I’m discovering again that the loss of the self does not entail the loss of Self: the non-definite, primal core. The living, emergent thing-we-are gets embroiled in the self of the decadent technocratic civilization we live in. The numinous and interior gets conflated with the efficient and pseudo-rational.
Some part of us resists subjugation to the whole: the culture, the mode, the state.
Security, soulless security, is the telos of the modern state. It does not matter if anyone is happy, in a deeper, more ancient sense, or if there’s joy or liberty and creative potential; repeatability and frictionless stand in for all values.
Probably the most powerful political act possible, now, is to perform a ritual. Soulless modernity dissolves at the touch of a magician.
An acknowledgement that things are getting worse should only move in one direction: away.
Without sacred rites, we need to build new sites for the holy. Without organic experiences of joy, we have to attempt new kinds of alchemy.
Small things become big things. The trivia of our lives are constantly metastasizing, mutating into immutable conditions. Fate self-assembles from simple materials.
On the whole, I think spiritual intensity has been repressed: we have abjured anything that’s too real or too intense, anything that makes the body shake or the mind threaten to split. The near-universal condition of depression has displaced a whole pantheon of existential intensities.
Mourning the world that has passed away. Most technological advances are really prophylactics against feeling too deeply–for poetry and pain.
Writing is not thought. Writing is a decryption of thought-elements. Thus, writing must transcend its origins to become itself–something else.
Longing is loneliness, but loneliness is not necessarily longing.
Create your profile
Only paid subscribers can comment on this post
Check your email
For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.
Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.