Ancestral Versions

March 25, 2018May 13, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

ghostly goo

The mist continued to fall on buildings that were shorter and squatter and sported more Mom-and-Pop grocery storefronts. The lonely car, or two, wound its way up the road, every so often, blinding Alli and Nealy with its headlights. They walked down the thin strip of sidewalk to one of the park’s entrances. The two followed the pebbled road, lit every few yards with black iron lamps, put in place at least twenty years ago.

They walked through the dark rows of trees, dotted with specks of lamplight. Late at night only nightingales chirped, and trucks honked in the distance. The two turned off main path, after main path, passing The Mall and the Carousel. Soon they were climbing up rock steps and pushing wet branches out of their way. A path that was barely stomped into the ground led to a muddy clearing, covered with red and yellow leaves, clustered by sopping, leaning trees. In the middle of the clearing was a ring of monoliths. Beyond them stood a wall marked by an unlit opening.

The orange clouds continued to roam overhead. They made their way over the slippery leaves, to the dark passage and descended the slick steps. They knew the way, even though the shaft was black as pitch. Both descended, until they got to a dirt landing, lit with a single brazier on sticks. Across the chamber a single wooden door, with black iron bolts, could be seen. Alli knocked. The guard drew open a latch and then, opened the door for them.

The guard ushered them into the main chamber, which was carved out of brown stone and lit with wrought iron candelabras along the walls. The room fit about a hundred people, and they were looking at the front of the room, where Old Archon, elected leader of the Young Avatars’ Club (Y.A.C.), stood on a balcony, in front of a small cave mouth, addressing them.

Old Archon had just finished his speech, “So, that’s our latest dispatch from our research group in Gilf Kebir. That concludes the updates for this week. I hope to see all of you at the benefit dinner, at the W Hotel, on Saturday.”

The room clapped, and Old Archon left the podium. The crowd dispersed to the little tables around the room, filled with the members’ own blend of red-colored punch, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic.

Alli introduced Nealy to some of the other avatars, since Alli had been in Y.A.C. longer. They were for the most part college-educated young professionals, like themselves, with a keen understanding of a combination of comparative mythology, archeology and astronomy, as well as other fields.

The crowd split into two groups, filing into two black doors on either side of the chamber, one with a small blue flame symbol at eye-level and the other, with a red flame.

In the avatar room, stood a long wooden table and on the walls hung various tapestries of famous leaders of the avatars – numerous Sky Avatars, Thunder Avatars and Lightning Avatars. A large painting of the current Sky Avatar, Æon, in black armor and on a white horse, carrying a sword, sat behind the head of the table. Old Archon took this seat and about fifty avatars sat down on either side of the very tight room, with rock walls, also lit by candelabras.

After their meeting, the avatars filed back out of the tight, airless room and out into the cool main chamber, stretching their legs. The anti-avatars came out from the other side of the chamber, also tired and restless. Alli found Nealy and they joined the throng heading back up the dark, slippery steps.

“Shake Shack?” Alli said.

“Yes, please,” Nealy said.

“I’m so tired.”

“Why is it such a long way back again?”

“There’s going to be nothing but hobos on the train.”

“Or drunks.”

“We could take a taxi,”

“Some of the drivers are weird though.”

The night air was cold after a long time spent in the hot underground chambers. The rain still spat around them, and the tree branches creaked in the wind. Alli and Nealy said goodbye to Carlton and some of the other avatars. Tiny groups ambled around the muddy clearing, before the groups scattered, going in different directions, into the night.

Alli and Nealy clambered back through the trees to the main path, paved with cobblestones. The lamp lights hung in the autumn fog, that was beginning to rise from the earth.

“I don’t know why we still meet in that place,” Nealy said.

“Y.A.C.’s been meeting there since the park was first built,” Alli said.

“I know, I know. But it’s high time we expanded it, especially the side rooms.”

They reached the station. The rain was coming down harder now, splattering against the sidewalk. The two took the escalator into the now quiet subway station. They pressed their Smart Cards to the circles on the gates and the orange barriers rolled back, the sound echoing throughout the cavernous station.

Two trains came on the other side of the tracks, before their train came. Their car was empty except for a lone, grubby hipster, bopping his head to something coming through his over-sized Bose headphones.

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A Donation of Sense

March 17, 2018March 19, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

hibiki_saka_gunbu2

An instance of denotation, manifestation and signification failing to support sense, is Alice losing her name.[1a] Alice loses the name that denotes and signifies her. Hence, sense is separated from the three dimensions of proposition. There is a regressive denoting of further senses.[2a] From Latin, and later, French – doner, donnes – comes the English word, “donate.” We are donated the “givens” in a problem. [3a] The problem preexists the answer. Alea, a game of chance,[4a] runs on lack and excess. There are no Ideal Forms, only forms, casts, events – points, sets, series, pips on a die. You have sets and series, with lack and excess moving between two sets.

In an identity, x = x. Sets hold various identities, including limits and singularities, placeholders, like zero. A singularity is a point or a non-point, like the eye of a storm or the center of a whorl of hair. In physics, black holes are singularities, rips in space-time. You could say singularities are points of pure becoming. A singularity is another point in a set; a point has zero dimensions.[1] Humpty Dumpty, an egg, has no organs; he is made of singularities instead. He lacks identity.

In losing her name, Alice gives off her incorporeal double. Doubles involve two entities going in two directions and good sense. There are the doubles, Tweedle-dee and Tweedledum, the Hare and the Hatter, but also the liminal in between. We have the Stoics’ Chrysippus effect and the law of the excluded middle, the infinite set, the limit and the convergence toward a limit. In the present, is the event, a point connecting to the infinite line of Aion, the ideal game, a line on a flat surface, the width, a frontier. The zero, the empty space, a floating signifier, is the ‘something,’ the aliquid, between the two sets. This given, in the problem preexisting answers, is the doner, the donation, between the two sets. Sense is that donation, the given – ‘that’s a given.’

Sense is the empty square between the two sets, the two series. Lack and excess define the two series, and the singularity is the event that provides coordination between the two sets. There are two sets, the signified and the signifying.

In the opposition between the surface and depths, the surface, the membrane between bodies and words, things and propositions, begins to break down and have holes. The body is a cavity with a broken surface; it is porous, with little holes. If there were no separation between propositions and things, words would enter bodies. Of course, this is not the case. In the world of depth, bodies are penetrated by other bodies, mixtures – this is a wound. On the other side, in a separate set, is sense, the event, an incorporeal effect, a surface effect. The surface effect, the pure ideal game is set apart; words are set aside from bodies.[2]

There is also the organism without organs, a body without organs, an egg, like Humpty Dumpty, or an embryo with undifferentiated organs, or a zygote with poles of cells, thresholds of potential. On the zygote are the animal and vegetative poles, active and passive poles of cells. The egg and Humpty Dumpty are points, singularities. They take in both sets of aspects – that of bodies but also skins, peelings, surface effects, events, sense – a body but a body without smaller, internal bodies, encased in membranes: a body without organs.

In the egg, this body without organs, there is no surface, no frontier, no difference or differentiation. The fish become a part of the sea, thus alluding to Humpty Dumpty’s poem including fish.[3] Are the fish apart of the sea or are they separate bodies? In this body without organs, between surface and depth, words enter bodies. Fire, water and air, classical elements, combine. Body and words become one – a strange amalgamation, like the portmanteau word.

Hecate is the goddess of the crossroads, the liminal and facing three ways. Circe, is an expression of Hecate, who is also the goddess of the moon. Circe turned the lotus eaters into pigs, a moment of pure becoming. There are lost pigs and other animals on Peter Pan’s island. Hecate and the nocturnal, connect to seemingly nonsense words: “lost pigs of the moon.”[4] Water and fire, classical elements, combine again. The combination of opposites points to the duality of the body: the fragmented body with separate organs and the body without organs. Peter Pan releases his shadow; both Peter Pan and Alice release their incorporeal doubles.

There is a difference between the nonsense of the surface and the two series, and the nonsense below sense and the surface, the nonsense of the depths, when the two series collapse into one. Sense slides along the surface width, between the two sets of signified and signifying. Meanwhile, there is no surface or difference between continuous bodies surrounded by their surface membranes, only depth. The lotus eaters are the nexus, the connection, between pigs and eating. Eating entails a digestive track from end to end, a tube, a hole, a tunnel, a surface of epithelium, running through the body, continuous with its surface; skin on the outside and the meeting of internal and external, inside and outside – one giant surface, running through a depth.[5]

Sense is the bi-directional line, like Aion, the divider between language and the body, protecting the body from language – when words pierce bodies, a wounding. Sense is the barrier, the mirror, keeping words, the incorporeal, proper names – and the body, bodies, the depths, separate. Sense is a singularity, an empty square, a supernumerary zero, moving between the two series of propositions and things, eating and speaking. There are two series, the body versus language and words.

Telescoping, Aion and Alice are unfolding, along an infinite line. Common sense, identity, is being eroded. The body goes back to being an egg, an undifferentiated body without organs. Doubles and doppelgangers appear in tandem – Hatter, Hare; Tweedle-dee, Tweedledum. The nonsense of depth is pitted against the nonsense of the surface.[6] The nonsense of depth, is corporeal; there is no surface or frontier – words pierce bodies and wound them. The surface collapses, pierced with many holes; it is porous.

The nonsense of the surface is the logic of sense, language, the incorporeal, the surface, the dividing line between the two series of language and bodies. The surface is like the surface of a body of water – it is easily pierced. Bodies pierce mixtures, producing surface effects, ripples. Sense is produced on the surface; when the surface collapses, sense collapses.

Sense is produced at the intersection of identity and direction. Sense doesn’t say its own sense – like nonsense – it further denotes in a serialization: n₁, n₂, n₃; infinite regression, eternal return. Sense is the surface between words and bodies. A surface and the liminal space before it, are indivisible; they are two sides to one whole, like two-faced Janus: a double causality. There are two forms: the general and the individual, two perspectives,[7] surface versus depth. There are two series of singularities, with empty square and esoteric words, circulating between objects and words, bodies and language, signified and signifying.

Faro