May or June: Did it matter?


Something like


I wake up and I have decided I need to relearn to walk. I take a walk through Watertown using a technique I fashioned from the words of Pauline Oliveros, her practices. A deep listening exercise. Both an exercise in deep listening and exercise. How could I lose? How to open the door to music rather than the all too common refrain.


I take a walk using a technique I fashioned from words. Pauline Oliveros. A deep listening. Both an exercise and exercise. How could I lose? How to open the door rather than the all too all too. Simple: by paces left open to exchange.


A few simple rules:


1) Enter a meditative state such that requires one to stare forward a few feet from one’s body, and not to move one’s eyes.


2) Establish a pace, of breathing and stepping. They don’t need to be identical. They will become identical (effectively).


3) Listen to Pauline Oliveros’ 1982 composition Horse Sings from The Cloud (not loudly, at ‘conversational’ pitch) through earbuds connected to a player.


4) Think of a destination and go there. Instead of thinking of the many steps it will take to reach the destination, think of the trajectory from home door to destination as one organic movement, like the single bound. Refrained time (there is no other kind of time) tells us where (when) a territory should end, yet by this exercise we seek to push the abstract boundaries of both territory and time, angling a longer pass.


A few simple rules, through Watertown. A walk I fashioned from the words of Pauline Oliveros. A deep listening exercise. Both an exercise in deep listening and exercise. I need to relearn—how to walk, listen, invite—and the only way is to move my legs out the door, but also to will something return. Like a baby’s climb to deictic. I mean this moon and star. My legs. By eliminating, somewhat, the necessity to see, I shift walking’s intensive calibration away from the day to day and toward something like an experiment. A hair-pin adjustment. Just by a hair. A helicopter on Mars. I make walking an intensive collaboration between the step and the breath, which—once I begin—realize how different a song this twining has made. A longer field. Toward something like an experiment, a practice, an ethico-aesthetic because I embody ways of living, the myriadic repetition of (good) deleture. As always, following Nietzsche through Turin.


Much like the various “filters” available for use on social media, often one begins again after a trial in which the possibilities make themselves known, and then one selects, and then one experiments, or the experience comes from earlier. So I began the exercise, effectively, after I had really begun. This had implications for the song of which I’m proud, and implications for guilt. I become aware of a light-relation between beings, not a sound relation, and not even truly a sight relation. This had something to do with the hum between my temples? Light as heat, white heat. Intensive collab.





~





A head pulls toward the speeding ambulance before it knows to look up.


Speed.


Affect sticks, expressed and contented. For a while I can resist. At the first intersection, only, I edge a refrain from the rigidity my spine assumes crossing the rectangles (the crosswalk), themselves placed in an echo of pond stones, affording only one plane of crossage. I took molar safety for granted, thought luckily nothing had mowed me down as I emerged as from a lake onto the other side of the street.


I had chosen the water, that is the bridge on the water, or the water sufficiently itself. To be honest I hadn’t decided. My destination. No more like numbering. Though a decision has to be made, no decision in this scenario survives. Therefore, one not only should remember to improvise, but what forms improvisation might take in relation to the here/now.


Instead of thinking of the many steps it will take to reach the destination, think of the trajectory from home door to destination as one organic movement, like the single bound. I had chosen the water, that is the bridge on the water, or the water sufficiently to itself. I didn’t need to decide. I took molar safety for granted. I could walk in a direction with no direction. I think of how conversational speech typically sticks to one pitch, one volume, though the speakers vary. The body leans where it needs to. I try not to worry about people. In the world. I worry about people on my phone. I walk bloomingly but I wouldn’t want to run into anything (relatively), so I follow, in a very limited sense, the blurry line of the sidewalk through my meditated eyes.


I don’t consider my walk to be “computer-assisted” as one might mistake. Rather, a walking-with the folded entity that would augment my attunement to the music. Unlike a constraint of omission simply. Simply. A critical relation to whatever else is available, to what avails, to complexify the affective stature of the walk as it's habitually laid lit. We say that one “makes the time” to accomplish some necessary. I make the time to relearn.


I make the time to relearn the walk, re-conditioning not structurally but pre-habitually, machinically. The mechanism has structure, where the machine finds a connection (or is a found connection—a sound connection). A sound connection, like structural integrity of a bridge or the bird refrain, located in speech, the chatter of cats, Debussy’s Preludes . My foot as it moves in and out of step with itself, in and out of the drone. The single bound, with all its little tiny decisions. Every friend unfolds like the pressure of my hand in a fountain. I walk for them, the t-shirt reads.





~





Affect, affect, affect… As in between opposition, between the beat and the step. Which is subjective, and that wants an object? Which encounters the scan?


"Affect sticks," expressed and contending. Affect stings, a sometime emotion. I approach it how I imagine the Surrealists approached their own writing, with surprise.


As I rounded the corner at Lexington and Acton, near where the construction had been taking place, I suddenly became aware of the exercise’s impending “completion.” I both wanted it to end and didn’t want it to have an ending. It had an ending, or it had many endings that I continued renewing. I'm told this is called the formation of territory, from where aggression takes form. Formal anger. Anger-fear. And homily, humming.


I open my eyes to water water water. A turtle turtle asleep in it.


End of first walkthrough.





~





(Do turtles sleep?)



july 1



This morning I stood in my living room between her desk and the couch and lifted my arms until they touched, then brought them down—hands in prayer—to the level of my heart, exhaling.


I tried some listening, I tried to achieve a global attention. I heard the brush of passing cars down below in the street. I heard the thicker brush of the shower in which someone was standing. I thought about cars and the naked body. I want to write, I thought of a naked body, but shouldn’t. Though I've just done that here. I tried slow walking, but quickly fell out of concentration (the concentration of attention), when I thought I would hit the desk. My eyes were closed shut, like a zazen beginner. When I turned around and walked the other way I fell off balance as soon as I began lifting the heel of my second foot. I just kind of looked down and exhaled at the floor. Sometimes it means you’re a part of a machine, not necessarily the one you were hoping. Sometimes the floor fights back, but it doesn’t mean it’s you that it's fighting.


I know nothing of the OM other than the moan of it. Word which has its root in others. As it's been often said, hidden (and reversed, though not it's negation) in mother, extended in ovum, nearly residing in often and open, both of which titillate the walk toward membrane. In money, which is not not its negation. Alm-ost in own, whose ghost haunts all of it. Our living together. Our root in others. In various contexts.


In the future, with what body is my body coupled, and whose?





~





Four simple rules. I think of home in these moments of peace. That is, I think of the indissoluble space between objects in one’s typical field of vision, how that shapes one’s habit of expectation. Affect: a habit of expectation, the limit of what can be felt. As only the felt can be felt. Only the refrain, by opening to another, allows for the true, unrepresented possibility for change. Yet back in Missouri, all the existential refrains ever say is “Don’t kill me.” Hills going into the sky, then back down, down. Not knowing if the car on the other side of the hill driving the opposite way has drifted into the center lane or not, a constant game of chicken, except un-incentivized. Exhale. Massachusetts. Watertown. Lexington. Street. Charles River. Exhale. Parkway. Charles River. The sound of the ducks only audible when I opened my eyes to their little feet paddling. Exhale.


This feels new, an exercise. In experiment. The new I and they have done so well to keep hidden from me.





~





july 3



Resuming the exercise in a period of great anxiousness. Hoping it doesn’t stick around, that this mood could turn into a diagnosis. I walk to the library in heat. I amble. It’s good that I’ve made this walk—like the one to the river—at least fifty times in the past year alone. I don’t have to think, no-nonsense conceptual-walk.


I walk past a philosopher's camp of squirrels, not darting as I pass. It’s still Horse Sings From A Cloud in the ear-space. The ear-piece—that is, made for the ear—which splits the ear-peace, or connects up to another less-probable. Though this time I've forgotten my notebook and am writing this on the back of a printed out copy of Felix Guattari's "Balance Sheet for 'Desiring-Machines'." Having begun the exercise in the middle of my walk, I realize that from the beginning of the first time, I'm ready for (the?) music to begin. I’m thinking of Messaiaen. Oliveros’ note: flubbing in and out of one’s focus. One dead squirrel under a tree on the opposite side of the trail to the library from the squirrel camp, mirrors the dead rabbit under the car from yesterday. Just as I wonder why I am compelled to record repetitions as repetitions and not, say, something else, I wonder what occurs (or who) between the slow rise of the foot and the decision to step. Is there any way for the body but forward? Trail, squirrel, shade, a mother's long cleavage as she pushes two three year olds in a stroller. Utterly called-out by this soon-to-be-diagram. There are no conditions, other than summer, that make me and the strangers passing me part of a legitimate ensemble, no recurrence by virtue of itself. I glimpse how far one's attentional ethics can come in over ten years of breathing deeply, as well as how false that distance actually is. The so-called space between strides that seems too artificial to ascribe to parts of the body, especially parts of the body I am conditioned to love. "This is the machine of which the dancer is a component part."


Waiting for the music to take over the tune. To take over taking attention. Utterly called-out by this, too. I must relearn what it means to constitute. The natal. To open a door, any door. To music. I've decided I need to relearn how to walk. How much else of my life takes places as if in a dream? Poor legs. Relearn to re-exercise, too. These are the degrees of mistrusting the dream, gradations of doubt. My raison d'etre.





~





the panic: july 28



Calming down—de-escalating—this isn’t “my thing.” But I can (Write it!). I blazon. The one huge tattoo of my chest on my chest.


This morning I’ll try walking among my territory in order to reach, perhaps, what lies behind it. I don’t know. I begin walking. Much like in the months following my father’s passing, entering the meditative state ignites an outpouring of grief. The sensei used to say, “If you must cry, the books have taught us, you must cry with the full outpouring of your grief.” What about a grief that isn’t your grief. I think of Emerson, as I often think of Emerson. Do I escape into Pragmatism itself as a refuge, or is my nature inherently pragmatic, admittedly most visible amidst strife? That I find personal import in the pragmatic method seems less suitable to the discussion here than that I’m typically miserable. I carry strife like a weaponous limb, it’s true. What a machine I miraculate. It seems to be just the room that I’m in that affects me so. The same room. Or series of empty rooms. As I’ve gathered, there’s nothing more painful than a series, that which is said to be operating, that which one must lend care. It’s why I’ve never kept a garden.


The body leans where it needs to lead, yet in the suffocation of grief, it’s the world that seems to falter. I try to worry about other people. In the world. I worry about the people on my phone. My primary interaction with a text is to “text” text back at it. I know this is a new normal. My primary understanding of the proletariat comes from the eldery women I work with, the shit they've put up with. On twitter, it's like a beer in the middle of the day. I try to keep off of it. So I walk.


I walk bloomingly


here, to tell you.


I wouldn’t want to run into anything. (Relatively). So I follow, in a very limited sense, the blurry
line of
the sidewalk through meditated eyes.


What’s meant by the body's center. The center of the body. More than a locus? I speak of a body around which. As the body means, necessarily. A configuration. I take a walk through Watertown, a town—having lived in it unemployed for so long—I think I know decently. A town my body's internalized, folded over. Horse Sings from a Cloud in the ear-space. I think about how Chris spoke about Glass, Irony and God, how he said he admired it but wouldn’t ever think of curling up in bed with it. What would I curl up with? This song, eddying like the digestive cut that occurs between the snake’s scales and the creek. Sometimes things are just below the surface of what we think of as surface. Sometimes a depth is the surface. I wend as a snake wends, dark with the coming.


Conscious of the thick penis failing to latch onto my left thigh as I step, lifting in near but never perfect tandem, the body’s third wheel. And first anchor. Conscious of the non-will to always be pulling it out of my pants. Action that miraculates the body beneath.


I think possibly it gets in the way of too much. “From a certain point of view, it would be much better if nothing worked, if nothing functioned. Never being born, escaping the wheel of continual birth and rebirth, no mouth to suck with, no anus to shit through...”


Not always conscious of the stiffness all over. Waking up to do stretches. Waking up to do work. Shitting and eating. Fucking and singing.


I would like to go against progress with this. This exercise. Approach without any discernible progression towards which. Operating without totalization. Isn't this how James approached the squirrel problem? Wherever my body stands, practical consequences follow closely before.


I walk to the library. The river of paper.


I walk to the center. The river of difference.


I walk to the territory. The river of discourse.





~





Refrain arises out of a rhythmic impulse, like the flutter of street light before it is “lighght” (Aram Saroyan).


Often others refuse the 1:1 relation of things while also in metaphorical substancing. When we say "refrain from ____, please" (“stop doing x action”), we make an appeal to the autonomic without even realizing. We chain a command.


From Kant we come to believe we possess the right to be right, not to cry when it isn't seemly to, no coffee past certain thresholds of human time. Rather with duration, the unthought of the body comes visible once more (as in the time after infancy, before childhood, where the dreams are stored). We place our hands in a circle below the gut and something simultaneous urges the sense of the body's being locked into place, yet never more free. It's about setting a plane. You can think of destination and speed as a wooden disk, if you want. With metaphor in tow, we grope into physics. You don't have to think of anything, really. You can just walk, let truth rally behind your thought like the wind through a flag.





~





Utterly depressed these past weeks. Manic, really. Unable to feel and then feeling it all, the all of it.





~





It's been ten years since I began my life as someone whose father had died.





~





november



I need to relearn. Five panic attacks, bad ones. I poured through Oliveros' book again. I needed to learn how to walk so I did it, with Pauline, or tried. I bought a pair of fresh-colored New Balance 574's, plugged in my headphones, and for 20 minutes every week this summer I listened to Horse Sings From A Cloud in attempts to revive myself, one who had been forgotten by poetry. What role does repetition play in a person's personological stupidity, was the type of question I tried asking myself. Tried to reach my own personological stupidity plane. I didn’t. I didn't reach it. I tired easily. I tired, though.


I let pace establish itself as I walked. I mimicked, willing or unwittingly, a form of stepping first theorized by people long gone. People who had to walk to get places, I'm told. For some reason I think of the nuns in Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus.





~





Then Young Thug released So Much Fun and once again I awoke, to a life.


Then Young Thug released So Much Fun and I awoke to this life.





~





I learned the Tibetan face wash, which I will reproduce here:


Rub your palms together vigorously.


Then rub your palms up and down your face.


As if you’re washing a monk





~





You know where the bag at, tell me where it is / ...I don’t care about no cop, I’m tellin you just how it is.





~





I worked for 500 hours. I had sex with my body and yours. I would start books just to abandon them in a day or two. Somewhere, the runner lost track of the shade. I had to change.





~





december



In December, you hit me with something new. Forcing me to evaluate. Luckily, repositioning is easy. Too bad it was too cold to walk bloomingly, or I would have walked bloomingly. In the cold one walks like a soldier, I think Spinoza once said.


We did sing to the bookshelves, I fondly totaled. Danced on the rung. The rug. Grasped many a night in the nigh. The night.


Too bad it meant this was the end of something that felt so enduring from the beginning. Not necessarily enduring lovingly, but enduring. There I said it.


Mornings orphaned spheres, or an ectoplasm, repeating those contours. There.


So much of our love I sought to relearn. Or something like it. Remembering walking around the side streets of the neighborhood in a city to which we’d just moved. Every corner so far away, to be anywhere was like a course in bereavement.


I grieve that my grief.


I thought in the car yesterday about how our love made a refrain for me, or what Stern (who I’m reading right now) calls a RIG (Representation of Interactions that have been Generalized), within which our sense of emerging selves, itself within a core, unfolds through repetition, into episodes of consistent affection.


I didn’t discover that love made a refrain. I’m not so naive as I often appear—due to my forgetfulness. What I realized was how moments return. Not memories of moments, but the conditions themselves—their conditions of being felt, seen, withdrawn from. I began to regain a sense of myself as it was when your love was so new to me. When I wouldn't know what the next day would bring, walking back from fucking in your house on the dark Providence street, listening to Angel Olsen (for empathy) and Deathheaven (in honor of ecstasy), not wanting to die.


That me that felt wonder at living somewhere so alien to a Missourian and, miraculous to all, somehow surviving.


For Christmas I ask for a pair of Sony Bluetooth Over-The-Ear Headphones, coveting their higher fidelity and cordless capabilities. I wondered how this would adjust to the contours of the walk. A week before Christmas you informed me the price had gone up. I didn't expect you to pay $200 for headphones. Instead I asked for a pair of black Cowin E7's. Cheaper, still cordless. I didn't like them at first, or was hesitant to make an evaluation. Until I lay down in bed and flicked on that song.


I heard the note that I'd always heard. The note I keep hearing. But I heard something else. I could, for the first time, hear Oliveros' fingers clicking the bass switches of her accordion. I tried to imagine how the dog on the cover of the album understood bass switches, their itinerant clinking. A dog howls with a timbre we recognize. I was in bed but felt lifted. I remembered the walk I took in May or June, whenever it was, or in some way I rewalked it. I didn't think of Deleuze or Guattari, or Thoreau or Kant or anyone other than Pauline, who had given me this message: I hope that when we finally buy a house together we own this album on vinyl and can walk together inside it. We meaning me now.


Blue tooth. We meaning me. There.





~





Rub your palms together.


Then run them up and down.


As if you're walking.
As if


I’m telling you this.


I’m telling you just how it is.