Gil-Martin

Play is the exultation of the possible.

[Gil-Martin @RobertWringhim]

Kenneth Patchen, In Quest of Candlelighters

[Gil-Martin @RobertWringhim]

I miss it all, knowing
only what I know now:
that all life is manual labour,
even the mind.

This not being my youth
but the second, coming late;
all exultation sets the task.

These words a wet napkin
pressed upon this brow
fevered and bent by dreams.

[Gil-Martin @RobertWringhim]

All I wanted was to be obliterated by a beautiful thread, ever unwilling to open my arms I needed something that I could hold firmly between my thumb and forefinger.

[Gil-Martin @RobertWringhim]

How it started was lost to sleep, but he recalled that they first met outside on the last day of his studies. She made some impression, certainly, for when they entered together—what was it then, something she said there holding the door, something he said in return—he followed her through to wherever she was going, which turned out to be the pools. There he paused a while, not knowing whether to watch or wait, before beginning on what was to be a long walk away were it not for what then caught his eye. An alcove nearby allocated to its students, and within four small posters (or posters of some sort, for they were here and there in three-dimensions as summoned to rise by papier-mâché).

Three of them were barely registered, but it was the fourth which caught his eye, the bottom right, that most ramshackle of the set. This was hers, he felt, and looking closer confirmed her name (how did he know her name?) That this was a disreputable creation was not his concern, though it was what caught him; rather it was that upon inspection he saw the poster to account the life of her thus far: what she had done in academics, in the pool, in extracurriculars, all. The life he saw there was far from the sad and small poster which faced him, and it was in this incongruity that he began to remember what had made an impression.

Beside these on the wall there were some numbers, half-scrawled, relating in some way obscurely to the lives of those four tabernacled there, and caught in reflection he brought forth a pen from his pocket and began to check the math, writing out the steps and crossing their contributors, generally defacing the whole thing without a purpose in any way clear to him. It was amidst this, he having been there for however long (who could know?), that she walked by and saw him, smiled easily and asked what he was doing. He could not say, it did not seem he had been doing anything at all. He could not explain why he had defaced that writing on the wall, nor even what it meant, though he squinted still as if to interpret a foreign sign. Inspecting it herself she only laughed; teetering he wondered what she saw.

Whether it was this sense or that prior charm, he decided then to show her. How he first did so is another fact forgotten, as alike whether she was particularly shocked to see this side of the school that each attended, but that he had soon turned himself into a small lizard and in that form continued to speak to her. What he did not expect, perhaps (or what he had hoped unknowing), was that in her seeing the possibility of this, it was only a moment before she stood beside him alike a little lizard. This was only the beginning of the transformations that he showed her that day; as birds they flew up to the rooftop, nestled there in laughter.

It was here, of course, that the story turned, for to tell or show another this, whatever of their nature thereby revealed, was not an option. There amidst the rafters was his teacher, and he barely saw her before his mind had shot ahead wholly leaving behind his heart: that this was his last day, and everything which followed was dependent upon how he acted here, the conclusion of his every effort in these last several years. Before the girl knew anything had changed, he leapt off the roof, swung his arm behind him as he fell: to make her forget, that he could do, though he could not make the teacher forget (however he did try), and that was all.

In the years that followed he exceeded even the dreams which drove him then, thrown into the world with all of the force of what he was. This was a sequence without images: man and nature alike, all manner of fortifications fell to him alone. These years though blind were not at all empty, and it would be a lie to say he thought of her at all; only that some mornings he would wake with a heaviness that had become his habit to throw off without least wondering, clear without thought. The day for feet and hands, the night their tending to that purpose. This was all.

Forgetting as much yet she continued herself also, there on much the path she had prior, that which he had read in her ramshackle poster. Success of its own sort was assured to her likewise, for the world was hers as much as his, and it never occurred to her that an evening years earlier she had been shown how much more.

Years later unknowingly both attended the same play, each in their respective seats watched this act together. Towards the end she first saw him there, or he was just any other then, in balconied seat alone, and her eyes slowed only subtly in their saccade back to the stage. Whatever it was caught her there, whether for having seen him blindly in the lulls of sight or the particular force of scene, speech, actors, all—it was then that she remembered, and this not faintly but all at once.

In the moments after the play she saw him again, hurried through the crowd towards him. When the throng thinned at last they were alone amidst so many cobblestones. There she saw him as she had then: as lizard, bird, whatever in the world he wished—and her too, she recalled all that she had been that day. She saw that he had since taken of the world his wish, saw also what it had taken in return. Yet rising within herself to speak she stopped. An actor having just left the stage recognises in a face upon the train their shared trade: what was there to say? I have been acting and so you.

[Gil-Martin @RobertWringhim]

To be given everything is nothing at all.

[Gil-Martin @RobertWringhim]

@AirTitus @mulherlacan

[Gil-Martin @RobertWringhim]

@sovietsoleri There is something beautiful here, as the paradox in Ibn Arabi: to be truly infinite, God must make himself finite. This is a similar intuition—but German.

[Gil-Martin @RobertWringhim]

> Beauty is the form of the purposiveness of an object, insofar as this is perceived in it without any representation of a purpose.

[Gil-Martin @RobertWringhim]

> According to Nishida, Hegel’s absolute idealism shows how reality is monistic, but in the end implicates a dualistic view of reality … the ultimate disclosure of contradictory-identity not only remains deferred, but foreclosed, leaving behind a ghost of self-reification.

[Gil-Martin @RobertWringhim]

Spinoza, Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect—

[Gil-Martin @RobertWringhim]

The evanescence of language misleads us; it is a spoon.

[Gil-Martin @RobertWringhim]

The first act of an entity is itself.

[Gil-Martin @RobertWringhim]

It is dark and we are falling, and though we cannot know when the ground will approach still we must listen carefully and attend to movements in the wind. The only way out is down but there is one which is a home.