<nettime> world

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

**


world


(what i stumble towards)
(what i have wanted to describe)
(what is indescribable)
(the tendency of my work)
(what characterizes philosophy: "philosophy has no regard")

the thickness of the world
the idiocy of the real
when there is death, the interior of a world disappears
there are details, one can see this in any past
the smell of a kitchen, the paint on the edges of the chairs
do the chairs need repainting
certain parts of the backs are worn, he sits there, she here
there's a sound they make, different sounds, pulled in and out
the dulled reflection of the chairs on the floor
when they were new
when they began to disappear, the last memory of the chairs
the light on them from the window, sounds of rain on the window
how high the backs above the table, their reflection on the table
the food, when the family may have been together
familiality, familiarity
when the chairs were comfortable, when they were turned
when we turned them facing one another, or moved them aside
when one of us left the room and the chairs were moved
fly in the window's interior
from the chair, tree outside, smaller then, different neighbors
sounds from the street coming in

the limitlessness of the world, its thickness
over and over again, peering around the corner
there is the world in uncanny, unaccountable, fullness

there is no theory for this, this inaccessible description
every explanation, there are heuristics, things glossed over
not the things of the world, but their fallen worlds
all worlds are fallen for that matter
all worlds encompassed with this thickness, inertness, grain
untheorizable, hardly memories, reconstructions, reconstitutions

with every death, it is a matter of ethics, this disappearance of worlds
with every death, loss of world and history
with every death, redistribution of materials, severed ties and limbs

i return constantly to this in my theorizing, this loss
no degree of technological recuperation works in this respect
no quantity of text or discourse plays the slightest role
what is re-presented is always already 0/1, infinitesimal

sometimes in a dream there is a horizon of what is gone
it's almost present, not really, you begin thinking of something past
you're thinking, it's almost present, almost on the tip of the tongue
it's never there, it's not even problematic, controvertible

i imagine paths through the world, turning beneath the chairs
beneath or around the rungs of the chair or the four brown wooden legs
paths opening up to interior surfaces opening up recursively
stains beneath the seat of the chair, cobwebs connecting rungs to rungs
the smell of the varnish on older paint, flat faded white shown through
paths moving among senses, spectra and bandwidths
paths moving from generation to generation, imaginary paths

paths of the scraping of chairs, people leaving for the very last time
paths of chairs pulled in beneath old new people eating, conversing
laughter, crying, screams, whispers, talking, singing, filling the air
chairs of first and last times, inconceivable speculations
inconceivable principles, axiologies, hypothetical, hypotheses
not, no ideas but in things themselves
not, the last or second-to-last of the ox-herding pictures
not, the grain of the real
not, the practico-inert or materialist or idealist foundations
not, tat tvam asi or fundamental or surface negations
not, the interplay of signs, sememes, sign-systems
certainly not that interplay of signifiers, semiotics, historiographies
nothing that "might be said" to characterize, capture, recuperate

something of absolute disappearance, annihilation, of trace turned ash
something of charnel-house, but that too has paths, worlds, traces
traces upon traces, perhaps i remember 1968
perhaps i remember 1945, 2003, perhaps i remember 1789
perhaps berlin, ankara, grise fjord, kurume, providence, katmandu
perhaps street, street-corner, room, field, forest, cliff, lake, tarn
perhaps you, perhaps another, perhaps others
perhaps events, occurrences, what happened, what happens

those anecdotes without endings, well what did she say, what was next
receding into pasts, backgrounds, irrelevancies of the present
but never irrelevant, always equidistant, equivalent, always inert
and present and unaccounted for and present and uncountable
and present and unaccountable, all we can theorize is this,
collapse of description and uttermost alterity

the being of which knows no regard, is obdurate in the world
i'd write this, this error of philosophy:
   "philosophy has no regard"
of which is the condition of speech, language, any and all interplay

*

so that i tend to produce, reproduce, overproduce
moving among media, modes, representations - this is all so futile
an attempt to pull back from death, from constitution
or somewhat of a release among interiority and world
negation gnaws at doors and portals
chairs and chairs, or wood, or institutions of chairs and wood
or ideologies or constructs: one crawls, lifts on the back
stumbles to the feet, totters, almost gets it in the air

*

the thickness of the world
the idiocy of the real
nothing in a seed but seed
nothing obdurate but always in a corner or path

everywhere the thickness of which "philosophy has no regard"
what has disappeared and for whom and by what means
what constitutes the disappearance and the world which disappears
what is death "in this regard"

who or what, or what of or with writing, what of the calligraphic


**



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