Umbrellas Unopent in Tempests, Part LIX

What was rising up, unbidden (please take this “unbidden” (used here as if a synonym for spontaneity) in as in relationship to Itwethey’s project, to bid welcome to Guest) without effort, without consent, was “the picture of reality” which streamed in, via the most primitive of visual and smoothing technologies, (though cinema is not at all a primitive or crude technology or art or art-technology), cinematically, through the eyes, (aka as the eyes—those orbs which sit in the face and do their own flitting dance, personalizing the face, even giving it a soul, yes, it is self-explanatory),(movie-camera-jeweledorbitizedwized) a perfectly wonderful and entirely natural experience (to the point that to hold the camera and take the picture seems a redundancy, unnecessary, and to see seeing as anything less than perfectly wonderful and entirely natural and whatever else we might say about it—direct, unmediated, immediate, authentic, vivid, delightful,spontaneous, awesome, groovy—we know we harm our enjoyment of the world and our place in it by acknowledging that “the picture of reality” coming in through the eyes is NOT SPONTANEOUS. It’s highly doubtful (if it is sufficient to put it that way…It’s unlikely to the point of absurd, isn’t it?) the eye as eye takes a picture (or a moving picture) of reality NATURALLY…It is in light of the history of technology, medicine, labor, art and perhaps every other history that what the eye does has any relationship to not only cinema, but picture, image, and…

Natch, no one in their right minds wishes to hurt their own enjoyment. Whatever this convoluted, labyrinthine history associating the eye work with enormous ranges LIFE AND EVERYTHING, the nitty gritty is the part about hurting enjoyment. We do not unbidden, willingly, without compulsion, hurt our own enjoyment. Itwethey didn’t, nor did Guest. Itwethey loves looking at Guest—she-they is pictured permanently in Itwethey’s mind (both at the threshould (should thresh or thresh should) and just out in front, naked, holding firewood), and this image which thrusts pelvically into Itwethey’s sanctum sanctorum sacroiliac in that lower chakra where Itwethey gets the most vibrant of orbiting of Guest, both pantomiming like crazy, “the picture of reality” which in this case is Guest—IS GUEST—Itwethey embraces this image, “the picture of reality” and has the sense of offering worship—that’s what this embrace is. Looking at Guest can hurt enjoyment of Guest and Guest’s enjoyment.

Guest isn’t that thrilled to be worshipped.

No, Guest is thrilled and bored to be worshipped (One wonders, as one “worships” God, if God might feel the same.) Itwethey has always had this weird idea that there is this ability or capacity available to, as Guest’s thrill moves down into boredom, an edit, on some level, can be put in there, to rectify this. Extempore. From the hip. A “Book Him-Her” on count one of two of three. The wildlands delta, down there in the monstrous—surely after all the guff and effort placed on disciplining that region, once removed from that region—should be capable of springing up now, when needed, to provide a perfect rebalancing so Guest, in worship, is thrilled. (Just remember one thing, as you consider this, a lot of people never wonder, no matter how bored they are by adulation, whether worship of God, adulation of God, is love of God.)

Umbrellas Unopent in Tempests, Part LVIII

Guest was pantomiming. Itwethey was sure of that. Itwethey searched memory banks: search words included “guest” “threshold” “welcome” and “pantomime.” Itwethey was dashing through the results—something had to turn up. Guest surely wouldn’t wait there forever. Pantomime is something to do with theater. Theater is something to do with Broadway. Broadway has nothing to do with Hollywood. Keats had tears melted into ground, though poetry and foundations are different. Itwethey stammered slowly in grunts and grouns, then said:

“I do take this transitiveness to mean I-I-I must accept as logical the objects “implied” quote-unquote. I-I-I do understand I-i-I must note as accepted objects shimmering or glimmering or offering light off of their starboard or esther or platonic solid or maybe, scratching contemplatively, stern, as a star is hidden or is eshstarred, melted into all experience, as if these horrible words, among which ‘experience’ is most horrible, have to be CONFRONTED.”

Itwethey lets out a sigh.

Guest’s pantomime was designed to let Itwethey know the experience of Guest was transitory. Guest had to know Itwethey had the hopes that any encounter with Guest was intended as eternal. Keats had, despite fears and tuberculosis, and some suggestions to the gaudi or the frightful “art noveau” (the objectivist or the critic of art known as the castigator of anything ‘noveau’ is horrified) down an emptiness no one will pantomime (ultimately we know pantomime creates, eschews emptiness, posits a relaxation of our fibers) Itwethey dares let out sigh, Guest, pantomiming, receives, mid-pantomime, that sigh, and delights.

Umbrellas Unopent in Tempests, Part LVII

Itwethey wasn’t that worried about “size.” Guest would be greeted, when the time came, with sufficient “size.”

But then again, when Itwethey saw the “size” of Guest’s regions, Itwethey had what we call, a “qualm.”

One doesn’t want to be swallowed up by another’s peepee.

Itwethey had previously mentioned Guest’s thatch was remarkable, splendid, and just a little terrifying. Guest’s legs, especially the thighs, were heavily muscled; Itwethey could hardly wish to state it, but will: more muscular than Itwethey’s “own.”

Umbrellas Unopent in Tempests, Part LVI

“However, there is something very positive and affirming and bold and audacious and vibrant in this silent, (or soft), musically announced ‘this is beauty.’ Kant had to have had a reason to treat beauty, even practically,” Itwethey muse-ratio-I-I-I-anizes. “We would like the practical to not need the hesitation of reason, and our beauty must elude, evade, avoid, or abhor the practical, much as nature used to, back when nature was natural, and proud of it, abhor a vacuum.” ‘Intuition’ has already been asked to back off, back off! Over there to the neutral corner, where we (pronoun of the empty) think the empty,(it isn’t the neutral, note) as our bell has been rung, resoundingly. We have no idea how to do without you, (Intuition-Woman), but that doesn’t mean we know what to do with you. (You have your place and we decide, in our fairness and neutrality, it is superior. Superior being understood as standing under, believe it or not understood as standing “under.”)

Itwethey toys with the notion of not announcing “it.” Itwethey’s boldness is not involved with any announcements. We don’t need no damned language interfering wi’ natura, naturans, “or orangutans”. Those monkeys are orange. We’ll interweave a bunch of faded (artistically so, not scientifically or philosophically so) …languages. If we are going to have a virgin birth, if we are going to actualize abstraction (sweatless, gruntless, stinkless, embar-bareassedless, gawkless, mawkish-mawkishless, planned-to-perfection AND perfectly planned such as the independence of the mental requires), woman emerges from the mental…This is the founding emergence.

“‘This is beauty’, is said as an organized sound. Venus. It isn’t a grunt. (Not to say a grunt hasn’t been organized. Indeed, it has been. If it has been recorded, and thus preserved, using ferromagnetism, we know, by the very act of being able to reproduce the grunt, to what extent it is organized, and we, as recorders, are also organized. We get not flat cooperation, but cooperation rounded.” Itwethey is not expansive here. The intention is to be and affirm it, the reduced. To curl, ever so gently, into a hollow round, of interiority. Someone must come around later and say, “Hey, why curled, why gently curled, ever so gently, curly-gently, a hallowed round, a vegetable, of interiority?”

“We make concessions to these nagging (intense? Hear the hypocrisy) needs of saying, before the form of woman, “Wow!” We can’t use you. That means you are without reason. That means you are to be rejected. That means (remember: this is all set against the background where if the thought occurs at all, it exists) what you offer will be conferred on to the functional as the functional: these feathers of flight are made to take us higher.

Umbrellas Unopent in Tempests, Part LV

“How deeply satisfying it is, when after adjudicating (through comparison, reflection, and abstraction) the flash ‘raw’ feeling ‘this is beauty’-- that immediate, ‘intuitive’, ‘from the gut’, ‘from the heart’, (or, ‘from the gut-heart’, which is a raw feeling simultaneously originating in organic and natural purity from both the gut AND the heart, they are ‘corroborating’ each other…AND ‘collaborating’ with each other….But then again, what about the ‘from the gut-heart-pancreas-spleen-rightbigtoe’ intuition, which is the doppelgangersockdollager of compound glory!)to discover that ‘raw’ feeling was sufficient, ‘as good as it gets’, as confirmed by the conceptual (conscious) adjudication(through comparison, reflection, and abstraction.) No one argues against this EVER happening, now do they?” Itwethey says, winded by the expenditure of saying that all in one breath, exasperated by thinking it all in one thought.

“We might—and point to whoever in whatever historical tradition says we don’t—intuit what we later conceptually realize was already sufficient.

“The CRITICAL question:—do we always?

“If we do always, philosophy, which is concept creation, bows out. If we do sometimes, adjudication of cases will probably have a permanent and important role(Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie or BillyBobthorNt0n) or function(esophagus or exhaust pipe…) to play. If we do never—can George Walker Bush be coaxed back into public life because we’ve got a police state to get erected ASAP! (Note how “ASAP” occurs frequently in daily life, a little less commonly in financial literature, a little less commonly in politics, never in literature, never in philosophy (except as sarcasm in literature and philosophy.)”

Umbrellas Unopent in Tempests, Part LIV

“However, there is something very positive and affirming and bold and audacious and vibrant in this silent, (or soft), musically announced ‘this is beauty.’ Yes, it is satisfying and appealing—and joyous-- to know (without knowing) ‘this is beauty.’ It is satisfying and self-sufficient: one is filled with the feeling, the self-certain feeling: ‘beauty.’ It can’t be questioned or criticized, nor should it be. (However, there is a problem, faint so far, perhaps to grow thunderously loud, a political problem, with anything—any thought or feeling-- which can’t be questioned or criticized.)”

Itwethey loves to be filled with the thought-feeling-experience ‘this is beauty.’ To be so filled is transitory, rare, but it happens. “You can’t be filled with this experience and at the same time attempt to criticize and question it, either. It is better to not attempt to contemplate it at the time—to reflect upon it.” Itwethey is more than happy to reflect upon it, to abstract from it, in order to prolong it, or maybe to get it to happen again. There doesn’t seem to be much doubt that the experience is faded and cooled in reflection, contemplation, and abstraction, progressively so. (Abstraction is, in this context, almost a process for the fading of ‘experience’. Abstraction is bleach.)

“But let’s face it: faded is better than nothing. If we can’t have ‘this is beauty’ on a consistent, reliable, or frequent basis, we’re going to have to make do with what we have. E’en as masturbation is sometimes to be resorted to, so also is mental masturbation,” says Itwethey, “which is what comparison, reflection, abstraction, contemplation, and the rest of these activities amount to, we guess.”

We could choose not to resort to mental masturbation…We could wait patiently, chastely, between events of ‘this is beauty.’ “Whereof we cannot experience ‘this is beauty’, thereof we must evacuate the mind of all its masturbatory tendencies,” says Itwethey, mournfully. “ It could be this would hasten the next event of ‘this is beauty’, if such hastening is possible, in the same way refraining from masturbation does seem to hasten the next score. We’re talking quieting the mind here. Quieting the mind does come from the AoA lexicon.”

Umbrellas Unopent in Tempests, Part LIII

“We’re trying to examine the idea of a fully formed judgment of beauty emerging from the intuition. This is not the same idea as subconscious impulses or drives transmuting through sublimation into a socially or culturally acceptable form, because the feeling ‘beauty’ is what’s down below, not a drive or impulse, and there is no shaping through psychic processes ( obscurely conceived as these are in Freud and as far as Itwethey knows, elsewhere—in the idea we are examining, there is no shaping of any kind at all) of something ‘raw’ and unacceptable into something ‘refined’ and socially or culturally redeeming. The intuition may be conceived as a way of accessing the subconscious, but the subconscious is not a squished-down mental space: it is capacious and plentiful, a garden (probably the garden of Eden.) This is closer to the idea of a collective unconscious and a realm of archetypes, though we say this guardedly.

“Nor is this the same idea as accessing time and space and shaping it consciously and reasonably. There is no ‘accessing.’ There is no ‘shaping’. There is no ‘consciously’ and there is no ‘reasonably.’ None of these are necessary. Not only that: each of these is considered as a negative, harmful, distorting process. The judgment of ‘beauty’ is there: it is just there. Also, it is going to be imperative (ha ha) to drop the word ‘judgment’ because it isn’t a judgment of ‘beauty’, it is an experience of ‘beauty’. The word ‘experience’, the idea of it as an experience is upheld. However, this isn’t an upholding of Hume and empiricism over Kant and rationalism. There’s no caustic, verging on cynical, examination of the effects of convention or other external non-intuitive forces or factors which might be intervening on judgments of ‘beauty.’ Experience is strangely ‘raw’ and ‘refined’, even ‘raw’ and ‘perfect’, even ‘raw’ and perfect only if ‘raw.’ This is odd, because most generally the AoA have extraordinarily sophisticated knowledge of the effects of convention and other external forces acting on thinking and feeling, which they do apply critically. They do wish to be, and often are, unconventional (in behavior or appearance.)

“What’s difficult in articulating this idea is the way each word of articulation would be disputed or disavowed. Articulating of the idea as a way of understanding it is disavowed or disputed as a worthy object. If we say, innocently, ‘it emerges’, then both the ‘it’ and ‘emerges’ will be disavowed and disputed as ways of describing.” This is the hypersensitivity to hypocrisy by which Itwethey has characterized the AoA. It amounts to a disavowal of language. Or at least of language insofar as language is logos. It is a deep commitment to the idea of language as something which distorts, and maims. (Poetical language escapes this but that’d be due to the musical quality of poetical language which, of course, is language not as logos.) It could mean a valorization of silence, but if it doesn’t, what is to be voiced is all but the logos. (We’re pointing this out because it seems to us this is the exact opposite of what Wittgenstein thought at the time of the Tractatus.)

“However, there is something very positive and affirming and bold and audacious and vibrant in this silent, (or soft), musically announced ‘this is beauty,’” Itwethey says, winded by the expenditure of air in saying all this in one breath, exasperated by the aspiration of thinking it all in one thought.

Umbrellas Unopent in Tempests, Part LII

“We are trying to evaluate the suggestion,” Itwethey says, “of beauty being ‘sublimated’ sex. What we are talking about here is the ‘raw’ feeling or flash: ‘this is beauty’ rather than the judgment, after reflection, comparison, or abstraction ‘this is beauty.’ This is the feeling or perception of beauty being ‘sublimated’, before energies (drives, impulses) are transferred or directed into creation of art works or other cultural or socially-useful activity. In other words, this isn’t the Freudian conception of sublimation, nor is it, at this point, a correct Kantian use of ‘sublime.’” (Itwethey feels there is something baffling—almost as if there was an intent to confuse by Freud-- in reusing the same term or word root: Freud’s ‘sublimation’ and Kant’s ‘sublime.’ Was Freud somehow responding to Kant? Or is the use of the word coincidental? As a coincidence, it’s remarkable. These are very different concepts, and yet—related? If so, strangely so. These are things Itwethey has not considered before, and probably does not understand very well, and maybe not at all.)

“We are trying to test the idea that such a sensation or perception or flash or ‘raw’ feeling as beauty is intuitive, (this use of the word intuitive is,Itwethey believes, very in tune with the way the word is used by AoA, which is very different from the way the word is used by Kant, and if so, this is of interest to Itwethey. Itwethey can’t remember any writings by Freud on the subject of intuition, and it is her opinion intuition is outside the purview of psychoanalysis. (If there’s anyone out there reading this crap who knows better than Itwethey or I-I-I about these matters, please chime in.) If there is an intuition of beauty as intuition is understood by the AoA, beauty doesn’t require reflection, judgment, and there isn’t a need or justification for aesthetics.

“We don’t need to know if something is beautiful, or why, or how. We know something is beautiful because we know. The answer to an array of questions is, ‘Because!’ (As when, prior to Galileo and Newton, objects moved the way they did because that’s the way they did move (‘according to their nature’, as if that explained anything (does it? Itwethey doesn’t mean to be hasty or nasty)), as if it was ‘self-explanatory’ (was it?)) It’s beautiful because it is beautiful and we don’t need to know how we know that—we might even damage our experience of it by enquiring into it. (Itwethey is not ridiculing this.))

“It worries me that so much of what is being said appears to repeat a critique of romanticism, and maybe the AoA are better named and criticized as romantics, as whatever is being criticized about AoAs is already understood within the critique of romanticism,” Itwethey remarks. “It worries me, because if that’s all it is, Guest will be bid welcome, but will never be welcomed.”