Plague Journal, Disappeared
Where did One go?
Am I still One when I analyze, or am analyzed?
Yes, but with an unidentifiable identity,
without a fixed center,
or mortiferous* repetition;
serial music rather,
a dance improvised
and yet supported by an underlying,
open order.
…a long history
that never stops coming back,
catching up with us. p. 64
Excerpt, This Incredible Need To Believe, By Julia Kristeva
I am reading for a second time the book by Julia Kristeva describing a movement of increasing self awareness, in the course of a conversation between a counselor asking questions, and answers offered by another… We risk such soul-deep exchanges in the hope of therapy (healing) of any number of debilitating conditions. Some are drug addiction, chronic anxiety, passive-aggressive compulsion, etc. There are many, many more states disabling in their effects. Kristeva describes the journey taken by the questioner and the “patient” in terms of experiencing a Jackson Pollock painting entitled One. Pollock paintings have always intrigued me.
Where and how do you point to the “One” in this painting? The act is impossible to do, a question impossible to answer. There is only a infinite matrix of relationships, the continuous movement of influences, a regression of voices, of encounters with no single one to isolate.
If I could afford to purchase this Pollock painting, — would I? Perhaps. The painting speaks to me, shows me a truth of our human condition.
There is no beginning and no end of the relationships that have made “me”, the speaking Subject that seeks expression to you the reader, at this precise moment at my desk, on a Thursday morning. And the self that I was moments ago, is different, at this precise moment. As the client receives inquiry from the counselor, the stories difficult to recall, unwind-in-the-telling, the layers of disability from which the client desires release. Is there an end, a “completion of the lesson” in the course of treatment, the journey jointly undertaken by the counselor and the client?
As Kristeva so beautifully writes it is like, “serial music, a improvised dance, and yet supported by an underlying open order. Free associations, yes alluding to a long history that never stops coming back, catching up with us “
* deadly, causing death
Do we not need a tune to carry us forward? Are not songs quintessential story-telling relied upon by our ancestors, ancient attempts to alluding to the “One,” which can never be pinned down, identified with final precision? This fine tune will do for this morning. City of Blinding Lights by U2.
City Of Blinding Lights
By U2
The more you see the less you know
The less you find out as you go
I knew much more then than I do now
Neon heart, day-glow eyes
The city lit by fireflies
They’re advertising in the skies
And people like us
And I miss you when you’re not around
I’m getting ready to leave the ground
Oh you look so beautiful tonight…
Don’t look before you laugh
Look ugly in a photograph
Flash bulbs, purple irises the camera can’t see
I’ve seen you walk unafraid
I’ve seen you in the clothes you’ve made
Can you see the beauty inside of me?
What happened to the beauty I had inside of me?
And I miss you when you’re not around
I’m getting ready to leave the ground
Oh you look so beautiful tonight…tonight
In the city of blinding lights
Time…time….time…won’t leave me as I am
But time won’t take the boy out of this man
Oh you look so beautiful tonight
Oh you look so beautiful tonight
Oh you look so beautiful tonight
In the city of blinding lights,
The more you know
The less you feel
Some pray for, others steal
Blessings not just for the ones who kneel, luckily
2 thoughts on “Plague Journal, Disappeared”
Our lives are much like a ball of yarn when, at birth, we are handed a single strand. As we progress through the traumas that are inevitable we wind the skeins into a chaotic ball, where we eventually mask the curiosity, the innocence of the newborn self into layers upon layers of threads. At some point we yearn for the long lost self, the one hidden beneath the morass of woolen strands, so we attempt to untangle the ball, seeking what we might once have been. Perhaps this process is through therapy or self-examination or some other traumatic event that rips a portion of our yarn ball away, revealing a glimpse of that inner self.
I’m not certain that we can ever recover that newborn, that essence of nature embedded in our DNA, for as we do our best to unwind the yarn, new threads are being added, as if we are caught in the fog of a forest without end, trying to find the path that will lead us back to ourselves, much like the quote from Ms. Kristeva’s book regarding the cyclical search for the self.
If, indeed, we become fixated on coming to a conclusion, we will miss that opportunity to reinvent ourselves, to discover that the entire ball of yarn is actually who we are and the essence we seek at its center is only an illusion, for every piece of that yarn is permeated with who we were, who we are, and who we will become. Until we understand that there is no going back, by accepting that we are who we are, the entire package, past, present and future, can we allow the center of that ball of yarn to emerge.
The ball of yarn metaphor is fruitful.
I agree with your tentative conclusion. I think that awareness, — that “many selves,” many layers comprise the self which appropriates the manifold of the present, is the pivotal point for going with the opportunities for reinvention.