The Metamorphosis Over Time (On the Passage of Time VII, Part II)

Note 1.- This is a complex and enormous text; and this is just the second part. It is also the continuation of “On the Passage of Time”. The idea is to get lost during its reading and within its paintings, because the meaning is strangely intertwined to our combined perception of them. And it is necessary to get lost.

Note 2.- I think and believe in every paragraph written, this is not a disjointed text, perhaps it is very dense and a jungle to be explored, even by me. And it is inspired by several theories that I have read in other jungles.

Note 3. Part I, here

The Context

When I believed I had closed the basic symbols of this essay, I discovered a sentence that was out of place:

Only a story that has been lived can reverse its time

I couldn't figure out what I had meant. I had to think about it because the sentence lacked its context; therefore, as long as the contour of its expression—its drawing—was missing, only I could reverse its time and resolve its original meaning: «Context is the where of the text», its place and a path through the jungle of the text itself.

And now it is here, being written and described.

Why do I choose a jungle as a representation? Because I saw a writer use it as a metaphor, and I found it fascinating. Writing is like entering the jungle naked, without a native tongue, exploring it, and coming out with a new language and a cartography of the unknown, without quite understanding what the map is or where you got it from. It is the extension of the jungle within us. But one must dare to dig deep into it, because when time passes, the cartography becomes the best possible map for our «future self»; that which will be our differential throughout the course of our time, which is also our story.

The night is jungle,   is jungle at night. From it one escapes only   through dreams. As soon as it’s light,   night falls;   as soon as it’s life,   death falls. No one         enter                its               depths,   its continues us,   and the jungle weaves us. No two are alike:   the inner one     absorbs and expands us,     open in origin,     entwining      us     like a perpetual tattoo;   the outer     is night of jungle,     jungle of night. Everything is jungle. Poem.- Through

La noche es selva,   es selva de noche. De ella solo se escapa  a través de los sueños. Tan pronto como es luz,  cae su noche;   tan pronto como es vida,  cae su muerte. Nadie         se adentra                en su               profundidad,   ella nos continúa,  y la selva nos teje. No hay dos semejantes:  la interior     nos absorbe y expande,    abierta en origen,      que se nos     enreda    como tatuaje perpetuo;   la exterior     es selva de noche     noche de selva. Todo es selva. Poem.- A través

What makes us think is not in the text, but outside of it. The more words, the more path than river; and it is more river the one that erodes it—abstracts, synthesizes, and reduces—than the one who makes it explicit. That river is the one that goes deep into the jungle, or the one we seek within it to find our place, to orient ourselves or to escape from it. What is it, then, that makes us think? It's its emergent recontextualization.

—Where are you, my dear?

“Should I speak in verse?

If verse is what I am;

when denial doesn't destroy

but transfigures,

write me:

Can an asymmetry

construct meaning

and transfer itself?

Can you go to the jungle

with a blank canvas,

a palette,

and escape from it

with pieces of its negation?

Can you deny me

when I am

—me, here—

being recontextualized?

Writer, you,

you who put me in quotes

while I write stanzas

crossing through your essay:

if you deny me twice,

I will become 

a passionate romance

—ours.”

—The Untamed Poetess, 

Context of a Meta-story

Trapped, she, in her context, leaving traces of a possible definition, the rest of us are entangling ourselves in the jungle of this essay, where the writer can transgress boundaries that are not always well interpreted. It's within this block that such things can occur, because it is the ideal context to be represented without seeming like a lunatic yet writer.

Poetic is not finding a representation—(def. poetic unfigurability)—of the negation of that which might belong to a nature distinct from the language in which we deny its meaning. What we deny are its words; not its meaning. It is like trying to draw music with the path of the rain. There are «no(s)» that belong to different natures; and no, you cannot negate one composition upon another if they do not share something more than roots, something I will surely explore at the end of the text. If they do not share roots and belong to different natures, a «no» upon another of different nature is more than a «no» it’s a «no» that loses(?) its meaning.

And if I dared to theorize about romance and its passion, I might have begun the essay with something like «for everyone else, (yes) I have, but not for you». In that negation, we would already have chosen. That is where the other would be «writing» within us. If I dared, of course, to begin an essay like that; something I might already have done, being, also, part of the context.

Every past is the eventual shipwreck of language, of thought, of every shared moment and of every context that is no longer there. Every memory is a re- or de- contextualization of our own memories.

“Every kiss

is exhaustive in its ruins.

Not now, but when it is no more.

Love postpones us

toward an afterwards

that always returns (to us).

A poem about love

delays its own ending:

far away, they will be two again;

it’s just that a kiss

is more than a kiss

for those who know how to interpret it.

Once its meaning exhausted,

two disconnected/disjointed verses will remain:

one less kiss,

one more poem.”

—The Untamed Poetess, 

Love and its Context

A text can also be decontextualized by underlining it, even though what should be exceptional—the underlining—often comes followed by even more exceptionality. It is that state in which the writer borders on the sublime and holds their breath throughout the entire context. They inhale, live, expire, and die; because by holding their breath they knew how to write the eternal while dying, writing their own permanence. We may extract that instant, but it is and was their own context that brought them to that sublime state, not ours.

The Poem

Is imagination a form of writing within us? Is unrequited love the enslavement of our desires to be inscribed by the other? Are those clandestine figures—our desires—the ones that wish longing to be rewritten? And, what is it to imagine, if not to desire?

“I come from writing over the stars;

And when I return

you offer me nothing but a romance,

to eroticize me,

or make me your possession

when I belong

to the stars.”

—The Untamed Poetess

To imagine the other (in secret) is to proclaim them the author of our secrets; we, their readers or writers, being the ones who wish to be the poem and not the poet, displacing ourselves towards the search for verses that are nothing but a clandestine and impossible love, verses that do not exist, being neither poem nor poet, but only our imagination.

It is a strange and beautiful renunciation, the desire to:

     – be written by the other, with no possible return
     – accept being a figure
     – aspire to be inspiration
     – die for and by our desires

And yet, we lie to ourselves because we are the anonymous authors of what came before. We lie to ourselves because only we can write within our own interior. It is not a poetic paradox to wish to be an inspiration, a figure, or a muse who will not be explicitly recognized, enjoying and suffering in the anonymity of desire, or is it? A poetic paradox.

“A secret

is to place a lock

and guard it

close to the heart.

To love in secret

is to close the heart

to protect it

while it devours you from within;

or to lock and close it

so it may be devoured from within

and protected from without/outside.

These are

the poetic asymmetries

of a secret.”

—The Untamed Poetess

It is not the same to deny that one loves in secret as to deny that one is in love. These are two negations of different natures.

Is requited love a double composition—between two? Do they share a nature? And, why must every poem be about love?

When everything is about Her.

You can begin by loving her, then want to break her into pieces, perhaps even reinvent her love story; but in the end, what remains is—poetically speaking—a poem.

If I were to think

                        in

                          verses

always only

               for

     you,

delight of

             poetry

                    that might transcend;

in desires and

                entanglements of

                               reminiscence,

you, my not princess,

                    princess posthumous

                                          the poet,

with no successor,

                no king, nor

                             beginning,

I would versify this

                         finite

                                poem

silence(s)

            that would not

                             transcend.

Poem. From End to Beginning, ℵ

There are writers who write, and writers who think about writing. Thinking ignites evocation, and from that fire a different kind of word arises: I speak of the «simile». There are poets who verse, and poets who think the poem. It is a «thinking the tool or the language» versus those who think of it or use it as a mere utility. Then another word is evoked: «aesthetics», from the Philosophy section; it is expressionism; ours, as beings who seek new and different ways to express their uniqueness.

Now I get entangled in the previous thought, and what we last observe often becomes the next rule in our inferences. Look, the irony—of the poetic function—is to formulate, only to end up finding the figure—the concavity of the woman—within a poem; where the poem is an aesthetic function and where the figure of the woman is she herself.

“They were distracted

reciting beauty

when the sea began

to draw back.

They believed their verses

would remain

like those written

far away, upon mountains.

Then

—prior silence—

Is tsunami.

All their sandcastles

were reduced

to an instant

that is no more.

Today, a siren

sings above them,

ignoring their tragedy

and their victims;

a siren who is the music

that supersedes them:

their poems, sand

of a non-melody,

now pouring down

beneath Music.

And all I needed

was someone

who knew how to turn

their universes upside down

the one—he or she—

against all the rest.

And no, I did not come here

to write a love story,

nor to risk my heart

but to set it on fire.”

—The Untamed Poetess, 

The Mythology of the Verse That Entered Troy

Darkness and the Moon

The poetic act deforms language and reshapes it into a new dimension, avoiding its destiny, which is transformed upon another; and without destiny, there is no language nor poetic function.

There is a parable I am still developing, that begins by entering a cave(figuratively), the time of our memories would freeze, and as we go deeper into it, we would be moving away from them, believing that when we come out, they would still be there, waiting for us to resume and return to their time—that once belonged to our memories.

Every person is a cave, with their own name. And, in life, we generally move from cave to cave. So, when you enter another's cave—a love, for example—carry your memories on your back, because they are also you. And when you know yourself to be a dark and impassable cave, do not invite anyone in: they may well destroy those memories, frozen or not.

Shadow after shadow
inside the poem
I unveil your core
crossing its mystery
here yet there
I draw you:
                     shadow
center of no one
whether I don't know yet
if it will exist.
When everything that is,
iff we’ll not know,
iff it’ll be disintegrated,
iff there will be no love in its timelessness,
and we will be left
inside steles that will be gone;
wow, what poems, you,
when you write inside them:
           “Hablará por espejos, 

            [Shall speak through mirrors,]
             Hablará por oscuridad 

             [Shall speak through darkness]
             Por sombras 

             [Through shadows]
             Por nadie.”

            [Through no one.]
And still knowing it, 

you sentence:
             “nadie es del color más profundo” 

             [“no one is of the deepest color.”]

ℵ, Iff we are shadows, January 14

Some hearts are shadows; to see them through their light is also to see them by their shadows.

“The most beautiful thing,

exponentially beautiful,

is when someone undresses 

you from within

with such violence

that you learn the meaning

what it means to feel vertigo

like             

never             

before             

you             

have             

felt             

and you are unable to describe

the sensation

  of falling,             

  of having already fallen,            

  or having been destroyed;            

and you cannot name it

  —if you’re falling,           

  if you already fell,           

  or if you were destroyed—          

when the only thing

 she or he did

was to gift you

the unrepeatable.”

—The Untamed Poetess