Trip Mckenzie and the Interjection Pages.

Opening the book, somewhere in the vicinity of page that I had reached. It lays on the desk, spread inappropriately: spine bent, binding loose and indecorous. Such provocative behaviour from this supposed tome of learning. I am nauseated. I reach out to shut it close again.

I cannot bring myself to touch the pages. I stare at it, I hope with an expression of reproach. I have the feeling that the book is unbothered. Neither its permanent nature or present state are such as to care.

Such unusually salacious behaviour from this book, my companion for some weeks now, not once has it hinted at this obscene playfulness. I wonder. What is it about these pages that it has fallen upon? Why this new behaviour? What words lie there, bringing about this change?

Forcing the bile and arousal deep into my stomach I lean forward. Peer intently, objective and disattached. A scientist studying a curious new bug. I shall not engage with the words on that page, my intention is to categorize, classify. A purely scientific examination. One in which literature, art, feeling and emotion have no place. By this I shall resist its allure.

The pages laugh at me. These dark characters spore further, tentacles grasp my vision, fasten to my mind. They pull. I go down. Deep and dark.

Lightning strobes, sight periodically. Blink out, recede into the black. Everything drummed in stellar light. Flash of endless heaven. Stark and terrible. Empty and pure. Absolution.

Concrete reality reboots, restores.

Leaning upon the single metal bar, spanning the door space in the wall. Elbow juts out, chin on wrist. I look into the alley. Lost in thought, thinking of nothing. Alarm bell ringing a constant. Rain tap dance the street. The walls. Sky dark, heavy, bright and clear. Glass reflection. I feel the sea extend endlessly around the world. Vast and powerful its serenity, peace. I smell the mountain peaks, storm breeze a faintest echo of winds that dance through summit and snow. I stand upon a glacier, magnificent shining resplendently in golden sun. Ancient and endless. Epochally I surf the ice. Circumventing the earth and the ages of the world.

The pages of my notepad flutter, the rain picks up, drops into sheets and then waves. Ground lashed clean, memory of the days washed away. Light shifts spectrum, a temporary hue, a moment shorn off the world.

My head lifts, sit up straight, eyes wide, dilate.

Internalize and eternalize.

The book, inanimate now, devoid of personality and character. As it always was.

Trip Mckenzie and the Great Barrier Language.

(wrote this a while ago, in lieu of anything better though I thought I would put it up. It is not written creatively or well, but I find the ideas quite interesting. More to the point my brain is not functioning right now, so I thought to kick start it a little by going over some stuff...)

I realised just now that I hate language.

By its nature language is a system of pre-conceptions, past exceptions, rules and regulations. In the interest of communication we conceptually limit ourselves. To describe a day's experiences we employ a barrage of references and descriptions of previous experience. These are not even our own.

If I say 'tree' I am referring to the thing that is a tree, except I use a word that is not my own creation, not my own reaction experiencing the object to which I refer. Up to a point this is a remarkably convenient means of communication. Generally speaking our collective experiences of trees are likely to be very similar. So by accepting the word tree as our universal label for those similar experiences we are able to easily translate our experiences to one another.

Yet none of our experiences of even something as concrete and common as a tree are likley to be identical. So that when we accept the label 'tree' for our own experience and concept we also assent to a sacrifice of something unique to our perception of reality. This is where language begins to frustrate.

Fir f we wabt ti express our own unique concept of anything, to represent in language our own instinctive reaction to experience, we must turn to this other and past defined system of description. Whilse 'tree' when first uttered may have entirely captured the feelings, thought and perception of its speaker, it cannot be the same for us. But if we were to utter to someone our own instinctive verbal/vocal interpretation they would surely not understand. Inevitably, to explation our meaning we would once more have to return to the accepted term 'tree' and then add further explanation of what the object inspires in us.

Add every other word and the structure of our expression is the same as that first one. To pinpoint exactly our own experience we fall further and further into complexity. Simply because if we were to utter the simplest most natural expression, no-one would understand nor would they be likely to seek to understand.

And this is all just for a simple reference to a common object...

Aparat from a literary exercise we are unlikely to have any great desire to share our unique interpretation of 'tree experience'. Appart from a certain sadness at this loss empathy, we can accept efficient communication as a preferable pay-off.

When it comes to an abstract idea, concept, emotion or feeling, however, the frustrating limitations of language become never-ending and irresistable. With its base sacrifice of expression in favour of communication, language in fact becomes a remarkably inefficient tool.

A picture tells a thousand words only because peope are prepared to descipher the nature of the picture, however abstract it may be. The same with music, dance, visual art. We accept our own emotional response as our guide to the expression of the artist's experience.

Present a book of abstract scribblings which are your own unique written expression of experiences and be branded insane.

At a push we can insert made up words and sounds into our chosen language to express something we otherwise cannot find the words for. Admit that no words are your own experiences, substitute the whole language for a book of your own creations - that is entirely unacceptabe.

As we reach to greater complexity or uniqueness in our discourse of ideas we embrace the most efficient tool in the interest of communication. But it is this very efficiency which is the flaw in that method, since it is this which pushes us to ever greater complexity.

technorati tags:language

I drift in void.
Orbiting a vast amorphous bubble of space.
Star clouds float, deep below its skin.

On occasion one floats closer. To crash and break against the impenetrable surface tensions. Explosion, magnificent spectrum. Light cascades across my awestruck face. Eyes widen at the beauty of it.

Creation, destruction, all of it before me.
This is the ideal of existence.

My path takes me further around the surface.
I see new shapes take form.
Impossible to describe, their geometry denies my perception. Existing as concepts in my eyes.
I realise. I am seeing other dimensions, universes.
This bubble contains so much more than my reality.

I reach out, desperate to pierce the film that separates me from the all. Fingers outstretched, comically insufficient. I will my nails to grow, joints to break, skin to stretch. Will in vain. It is beyond me.

I drift. Away now. Void envelopes. The bubble diminishes into nothing. Only the sheen of its surface shifting remains.

Where does the light come from I wonder.

Everything is black now. My eyes close, what difference is there.

Explosions, climax, release. The stars are inside me. Rushing from my mind, crash against retina. Violent, chaotic creation. Eyelids are torn apart. Eyeballs burst into space, grey matter sucked into the vacuum.

The bubble has broken. Surface tension lost, more than could ever be contained.

Everything, the all, rockets towards me. A stream of existence in all its possibilities. A pear propelled into my hollowness.

Pouring in, filling me. Saturation, destruction. I dissolve into the all. My body, soul, nature, disparated into something infinitely greater. Total.

Bonds reassert. Forces exert. Coalescence, cohesion return. Surface tension restored. The bubble is complete.

I orbit the centre. Looking out,the void is barely perceivable, refracted by shifting of the inner film. Looking in, to the centre. The epitome, the essential. Inconceivable.

Trip Mckenzie and the power of his hands.

Get the fuck away from me.

Stars traverse my fingers,

Fingers over eyes.

Eyes filling with stars.

That is what I hope for at least.

Get the fuck away from me and let me fill my head with stars.

A head filled with the cosmos,

All that there is vast held between the walls of my skull.

Everything inside.

Left outside only what is not.

Not a part of everything.

But instead, you continue to be there.

Blocking my star flow.

Maintaining the emptiness inside my head.

Whilst everything, outside, distant, apart.

You, I hate you.

Your hands covering my eyes.

Not protecting me, hiding me.

Ashamed, afraid.

Worse.

Disinterested.

Disinterested in my emptiness.

Disinterested in their surfeit of existence.

Disinterested in all and nothing.

Can't you tell that I want to be alone.

Alone as a part of all.

Get the Fuck away from me.

Remove your fingers from in front of my eyes.

I see now. There are no stars to be found in them.

Those were just the first flashes of blindness.

Blind to though, feeling, inspiration and beauty.

The great numb blind.

I might say the words, understand me.

I might say those words.

Beg, plead, pray for numbness.

Bt there is no sincerity.

They only reach so far, never so deep as my heart.

My heart cries out 'love or bust'

It rejects you nihlism and I adore it for that.

It embraces the futitily of it all and runs with it.

As far as it can.

When it falls down it whispers to futility, held tight in its arms

'You can be anything you want. You can be hope, joy, prpose, life. Everything.'

Take my fingers away from my eyes.

There is no need to hide, I can be anything I want.

I can be the stars, I can be everything.

Come back to me.