dilapidarium

[dilapidarium]

You’re in a playground with your eyes blindfolded, and someone leads you by the hand, sometimes left, sometimes right; you have constantly to be ready for the tug of his hand, and must also take care not to stumble when he gives an unexpected tug.  Or again, someone leads you by the hand where you are unwilling to go, by force.  Or you’re guided by a partner in a dance; you make yourself as receptive as possible, in order to guess his intention and obey the slightest pressure.  Or someone leads you along a footpath; you’re having a conversation; you go wherever he does.  Or you walk along a track in a field, letting yourself be guided by it. All these situations are similar to one another; but what is common to all the experiences?

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

[dilapidarium]

People say: it’s not the word that counts, but its meaning, thinking of the meaning as a thing of the same kind as the word, even though different from the word. Here the word, there the meaning. The money, and the cow one can buy with it. (On the other hand, however: money, and what can be done with it.)

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

[dilapidarium]

A picture held us captive. And we couldn’t get outside it, for it lay in our language, and language seemed only to repeat it to us inexorably.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations 

[dilapidarium]

I wanted to figure out some way to live as something more than information. I wanted to figure out some way to write what we need that wasn’t going to turn it into a pornography of particularization. That we are alienated, that we are unsure, that our next month is so regularly worse than our this one, are things common to many of us, are these hard and ordinary things of life as it is now which an algorithmic display of affect can’t soften.

Anne Boyer, “'Literature is against us': In Conversation with Anne Boyer”

[dilapidarium]

Widespread consent to specific opacities is the most straightforward equivalent to nonbarbarism.

Edouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation

SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS

TATTOO IT ON YR BODY

[dilapidarium]

“He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream. He could not force himself to understand how banks functioned and so forth, because all the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion, as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary. In a human sacrifice to deity there might be at least a mistaken and terrible beauty; in the rites of the moneychangers, where greed, laziness, and envy were assumed to move all men's acts, even the terrible became banal

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed 

I started reading The Dispossessed around this time last year, during a strange and turbulent time in which I was constantly ill and alternated between states of unbearable anxiety and crushing, deadening sadness. And as much as I feel conflicted about attributing value to literature solely for its ability to produce subjective emotional experiences, reading The Dispossessed did make me feel uncomplicatedly in awe of something, and in so doing allowed me respites from that scary interiority. It was also, in my reading, the most politically hopeful thing I had encountered in a long time; like all responsible utopian thinkers, Le Guin fleshed out a way of being otherwise that was concrete and tangible while also pointing out its limitations, not as an argument against itself, but as an acknowledgement of the challenges of utopian thinking. 

[dilapidarium]

There is a golden orbit around a start where liquid water is keen, instead of frozen interlocked or admixed into gases--a three bears situation. Similarly, sometimes yr not looking to get wifed up. You just want to fuck, get slapped in the face, and not hug. But in your own bed Not w/a total stranger & somewhat on the regs And why not--Let's order a pizza? afterward. This golden orbit is called Tender/Casual/Fun and not an orbit for everyone.

Tommy Pico, IRL

[dilapidarium]

The allure of Muse, is shirk. Like Adderall--like cheat code A prayer that something easy will emerge, replace the work required to make love or art or peace or thin or smart or trill or public healthy interventions on NDN reservations.

Tommy Pico, IRL

[dilapidarium]

Girard is not coming over, which almost makes me mad But he says sorry, says he wishes he hadn't made plans Wishes he could be with me, and the phrase "be with" is a deference to a kind of growing infection I mean affection inside him that is not growing inside me, so I don't respond. If he said "I'll fuck you Tuesday" I would have :-) :-) :-) If Muse ever texted me I would :-) :-) :-) If Muse texted "I want to be with you" I would have a minor coronary incident, would have to dic- tate this from Woodhull Medical Center as I surely would have passed head- first into the evening's net of basket of hammer of stars. There's my body, and then there's your body-- basically the plot of every Beyoncé song

Tommy Pico, IRL

[dilapidarium]

There was a wall. It did not look important. I was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations that had been nothing in the world more important than that wall

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (1)

[dilapidarium]

Turn around— did you can you will you (a letter unopened) (a knife in the sink). A time of year laying itself onto the windowsill should we want to touch it. The unseen up for grabs. Here it is: even a fly made an important shadow. And here: the place most like life in the pleats, in the knife's underside.

Jorie Graham, “Room Tone,” The End of Beauty

[dilapidarium]

They want to be owned, it is all that can on them. The look, the look finally free of the anything looked-for, the hurry finally come unstuck of the hurrying, something fiery all around like dust or a jury.

Jorie Graham, “The Lovers,” The End of Beauty

[dilapidarium]

���Soylent’s origin story works to associate the drink with the culture that founded it. Soylent adheres to its tech roots; its commercials are about “hacking” and “maximizing efficiency” and “food product.” Its label is sleek and minimalist, and its products never filmed far from a laptop. If it’s also a weight loss drink, it doesn’t want us to know. Soylent’s slogan “use less, do more,” implies that a body is only good insofar as it is a tool for mental optimization. Its shape is secondary, unmentioned, and because it is not named, unimportant. In contrast, SlimFast ads never mention productivity or efficacy; consumers’ professional desires or work schedules are secondary to their physical attributes. Soylent and SlimFast exist in an ad space that presumes gender is binary and nonfluid. Women are sold bodies without minds, and men are sold minds without bodies.“

[dilapidarium]

Here is the secret: the end is an animal growing by  accretion, image by image, vote by     vote.

Jorie Graham, “Breakdancing [Teresa: Saint Teresa of Avila],” The End of Beauty

[dilapidarium]

now her fingers dart like his hurry darts over this openness he can't     find the edge of, like the light over the water seeking the place on the water where out of air and point-of-view and roiling wavetips a shapeliness,     a possession of happiness forms,

Jorie Graham, “Self Portrait as Hurry and Delay [Penelope at Her Loom],” The End of Beauty

[dilapidarium]

A train can be heard (there is distance), and a voice calling an Andrew in because the dampness, yes, is setting in and because no matter what I'd do, unfinishing, the damp—as soon as sunlight's gone—has rights in the matter even the author does not have and the mother, calling and calling, knows this who has been reading the same page over and over                                                               all afternoon

Jorie Graham, “The Veil” The End of Beauty

[dilapidarium]

When I asked you to hold me you refused.        When I asked you to cross the six feet of room to hold me you refused. Until I        couldn’t rise out of the patience either any longer to make us        take possession. Until we were what we must have wanted to be:        shapes the shapelessness was taking back. Why should I lean out?        Why should I move?

Jorie Graham, “What the End is For [Grand Forks, North Dakota],” The End of Beauty