Shade-Haunted Space

“Limitless night ceases to be empty space.”
(Bachelard)

Often the outside encroaches on the inside. There is a draft which is not secured by the closing of doors or the drawing of curtains. Instead, things press down. Space becomes a retreat in which the divisions between presence and absence are revealed. We would do well to dream of a shadowy retreat in which these divisions were subtracted. What would be asked of you? Treacherous words are spoken in the moment where the inside is protected. There is a shuffling that only intimacy brings about.

Thereafter, an entire world is summoned which demands understanding. For a while things endure, as nightmares are shared moments not yet overturned by the collision of fate fall freely from above the alcove. But can the opposition between inside and outside ever be overcome without this void lurking? Isn’t there always something which disrupts the intimacy of cloistered space?

Bachelard was entirely right to ascribe, by way of an “ontological amplification”, the characteristic of being/non-being to the division between outside and inside. This “implicit geometry” follows us with every tread and is marked most explicitly in the breeze which sweeps through enclosed space. Conflict, not merely confined to the laws of gravity, nor to the boundaries of the built environment, discovers itself in being itself. Here is a line Bachelard quotes by Henri Michaux:

“Certain (shades) especially, girding their loins one last time make a desperate effort to ‘exist as a single unity’. But they rue the day. I met one of them.”

There is regret to this entrance in which sound “no longer existed” and instead became a drone “as though it never existed.” Ruins, overarching and bearing down from above, partake of this drone through annihilating the distinction between inside/outside. “It once was”, writes Bachelard, “but wasn’t it merely the noise it has become.” A drone is an echo that never derives out of itself. There is always an origin, now lost, that it depends on for the sake of communicating the negative space.



I find it in that deserted centre: the drone remembers. I return to words that have now grown extinct. Only a reverberation recalls the movement of conception. Instead, the smell of things pervades. Even now,I am able to smell you. It is a suffocation of being to impose oneself on a lost outside. “Unuttered words and unfilled intentions”, haunt that space that ceases to protect us from the outside. Things, moreover, refuse to surface. But why? Reticence does not begin to account for the resistance to expression. There is a trace of impossibility which accommodates all situations. It might well be experienced in solitude or otherwise in the company of others. In both occasions the intoxicating disorientation precludes clarity. We quiver in that shaded alcove and think only of the moment in which retreat heals the barriers between space and time.

Remission (2): The Gaze

In a passage from his essay Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence, Merleau-Ponty paraphrases Malraux:

“She is a certain manner of being flesh which is given entirely in her walk or even in the simple click of her heel on the ground, just as the tension of the bow is present in each fibre of wood...”

I’m out of step in this false piety. Thought can’t come to itself in this artificial light, the collision confuses. This is why I ask you to dispense with appearances; this is why I ask you to hold out into the indeterminate. Tonight they tarry; endless rituals carried out for the sake of an unspoken preservation. I’m talking to myself.

Obliged to undergo tasks that would otherwise remain on the shelf, tonight I grasp them with the habit of one who is proficient in duplicity. In-between the measures of time and the measures of space there is an irrevocable absence; in-between the illusory motion of things being exchanged, often at the expense of the condensation on the windows, there is only the trace of that outline remaining.

This is the way: lassitude is an exposure, a veritable abyss. Fending of the still beat of things so that the gaze is evaded. Against its own desires, the blood stops rotating, things become themselves. What does the static air want of you? It does not abate. Clarity allows things to become undone. Motivation becomes cloistered, hermetically sealed in a transparent space.

We have a tendency to recline in grey chairs until our sense of compassion brings us back to the room. The sentiment flinches as the head bows in defiance. But there is always a gaze beneath the brow. Often it has to arise from beneath the surface, peering out from behind the drapes as though to vouchsafe the world outside the window. On other occasions, it sees itself alone, singing for the sake of a dormant song.

Remission (1): Guilt

In the space where the chance of conversion is thwarted by bitterness, absence and rigidity: things hold back for the sake of preservation. You became adjust to a method, a framework that permitted the illusion of things working, of sound being forthcoming. For then it became a means to justify the origin of dysfunction. Under the pretence that this emaciation of emotion is way by which it is imprisoned, the pattern is re-enforced. In-between bitterness and revenge there is a dreadful silence where thought is stifled and the possibility of the origin of things returning becomes a haunting fixation.

In what climate would there be an opening for this habitual idleness to be crushed? When is the sense of guilt sufficiently virile to force a collapse in the central nervous system? Moral redemption for those who are incapable of testifying. Those of us who are beyond being thrust into the limelight of disquiet and then being called to ransom - ha! - it really is a peculiar thing not to take action, right? Sub-humanity dreams of a time where the surface is returned. Even Charon evinces a sense of nostalgia for a shadowy retreat or some such Sunday afternoon tea and cake den with newspapers, oak tables and a complete lack of consciousness. Places beyond places. The life of being and being-there. Yes, there, in the moment of fortitude and ease. It is an opening, no matter how much the dark imposes itself beneath the soil. Inhumanity, however, excludes that return. There is no field expansive enough to cleanse the tongue of the calculating inclination towards acidic empowerment. The organic is only a respite from the encroachment of the synthetic. There always comes a time in which they converge and so lose their distinct identity.

This is the meaning of the lie. It blurs divisions, heals barriers between expectation and anticipation and so creates the illusion of moral obligation - there is always an effort to do what is right, yes? Going out of our way involves exerting some degree of effort. One needn't feel good about doing what is right. In fact, pain, discomfort and a general sense of desolation might well be symptomatic of a morally virtuous action.

So you found yourself present. Twitching in the dunes, the enveloping clarity urges autonomy from the dead air. Things thrown in. Hollow cells seem as though this is a spatial existence. There is no reverberation in this room. Everything is still-born like some macarbre animation that has been paused. Silence - . The age of coughing up dirt has begun.

This is why you find yourself here today, now. Adrift. The lived experience is a dangerous area and ambivalent desire is not easily negated without strict obedience to a symbol above oneself. Veering, dithering, moral insecurity: how easy to reproach the timidity of those who seek 'guidance'. On the other hand, I do not side with the beseecher. There is no closure for indecision, no redemption for bad taste. Often the drive towards ruination is the only form of providence that can be spoken of. At the same time, if moral guidance is itself morally repugnant, then self-contempt is equally as abhorrent. I confess: rendering a martyr out of something that is morally putrid ought to be avoided.

Up-surged, resisted, irresistible devastation. It's happening now. There's the presence of moral ineptitude floating in my Diet Coke and it's starring at me. This is a dreadful punishment for those who can't look away/back. Lacking faith in the void, a hyper-sensitive pathology of sensory corruption ensues. Nothing can be overlooked. Everything must be countenanced in order to ascertain whether or not it's worth crushing. This is what is inviting. Everyone wants a generous portion of the ruin. I can say this without radiating a sense of paranoid flattery. Self-destruction is disarming, and the presence of vulnerability is often mistaken for sensitivity when in fact bitter vanity is more likely to be behind it.

The Approach

Often the gaze is met by its own intention. We call that an awkward moment in which staring becomes a form of indirect communication. There is no space for movement; with the head fastened to the body, the eye takes on the form of navigator. All the while, the remaining self dissolves into the background. Within this framework of carnal desire, things pass by, and the interchange forces a divorce in time. Afterwards, very little is remembered despite attempts to re-trace, re-configure and re-play the moment.

Seeing through things: how is this possible? No collection of impressions can provide a platform, upon which transparency can emerge. What happened to that moment? Was it left in the area besides the wooden seats and shuffling of feet, on the train? Overhead, wires charged with current provide passageway between leaving and arriving. For a while the moment is resuscitated like a childhood episode. The flinch of acknowledgment. I remember. Realizing something is emerging even if it is shrouded by obscurity and transience. Remember what was promised in contact.

Who can be seen in the traces? What does seeing want of you? No, don’t answer that. Aware of the frayed occupancy of things, the inclination to speak emerges. Just as you spoke to me, so I speak aloud from outside of myself. It is true: some things are written only to confirm a moment that automatically endangers itself to the void. It might well have already been swallowed by the few seconds that swept in-between the moment of vanishing and contact.

This is the problem with the abstracted image, be it a memory or a photo: the spatial correspondence it has with the viewer is undermined by its remoteness. Memory alone does not secure transparency when it comes to evoking the original imprint of the object. I inhabit a space that is no longer your own, and when I attempt to position myself in the image there arises nothing more than a vague uncertainty as to where I was originally stood. I am back on the train.

Fix yourself, therefore, in the reflection of another’s gaze. It is your own gaze that determined the moment. Quieten the temptation of things that appear in the non-space between moments. It can disarm and afford the illusion that correspondences are met. Thereafter, there is only the exit; slam door reverberates in the real world. Outside: the forgetfulness of the body is awoken. Those that walk in parallel with us, and you walked with me. Now is the time for movement: aware of the gaze lingering from the train, no longer able to identify its origin, encoded for the sake of preserving its anonymity. The awkward silence. Nearby events that summon trouble. They are close by. Remember what was promised.