binding consequences, such as the humiliation of being regarded as a pariah. Such cases both reveal the true primitiveness of some aspects of human social relations, and raise questions regarding our true nature as sentient and gregarious beings.

I will leave it to whomever is actually reading this, other than myself—assuming that someone has read up till now—to parse out the significance of what this all means. Perhaps I am just talking into the air, in which case, I can at least rid myself of any vestigial traces of embarrassment, as nobody is around to answer my rhetorical hypothesis anyway…

Finally, in a realm, perhaps, unrelated…

There is a tendency—which I may have remarked upon in previous posts—for human beings to take ideas that contain ‘truth’ and transform them, overnight, into ‘totalizing truths.’ The difference between one and the other is instructive; for, while the former occurs largely at the event-horizon of a gestalt-shift, the latter is its rigid codification into catechism: the fact that both idea and its reduction into coded ontological fact, are related is an epistemological illusion borne of faulty reasoning, not a reflection of verity, or even a commentary on the human conceptual apparatus—although such reflection is tempting.

This is even more painfully obvious when I recollect a series of conversations—regarding my own work, primarily—with fellow members of a writers group to which I belong. A recent short story, which is also in my blog, received an interesting response, in that everyone else in the group insisted that it was overwritten and, possibly, required editing for verb choice [The reader may peruse the story in question, and decide for himself/herself—it is called The Visitor]. I regarded these suggestions as a reflection of an unspoken insistence upon adhering to specific literary conventions, namely the construct of genre; in other words, I saw much of the critique as being both impressionistic and as attempting to corral my narrative within a horse-fence of stylistic codes that I regard as outmoded and irrelevant. They insisted—and, of course, there is always the possibility, that given the dynamics of this particular group, which are too complex to go into here, that they were merely playing ‘follow the leader’ (or, even the possibility that said critique was transparent and correct, although it seems unlikely)—that it had nothing to do with ‘convention’ and was instead a commentary on the fact that the story seemed ‘overwritten.’ By this, they meant that it lacked a certain verisimilitude, because the story’s protagonist used language that appeared inappropriate for someone of his station. The character in question—as the reader will certainly discover—is a 14^th century Bishop from Verona.

I was, subsequently, compelled to ask, how someone of that position, from that time, should be ‘translated, ‘ as he surely didn’t express ideas in English; and why the typical practice known as, “Suspension Of Disbelief,” should only apply narrowly to the language barrier (as I write in English, not in an Italina ndialect from the 14^th century), and not to the notion of ‘verb-choice’ as well. After all, I argued, my verbs were correct, in that they did what verbs are supposed to do—they describe actions. And, in explaining this, I inquired, as to whether it was also possible that the response, insofar as it reflected that particular criticism, and related points, was more of a reaction to my violation of a literary genre—specifically, my lack of concern for the highly stylized codes that dictate, albeit in a subtle, and invisible way, how one should express certain historical ideas and personages—than to the actual substance of my narrative.

However, I may be employing a tendency to break narratives down into component parts that are themselves reflections of conventionalized notions about literature, rather than discrete entities that can be detached and rearranged like Leggo blocks. This is where the idea comes in that genre itself functions more as an heuristic device than it does as an arbiter of narrative style; for the categories that have evolved into specific types of story-lines, began as transgressions against a previous set of categories themselves. This Hegelian process (Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis), is a general insight into most cultural dialectics, since it illustrates the process by which a practice evolves; from something essentially innovative, and often in opposition to—or, at least distinct from—accepted methods, to something accepted, and finally, to something that merges with previously held notions.

As all human language systems, and most cultural practices, are essentially contingent, one can more specifically point out the way in which the aforesaid dialectic illustrates the formation of truth-concepts out of the materials of an evaluative practice. Literature, is—even in its most empirical incarnations—an evaluative practice, because it relies on a set of conventions, built on language, for its effectiveness and its style. And, although there are variations within the framework of these conventions, in terms of how essential they may be at any given time, in reference to each other, most are historically contingent, and subect to the same level of flux as most of the idioms and tropes that are characteristic of how a language conveys meaning.

One way of conceptualizing the relationship of language to more hard wired perceptual structures, would be to liken it, and its conventions, to a sliding continental plate. In geology, it is known that these ‘plates’ slide over the Earth’s mantle and are therefore unstable, although the Planet’s deeper layers—subject, as they are to outgassing through volcanic eruptions, which are fed by, amongst other things, the subduction process—remain largely stable over longer periods of time. Similarly, the conventions that characterize a method of communication tend to slide across the neurological undergirding that compartmentalizes and maintains the structures that enable language acquisition and usage.  This is also true of literature, which is also subject to stylistic shifts and changing norms. Genres, as distinct compartments for theme-oriented narratives, first emerged as ways of describing and organizing the exploding assortment of styles that have developed within the last two centuries. The typologies tat have grown from this, were themselves outgrowths of stylized practices whose roots may have been in the changing social and cultural mores, which reflected deeper shifts in technology and epistemology. It must be remembered that these stylizations were born into a literary oeuvre that did not necessarily contain categories that could measure or describe them; hence, they were initially, revolutionary, and as such, were transgressive. Later on, these practices hardened into the rigid containers that are presently known as Genres. They are themselves presently yielding, with a certain amount of resistance, to newer methods of describing worlds that are conceptually distinct from the ones that were first formed at the time when the present system of literary nomenclature was just becoming codified into a set of discrete applications.

As with any heuristic category, they were, and still are, primarily ways of defining things as distinct from other similar things, so as to better be able to understand them, rather than ends in themselves. The tendency, however, to turn a conceptual hypothesis into a law, is part of a more gradual shift from the original, wholly contingent, container, into a reinforced category of ‘truth.’ Ergo, this distinguishing nomenclature has been hardened by the epoxy of codification into an unalterable literary reality. This is the equivalent to privileging the container over the contents themselves (Of course, this two is an artificial distinction, but one which I find necessary to make mny argument).  What is problematic in this notion is that the perception of the container invariably alters the contents that it carries. It would, in all likelihood—to take this artificial dichotomy further—be far simpler to merely design a container, organically suited to its content, rather than allow this form of conceptual acromegaly to distort one’s literary instincts by shoehorning them into the equivalent of a pair of size 7, Buster Brown Loafers.

While I tried to explain the intricacies of this idea, in relation to my own work, the group—perhaps unwilling or unable, to follow such a complex, and maybe even convoluted, line of reasoning—remained insistent that by sheer force of numbers, they had to be correct in their critique. I politely countered that such notions have no meaning in aesthetics—particularly in the confines of a writers-group—as they are often distorted by preconceptions of canonicity, which manifests itself through primarily petty criticisms of anything different or innovative. As if in agreement with my point, the other writers groups, I often attend, found no serious problems with the narrative.

I would say, I rest my case, but nothing is ever so simple. Still, I believe that whatever the flaws in the aforementioned story, they need to be clarified in the context of a reading that, at least, acknowledges the idea that new forms require new methods of criticism, so that one does not engage in casuistry by inadvertently applying a critical paradigm conceptually unsuited to the material in question. It is this latter problem, which I believe is, at least, a partial explanation for the difficulty that I have found in fully communicating my literary vision—whatever its actual import or value—to the writers group to whom I initially read the narrative.

Perhaps, I will have more success in explaining myself during future meetings.

Until then, whenever that actually is…

The Steward of the PhlegmTurtlePalace

Final edit 12/9/2013

12/6/2013

Hello into the deep void of silence...

Looking at the number of viewers, who might have actually stumbled across the PhlegmTurtlePalace, I see that 4 are from West Germany. the reason that I regard this as significant, is that, up until this discovery, I believed that the record of 'viewers' simply referred to my own forays into my own blog. As this is not the case, I have to assume that those who stumbled in, stumbled back out without leaving any vestigial trace of their visit. Since I regard this blog as existing primarily as an archive--and a very incomplete one at that--I shouldn't expect that anyone would even know of its existence, much less want to visit again once they have found it. This is probably attributable to the fact that I regard most blog-viewers as seekers of entertainment, or facile sound-bites and other quick thrills, and I am not someone likely to provide that. Then again, I am probably entirely wrong in this assumption; however, my assessment keeps me from stumbling upon the realization that I may simply be a mediocre writer. let's not all protest that assertion at once...I am sorry, I didn't hear that, can you say it more clearly please?

Well, there I go, talking to myself again...The soundproof booth syndrome, or maybe I am having one of those very tiny, un-measurable, nervous breakdowns; like the emotional equivalent of innumerable minute bone fractures suffered by professional soccer players, which don't manifest themselves in any visible way, until years later, after so much bone has chipped off of one's ankle, or femur, that a mild limp, and arthritis are almost assured. In such cases, as with my infinitesimal 'breakdowns,' they are never apparent enough to be noticed by anyone else; and even if they did, it is easy enough to dismiss them as they remain below the level of conscious awareness most of the time. Those that do intrude on consciousness, tend to recede quickly. My point, being that such tiny shifts in one's physical or mental homeostasis are only unsettling enough for the individual afflicted by them to notice, and are therefore beneath the cultural radar, but no less important for not being seen. This is not a Public Service Announcement for the concept of mental health, which I regard as pure kitsch, and not worthy of serious consideration--another version of that common tendency in western culture to reify conceptual categories and thus transform them into bulky, physical, organisms, which will eventually need to be fed and enhanced, despite their being largely of an apparitional, conceptual nature.

I may be wrong about many things--although I cannot think of any serious intellectual miscalculations that I have made recently--but not about this. If America is characterized by one serious intellectual flaw--which, as the most 'modern' of the modern countries, it is most thoroughly indoctrinated into--it is that tendency to take ideas, turn them into things, and then transform those things into codified formulas, that even when not implemented as 'law,' still reign as de-facto 'truths' that grow in the minds of most Americans--and Europeans--like parasitic nematodes proliferating in dirty reservoir basins. Such 'entities' have twisted and warped, our notions of reason, the way that heavy cosmic objects, like Betelgeueseian stellar masses, bend light into sinewy arcs of photon-engorged energy. If my metaphor makes the process sound 'naturalized' then I am doing my own argument a disservice, as few of our commonly held conceptual paradigms are as dangerous...

Still listening? 
Well, I think that I will leave it at that for today
Enjoy!
The steward of the PhlegmTurtlePalace. 

The day before Thanksgiving, and I am like someone having a one-way argument in a soundproof room. But I like the way that such rooms foreground the flow of bodily fluids amplified inside the curving tubes of the ear, and how they tend to focus one on the exigencies of personal thougts without the disruptions often imposed by linear narrative. Still, everyone who writes has some audience in mind, even if that audience is an imaginary one. My imaginary audience would be fairly diverse and yet serious enough about what they read to want to take something of importance with them after they were through--does that sound platitudinous? Perhaps, someone answers, but that someone is me, and I am still alone in this white-blog screen, which reminds me of the backdrop for most of the scenes in that old George Lucas film, THX 1138. Of course, it might be better if I had Donald Pleasance and Robert Duval to talk to. Then again, there is some benefit to being alone and not having to contend with the interruptions of others. Today, I would welcome such interruptions, on my blog, that is--in other areas I am a private person who is content to be alone most of the time, and is lucky enough to live in an area where contact with other people is infrequent; and not for any other reason than the fact, that I find solitary activities--like writing--so refreshing...
It snowed yesterday, and through the night, and I am not sure that I am too happy about that. Then gain, snow is always preferable to the cold weather that often follows in its wake...lets hope that this winter will be a mild one in Ohio.
The steward of the PhlegmTurtlePalace

                                                            Banana Learns A Craft

                                                             “…for something

                                              like history is trying to take place in secret meetings and bombs,

                                              something that does not include us, though we are there in force,

                                                            counting the dead”—Rodney Jones, Grand Projection

Banana grimaces and awakens from a slumber dominated by images of an immensely proportioned alien structure. His mouth opens into an elongated ‘O’ that soon begins to distort into the shape of a wobbling Hula-Hoop in decaying orbit around the waist of a child. Banana still bears the fading red stains from Tomato’s epic leak, and he doesn’t have much to say to his plump rubicund neighbor as a result. Moreover, he feels less and less inclined to join with the other fruits and vegetables in their daily rounds of gregarious gossiping and grimacing. He can grimace quite effectively all by himself, thank you; and he spends much of his time balanced against the rims of the Fruit Bowl, secretly hoping to fall out onto the hard floor below. Of course, for Banana, whose hide is thick and tough, this would barely cause any significant bruising, but might draw the attention of Hand.

Hand, of course, occupies that special place in the Fruit and Vegetable narrative, usually reserved for demons, monsters and ghouls. He—or she, as no one can really distinguish gender in Claymation—has five articulable digits, each capable of putting the squeeze on any produce item that is desired at any given moment. Worse, for the occupants of the Fruit-And-Vegetable-Bowl, is the fact that Hand has mercurial tastes, probably influenced by an unseen partner, and can be relied upon to do the unexpected. If Hand desires a Pepper, he might just grab Habanero, of whom the other Fruits and Vegetables have grown so fond; but, if Hand, wants an Apple, Red Delicious might get the grab, and will be remembered as he looked when ascending in the organism’s tight and strangling grip, as he rises into the depths of Kitchen never to be seen again. Hand, of course, makes no apologies; he is as Kitchen made him.

Banana slowly begins to sense that none of the Fruits and Vegetables is really that important in the grand scheme of things happening in Kitchen. This is disquieting in itself, but even more disturbing is the realization that Hand is the central player in the Claymation drama, and only appears to be a monstrous anomaly because the Fruits and Vegetables have been cast as edible bit-players. Banana is shocked and emasculated by this realization, and knows that he could never tell the others, as they will most likely get angry—thinking that this repugnant, but quite possibly accurate, insight is a reflection of his opinion—and end up tossing him out of the Bowl as a result. But it is not for Banana to decipher the complex tangle of creeper-vines undergirding his mysterious motivations. It is enough that Banana knows that he must leave the Fruit Bowl and find the truth.

Hopping out is easy enough. Some momentum and a push from the upended top of his black anvil crest—the umbilicus that once connected him to the collective banana consciousness that still seeks communion through symbolic reunification with the ‘Bunch’—is enough to pole-vault Banana over the rim and down onto the flat table surface below. Banana knows that he must descend to the lowest level of Kitchen in order to make it to the large and alien device that he has seen in his dream, which he is certain is just on the other side of a far plateau. Banana twists his elongated yellow body, goes into an unintentional small-‘o’ mouth-grimace and turns end-over-end like a Starfish until he builds up enough speed to glide down to floor level.

Star-fishing across floor level, Banana confronts his first obstacle in the form of a tremendous monolith whose sheer walls rise at too straight an angle for normal scaling to be effective. He realizes that this is the close-up view of the plateau on which the alien device resides. Getting to the counter-top will be tricky, but Banana is an inventive fruit of unfathomed intuitive capabilities. A single strand of fiber from his own hide will make the perfect tow-line that he can use to shimmy right up the sheer cliff face of this gargantuan butte; Banana, however, doesn’t want to compromise his body just for the sake of convenience, so he devises another arrangement. Using his own increased momentum, and an innate knowledge of a strange occult science called “Newtonian Physics”—which, Banana believes to be the ‘physics’ of Newts—he upends himself again and begins Star-fishing rapidly in a series of ever diminishing concentric circles. Once the circle begins turning in on itself, Banana uses the explosive thrust in momentum to corkscrew into a spiraling mass of centrifugally propulsive Caribbean fruit. He ascends off of the bottom level and into the rarified air of Kitchen, glimpsing the Claymation Fruit and Vegetable world in its totality for the first time.

The ‘Device’ is just as Banana has imagined it. It sits on a small platform, and has a large screen that is framed by a thin cladding of the same unknown material as the platform. When Banana looks at the screen, he sees an exact duplicate of the world he is part of—the Kitchen—but from an unusual angle. Banana adjusts his angle and is shocked by what appears. It is another Banana, who is staring back at Banana just across the narrow divide between his world and the world of the ‘Device.’ Banana tries to cross over, between the barrier, but the duplicate Banana steps in to prevent him from entering. Each time that he attempts to wedge himself against the screen so as to force his way into the ‘Device’ World, his opposite, immediately—as if through some form of telepathy—puts the identical part of his Banana physique against the screen to prevent Fruit-and-Vegetable-World, Banana from gaining access.

It is deeply frustrating, and Banana grimaces unwittingly, only to notice that his doppelganger has grimaced as well. Banana then turns his Claymation mouth into a wide ‘O’ grimace, denoting disgust. Device World Banana does the same, and at the exact same moment. Banana is horrified but secretly thrilled. His mouth opens and he intones, “What an amazing creature—it can read the intentions of other fruits!” Of course, no sounds actually come out of Banana’s open O-Claymation mouth, although he does sense a string of symbols denoting an identical meaning running across an unseen subliminal barrier. As expected the Device World Banana utters the exact same string of symbols. Fruit and vegetable World Banana is fascinated and perplexed. In rapid succession he displays an entire portfolio of grimaces, tweaks, undulations, gesticulating frowns, discombobulated sqwonks, and assorted clown-faces and fish-lips, all to his opposite counterpart, who does the exact same thing in the exact same order. There isn’t even a change in nuance. Both Bananas look across the barrier at their opposite, with a forlorn expression of resignation, tempered by the slightest hint of burning curiosity.

Suddenly, Fruit and Vegetable World Banana, has an epiphany. “It’s a duplicate, because it’s another me; if I can reproduce it on this side of the barrier, I can populate the entire Fruit Bowl with a never-ending supply of Bananas, with which ‘We’ can combat Hand. He can’t grab us all at once!” Banana is delighted with himself for having this insight and his Claymation mouth immediately converts into a half-circle grin. The question now is exactly how to go about reproducing Device World Banana, as another Fruit and Vegetable World Banana without upsetting the balance between the two realms. ‘But why should there be any balance between the two realms?’ wonders Banana. ‘Perhaps, the problem is in how I look at Device World Banana,’ he elaborates. ‘Maybe there is no Device World, only an apparatus which manipulates light, the way that Hand manipulates its five articulable digits.’

It is only a short Starfish-leap from this intuition to the realization that Banana can best reproduce a doppelganger by manipulating the Claymation realm itself. But doing this will not be easy, since Claymation is the bones and body of the Fruit and Vegetable World; and, getting outside of it is as impossible a task as standing at a distance from oneself to gauge the precise dimensions of one’s boundaries. Banana can sense however, that the Claymation World is not one continuous moment of uninterrupted movement, but a series of frames, each with a distinct beginning and end. Of course, if he shared this bizarre idea with the other Fruits and Vegetables they would think him mad, or worse, some form of charlatan. But banana knows that no matter how strange it sounds, his idea is true. However, if Banana’s very identity is construed as part of the Claymation World how can he retain the former while standing adjacent to, but not within, the latter? This is a question that Banana feels is unanswerable. Yet, he must try to do exactly this, if he is to be successful in his wild endeavor.

Banana stands rigidly, as if encased in petrified cantaloupe skin, and begins to visualize an invocation with which to summon Device World Banana over onto his side of the barrier. Banana now realizes that there is, in fact, no barrier, only a refracted world of light; and, that by extension, Device World Banana is also an illusion comprised of tiny seeds of light. Names have a tendency towards semi-permanence however, no matter what world one is residing in—and Banana still finds it irresistible to think of this apparition of luminescence as another version of himself. He slowly begins visualizing the spaces between the Claymation Fruit and Vegetable World and the unknown void from which it is generated; which he pictures as a series of tiny mandarin oranges dropping from a small chute onto a continuously moving conveyor belt. The oranges are as the frames in the Claymation world, and the conveyor belt is the passage of time, which makes it all appear continuous and uninterrupted. At the end of the Conveyor belt is a Hand. If there are too many oranges, the Hand cannot grab them all at once, so it picks a few and lets the others go. Banana sees this as a symbol of Hand’s limitations, as well as a something that diagrams the possibilities for fruit proliferation in the dangerous world of Claymation.

While lost in this stream of Claymation images, Banana begins reproducing his proxies on his side of the barrier. When he realizes that his plan is working, he becomes puzzled for a moment, as he doesn’t know exactly how he has managed to do this; but, it is enough, perhaps, that Claymation World has stepped in to actualize his fantasy and bring it within range of completion. The more Banana thinks about the process of making proxies, the more easily he is able to conjure them, until he finds himself in the company of over two dozen ripe and grimacing Bananas who are identical to him in every way.

Getting this group of gregarious fruits to listen to him however, is another matter entirely. They are all quite frisky, and, of course, resplendent in their thick yellow-hide jackets. Not one of them is interested in hearing what any of their counterparts has to say however, and they all seem to talk at once, sounding like a gaggle of cranberries in a swampy bog at harvest time. This is no way for mature Bananas to comport themselves, thinks Banana, before realizing that the circumstances here are actually quite exceptional. To speak with his proxies he must appeal to their sense of self-preservation; to their desire to save their smooth and lightly speckled yellow skins.

“Fellow Bananas, proxies, replicas,” he intones as a scrawl of obscure symbols passes underneath on a subliminal screen, “If you want to live, to ripen into the black splotchy sweetness of old age, we must all band together as a single bunch, and do our best to confuse Hand with our natural talents as imitation Claymation fruits.”  While the results are not as dramatic as Banana hopes, he notices that he has caught the attention of the proxies, who soon stop chattering, and indicate that they are prepared to make the journey back to the Fruit Bowl.

Banana can remember nothing of the journey back to the Bowl, he simply makes a seamless transition from imagining being back in the relative safety of the familiar redoubt, with his proxies, to actually finding himself in the same perch where he had been before his journey to the light-refracting ‘Device.’  ‘The Claymation World certainly acts mysteriously,’ he thinks. Now, however, he is surrounded by two dozen fellow Bananas, who are exact duplicates, and they are crowding out the other Fruits and Vegetables, who are grumbling at low frequency and grimacing large Claymation mouth-lip O’s. Hopefully, this will all be resolved soon, as Banana anticipates an oncoming Hand-grab, in the midst of the restive complaining and arguing that hovers about the Fruit Bowl like the sweet smell of oxygenating perishables.

Such whimsy is quickly put to the test when Hand emerges, mysteriously, from the outer reaches of Kitchen. It quickly grabs at Banana, but the proxies are waiting, and begin vibrating and moving about, trying their best to confuse Hand, who recoils in surprise. Banana’s anvil is shimmying like a crow caught on the roof of a barn during a thunderstorm, as he adds his intonations to the clamoring rustle amongst the proxies and the other fruits. Hand is at a loss for words, in a manner of speaking, as hand always does its hunting silently, and rears back as if in prelude to a charge. But Hand doesn’t charge, instead it seems to draw further into the recesses of Kitchen, and then goes down, like an apple knocked off a tree.

At first the Fruits and Vegetables cannot see where Hand has actually gone; but then Habanero Pepper, whose vision is first rate, indicates that Hand is lying motionless on the bottom level of Kitchen, the floor. Suddenly all of the Fruits and Vegetables are peering in the same direction, across the rim of the Fruit Bowl and down into the depths of Kitchen, to get a look at the now dormant apparatus. It is Tomato who calls it however, intoning that, indeed, ‘Hand is dead.’ For a second everything freezes, and Banana, momentarily believes that the Claymation World is playing its now familiar time-lapse games—that only he seems to notice—again. However, within seconds, the silence is broken with the loud vibrations of a Fruit and Vegetable cheer that causes a rapid transit of numerous arcane symbols across the subliminal screen below.

It is then that Habanero Pepper and Banana notice something odd. Hand is not alone, but appears to be attached to a larger apparatus, that consists of snaking limbs, a bulbous middle area, a large head-like protrusion, and—much to the chagrin of the Fruits and Vegetables who are gathered at the Bowl rim staring out at the monstrous manifestation in growing discomfort—another Hand. Banana points out, however, that neither hand, is moving, so he concludes, happily, that hand and its previously unknown brother, are both dormant, perhaps permanently consigned to the oblivion of non being. This promps the Fruits and vegetables to sing in unison: “Hallelujah, Hallelujah; Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelu-u-u-ja…Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hall-a-a-lu-u-u-jah… Hallelujah, Hallelujah; Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelu-u-u-ja.”

At that moment, as if inspired by the angelic singing of Claymation          Fruits and Vegetables, the head-protrusion begins to turn slowly. Suddenly, the eyes open, and they start looking around Kitchen, at first uncomprehendingly, and then with greater and greater awareness of what has just transpired. Banana looks at his fellow Claymation Fruits and Vegetables and thinks that he might have been premature in his assertion regarding the death of Hand. Now, there is a new and unfamiliar monster, and the denizens of the Fruit Bowl are all silent in nervous anticipation.

JZRothstein  11/25/2013

11/23/2013

Hello to whomever probably isn't there anyway,
I'm archiving some stuff--its a long process and it will take some time. If anyone is eavesdropping, I welcome any advice regarding the uploading of images, particularly when the images are attached to texts, like the text that I published today on the blog, "Explaining The Unexplainable."

Anyhow--I'm groggy from too much Valerian root last night, taken to counteract a strangely disembodied free-floating anxiety, that sometimes chooses to settle in my stomach like plutonium 'taking up residence' in a reactor core. My core is heating up, but far from anything close to meltdown...Which reminds me, if anyone has images of Shoreham nuclear reactor, please post them on my blog; and if you find it difficult to post images (and I am open to any hyper-modern, industrial, or unusual imagery that is out there), please tell me how I can make the blog available for inclusion of such images...Any questions?
No?
Well, I'm signing out for now,
phlegmturtlepalace  steward

                                (Dreaming Omaha pt1.)                   

                                                   Explaining The Unexplainable

 

“It seems very pretty,” she said

when she had finished it,

“but it’s rather hard to understand!”

(You see she didn’t like to confess,

even to herself, that she couldn’t

make it out at all.) “Somehow it

seems to fill my head with ideas—

only I don’t know what they are!”

 

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

The concept of trying to explain the unexplainable appears self-contradictory because western languages are logocentric. Thus, there is a tendency to assume that the concept of making visible, what is obscure, or invisible, must cancel itself out. This is because the words we ordinarily use in the service of describing an, arguably, shared reality do not, in fact, possess those very containers, or conceptual apparatus, necessary to clarify esoteric experiences and “constructs;” which, by definition—lacking context in the ordinary sense of the word—are suppressed, and regarded as inherently irrational, or simply unimportant.  Hence, the question around which such an argument can be framed is: ‘what does one do when the available forms of expression—the Tupperware through which ordinary words, sentences, paragraphs, (or figurative tropes such as hyperbole, metaphor and synecdoche), etc—are deemed inadequate or irrelevant to explain the integrity of the content of these self-contained forms’?

If one regards the idea that the interrogation of accumulated meaning, in language, or poetry, is (or can be) primarily concerned with the relationships between words—rather than necessarily being measured in accordance with the assumption that some form of globalized meaning be used as a central criterion—then, it follows logically that, it need not be essential for it to be “rooted” in the commonly understood world of tangible phenomenon. Instead, a poem can exist as a self-contained map of something experienced outside of the parameters commonly used to frame such experiences (I.E., constructs), since context, or a usable frame of reference, is not necessary to heighten that aforementioned connection—as it need only exist between the elements of the poem themselves, without having to refer to any recognizable theme outside of those relations. In this sense, a poem can be a closed system without being understandable in the Cartesian sense of cause-and-effect relationships between objects that refer to a closely-mapped reality outside of the aforementioned concerns of the poem itself.

The ways in which such ‘heuristic’ hypotheses  are used in areas extrinsic to aesthetics can help explain some of the dynamics that animate the everyday categories into which the stuff of  ordinary experiences are frequently catalogued for the sake of convenience. Hence, a culturally contingent picture of the world being described is itself a product of the mediated history of the language used to magically invoke it as a ‘reality.’ As a result, the potential to interpret all manner of impressions within these sometimes misleading methods of recording and analyzing experience hints at the underlying complexity of what often appears deceptively simple or obvious.

There is also the question of how in our everyday interactions with other people and environments we employ these heuristic framing devices as ingenious ways of compartmentalizing complex experiences, thus rendering them portable and easier to evaluate. The inverse of this process however is that one’s world can only expand to the proportions allowed by the interconnected system of names and categories that are employed for this purpose. This is commonly understood to reflect the specialized system of nomenclature and classifications, or taxa, into which aspects of one’s existence and experiences are catalogued and categorized, hence standardized, for more efficient evaluation and reference. The difficulty, of course, arises from the tendency to take these artifacts of the attempt to group various experiences—using a method similar to how animals and plants are often classified—into usable and practical containers, and then elevate them to a level of equality on par with the often subjective and quirky processes of continuing, interconnected, perception that reflect the raw stuff of unmediated existence. Whereas the former is a kind of map key, coded in the language of discrete, and well defined—therefore self-contained—experiences, organized into an hierarchy of tropes that does not reflect the more chaotic maelstrom of nature’s actual workings; the latter, is the untamed thing to which that map key refers. And, it is only through the special code offered by a conventionalized and rational system of naming that this chaos of life can be corralled and civilized, so that it can be made available for reflection. One might think of the way that a library organizes ideas into easily located books and other media, as an example of this process.

This very device however, so clever and portable, creates the environment upon which later map-makers, freely and without pause for reflection, reconstitute the entire process as a single entity. In this way, we have all become reliant upon the code itself to explain the landscape to which it refers, and only dimly resembles, as if they were indistinguishable. Such confusing of abstract ‘idea’ with the ‘world-in-itself’ creates a gap in the way in which that ‘life-in-the-world’ can be described. This gap is narrowed by the passage of time until it is no longer visible, except to the most determined observer, and creates a consciousness that loses sight of the true richness of this no longer recoverable awareness of itself as an ongoing spontaneous entity. It is here, at the junction of the standardized, usable past, and it’s almost forgotten origins, via a foot-path leading to an overgrown weed-rich garden of unexplored complexity, where it becomes necessary to speak the world subjectively and on its own terms, without compass or clear frame-of-reference, as those very things have distorted and cut it off from our sanitized simplification of its primal, unmediated, experience.

In Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave this tragic loss of the richness offered by a transcendentally experienced ‘reality’ is presented as a form of deprivation. The individual is portrayed as a passive consumer of debased representations of reality, now reduced to shadows of objects cast on the walls of a cave and distorted further by the uneven light of a fire that is also a symbolic caricature of its own inferiority compared to a more potent form of illumination. When this denizen of the cavern is suddenly released from his sensory bondage into the penetrating sunlight of Plato’s metaphorical world that exists beyond ordinary perceptions, he is overwhelmed by three dimensional objects which can now be experienced in their true depth through all five of the senses. Unfortunately, however, nothing in his limited experience has prepared him for this encounter with a world of such unfamiliar vigor and resonance, and this precipitates an existential crises: how does one describe the truth of this viscerally experienced, transcendental reality, when there exists no known language or system of concepts with which to convey its intensity and complexity? The reason for this, as it is implied in Plato’s narrative, is that the very language, ideas and concepts which might be used to express the essence of this epiphany about the nature of the world, has been impoverished by its continued application to the limited palette of events which occur in the environment of the cave. Hence, all of the familiar methods of communicating the nature and depth of one’s experiences, have become so thoroughly associated with a specific and very mundane order of sensory impressions that they could never adequately convey the heightened complexity and richness of the new environment into which Plato’s cave dweller now finds himself. Thus, he is limited by the inadequacy of a language adapted over time for an entirely different order of experience. To use such a specialized set of cliché-worn containers to capture an essentially foreign index of place, would be to invite misunderstanding, apprehension and perhaps even ostracism; since, as Plato also makes clear, nothing is more disturbing to the uninitiated than exposure to the blue-prints of an alien world for which no corresponding maps exist. One must either endeavor to reinvent language so that it fits the shape of one’s experience, no matter how strange and unfamiliar, or one must retreat into incommunicative silence.

Through this process, and inversely, via its absence, we may now see how the symbolic meanings associated with certain idioms and the worn-carpet of associations which gradually erode words, like moss-covered stones in a jetty rubbed smooth by the cumulative effects of water, create a need for new modes of expression. This is, of course, on one level, exactly what art is for. And, the metaphors—and other forms of symbolic illustration—inherent in the structure of its articulation of existence, function as touchstone’s for translating the arcane into an overdetermined but  conceptually comprehensible  map of experience. However, as language and culture unfold into elaborately branching tangles of associations—perhaps similar to the way in which an origami bird or elephant begins to reveal manifold angles and shapes as it ages and frays like an hallucinogenic floral display blossoming in time-lapse—the dense array of meanings which make it coherent also begin to stretch and mutate. And, while such mutation is also part of the expression of art, it frequently evolves into a complex bramble-knot of self-referential, and inter-textual, meanings that balance a growing reflexivity with the tendency for such cultural forms to take on unusual shapes. The latter often react to the gravitational pull of shifting cultural gestalt’s by suddenly steering into unexpected directions like elaborate parade floats that loosen from their moorings and then go sailing across those parts of the city rarely visited by festivals or airborne balloons. All of this, of course, adds new layers of import to expressions already overloaded with significance.

Perhaps, at this point in my analysis it would be more accurate to compare the meanings embedded in the sounds used to convey the intangible aspects of language to the symbolic integers in algebraic equations, such as x or y. Mind you, this is intended as an heuristic metaphor, not as a literal analogy. Nonetheless, these coded digits put in the form of letters convey the same mysterious unavailability of meaning as their linguistic counterparts, provided that one does not take the analogy to the literal extreme of assuming that idiomatic import can be quantified as if it were a mathematical calculation. One might visualize this process by imagining that each word is a separate container made of colored glass, and that their respective contents are concealed by these translucent hues, with the aforementioned algebraic symbols used to denote the mystery residing within each flask. In this way, the full significance of their meaning always remains partially obscured, denoting the extent to which each can be emptied and refilled with revised or even completely novel signifiers.  

If part of the connotation of even the most familiar expressions, are already hidden from view in this way, what does that suggest about the combined whole, when expressions are strung together like beads of oddly textured glass into sentences and paragraphs? If meaning is cumulative, with residues gradually adhering until they form calcite deposits which grow into separate tree-ring like narratives of etymological usage, then it may also be true that such discrepancies may provide a code for recuperating some aspects of lost context. This does not mean that the hidden vocabularies within each word, curled up like semantic alligators emerging into the multidimensional negative space of an MC Escher lithograph, can really be made available in any modern framework; rather, they can be only partially reconstituted, and primarily for the purpose of mapping out the process of how meanings are lost and discarded in the temporal flux that occurs imperceptibly over many years. Ultimately, what is gone cannot simply be returned, and those stories buried deeply inside the DNA helixes of every nuanced dialect, are more like intimations of a fossil record denoting the existence of an ancient ox bow lake in a Mesozoic river-bed than they are like simple equations whose meanings can be extrapolated from missing integers. All of this, of course, is rendered more difficult by the fact that contingency, itself alters the tropes inherent in signs, often beyond recognition, and in complete disregard for a word’s former history. This is because language is open ended, given to an impressionistic gloss of metaphor; and thus subject to complex distortions, over time, which transfigure it in the same way that the aforementioned geological processes would alter a prehistoric river bottom.

Of course, even this comparison is flawed, as there are accurate methods available to reimagine the environment of the latter, but no way, save for another glossing of metaphor to attempt to re-invoke the essence of the former. This, of course, is what allows languages of all sorts to bend and flex into the odd combinations and contortions of art and poetry: namely, that elusive quality of elasticity. This is also why the ostensibly inexpressible always needs to be reimagined, as such excavations reinvigorate the language as a whole, even if their quarried relics must be extrapolated in the speculative manner of divining pig-entrails, rather than in the reifying context of geometric inference.

The differences in the methods used to recuperate meaning—between say the avant-garde’s of the last century and their more accessible counterparts—might be summed up using the allegorical example of taking two different hypothetical approaches to persuading an alien-visitor, who has never seen or even imagined an ocean of liquid water, that certain biological forms exist and thrive even in its deepest regions. For example, one might explain the existence of a particular bioluminescent fish species, living far beneath the deceptively static looking surface of the ocean, to our metonymic alien—who has no frame of reference for any marine environment—by inviting this alien into the ocean. This could be achieved by utilizing a small deep-sea submersible object. Within the protective hull of this high-tech submarine, our hypothetical visitor, and human host, could travel to the very depths of the ocean; both, to point out how this particular fish interacts on its own terms within the framework of its own environment, and to give our curious, but skeptical, alien guest a glimpse of just how different this part of the world looks when one is sitting near the bottom of several miles of water, in a dense hydrosphere into which no sunlight can reach. In such an environment, one would point out to one’s visitor the oddness of other formations, such as the cracks in the ocean floor from which black-smokers emerge—large vents exuding dark clouds of sulfur and other chemicals—and the various flora and fauna ( odd undersea plant forms comprised of separate individuals forming entire colonies of sulfur drinking tubed-shaped flowers, and the numerous species of albino crabs and shrimp, that exist at their rims). This would reinforce how a  bioluminescent fish, for example, could exist at such depths; and would be, in fact, a natural consequence of the vicissitudes of such an environment; a fact less easily understood, if the fish were merely caught on a deep-sea line and pulled back up to the surface; hence; removing it, even if only temporarily, from the unique setting that justifies its singular adaptation. In much the same way, the process of explaining the obscure on its own terms, while sacrificing a certain amount of concision and clarity, comes much closer to recuperating the esoteric shades of meaning once embedded so firmly within the fabric of language.

All of this speaks of a ghostly residue, adhering to the surface of words and phrases, like an almost transparent sausage-casing or gelatin sheen; one hinting at the existence of a lost code now folded into the compactness of the words that were formerly employed as catalysts for its explosive emergence into a world of shared perceptions. The subsequent fragmentation and consolidation of memes of communication into discrete envelopes of carefully parsed out meanings has both insured the specificity and clarity necessary for communicating the stylized abstractions of a technologically sophisticated world; and, simultaneously, reduced many complex and difficult ideas into tiny compartments sufficient only for sound-bites and mass-produced clichés. The tragedy in this is that what has been pruned away into effective displays of linguistic topiary has also transformed a previously interconnected, forested, architecture of foliage into a contested memory of superfluous shrubbery. Thus, even as art forms continually adapt their recuperative properties, the newly aestheticized connection to a wider framework of meaning that they reveal will be compromised by the very artificiality of the process of elucidation, hence reducing it to a rather elaborate form of highbrow nostalgia. Ultimately, we cannot revisit the past through language, only insert it within the frame of the present, and ineluctably change it into a reflection of our own desires and sentiments. In this sense the past has indeed passed into the past.

 

JZRothstein (final edit) 8/20/2013