Fish In the Afternoon

At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives the flag the military salute — right hand lifted, palm downward, to a line with the forehead and close to it. Standing thus, all repeat together, slowly, ‘I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands; one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.’ At the words, ‘to my Flag,’ the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, toward the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side. – Francis Bellamy, The Youth’s Companion

1776 is not a year but a signifier. In the agon, matterings war with one another, emanating history. Long ago, Luther’s children escape the restoration, taking Cromwell’s skull to Turtle Island. Their God chooses, baptizing in water and pneuma. The first baptism is a sign of the second; the second is God’s will. Either way, the earth-soul breathes. The roundheads fence the world, reifying God in the market and separating themselves off as white. The Puritans mistake their flesh for divinity and case their hue as cosmogonic. The white world is birthed from idolatry, enfleshing the violent superego of settlers, slavers, and conquistadors. O woe to you, Vespucci.

The proletariat is an invention. In the dusk of the Black Death, the bourgeoisie emerge, exchange eclipsing feudalism as peasants are stripped of their land and women are burned on stakes. Capitalism is a witch hunt – the witch of rebellion that haunts history, the world turned upside down. Making the yuletide gay. Puritans are theologians of the market, crushing the un-chosen carolers with the God of enclosure. The kingdom collapses and its grave births Leviathan, Hobbes’ nightmare of man against man, the myth of the terror. Together, this terror and the Puritan God re-write history, capital crawling snarling out of the pit of England. America never left Plymouth Rock.

Capitalism starts from covenant, from the predestination of the saints. TULIP is an acronym for the Time-Machine. Lost on Mt. Ararat, the Rushdoonys whistle Yankee Doodle Dandy, burying theocracy in the heart of the slaver’s republic. In July, the plantation billionaire signs his separation, the teeth of the dead rotting in his mouth. Leviathan finds fathers for its parasitic creation: settler democracy. A demos of occupiers and property-owners, the double-image of the Athenian executors. Tyranny masks itself in the guise of the people, the general will confiscated by the homeowner’s association. Race becomes a mark for the covenant as women are privatized and the land is terraformed into territory. The mark of the pneuma is race-capital, the fetishization of value reified in flesh.

The fasces is a Roman invention, appropriated from the ash of Minos. Caesar glimpses the chi-rho written in the sky and the Carpenter is crowned king. No longer an executed criminal, the Begotten One is re-made in the image of the enslavers and occupiers, the temple of Augustus built on the ruins of Golgotha. The axe returns again-and-again, inaugurating Charlemagne, Washington, Bonaparte, and Hitler. At its core is the imperium, the synthesis of God and Caesar, carried from Augustus to their Puritan offspring. Yockey imagined what was already being born: a white imperium, carried from Europe to the occupied lands. Romulus kills Remus and spills his blood on the steps of the Capitol. The challenge of the Carpenter remains: to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. To not put your faith in false gods.

And in princes who cannot save.

As against this, the commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of labor, within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material relations arising out of this. It is nothing but the definite social relation, between men, themselves, which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must take flight into the misty realm of religion. There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations, both with each other and with the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men's hands. I call this the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labor as soon as they are produced as commodities, and is, therefore, inseparable from the production of commodities. - Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1

Image: American Dream by Brett Whiteley (1969)

Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque revenit. – Horace, Epistles

Slow. I am at rest. No. I am not resting. We beings breathe the three-in-one, creating-begetting-proceeding. The divine does; the imago deis. We are parched, desert-time frosting catabolic catastrophe, the dust unsettles in place. I am kudzu. Body. My soul hurts. Mind. I am a vine. Spirit. I am reborn. Earth.

Tree sap syrups the forest. Evolution paints ants along the aphid-dotted floor, the rococo of the Oversoul. Walk / Stay. Heaven drips mercy into amoral nature, strife recomposing into unity, the dance of the Dao. I am a many-worlded being, stardust teeming with bacterial galaxies. Harmony is woven difference, needles threading anima into the theater of time. I am a place I am always arriving-at. Here. When? There. Now? Being swallows the sooted pine, life ticktocks the dawn. I am a willow.

Stop and breathe. Pause. Silent. Still. Do you move or does the world? You have turned the earth into an icon and humanity into an idol. The common-being can’t be found. (You cannot locate the universe.) We seek the already-here. Take a step back and ask: when was the last time you let the world speak? (Pity the philosopher who speaks of transcendence.) The immanent is an expanse far greater than eternity. You paint the sky and pretend it’s art; butterflies burn civilization. Wait. Brain-deep in the swamp of concepts we drown our lungs in thought. Breathing is a forgetting; knowing is anamnesis.

Hades is a place you can touch.

Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher. – William Wordsworth, The Tables Turned

Image: The Forest Edge by Gustave Courbet (n.d.)

Thus there is nothing waste, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearence. We might compare this to the appearence of a pond in the distance, where we can see the confused movement and swarming of the fish, without distinguishing the fish themselves.

Thus we are that each living body has a dominante entelechy, which in case of an animal is the soul, but the members of this living body are full of other living things, plants and animals, of which each has in turn ita dominant entelechy or soul. - Gottfried Leibniz, Monadology 69-70

The self is both real and not-real; it is here and nowhere. The mind is a no-mind, but a no-mind that en-minds, enfleshing sensation. Touch pianos being. I heal; over-and-again. I heal.

Holy One, we dwell in you. We dwell in us. Us. I am also an us, galaxies of micro-life unfolding their species being. I am the cosmos for others. Others are a cosmos for me. There is never only one world. Hear. Every rustle is worlds-in-motion, the universe shimmering eternities in a modal sea. We are infinities.

I sit still. I listen. Wait. Beauty appears first; sensation sparks aisthesis. Being poems life. Take a step back and the real swallows you, the real caresses. Where do the archons go in the winter? I spellfree my past-selves, the archipelago of ashes. I unfold like an ethic. The pluricosmos composes you; you are a many-unfolding. History owls the presentfuture. In the many-unfolding the Unique appears as awareness, the appearance that appears to itself. This Unique orients, it intends, it leans, it attends, and it acts, it means. Meaning is planted in the first Uniquing.

Loved One, I attend to you. I attend to us. Attending is always attending-with-another, painter, painted, and paint intertwined. One experiences as the subjectobject, entangled-becomings sculpting a world-together. Ontology is attending to the entangled worlds of our togethering. Time re-members in the dreamsleep of awakening. Shhh. Wait. Listen. Silence does. It is the silence that speaks. Look. The silence rests in you, the hearth of your heart, the creative nothing that unfolds the many-worlds. The many-unfolds as the one-unfolds. We.

Everything-together.

Deus seu Natura. – Baruch Spinoza, Ethics IV: Preface

Image: Cosmos No. 3, Martha Boto

The animal is poor in world, it somehow possesses less. But less of what? Less in respect of what is accessible to it, of whatever as an animal it can deal with, of whatever it can be affected by as an animal, of whatever it can relate to as a living being. Less as against more, namely as against the richness of all those relationships that human Dasein has at its disposal.

Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, §46

Adapted from a paper for a Heidegger course.

Harriett is a duck. I met her during a depression spell, wandering aimlessly next to the Potomac. I started visiting her because she has a hurt wing, jutting out at an acute angle and preventing her from flying. Concerned, I walked an hour-and-a-half multiple times a week to check on her, to see if she’s eating, if she’s socializing, if she’s having any trouble living her best duck life now. This practice was intended as an act of loving-care, attending to her in the ways appropriate to a duck, and I interpreted her swimming to meet me as cross-species recognition, quacking “I know you” even without the locution. Through it all, Harriett persevered, a duck-on-a-mission, swimming-about and making a life for herself among the Mallards of the Potomac. The last time I saw her, she was healthier than before, defiantly waddling through the river’s pollution, building a coven of friends, and savoring every corn kernel that comes her way.

Harriett is and acts and becomes, unfolding the form-of-life that she inhabits. To unfold is to enact one’s agency in the world repeatedly, dancing the rhythm of being that matters the world. Being buzzes with beings that are -there and -with, always-already situated within a pluricosmos of overlapping and interweaving worlds, meanings and matterings appearing in the unfolding. Drawing from Heidegger, this unfolding depends on the project or pursuit that the creature takes up, orienting themselves to the world as that which they are and marking things in the world as occasions for, or which draw us into, action. For Heidegger, this creature is Dasein, the being-there that asks-and-nervously-answers the question of being; however, I call it the Unique, that which is itself-in-itself and irreplaceable with any other, the matter that matters the world. The Unique forms a world through inhabiting a world, matterings cascading out into the ontology of the cosmos, the Unique of all reflecting the Unique of each.

What does a duck do? Does a duck do? Are the entities in the world significant for a duck? Do they matter? Do they help in the project of ducking? How does one duckily do in the world? It certainly seems if you throw a few grains of corn into the river that it solicits the ducks to eat, that the kernels show up to the ducks as “that which a duck like me eats.” The moment the grains ripple the water, the ducks turn and wade towards it, recognizing it as a delicious feature of their duckish life. Not everything in the Potomac solicits in this way or appears in a duck life as appropriate for a duck – the corn appears as something-to-be-eaten precisely because it is something-to-be-eaten by a duck. It is living life as a duck that causes the corn to appear as it does. Does this mean that ducks have projects or life pursuits like Heidegger’s Dasein? Well, they certainly pursue the corn, and they try to continue living life in a way that is particular to a duck, ducking through their everyday life in a way that changes what things are for. The project of a duck is to live this life, to dwell in the form-of-life of ducks. Ducks do as ducks do, and, in this doing, they constitute a duckish world, a world where things appear as for and not-for ducking.

A duck thus does as Dasein does in ducking. A duck takes up a duck-life through being-in-the-world as a duck. In this ducking, the world becomes the world-for-a-duck, affording opportunities for waddling and wading and flying and eating and doing whatever it is that ducks do when we’re not looking. Harriett’s hurt wing prevents her from flying, blocking the potential for entities to show up as to-be-flown-from, but she still glides and wades, ducking-on in a way particular to Harriett’s unique duckishness. Duck-worlds are not all the same but depend on how individual ducks take up and pursue the project of ducking in the world. Each duck must still learn to duck-in-the-world, and this opens a world that is both grounded in the pursuit of being a duck and in the particularities of being that duck, not just generic duckishness. Harriett finds herself thrown into the world a bird with a broken wing, but every day, she ducks-on. She projects herself onto the possibilities in the world and seeks to live life as a duck, acting on and with things in a way conditioned both by her duckishness and the way she is thrown into that duckishness and into the world. We ourselves human every day. The bee bees, the duck ducks, and the human humans, but being beings in all of them, constituting a world through the project of animaling as the animal-that-one-is, one’s species-being.

A year ago I started visiting Harriett as an act of loving-care. To love another is to attend to their unfolding as that which they are. As what she is, Harriett unfolds a world as she unfolds herself in it, matter mattering matter. To care-for and care-about Harriett is therefore to care for her as the unfolding life that she is. It means attending to the world that she makes and making it possible for her to unfold her life as a duck. Harriett is Unique, and so are the creatures that she is -with, both human and non-human. Caring for each is caring for the Unique that they are, and caring for the Unique that they are means making it possible for them to unfold their life-project, to animal. Recognizing non-humans as Uniques invites us into a new ecological ethic, to prevent ontocide through attending to the world that the Unique is and creates, a pluricosmos of different beings-in-the-world that imbue the universe with mattering.

All worlds are full of Uniques, and Harriett and I are two. I Unique in my humaning and her in her ducking, and just as her presence helped me to human-on when humaning felt untenable, so I have a responsibility to her in her ducking, to be the duck that she is. Harriett is Unique, and so am I, together in this world of beings-in-their-worlds, making the many-worlds together.

All things are full of gods.

Thales of Miletus, quoted in Aristotle’s De Anima 411a

Image: Harriett by me (2023)

We are making the future as well as bonding to survive the enormous pressures of the present, and that is what it means to be a part of history. – Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

We poetry. In motion, we sway meaning, significance. Significant. To matter to. I am here, ghost-in-flesh mattering being. You are here, angel-in-presence emerging a new mattering. Meeting you, I inhabit a new world, a ma that stretches between us, a time-ing of our memory, forming-together the history of us. I kneel in the soil of our love; I tend for you. To -tend. Love is attending to the unfolding of another. To attend is to tend-to. To tend-to is to en-home our activity, to relinquish our power and to instead unfold mutually, equally, Uniques togethering rather than directing. To together is to intimate. Intimate. Familiar, close, known, within, inside. We intimate by patterning our lives with one another, dancing our everyday head-to-chest, just you and me, to softly eternity.

We ensoul our lives already-here, in history. Animating, we wander the otherthinkers, the them that measure and quantify, the imagined One. This One has never existed, but emerges in our patterning, the psychic residue of the struggle of history, the agon where matterings clash. The Leviathan is an imagined One; an unspoken Father that reimagines creation in its own image and barks out this image to the world. There is no such thing as a woman or a man. There is woman-ing and man-ing, two kinds of mattering-in-the-world. But each of these matterings is a tree of infinite branches, ways of woman-ing and man-ing that are as Unique as the Uniques that compose it. And outside these trees lie many other groves, many other ways of gender-ing. We are in the wilds following a dead king. We are free.

She jazzes. Ballets kindness, pinks wisdom, flowers beauty. My sunshine, my soil, the garden who gardens me. I was a mountain when I met you. Honeyapple shoe-tapping the awaiting, I wait. Seeing you, my breath repeats and hums hallelujah, heart-skipping Seraphim my angel graces. Time appears when two or more are gathered, re-membering our being-here; being-here with you I intend and attend-to a new future, your walnut sugarcane eyes welcoming home. En-home-ing. Gently, we unwrap our placetime in the hills, two autos in solar orbiting, rollerskating into our unfolding togethering. Rejoice, join, rejoin, rejoice. The Unique in me nests tenderly with the Unique in you. I tend-to-you. Hello, joy, we kitty dearly our desires, Daniel and the lion’s den. We holydwell en-animation, strawberrysouling the sapien earth. Holding one another, we dream the coming Ark, climbing Ararat and descending into bed a reincarnation. Thicket-wet the jungle monad rivers one the neverone. The two are one are two are one. The Us.

Spiritmatter blends and joins in Alalia, the ocean of possibility that life drips eternally back into. Raindrops of animation, time hovers still as our lives touch and combine, souling creaturely the currents of becoming. The all is repeated and transformed, waves of knowing wyrded into the future, every act an act of fate. Odysseus journeys to Penelope again-and-again, eternal return mything every moment. The myth we carry together carries our carrying-together. Femmebutch, butchfemme. Freckles are indents in time, sun-kissing your Uniquing. My dimples are my gift to you. Placetime rhythms the echoing Unique, the breathing-heartbeat of intertwined anima. I love it when you give me flowers. I love it when you you. I love you.

My forever.

Sweet mother, I cannot weave –
Aphrodite has overcome me
with longing for a girl. – Sappho, Fragments

Image: Bouquet of Sunflowers by Claude Monet (1880)