(Un)Conscious (Non)Correspondence

I’ve been hiding in the forest, in the woods. Up in the mountains. In the wild. I hadn’t gone back to town for some time now. Ryan, as I see, has taken care of this place. He proves, as always, responsible and competent. Ever mindful of the many unhomes that, fortunately or otherwise, we share. I’m thankful, though not happy. Obviously he has monopolized this space, reigned exclusively over the medium. Marks of his hegemony are ostensible everywhere. The painstakingly organized and unbelievably exhaustive posts of the last few months . . . Part of the reason why I didn’t want to go back. To have to go down, descend to life . . . What was he trying to do, this alter ego de moi? Show off his exceptional mastery of the field through quasi-fascist coverage of all in painstaking detail? Articulate in an eloquent—i.e. well-edited—manner stock—i.e. repeatedly memorized—knowledge precisely—i.e. accurately and punctiliously—cited? Prove his official academic erudition using official Royal State language? Signal to the bureaucrats of reason—by practicing philology, exegesis, i.e. pedantic scholastic scholarship—that he can be one of them—that—fuck!—he is one of them? In the woods, it is fun. In the woods, one gets lost. Regard the town below but not be in it. Look at the river from afar and not be carried by its flow. Follow paths through the woods, inside the woods: outside. Follow tracks, leave them, create new ones, invent one’s own. To not have to look below. Forget below. Escape. Make what one is escaping escape. Although: someone does have to feed the kids. Someone has to work. I guess I have been somewhat irresponsible. I left Ryan there all alone. Someone does have to think of what happens tomorrow, next year, of the exams, his career . . . Someone has committed to certain books and someone has to read them. Be able to explain them. Understand them. Understand them well.—But I couldn’t stay there. No . . . It’s gotten . . . rotten. Ironically enough, just when he was trying to do the opposite, Ryan was wasting his time. Staying there in the room, avoiding friends, avoiding people altogether, not going out at all. Even inventing a motto: Disjunction, Catharsis, Training! that not only once could be heard uttered in his sleep. We’re in the Old World! In a foreign country! But Ryan, this alter ego c’est moi, has shut himself off! From the culture. The language. There are, he says, more “important” things: namely, every single detail of the “complex” books he has to read, every thread of the philosophical schools to which he considers himself to belong, every area of competence in which he needs—wants—to prove himself. But No! I wouldn’t have it. I couldn’t. I needed a breath of fresh air. A book by Schopenhauer—relevant to, but nonetheless not in Ryan’s list—in the original language! Despite Ryan’s strict budget, I bought it. Bought it and went off. Out of the civilized world into the wild. Into the mountains. Where, eureka: Ich kann eigentlich auf deutsch lesen! But I didn’t read too much. I didn’t want to read. I don’t always want to read. There were so many things in the forest that were beautiful. Breathtakingly. Some parts almost—but not—completely bereft. Parts that were so remote, so hidden, that I couldn’t help but think: “Someone could totally fuck here! fuck totally! or if alone jerk off!” Someone did. At the same time that I decided that the most arousing pick-up line in the world in all of history has got to be: “From what tribe did your people come from?”—which, I reckon, is really saying: “What are your people planning to do to mine?” “Can I be of use to you?” “Would you like to escape—with me?” “Let’s escape! Us both! Them both—our tribes!” “Leave them to the slaughter that they will wrought!” “Skip all that blood and lust and hunger and leap straight to the result: the offspring: the heir: the impure child: the bastard.” At least that’s what I said. But the other refused. Leider! He wanted to go back down, go back to town. Not desiring it, but nonetheless wanted to. For a reason I could not fathom. Alas! He had been too steeped in the culture in which he was raised. But me, me . . . Staying in the woods, bathing in rivers, eating, drinking, peeing, fucking, shitting in the wild and loving every fucking moment of it—I was undergoing a transformation, a metamorphosis. Becoming something else, I was. Becoming-Heliogabalus. Becoming-Mongol. Becoming-animal. I smelled myself, scratched, licked, rubbed against myself. I touched the different parts of my body. I touched many parts of a body. I touched many different parts of a body I no longer knew. I scratched my head. There was hair there! But of what color was it? What color was the thing I was touching? What tribe spawned this body I was exploiting polymorphously perversely? I had no sense anymore of what I looked like. No more sense of myself. No sense of a person. And one day, one day—breaking all mirrors—I heard myself roar . . .—“Papa! Papa!” Someone had wandered off to disturb my wriggling on the grass. French tourists! Father and son! The father picked the kid up and politely tried to pass me by. Unable to bear the view, the father turned his gaze away from me. Though the child—curious, fascinated—kept looking. The son looked at the father. “Je t’aime,” he said. The father, after taking a sidelong glance, responded, “Moi aussi.”

Aless, July 2008

It seemed like a long, strange, but pleasant dream. Of Aless it was, just the man I miss. Or rather: It was of Aless, whom I miss. They who come like fate have come and converted me. I have become they who come like fate.

Aless and I are different. In many ways:

1. Aless would never write what I’ve been writing in the blog of late. Too complete, he would say. Too proper. (Because of that,) Boring. More importantly: they have already been written. What I was doing was just resurrecting the dead. Instead of deciphering—semiotically, which is to say: obsessively—what this or that “author” said, why not just: What did you—what can you—take from the text? (To which I rejoinder: Still, there is a reason for exegesis, philology, and history. Why else do they exist? Obviously, there’s a function that they serve.)

2. Aless never did care what the blog looked like. Just write, he used to say. The text will “sell” themselves. No images are necessary. In fact, do away with the image. You don’t need flashy pictures to get traffic into the blog. You don’t need to get traffic. No need to organize either. Just write whatever you feel like at the moment, however complete you can get them to be. The text finishes (by) itself. Let it start and go off as it pleases. And if nobody understands—well, so what? You’ve written, haven’t you? That’s all that matters. And someday, someone will understand. Someone does. (I never did completely understand some of the things that he says.)

3. Aless would never have the notes I have, couldn’t care less for page citation (though the authors—I mean, the “writers” (the term he prefers)—he does remember), couldn’t finish a book he’s started without at the same time reading (many) others, couldn’t possibly have done what I did, focusing on one book at a time and engaging with them in a sustained manner and shutting himself off the world to focus on (purely) intellectual work. There’s no disjunct, he used to say. There is disjunction—but no disjunct. Work is not separate from world. You don’t look at a thing, examine it, think about it—in a vacuum—like what science (and Analytical philosophy) does. You live as you think and think as you live. Then—which is the most insulting thing of all—on my face he would mutter: (mass)think! (To which I don’t agree, of course. What, is that the only way the term could be (mis)interpreted?)

4. He likes the outside—and by outside I don’t mean a day stroll at the market, or bar hopping at night. That would be me who likes those. After all, I am a city guy. No, the outside that Aless likes is a different outside, that is to say: truly outside, really outside. He likes to locate and immerse himself in what he calls “tribes” (hence the trips he coerced me take while in Europe, hence our stay in Europe in the first place (which, I should say, is a compromise; he wanted to go somewhere more “exotic”)), sometimes downright outside of civilization, sometimes even outside of what is human. I never did feel comfortable in those places. He doesn’t either. No matter what he says. Though, after a while, as though by magic, he does. He starts, as he says, to feel just “swell.”

5. Unlike Aless, I would never allow these thoughts to be published. I mean, what a scandal that would be! It’s not even a draft, this thing. Quite informal. Unedited. Unimportant. Who would possibly be interested in it? Who would care? Personal musings of a man . . . No, no: the blog has to retain its voice and format (its ways and means, as it were) and only publish philosophical things—comprehensive and definitive ones. Definitely should not let this thing go out. In fact, I should write that down. It is important. I mean, how scandalous would it be for an aspiring professional academic like myself to be caught writing personal, mundane, unimportant things like this? For it to be discovered that I—like all people—have trivial thoughts too? That I too live (not only amidst high philosophical things but also) the (unbearable torment of) everyday?

Aless is probably not gonna be happy when he sees what I’ve been publishing in the blog. What the f**k?, he would yell. And, if he’s in a really bad mood: What the f**king f**k?—followed by a roar not even I could understand. Well, you left. No bye, no see ‘ya!, no message, no kiss—nothing! Just went off your way, like you always do, leaving everyone else behind, not giving a f**k! And now all of a sudden you give a f**k? What did you expect? Someone had to keep working. Someone had to write, take care of things here. These complaints of yours, Aless, these objections—I don’t know if you notice it but they really are grumblings of an immature juvenile. A delinquent. And, for crying out loud, how ungrateful can you be! After foraging away—at whim, I should say—now that you get back, you just expect . . .

I shouldn’t be angry. We’d simply misunderstand each other.

Where has he gone off anyway, this man—my Aless? Probably not too far. Didn’t have a lot of money left, didn’t have enough time. Couldn’t have gone that far. He probably didn’t even leave town. Philosophenweg would be my best guess: climbed the hills and wandered off the hiking tracks.

I shouldn’t be angry.

Placing myself in this artificial vacuum, surrounding myself solely with books, paying attention to every single detail of everything and striving to write every single thing in the most articulate way possible as though no one else would do or has as though I needed to write everything as though to remember I needed to write as though I needed to remember everything as though I needed to prepare to be able to think and say anything at all as though it was the only thing that mattered, wanting to be like them, wanting to be one of them, because I needed to, selling out, in the process, losing touch . . . No, no!

What have I done? What have I f**king done?

I do not like the man that I’ve become.

Against the man of State I need to be saved. Against the blond man of State the brown man, the man of the sun, the sand, the dark . . .

But there is a reason for what I’m doing, isn’t there? There is a reason why I’m doing all this—there is a reason to these things! There is a function to them: to articulate what others don’t have the time for, to be understood in the first place, to reach the masses: (mass)think!

But is that all that I can be? Is that what I want to be? The intensity with which I followed the rules, the way I complied with the Law . . . Fear, was it? Isn’t that the real reason? The fear that if I didn’t do what I did, if I didn’t prepare—I wouldn’t be able to do it at all?

But no, no! If I didn’t do that in the first place, if I didn’t compromise, I wouldn’t have gained a voice. And without voice, without recognition, I wouldn’t have been heard at all: I wouldn’t have been able to (mass)think! in the first place! In other words, I needed to set a ground beyond (which is not to say: before) mere simulacrums. I needed to first master what I was critiquing in order to then critique them. I was thus in truth just setting the ground that there ought to have been in the first place!—But: For what? So what? So that I can talk like them? Do the things that they do? Be like them who I’m fighting against?—So: to (mass)think, first short-circuit (mass)think!?

He would arrive soon, I can feel it. He would soon arrive.

But I’ve cleaned up. And when he arrives, he’d make it all dirty again. I’ve planned everything and been planning to go as planned but Aless—Aless would wreck it. Wreck it all. Aless would arrive covered in sand. Aless would arrive stinking of dried sweat. Aless would arrive with jouissances—his and other people’s. How can one possibly live like that? How can one prefer to stay outside? How can one not (want to) come home? He would come home, this Aless—angry, rude, dirty. Browned by the sun, dried in (his own and other people’s) sweat, with sand stuck all over his body . . . He would wake me up, this Aless, wake me up by jumping up and down the bed, splashing the sand all over the place, wiping the sand off of his feet on the mattress, touch the books with his sticky hands, use their pages to wipe the dirt off his body . . . This man, this dark man, this crude, dirty man—impolite, unrefined, offensive—this man who has no manners, this man now covered by hair making him even darker, this man who prefers to move his body rather than speak, this man who when he does speak speaks roughly—in abrupt outbursts—that soft accent easily outvoicable by everyone else—in the same way that his people had been trampled on by them who call themselves the major world powers—this man—the man who fucks other men and gets fucked by women, the man of Dionysus cheering amidst the pathos of the collective, the individual man forever outside, out of sync, erring and deviant—this man, the savage, the drunkard, the beast—he would come home—the man I do not recognize yet (deep inside) all too well know, the disrespectful and contemptuous barricade- ground- and organ-breaking street-fighting man I (secretly) in all intensity desire.

Ryan, Early Summer 2008