Thump.

hand to hand to march to hell to us to now to law to death to field to done to

Thump.

(A heartbeat here marked time. An instant was the only. Creation destruction in a moment and then gone and then again all at once. No endings no beginnings except all was always both one and the other.)

Thump.

(Their god was a DJ. She made a world in a beat, and once that beat was over, so was its world. What persisted across multiple beats did not really persist at all, because with each beat each creation it was born anew along with the world, and with each beat it perished. There was no self, there was no identity: only a succession of moments of existence, of perception. Only the heartbeat.)

Thump.

Point (touch) Turn (touch) Drop (touch) Bend (touch) Step (touch) Swish (touch) Rub (touch) Spin (touch) Shimmy (touch)

Thump.

(Always in the beat, in the moment, suddenly and for an instant. Sometimes the moment was like a snapshot on a dancefloor, and the DJ watched as bodies bent into or away from one another, touched and touching all at once, and she thought it beautiful. Sometimes the DJ watched as bodies cut and tore at one another, giving and taking pain, and she thought it beautiful. Sometimes she slowed down time, extended the moment, turned it around to admire it and to give the bodies more time to feel it before it was over. And it was beautiful.)

Thump.

(Sometimes the DJ watched as they posed out a moment in the midst of a game of sorts and it was run run run smile jump leap air air air air air fall…and then over. All at once. Can there be all-at-once without violence?)

Thump.

(Sometimes it was the midst of a lightning storm, and the thunder crashed in a single note and the moment was one non-stop sounding and hearing and loudness and wetness and rain and fire.)

Thump.

just a wedge of geese cutting the air, at the moment of an up- or down-flap feathering of wings and then  

Thump.

crashing rolling of waves cresting and smashing and againsting the side of a sailing and blowing and   

Thump.

(There was no sense in this world. Only connection and co-presence, and experiences of them. But what did experience mean in a moment? What kind of body allowed and enabled this kind of experience? What kind of history was possible with no past, and no future, and no now, because when everything is now then nothing is now?)

Thump.

(And all of it was music. As a heartbeat is music. Is an all-at-once-ness. Is a pell-mell making of life. Is movement in moments. Sometimes the time between thumps was slow, and sometimes quick, and the DJ changed it up when she felt inspired and always it kept going and always it could stop at any time as existing and ending always exist at the same time all at once because everything is an opening and a closing.)

 

[Return to “Reading Notes: The Intertwining – The Chiasm”]

 

 

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14 Jan 2016 note: This piece was originally written as a translation of the first sentence of the Merleau-Ponty piece: “If it is true that as soon as philosophy declares itself to be reflection or coincidence it prejudges what it will find, then once again it must recommence everything, reject the instruments reflection and intuition had provided themselves, and install itself in a locus where they have not yet been distinguished, in experiences that have not yet been ‘worked over,’ that offer us all at once, pell-mell, both ‘subject’ and ‘object,’ both existence and essence, and hence give philosophy resources to redefine them.” There are embedded references here to moments that came from a thinking hard about and a researching into “pell-mell” – Richard III, Moby Dick, and others. It may yet take on another form as part of a collaborative, many-voiced translation of the essay. I’ll link here with updates! Thanks to JF, BS, AW.