From: Ariosto Raggo <df803-AT-freenet.carleton.ca>
Subject: Re: your dream
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1999 23:12:47 -0500 (EST)


> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, 2 Mar 1999, Ariosto Raggo wrote:
> 
> > > 
> > > Ariosto,
> > > I dont have much time to give to you typing today and as a scary sort of
> > > gift (it feels sacrificial to me), I will tell you what I have to do so
> > > you can decide how hard to slam your breaks. If you havent already figured
> > > out, I am doing an MA in English here in Halifax. I decided to take their
> > > offer of pitable income to allow myself the luxury of reading for a year.
> > > I am teaching a class today on Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_.  Then I
> > > have to read some Romantic Women Poet's and right two responses to
> > > paper proposal's that I just picked up from my Mailbox.  My computer
> > > broke on the weekend and I have to get it shipped somewhere in Ontario.
> > > (here is the text of boredom/bliss: the laundry and the bills) 
> > 
> >   I was not sure exactly what you were doing and thanks for slowing down.
> > This is too real for me now, I crashed already, are you listening?
> > Breaks didn't work too well..but they come on again, a certain realism,
> > this is vague but it's hard for me to put into words, is making me cold.
> 
> Obviously, I am listening as well as I am able to under the circumstances.
> 
  I hear you, don't get mad and I'm glad to slow down. It seems to me a
biblio is emerging around which we can attune our listening. I could
mail those two essays in _sexy bodies_ if you want? I have thoughts and
posts coming on mimickry, haven't got a copy of the one mentioned by
Caillois yet but will. I picked up Severo Sarduy who is influenced by
the college and applies to his own simulacra, that of a transvestite.
Also there is an essay by Deleuze at the end of _Logic Of Sense_ and
that takes us to Klossowsky, another figure associated with the college
and Bataille...

I am showing my frustration...what do I want to say...I like you more
than these three words tell, you touch me in every way, I'm captivated
and...you know... breaking and slowing down, not wanting a return but
assurance still, even if this makes me sound like a baby for not quiet
letting myself go. I feel the weight of knowing that you have check me
out and this list for a long time really, so I think to myself that,
well, you must have thought about me a lot before you posted not sure
of what would happen and what the experience would be like, but still,
there is a lot of investement of time there, and yet you go slow. Do i
make you smile? Do I make you think and want to write? Do I turn you
on? Do I move you to imagine and dream...? Hypotheticaly, *if* you were
to ask me these questions i would answer...Yes.Yes.Yes.Yes...

> > > 	The writing/reading of your dream illicited so many contrary 
> > > responses in me that I fractured.  Do you know the equation for
> > > calculating the fracture point of a steel bar?  Intuitively, perhaps? 
> > 
> >   No, don't know equations or formulas. Steel is hard though, you don't
> > take yourself to be this hard do you? All tight and constricted like a
> > noun with dams all around to hold the flow of verbs...I hope it's just a
> > metaphor, you know, something we can shatter some more.  
> > 
> Absolutely, but it is my understanding that all matter is moving and full
> of absences.
> 

  Or something hard like steel is embraced by absence.

> > > My
> > > immediate reaction was to think that you were lying, testing to see how
> > > far i would/could pretend. 
> > 
> >   Could pretend that what precisely? Lying that what? I have a crush?
> You, Pretending an extra-texual reality. Me revelling in the tropes of 
> intimacy.  Yes. You know poetry is a good way to pick up women. (You have
> said this in reference to _Dead Poet's Society_ very very very funny).
  I did too, i think, see how much you have on me. It was an inspiring
movie for sure. I love it. I am starting to blush a little...

> I
> myself havent had much luck with it as a strategy. *grin*  I was at this
> party over christmas... at times i attempt to be extroverted thinking it
> will be good for me...i am always disappointed.

  I would say I am introverted too, depends on the crowd sometimes, but
when a moment is there i know how to exploit it. You are worried about
that "switch" I invented then. I think it's good because, if you are
picking me up here, that would allow me to express what *I* want and
the same for you so it is and it isn't a switch. A practical way of
approaching an economy of jouissance, that's how it works out. 

>  This guy came up to me
> who i knew through a mutual friend.  "So you are one of those girls who
> gets off on big words"...My response "Why? Do you know any?"  such a
> shame, I was quickly abandoned.  
> 
  That's funny. Have you always been so smart and not pretentious I
might add. Do people think you are pretentious? There is something
humble about you, there must be confidence there. If you didn't have it
you would just be trying too hard to be smart and look the fool, like most
of your profs probably. 

> But also something that I have come to (marginally) understand about
> myself is that I like writing to a
> You.  I think your idea at looking at letters in novels and other
> narratives is interesting.  I will tell you the story of Zamyatin
> tomorrow.  His utopia/distopia _WE_ is written as a letter to the past,
> present and future.  One of my ongoing pre-occupations is narratives which
> posit time travel, anachronisms etc.  I did an extended study of
> evolutionary theory of the 19th century and a few science fiction novels
> of the same time.  All sorts of living-fossils and hopeful monsters. (i am
> so easily seduced by some metaphors)
  which ones?
 
  We have to get back to swift too and Gullivers Travel. I studied this
close once in a satire class I enjoyed very much, one of the few classes
I have really enjoyed and learned in.

> (I had to recall the Levinas from the library...if you can wait a week to
> begin I would like to read it contemporaneously with you) 
> Just as a note. As a firefighter I would have to say that the nexus
> between strategies for queer politics / heterosexual politics is
> reformulating/ messing around with the ways desire is both
> explored and represented. 
 
 I figure you may know more about the ins and outs of all this more
than i do but i am attaching myself to what seems to me a good thing
for all parties and you are being vague, story of my life with woman.
  
> 
  You mean _Otherwise than Being_? btw, volatile bodies is out so I am
waiting on this too but share anything that seems relevant as you read
it ahead of me. You are saying you have a lot of time aside from one
class and you are reading this year into what you couldn't because of
time pressures from your classes. What a shame it has to work that
way.. I want to read Irigaray talking about lips... I will resist
further commentary until we get there. I hear you about the D&G, it's
hard read and I deterrotorialize them by juxtaposing with my own
emerging patterns or whatever... but there is much there on invention,
intensity of sensibility, the depth/surface talk in them has found its
way into how I work and play with language, interesting things on
masochism as well. Overall requires heavy investement of time and will give
you headaches. I juxtaposed them somewhat with Lyotard who I know
fairly well and read and reread in re:events which I forwarded to this
list.

> Don Socha and Marsha Faizi (and any other familiar you's) I would like to
> know about the distinction you make between joy and hope.  (is it a time
> thing?)  Is expectation the same
> as hope?  Is expectation the same as desire?  Isnt writing a manifestation
> of desire and therefore hope?
> 
  myself, I am starting to think a look at Barthes distinction between,
well, it's not sharp that's why jouissance remains untranslatable like
_coup_ In Levinas there is the distinction between desire and need by
Ricouer and it's interesting to note, not by derrida. It's also there
in Lacan I think, maybe Ashley can helps us on this one?

> > > My life has not been completely
> empty of > > players.   Then I read it sincerely and wondered crazily
> > > what a dream only based on what i had written and then what you read could
> > > possibly be like.  Always the this dilemna with words.  I have shifting
> > > notions of obligations and gifts as I have been attempting to explore with
> > > you on this list.  Rarely has anyone made me believe that they were taking
> > > me seriously.  I have been told this is because I am *too* cute and
> > > ofcourse that I have the delightful habit of ending all statements that I
> > > make by raising my voice ie. they turn into questions, making me seem
> > > ritualistically uncertain. 
> > 
> >   I am taking you very seriously, you have imagination, you are smart
> > and can respond well. You know what, I have a disinclination to
> > flattery but with you somehow it started coming out in spite of a heavy
> > inhibition. I don't think i could take much flattery from a man to be
> > direct, it would almost be insult where I would take it as
> > condescending as if I need encouragement and an ego boost. Not that i
> > never need a little push here and there, must be my will to solitude
> > and singularity...don't tell me you are cute, I'm going to be
> > pulverized now. Questions can be very agressive. I learnt this when i
> > studied hermeneutics for a couple of years in a lutheran seminary. Droped
> > out of university to do it. did it partly on unemployment insurance, it
> > was fun. I am so irresponsible stacey.
> > 
> > >(not untrue actually but not that helpful for
> > > small talk, which by the way I am absolutely horrible at.)
> >   That other stuff we were going on about was small talk, this is not,
> > that's clear. 
> > > I have to go teach now.  My lecture is on the gothic.  How the familiar
> > > can often times lead to sights of shifting horror.  (Do you think you
> > > inspired this particular gift of a lecture?
> >   I am not sure, I am too insecure to think that right now, can you
> > give me a clue? 
> >  Can this be anymore
> > > less elliptical?  I have been reading and writing to you all day. 
> > 
> >   stop teasing me! up and down like a yo-yo... you make me smile,
> > smile, and smile...
> > I am going to kiss you again, with more feeling this time,   
> > ariosto
> > > stacey
> A Postcard
> 
> I feel you undoing my night.
> As the sun,
> You conjugate me,
> into the tenses and flows of
> palmed pressures.
> The typographic stains of words
> you trace.
> I read you, I read you,
> I read you, I read you.
> (which tense is this? *laugh*)
> But these plants (me) and animals (you)
> are never removed from the world of nouns. 
> No matter how you sacrifice (me).
> The victims of your words and silences 
> eclipsing and (un)doing the folds
> of intention and causation.
> No idle/idol monuments these.
> Moments and rhyzomes.
> 
> It is only from standing here
> as ruins and plants and cannibals
> that we witness the 
> eclipsing familiarities of organs.
> 
> If the sun is what you are,
> You still burn the curves
> And craters of the side of the moon
> Not seen by imaginations.
> 
> "The return to immanent intimacy implies a beclouded consciousness:
> positing [posting] of objects as such, grasped directly, apart from a
> vague perception, beyond the always unreal images of a thinking based
> participation." (Bataille Reader 211) 
> 
> Thinking again in Spinozian time.
> Where each rhyzome co-exists and clippingly
> eclipses each of the others.  
> Duration not impressive next to the becoming
> of nomadic housing.
> 
Oh... my tongue is tied up,
ariosto
> stacey
> 
> 
> 



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