Agna
Agna and the merman
This story has been told many a-times and in many a-ways, and the echoes of eternity strike kindly with each telling; but no Agnete resembles my Agna. No Agnete has the incommensurable depth, and no sound resembles the chord of this particular telling of Agna’s heart. Likewise, many a merman has been told us before, and many have rode the tide of eternity, but none such as this.
Agna is no innocent woman; Agna’s birth says so. Her bosom is not soft, her cheek’s are not rosy, her smile is not effortless, her heart is not flowing and her love … her love… ah… her love… is not. Agna is a victima ultima of her birth, cursed with her very existence, so she is by all means not innocent. Guilt flows from her heart and sends a green current that effortlessly distorts her vision and disorients her way; it smudges her life. Her life’s gait one of clumsiness, betraying an awful attempt at care and protection, a self-defence that’s enough cause for a tear from the naturally and painfully sense-tive. Agna has never known happiness, her happiness has been an absence of pain. A happiness that is nothing but a wearisome gaze, a sigh of exhaustion. Her soul is a shipwreck, a shipwreck that awaits rescue. Oh, how hard it is to see her in the fog that is her life, it takes no average man to see this, it takes a super-human to harbour the eyes refined enough for seeing her in the fog. Her shipwrecked soul is so close to oblivion, she can taste the darkness, she can smell it and feel its depth approaching. The only thing holding on to her, or maybe she holds on to it, is the anchor she has dropped on her shipwreck to stop it being taken away, swept clean by the eternal tides. Her hope is to not be swept away by the darkness, her hope is fear of oblivion.
Agna is not innocent. Yet, no-one has the refinement to sense this, no-one can feel this – and who blames them? She is well-educated in the world, her smile echoes a formidable strain, a hard work, a sweaty brow that has taken many years of service in the social battlefield to bring home the fruits, the honey, the spoils of what is known to some as deception, as appearance. It is flawless. An awe-striking and elegant gait; nothing sexual in it whatsoever, only a tender feeling of care and openness to the world. A supposed fervency of exploration, a love for charity, a sense of propriety blooming, ladylike and almost motherly – the perfect masquerade. She knows man. Man, that creature that can’t, try as he might, escape himself, leave his condition like his seed leaves him. Man, the creature that cages himself in order to un-cage himself, and she knows this. She knows that man yearns for the wild, yearns for the appearance of the seed. Man, the insatiate creature that is perfectly happy with his insatiate ways, even plays to the world he’s created, dances to the tune, just to amplify his caging. The creature open fully to his desires, open in order to open, caging in order to free. Man lives for his desires, and desires that for which he lives. She knows, she is wise, she can make any man her own. Her fertile apparel would be enough, but she’s stronger and more capable than that. Perhaps one of man’s biggest temptations is that he yearns to show his capacity, to make it burst forth per analogiam. Indeed, it would seem that woman lives in a man’s world.
I repeat, who has the refinement to see this? Who is able to bring out from the depths the conditions wherefrom such a plant as Agna grows? What manner of dirt and hidden minerals swarm around mixed with the water in the soil wherefrom this appearance sprouts? Ah, how tiny and shallow, like the froth at the end of a wave, is her exterior – how concealing this motherly demeanour is. To the animal in man she appears fertile, to the man in man, and how rare is such a man, she is a decaying weed feigning fertility to be consumed, to be impregnated such that her life would not be in vain. The last instinct in her body, doesn’t maintain her, or her body, but wishes to reproduce itself and try again, for her body borders its limit, it is decaying – hence she feigns fertility, this is the body’s last stand, this animosity. The body can feign strength in order to scare, but it can also feign abundance in order to gather. But, lo and behold, this shows – it shows! Allow me to bring this out for you, for it’s all I can do, all that is within me – because soon enough I too will be consumed by her green current.
The merman is no seducer and enticer of the depths. He is no creature with a smile that hides the intentions of nothingness, the intentions of death. There is no such thing to be found anywhere, it is but an illusion. No, no, do not let his appearance fascinate you in this way. There is no such thing. The merman is himself a proud creature, but also a creature of great torment, much like her. The centre of his chest resonates a pulsating pride, a self-sufficiency and togetherness, coupled with a poise and apparel, which just like her, makes him desirable. His very own last stand. The merman, a broken creature, a shipwreck that’s exposed to preying on women. This is his apparel, the predator, the creature of darkness, the creature of soft, sweet words, a piercing emerald glance, subtly raised eyebrows and a tone of voice that disarms Hera herself. He can have any woman he wants, this has been the spoils of his very own service. A genius of the mood, ah, what strength he has over a mood, over an atmosphere – and therein lays his power, woman knows such power only too well. How earnestly she courts such power; she courts and envies.
The merman, the evil man, the devil incarnate. The man that can make any woman’s legs turn momentarily goat-like; like the devil’s own. The creature of decadence with an insatiable hunger. Woman’s fear, but likewise woman’s secret yearning, for woman wishes to be impregnated – and how she lies to herself, how she pretends to love him and attempt to bring out the ‘good’ in him. Woman, to him the parallel creature of decadence like himself, the insatiate creature, the being that courts and flirts with nihilism but in the process calls it love. The being that must hate before it can love, the backward creature, the creature of the backyard. There is indeed only one cure to woman, only one way out of this flirtation: a child, pregnancy. A child is the only thing that seduces a woman, her hope and fear of oblivion appears in this child. She may place layers upon layers on herself, words upon words, lies upon lies to try and conceal this, to run away from this awareness, from this simple fact – for that is all us humans can do once we find the truth, we run away from it, we wish we never knew. We pretend as if we never knew, as if it never happened! They call it repression amongst other words. Consciousness is the illness of life. Life’s little bit on the side that is threatening life itself. But, just like man cannot conceal his insatiable desire to impregnate every woman that strikes his fancy, so is she not able to conceal her insatiable need to be impregnated. The merman knows this, he knows, he feels this limit, he shakes hands with it and then appears to use it.
Just like Agna however, my merman too has an anchor of hope, so he is not a creature of darkness entirely. But what hope? What is this hope that these two have? Agna wants to come home from her shipwrecked soul, to be rescued. What rescue is there for Agna, other than pregnancy or something equivalent? – for there are many forms of pregnancy. What then is the merman’s rescue? It’s simple, the merman’s hope lays in the cage. The merman’s hope is freedom in and of itself, the kind of freedom that does not need an escape from a cage to feel itself free, and just like her, he suffers from guilt, he smudges his life with guilt. Just like her, guilt is at the centre of his chest. Guilt is his birth. The more he learns of the world, reads the world like a book with these glasses of guilt, these glasses that have gone far beyond responsibility, the more he feels the need to cage himself. Each time wishing to make his imprisonment harder so that his freedom may taste just that little bit better, and the biggest imprisonment for him is pregnancy. What? Is it then possible that after all, man lives and loves, above all else to, live in a woman’s world? Man impregnates in order to cage himself and free himself. Woman is impregnated in order to escape from her fear of oblivion. The man that doesn’t need to impregnate is free of necessity. The woman that doesn’t need to be impregnated is the shinning beam that pierces through oblivion.
But is this all that can be said of my merman and Agna? Surely my contribution to the story of Agnete and the merman doesn’t end like this, with an unravelling of their depths? Do you expect me to give us a light, a way out of this apparent baseness, this ugly bedrock of living in the world, these lies we seem to be addicted to like poison which numbs our pain but at the same time drains our energies, and the body itself, slowly? The lies that our body needs to force on itself in order to compete with consciousness? The things it does, the thoughts that our body has to fathom in order to stop consciousness from destroying us and itself completely, in order for the body to get a say in this thing we call living? Consciousness, this brain-organ and nothing more, nothing special, must believe in its special character, for how else will it maintain control of the body? How else would it remain superior and accumulate all the energies necessary for this superiority?
If consciousness had its way, we’d all be dead. Nobody lives because of consciousness and its strength, but because of the body and its impulses.
An interesting…
… consequence of flirting with the devil is simple, as well as terrific in all manners: the better you flirt the more the devil fucks with you. You may flirt with the devil my good friend, you may indeed, but the devil fucks with you.
The Lover’s Ethic #88
If your partner is not being fulfilled in bed, and they are sure it’s not because they’re not attacted or grown weary of you, then the weight falls elsewhere. It falls on them. There is only one way to bring this out and fulfil your partner: communication.
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I am convinced beyond reproach that all sexual problems are problems of communication. The problems of communication however are much too diverse to determine and fix easily. Sometimes it’s just more than a matter of “I would like you to do this rather than that”. Sometimes a person just doesn’t like anything, or their body is to a certain degree what I call ‘cold’. This is where the situation gets tricky, this is where the sex isn’t the problem. This is where sex becomes perplexing and the matter diverges so much that a human mind finds it difficult to stay with it.
The cold body problem is a matter of an emotion counteracting another, an impulse combating another, and this battle is internal, always. This impulse takes many forms and harbours a few fascinating designations: trust, love, guilt, rapport, surrender… etc… Not one word can indefinitely establish and determine what exactly is the source of the cold body other than a clash of impulses. The only thing we can do is to court communication, it is speech and to a certain degree of emotional proximity. What meagre and unreliable tools, but it’s better that than nothing, especially if we care for our lovers. All the designations perhaps converge on one point: a person’s relationship to their own body and themselves — this inner conflict is mediated by either the body’s constitution and the person’s upbringing. Quite simply, cold body is not a partner’s issue, it is an issue of self, it is an issue of one’s relationship to themselves, to their own body.
Fascinatingly, the cold body seems to have a general continuity amongst race and upbringing, so the factors are perhaps much too diverse to determine, but there’s only one way to begin: speech, communication.
We are asked…
… to understand one thing and one thing only, if not anything, else that the human body must accumulate and expound energy. The more it accumulates, the more it needs to expound, the more it needs to discharge. The more humanity grows, the more it accumulates and the more it can and must discharge. As millenia go by, new and different forms of expenditure are necessary, for the forms of accumulation are all the same and they concern the body. The human body is an energy-discharge machine, and this is the most beautiful thing about it. It accounts for all art and the higher aspects of life we call the sciences. Maybe even consciousness itself was brought into play by the body such that it may, through its function, find and establish new forms of discharge.
The Lover’s Ethic #2
Don’t listen to them, my humble readers, even when they say unto you ”love is not about being guarded and building a fortress, you can’t fall in love if you’re so guarded”. “Stop being so guarded, let down your arms” they shout, and you must smile, nod and walk away from them. They don’t know, they are foolish these clowns, these drifters and decaying bodies. Build the biggest guard possible, just make sure you’ve left out a space for a door somewhere. Even the mightiest castle and fortress conceivable needs a door, a door for your own escape, and that door is all one needs for love. Don’t listen to them, my humble readers, they would much rather have you fight with them until the last breath, these clowns, than love you. They are comical, these fools, they make for great jest. But, do not hate them my humble readers, have empathy for them, they do not know, they are foolish. Life has been unfair to them, it has not given them enough strength to love. They condemn life, and they condemn you, but do not repay them with the same treatment. Life knows not about fair and unfair, these distinctions are much too anthropomorphic to be applied to life. Life both equalizes and favours at the same time, don’t forget that my humble readers; life is unconscious.
And if they disappoint you and place you on the corner, do not fret, you are not alone, love is with you, it will shine forth from your bosom and your smile. You need no God for this, and you need no after-life and heaven, don’t listen to or be fearful of their hell either; for it is in their bosom and on their shoulders — it need not be on yours too. That is justice. You have all you need: yourself and your ground. In these moments you can proclaim to them, “love needs a door, a way in, that is all”. And if they be sceptical, these weaklings and clowns, bestow onto them, “my dear fools, don’t confuse a way in with a way through, or a way past”.
“All you need do, is ask.”
We are partially…
… if not fully, characterized by our incessant chasing of excitation of nerve-endings. Everything we do is aimed at some sort of excitement of the nerves. To be human is to wish to excite oneself, to raise oneself to a state other than that of rest, not to bring oneself back to rest… there is no bigger fallacy than the view that permits of the human a constant state of excitation in which the state of rest, or equilibrium, is where the goal of the individual lays. To give a drive to becoming that is aimed at equilibrium is the biggest mistake in the interpretation of becoming, the very interpretation implies an error in the interpretive organ, or body. It is in the absence of excitation, they say, that we find ourselves and our ultimate goal, that we find happiness. But what is this if not death or a morbid state — a state of decay to the body? How much can such a theory hate the body; how far does this hate go?
This view is broken and indicative of a life of anxiety and torment as its natural state of being, as the being in becoming, or as its normal state; but is every life like that, or is it only the broken life, a particular life, that is like that? Indeed excitation implies both torment and exhiliration, but not all excitation is only one or the other. In no way is the natural state one of excitation whose qualification is torment, or the equilibrium, the bringing back to null of that qualification; exhiliration is then not even included in this picture. They (torment and exhiliration) are both excitations, and the normal state is indeed itself an excitation, but there are degrees of excitation, the normal state is that of a weak excitation of the nerves. The higher this rises in the appropriate places and in the appropriate way for the body, the more a certain qualification of an excitation is made apparent. There are only degrees of excitation and each harbours a qualification; the absence of excitation is either a stupid linguistic and formal anomaly, or what we call death, the decay of the body.
The body pushes for a higher degree of excitation, at every possible opportunity where its energies afford it. It does not however, wish to maintain that degree, on the contrary, it wishes to tend towards it, little by little, but not maintain it in its qualification. The body wishes its natural state to tend towards an excitation with every expounding of energy towards that excitation, but not maintain the peak of that excitation; rather it attempts to subtly alter its natural state. Those who hate the body thought that because excitations always go back to the natural state, it must be the natural state that is where pleasure to the body comes from. It is the dropping back to the natural state that made the body feel good, and the excitation just made it feel bad, the excitation was a torment, it is never the rising of the degree of excitation. Foolish thinkers and haters of the body. If the whole body is always in a degree of excitation, whence arises this feeling of pleasure at going back to that degree after deviating from it, and whence arises the constant and incessant movement towards a higher degree? The body doesn’t hate itself, it just wants more of itself, it wants to increase itself. The body is invested in itself and its rising in degrees of excitation, it shows it strength, vigour and good health. A health body is an active and excited body, not a numb and borderline comatose body.
These doctrines that preach the numbing of the nerves will make of humans nothing but simulacra of living things, it will make us machines.
I reject a philosophy of death and numbness from the start. If your Philosophy smells of death, take it with you and be on your way.
Yes, nature…
… plays dice, even if God doesn’t. She plays two dice. One she calls philosophers, the other she calls philosophers. Both dice invalid but cherished by her immensely, so much so that all retribution she bestows on their souls, it comes with a mother’s gentle touch, kiss and hug…
There is no sickness…
… as rewarding to a life as wanting to be the best at what you do, no matter what that is. This form of life is constantly overflowing with anxiety and anger, but its rewards are so fruitful, for both one and all. The biggest danger with such a life is always the imminent promise of hate and anxiety towards others. This is where this kind of life finds its two most fascinating fruits: the fruit of scarcity and the fruit of abundance. A life that is sick in this manner is much more interesting if it stems from an abundance as opposed to scarcity. Scarcity is the worst fruit of any tree. I wonder if every tree reserves and expends the most of its energy on that one fruit, the fruit that justifies it? The tree of life harbours many fruits, but what does the fruit that justifies the tree look like? What shoot does it stem from?
The Lover’s Ethic #1
Sex is not a function, it’s not even a form of leisure, neither is it a special union, or a union of any sort. Sex can mean one of a myriad of things, or even ‘all’ at once and none at any particular time. To reduce sex to one meaning and educate children on that one meaning, such that that meaning becomes the social norm, the way people communicate about it, is to destroy an experience. It is in this sense the most decrepit form of robbery. Sex has no particular meaning, it can mean anything you want it to mean, set the meaning to it yourself in your encounters and communications. But, always realize that its form can always change. Words and experiences concerning people are more formal than they are material.
The responsibility falls on you to create your own environment: man and woman alike.
Language is…
… like fire, it consumes everything it can digest and makes it a part of itself. All else cause it to die and force it into silence; but, look how much fire can digest.
Thought in language is like a simulation. It is distinct from activity, of movement in the sense of the body. Thoughts within language open up possible movements or possible activities, but nothing more. It must be distinct from activity. Activity is other than thought, even if preceded by it.
Look at how many distinct forms of simulation there are. To simulate is to establish boundaries and rules for possible action. The moment that action is acted, or actualized, the fleeting nature of the action itself is revealed and the boundary holds only if the rules hold, and further if the actions hold. The boundary doesn’t fully determine the action while it is acted, some may find it soothing to say it doesn’t even determine it before the action in thought. The action rather determines and generates the boundary anew with each actualization, with each movement. It does this or it destroys it with a movement contrary to the boundaries, whose possibility is always implied. There can be no boundary big enough to encapsulate all possible action, because possible actions contradict each other or render each other superfluous. Thus, any complete theory of possible action is incomplete by virtue of its project and the means to it. Actions are limitless, not in thought, but in action — they are temporally bound. Thought can bring out this temporal boundary, which is no boundary at all, and in so doing reveal the lack of limit in an action. A limit can be drawn, but the temporal quality of actions rubs off all limits.
Language only organizes action, but it does not more. Action itself either maintains that organization or not.
