Art of Flux Thinking

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.

… is like that little quantity of metal that’s sent to the factories and forges to be moulded and shaped, such that it may fit and find its place in the machine we call society. Ah, how this machine resembles an individual body. Society is a body of its own, very much like your own body. We wondered of the union between soul and body, look at the union between people, professions and the country itself. Look at the analogy. Where do the people and professions end (body and organs) and where does the country (soul) begin?

Then ask, what is England? What is France? What is this English consciousness, this French consciousness, with their english and french products? Then ask, how do the English and French relate with each other, how do they share their products. How do people do so amongst themselves? The part is not distinct from the whole upon holistic vision and movement, but upon particular action focused on each part, the part is furthest distinct from the whole. There is no possible reduction from part to whole or vice verse. They are in perfect and remote harmony. We can’t chop up the body and fully reduce it. I am my organs and I am also something more. I flirt with the possibility of a new organ, the possibility of a new part, a piece of metal that cannot be moulded and reshaped or whose moulding and reshaping implies a different movement to the entire machine. A shinny and strong metal of abundant quantity and mass. A powerful metal.  

This new organ, this new part is perhaps the only interesting and anticipatory thing about a machine that we call a society. We all wait for such a part to be born. The future sits biting its nails at the possibility of reading and flirting with a book that speaks about one these parts. The most interesting history is the bad one, not because of the badness of it, or the evil, or the tragedy it afforded. But because it built a part that went against it, it built a part that shook and stirred not only the machine itself but the entire Earth. Such history is glorious as it is terrible, and the present never benefits, the present is after all a mere sacrifice, a sacrifice for its children and the future, for their joy, their happiness and their learning. The better a machine gets at dealing with such parts however, the more powerful the part needs to become, the more nature struggles to bring together such power.

… may rest on you, but can your shoulder bear the weight of the world that comes with it?

.. that go by the premise that all sensuality and sensual festivity is a matter of animal coarseness and evil, is by far itself the most beautiful lie — oh, how this lie uses one’s vanity against one. How it manages to seduce one with their own smell, to sublimate ones strength and render it into weakness as opposed to transformed strength — afterall, sublimation is akin to a transformation. There is indeed a massive gap between man and animal, and it is not to be drawn by making man feel ashamed of the splendour he once experienced in being an animal (if that was the case), the freedom of wilderness hangs heavy on man’s neck. The innocence that comes with that splendour, that wilderness, that freedom is undeniable. Innocence in man is not the same as animality. To make man feel shame at being who he is, shame at his strengths, has been one of the most cunning tricks and deceptions, a powerful tool of war, a perfectly concealed and slow genocide. This takes the deceptive form of caring for man, but the true form of making man slowly eat at himself.

The mirror was placed upon him, only, alas, the reflection was seen with glasses other than man’s own eyes. Other than his own vision has man had to see himself with. Glasses that blind had been placed upon man to make him lose his way, to make him bemoan his roots in such a way that he is not allowed, by his own self, to rise above himself using his roots, but instead to fight them to the point of exhaustion and death of himself. This is the most cunning parasite in himself that man has had to combat with– it is indeed, ‘life’s biggest obstacle’. Behold the plant that attempts to sever its own roots, the stupid plant that attempts to lose all form of nourishment, the plant that wishes to wither.

Man cannot trust himself no more. How is he supposed to trust others? Man needs a new light, a direction, a raison d’être. He needs an enemy, a focus to his strength, and it cannot be himself, that has been going on for too long. Man’s enemy can’t be man either, that likewise has been going on for too long without offering man much. We’ve conquered all animals, disease is likewise in the process of being shown its place in the hierarchy. But what is there left? Man needs an enemy not for negation, but an enemy for affirmation. He needs to be reminded of who he was such that he may strive to be other than what he is now, but at the same time everything that he is. He also needs his enemy to exercise his strength, his potential. Man needs to create himself anew.

… who without a sense of privacy and a sense of honour penetrates so deeply into their lover’s soul that he finds their most secret hiding place, then forces them to take leave of that place. Evil is he who wishes to escape from his own depth into another’s, evil and stupid. Evil is he who uses all manner of strength to expose the inner world of their lover, and thence their own, to the point where they have nowhere else to hide but their surrender or insanity. Evil is he who finds with such methods that the lover can’t ever be in love with them, for their depth harbours a longing of another kind to them. Evil is he who realizes that all longing, all love, all depth is but a fabrication and that a person can love equally one as they can love all, for love is nothing but an excitation. Evil is he who rejects even this and hopes that love is the excitation to relax all the others, the master of excitations, the master of the house. Evil is he who hopes for this, for all manner of evil things arise from such hope and longing for the master, for the master’s arrival. Evil is he…

Against and in the face of such a master all evil is the sweetest, most enriching and divine good. Evil, and stupid, is the Lover.

Thus spake the demon in my dreams whose appearance was an old man speaking in the manner of God. He spake to me of the current that drives the becoming of man, woman and child — the becoming of life.

Zest or lust, zest or lust, zest or lust, zest or lust… the mirrors of becoming.

The dimly lit room creates an atmosphere of silence and soothing comfort as the hooker lays her head on his chest gently, her hand by her side and he can feel sleep arriving too soon to take her. He lets out a sigh and she asks casually,

“What’s up?”

“You know, I’ve spent my life in war, from all sides. War at home, war outside, war inside my heart. My life has been one big, never-ending battle — I seem to know nothing else.”

“It’s your destiny, and you’re good at it.”

“But it has never been my wish. I would fight the whole world, gladly and for an eternity if I had but one chance at peace. One moment in that eternity where I don’t have to fight. I would desire to share that moment with a woman. I would fight anything, everything, if but I could be in peace with my lover. Yet, even in that one thing, I still have to fight. I have to fight to convince my lover to love me. No human being should have to convince someone to love them. This has been and is my curse. My Torch is not one of light, but one of eternal burning. It’s not used to illuminate, its use is to set ablaze myself and those around me.”

The woman kisses him on the chest and exclaims,

“Shh. It’s OK, tonight you can have peace, and pretend that I love you.”

“Even though I just had to convince you to say that?”

“Yes, even though… even though you paid me to do so.” 

Jorge the Torch forces out a smile to maintain the balance between them and kisses her on the forehead, before letting his head drop back and his eyes stroll upwards to the sealing where a tear manages to subtly squeeze itself through. His soul had been sold a long time ago. He wipes it away and turns slightly to the left to blow out the candlelight. As darkness drains the comforting atmosphere they both withdraw inwards into their safe-haven. A distance suddenly takes the room and them in their proximity as their hot bodies touch each other in longing. They decide to contemplate away from the pains, anxieties and possible-traumas of intimacy. They safely hide within their thoughts where they reminisce yesterday’s happenings and anticipate tomorrow’s pactical blessings.

We need a new language… this one doesn’t do the job it once upon a time professed. It is deceptive and cancerous; hopefully, eventually, to itself. A new language is needed that bypasses the brain-organ, and reaches straight to the rest of the body, to the liver, lungs, heart etc. A language that cares not for thought-processes, belief structures and reasoning, but fires straight at the heart of it all: the living-body and its movements.  The brain-organ is a delaying organ that is more prone to constancy in movement and death as opposed to constant movement and life. The body suffers immensely at the hand of the brain-organ and its prima qualitá: reason. The new language would be most interesting for it would make possible a rebirth, a new mode of life, a different encounter with the world, and existence would take on a different flavour. A more innocent and celebratory flavour: an innocently celebratory flavour.

…beware of it. It stands shadowed in the distance, yet brimming with an enthralling shine, forcing you to ardently desire to close that distance. So, in response, you set one step over another. Slowly you make your way closer and closer, in anticipation of the conspicuous figure’s source of such an exquisite shine. Each step is seen by the figure, in the shadows it smiles and in return it considers, it prepares your arrival and its subsequent exposition – it designs a game for you. What a game indeed! Upon your arrival or a given proximity, the shadow loses its shine entirely and you experience nothing but a darkness that overwhelms you with fear. The closer you get, the more fear grips you, the further away you move the more that overwhelming shine comes back from the depths, from the shadows, somehow shoves aside that fear and forces you to doubt it once more. This is when you experience the most profound state a human being is open to – an ambivalence that is the most interesting in comparison to any other creature that inhabits our humble planet, and this is no anthropomorphism. You know not no more, and you find yourself chosing between madness and eternal purgatory.

Yet, there is a way out of this amorous trap: the blessing itself. In your approach the shadow merely plays a game of masquerade with you – a Venetian masquerade. It merely conceals itself in the most fascinating manner upon your arrival, a manner that traps you, as a coquette traps a poor and emotionally turbulent soul – like Josephine trapped Napoleon. The shadow brings out your most loyal friend, the one who’s kept you ’safe’ and ‘alive’ until now, the one who’s interested only in your happiness. The one who, in truth, is merely interested in your unhappiness, its absence, leaving you disinterested as concerns pleasure and peace, but fully interested in the negative. That friend who would much rather experience no-pain, than happiness given all the pain in the world. This is what the shadow is masterful at, it mirrors your soul and as such your position of power entirely. Its masquerade brings out your fear, but only in a given proximity, for it knows that inside you lays the opposite of fear, dormant, but either potent or impotent in relation to the fear. Inside you lays that which will approach the shadow, feel the fear and fight it, or ignore it entirely, and keep on stepping until: either death or the source is reached. Such is the leap that the shadow demands by its game of masquerade, the leap of the most ultimate risk, the leap of the loss of self. The leap of transformation.

I knew a writer who once sang something in the manner of, ‘All the ingenuity and stratagems in the world cannot deceive or harm the soul of an innocent girl when it’s set with a divine pride in a particular direction’. Bestow her road with starved wolves, lions, tigers and any other possible danger on Earth and watch her higher-nature charm her way through the shadows in the shinning and brimming source that is the transformation of a life into another.

This is the amorous blessing: the figure of eight game d’amour, de passion, de mouvement, d’action, de trasformation.