Phantoms, interrupted
I have been victim (and perpetrator) of an insistent, incessant feeling that I have lost a part of myself (since moving here, since failing to produce stories, since heartbreak, since...?). I can never name it: it is elusive, keeping within my ken but just out of sight, out of reach of language. An inventory would be helpful, but not conclusive, since an inventory is only a list of effects. Causes remain obscure.
I can almost feel my way back along a thread to the moment of the inception of this feeling. But as I attempt to step into that moment, I find the thread frayed and inconclusively split into dead-ends, or it turns out I have not been holding the thread at all, or I continue to follow it deeper into the past, never arriving.
It can be argued that the inconclusiveness of this feeling - its way of hiding and of eluding elucidation - is proof against its reality. Perhaps, but consequences prove the existence of phantoms, not the other way around.
I am indeterminate, existing without existing, incapable of finding a way outside of this entangling net of language, of these miserable words that seem only to give shape to discontent, rarely joy. (Am I anything other than words? Would I exist without language? Would my existence be richer with richer language? I am linguistically impoverished....) I am trapped inside, but I am also outside - so far, so far outside. I don't know if I can make it back and even if there is anything to return to. (Isn't return an illusion? We never return, we are always, despite the seeming proof of deadening habit, arriving. This paradox should serve to awaken me. It should. It should. It should.)
*
"[S]ince language is something I am made out of, rather than merely a convenient tool I use, the whole idea that I am a stable, unified entity must also be a fiction. Not only can I never be fully present to you, but I can never be fully present to myself either." - Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory
But I try, I try. Against the proofs of post-structuralism (and deconstruction in particular), I rebel - foolishly clinging to a myth - trying to hold myself together. I rebel against the beauty and attraction of Pessoa's multitudinous self. I rebel against a part of myself. Against science, against psychology I rebel - for what? Because I feel inside and everything else seems outside? Because I cannot know your thoughts? Because I am crippled by what it seems I'm not and the only way to hold myself together is to hold myself together?
Things have been better.
I can almost feel my way back along a thread to the moment of the inception of this feeling. But as I attempt to step into that moment, I find the thread frayed and inconclusively split into dead-ends, or it turns out I have not been holding the thread at all, or I continue to follow it deeper into the past, never arriving.
It can be argued that the inconclusiveness of this feeling - its way of hiding and of eluding elucidation - is proof against its reality. Perhaps, but consequences prove the existence of phantoms, not the other way around.
I am indeterminate, existing without existing, incapable of finding a way outside of this entangling net of language, of these miserable words that seem only to give shape to discontent, rarely joy. (Am I anything other than words? Would I exist without language? Would my existence be richer with richer language? I am linguistically impoverished....) I am trapped inside, but I am also outside - so far, so far outside. I don't know if I can make it back and even if there is anything to return to. (Isn't return an illusion? We never return, we are always, despite the seeming proof of deadening habit, arriving. This paradox should serve to awaken me. It should. It should. It should.)
*
"[S]ince language is something I am made out of, rather than merely a convenient tool I use, the whole idea that I am a stable, unified entity must also be a fiction. Not only can I never be fully present to you, but I can never be fully present to myself either." - Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory
But I try, I try. Against the proofs of post-structuralism (and deconstruction in particular), I rebel - foolishly clinging to a myth - trying to hold myself together. I rebel against the beauty and attraction of Pessoa's multitudinous self. I rebel against a part of myself. Against science, against psychology I rebel - for what? Because I feel inside and everything else seems outside? Because I cannot know your thoughts? Because I am crippled by what it seems I'm not and the only way to hold myself together is to hold myself together?
Things have been better.