Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 19:58:50 +0000
Subject: Re: ...haven't got the time time...
From: "Michael Pennamacoor" <pennamacoor-AT-enterprise.net>


:a-part-ing one:

Jud spake thusly, and at long last he spake with some decent (and indecent) questions
which I shall attempt to answer at some length (perhaps in a series) when I have the time
time :-)

>Michael the Mystic Mountaineer quoth:
>
>Jud the Juddhist : -) managed this recently:
>
>Michael:
>Well no, almost everywhere: presencing is the point; our con-gress
>is at radically differing times, so to speak; the presencing of what is
>present
>
>Jud:
>There is no 'presencing' because there is no 'presenter. ' : -)
>
>Michael:
>presencing [is] with-out a 'presenter' {I accept the scare-quotes}
>
>Michael:
>(a being), the timing of what times
>
>Jud:
>Nothing 'times' in this connection. You could say that a stop-watch 'times'
>a race however. : -)
>
>Michael:
>nothing times except time [itself]; a stop-watch [what a curious word] times
>nothing; time [is] nothing. . .
>
>Jud:
>It seems you have a curious propensity or irresistible tendency to construct
>simple verbal particle phrases [or gerundial constructions]  out of abstract
>nouns.  May I ask some questions about this groundbreaking substantive
>activation trend?

Firstly, verbalising [sorry] nouns comes, for me, from the very material in hand itself
and is of the essence, so to speak. It is not a quirk of non-standard English or some kind
of poetising or mysticality or an inability to speak/write standard English. It is the
very ex-pression of my thinking or attempts at such. Why this pressing need to "construct
simple verbal particle phrases [or gerundial constructions] out of abstract nouns" (and,
of course, my propensity to hyp-hen-ate) will become apparent below; but now for some
think [sic] completely the same...

>
>1. How does 'time' time itself? How does 'nothing' nothing itself?

A1.  time times in the same sense that beings are and space spaces... it is a reference to
the hard to grasp (because ungraspable) in everyday English, that time, being space et al
are something like 'processes' (and that is not at all correct because processes are once
again conceived as things, as beings, and can thusly be spoken of as nouns, as names of
things, as beings in the sense of already givens, as ultimately data... Time is nothing in
the sense that it is not a thing. Time as the ever-present present is nothing in that it
is not *what* it is, since it is over already... or not yet. Even in the scientific
hard-man frame, time is seen as a framework along with space within which beings appear
and events come to be as they are... thus no thing itself. Time is defer-ment,
holding-out.

>2. Why should it do this?

A2. "Time times" does not say that 'time' is both the subject and predicate of some
statement. It says that time is timing, that time is not a thing that does something, that
acts, that activates. Time does not do anything. Time is the -ing in be-ing, the -ing in
presenc-ing, the stay-ing in what stays and remains. If a being is anything that is, then
such a be-ing is hold-ing itself out against both non-being (nothing) and some other being
(difference): this holding-out is not nothing and is not a thing, but time...

>3. How [assuming that 'time' exists] does it display this information?

A3. Do you mean to ask how the timing of time appears to us? Surely in the phenomena of
the having been and the not yet to be; the present as the only time there is (your thesis)
holds together the has-been and the not-yet in the tension of the present itself, collects
and disperses the passing of the passed and the becoming of what comes-to-be; in
psychological terms, memory and anticipation.


>4. Can you initiate this activation of ALL abstract nouns in English in the
>way that you do with time, being, present, event?  For example can beauty
>beautify the beautiful when to be  beautiful is an infinite completed
>action? Can 'presencing' presence something that is  already in the infinite
>mode of being present? Can winning win something that is already won?

A4. As I have already suggested, any thing can be read as thing-ing, as holding itself
against being nothing (not being) and some thing else (being other); thus any noun as
representing some thing can be interpreted as occluding an 'activity', a be-coming, a
standing-out, etc (re-minds me of Nietzsche's objection to Darwinism: that a species (a
successful example of evolutionary success) is only a very slow moving changing, not a
final result... and therefore not properly a successful end). Basically, to the extent
that a noun denotes some eternal essence, some thing, such an implied end-point can be
seen as hiding a holding-out against non-being and not-being, and thus a do-ing without a
doer, an action without an actor, a holding without a be-holder...


I have no more time for this as of now, so...

An other episode in time (presently, must eat)

bye

MichaelP


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