these are autumn leaves—and dried summer fruit, spring berries, and even winter branches, but from last year. most immediately, they are the dried hearts of our most recent affections; desires, which grew and now appear in their last colours, slightly faded, worn and aged. if the branch of the last year appears, perhaps it is next year’s. or will be. maybe that’s our own hope as we lay them down before you: leaf, fruit, berry, and branch. though nothing that is here remains, but there is a mention of it all—and that does; even cruelly, it remains despite nothing else. even ‘nothing’ itself. so much so that, really, we offer you only ‘leaf’, ‘fruit’, ‘berry’, and ‘branch’; and even these were, in their time, just hopes to reach these things themselves and began with the same sense of loss. this is the hope for the new year: that branch to ‘branch’ may show that something in the cycle of that concept must go deeper. if in my mouth was always the word ‘branch’, from which all scepticism about branches emerges, then the state of my mouth is of a thing which has spoken of ‘branches’ but never known them. cannot know them. as hegel would have us piece the moment together just to have it for the first time, he knew its weathering meant something in its structure began with ‘moment’ and only reached later on, if ever, the fruit of that thing or time later we call the moment. perhaps, then, that may finally offer us the metaphor with which to begin. these are such ‘moments’ as we have first encountered with our raw mouths and eyes; and now we present them to you, that they may become, or at least pretense to, something more
postscript: there is angel there, yes, that is an angel there, because it must be an angel, because if it not an angel, then where are the angels and how are there any angels when that is not an angel and if it is not an angel where are the angels and it is angel, that is an angel there, there is an angel right there and it is shining and that is a shining angel and if it is not an angel, if that is not a shining angel, where are all the angels, where are all the angels if that is not an angel?
Pain is violence to the soul: there is an active intervention to what you are. And “you” means you - not the sum of who you have been so far: the history of your actions, thoughts and feelings, but you stripped of all that; the naked you - you now, in this time point alone, the result of that history, observing, attending (we should be careful to not being cyclical here: that is why “you” has to be devoid of continuity, it should be discrete). To be hurt is to experience that intervention, a violent act of the reality that, with its change, inflicts change on you as well. That is because reality sticks: it kisses, absorbs you and dissolves in you; it stays on your eyes forever (well, forever until the very next moment). So, with the cascade of moments that is time, you inevitably fall into the cascade of interventions, violence, to your soul: reality sticks and then tears off again and again, taking away some parts of you, leaving some particles of it on you. Time is pain.
I was thinking that, generally, the other person’s heart is the most important: I should be careful to it, save it, be kind, and by doing that I would leave in them a good memory about the world, because to them I’m a part of the world (that’s the rough divide between the self and everything that is outside). And that was the purpose on its own. I liked the randomness and meaninglessness of it: “there is no reason to create this good memory in the other person, but it’s important to me like death”. With that meaninglessness I avoid consuming something back from that person and the world. It’s like that burning bush: fire without consumption. That is a good image to aspire.
And in it, there may also be some transcendent value to it: if I do a kind thing, honestly, out of genuine love to the person (I guess true kindness implies love and honesty), I almost add something valuable to the Absolute, it’s like the God would smile at me; maybe because a kind act to person makes their spirit more connected to the Absolute, like that person would have more care for being after that kind act. I know it sounds obscure, but it feels like that, I still have to think it through better.
But then, now I feel that people neither want nor need to be an object of a kind act, sometimes it may harm them: there maybe less energy in them to make change in themselves and the world. It’s like by being kind I may actually kill their spirit. People sometimes need to be pushed, irritated, tortured to a change or to an inspiration to creativity: that would fuel in them the energy, make them more ~alive.
And then, that is only what concerns my relationship to people. So I have to actually check if that’s the relationship I should care about the most. Maybe my relationship to my action, to my creation in themselves should be the focus.
There’s a lot of presuppositions and hidden paradigms in my language that I need to be revealed here too, if I’m to be careful with my thought.
The problem is that when I think about those things, about the things I deeply care about, I almost intentionally avoid the proper philosophical argument construction: with its language and logic. I despise philosophy in those moments. Because I hate the reason, and I would hate if reason would actually answer to those problems that I deeply care about: it would be like something divine being turned into material. I need the miracle to help me, otherwise those things I care about are not worth to care about. But if I get this miracle by just being sloppy in my thought, making myself ignorant, then it’s not a real miracle, just self-deception. I must be honest with myself.
I guess I have a flaw in the beginning: I suggest that kindness is defined by leaving a good memory in the person’s head. No. It’s must be more broad: as making the life of the person ~better~ in general. But the what’s better is another definition pit to fall into.
I’ve just received some bad news about my father’s health. I’m reminded of a few things I’ve written about him over the last four or five years; about our relationship, or of him getting older. Invariably about the things he’s passed down to me–his trumpet, his cooking, the ways he lives his life which I find myself repeating. And I invariably focus on the good–the good things he does, the good things he’s passed down to me. One reason for this is because I do feel that he was a good father and that the great majority of his actions and parenting have been “good.” But when we look for remembrance, we are drawn towards uncomplicated interpretations. Or rather, maybe feelings are always uncomplicated, pure, and it’s our analysis of these feelings which complicate matters. Don’t mistake me, that analysis is important to me, maybe even more important to me than the original feeling.
In circumstances of grief and love, our pure uncompromising feeling may really feel the same as another’s pure uncompromising feeling. What I mean to say is, our experience of love is perhaps the same, no matter the particulars. We are unique individuals who experience the world rather differently, but the experience of love is universal and understood immediately; the same can be said of grief. You might call this kitsch. As Kundera put it, when you march in a political or nationalist parade and shout slogans and sing songs as a collective, the content of the slogans matters little; the feeling of being a part of the collective, for Kundera, is kitsch. And if the types of memories that we all, invariably reach for when we are coping with grief tend to resemble one another’s, then I think we could call this kitsch.
Of course, we will have a very different set of feelings depending on our own relationships with loved ones who have passed away–a “worse” father will have a different, pure feeling associated with him, but it will still in its own way be pure. To feel fully is to feel something pure; our inability to articulate that purity does not mean it is any less pure. I will never know the exact relationship and thus the exact feelings you are experiencing, but I have felt this purity of emotion and I have grieved from my own corner; and I believe that our corners are more or less the same in essence, no matter how different they are in content.
We might also extend this reasoning to our historical ideologies–why we feel as though the past must be told one way or another when we are working through historical grief and guilt. Why the “forgotten” Jews of Eastern Europe or Black Americans in general must be uniformly valorized; kitsch is powerful and we should not reject its purity of feeling with our knee jerk reactions against it, but we cannot afford to fetishize a whole people by clinging only to that purity of feeling. We cannot cede analysis; historical interpretation is not easy or uncomplicated, and the solutions to our political settlement and to our own lives will not come from a solely moral-emotional impetus. We will need cold hard reflection. This is the lesson of grief, not to work through the emotions so that we can open our eyes to the sins of our father, but so we can deal with our present conditions at all.
Here is the legacy of 2008 on the individual: if you are poor, you get poorer; and, for the middling classes, you no longer have to sublimate material concerns with a vague sense of personal guilt at the ills of the world because things probably will get worse for you too.
That is the secret appeal of Trump: by reelecting him, we have affirmed that things are worse, and that we can admit to ourselves that things are worse. We are signaling as much to ourselves as we are to our leaders that this is the case. We did not elect Trump because we thought he would fix anything.
Rather, there is a self-destructive heroism to our psychology not unlike the conservative nostalgia which Mishima advocated and died for in postwar Japan. His faith in a glorious Japanese past is understandable (nevertheless, wrong); against an ascendant American consumerism, Mishima found meaning in physical strength, national history, and death. In his own, perversely intellectual way, he too prized the material conditions of one’s own life over all else. His value system placed honor and truth above creativity and personal expression; our relationship with our conditions over our analysis of them.
This is the impulse which lies at the heart of every tragic hero from Oedipus through Ahab: an almost noble compulsion towards self-destruction.
The great accelerationist hope is that, in the wake of the second Trump administration, material concerns will again take center stage in our political life. Politics as such will overtake politics as sport, and the realization of our death drive will actually induce a sort of rebirth. But for now it is just that—a great hope.
I’ve noticed something about conversations with–is it conversations with Americans or conversations with older people? With that older generation of Americans? With intergenerational conversations? Maybe it happens with young people too? Who knows. In any case, I’ve noticed a phenomenon where certain conversations flow so constantly, proposing new topics and ideas so frequently, that topics are never finished but rather left behind. It is difficult to fully probe to the end of any one subject.
Why is this? To read it pessimistically: we don’t really care about the things we talk about, so there’s no interest in completing a thought to its end or in opening up one’s anecdote or comment to questioning. More pointedly, we don’t care about what the group has to say, only that we are able to utter our own anecdote or comment to the group. Or perhaps, we don’t care about what we ourselves really have to say, and so how could we take an interest in what other people might say?
To read it positively (normally, correctly, almost certainly correctly): when we are interested in any one comment, we express our interest so totally and immediately that the conversation must veer off to address this new thought, which is by its nature more interesting than any other thing which has thus far been said in the conversation. This newness is elected by the instinct of the crowd, which is ruled by a dictatorship passed from leader to leader (or, whichever individual makes their interest known, thus directing the conversation towards their newest whimsy).
Why are people colder today? Because we are told that our experiences are singular, and so we don’t believe that others can really understand us. And if we aren’t understood, we will continue talking in the vain hope that something will change: we have to resolve this issue that we can’t even address–we can’t imagine another approach, hoping that something external to us will change the state of affairs.
And so, believing that others do not understand us, we are unable to care about other people because we know that we can’t understand them. Individual to the utmost, we are caught in a cycle of mutual unintelligibility, loathing, and pessimism. We hope for something to change even as we are incapable of changing ourselves.
it has been on his wall for a day or so, having appeared sometime at night, he thought; a wound, he would have called it, but more so from water-damage splitting through the wall into the sign of some exit or entrance than anything else, though he could not have said which or what. he had thought to invite others to see it, observe it with him, produce deductions, but then it was a damaged wall, nothing more. if, still, he hoped for more, it was maybe to the end that amidst causal assessment there may have emerged, “how does such a thing really appear?”, “is it a sign?”, “what does it mean?” but, then, it meant nothing; and that was of interest—did that nothing have something to do with the world? he couldn’t have said what, and he knew most would remain dumbfounded at what was not beyond description owing to how it had remained obscured, not flat and truly empty as it was; no, there simply was no description for it at all. he stared at it, its browning edges, the crowning hole, protruding inward, a mix really of exposed studs, wiring, rusty pipes, and drywall. “that isn’t it,” he thought. it was something else, he was convinced, in itself, and he still did not know what to do about it or how he could go about explaining to anyone what it was that had happened, what it was he needed dealing with, or what it was there was to see. he could have had it filled, and so he imagined thereby forgotten, but he knew better that his mind would see it through the wall where is eyes either dared not or would not, and he could see himself already wondering about it at night, just as he did now, staring at it without any conscience for it was. “what am I even wondering about?” he asked himself: what was there to wonder on? he thought, again, of some game he might have had in inviting others to speculate; he knew as well this would lead toward some mania of its own, when, dissatisfied, the answers piling in, each selfish in his possession of his own interpretation, who could have done anything to say who was right? and what would it have meant to have been right? it looked like a mouth, he thought, now beginning to count his guesses. where was the throat? he thought. and the spine? eyeless, the wound appeared like a perfect human being, he thought further, but for all the missing parts, not that that would have changed anything. “was a mouthless human not still human?” it did not appear to him, however, as something that had either happened or had happened, as it were, to something else. it was there, if one could say that, and this made it seem, again, if one could say this, as if it was not, in fact, there. in the frankness in which it was there, it demanded attention, of course; it was perfectly unusual to see. but, then, it was not as if one could say what one was attending to, or, say, which precise edge made it what it was or gave evidence as to what exactly had occurred. one suspected, if anything, that it had really been there, beneath the wall, and had only re-appeared—but was this likely? again, for all its frankness, this subdued it; it was so there that it defied the simple expectation one confided in description, for then so expectant was the description that all attempts simply failed. it being so special, so out of the ordinary, it defied any simple account of where it was meant to fit amidst the other parts, first, of his flat, then of anywhere else he felt inclined to compare it to. indeed, it became even vague, sunk into the wall, of which it could hardly have been part, either so exceptional it was, or so dumbfoundedly irrelevant, so that one did not really notice it after a certain point—again, it almost seemed to ask the question itself, of what here can be noticed? it was not then that it had appeared or had not appeared, but that it even this was too much of an assumption. it resolved one either to the distress of thinking that something had happened which had not, or, worse yet, that whatever had happened was not something of which one could take notice. even this, however, resolved nothing. was it an indifferent nothing that had happened or something still more obscure? he thought. and if nothing had happened, was it this that was the real nothing, either that nothing had happened and it was this not-having-happened which was nothing or was the nothing, not even the flick in the ointment of reality that had led one towards noticing something that was not there, but simply nothing—an unequivocal nothing, which could not ever be noticed no matter how hard one tried to? he suffered thinking about it, caught in the vicissitudes as much of his thinking as of the parched presence of the wound. ‘but, does not a wound imply too much?’ he thought. he could no more say, however, here was simply nothing; it was after all some nothing which was there, or, again, if not, then it was some true nothing, which made his mind blank upon each observation, defied him in his attendance of it. ‘did this not still occur?’ he thought. ‘like a trick of light, yes, it is really nothing, but then absence leaves something to be desired which cannot simply ever fill in.’ his blank mind, so it seemed to him, was the most interesting thing in the room besides the wound itself. it was the possibility of such blankness which astonished him, and to think that it was there, though, of course, it made no sense to say no, as if his mind was piecing together what it thought was nothing, so as to experience it, he presumed; and what experience did he gather? it was not that that blankness lent itself to thought, for it seemed to simply to be there, somehow with him, somehow not. it was some perfect blankness, which, again he could muddy thinking it was absence, or render it still more absent in thinking, such as he could, by imagining that it was not even there at all, that when he had seen it, the wound, it was there only ever in the corner of his eye; only in the lie of the perfect shadow of his blinded vision could he form an image of it, as if it were advancing nearer to him whenever he took his eyes away from him. where else could it be, he thought, but that wherever I am not, there it is, and wherever it is, I am not. he gave himself this corner-of-his-eye view of it, even as he never saw it, but then it succeeded that he saw it only when he could not see it, only when some kind of vanishing, which his mind could only just barely conceive, substituted for this vanishing the presence of something else which could never be directly looked at, not even as having vanished. it was never there, this nothing, he thought, but then, even now, I am not really thinking about it, and he knew, if only in his heart, how it was then that he saw it, if only with the corner of his eyes, this nothing, the wound, which had never been there to begin with. this did not explain the hole in his wall, which he came to regard contemptuously, feeling as he did that he seemed to discredit something which was ‘there’ only in proposing there was a simpler way in which it might be nothing. “it was nothing,” he explained to a few friends, who had come to visit him and observe it, “but it was more special in that one must imagine it really is nothing.” his friends looked at him incredulously, uncertain either of the difference or of what it was, then, which was to explain whatever it was that was in front of them. “it’s being there is not entirely the point. if it is there as nothing, then we cannot, in any case, observe it.” “so, what remains then?” “either it is nothing that remains or something we can only call not-only nothing.” “no,” interjected one of the friends, “it seems that if it is this blank thing, as you suggest, then we are not even looking at it, and it is this which is like a spot inside our minds. we place something there, which cannot be there.” “but, then how does the blankness enter into it at all?” he added. his friends looked at him confusedly, relenting only slightly to the mad premise. “it seems,” wagered another, “that what we have here is something that is not beyond description because it has exceeded it, but it never even arrived at it. but then this serves as a description. to say then that one has not really described it only muddies one further.” “one must imagine a perfectly blank spot in one’s mind,” he replied. “not even,” began one, final other, “not even, because this nothing is not here, then this is, well, nothing.” “but, that’s just the paradox,” he exclaimed now to all of them at once, “for there must be something there, stranger still than the simple fact that this here, following our observations, should remain nothing, and that is nothing short of the fact that it is, one could say less than nothing, though I would hazard the stranger phrase that it is nothing so truly rendered it defies description, not because it lacks it, but because it is impossible to describe.” “and you’re suggestion,” continued one of his friends, as if this were the natural conclusion of what he had said himself, “is that it is this which is before us? pray, then, how can we see it?” “but, you cannot see it!” he shouted, now rudely, so that his friends began to stir amongst themselves like some rattled heard. “what do you mean, we can’t see it? it is plain as day before us.” “no, no,” he continued to exclaim, “what you can see is nothing, sure, yes, triviality, great, but, no, the thing of which I am speaking of cannot be seen at all, not because it simply cannot be seen, but because it not able to be seen. there is simply, gentleman, quite literally nothing to see.” “then why speak of it all?” asked one of his friends exhaustedly. “because it would seem that this nothing which cannot ever be seen, lacking all depth, colour, anything, is not something of which we can even speak of as seeing or not seeing. even that fails. our mind conjures something up, which we confirm with the notion that it is whatever is absent from the world.” “I still cannot consent to whatever it is you say,” said one of them, he knew not which, so preoccupied had he become with staring at the wound, “because I do not understand why it has appeared at all then?” “it hasn’t,” he replied without looking at them, “there is quite literally nothing to see here.” he had invited a doctor, or rather a doctor had been invited over for him. it had been decided that he must have been suffering from some peculiar illness related to his fixation with the hole in his wall, or wound as he referred to it. “why is it wound?” asked the doctor, “seems like an odd choice of a word, suggests something got wounded.” “maybe, it did,” he replied shortly. the doctor sat beside him, having no other choice, for if he had attempted to place himself before who was now the patient, him, the patient, him, would have simply moved himself a foot closer to return to his unobscured vantage. “you say it is not really there.” “no, it cannot be there. it’s entirely the wrong word.” “but, then you’ve used the word wound. why? is it somehow there to your mind? is there something you can see, that we cannot?” “no, doctor,” he said blithely now, “I can see nothing neither more nor less than you. if it is a wound it is because, well, what else can you call it? it is not a wound like you or I might have, it is simply that, a wound. do you not imagine that something, when it is missing, should be called a wound of some kind?” “it is a wound of what then, young man?” “it is precisely its not being there which is the wound.” “so, what,” said the doctor, exasperated, “after all of this time are you staring at?” “you presume I stare because there is some sense to it. no, no. I am staring at nothing, that is entirely the point. there is nothing to be stared at, the more you point that out, the more I succeed at what I am doing.” “but, then it is there!” shouted the doctor. smiling, then, as if he had got the better of the older doctor, he said, at last, “you see, herr doctor, that’s the rub. it is precisely its not being so that makes it so.” in time, after much dispute and heavy wordiness, the patient now became confessor, or parishioner to the more reformation-minded, and the whole town which surrounded his flat had joined up in a great convocation, like one of old, to decide upon the fretting case of the young man gone mad staring at a hole in the wall. indeed, by way of some interjection, the case was eventually presented to the young man himself, so that he might, in contradicting it, make some acknowledgement of the matter of that of which he was meant to be mad. it had been agreed, after all, that unless the whole town was itself to accuse itself, of find itself accused of, being mad, it had to have the offending party, as he eventually became known, to acknowledge some sense in which he was, or as it might have happened, was also not, involved in such dispute as would warrant any kind of civilian extradition. even this he refused, however, in as petulant a way as he had done with all previous attempts to ensnare him to declare that the nothing was simply there, this having become the chief object of argument for, as it happened, both witness and defence, the offending party having no part in either side, as he had declared it an impossibility. his refusal to acknowledge of course rested upon the fact that there could be no acknowledgement, again, that the nothing was there, “for, my dear jurors, doctors, civilians, judges, lawyers, friends, family, and all others present,” indeed this last affection became the only credible part of his speech to which he himself made what was considered sensical reference, “all others present,” it being deemed at the very least a fair admission of sanity; though this was, it was argued, hardly what they were trying to prove. indeed, his refusal to acknowledge rested equally upon the affectation that, whenever they should ask him if it was really there, the nothing, he would respond, “I say to you and all others present,” the various front and back benches tended to lean in at this point, “it is precisely its not being so which makes it so.” this last part could, of course, have become as obdurate, and obdurately-viewed, an affectation as the others, but seeing as it was this principal argumentation, though it was refused to be called that, and therefore to be even entered into evidence, which had stumped all those around him. eventually, however, the priest was made to enter, it being duly conceived that only the graver suspicions, and therefore the graver methods, could now be conceived as explanation for whatever it was that was “afoot”. it was this which became, it must be said, among, admittedly, many others, the affectation of “those present” to the end that the business, it had to be said, could simply not be described in any simple parlance and so had to be referred to as that which was simply “afoot”, underscored, on occasion, by the more detail-minded, as “the business afoot concerning the nothing that is there”, with some occasionally opting for the laconic rendering of “the nothing that is not there,” this being, in point of fact, technically the central objection of those on the side of the defence, the town having been split between these two nothings, one which was not there and one which was. when this was presented to the offending party, he nodded his head, as if in agreement, and therefore seemingly joining in the general consensus that he was, after all, surely, speaking of a nothing that was not there, but, then, just as he was meant, so they thought, to give his hearty consent to this formulation, he replied with the old affectation, “ it is precisely its not being so that makes it so.” the priest, learned in theology, took this as his starting point. “so, then, son, the negation would imply that it is the first nothing, the nothing that is there, which is, it must be said, the view of the greater half of the town, which is that there is a certain nothing you are staring at, but that it is no more than nothing.” “I cannot consent to say that it is no more than nothing, only that it is certainly not there.” “but, you are on record saying it is its being the negation which makes it so. what can the negation here be but that it is the nothing which is there?” “I mean to say that the negation of it being the nothing which is not there is that it is not there, which is precisely that it not being so is what makes it so.” “because you mean to say it is neither.” “the negation of what is not so is not what is so, not when what is not so is not simply not what is so. there is neither the nothing that is there, nor the nothing that is not there. in one sense, they are exactly the same thing, nothing. which is why it is only when one has the negation that one can get to the point that it is its not being so that makes it so.” the priest did not understand this last formulation in the slightest and so opted for a more human approach, “can you tell me, why, then, you look at it?” “look at what? I’m not looking at anything.” the priest sensed a slip-up here. “if you aren’t looking at anything, are you not looking at the something you are not looking at.” he smiled at the priest, and said, “can you, of all people, not imagine such a thing as a perfect nothing, something so blank it cannot even be contradicted. do you think that you could say you see it or not?” “I would think that if such thing existed you would be carrying it with you all around whereever you went. you would not be able to say when it was not with you.” “and, yet, if you ever said it was, it would be nothing. the question, of course, then, is of this nothing which is really nothing. that’s the question.” “my son,” said the priest, “it is not a question.” with that the priest too left. it was not until a great deal of time had passed that an unassuming person in the town was passing, having driven in totally unaware of the circumstances that had befallen it, the entire place being, after all, in disarray and suspension, all business having come to a halt, as all that remained were those who remained within the disputing halls debating, and who largely hung upon a faded transcript of this last conversation between the offending party, though he was now generally himself referred to rather ambiguously, and conflatingly, as the wound, and the priest. this stranger, though unprovoked, took it upon himself to speak to everyone so as to gain a measure of what had happened, inclined towards the notion he might be able to help, and it was he went into the flat, having spoken already to every other occupant at that point, meeting there where what must have been the singularly sane person to whom the obvious design of this spectacle must be owed. he was not disappointed, but found in the man the perfect expert of whatever dialectical sore had erupted into the scene, the man having even had occasion to drill, so he imagined, into the wall a perfect representation of what was to be the hopeless wound. following some hours with the man in which he heard each line of dispute, he asked him, at last, how he had come by this knowledge, and why he, out of all of them, seemed to know it so perfectly. he did not inquire, it must be noted, as to the question of the wound itself, satisfied as he was with the pure demonstration, after all, that it was not, in any case, to be found. the man to whom he spoke eventually replied to his question, saying, “I could not tell you who first mentioned the wound to me, for it is not the kind of thing that can be mentioned. I certainly cannot tell you who first saw it, for it is not the kind of thing to be seen. but, then, as I have often said, it’s not being there is precisely what makes it so. those who say, what is there is not there, but this is but a philosopher’s trick. it makes no difference how you are content to formulate what you cannot formulate.” “yes, I wondered this myself,” said the stranger, “and it seems to me that the townspeople have, so I imagine by your design, missed a crucial discursive move here. they were inclined to say that, then, there must be some formulation which is adequate, but there isn’t, is there? if I am correct in understanding what has gone on, the wound does indeed exist. one could even say it exists more than anything else, and that everything else is rather a fiction of its formulation. but, here, one must go a step further. if we were to imagine the wound in the world as like this hole here in the wall,” and he pointed to the wound rather scholastically, “then we might ask of it, is it an entrance or an exit, thinking it must be one or the other. is it not, however, that what all others have missed is that, it is in its impossibility, which makes it there. what is, finally, there, is not, as all others had thought, nothing, but what was impossible. nothing, for any interlocutor, was a category, like any other, to be overcome. what was there, finally, was what was impossible. and once one admits to that, that that impossibility is there, one accomplishes that very disorientation which is the problem of the wound itself. one must not, after all, ask, what is that thing we call the wound which is there in the world, but what is the world which is there in the wound?” and when the stranger had finished speaking and his eyes flushed with a sense of strange epiphany, he turned towards the man with whom he had been speaking to find he was no longer listening.
