The value of vagueness

Overall, I deeply and profoundly think we (meaning the whole planet) take ourselves TOO SERIOUSLY and that is why these lines about Deleuze's thought from John Rajchman's book The Deleuze Connections have struck me so strongly:

"Our lives must be indefinite or vague enough to include such potential for other worlds of predications or individualizations, and so enter into complications with others that are never fully 'explicated.' The vagueness of 'a life' is thus not a deficiency to be corrected, but rather a resource or reserve of other possibilities, our connections.

It appears to me that the deeply felt need to be right, to hold on to one's own identified world view without interest in another's perspective is one of the foundational causes of so much tragedy and suffering in our world today. I think this concept of "vaugeness" can help loosen the hold of righteousness and fundamentalism.

Deleuze's ABC Primer (B)

"B as in _Boire/Boisson_ [Drink]"
Parnet asks what it meant for Deleuze to drink when he used to drink. Deleuze muses that he used to drink a lot, but had to stop for health reasons. Drinking, he says, is a question of quantity.

Drink and drugs are not required in order to work, but their only justification would be if they did help one to work, even at the risk of one's health. Deleuze refers to American writers, cites Thomas Wolfe, Fitzgerald, as a "série d'alcoolique" (alcoholic series). Drinking helped them to perceive that something which is too strong in life.

Deleuze says he used to think that drinking helped him create philosophical concepts, but then he realized it didn't help him at all.

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Note that these are my excerpts. The entire text of the discussinon is available online at Gilles Deleuze's ABC Primer, with Claire Parnet.

New Deleuzian Journal -- Actual Virtual

Check out this new journal for Deleuzian studies -- Actual Virtual -- January 2006

Each issue will feature papers by leading academics in the field of Deleuzian Studies and artwork inspired by Deleuze's writing.

The first issue features two papers from the recent conference ‘Re–Mapping Deleuze' held at Cornerhouse, Manchester, in September 2005: Entrancing Time by Dr Anna Powell (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Diagrammatic Actualism by Dr John Mullarkey (Dundee University). We also feature the film Rhizomtic 1# which captures a squatted art and community space organised by the anarchist collective SPOR and directed by Matt Lee.

The aim AV is twofold. To provide current Deleuzian academic research papers presented as they were meant to be seen... rather than publishing the written word, each paper is filmed by the TMF production company and presented here as streamed movies. To provide a platform for Deleuzian inspired artworks across the international Deleuzian community.

Deleuze's ABC Primer (A)

Available online is Gilles Deleuze's ABC Primer, with Claire Parnet -- for the next number of days I will be sharing excerpts with my highlighting from this site -- hoping to deepen my appreciation of this text.

"A as in Animal"
In philosophy, he says, the invention of a barbaric word is sometimes necessary to take account of a new notion: so there would be no territorialization without a vector of leaving the territory, deterritorialization, and there's no leaving the territory, no deterritorialization, without a vector of reterritorialization elsewhere.

In animals, these territories are expressed and delimited by an endless emission of signs, reacting to signs (e.g. a spider and its web) and producing signs (e.g. a wolf track or something else), recognized by hunters and trackers in a kind of animal relationship.

Here Parnet wonders if there is a connection between this emission of signs, territory, and writing. Deleuze says that they are connected by living an existence "aux aguets", "être aux aguets," always being on the lookout, like an animal, like a writer, a philosopher, never tranquil, always looking back over one's shoulder. One writes for readers, "for" meaning "à l'attention de," toward them, to their attention. But also, one writes for non-readers, that is, "for" meaning "in the place of," as did Artaud in saying he wrote for the illiterate, for idiots, in their place.

Deleuze argues that thinking that writing is some tiny little private affair is shameful; rather, writing means throwing oneself into a universal affair, be it a novel or philosophy. Parnet refers parenthetically to Deleuze and Guattari's discussion of Lord Chandos by Hoffmanstahl in A Thousand Plateaus. Deleuze says that writing means pushing the language, the syntax, all the way to a particular limit, a limit that can be a language of silence, or a language of music, or a language that's, for example, a painful wailing (cf. Kafka's Metamorphosis).

Deleuze argues that it's not men, but animals, who know how to die, and he returns to cats, how a cat seeks a corner to die in, a territory for death. Thus, the writer pushes language to the limit of the cry, of the chant, and a writer is responsible for writing "for", in the place of, animals who die, even by doing philosophy. Here, he says, one is on the border that separates thought from the non-thought.

Notes on nomadics (2)

Nomadics -- Negatives
chaotic; leaderless; directionless; practiceless; concerned about newness for newness’ sake; destructive of tradition; rootless; lonely; pathless; easy to get lost (though can one get lost, when one is a nomad?)

Nomadics -- Positives
freshness; creativity; openness; movement; lively; evolutionary; encompassing; not rejecting of any moments; at home everywhere; representatives: Kazantzakis, Bergson, Deleuze, Berman, Eco, Kauffman, Heidegger . . .

Notes on nomadics (1)

focus on the creative
the new
the rhizome not the root

no set path
though all paths can be “raided” for necessities and treasures

constant movement
constant correction
constant rebirth

constantly making connections
new connections for new possibilities
new life

no authorities
no organization

love of the new
the possible of all the connections
that create the world new every moment

humility to the unknown and unknowable
surrender to the creative
embracing of the virtual and the unthinkable next moment

nomad poetics

Nomad Manifesto from Pierre Joris

The opening to the poet Pierre Joris' Nomad Manifesto:

The days of anything static - form, content, state - are over. The past century has shown that anything not involved in continuous transformation hardens and dies. All revolutions have done just that: those that tried to deal with the state as much as those that tried to deal with the state of poetry.

• A nomadic poetics is a war machine, always on the move, always changing, morphing,moving through languages, cultures, terrains, times without stopping. Refuelling halts are called poases, they last a night or a day, the time of a poem, & then move on. The sufi poets spoke of mawqif - we will come back to this.
• A nomadic poetics needs mindfulness. In & of the drift (dérive) there is no at- home-ness here but only an ever more displaced drifting. The fallacy would be to think of language as at-home-ness while "all else" drifts, because for language to be accurate to the condition of nomadicty, it too has to be drifting, to be "on the way" as Celan puts it.

The line that speaks to me most deeply is this -- "anything not involved in continuous transformation hardens and dies." I couldn't agree more. We must constantly transform ourselves, or perhaps in reality we must simply recognize and open our eyes to the fact that we are constantly changing and transforming, whether we like it or not.

We can either embrace this change or try hopelessly to block. By refusing to accept this truth, much pain and sorrow is unleashed into the world today.

Nomads are pilgrims -- A Poem

Nomads are pilgrims who
are continually on a journey
of understanding and transformation.

On this journey the nomad
honors and respects
each individual
and the cultures and traditions
that individual holds dear,
while at the same time striving
through the sincerity
of their journey and personal transformation
to free and lighten any
constricting holds these “systems”
may have on those individuals.

The nomad also recognizes
that the journey of understanding
and transformation is
lifelong and
moment-to-moment
without any specific goal
other than becoming
more loving,
more caring,
more open.

Copyright (C) Jeff Wild 2006

Truths -- A Poem

creature and creator
conventional and ultimate
beings and being
trees and rhizomes

loving surrender to infinite love
mystery, acceptance,
Logos, Son of God,
revelation, Trinity
transsubstantiation
of matter,
of us through
“reverent, astonished wonderment”
a simple,
bowing of the head,
bending of the knee

transforming our consciousness
caught in the web of
obstructions:
desire, hatred, ignorance,
through meditation on
and perception of ultimate truth,
of emptiness,
“purifying obstructions”
with meditation –
analytical, stabilizing, visualizing . . .
debate, memorization,
techniques, skills, practices
purifying obstructions within the paths of the tradition

thinking by thanking through
pathways in the forest of
being,
basking in the Open,
in the Lightening,
in the unconcealedness,
“inward conversion to the Open with the heart”
continual renewal of the question of being,
wondering, wandering,
transforming the technological perspective,
dwelling, not owning, not controlling

diving into the pure source of creativity
with no safety net
freedom and creativity live
breath is all
events not things
invent or perish
maps not systems
maps of fancy
mappemundes of the moment
mobile enough to keep pace,
to create the future
in its yearnings and strivings
and creations

Copyright (C) Jeff Wild 2006

Why this desire for the end times?

It seems everywhere one looks there are discussions about the "end times" and the "Rapture."

Whether it is the Left Behind series, or the President of Iran or the Jewish organization Chabad, the discusion about and hope for this event seems quite real.

What a TRAGEDY! Why focus on such a short term horizon? I guess the easy answer is that each group is hoping, of course, that they "win."

While I enjoy moving about, even dancing between religous traditions (in particular Tibetan Buddhism, Judaism and Catholicism) and seeing them as various nodes within an infinite rhizome of spirit, I must admit that the Buddist version of time is the most helpful.

In Tibetan Buddhism -- there is no beginning and no end -- we have been around an infinitely long time -- time enough for every sentient being to have been our mother many, many times. With this huge horizon of time and yet an equally strong focus on the importance of this precious human life, one receives a healthy balanced perspective on time.

Here is a link to a a summary of the far more unhealthy views of the end of times from Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

What is a rhizome spirit?

What is a rhizome spirit? I hope over time, by sharing and writing within this blog, to begin to truly understand this spirit that I feel deeply and strongly within me.

I would love to hear others thoughts as well, since the fundamental nature of the rhizome is as Deleuze and Guattari say, "and . . . and . . . and . . ." and not either/or.

The word "rhizome" became a philosophic word, and I would claim a spiritual word, through the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. In their work A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, they create a vision of reality that is filled with what they call "lines of flight" and give us the wonderful image of the "rhizome" as compared to the "tree."

They write:

A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes. . . . Rats are rhizomes. p6-7

The rhizome includes the best and the worst: potatoe and couchgrass or the weed. p7

Principles of connection and heterogeneity: any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be. This is very different from the tree or root, which plots a point, fixes an order. p7

A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines. . . . p9

The rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots. . . . the rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight. p21

. . . the rhizome is an acentered, nonhierarchical, nonsignifying system without a General and without an organizing memory or central automaton, defined solely by a circulation of states. What is at question in the rhizome is a relation of sexuality—but also to the animal, the vegetal, the world, politics, the book, things natural and artifical—that is totally different from the arborescent relation: all manner of “becomings.” p21

The challenge that I have is to recognize the rhizomatic nature of my life and embrace it. I often resist this nature and strive to find a more settled, a more comforting tree-like vision with which to view the world, a view that comes from traditional religion for example.

However, when I open myself to my true nature I do come upon a rhizome spirit that lies within.

A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. The tree is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree imposes the verb “to be,” but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, “and . . . and . . . and . . .” p25