From 43e2b69dfb0d37cce157ea78a35b47e54c85c7d3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Case Duckworth Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2015 12:13:08 -0700 Subject: Fix bad commit / other issues --- howtoread.txt | 156 ---------------------------------------------------------- 1 file changed, 156 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 howtoread.txt (limited to 'howtoread.txt') diff --git a/howtoread.txt b/howtoread.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 2fed4be..0000000 --- a/howtoread.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,156 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: How to read this -genre: prose - -project: - title: Elegies for alternate selves - css: elegies - order: 2 - next: - title: And - link: and - prev: - title: epigraph - link: epigraph -... - -This book is an exploration of life, of all possible lives that could be -lived. Each of the poems contained herein have been written by a different -person, with his own history, culture, and emotions. True, they are all -related, but no more than any of us is related through our genetics, our -shared planet, or our yearnings. - -Fernando Pessoa wrote poems under four different identities---he called -them *heteronyms*---that were known during his lifetime, though after his -death over sixty have been found and catalogued. He called them heteronyms as -opposed to pseudonyms because they were much more than names he wrote under. -They were truly different writing selves, concerned with different ideas and -writing with different styles: Alberto Caeiro wrote pastorals; Ricardo Reis -wrote more formal odes; Álvaro de Campos wrote these long, Whitman-esque -pieces (one to Whitman himself); and Pessoa's own name was used for poems that -are kind of similar to all the others. It seems as though Pessoa found it -inefficient to try and write everything he wanted only in his own self; rather -he parceled out the different pieces and developed them into full identities, -at the cost of his own: "I subsist as a kind of medium of myself, but I'm less -real than the others, less substantial, less personal, and easily influenced -by them all." de Campos said of him at one point, "[Fernando Pessoa, strictly -speaking, doesn't exist.][pessoa-exist]" - -It's not just Pessoa---I, strictly speaking, don't exist, both as the -specific me that writes this now and as the concept of selfhood, the ego. -Heraclitus famously said that we can't step into the [same river][] twice, and -the fact of the matter is that we can't occupy the same self twice. It's -constantly changing and adapting to new stimuli from the environment, from -other selves, from inside itself, and each time it forms anew into something -that's never existed before. The person I am beginning a poem is a separate -being than the one I am finishing a poem, and part of it is the poem I've -written has brought forth some other dish onto the great table that is myself. - -In the same way, with each poem you read of this, you too could become a -different person. Depending on which order you read them in, you could be any -number of possible people. If you follow the threads I've laid out for you, -there are so many possible selves; if you disregard those and go a different -way there are quite a few more. However, at the end of the journey there is -only one self that you will occupy, the others disappearing from this universe -and going maybe somewhere else, maybe nowhere at all. - -There is a scene in *The Neverending Story* where Bastian is trying to find -his way out of the desert. He opens a door and finds himself in the Temple of -a Thousand Doors, which is never seen from the outside but only once someone -enters it. It is a series of rooms with six sides each and three doors: one -from the room before and two choices. In life, each of these rooms is a -moment, but where Bastian can choose which of only two doors to enter each -time, in life there can be any number of doors and we don't always choose -which to go through---in fact, I would argue that most of the time we aren't -allowed the luxury. - -What happens to those other doors, those other possibilities? Is there some -other version of the self that for whatever complexities of circumstance and -will chose a different door at an earlier moment? The answer to this, of -course, is that we can never know for sure, though this doesn't keep us from -trying through the process of regret. We go back and try that other door in -our mind, extrapolating a possible present from our own past. This is -ultimately unsatisfying, not only because whatever world is imagined is not -the one currently lived, but because it becomes obvious that the alternate -model of reality is not complete: we can only extrapolate from the original -room, absolutely without knowledge of any subsequent possible choices. This -causes a deep disappointment, a frustration with the inability to know all -possible timelines (coupled with the insecurity that this may not be the best -of all possible worlds) that we feel as regret. - -In this way, every moment we live is an [elegy][] to every possible future -that might have stemmed from it. Annie Dillard states this in a biological -manner when she says in *Pilgrim at Tinker Creek*, "Every glistening egg is a -memento mori." Nature is inefficient---it spends a hundred lifetimes to get -one that barely works. The fossil record is littered with the failed -experiments of evolution, many of which failed due only to blind chance: an -asteroid, a shift in weather patterns, an inefficient copulation method. Each -living person today has twenty dead standing behind him, and that only counts -the people that actually lived. How many missed opportunities stand behind -any of us? - -The real problem with all of this is that time is only additive. There's no -way to dial it back and start over, with new choices or new environments. Even -when given the chance to do something again, we do it *again*, with the -reality given by our previous action. Thus we are constantly creating and -being created by the world. The self is never the same from one moment to the -next. - -A poem is like a snapshot of a self. If it's any good, it captures the -emotional core of the self at the time of writing for communication with -future selves, either within the same person or outside of it. Thus revision -is possible, and the new poem created will be yet another snapshot of the -future self as changed by the original poem. The page becomes a window into -the past, a particular past as experienced by one self. The poem is a -remembering of a self that no longer exists, in other words, an elegy. - -A snapshot doesn't capture the entire subject, however. It leaves out the -background as it's obscured by foreground objects; it fails to include -anything that isn't contained in its finite frame. In order to build a -working definition of identity, we must include all possible selves over all -possible timelines, combined into one person: identity is the combined effect -of all possible selves over time. A poem leaves much of this out: it is the -one person standing in front of twenty ghosts. - -A poem is the place where the selves of the reader and the speaker meet, in -their respective times and places. In this way a poem is outside of time or -place, because it changes its location each time it's read. Each time it's -two different people meeting. The problem with a poem is that it's such a -small window---if we met in real life the way we met in poems, we would see -nothing of anyone else but a square the size of a postage stamp. It has been -argued this is the way we see time and ourselves in it, as well: Vonnegut uses -the metaphor of a subject strapped to a railroad car moving at a set pace, -with a six-foot-long metal tube placed in front of the subject's eye; the -landscape in the distance is time, and what we see is the only way in which we -interact with it. It's the same with a poem and the self: we can only see and -interact with a small kernel. This is why it's possible to write more than -one poem. - -Due to this kernel nature of poetry, a good poem should focus itself to -extract as much meaning as possible from that one kernel of identity to which -it has access. It should be an atom of selfhood, irreducible and resistant to -paraphrase, because it tries to somehow echo the large unsayable part of -identity outside the frame of the self. It is the [kernel][] that contains a -universe, or that speaks around one that's hidden; if it's a successful poem -then it makes the smallest circuit possible. This is why the commentary on -poems is so voluminous: a poem is tightly packed meaning that commentators try -to unpack to get at that universality inside it. A fortress of dialectic is -constructed that ultimately obstructs the meaning behind the poem; it becomes -the foreground in the photograph that disallows us to view the horizon beyond -it. - -With this in mind, I collect these poems that were written over a period of -four years into this book. Where I can, I insert cross-references (like the -one above, in the margin) to other pieces in the text where I think the two -resonate in some way. You can read this book in any way you'd like: you can -go front-to-back, or back-to-front, or you can follow the arrows around, or -you can work out a complex mathematical formula with Merseinne primes and -logarithms and the 2000 Census information, or you can go completely randomly -through like a magazine, or at least the way I flip through magazines. I -think writing is a communication of the self, and I think this is the best way -to communicate mine in all its multiversity. - -[pessoa-exist]: philosophy.html -[same river]: mountain.html -[elegy]: words-meaning.html -[kernel]: arspoetica.html -- cgit 1.4.1-21-gabe81