Date: Sun, 08 Aug 1999 02:28:25 -0400
From: marsha faizi <mfaizi-AT-rbnet.com>
Subject: [Fwd: silence]


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Message-ID: <37AD0731.6F3A49D2-AT-rbnet.com>
Date: Sun, 08 Aug 1999 00:27:29 -0400
From: marsha faizi <mfaizi-AT-rbnet.com>
Reply-To: mfaizi-AT-rbnet.com
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To: bataille-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: silence
References: <1.5.4.32.19990807195552.006cf9b4-AT-mail.wellsgray.net>

HTML VERSION:

J. Foster wrote:

By the way, Marsha is asking a question of you. She is sincere, you are the
only one on the list it seems that she communicates with authentically, even
though she is critical of your writing mechanics, style, or lack of style
sometimes. She has just had mono. Don't you think you should wish her well
now that you have learned about her recent illness? I think that she admires
much the content of your thoughts, and she is not just using you as her mole
to uncover information that she could not find herself. She appears to be
attracted to you, albeit in an almost unholy way.
 

Ariosto is a frustrated academic.  He longs to fit in with what he sees as an elite intelligentsia comprised of poets and writers and college professors--especially college professors.  Indeed, he looks up to anyone whom he fancies may be of this ilk.  Again, indeed, he fairly worships them.

I find such worshipful behavior to be disgusting.  I do not fawn over anyone for any reason.

I, on the other hand,  loathe all those who have such leanings toward academic pretense.  I can easily move with that sort of crowd and I can do so effortlessly; without a need to impress anyone with any excess of so called knowledge.  I am not an intellectual and I will not pretend to be an intellectual.  I would not want to be an intellectual.  I am better than that.

This greatly embarrasses Ariosto.  I have embarrassed him many times on this list.  The most memorable time was the time that the professor from Montreal dropped by this list to chastise us for the quality of the writing here.  The professor and I later parted on quite friendly terms and, I think, came to an understanding and to some degree of respect for one another.

Ariosto came completely undone. God, it was disgusting.  The ass kissing and the brown nosing and his all-too-quick condemnation of me.  Fawning is never attractive and it is least attractive to the one for whom the fawning is intended.  If one wants respect, one must demand it--by the force of his personality; the steadfastness of his mind; his resolution.  One does not find respect through begging.

I received mail from this list for more than a year before I decided to write to it.  I came here through Edward Moore.  I had encountered Edward and Luke Pellen on the infamous Genius-l list where I am, of course, revered as a goddess.

The only reason that I did decide to write here was because I could not figure out how to unsubscribe.  It was a matter of--if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Ariosto was the most vocal writer here at that time.  My intention in writing to this list was, at first, to have a place where I could develop my, perhaps, more poetic writing skills.  I actually attempted to be nice.  Well, as I have learned many times since then, being nice never works out for me.  I can be nice until the fucking cows come home and it just don't register, know what I mean?  Other women can come here and be nice and everybody loves 'em.

When I try to be nice, all I ever get is a lot of lip.  Well, that is what I got here from Ariosto--a lot of lip.  He was baking a cake or some such cute crap and I obliterated it.  Blew it to kingdom come.  By the end of that episode, I had our boy, Ari, broken down to a pathetic marijuana sucking piece of shit.  The boy couldn't sleep and he was having a lot of trouble concentrating at work.  It was that profound of an effect.

For a couple of months, we had a few fairly interesting conversations.  Then, he got all uppity and high class and started his academic pretense crap.

It is pretty funny that he thinks that he is better than me.

He likes to engage in these lengthy discussions with you because you are intellectually inclined and capable of such discussion.  More than anything, he wants you to know that he is like you; that he, also, is so inclined; that he has read this book and that book and he can tell you this from this and that from that.

I see nothing wrong with comparing notes; with comparing and discussing what one has read.  However, I think that there is more to life and more to art and more to writing than merely what one has read and seen from others.  There is the reality of creativity, for instance; and the reality of abstract thought that has nothing to do with the collection of data from books or fascination with the footprints that others have made in their time and in their thought and in their writing.

There comes a time when one must break from the mentorship offered from books.  One must not be afraid to make his own path.  There is but one walk upon the earth and, unless one forges his way, one is left to flounder and, ultimately, to fail.

The world of the academic is a failure. It is an artificial world that is built upon an artificial world.  One needs only to read the introduction written by a college professor to Ecce Homo to know this.  What could this plain professor understand of Nietzsche's madness?  How could one who has chosen his life low to the ground understand the heights?

Upon my first coming here, Ariosto has been my foil.  First, he was my dancing marionette.  Then, he became this stiff thing that drones on about Heidegger and Echkert and this thing and that thing.  He is less than a marionette now.  He is a puppet with a death mask.  He is a straw man dressed in tweed with suede at the elbows.  He is diminutive in his mind and shrinking yet.  He is pathetic.  I pity him in his dungeon with his empty books.

He hates me because I can override him.  He hates me because I can master what he cannot.  He hates me because I will not worship as he worships.  I do not recognize his gods.

He hates me because I am personally forceful while he is cowardly and weak.  He hates me because I refuse to don the mask.  He hates me because I will spoil his happy party and I will, again, smash his cake.

It pisses him off because, once again, I will take the lead.  It needles him because I can dominate where he fears to tread.

He hates me because I am his conscience that he has forsaken.  He hates me because I am the voice that he does not have.
 
There was a time when the relation between myself and Ariosto was one of a kind of love/hate.  I loved him for his weakness and I hated him for his refusal to acknowledge his weakness.  He loved me for my strength and he hated me for what my strength could do to him.

In this way, it is still a love/hate friendship.  He hates me for coming here and, yet, he knows that my presence is stimulating and provocative and will draw others as it, again, drew him here.  Yet, he would happily cast me out if he thought that he could do it and keep interest.  But he can't.  I know that and he knows that.  He tried once to do that and, without me, his attempt failed.  It is the tension between us that draws the crowd.

It is the dance of the ape and the virgin that keeps the interest keen.

Ariosto is a fuckhead.  He may pretend otherwise with his intellectual musings but he is a fuckhead.  If he could ever come to accept himself for himself, such a title could, possibly, be withdrawn.  However, I do not see that time coming soon.
 

"You move the air that pleases me...Rosi, it snowed last night a bit. It
felt cold last night. In the dark, it was just you and me, I am talking to
my cat. There wasn't a sound, I am slowly becoming blue. Nina Simone sings
"he presses his fingers to my lips, keep still in the dark, soon he will be
gone, and to be missed. Born in the dark"

My understanding is confirmed in the first person declaration. You Rosita
move the air that pleases....Now if I were to observe this in myself, then
what would stop me from observing this in something, someone elsewhere?

Perhaps what I am saying is that perhaps you move the air that pleases
someone else...and you make them blue. Where there is strife there is love,
where there is strife there is possible friendship. Like only knows like, it
recognizes it-self in everything.
 

What has become of Stacey?
 

That which is alike cannot
be gathered together since it is already one. Take heed...
 

He despises me for my arrogance but, without me, he is most dull.

Faizi

john