spirit battle with a father
hegel: everything depends on grasping and expressing the
truth, not as a substance, but as a subject as well
a self having knowledge of itself in the antithesis of
itself, this ether
the beginning of philosophy presupposes or demands from
consciousness that it should feel at home in this element.
but this element only attains its meaning and acquires
transparency through the process of gradually developing it
this simple element is thinking ... really to feel alive there
the real living one is the one who is only there in knowing
itself to be and in managing movement among states
as a being it is simple otherness from its states
it isn't an original or primal unity as such, it is not
immediate as a unity. it is merely the process of becoming
itself, a circle
its work can be seen as play, then, but that leaves out the
seriousness, the suffering, the patience and the labour of
the negative
this quiet house. the fire breathes. continuous inhale with
particle crackles
today when nordhagen stopped by and saw my blankets on the
outside bed he said, aren't you afraid someone will r-r-rob
you
yesterday's fine concentration. in the afternoon i
hitchhiked to la glace to see them. after supper i set my
spine very vertical and began to lead him, instead of away from,
toward his vortices of complaint
it makes such a sense of brave balance to look into his eyes.
he and i have never looked in each other's faces except
very fast on the way to somewhere else, and i hold him now
for sometimes almost a second before he veers right and down
it's still hard for me to hold against his fright. i have
to work so fast and accurately. it's a kind of concentration
where speech comes from below and i have to rely on what
comes. it feels like sheer risk because it goes so against
the long practice in guerrilla warfare
and she's holding her breath. her long practice in distraction.
she can hardly bear it. sometimes i have to head her off,
or cut her off
and he dodges into his old safe hideouts and i rout him out.
i move fast because if I didn't i'd lose my nerve
when i was in it i didn't know at all where it would go,
that utter relying on the moment. i liked it too, it took
me out on a limb
i wanted to tell him something i'd held against him. he
was out of the chair and to the door, but i kept him there
until it came to a showdown. i said i needed information
and wanted to be relieved of what i knew. he couldn't let
me tell him
when we'd got to that bald ground, each returned to ourselves,
held so still, i felt a very delicate shudder and
realized i was going to cry, and would have to cry out in
the open
it was such precise crying. he was on one side of the room
and she was sitting opposite me, and we could all hear the
little tic right and left and right and left of the
tears hitting the table. then he went out the door but
not till i'd stopped
she made a flurry to get him back. she didn't understand
how it was working or how strong i was at that moment. but
i stopped her and he left
and then she, i was cold and exhausted and i realized she was
feeling so left out and wasn't understanding, she needed
comforting, and i didn't have any. so she took me home.
he came too. she tried to talk but i wanted to be out
in the wide west. long shadows, the depth of sky in
the holes in the road. my eyes were happy
today i had the backlash. the voices in me were muttering
and quarreling with him most of the day
i felt my friends in me during that meeting
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