Sans Titre
Preface
À Paris aux Soir. Of what we discover in the night, can only be seen by daylight? In the vast spectrum of emotions, of phrases, of being, where am I, for who doth composed this corpus? Is this hors d’oeuvre, because it's outside the text? Is it possible to view something outside of a text if it is between two covers, or published in the same blog post?
Sans Titre
It took, for some time it hadn’t (taken me), to understand loneliness. I’d heard the words before, those which comprised the emotion, the letters which spelled an indivisible object. Its constantly seeking a definition, its constantly being defined. I imagined if it was possible to go back before this, to become illiterate just here, just once, to be spared the experience and all the things which came with it. I wasn’t allowed, and neither was my object-an object by my standards. Is it still, did these intense emotions amount to anything but depravity, illness, and longing? Love(sic); equivocal to that of any other thing. How could I, reader? I barely knew ‘er.
The shadows forms a figure, which is cast, perhaps, more accurately: just like an image, defined through its negative. We observe the shadow. Its extension shimmers and splits, the various elements perturbing its form, its essence, its nature, its being. Here, already, it's assigned qualia. An instantiation, existing entirely within, not without, already, already here. Not before, not after: now!
Only the perceiver views this presently, the percievee has no “presently”.
A girl on the phone nearby was talking to her boyfriend who had recently transferred to another school, this semester. They were laughing, both of them, but the girl kept making jokes about if he “came back”. We all knew, him, her, and the casual observer, that he was never coming back, and there would be no satisfying ending, no closure, no solace. It was pathetic, more pathetic than anything said all day, but, also, neither exceptional, nor particularly interesting, just sad and painful.
But what of Paris, of those lights, those public toilets that open while you use them, the baguettes, the fromagerie, the Tour Eiffel, the Louvre, the Centre Pompidou, Le Gare du Nord, L'arc de Triomphe, the Seine and the numerous bridges which pass over it. All those bridges, replete with locks, soft, brunette, pleasant smelling locks. So many locks, infact, that they damaged its structural integrity. It didn't fall down, though. Or were they? The locks were down, that time, other times they were up, but then they were down. I liked them better, up, but didn't mention it. From across bridge was the Musee D'Orsay. From across the Musée D'Orsay was the Musée de L'Orangerie, where those famous Monet paintings are kept. Difficult to appreciate those paintings when you can't eat, because, if you eat, no one will ever love you, and, therefore, you'll be alone forever, and it will be like this - hunger doesn't hurt as much. Not many, anyway, will. Those that do, won’t do for long, or won’t really; not for cheap.
Love locks, because, they make it permanent, unending, untroubled by reality. Right, there, the connection betwixt and, now, interwoven, with fantasy. Isn’t it, this all, a fantasy. Could the reality ever be said, a story be anything but its own. So scared, so windy, so nauseous; does everyone call their parents for advice?
«I don’t know, I’m afraid, I just, I…»
«Let go of the outcome. Right now, you’re measuring the results against your fantasy.»
«Right.»
«So forget all that, just go with the flow. Whatever happens was gonna happen anyway.»
Was it? Was it really? Could anything have changed, anything have been done differently. Too many questions, not enough answers. The moment is cursed, my experience haunted. No origin point, “...the figure of the ghost as that which is neither present, nor absent, neither dead nor alive”. An apparition, which must be grounded, beaten, into sense and being. Violence, Force, and Power; the trifecta, the crucible of meaning.
I think everyone hears La vie en Rose in their head when walking around Paris. They all think as if their in some sort of tragic story, where either they, or some other, is the fallible one, the one who falls for someone that they shouldn’t have, or, maybe that they only believe they should. Like love is some sort of game where classic French songs always play in the background, where theres always an ending that's both ugly and incredibly satisfying. They’ll just bump into to that guy or girl outside a cafe, and it’ll be the same as before, when they first met. As passionate and intense. The locale, somehow, overlaps the emotion. we know that Paris is not a special place, that this could’ve happened in any other place, it could’ve been contextualized to any other time. But, oh, oh my, oh lá lá, I can’t let go, not even now, not even once. I still see her in my dreams, far away, like in a crowd somewhere. What would even happen if we met again? In my own world, I can’t approach. She wouldn’t like it, she probably wouldn’t want me too...
The couples, everytime they walk by, I feel it: Envy. They seem so happy, so content. Even if that’s not so, for a moment it was, and that moment has already passed. Passing, but already passed, but always having passed?
Did I miss it?
This line is a circle, and it runs around the city. ‘Round and round it goes, all day, all night. Its warm, quiet in there. Sometimes the homeless would awaken, stumble around, before getting up, and getting off. Getting off. For a time so was I, displaced from within my own lodging. And there was me, among them, the sleeping homeless. My eyes, wet, my palms wiping, cleaning, hiding. When you’re alone, away from home, you’re exposed, naked. In our room, in our shared room, their pelvises drawing together, back and forth, under a blanket. The moans, stifled, the creaks, slowed. When I realized what was happening, it shocked me, my mind went blank, then ran away. I remember, she was very, very young, and he wasn’t.
Whenever it snows, a certain madness takes over the general population. There is no benefit to trouncing around in it, no objective. Most of the frigid activities are pretty dangerous, even, so why do we do it, why are we so excited? The ocean too, is in my mind here. There’s no reason to stare, or remain entranced by lapping waves. It can be peaceful, the sound of waves hitting the shore often helps me to sleep, but I’m only occasionally allowed. Sometimes, I just want to see that you’re ok. But now, whenever I look, you look away. Desire, what a damaging expression. To think, I didn’t even, she tried to tell me off, really tried to let me down easy-she overcommitted, and underestimated. Maybe I was too fast, maybe she...But I was nervous, then drunk, then scared, then confused. All I asked for was a kiss.
Even hors-texte, there is still a title.
The preface, by daring to repeat the book and reconstitute it in another register, merely enacts what is already the case: the book’s repetitions are always other than the book. There is, in fact, no “book" other than these ever-different repetitions: the “book" in other words, is always already a “text," constituted by the play of identity and difference. A written preface provisionally localizes the place where, between reading and reading, book and book, the inter-inscribing of “reader(s)," “writer (s)," and language is forever at work....Derrida makes clear, that the fulfilled concept— the end of the self-acting method of the philosophical text— was the predicate— pre-saying- pre-face, to the preface. In Derrida’s reworking, the structure preface-text becomes open at both ends. The text has no stable identity, no stable origin, no stable end. Each act of reading the “text" is a preface to the next. The reading of a self-professed preface is no exception to this rule. (Spivak, Translator's Preface, of Grammatology, 1976, xii)
💔
This was worse than I thought.
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