waiting for impossible unity
ben goertzel
Incandescent fragments of being, undulating lustily through my
brain like melting plastic.
Obscene? I don't understand where they come from – thoughts,
turns of being, feelings, invisible thrusts and thrusts. Pieces of
others' minds, minds of others' pieces, words heard on the train or
at work or in childhood, not understood, filed away for future
madness. Everything you've ever said written or thought is here
somewhere in my brain, in the cosmic contradictionary, in the
cosmic cuntradictionary, tucked away, fucked away, sucked away,
understood away and stood under with umbrellas as it rains its
vacuous meaning thus watering the glorious lawns of the mansion of
my ever-raving soul.
You don't understand – people don't understand – no one ever
understands. Understanding is impossible. Mutual communication's
a farce. Our minds each have their own special languages.
Translation into spoken and written phrases is a form of ritual
murder. Although perhaps a sensible antidote, et cetera et cetera.
Humor value may be significant, but semantics is mangled, pulled
through the asshole of sacrifical goats, lost like a single drop of holy
water fallen into a toilet or onto the body of lovers cloaked in pain
and sweat.
You stare at these words not knowing, trying to pull the strands of
meaning out of the hideous mess. What the fuck was this goertzel
guy thinking? Why the fuck was he typing these words? How did
this twisted attempt at great literature find its way into my realm of
mind, with its known limitations, its perfections and courage and
fears? He himself, as you know, struggles endlessly with meaning.
With meaning and meaning and time. With women, and their
meaning. With his own lusts, delusions. Like any other being, but
with excessive introspection. Perhaps he has overly frequent sex,
and this addles his neurons. Perhaps he would be better off
restricting himself to technical work and not attempting to create
literature. But is he really creating literature, or just
balancing the equations of his mind? Forever seeking balance,
it can't be found, or found. The limitations of ordinary forms of
discourse, written and spoken, frustrate him, make him crazy sane.
He wants to cup her cheeks in his hands and transmit directly mind
to mind. To shout his weird thoughts to the universe through universal psychic
satellites. But what would the value be? Has he really solved various
puzzles, of value to the common man? Perhaps a few pieces of the
human enigma have been assembled in his notably productive and
creative yet disturbingly eccentric brain. Perhaps if we all could
broadcast our thoughts, through the fabled psychic satellite, of
which he wrote much in 1986 (qua qua qua), each of us would share
(la ti da) the sections of the puzzle we've put together, and we could
collectively formulate an attempt at piecing together the whole
damn whole. So mushy, lovey, dovey, love. The whole enchilada
burp of being. The solution to which is, inevitably, a big white Not.
But no, instead we shit our thoughts out through the toilet of
language.
But if it's all so ridiculous, so stupid and pointless, why contribute
to the mess with more text? Another inner compulsion, obviously,
ridiculously. The compulsion to obsess on women, the compulsion
to obsess on words. The compulsion to spend hours yanking ideas
from the collective chamber at the back of mind, pulling them into
the forms of conscious understanding, making them real and dead
and perfect, sharing them with others, forcing them through the
teeny tiny doors of other peoples' minds. Can we in fact rebuild the
universe into its virgin state, by typing out words on paper? It's
highly unlikely. But it's a piece of the puzzle. And every piece is
the puzzle. Inside the puzzle is a strange and beauty peace.
And then – and then – and then – and then --
Here I sit, alone in the garden of my nonsense, waiting for
impossible unity, waiting for you to step into my cosmos and extend
to me a welcoming flower.
And then – and then – and then --