Friendship (d'apres Georges Bataille)

By Prof. Rowan

At the most fundamental level, and the foundation of the world, we are one, and yet we are unable to overcome false transcendence to catch sight of this truth. It is a truth of death, or the unity of life and death, of the fundamental ambiguity of the world, which we avert our eyes to turn away from our eventual dissolution. And yet some, among us have the courage to bear this truth. But can we ever be certain of our endurance? On the contrary, this truth is unbearable: we attain this impossible truth only blind and burning, in that moment in which we surrender to self-loss and are as one, consumed in moments doomed to disappearance, by the conflagrations of love.

"A simple possibility of thought . . ."

"Everything that writes in me is love, incendiary. The truth that I bear in me cries out, with the force of slowly articulating the angular words." (G.B.)

We are all wounded. I speak not only of scars left by past life experiences, but also our weak, sensitive, touchy spots, but most importantly, our passions, the immense openness of which we are all capable, and in which all boundaries collapse. We are wounded by life, wounded by the passage of time and inevitable separations - experience wounds - shared experience wounds, but also forges friendship and the only truly sincere understandings.

Alone, the wounds we bear are insufficient, they are only the possibility of laying bare. Words spoken might well be mere cries in the wind without the sharing of wounds, the opening of wounds, of worlds, unto one another; the dissolution of boundaries that makes words superfluous. I call you "Friend" in the strong sense of the term because in some way we share some wound or another, or more. Our wounds, with our memories are what make us who we are; fond memories and profound communiques written in blood constitute our "Friendship."

The Pataphysics of Friendship (Prof. Rowan - 17 April, 2011)

Love, the apotheosis of friendship, lets self-loss speak without words. Friendship at degree zero is without signification, without words; it is the shattering of our separation, an embrace. Communication is a matter of physical contact and a touching – whether one of a gentle caress or one of a violent blow. But are we even then truly heard? No. More frequently, words fail to signify, for they fail to penetrate the surface of thought. There is no shared foundation of meaning; it is as though words fell upon deaf, impervious ears. Rarely, however, there is a shared foundation – communicants naked before one another, defenseless, wounded and open – and words transgress not only the ear as sound but the boundaries of isolated beings. We know this as friendship; we know this as love.

Mythic Life (Prof. Rowan, 19 April, 2011)

Eyes, bereft of transparency, no soulular windows
    scratched, cracked - schized, torn-in-two and open,
no trace remaining
of the soulular structures


Eyes, overflowing with reflectivity,
   reduplicating, déduplicating,
the soulular structures.


Eyes, illuminating the twinned world
wherein dwell, re-projected,
our world-twins, our mirror-souls

(18 Sept. 2011)

Your Face and Mine (Prof. Rowan, 17 April, 2011)

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