Man carrying thing (pt. 3)

Landscape with Boat opened our discussion yesterday. I came to the class thinking only about kenosis and the way it fits into all of this, the whole discussion we have been having. Justin Bieber vomiting? It is an emptying out. But what of "things"? What of the Man Carrying Thing who has now been following me around for some time? What of this new discussion with boats and the letter "c" and the sea?

I am looking for a place to start with all of this, so maybe I'll go back to the weekend and work forward. This last weekend I backpacked the Cascade Canyon trail in Grand Teton National Park. It is a 20 mile loop that carried me and my friends through some incredible backcountry. And as I was there, I remembered Sexson's challenge to see something as it really is. While considering that, I came upon a large, clear pool where ice and water seemed to collide. Below is the image of what I saw.

And as I looked at that, I thought of this idea that we are all made of the same stuff. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. There was ice, and there was water, but it was all water. This idea of the swerve is about constant motion, movement, and fluidity. That's water. But what about the ice? Along other parts of the trail, there were these incredible streams, and at parts a small waterfall spitting drops of water onto a log laid across the stream. And upon the log, these magnificent layers of ice formed. The fluid became solid, still, fixed, but it is still the same stuff. I think life is about movement and motion and transformation and constantly traveling along the spiral that moves us closer to wherever we might be going. However, it is more. It is a series of images frozen in time. The conscience of reason centers upon the absolute and knowable truths. It focuses on what is presently visible, the thing "as it is". It is like the ice. But this other part, the imagination, it is the water. It is the fluid and shifting, and also presents the thing "as it is", though in a different way. And I made the mistake of thinking one superseded the other in regards to which conscience a human must operate from. Then it became clear in the clear waters of this pool. They must coexist, reason and imagination, and we know this from our discussion on Monday. 

But it goes further. Man Carrying Thing:

The thing he carries resists

The most necessitous sense. Accept them, then,
As secondary...

...A horror of thoughts that suddenly are real. 

What is the necessitous sense, "the horror" of these suddenly real thoughts? It goes back to the snow man as I mentioned in the first part of this blog. And this is the final line of that poem:

Nothing that is not there and nothing that is.

Finally- I know this is a lot of setup, but it is necessary- this is from Dustin's blog (also addressed in my first post):

imagination remains as the negation of reality, the nothing in excess of the something.

All of this deals with kenosis. It is an emptying out; we know this. And this negates what is normal or common to human thinking. People fill themselves with knowledge, fill their houses with things, and occupy their time with activity. This is reality. Imagination negates that because it is an emptying out. Imagination breeds creativity, and creativity is an expressive outpouring of ideas, thoughts, and experiences in a manner that makes sense to us. In many ways, it is how someone shows the world how they personally experience reality through their lens of understanding based on the summation of those experiences. You see, reality is the form of something in the most real way we can experience it. Imagination negates this in that it is not a filling up, but instead an outpouring (the nothing in excess of something). What is interesting is what we find in Adagia...

The imagination wishes to be indulged.

In part 2 I wrote about how we all carry something, and our job is to share that and occupy the voids around us with those things. We are all the man carrying thing, and that thing inside of us resists the outpouring because, generally, to be full is to be satisfied. A significant part of this is the idea that the imagination wishes to be indulged. It seems that this part of us is somehow uncontainable, though often contained, and must be indulged through release. Imagination, though secondary, confronts us with the "horrifying"thought that it is suddenly real. This is evident in the fact that it has the very real desire of being indulged.

But why is this horrifying?

I think it is because kenosis feels unnatural. Though people naturally want to create, that natural desire is often stifled by the pressures to learn, to be filled with knowledge and understanding, and to not look stupid on the off chance of saying something dumb in a personal outpouring of thoughts. But this is the life and death process, an idea that seems to continually surface in these considerations. Sometimes I have an idea that strikes me as profound and important. I like the idea, but fear that the validity of it might be challenged if shared with people around me. In order to share that, I have to give up a part of myself, and this is the same thing. It is a small death. However, as the idea grows and gains momentum and more and more people become interested in it- as has been the case when people share in this class- the entire process is very life giving. Death, life, death, life.

To return to Landscape with Boat, I return to Monday's class. While Sexson was teaching, I was working on some different ideas that surfaced as a result of Eli's sharing and the discussion that followed. I was flipping through the table of contents looking for a particular poem when Sexson began talking about the sea. He then said it was more than that, that there was a connection to the letter "C". My first thought was, "That's an interesting idea, but so what?" My second thought was, "Sexson seems like he almost always knows what he is talking about, but I don't really see the point/significance of the letter 'c' bearing a connection to the sea." Then, in another one of those instances of unfathomable coincidence, probably better described as fate, my eyes fell upon this poem from Harmonium...

The Comedian as the Letter C

I think Sexson may have made mention of it, now that I think of it, because he was talking about Crispin who is the predominant figure in the poem. Maybe he did, but maybe not. Like I said, my mind was preoccupied with a number of things from the earlier part of the discussion, thus causing me to miss out on the latter half. But we are confronted with "C", sea, and see. With each of these comes a different connotation, though out of context to any ear, they are all the same. I cannot distinguish c from sea from see with no context and when I simply hear each one. I could reach any variety of conclusions about what one may mean by saying c, sea, or see, but the point is that eventually one will supersede the other two, and the other two must be left. But I can always return to them. I may have reached land in a sense, but I always have the ability and opportunity to take the boat and return to sea.

Sexson told us in Oral Traditions that we already know everything, and we have simply begun to forget everything. This is kenosis. This is the emptying out. Those things are out there, but we always leave them for a time to go to land, to the solid, to the real. We go to the ice. But eventually we have to return to the boat and return to sea, to the fluid, to the imaginary. We go to the water. And we pour out one and gather another. And the cycle continues on and on and on until. One thing dies, another comes to life. It is like the variety of ideas in this class. Everyone becomes consumed with one thing. Eventually, though, he or she will leave that thing and move on to something else. The previous thing will always be there for them to return to, but it is no longer the thing.

This last weekend I got to be a part-time hermit in some ways. I abandoned society and entered into a place where I could empty myself out. I was able to set some things down so that I might return and pick up in a different place with a new set of ideas and things. I returned having seen something as it is, but that is only a small part of a greater reality. Later on I will have to set aside these ideas for the sake of others that are built upon it. They will only be built upon it, though, if it becomes the horrifying thought of reality, reality itself.

This is the importance of the man carrying thing and the interplay between reality and imagination. People always carry something with them, but that something comes at the expense of other things. I have given something up in order to carry this other thing. I will eventually give the thing I carry up so I can carry another thing, and so on and so forth. This is negation. This is the nothing that is not there, and nothing that is. Why are all the things nothing? Because they negate each other by their mere essence and existence. We are all made of the same stuff. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. 

Life is the elimination of what is dead.

     Wallace Stevens, Adagia, 908