From 96ab7a3ce522f38a768e67c73021bf1071832a37 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Case Duckworth Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2015 12:04:05 -0700 Subject: Add Paul; move source files to src/ --- src/howtoread.txt | 156 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 156 insertions(+) create mode 100644 src/howtoread.txt (limited to 'src/howtoread.txt') diff --git a/src/howtoread.txt b/src/howtoread.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2fed4be --- /dev/null +++ b/src/howtoread.txt @@ -0,0 +1,156 @@ +--- +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