If you’ve taken any note, and why should you since this is the type of typographically obsessive thing that I’d only find anomalous and justifiable (if at all excusable) in myself (subconsciously produced, loose textual patterns are barely forgivable--especially when they elicit so much useless, self referential analysis out of a person): I’ve been using question marks sporadically. I’ve noticed myself unable to type them where they would be considered grammatically appropriate. They’re making me itchy so I've been forcing myself through them when I can. I’ve been finding them demeaning in written form---not so much when implied in my speech and nose-to-nose interaction, though I’m too Socratic for my own good. I’m in this state where I’m finding all questions rhetorical. This is a problem. Whenever I am doing something or thinking something I am at least five steps ahead of myself. That’s a rhetorical state of being. Why is this rhetorical state a problem, you ask? I’m always racing to catch up with myself, what I see. Answers are solved before I can even think the questions out fully. I find this happens quite naturally, though the other end of the spectrum is: nothing is ever set in stone for me once it’s done, though it's always done before I even begin. In one sense, I am falling prey to my instinct by living only in instinct and nowhere beyond. I feel I am separating two forms of life here: textual vs. actual and recognizing how I have diametrically opposed physical reactions when I am engaged with the same activity in either form. WHAT THE FUCK? Do you see my problem? My instinct is telling me it's a simple one of transposition and resulting displacement through binary inherent therein.
(I’m actually not sure if you do really see). I mean: god, I've just asked a question, like: I don't know let me apply my state in grammar as for humanity. In other words: being so balanced in two modes (of "reality") makes me hyper unbalanced. And so basically: structuralism (what I have to work with, in all its forms and please excuse the gross pun) is driving me mad, as in: crazy, because its greatest detriment (possible side effect) is loss of vision. Don't say Frank O'Hara didn't warn me, because by god, I memorized that poem of his from the first time I read it: four in the morning, age 15. Now my sightline's all blurred like a used punchcard, just like Frank said it would. Thanks, Frank. You died so strangely for a writer, though I don't ever remember you using the word "punchcard," and I wish that made me feel more than it does when I'm alone, and thinking about it.
Posted by caroline at July 4, 2006 3:29 AM