Michael A.

“I went in; I closed the door. I sat down on the bed. Blackest space extended before me. I was not in this blackness, but at the edge of it, and I confess that it is terrifying. It is terrifying because there is something in it which scorns man and which man cannot endure without losing himself. But he must lose himself; and whoever resists will founder, and whoever goes forward will become this very blackness, this cold and dead and scornful thing in the very heart of which lives the infinite. This blackness stayed next to me, probably because of my fear: this fear was not the fear people know about, it did not break me, it did not pay any attention to me, but wandered around the room the way human things do. A great deal of patience is required if thought, when it has been driven down into the depths of the horrible, is to rise little by little and recognize us and look at us. But I still dreaded that look. A look is very different from what one might think, it has neither light nor expression nor force nor movement, it is silent, but from the heart of the strangeness its silence crosses worlds and the person who hears that silence is changed.”
― Maurice Blanchot, Death Sentence

“Philosophy is not a hospital. If people are vertiginous and want to take medication against it, I don't stop them, but I say: this is medication.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Merleau-Ponty Reader

“Keeping a monopoly on legitimate violence is still the proven best way to limit violence and allow reason some asylum where it can be freely practiced.”
― Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

“I AM ROWING (a hex poem)

i have cursed your forehead, your belly, your life
i have cursed the streets your steps plod through
the things your hands touch
i have cursed the inside of your dreams

i have placed a puddle in your eye so that you cant see anymore
an insect in your ear so that you cant hear anymore
a sponge in your brain so that you cant understand
anymore

i have frozen you in the soul of your body
iced you in the depths of your life
the air you breathe suffocates you
the air you breathe has the air of a cellar
is an air that has already been exhaled
been puffed out by hyenas

the dung of this air is something no one can breathe
your skin is damp all over
your skin sweats out waters of great fear
your armpits reak far and wide of the crypt

animals drop dead as you pass
dogs howl at night their heads raised toward your house
you cant run away
you cant muster the strength of an ant to the tip of your feet

your fatigue makes a lead stump in your body
your fatigue is a long caravan
your fatigue stretches out to the country of nan
your fatigue is inexpressible

your mouth bites you
your nails scratch you
no longer yours, your wife
no longer yours, your brother
the sole of his foot bitten by an angry snake

someone has slobbered on your descendents
someone has drooled in the mouth of your laughing little girl
someone has walked by slobbering all over the face of your domain

the world moves away from you

i am rowing

i am rowing

i am rowing against your life

i am rowing

i split into countless rowers
to row more strongly against you

you fall into blurriness
you are out of breath
you get tired before the slightest effort

i row

i row

i row

you go off drunk tied to the tail of a mule
drunkenness like a huge umbrella that darkens the sky
and assembles the flies

dizzy drunkenness of the semicircular canals
unnoticed beginnings of hemiplegia

drunkeness no longer leaves you
lays you out to the left
lays you out to the right
lays you out on the stony ground of the path

i row
i row
i am rowing against your days

you enter the house of suffering

i row
i row

on a black blinfold your life is unfolding
on the great white eye of a one eyed horse
your future is unrolling

I AM ROWING”
― Henri Michaux