Cetaceus

The trace is everywhere. I see it now and see it clearly. It’s the amp that sits in my fireplace right now, it’s the towel I put in the laundry today. Indeed, I’ve always seen it, I just didn’t know what to call it. The photo of the cat on my computer desktop is the trace of a trace. The word and the concept are beautiful, and they work to describe what it is they are meant to in the most effective way possible. Thanks Levinas, I guess I owe you one.

At some point in the coming weeks I am going to move this blog elsewhere, probably just over to a regular wordpress blog, spend some time re-organizing it, and probably re-posting some old travel writings, now long out of sync.

There are, in fact, none. I haven’t updated in a while, but other than finding myself on the other side of 30 today, school work has kept me too busy to breath, let alone reflect on anything. Something interesting will happen soon, however, to be sure. In the meantime, I recommend “Ghosts of the Great Highway” to you, again and again.

One of the really important differences between living somewhere completely new — I mean this as a technical term: specifically, where all of your friendships and relationships are new — and living some place for 10 years or your whole life or where there are people you’ve known for those amounts of time, is that when you live somewhere completely new, and something important happens, there is no one around to talk to about it. I don’t mean “no one” in the literal sense, I mean no one who, by virtue of having known you for so long, will “get it.” This is the difference, or at least one of them.

PS: I say this because the importance of yesterday is nothing that anyone in this part of the world can possibly understand.

I had this dream last night that I just remembered. I was in someone’s living room in San Francisco, and one of them was there with me. Actually, we were sitting on the couch together, across from another couch full of a number of people. There were also people standing up, it was some kind of small party, and whoever owned the house was there among them. Then, who pulls up–in the gold Lamborghini her dad had bought for her mom–but the other one. She comes in, and there we all are, this random group of people, me, and the two of them, there in one room, at the same place, at the same time, being really nice to one another. These people have never met, so that was bizarre enough, but I took the image of the two of them smilingly, though of course warily, introducing themselves to one another to mean something about what I should do, some action my subconscious is telling my I should take. Whether or not I should listen to it is another question entirely, but that aside the image was extremely striking, and even more weird. The gold Lamborghini really made me laugh, but seeing those two together, same place, same time, all smiles, it was nothing short of bizarre. It may also be a message that I should be slightly less serious about certain things. Those two in a room together, introducing themselves, and being extremely friendly: I’m not too into moralism, but I could only take it as a message, nothing less than some kind of self-instruction.

I have to admit that as much as it is true, and as much as I know it is true for others, I tend to only ever think that the claim of “being too busy” for this or that is some kind of excuse. That is weird, of course, because it is a statement, and by my own instincts an excuse, I use every day for all sorts of things and to just about everyone. The fact is, it is absolutely true that me and everyone else around here is really busy, too busy even for a lot of the things a lot of us would like to be doing, like hanging out, having long conversations, ingesting various forms of art and so on. Don’t get me wrong, learning is a joy, but making knowledge my full-time job has done interesting things to the rest of my life. I was telling Ben the other day that my entire iPod is now full with only five genres of music: classical (all Bach), minimalism, afrobeat, math and jazz. The connection? All of it is either completely instrumental or the lyrics are, in the case of Fela Kuti and the like, either in another language or really rhythmic or for the most part both. I just can’t read, write or translate with voices whispering sweetly profound poetic nothings in my ears. I’m not too upset about this, as I do believe that listening to tons of Bach and every Tortoise album over and over again is not only good but somehow, in a deeply spiritual way, actually good for me. Nevertheless, it remains strange–especially as I love so much the deft utilization of the English language, perhaps one of life’s greatest pleasures–that my musical consumption has essentially been funneled out of necessity into the specific channels it has. I swear man, I’ve listened to that brief Henry Tennis EP that Takeshi gave me in Tokyo last August at least 1000 times in the past year; now those are some learnin’ songs.

The other interesting thing here–and maybe it would be better described as the overarching phenomenon in question–aside from the funneling of music into these specific channels is that the general economy of aesthetic input is now almost completely determined by “busyness.” I swore to myself that I wouldn’t stop going to shows anytime soon, and clearly those are for the most part relegated to weekends, but I have lived in this town a year now and I still haven’t been to the Art Institute. Art in my life has to bend itself in weird ways to the fact that I have a full-time job reading now.

So, clearly if “being busy” is an excuse, this is the worst way in which it is an excuse. Now, I hold that it really isn’t and I am just someone who expects everything to be some kind of racket or hustle–even the things I tell myself–and that I just think busyness is anything but a damn good reason not to do something. What I mean by those last two convoluted sentences is that I read all day, so I really am too busy for anything, so I better stop distrusting myself on this one. You really are one busy person, now get back to it.

This afternoon has inspired these kinds of thoughts, which I just wrote on text-edit at work:

Is loving someone the condition of the possibility of giving them a chance, letting things slide, actual forgiveness? And I mean these in something like the sense that Derrida gives forgiveness, namely that  it can only be bestowed in response to something unforgivable. Now, taking this down a few notches (I mean look, interpersonal relationships don’t have to have the gravity of war and genocide), can we say something slightly different: that a pre-existing relationship is the platform from which someone takes a leap of faith for someone else, someone who has done wrong, someone with regard to whom the lack of that platform would completely negate even the thought of forgiveness, leaving instead the simple desire to never talk to that person again. The question is one of exactly what that relationship is; do we call this romantic or platonic love? I think, possibly, that the answer is yes.

>I decided that what had been written here was a bunch of gibberish, and that I would just leave the important part:

As a great man, sitting near a great dog, once said over dinner: “I blame Catholicism.”

It is a drizzly early morning in Chicago. Here going on a week now, I am just home from the bar, having seen friends and non-friends, talked a bit and drank some. I missed a show tonight, and forgot to call Sam. But all of this is an aside, because it is moments like these, in which I am surprised to be lucid enough to write something like this, that the strongest feeling I have is one of waiting. Right now, I feel like I am waiting for something, perhaps rather someone, to show up. And it is as if I have been waiting for years, like right here on this couch, waiting for a knock at the door, waiting for you. Someone else, somebody, once asked me if I had any patience. At the time it was clear to me that I had none at all and never would. But the proof is in the pudding my friend, and the fact is that I goddamn do have patience: I’ve been waiting this long, and will continue to do so.

The theme song to this waiting is Vetiver’s “Been So Long,” which I will sing to myself and to you when you arrive:

I can’t believe that you’re knocking
Knocking on my door
Oh it’s been so long, been so long, oh

I am home now, by which I mean quite literally home, at this very moment writing to you from my bedroom-cum-storage space at my mother’s house in south Jersey. I returned to the US from 3 months in Paris and a week in Berlin to two nights in New York, one in Red Bank with the little brother, one here after the obligatory and always anticipated stop at my uncle’s place for pasta and sauce the likes of which you have never tasted, and in an hour or two I depart for the ever-loved city of Philadelphia for a night, some beers, a quick haircut, chill time with one of the best of sisters and 2 or 3 of the best of friends, before returning to Chicago to start the whole process, in the form of year 2 of graduate school, all over again. Yes, that was one sentence. The summer was familiarly amazing and important things happened — things serious, ridiculous, and at times frustrating beyond belief even as they brought me happiness of equal measure at others. I reconnected, and to my mind enriched, relationships with good people, and initiated a few important ones that I can and must describe in the strongest terms possible as having marked, changed, and made better my life, and will continue to do so, both in their continuation into the future, and the lasting effects of brief and powerful moments. All in all, the trip improved my French dramatically, increased my love for certain things and people, and has left me with a sense of both peace and settled determination that I haven’t felt probably in years. Above all, I must say that there were those few words,, simple and to other other ears obvious, delivered with both the force of soft but sure conviction, and not only the ring but the smack of truth, that one night in the briefest but best of periods, in a voice at the time new but as of now constituting a lasting echo for me that I am determined not to let die. What an August–I thank you for that.

I had begun to prepare a post upon my arrival a week and change ago in Berlin, a more proper travel-writing statement of the sort I have composed plenty of times now, and which in the past I had felt compelled to pen, with a simple satisfaction that, although certainly not gone, never really arrived in the usual way this summer. Excerpting part of that draft will say something about why I’ve maintained such radio-silence the past few months:

Thursday September 3, 2009

I haven’t done really any travel writing this summer, which I chalk up to the fact that I haven’t done that much proper traveling, in the strictest sense. I lived in Paris for three months, had an incredibly regular schedule, and spent many an afternoon-into-the-evening pounding out a long and hopefully worthwhile paper, casting long leftward glances out of the northerly-facing 6^th floor window of the Maison des Provinces de France at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, framing the site, across the city, of the Sacré Cœur. That view will be perhaps the strongest visual memory of the summer, if for no other reason than that it was indeed assez belle, and that I saw it every day. Of course, there are/were far more beautiful and far more memorable things in Paris, but such things are not the stuff of blogs. The point being, anyway, that I haven’t felt as though I’ve had much to say since despite the many interesting and cool things that have happened, people I’ve met and fun stuff that I came across, it had for me more of the character of everyday living than of travel proper. Really, I only left the actual city (by which I mean, crossed the périphérique) 3 times: once to go to the flea market at Saint Ouen, once to get a haircut, and once to go to a warehouse/squat party in the suburbs, which was, for the record, pretty awesome. I only found myself in Montemarte once or twice, and otherwise made the 14^th, 13^th, 5^th, 6^th, 1^st and 2^nd my usual haunts. There were a few great times in the 19^th and surrounds, but the core of the city really ended up having enough going on in it to keep me occupied while I wasn’t writing. But again, really the pace was slow, regular, marked with familiar faces and places that soon became so, such that to really feel some urgency to put fingers to keypad never really arose in the way it has for me before. This isn’t to say that it wasn’t a great or eventful summer, but rather that I think the photos I have online say more about the entire experience in general than I can really sum up in writing anyway.

So there is that, and I hope it makes sense.

I did write something furiously, in public, on the Berlin U-Bahn in a way that I think confused my compatriots and the random person who got on the train and sparked off the writing fit. I’ll put some of that down for you as well:

Dear Friend,

I saw you on the U-Bahn tonight in Berlin, much to my surprise and startlement. I had sat down next to a man doing complex mathematics who was himself quickly replaced by a placid blond and white spotted dog. You, not being you at all, not even knowing or probably being able to conceive of you or why this other person would make me think of you, and for this reason even more surprisingly, looked up quickly at me as if in recognition, looking away quickly but glancing back constantly during the ride as I scribbled these notes. (I had to display my handwriting for Ruth as we exited the train). You have no idea how bizarre it was, let alone why, to see you in this place and context, especially for a mythologizer like me, one who seeks stories, hidden meanings, secret knowledges and messages everywhere. Above all, that you entered and sat down next to Petra – of all people! right next to her! — and across from me was something I will probably spend months pondering and attempting to unpack. Petra sat there and smiled unaware the entire ride, me hyper-aware, you looking back at me now and then, directly in the eye even, with a bit of the slightly-angry-but-silently-so face I’d been figuring on encountering at some point, a strong hint of fatigue in the eyes, tired eyes across the aisle, and if we factor in the place, well, how can any sense be made of this agglomeration of personal/person-symbols?

Of course, and this being perhaps the most important thing, this almost-you was not you, but a specter of you, which had emerged from the periphery, the horizon, of the space of my own personal experiencing, from where who knows, and aside from the name of the U-Bahn stop, to where who knows. This specter had no knowledge of you and probably never will, no real knowledge of me either, but only a very much understandable curiosity and probable annoyance at the strange and very clearly not-German man across the aisle casting you furtive glances and writing quickly in a flip-pad. Well, so it happens, we stand in for one another, we mean things to one another, even when not really being there ourselves, or when that meaning has no real connection anymore, or perhaps and lost and irretrievable connection, or who knows what else. I have, here and there, discovered my own personal meaning to certain others, meaning I could never have predicted or known had they not made it known to me, and so have I with others. In any case, I will think about this spectral-Petral-German you-encounter for a while, and hopefully for both our sakes will make some sense of it, someday sooner or later.

My sister is home now, the train is in about an hour and a half. So, I leave you with these fragments of France and Germany now from my old seat in Jersey. Next time, it’ll be Chicago.

When one has planned to spend one’s Sunday reading Hume, it behooves us to not allow distant events–from the personal to the political–in far-off countries and climes to take our attentions away from the texts. That said, it is inevitable, as my attention span is no match for the irrational drive to hang my hat on your every word. If only we’d've played the cards we’d been dealt decisively, with purpose and at the precise historical moment when that stacked hand had been called for. Waiting forever, patience, and so on, are all cover-ups for cowardice. Let’s hope the president don’t make the same mistakes the rest of us tend toward.