Suppose we could empathically communicate with a quantum (the smallest possible element of anything in nature) as it tries to deploy its formative tendency (everything in nature tends to become more 'complex' [to grow, to become alive, etc.]), what would we come to understand of it?
Suppose I were a quantum, how would I feel? I imagine a hunger, a craving perhaps. An unspecified urge to become something; anything. Or perhaps merely a playful impulse, based on the security that from who I am now, I can expect only growth. There is no way I can get any smaller, no way to get any less specified. Once I have actualized into whatever phenomenon, I will have forgotten I was once a quantum. There was no way for me to record my quantum experience of being merely a wish to become. No senses, no memory, no language. Once I have actualized, I will be part of whatever I have actualized into, perhaps into an experience of a human being. All of a sudden I will take part in that person’s consciousness, not knowing that I came from somewhere else. I will be that person’s past, in which she herself (who is now me) was something of which she is not aware any more. Nevertheless, along with me the wish that once defined me has now become part of her also. I contribute to her wishing for something, as do all the other quanta that bundle up to form this person. I realize that nothing has changed, really: to be a person is still a wish to become. [derived entirely from Ton Baggerman]. I am touched by finding how ‘opening’ is really both noun and verb.
Perhaps icing is, or yearning. But an opening seems such a stable thing. It can be an opening in a thousand-year-old castle wall. Or an opening in a ten thousand-year-old rock face. Or a fleshier, but still lifelong, way into, or out of, the human body. Or, with more movement, it can be a centuries-old way to start a game of chess or a conversation with a stranger. Or it can become the widening apart of lips, of arms, of eyes. So that, with the addition only of movement, the merest slit or gap or finger hold or hollow can become the very act itself of disclosing, inviting, revealing, waking, communicating, displaying, smiling, embracing, releasing, relinquishing or dying. My desire
Is the upward curl of flame in Autumn's long-awaited bonfire. My desire Is the unresisted snap and crackle Of tap dancer's urging foot. My desire Is the jealous equilibrium of kestrel. My desire Is the long yawn of water's fall. My desire Is the echoing toowoo of midnight's owl. My desire Is the rattle of halyards on a wooden mast. My desire Is the sap-ridden push and push and Thrust of potato's first shoot. My desire Is the endless hanging on of green silver lichen. My desire Is the single yellow rose that Blooms already blackened in November. My desire Is the watered chortle of syrup-throated Blackbird. My desire Is the opening of any heavy-lidded eye. My desire Is the just perceptible drift of morning sun Apart from tight-lipped horizon. My desire Is the beckoning to pen of faint-lined page. My desire Is the first scent messenger Of oven's rosemaried lamb. My desire Is all the colours of everyday nasturtium And the absurd blue of dunnock's egg. My desire Is the smell of new sawn timber, new fed baby, New spun honey, new loved pullover, New mown hay. My desire Is the hanging down of heron to Stonepark's river. My desire Is monk's kneeling in devotion to some truth. My desire Is the unrelenting drip drip of first Spring water down through moss. It starts with the flat surface of some world
A lake, a millpond The rolling field of cloud expanding over the face of the Earth When seen from easyJet above The desert of sand or snow or ice or moss that can spread, cover and consume. It starts there. In the palm of the hand in the skin of the world. It starts there with the soundless empty shaping curling pulling back from first form into the round possibility of a howl. Like this - a chasm starts to open up, a paroxysm reveals itself, a cave, a whirlpool Pulls back the water to reveal, the moss folds back on itself, the world is seized by grief or birth or pain or simply the expression of howl that shakes a universe even before any sound comes forth. Let's take that howl and find a face for it. Let's take that world's howl and find a human face that can express it, carry it. A human face that is essentially a mouth, A human body that is essentially a face, A face that is essentially a mouth. Let's hold that face and all that it has witnessed, spoken and received. Let's take that bodyface, take it, Howling, spitting, Let's take that bodyface And call it U. U for everything it holds and has in possibility U for everything that we can press onto into it U for every time we make it other than ourselves Let's make it woman. Hello U Soft flesh, smooth skin, flawed, scarred, Perfect container Howl of baby's first emerging, breathing Howl of mother's last possible birthing Howl of innocence and need and Howl of greed and desire and Disgust and howl of dying death Let's take that whole howl of U And flatten you first into desire Let's read your howl as need As the howl of the whole world for Light for water for food for Recognition for love for Being filled up full and overflowing Let's gaze at your desire And see how your whole Form is desire and then Let's do what we do Let's see our desire mirrored in your U Let's inspect you first Examining your arms and thighs and Every inch of fleshed you, flattening you out, Judging your suitability, pressing And exploring you for ourselves Admiring the tight the plump the Tender the opening the moistening The becoming available. Let us Press this flesh as U becomes Our possible property Let's ask you for your past Your films, the films you've made Let's see how you've been howled, your Pains wiped aside as flesh Has needed and consumed you Let's see how you've pushed back Too, risen up met desire with Running desire Let's see you as a world of desire's history Your body running with rivers Of desire dreamt and spent Awash with love and contempt and Rivers of lust expressed and Washed away, riven with earthquakes Of consummate disdain Blood and sperm and saliva and mucus, Lubrication on your face and thighs And the endless possibility of your God's young arse. Let's see you lean into your future Let's see you bring your pleasure And pain forward to now and into What's next Let's see how you can curl cur, Snarl snap your howl into Teeth barred fuck me fuck me Driving up tight clenched desire Pushing through forests of bodies Pale and dark, igniting them With your touch moistening Them wetting them stiffening Them emptying them as You walk through this Gallery of liquid desire erupting Obscenely over you Let's see you divining this lust Drawing it like a boil Like a temple whore, let's See you forming it building it Howling it into shape Let's see you offering yourself To it, for it, let's see You submitting and surrendering To it let's see you Opening for it teasing For it, curling up your body Coiling up your body Inviting it, touching fingering Licking sucking for it till You get it flowing emptying Spurting till you make the World howl its desire over you Pulling every flesh into you Washing awash consuming Drowning drooling holding In your U the oceans of special fluids That have consummated the desire of Millennia. Let's remember your lust Let's remember that you are ours Now U are ours now Let's make the most of U Take the most of U let's Dress and undress you let's Make you say and display Let's hold you, force you Choke you, have you, make you, Force you again and again Let's own you, ruin you, Smack you, cut you, whip You, contort you let's make you do Everything that Sade can imagine Let's leave you for Dead awash Let's look for another let's Howl hack at you Let's remember that we had No choice but to use U For our pure pure pure lust. Let's see if you can manage To turn once more Let's see if you can Manage one last spasm Ask us for one more Thrust to flip you Over and over Take you one more time, Fill you fuck you empty Ourselves into you, over You on you wasting you Laying waste to you Pulling you close, biting You through till your Blood flows Over the face of the Earth again and You are returned to the Flat face of the ocean Of the mossed forest Of the cloud's surfaces U Gaia, lost in love Awash with our desire spent. What to make of this desire
Endlessly To relocate? Almost before understanding how things are There comes the necessity to Move them Replace them Tip, tilt, realign or Balance them One on the other. To relocate myself Lest the music stop And I Turn out to be in the Wrong place. Now I see that the river is
Fish is Otter is Glistening flesh Rippling between rock over slate past root along Branch around boulder Hurrying through strait and Narrow Tumbling playing leaping Swirling. Water is flesh Is fluid desire. I think stream swirls and sighs like a breathing out.
I think current flattens and spreads Like a trout Stilling itself then Spilling, rushing, gushing, Spouting Its way to a slow, deep pool – The very heart of water. I think stream taught trout to Turn, to slide by the flat, green side of rock, to Hover and slip past. I think stream taught heron to Stand stock still, To pull back, stiffen and strike; Taught kingfisher to dart To stab and trowel out a mouthful. I think stream taught Fly to hang in wait, Taught weed to drape itself All the way along. I think stream taught otter How to play; Taught pebbles how to roll, And how to clatter. Taught frog to croak. I think stream taught Lizard how to Brace himself against the world, Taught tree how to cling on, Hang on. I think stream taught moss How to swell, thicken, soften, How to hold water. How to hold on. I think stream taught Our ancestors, Taught us How to furrow our brows, How to wrinkle our skin, How to make lines And how to make waves On the surface tension of our bodies. I think stream taught Snipe How to dip His beak, Taught granite outcrop How to take it, Take it, take it, Until some micron is worn away. I think stream teaches me To listen, How to listen through the Pearly slitter slatter. I want to look at the patterns that are disclosed in nature. There are some in A swirl but they seem familiar. Actually they will all seem familiar, I think. Isn't that the point?
Here's a first one ...there's me awake at 5 quite often full of desire and some kind of sparkling, but not quite knowing what to do with it. Supposing that they require an 'object' or something/someone to direct them at, and registering my habits and, of course, knowing that desire and sparkling are apparently greatly to be preferred to pain and grief - but also aware that they are all things that we whip up one way or another and all available for inspection and internal audit and none of them quite real somehow...
Desire seems to be the future tense of memory.
Paul Tritschler says: "In a series of lectures given in New York City and São Paul in the mid-1970s, Bion tackled the problem head-on. Following Keats’s lead, the psychoanalyst suggested that true psychic growth required the capacity to feel and immerse in uncertainties, to be open to the prospect of thoughts in search of a thinker: Discard your memory; discard the future tense of your desire; forget them both, both what you know and what you want, to leave space for a new idea. A thought, an idea unclaimed, may be floating around the room searching for a home. Once more, we can widen the boundaries of our search by not looking. Within the therapeutic context, negative capability required the individual to develop a radically different concept of self. Most analysts had their clients search for the self in ever-deeper layers of memory and desire. But Bion believed that negative capability – the ability to let go of these things entirely – enabled even greater self-knowledge and success. On one level, negative capability would help us to manage the emotional challenges associated with uncertainty. On another level, it could reveal the unconscious as a reservoir of possibility and hope. That reservoir would be a fount of intuition and creativity – a link supported by a growing body of research evidence. In essence, both Bion and Keats saw negative capability as an added dimension, one beyond the mere logic of reality – one that relied on intuition and sensation, providing an alternative to the incessant search within ambiguous circumstances for rational, empirically based narratives." |