Writing is a form of presentation. A gathering of words, a collection of possible meanings, charged marks that contain the endeavour to form the future.
What are you talking about, they say.
“It is no accident that one of the co-founders of molecular biology, Francois Jacob, described the process of the experimental sciences as a ‘machine for making the future’.” (Radical Philosphy 187 p 13) A play of the possible. And the play is interminable but subject to shocks and accidents and to the efforts of the writers who give shape to the imagination.
Is it what we want to say or is it rather the happy accidents, the shock of seeing what we did not have in mind? The future is being made but not what we had in mind. Can we safely assume that Bush/Blair, those two halves of the pantomime donkey, did not rush to leave their piss trails in history because they saw that their actions would lead to Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL.
We have to attempt to discover reality. We have been driven to the edges of madness by the lies and deceits of global corporations and their political poodles so we seek other views of what reality might be. Might I mention this week’s referendum in Scotland? Like the seesawing polls, my unvotable views edge both ways but I tend towards supporting the YES vote simply so that something happens to break the mould we are trapped in. After all we all want to have a say, have a hand in creating the future.
I can see myself as ill organised fragments, each bit having its own dynamic and pattern and demands, but do they cohere into some self? Some well organised and functioning thing? A person? Have we all become more complex? As I picture my parents, they appear to lead relatively simple lives. That might not be true! They lived through the shock of WWII: reality visited them. It forced them to focus on what was important. Family. Recovery. A safe future. But then we (my post-war generation) came along full of the intention of upsetting things, upsetting the apple cart, in order to see what was hidden and to see what could be made of the future: more fun, more possibilities, more freedom . . . we would discover the nature of reality . . . with little thought as to the ensuing wreckage. Wreckage tends to produce fragments. And dreams perhaps. And so here I am, a bundle of ill organised fragments, sort of functioning . . . actually it comes to mind that the experience is rather like that of a character out of Beckett’s oeuvre, shuffling forward, in love and on the edge of love, but with a mind full of fragments of a life, ghosts and other assorted animals who press in curious and excited.
