A IS For Abject
March 11, 2023

This is my work for the day, updating and editing my abject vowels.They have been posted under the Abject Alphabet tab, and I’ll likely make it appear under Vicipedia as well.

THE VOWELS OF THE ABJECT ALPHABET

from AN ABJECT ALPHABET [1]“I am abject, that is mortal and speaking,” wrote Julia Kristeva.The term abjection literally means “the state of being cast off”.

The Letter AAbandoned: They left me. From infancy to infirmity. I speak, alone again. Unworthy, abject; naturally.

Abasement For their gaze, for their touch, I will do anything.
They love me. They love mE NOT.
My mouth is full of want, hard as it is
to get my tongue around it.

 Adultery:     First you can’t see anything.
Then you can’t look. 
Away. Finding half a worm
in the applehanded you.
 
Angst:      
Ich habe. Du hast. Wir haben.
 Ich bin. Du bist. Wir sind. Allein.
A long drive. A longing. No place.
 Shaking all over, and sitting still

 Ich will rein! Ich will rein!

Ax:  My father’s. The one I 
lost, left behind (a long scar on his knee) in the Christmas tree forest.                

 

The Letter E

E is for chaotic eating (mine), E is for ever, for eternity.
E is for enemy, envy, erectile dysfunction,
emasculate, emaciate, efface, even ejaculate.

E is for English upper or lower caste, empire,
E is for exhaustion, E is for exit, and E is for my friend Eeyore.

E is for Enns a river in Austria I’ve never seen like the twin babies left on its banks. One died the other his finders named Abraham von der Enns founder of our family, Spelling my name I jest E-N-N-S, but the e is silent.

 

The Letter I

I is for injury, for interloper, for infatuation, for imagination.
I is for Indigenous, independent and influential.
I is for India, infidel, for Icarus in flight.
I is my personal pronoun, except when I’m plural, which has been happening a lot lately, CGI or no CGI, I am mostly me. Whatever I am or is, I’m not U.

I is for immune, for icon, for insane,
I is for incarcerate, incinerate, inappropriate
I is for idea. As in “what’s the big.”
I is for impossible

             

The Letter  O
from The Abject Alphabet

O is for other, obvious and obliterate. O is for open, “keep your mind open and help me keep mine open too.”

The Story of O was a book everybody was once after, obscene 
or not obscene depends on your shades of gray.

O is for offer, for offering, for dropping money in a velvet bag.

O is for obsession; the three ice cubes in my glass, the white shirt on my back,
a roast on Sunday, one potato, two potato, three potato. Three! Three! Three!
No more.

O is for Oblivion, a book and a final destination for David Foster Wallace.
O is for organ often found in churches, the instrument of choice by my
best lost girlfriend.

And the great southern Manitoba affirmative, Oba Yo! and my favourite sobriquet;

Opa, venerated grandfather I am.

Obituary:  Right me.

 

Orgasm: . A sinking ship in mid-ovum     
The holy only one
… expected in heaven

 

Oxygen: I nearly died because my lungs were filled with food. My breathing had slowed to dangerous levels. One nurse said, “If he makes it through this, tell him to chew his food.” Another nurse was asking for a DNR (do not resuscitate order), and my wife said we don’t have one, but DID agree to an intubation which saved my life.  It was six days before I could breathe and swallow well enough on my own. They told my wife to keep her expectations low, I had been too long with too little oxygen. My wife waited to see what she would get. Here I am. And I’m not U.

 

The Letter U

I am not U. U is not you, U is a sigh; an exhalation between two goal posts, waiting for a Taliban hanging.

Unconscious; Like I was for nearly 6 days and 6 nights in a medically induced coma with doctors and nurses leaving my room in ICU, (U is for unit), shaking their heads warning I might not make it, and with my shortage of oxygen before I was intubated,  my brain might be damaged. My wife sat and waited to see what she would get.

Understand: We understand each other, and alone deluxe, we are better together. I can be hard of understanding but I can be hard to understand.

Uncomfortable; my words and my tears make others uncomfortable, though not my wife Michelle and a few friends. There was the time in Victoria I read to an august audience, crying when I started my Love & Surgery reading and didn’t stop until I had finished. Everybody was uncomfortable, especially me. But I am not you.

 

[1] I have been writing the Abject Alphabet since the 1980s, after Kroetsch’s Sad Phoenician, I must be the Mad Phoenician I thought. I met Julia Kristeva when she was promoting a novel which I’ve since given away. I did buy many of her critical texts including Power of Horrorwith its focus on abjection. As a neurodivergent this was significant, as was the Revolution in Poetic Language. These books were sold at the top of the lecture hall in Toronto, I did not have the legs back in the 1990s to go back down the stairs, and have those that have been significant in my life, signed. She is still living as far as I know, her reputation somewhat tarnished for meeting with Bulgarian spooks reminding her she might be free in France, but her family was not. I read Barthes and Melanie Klein, all now horribly out of date like I dreamed last night being sent away from the University of Manitoban newspaper that I co-edited for a year, and Artspace where I had been President of the Board.  And where my art installation opens at the end of April 2023. Look. Always Breathe.

 

C IS FOR THE CUT-UP METHOD

 

“The Cut Up Method” – William Burroughs,

from Leroi Jones, ed., The Moderns: An Anthology of New Writing in America (NY: Corinth Books, 1963).

 

NOTE ON VAUDEVILLE VOICES

In writing this chapter I have used what I call “the fold in” method that is I place a page of one text folded down the middle on a page of another text (my own or someone else’s)–The composite text is read across half from one text and half from the other– The resulting material is edited, re-arranged, and deleted as in any other form of composition–This chapter contains fold ins with the work of Rimbaud, T.S. Eliot, Paul Bowles, James Joyce, Michael Portman, Peter Weber, Fabrizio Mondadori, Jacques Stern, Evgeny Yevtushenko, some newspaper articles and of course my own work–

 

THE CUT UP METHOD

At a surrealist rally in the 1920’s Tristan Tzara the man from nowhere proposed to create a poem on the spot by pulling words out of a hat. A riot ensued wrecked the theatre. Andre Breton expelled Tristan Tzara from the movement and grounded the cut ups on the Freudian couch.

In the summer of 1959 Brion Gysin painter and writer cut newspaper articles into sections and rearranged the sections at random. Minutes To Go resulted from this initial cut up experiment. Minutes To Go contains unedited unchanged cut ups emerging as quite coherent and meaningful prose.

The cut up method brings to writers the collage which has been used by painters for fifty years. And used by the moving and still camera. In fact all street shots from movie or still cameras are by the unpredictable factors of passers by and juxtaposition cut ups. And photographers will tell you that often their best shots are accidents . . . writers will tell you the same. The best writing seems to be done almost by accident but writers until the cut up method was made explicit– (all writing is in fact cut ups. I will return to this point)–had no way to produce the accident of spontaneity. You can not will spontaneity. But you can introduce the unpredictable spontaneous factor with a pair of scissors.

The method is simple. Here is one way to do it. Take a page. Like this page. Now cut down the middle and cross the middle. You have four sections: 1 2 3 4 … one two three four. Now rearrange the sections placing section four with section one and section two with section three. And you have a new page. Sometimes it says much the same thing. Sometimes something quite different–(cutting up political speeches is an interesting exercise)–in any case you will find that it says something and something quite definite. Take any poet or writer you fancy. Heresay, or poems you have read over many times. The words have lost meaning and life through years of repetition. Now take the poem and type out selected passages. Fill a page with excerpts. Now cut the page. You have a new poem. As many poems as you like. As many Shakespeare Rimbaud poems as you like. Tristan Tzara said: “Poetry for everyone.” And Andre Breton called him a cop and expelled him from the movement. Say it again: “Poetry is for everyone.” Poetry is a place and it is free to all cut up Rimbaud and you are in Rimbaud’s place. Here is a Rimbaud cut up.

“Visit of memories. Only your dance and your voice house. On the suburban air improbable desertions … all harmonic pine for strife. The great skies are open. Candor of vapor and tent spitting blood laugh and drunken penance. Promenade of wine perfume opens slow bottle. The great skies are open. Supreme bugle burning flesh children to mist.”

Cut ups are for everyone. Any body can make cut ups. It is experimental in the sense of being something to do. Right here write now. Not something to talk and argue about. Greek philosophers assumed logically that an object twice as heavy as another object would fall twice as fast. It did not occur to them to push the two objects off the table and see how they fall. Cut the words and see how they fall. Shakespeare Rimbaud live in their words. Cut the word lines and you will hear their voices. Cut ups often come through as code messages with special meaning for the cutter. Table tapping? Perhaps. Certainly an improvement on the usual deplorable performance of contacted poets through a medium. Rimbaud announces himself to be followed by some excruciatingly bad poetry. Cutting Rimbaud’s words and you are assured of good poetry at least if not personal appearance.

All writing is in fact cut ups. A collage of words read heard overhead. What else? Use of scissors renders the process explicit and subject to extension and variation. Clear classical prose can be composed entirely of rearranged cut ups. Cutting and rearranging a page of written words introduces a new dimension into writing enabling the writer to turn images in cineramic variation. Images shift sense under the scissors smell images to sound sight to sound sound to kinesthetic. This is where Rimbaud was going with his color of vowels. And his “systematic derangement of the senses.” The place of roescaline hallucination: seeing colors tasting sounds smelling forms.

The cut ups can be applied to other fields than writing. Doctor Neuman in his Theory of Games and Economic Behavior introduces the cut up method of random action into game and military strategy: assume that the worst has happened and act accordingly. If your strategy is at some point determined … by random factor your opponent will gain no advantage from knowing your strategy since he can not predict the move. The cut up method could be used to advantage in processing scientific data. How many discoveries have been made by accident? We can not produce accidents to order. The cut ups could add new dimension to films. Cut gambling scene in with a thousand gambling scenes all times and places. Cut back. Cut streets of the world. Cut and rearrange the word and image in films. There is no reason to accept a second rate product when you can have the best. And the best is there for all. “Poetry is for everyone” . . .

Now here are the previous paragraphs cut into four sections and rearranged:

ALL WRITING IS IN FACT CUT UPS OF GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR OVERHEARD? WHAT ELSE? ASSUME THAT THE WORST HAS HAPPENED EXPLICIT AND SUBJECT TO STRATEGY IS AT SOME POINT CLASSICAL PROSE. CUTTING AND REARRANGING FACTOR YOUR OPPONENT WILL GAIN INTRODUCES A NEW DIMENSION YOUR STRATEGY. HOW MANY DISCOVERIES SOUND TO KINESTHETIC? WE CAN NOW PRODUCE ACCIDENT TO HIS COLOR OF VOWELS. AND NEW DIMENSION TO FILMS CUT THE SENSES. THE PLACE OF SAND. GAMBLING SCENES ALL TIMES COLORS TASTING SOUNDS SMELL STREETS OF THE WORLD. WHEN YOU CAN HAVE THE BET ALL: “POETRY IS FOR EVERYONE” DOCTOR NEUMAN IN A COLLAGE OF WORDS READ HEARD INTRODUCED THE CUT UP SCISSORS RENDERS THE PROCESS GAME AND MILITARY STRATEGY, VARIATION CLEAR AND ACT ACCORDINGLY. IF YOU POSED ENTIRELY OF REARRANGED CUT DETERMINED BY RANDOM A PAGE OF WRITTEN WORDS NO ADVANTAGE FROM KNOWING INTO WRITER PREDICT THE MOVE. THE CUT VARIATION IMAGES SHIFT SENSE ADVANTAGE IN PROCESSING TO SOUND SIGHT TO SOUND. HAVE BEEN MADE BY ACCIDENT IS WHERE RIMBAUD WAS GOING WITH ORDER THE CUT UPS COULD “SYSTEMATIC DERANGEMENT” OF THE GAMBLING SCENE IN WITH A TEA HALLUCINATION: SEEING AND PLACES. CUT BACK. CUT FORMS. REARRANGE THE WORD AND IMAGE TO OTHER FIELDS THAN WRITING.

I is for INNOCENCE

Innocence – Shame –

The psychoanalytic tradition is broadly divided between those (like Fairbairn and Winnicott) who saw the child as initially innocent, but liable to lose its innocence under the impact of stress or psychological trauma; and those (like Freud and Klein) who see the child as developing innocence – maturing into it – as a result of surmounting the Oedipus complex and/or the depressive position.[7]

More eclectically, Eric Berne saw the Child ego state, and its vocabulary, as reflecting three different possibilities: the cliches of conformity; the obscenities of revolt; and “the sweet phrases of charming innocence”.[8] In a rather different formulation, Christopher Bollas used the term ‘Violent Innocence’ to describe a fixed and obdurate refusal to acknowledge the existence of an alternative viewpoint[9] – something akin to what he calls “the fascist construction, the outcome is to empty the mind of all opposition”.[10]

 

 

 

Z IS FOR ZERO

Poor old gumboots boy.
Ghost of hollow-heart.
My dear old zero. Kiss me,
I’m yours, you’re my loss.

 

 

M IS FOR MANIFESTO

My desire drives me to work everyday, and it ain’t in no cadillac. I want to say something.  I want to write something. I want to read something. I want to make something. The Need for Wanting Always is the name Gertrude Story gave to a short story collection. Her desire was returned by the way of a muser who dictated the stories, well most of Gertrude’s stories. I can’t remember the dictator’s name

It’s not the wanting that’s so much the problem, I’ve heard.  It’s becoming attached so you can’t let go. Makes sense to me like this…I want…I write a poem…as good as I can…then I let it go.  Desire is not the same as attachment, said the man with three ex-wives.

I advised an artist to give up on despair and get back to riding desire right to creation. You are god, the creator, the maker, you’ll never find a better job. You make something using everything your desire gives you, to create. You put into the world something that didn’t exist before your wanting then thinking then making. Without desire your imagination withers. Argue if you like but I believe desire beats all.

Herbert Marcuse says somewhere in Eros and Civilzation, that making civilization is Eros sublimated, Thanatos thwarted. Otherwise like the Kills sing in Black Rooster “You just want to fuck and fight (down in the basement).” Argue if you like, but I think making is the ticket to civilization.

Without desire I will die, or want to die. I know while I am working, writing especially something new that didn’t exist just minutes before, I am most alive  in the sway of my free-ranging senses making, creating something new.

“If that last thing left you can do is to keep creating, creation will sustain you…. creation is life-sustaining.” I get this, put succinctly by Tom Allen on CBC speaking about Mahler at the end of his life. I hope my family and friends do too.

 

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