Narrating
Leslie Scalapino

I just write, without advance plan as to a plot or form — the writing driven by a wind of my being in some urgency at the time. Each work I've done has been written in that way. Each is different. The next time I'll write dependent on what's occurring then. Here I'll say something about Defoe (Sun & Moon, 1995) since of my prose it was the hardest on me (in a state of extremity) and required the greatest extension. 'Narrating' is for me:

Inextricably related — not simply because events 'are related', but because the relation intrinsically is oneself. The phenomenal world of nature is inseparable from one's 'conception' (visual and tactile) and also does not come from oneself. One is one's relation to the rose disc-cloud on the desert as to social occurrence, such as people's minute nuances or war:

"disc floating on the desert, with cattle that come to the edge of the blue water and the white desert — not coming from it.

One has to agree with them or is not there — which in society can not push out from themselves the red soft hanging disc. that is separate.

misery in having to be in agreement with them giving up being there though one can't do that."

One can not be as social definition, yet that exists. That social relation is inherent conflict as oneself in which one cannot exist or be — 'causes' the syntax to be a 'place'. — Surfaces collapse on each other, existing together as plates in paragraphs, clarity only possible by inclusion of, or being, the conflict. Conflict is the writing's shape configured and is attention in space.

Sleeping dreams are 'compared' to the literal "day"-as-surface as if both day and dreams were surfaces as thin discs and placed side-by-side — the ego not in either of these but there also:

"One sees oneself as simply a shallow behavior that is thin. and so one is free. And then turned inside so that one's dreams are sent into one from the day, as they are it. So there is no REM. People rest in the thin area. One laughs frisky. love in behavior is there, in reverse. That is the street, the way it is seen."

Also fictional events and real events (the Gulf War) are placed side-by-side regardless of their size:

"An object connotes by a prior connection or culture.

Where the object loses, or begins, its connotative existence is to be just then non-connotative. (To see its edge...) would place the piece at the point of dissolving. forming as an object and socially. which is nothing. An object's form isn't anything as that. So it's the point of the form and the conceptual meaning separating. (or rather, being the same)...Trying to get to or to see where actions separate from their social existence — which is what they are — that is their connotative being, so seeing an action without that."

Action is seen 'without' itself in the sense that action (that which is enacted, as physical movement) is 'other than' writing, the one can not be the other — they (both) are also phenomena as conflict, thin discs that impinge on each other:

"Action collapses on itself and is compressed, in that it is description of itself. It is thus in the present-time, still and calm.

It does not diverge from itself, supposedly. That's a conception which people already know. Therefore speaking enables one to see the diverging or separation that is this present. These actions occur as if to make the pupil of an eye (some other's) dilate, and be held open. The present takes place as 'some other.'

Life is dilated.

It does not diverge because description cannot be separate. as it is of itself."

Defoe, the writer, created fictional characters who were supposedly real giving documentary accounts. They were to be imagined as entities, which had no reality. Paragraphs are plates of actions which are not single and do not begin or end there — in order for there to be reflection (as the text) throughout everywhere that is not mirroring of authority as authority is not (is not in) any single one of those actions:

"To name it will be merely caught again in their authority as they will recognize that as themselves and will be in their trap again.

If there is no area between his dreams and waking life, there is no identifying with anyone.

Walk through stream of hot metal bumpers of cars that then move like plates shifting. Mass of plates and she's veering in it. On tin tail of motorbike of yellow teeth thrashing in neck. He's ahead then. On it again thrashing neck. The bike skidding and swaying in narrow channel amidst bumpers. It bucks forward. Neck bike veering and bucking out on the vast tin sheet. the sunlight is reflecting off. He wriggles free, lunging. The motorbike lunges forward. Crashes into car's side in the mass. Slippery blood on his head neck slashing. She's slashed hard slamming into car's side. Rider on foot then, veering and is way ahead then out on stalled mass.

Seeing him out on the vast reflected expanse."

Prior sight — we see things before they occur: whatever dream occurs, that's waking life. Perception does occur in people (or 'in' something happening) — what is it?

"Perception occurs before the context — it is not in a setting.

Without seeing it as it was going on while seeing it, really. The man in being authority is the process of down fawning on the feet of the other man while this is merely an image a negative that is imposed on it. Like an angel.

Is it that seeing into the future as what's going to happen to people it then just is that. It occurs. Isn't deflected. That isn't continual change which is aware as we are in it.

We can see it in ourselves. that's why it's aware.

People see that later. Not when they're young. it's separate from what's actually there which is to be seen directly. has to be.

There is no 'inner reality' to the destruction that this person is creating for themselves from within, which is seen from the outside by others.

So suffering is in oneself, and has no 'inner reality'."

The relation of creating a spatial shape as the writing to changing what occurs (a friend dying from leukemia was having a bone marrow transplant at the same time as the bombing of Iraq — the illusion that one could avert and change this reality while it's occurring in the mind relation that's the writing — yet the friend died and the bombing destroyed) is an impossible terrain/conflict. The illusion itself took one apart. It's an illusion that is bathos, like jump-starting a car. There is nothing commensurate. Fictional jump-starts:

Real boys (and others) starving in the Sudanese desert. One is in or has the dreams of one's fictional characters to make a particular surface. "There is no resemblance between the boys and the boys in the desert, that's forward in time supposedly. really, as it has reality in itself — and is separate from this. One non-reality against others in oneself, it is seen between them. as oneself is simply that.

It isn't changed when it gets to this. Or by it later.

Dreams are excluded from this, which occur. That's convenient because I can't remember them. dreamed one which met this red (actual) sunset that just occurred.

This isn't it. Flattened to my inherent nature. I just woke up. The man who was the driver deserted by the boys who don't resemble them on the desert, has a dream:

Venus was hanging above the red smear, which I didn't see in it. The neighbors with whom had formerly been at war for many years agreed to smuggle oil to them.

It doesn't resemble them and can be reproduced and only seen in reading as lovely isn't the market. Seen as lovely it therefore isn't the market."

In writing: "The seeing is the event, rather than arising from its occurrence." And: "People's experience lags behind the time they're in." In other words, Defoe is trying to find the relation between seeing (apprehension) and occurrence (events occur 'outside'). There is a relation one makes:

"Make writing that forms before motions.

As when I was in a rage, it formed first — I'd forgotten it so the anger occurred, I was in misery. Walking was at base and therefore observation occurs.

Not observation occurring about it after.

Fictions are so simple that no observation occurs after.

So the fiction occurs first.

Defoe occurs first and so has no validity. It's not bathos and is only distorted to be first or as being that.

So there's no Garden of Eden. There's not authority at all, that's to be at base.

Walking occurs first and observation is not derived from it.

I want to still observation first. I started to walk one time with no writhing and didn't remember beginning walking. I had nothing to writhe about. There isn't a start of that, that's separated from walking.

One can eliminate power in oneself by not eliciting placating. Memory of what hasn't been seen before. So fiction (I mean all conceptualizing) occurs where the real event isn't — isn't seen, it's eliminated, but is occurring or has. Openly doesn't resemble it.

There's present-time first. That's what fiction is, when it is entirely stilled. It doesn't resemble the event."

Fictionalizing drives the mind-terrain into a state of separation. There the dream abuts itself. A real event (such as here an anti-war demonstration) also abuts itself only:

"The dream I had is closer to being because it abuts it — then. before it's occurred. This is in the present. The blossoms on the plum trees opened. On some. Birds sit, and fly amongst branches of bare trees. It has no reverse side, and is thin.

Birds skim low by me.

Wall of police swinging their clubs sweep forward. young punks with tattoos emerge from the crowd, turning the cop car over and burning it. They receive beatings.

...A memory as just a thin disc, as it is seen that way. There is no event.

Warm, the birds stirring and flying. I had a memory of being on an empty street in San Diego near-by the ocean; just that. that as a disc because it became so stagnant it seemed it was going to collapse, and be still. it flapped. my mind had become so tired its resistance was going. The mind being weary as clarifying in itself.

... 'false joy' because they're lying to us. but inside it is not their 'false joy.' It could be one's own, that is a thought. which in itself is joy which bangs against it. The dark cattle stood earlier with the disc of moon on the other side of them — why they were dark; when the sun was on the side (of them) on which they were dark.

That is in memory as the actual event.

The chest in one is struggling in constriction of joke. Trash. The air cannot get into the rib cage. The thought of a bicyclist comes up — which is a memory and therefore separated from one, who is small. That was him and so flattened shooting ahead. His back, that makes one laugh constricted inside so that it's him.

So the flapping swans here so they're the same as the sky simply flying is that (in time), before.

The entire day completely dilated is flapping in one's recesses so it is behind in the back of one. Stagnant in that sense, as it's flapping and then narrowing it in front though it's still the day.

It's the day in a sense, narrowed to a thin disc in front in which the entire dilated day behind in the recesses of oneself bangs shuttering on it. The day collapses in that sense when that's slowed and interminable.

One rests.

One just sees from one's social group perspective say and then the huge bright day is dilated flapping with that; so it's involuntarily let go as it's large and while hitting the recesses in front of one in the present, remains there shuttering."

Comic book style, the apprehension occurs via "the other" who has a hole (or eye) in her side, everything seen alongside and flattened. The visual slots or frames of the comic book (only conceptually implied) can include all layers and perspectives at once, horizontal and vertical. The Other is in love with James Dean who in death is turned into a deer. She pursues the deer to rescue James Dean as the black rain falls. She's traveling through refugees dying from blood blisters on the roads. Her own blood blister is gently lanced by a soldier who's driving the jeep.

The incommensurable relation between outside-action (in the world) and interior-action mind phenomena — is overtly the subject. The shape the writing takes is related to use of fictional and autobiographical/historical event (such as the bombing of Iraq) at the time it's occurring. The time it's occurring — the paragraph-plates are real-time moment of exterior event brought into compressed relation of interior occurrence/horizon together and always separated. The intention is that fictional illusion be at the moment of real-time to: implode it as real-time action.

These are illusions in the practical sense of being 'only' writing (writing has no relation to present or historical reality — it has no reality, is it as well, being mind phenomena. So the 'ordinary' small action is [to be] as much 'reality' as events that are devastating). I am trying to divest hierarchy-of-actions. 'Hierarchy-of-actions' voids people's occurrences (that is, individuals' actions are relegated to inconsequential or invisible). Such hierarchy substitutes 'overview' of 'history'/interpretation/doctrine — therefore to divest 'hierarchy-of-actions' is certainly a political act. (In one's/reader's /viewer's conceptualization then —[is the intention]). What I'm referring to as 'divesting hierarchy-of-actions' by definition has to be in oneself.

Making illusions and noticing them makes them so overt that they 'become' bathos. (I don't regard that as "alienation," however.) Fundamentally anarchism (viewing that as being observation itself) is necessitated. Besides Defoe, my other prose works (crossed with being poetry) are: The Return of Painting, The Pearl, and Orion/A Trilogy (reprinted by Talisman, 1997) and The Front Matter, Dead Souls (Wesleyan, 1996). Also Orchid Jetsam (in manuscript) and R-hu (forthcoming Atelos Press).

 

Issue One
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