Fish In the Afternoon

Home is where the heart is. – Pliny the Elder

Here.

En-placed and en-homed, togethers draw-together in the doma. Sophia is loving-wisdom, and one wisely-loves only in place and in time. Placetime. I am here-, now-, with-you. I am never nowhere and nowhen; where and when are always -with-. Being inhabits being in dwelling in the here-and-now with-you, the neverplaceless moment of togethering. I Sophia onward the dawning sunlight, the in-the-world that inaugurates the here.

Placetime has the quality of hereness, but this hereness emerges from the act of dwelling rather than the naming of place. I dwell in the world, not in ‘America’. The -time of placetime is itself timeless, a being-now that qualifies rather than quantifies, the never-measured ellipsis of doing through which the Unique Uniques. Placetime is the arena of Uniquing, the unfolding of Unique-togethers in their Unique dwelling. This togethering architects the doma, the home or nest where the unfolding of each overlaps the unfolding of another and matters the matter of their dwelling. The doma is not nowhere or nowhen but a -where and -when so close to the skin that each atom vibrates the history of the together. Uniques unique together in the historying of their dwelling, making home in the warmth of their being-with. Togethers hearthing together.

The good of the doma is the enacting of the good-itself: the Unique. This Uniquing is always a Uniquing-with, and the good of each Unique is the good of the dwelling in which the Unique resides. Because of this, to enact the form of the good, each Unique must attend to the Uniqueness of their Unique together, loving-wisdom being a loving-dwelling with the beloved Unique. Love loving love is the essence of the good, reflecting the creating-begetting-proceeding of the all. The oikonomia of the doma is an energeia, Uniques in hypostatic union acting-together to unfold their together in the world, nesting virtue. To enact the good, one must en-home.

With you.

Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise. – Novalis, Fragment No. 51

Image: Basket of Fruit by Caravaggio (~1596)

So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn. – Henry David Thoreau, Walking

Being is becoming; existence is a journey.

We saunter futures that echo pasts as the present guides our feet. Calloused soles that soul onward, we toe-tap memory into magic, intention guiding attention, attention presencing the absent into meaning. I wander the many-worlds with you.

Serendipity. Epicurus: the Swerve. Atoms loose possibilia into modal cornucopia. To plan is to seek a future, to navigate time. This navigating is a navigating-with, with-the-world and with-another. We intend the time-to-come and in our present we journey the to-be. But this journeying is always a wandering, an improvisation. Being becomes through creativity, through a leap of faith into love, attending to the coming-dwelling. Hope is an artwork.

In plans we scribble the future. In seeking, we prophesy. I orient, I lean, I intend, I attend. I intend to attend to a future with you. I attend to unveil my intending, my attending-to-come. We lean, we orient. Towards one another, towards a future, a willing-of-time. I will, I will, I will. To will is to unfold a future; holding hands is loving-in-time. I journey to journey forever with you, sauntering the unknown. All I know is love.

Dreams dream, our imaginings layering on our skin, wrapping ourselves in the quilt of time. Please, plan. But please, wander. Creation is perichoretic kenosis, indwelling, self-giving love. Creating, begetting, and proceeding. Nature is a pilgrimage to a holy land that is already-here. Earth-souls plant memory in fertile soil to spring-forth the tree of life, Eden the un-naming of the forms, paradise a being-here. I am here, I am here, I am here. I am always here.

Uniquing is always a Uniquing-with. Uniques unique together, togethers togethering in the together of togethers. Holy earth journeys multiplicity, life echoing infinite Uniquing. Hold my hand and leap into the heart of the world. Journey with me the becoming.

Being is becoming; existence is a journey; to be is to love.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. 
- T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Image: Evening Primroses in the Vase by Paul Gauguin (1885)

He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars;
General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer:
For art and science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.
- William Blake, Jerusalem

This was originally written for my students.

What is an idea? Ideas are partitions of the senses, both present and absent, divisions of spacetime into objects, into this-and-thats in-the-world. This-and-thats are action-potentials, or affordances: layers of what-it’s-for within this-and-that. Our ideas have a direct effect on what we can do and what we imagine we can do. The can-do is a function of the what-it’s-for of a field of affordances, a what-it’s-for that is both invented and discovered, both in-us and in-the-world.

The properties of the spacetime bundle constrain the what-it’s-for by defining the physical limits of what-can-be-done. To stop thinking of a chair as a chair may change the what-its-for, but it can not take on the what-its-for of a lamp. We also, however, invent the what-it’s-for. Our ideas are world-embedded, overlaying on the this-and-thats of the real. The what-it’s-for emerges out of how the idea modifies the affordances of the physical, a uniting of both what-can-be-done and what-we-see-it-as-for. Though we may not be able to change the what-can-be-done, modifying our concepts modifies the what-it’s-for through modifying what-we-see-it-as-for. Conceptual engineering is also agential engineering, the changing of our ideas for the sake of changing the what-it’s-for of things around us and opening up new possibilities.

There are, however, things that do not have a what-it’s-for, or where the thing-itself is what-it’s-for. This is the Unique, that which is itself-in-itself and irreplaceable with any other. The what-it’s-for of the Unique is Uniquing, unfolding as it is in the way that is right to it. The Unique grounds value, everything is either valuable-in-itself as Unique or valuable-to-a-Unique. Ultimately, the what-it’s-for of all things is the Unique, everything else appearing as valuable in the overlapping Uniquing of Uniques-in-the-world.

Every person is a Unique in this way. People are that which do not have a what-it’s-for or who are themselves their own what-it’s-for. This extends to all living beings: life-itself is the Unique and the Uniquing of all is life-itself. Life is what does and acts in the world, and which through this doing makes manifest the what-it’s-for of everything else. This means that the what-it’s-for is mutually-shaped, not just a what-it’s-for for me but a what-it’s-for for me and you and you and you and you. The what-it’s-for is -for all of us and to exist in community is to take all others as the what-it’s-for of your activity. What-it’s-all-for is me. And you. And you. And you.

What-it’s-all-for is all of us. All of our hopes and dreams and fears and anxieties. All of our pasts, and all of our presents, and all of our futures. All of our wants and needs and desires and loves.

What-it’s-all-for is the world-as-it-is and the world-as-it-could-be.

He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for little. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth, and ever shall for that God loveth it. And so All-thing hath the Being by the love of God. – Blessed Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

Image: The Human Condition by René Magritte (1933)

God remembered Noah, all those alive, and all the animals with him in the ark. God sent a wind over the earth so that the waters receded. The springs of the deep sea and the skies closed up. The skies held back the rain. The waters receded gradually from the earth. After one hundred fifty days, the waters decreased; and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day, the ark came to rest on the Ararat mountains. – Genesis 8.1-4 CEB

Mournwest. Present-tense. Into the eternal, do you see the erising? I barely know you, lost-one. I. I. I the I. I fail. My way of knowing unknowable? To know can never be unknowable, the unknowable hears, from you to me. The you to me is the markable.

Imagine us. Echo, the divine dust. The us. Spacing out our wonderkite, we everbright. I’ll share my watch, weary weary gale El’el. I dwell in you, the hungering, the evering. Sainting. Aetherning. I go-step the remarkable, wavering. The aliening. Autoing. The autos autos the autoing.

There-is. The is is’es, inhabiting. The is-here represents the dawning. I gainerestesse. I lose, I rest, the rest, I lose. I’ll take off my fingernail polish soon, the fasces glares ominous. Consider this. Against-Napoleon, we shutter the reckoning. The fasces this-time has cloaked-itself in the simulation of the Carpenter. Remember Rushdoony? The Institutes of Biblical Law, under the bed though it may be, haunts the future, theocracy. The Puritans never left us, that Pilgrim Ethic, the Roundhead deity malochs. Galeforce winds the Ragnarok.

Walter Benjamin. History elopes. Affirm the new commoning. Become, become the creative nothing, dwelling in the Gemeinwesen. An eternity of I’ing, being in the common beinging. Our estrangment begins with quantifying qualia, through measuring. Chopping the dwelling, concepting the being-here. This estrangement is neither friend nor foe, it is both the source and haunting of the I’ing. The demon-creeps, the Tartarus, not only estrangement but simulating. Marking the I’ing as only quantifying, atoming the unimaginable.

Rememberhere. Here, here. We weep. We weep. We here. Hear me, hear me. Hearhear. Herehere. Hear. Here.

Sophia-ing.

But wisdom, where can it be found;
    where is the place of understanding?
Humankind doesn’t know its value;
    it isn’t found in the land of the living.
The Deep says, “It’s not with me”;
    the Sea says, “Not alongside me!”
It can’t be bought with gold;
        its price can’t be measured in silver,
    can’t be weighed against gold from Ophir,
        with precious onyx or lapis lazuli.
Neither gold nor glass can compare with it;
    she can’t be acquired with gold jewelry.
Coral and jasper shouldn’t be mentioned;
    the price of wisdom is more than rubies.
Cushite topaz won’t compare with her;
    she can’t be set alongside pure gold.
But wisdom, where does she come from?
    Where is the place of understanding?
She’s hidden from the eyes of all the living,
    concealed from birds of the sky.
Destruction and Death have said,
    “We’ve heard a report of her.”
God understands her way;
        he knows her place;
    for he looks to the ends of the earth
        and surveys everything beneath the heavens.
In order to weigh the wind,
        to prepare a measure for waters,
    when he made a decree for the rain,
        a path for thunderbolts,
    then he observed it, spoke of it,
            established it, searched it out,
    and said to humankind: “Look,
        the fear of the Lord is wisdom;
            turning from evil is understanding.” - Job 28.12-18 (CEB)

Image: Noah’s Ark by Marc Chagall (1966)

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thr' all its regions - William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

Hello, timelost. weary old fragment. (how are You?) Silence, death. We, the wholed conqueroar. Spellmind the failurelost, joyjoy autumnaloss. How do I bare you, beforeanafter, shinywillowleap the tiger. Say halo to the nihil. Cybermaloch, the artificial enminds the Ragnarok.

Hello from ol’time, this is ash. the esse ain’t the is, the esse essays the in-between. We joy. Or youthst to. Gallop’callop-ticktime-thefiber, denoting Russell, the imagined here. Conditional ain’t, this life of mine. Material to-be, the is-and-then. I Paris strawberry, my lonelylove, curledlooped the autumnspring. Analects intellect the gardening.

I time you. Being beings the being bes. Bees be bee-ing as being. Bet thirty, Pascal’s wager. I wager you the now. I neverlost the fightinme, pigfuck the fightback. Have you wandered the forestqueer, the fae faith that fatherseer? I mytho you, Twain-headed fuck. Spelltwist the earthenhere, gallop quickly the enough.

Here in Ozarkia, the tornado.

Instead of using the names of the twelve constellations as the astrologers do, the hillman usually designates the portion of the human body with which each is associated. Some very successful farmers believe that underground crops, such as potatoes, should be planted ‘when the sign’s in the feet’—that is, when the moon is in Pisces. If a hillman wishes to indicate Aquarius he says ‘when the sign’s in the legs.’ In the same way Capricornus is connected with the knees, Sagittarius with the thighs, Scorpio with the sex organs or ‘privates,’ Libra with the kidneys, Virgo with the bowels, Leo with the heart, Cancer with the breast, Gemini with the arms, Taurus with the neck, and Aries with the head. – Vance Randolph, Ozark Magic & Folklore

Image: Approaching Arkansas by Ronnie Landfield (1986)