In transit, or, on the way (to being) home(less)
I am not certain where to start, since I have always already started, and as Derrida would have it, "We are always beginning, wherever we are." The profundity in that statement is equal to its tautologicality, which is further equaled only by its full-willed and open-eyed resignation to whatever and wherever you are. As Pratchett would have it, "We are here, and this is now." Or if you want, the Romans have simplified it to what is an adverb, but is really an injuction: hic et nunc. Here and now.
Always already a here and now, whatever it contains.
Throwing in two very simple but elegant (those two are also equal, not deserving the but) phrases out of two massive thinkers is not a good way to begin, but what is a good way to begin? We can never get proper traction in asking ourselves that question, for we are always already here, if only so that question can be asked. The question - and all questions - come a split second after the fact of our being facts. And the question of how to begin comes a split second after the fact of our strangely wordless beginning, which only becomes a beginning once it can be worded. And what's special about this particular question is that it can only be recursive to its own rootedness, knowing full well that it will miss what it cannot help but want to capture: how do you begin? Oh, but you already have. It is a proper question, therefore, incomprehensible in its truest sense (that is, true to its Latin roots, in - not; com - with, together, unite; and prehendere - to grasp, to seize). It is a question which will always long for, and always miss by a hair's breadth, its own answer, because its answer is what will have spawned the question which will be a different question once asked for the first time again. An oroboros spawning mouths as well as tails that will never align. And it is a question whose answer is itself the question, though not exactly itself by a hair's breadth. Incomprehensible, ungraspable, itself only in not being itself.
It's like coming home. To be home is to have a home to come back to. It's exactly the same as why a vacation is a vacation and travelers cannot be travelers forever, for the point of travel and vacation is you will have somewhere to return to, to have a place where you can look at your travels from. (That's another one of Pratchett's.) Or, again, in Derrida, Odysseus cannot but return home. That is the point of the word odyssey. His problem with that, and perhaps with Pratchett, however, is that in the grand design of Greek mythology (or any design, as long as it is a design), Odysseus, or any traveler - is programmatically advancing to his own destined Ithaca, his detours laid out (which effectively destroys them as detours), his return inevitable (which effectively destroys the travel). That is not a journey, that is not travel, that is neither coming nor going: that is simply being in places you were meant to be. There is no grand design to experience, however, and there is no program to follow. In a sense, we are always already homeless, and that is how we can begin homes, and end homes.
I came home after four years of being away, staying in another home. One of the practical reasons why is that I have to see my home here rebuilt. One week after being here I have to see the house demolished, so that it can be built again. So I have to be in another home for the rest of the year, a home which is not. In the span of five years I have stayed in four different houses, rooms, what have you - and I came back home. Odysseus to his Penelope and his men, Odysseus in Ithaca.
I find my Ithaca in ruins, so I will have another Ithaca for the time being, but still home, with my Penelope (in all probability that could mean my... Er, I am looking around my room to see what could be metaphorically my wife, but to no avail. Maybe this glass of wine?) and my men (cigarettes?). At the end of the year I would return home once again, with my wife again (most certainly still wine), with my men again (ditto). So why use Pratchett and Derrida and be all pretentious as fuck in all this?
The home I will return to is not the home I left. Literally. And geographically, even though it's on the same lot. It is truistic - home is a place, not a structure. But the home I left four years ago is not the same home I came back to even before it's demolished - it's not the structure or the place that changes, it's your eyes. That is what experience is, in its truest sense - if Derrida had his way we would call it envoyage - a journey, and only worthy of the name if it is something truly new. The journey, and the experience, is not the journey or the experience itself, it is you. It is you that is constantly buffeted around with time, with space, with places, with Penelopes and men, and as you are buffeted and riveted and destroyed and made whole again, you are the one that changes. Whatever you take home with you will be the lens you view your home from, effectively making it not the same home you left, regardless of how unchanged and untouched it has been.
You are always in transit. Always homeless. That is how a home is a home, in the impossible place of beginning always already where you are. It fucks you up real bad, but hey. There is always already a you to fuck up. In less crass terms - you are home. Not in your home, but are, itself, home. That's the problem with words we use for being - we forget the ontology, and automatically think in terms of container-contained, condition-content. Hence the inevitable and necessary and inevitable necessity of the question of how to begin. You don't. You have always already begun. An oroboros always missing its own tail, but an oroboros nonetheless, only, will only be, and can only be, impossible. You have always already begun, in a home. And you will die in a home. Whether or not those two homes are the same or are different are meaningless - you are in transit until you are no longer.
Always already a here and now, whatever it contains.
Throwing in two very simple but elegant (those two are also equal, not deserving the but) phrases out of two massive thinkers is not a good way to begin, but what is a good way to begin? We can never get proper traction in asking ourselves that question, for we are always already here, if only so that question can be asked. The question - and all questions - come a split second after the fact of our being facts. And the question of how to begin comes a split second after the fact of our strangely wordless beginning, which only becomes a beginning once it can be worded. And what's special about this particular question is that it can only be recursive to its own rootedness, knowing full well that it will miss what it cannot help but want to capture: how do you begin? Oh, but you already have. It is a proper question, therefore, incomprehensible in its truest sense (that is, true to its Latin roots, in - not; com - with, together, unite; and prehendere - to grasp, to seize). It is a question which will always long for, and always miss by a hair's breadth, its own answer, because its answer is what will have spawned the question which will be a different question once asked for the first time again. An oroboros spawning mouths as well as tails that will never align. And it is a question whose answer is itself the question, though not exactly itself by a hair's breadth. Incomprehensible, ungraspable, itself only in not being itself.
It's like coming home. To be home is to have a home to come back to. It's exactly the same as why a vacation is a vacation and travelers cannot be travelers forever, for the point of travel and vacation is you will have somewhere to return to, to have a place where you can look at your travels from. (That's another one of Pratchett's.) Or, again, in Derrida, Odysseus cannot but return home. That is the point of the word odyssey. His problem with that, and perhaps with Pratchett, however, is that in the grand design of Greek mythology (or any design, as long as it is a design), Odysseus, or any traveler - is programmatically advancing to his own destined Ithaca, his detours laid out (which effectively destroys them as detours), his return inevitable (which effectively destroys the travel). That is not a journey, that is not travel, that is neither coming nor going: that is simply being in places you were meant to be. There is no grand design to experience, however, and there is no program to follow. In a sense, we are always already homeless, and that is how we can begin homes, and end homes.
I came home after four years of being away, staying in another home. One of the practical reasons why is that I have to see my home here rebuilt. One week after being here I have to see the house demolished, so that it can be built again. So I have to be in another home for the rest of the year, a home which is not. In the span of five years I have stayed in four different houses, rooms, what have you - and I came back home. Odysseus to his Penelope and his men, Odysseus in Ithaca.
I find my Ithaca in ruins, so I will have another Ithaca for the time being, but still home, with my Penelope (in all probability that could mean my... Er, I am looking around my room to see what could be metaphorically my wife, but to no avail. Maybe this glass of wine?) and my men (cigarettes?). At the end of the year I would return home once again, with my wife again (most certainly still wine), with my men again (ditto). So why use Pratchett and Derrida and be all pretentious as fuck in all this?
The home I will return to is not the home I left. Literally. And geographically, even though it's on the same lot. It is truistic - home is a place, not a structure. But the home I left four years ago is not the same home I came back to even before it's demolished - it's not the structure or the place that changes, it's your eyes. That is what experience is, in its truest sense - if Derrida had his way we would call it envoyage - a journey, and only worthy of the name if it is something truly new. The journey, and the experience, is not the journey or the experience itself, it is you. It is you that is constantly buffeted around with time, with space, with places, with Penelopes and men, and as you are buffeted and riveted and destroyed and made whole again, you are the one that changes. Whatever you take home with you will be the lens you view your home from, effectively making it not the same home you left, regardless of how unchanged and untouched it has been.
You are always in transit. Always homeless. That is how a home is a home, in the impossible place of beginning always already where you are. It fucks you up real bad, but hey. There is always already a you to fuck up. In less crass terms - you are home. Not in your home, but are, itself, home. That's the problem with words we use for being - we forget the ontology, and automatically think in terms of container-contained, condition-content. Hence the inevitable and necessary and inevitable necessity of the question of how to begin. You don't. You have always already begun. An oroboros always missing its own tail, but an oroboros nonetheless, only, will only be, and can only be, impossible. You have always already begun, in a home. And you will die in a home. Whether or not those two homes are the same or are different are meaningless - you are in transit until you are no longer.
Comments
Post a Comment