Both and

The story of Philippus from Plutarch's Lives— "There were two brothers called Both and Either; perceiving Either was a good understanding busy fellow and Both a silly fellow and good for little, he said: Either is Both, and Both is Neither..."

Where in the world are we? I accidentally on purpose took two days off from making posts for the first time since I began blogging here, in January. I have been busy but external preoccupations have never stopped me from putting up even a simple video link before. This writer's strike of sorts came from somewhere else, from a Piscean struggle to turn sensation into language and to come down from the hidden mountain behind the clouds of the spiritual download, where we receive, receive, receive...and we have to be ready to exist again in word. 

Words are earthly object-acts with which I used to think I have an easy intimacy, and yes, I still do, but I recognize now that the why of such easy intimacy is their origin as concentrated currency, or the energetic force that rides on a wave and then the wave becomes word. The fact that the riding of the waves may be the root of all experiences in my human form is very assuring to me, considering that sometimes to myself, but most often to others who are better able to see this in me, for I feel it not (my multiplicities have always made sense to me however much secondary grief they might cause and despite the external frustrations): you are torn between different ways of working...between the logical and the numinously intuitive, between the detective pursuit and the organic, immediate knowing but the world wants you to choose a way. 

I would prefer to choose, simply, the wave.

When the world asks us to choose that is when we "drop out" from its fora to reevaluate. The past few weeks have been ideal for "dropping out", with minimal whiplash in its wake...Things are changing for me, perhaps, I am enjoying the solitude, accepting it diligently...

I remember as a child, after studying To Kill a Mockingbird in English Lit, I adapted a phrase from the book (about the accusing party of resentful poor whites)...Maycomb gave them Christmas baskets, welfare money, and the back of its hand...to describe the father of a just-divorced classmate: "he gave her a credit card and the back of his hand"...shoo young one, I pictured him saying. Leave me alone. Shouldn't material beneficence be enough? 

Is that what it means to drop out from earthly responsibilities like parenthood, to turn the back of one's hand to the world, in lieu of love, gifting mere stuff? 

I believe that when we ride the waves up, up, up to the mountain hidden behind the clouds, we are invited to see the world as it is, we are invited to hold that world out on a rose, in the rose's equivalent of the palm of a human hand. There, images will meet words but need not use them. There we are not "alone" but in elective oneness. Back of hand and front of hand are integrated. Stuff becomes seeds for something else. Either is Both and Both is Neither. This state of observation, that frequency of being can cause some consternation when we reground to descend...and some confusion, too, about how to make decisions via word's object-act...

as is suggested by the title of Huma Abedin's new memoir, Both / And — or, my preference, in this clip from Every Man for Himself (1980), the movie that marks Godard's second wind, I think he would prefer that term to the idea of a comeback (as he discusses here with Dick Cavett), where a woman forced to make a choice chooses "neither", and as is revealed over the rest of the movie, the woman who watches the consequence of her non-choice chooses the conjuncting "and"...to an either-neither sort of end.