History

All the fidgety errors that aspire towards dissolution. Re-reading Hegel’s Preface to his Phenomenology. It is here. Images of megalomania and contortion in the grotesque haze. Since when did we last encounter a philosopher aspiring to sculpt the world in accordance with his ego? It is good that it is buried. We have long since ‘disrobed’ the inclination towards totality. I wince at this thought. Those who have yet to pardon themselves of such a temptation – one day there will be a mass confession in which the excuses of academics will be unveiled. It will be a festival where prophecy and remembrance are burnt at the stake.

Still, nothing is worth holding out for. Not even voyeurism.

The mistake: piety. The piety of want and lack. It makes us...zealots of our own injustice. Of demanding justification for secrets we harbour in nightmares and daydreams. Dreams themselves have no part in inspiration. Silence no longer says anything. The tension erodes. Remember we I made a fetish from the word once? Of course you don’t! It was a secret. A secret that might already be disseminating in various chambers even though I hide it in-between the pages of Seneca.

I doubt anything will ever come into fruition. Not even voyeurism.

Things have to be voiced at the expense of indignity. Careerism is a dreadful plight. A dreadful and sterile form of impotency that nullifies days of sublime indolence. And it is always specific days that determine our choices. Always a peculiar configuration in the clouds that compels a sense of want. Then what! You abide yourself! You abide your obligation! Is this some form of consolation? Affirming the absence in the moment in which it is most realized, acknowledging its palliative effect? I know who you are and I can’t begin to think of this moment. It eludes touch. Things are too embryonic. But you! You have already submitted.

Once that hallway, once that courtyard, once that hotel, once the kitchen table, once the departure lounge, once the annotated calendar. Once the burning begins the once will end. In the work of ruin – in the work of ruining the once – they conclude in collapse. Spaces of absent murder in which the presence of the murder is still present. What can we aspire towards? Towards the preface? The preface defines the imposition of the ego that initiated the once in the first instance. It justifies the vulgarity of the work. How can I write a preface for a work that dreams of collapse? Think: there it is. Forgiving the indulgence which began the origin of destruction. I lie. Not only to myself but to those who seek to engage in the fog.

I tell you this now because regrets aids sleep and sleep is the one thing I lack.

These are the side effects of nostalgia. They imbue us with an illusory vocation. There was a time that Hegel and Schopenhauer were nothing more than objects to keep the window open for me. In apartments and corridor hallways they held the breeze aloft. At best, they acted as a surrogate air-conditioner. In time I got my hands dirty. I was locked in, literally. There was no longer the possibility of dying. The proximity to the displaced door knob had annulled the possibility of absolution. I was in an impasse between justification and regret.

Now those ages are sifted into tidy boxes. Their potency reduced to hands of archivists. Nothing is more fitting to history than it being condensed to plastic boxes, shoved into obsolete cupboards and then affixed with a generic label reading: hidden.

The End of the Beginning

The thought that the closure of a project brings about a closure of the themes present in that project. It is an illusion. And I am not even talking about the inevitable emptiness felt when you complete anything that you’ve invested years of effort into. But rather that there is no resolution to the things you sought to bury in the process of writing. It is like having an amputation, thinking you’ll never feel a sensation again, thinking that if you sever a particular part of you then it’ll never return. Days later, the sensation returns, the numbing core which brought about inspiration in the first place. Nothing has changed you realize; the dreadful sensation has been retained despite the exorcism. The beginning has begun once more.

So now you’re thinking about next time. About where you missed out in the trial. Thinking of how to justify things through applying philosophy to them, only this time with greater extremity. Certain losses are only acceptable when they can be transformed into universal a priori notions.

It is, I confess, a danger of rendering philosophy biographical. Too much is involved, too much is at stake. Ideas become impregnated with events. Better to dispense with ideas as though they were artefacts in the desk drawer. That is the impossibility of enforcing yourself into writing. Countenancing the desk drawer is a concession to failure. Things have to be expunged.

Intermezzo etc

Somewhat busy ‘pruning’ things at the moment. World decline looms in the background like a neon light. Back soon with big posts on misanthropy, egoism and German porridge recipes. In the meantime there’s always the view outside the window to entertain.

Oh, and if someone can tell me where Nietzsche said “If you see something slipping, push it.” then can you let me know.