Thinking/Writing in the stream of
[…and there’s nothing coincidental about this
show from 1968 opening with “Lovelight,” as today is the Winter Solstice, the
day when we celebrate the dark of the night and welcome the Return of the
Everlasting Light. In fact, during this
morning’s service I heard something – in a hymn, or during the liturgy – that
prompted me ‘hear’ “Lovelight.” Nothing coincidental…]
I want to
begin by returning to something I wrote
in my commentary, because it speaks to where I am in this last stage of the Being and Learning 2.0, which is to say,
where the original meditations were in the last two months. Yesterday I wrote:
“‘Being of
existence’ emphasizes the originary disclosure as a primal dynamic flow. We reach the juncture where there is no
further reduction, and the description becomes both a repetition and
reiteration of what has already been writing, and in this sense the writing is
decisively mimetic, and then implodes
at the moment where the prosaic is saturated by the poetic and can no longer
bear the weight of memory. The
phenomenological is laid bare and amongst the fragments that are strewn in the
meditation.”
‘Being of
existence’ recalls the commentary where I clarified that the question of Being
is nonsensical, because what is usually indicated by the question is the whatness of Being, not the howness of Being, and the question does
not take us into ontological nor the existential thinking. The juncture identified yesterday is arrived
at when all descriptions have been exhausted, and yet we are faced with the
persisting excess of Being’s becoming.
At that moment all that one can do, as I have been doing more often than
not the past month, is to reiterate and repeat excerpts, and then explicate
them anew. “What was scattered
gathers. What was gathered blows apart.”(Heraclitus
cited BL 319) In this way the excess that remains when all
descriptions have been exhausted can be taken up hermeneutically via exegesis,
and the writing can distill and making meaning, which is to say, make music of
a different kind…an Other One:
[Spanish lady come to me, she lays on me this rose,
rainbows, spirals round and round, trembles and explores.
Left a smoking crater of my mind, I got blown away.
And
the heat came by and busted me for smiling on a cloudy day]
Repetition
and reiteration – [“coming, coming, coming around, forming a circle”] -- I’m reminded of the koinōnina moment with my students when we held class on and around
the Chartes labyrinth; and I’m further reminded of Bernard of Clairvaux, and
the holy time and the repetition of prayer, service and celebration in
spiritual communal life. All this is
enactment of learning: “The enactment of life is
decisive.” On 12/21/04 the decisive
enactment is described as “en-chantment,” which is written so as to indicate
the state of rapture is both the passive and active, receptive and productive,
listening and saying (or as Rocha puts it ‘sanging’)
“En-chantment
unfolds with the seizure of the subiectum
(the ‘singular’ and ‘whole subject’) into the ‘wholeness’ of Being’s
processural un-folding.”(BL 319)
n
[“come now, what we need is a
little bit of power…maybe you all can dance and clap your hands and we can all
generate a little power on this…” Bobby Weir, 13:24 of “That’s it for the Other One,” 12/21/68] -- I don’t recall ever hearing Weir or any
member of the GD calling out to the audience to help them generate power. What power?]
–
The
repetition on 12/21/04 returns back to the abode of Heraclitus and identifies
in his dwelling the modality of one en-chanted. Why is Heraclitus identified as
en-chanted? First because he remains
steadfast in the flow of Logos,
which on 12/21 is described as the
“estranging play of difference” in order
to disclose “the manner in which Be-ing enjoins existence in/with
inter-dependency yet distinguishes ‘beings’ through the creative act, the
originary dispensation, through which ‘beings’ appear as distinct and separate.”(BL 319) Estrangement here
denotes the originary decisive decision and the mimetic repetition of that via
enactment. And Heidegger’s “the
enactment of life is decisive” is helpful here to show why learning begins
where self-overcoming ends, where the power of the individual human will
diminishes into the will to power – denoted by the universal, or what
yesterday, in a moment of reiteration, was recalled via Aristotle as the Law of
Nature. The work of learning – the
realization of thinking in communal production – is propelled by the force of
the will to power (originary dispensation).
“The enactment of life is decisive” can be heard as “decisive is the enactment
of life,” which is to say that we en-act life; and we must hear the performative that is expressed by that
reduction. Put differently, the life
en-acted is the mimetic repetition of the creative act, what yesterday
Gutierrez reminded us of when we cited him on the unity of salvation and
creation. Here I am reminded of an
etymological moment in Schürmann, when he reminds us of the roots of
‘decision,’ saying something like “from French décider, from Latin decidere
‘determine,’ from de- ‘off’ + caedere ‘cut.’” When we reach caedere we can appreciate why the the encounter with Being’s
‘originary dispensation’ is described as ‘estranging.’ It is the moment after the effacement with the totality of Being that we encounter
the ontological difference and the emancipatory dff’rence that is at one and the same time empowering and
estranging. In the decisive decision we
encounter the propelling force of the will to power that at one and the same
time unifies and separates (cuts off) all things.
On 12/21/04
the return to Heraclitus is a return to the abode, for “here too the gods are
present,” which indicates the totality of the unity gathered by Logos.
An imagined dialogue is depicted on 12/21, one that imagines an exchange
between Heraclitus and one of the unexpected visitors who are part of the company
in Aristotle’s story that is retold by Heidegger in his “Letter on
Humanism.” Heraclitus, the sage,
confused and estranged his visitors, those strangers, with his cryptic pointing
to the hidden yet present gods. And so I imagine Heraclitus saying, further,
“Come, cross over into this abode where we might forge a community of learning
in the presence of those whose hiding reveals to us the nature of Be-ing: ‘Things keep their secrets.’ One of the
confounded might respond, in a voice she had not yet spoken and her companions
had not heard before, ‘But how and what shall we forge?’ And Heraclitus might reply, ‘Let this fire
gather us, enjoin us, and indicate the manner of our forging. ‘That
which always was, and is, and will be everlasting fire, the same for all, the
cosmos, made neither by god or man, replenishes in measure as it burns away.’ The fire of the hearth is the source of their
belonging together, their be-ing with one another.”(BL 319)
Logos as the enjoining Fire describes the
force of koinōnia as both what
gathers – the hearth – and also what allows for making – the forge. With hearth and forge the community is made;
what Gutierrez describes as the work, “to transform this word…to build human
community; it is also to save…and to build a just society is already to be part
of the saving action, which is moving towards its complete fulfillment.”(159)
n
[12/21/68 concludes, so I move into the stream of
https://archive.org/details/gd78-12-21.aud.cotsman.15209.sbeok.shnf,
jumping ahead to “Terrapin Station”:
Let my
inspiration flow in token rhyme, suggesting rhythm,
That
will not forsake you, till my tale is told and done.
While the firelight's aglow, strange
shadows from the flames will grow, Till things we've never seen will seem
familiar.
Logos, the fire [nb: recall the Pentecostal force, the ‘fire next time’], the
originary, in John 1:1. [cf. OPM
296(297), December 12th: “Meditative thinking flows with the common (ho koinos), which for Heraclitus is Logos.
John 1:1: En archē ēn ho Logos. The common is the beginning, the originary.”] Learning
is an en-acting of Logos, hence it is
called: originary thinking. But, first, Logos, the fire: “the source of [our]
belonging together, [our] be-ing with one another. As such, it has the capacity to attune them
to the essential sway of Being’s with-holding, the…openness that shows and
hides, reveals and conceals, and thereby preserves the space for the
performance of the extra-ordinary, for the arrival of the un-familiar by
re-maining Open. Fire reveals the
radical openness of Being as the unbound ‘space’ of possibility. Fire, as Heraclitus indicates to the estranged
ones reveals [the] impermanence of all things, their openness, their
incompleteness, their freedom.”(BL
319)
3.0 (Saturday, Portland, ME). Longest night! For some reason, didn't mention the Winter Solstice in the 2.0 commentary. Cold long day here in Maine.
ReplyDeleteOne of the important themes of the current project, which was initiated in the forthcoming Nancy paper, is circularity and repetition. Here from above: "Repetition and reiteration – [“coming, coming, coming around, forming a circle”]". AND here from "LEARN": "The discussion is a repetition of the reception that happened during phenomenological reading. The repetition of that reception enables the students to collectively receive the text anew. When Arendt described the Socratic dialogue as “going around in circles” she was describing a circularity of the periagôgé that turns the student towards the solitude of study, but also returns the students together as a community of learning to that receptive modality where the poetics of book breaks through and inspires discussion. In this sense the gathering of the learning community is a re-collection of the original Moment of inspiration, a gathering back to the first encounter with the text in the solitude of study. The flow of the discussion arrives from the poetics of the words that are re-called, or heard again, and in being recalled they re-collect the students into the commonality of discussion. “This is why poesy is the water that at times flows backward toward the source, toward thinking as a thinking back, a recollection.” AND: "The repetition of philosophical learning is akin to the circular movement that Arendt highlights in her description of a Socratic dialogue, which “leads nowhere or goes around in circles.” AND "The Noli me legere is received as an echo of the original directive that exiled the author. This echo resonates with the birth of the original Echo, “a nymph deprived of speech by Hera in order to stop her chatter and left only able to repeat what others had said.” A précis is a mimesis of the poetics received as fragments, a repetition, echo and reverberation of the book’s originality. The precis records the fragments or breaks that call out. Above we recalled Nietzsche’s call for dancing, and this recollection was heard as a poetic way of describing philosophical learning. This dancing is an even more evocative way of describing the improvisational discussion that responds to the breaks that call out and are recorded by each student."