I found this in my journal... don't recall whether it was posted--maybe in reply to a comment, but thought I put it up again. From February when I was dealing with asthma, and the had just begun working on Poem to the End of My Days. I've recently completed work on the third volume.
I keep thinking about the psychosomatic components. So very complicated--as I don't have to tell you, not a matter of 'mind' &/or versus 'body' Nothing of mind that isn't physical, nothing of body that isn't mind. This would be the year of my father's death... didn't live to his 71st birthday. Simply the fact that this occurred to me several times as early as this summer (beginning 69th B-day, beginning of my 70th year).. and came to mind very forcefully with those 'faux death'
syncope episodes... which happened, when? In October. Month of my father's birthday. I think this tells me that there's something to be listened to here. Not a matter of simple cause... anything but simple
I love this quote from Lacan... in answering the question of where the ego is situated.. that one must ask "through whom and for whom the subject asks his question. (ital mine)... 'subject' in Lacan's use, being the 'I' who speaks: whose 'language' the analyst is keen to hear in the swerve and ellipses of what is spoken.
through whom -- for whom
the subject asks
... & what is the question? ... how can one hear or understand the question, until you grasp that?
I needn't add how relevant this is to any form of creative work... the very mark of difference between success and failure of any piece. It may not be conscious... almost certainly isn't, but that 'from whom... and to whom' is there inhabiting, animating, engendering every novel poem painting musical composition song dance... if it is to live. To be alive. This is the psychic reality of the Muse, of 'inspiration.' ... some word, eh? ..."in-spiration?" The breath of life. Poem to the End of My Days
syncope episodes... which happened, when? In October. Month of my father's birthday. I think this tells me that there's something to be listened to here. Not a matter of simple cause... anything but simple
I love this quote from Lacan... in answering the question of where the ego is situated.. that one must ask "through whom and for whom the subject asks his question. (ital mine)... 'subject' in Lacan's use, being the 'I' who speaks: whose 'language' the analyst is keen to hear in the swerve and ellipses of what is spoken.
through whom -- for whom
the subject asks
... & what is the question? ... how can one hear or understand the question, until you grasp that?
I needn't add how relevant this is to any form of creative work... the very mark of difference between success and failure of any piece. It may not be conscious... almost certainly isn't, but that 'from whom... and to whom' is there inhabiting, animating, engendering every novel poem painting musical composition song dance... if it is to live. To be alive. This is the psychic reality of the Muse, of 'inspiration.' ... some word, eh? ..."in-spiration?" The breath of life. Poem to the End of My Days
Coincidences are incidental, are they not? ... to our powers of selection from the glittering stream... perhaps, even more, conjured from our powers to ignore what doesn't correspond? ... not out there, but private. Symbolic language within. Thinking them out there, of the world, I'd think would be but another veer from our own Truth. Through whom am I speaking now... and to whom? And what is the question... yours or mine?
Not so much my father as his death, his day of birth, the timing and this cough and how I number my days... coincidence of subject... how my body has responded. The pulmonary specialist told me to ditch the Lisinopril even though the cough preceded it. Gasoline on the fire, he said, not cause of inflammation or its spark, but fuel enough (& deadly, so i heard) & so I stopped. Ace inhibitor--inhibitions incomplete... insufficient for the task. It's always the context, material and otherwise, that matters.
Observe Ulysses bound to his mast...
oh no! Scrap that!
Wrong symbols there for sure!
Who then the sirens, where the foundering rocks?
Not so much my father as his death, his day of birth, the timing and this cough and how I number my days... coincidence of subject... how my body has responded. The pulmonary specialist told me to ditch the Lisinopril even though the cough preceded it. Gasoline on the fire, he said, not cause of inflammation or its spark, but fuel enough (& deadly, so i heard) & so I stopped. Ace inhibitor--inhibitions incomplete... insufficient for the task. It's always the context, material and otherwise, that matters.
Observe Ulysses bound to his mast...
oh no! Scrap that!
Wrong symbols there for sure!
Who then the sirens, where the foundering rocks?
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