otherness

Language, the unconscious, the parents, the symbolic order: these terms in Lacan are not exactly synonymous, but they are intimately allied. They are sometimes spoken of by him as the __ther_ _ as that which like language is always anterior to us and will always escape us, that which brought us into being as subjects in the first place but which always outruns our grasp. We have seen that for Lacan our unconscious desire is directed towards this Other, in the shape of some ultimately gratifying reality which we can never have; but it is also true for Lacan that our desire is in some way always received from the Other too. We desire what others _ our parents, for instance _ unconsciously desire for us; and desire can only happen because we are caught up in linguistic, sexual and social relations _ the whole field of the __ther_ _ which generate it.

And suddenly, lying in bed, I became aware of every inch of my body and I apologised to it, quietly. I apologised for bring so ungrateful for so long. Then I thanked my arms, hands and fingers for always trying so hard. I thanked my legs and feet for holding me up all the time. I thanked my brain for working so amazingly well and conjuring up thoughts and dreams and sentences and images and crazy poems. And I thanked all my organs for working together and giving me life. It had taken four and a half billion years for me to be here. Right now. In this universe. And in that moment, I felt totally overwhelmed at being alive. There could be nothing but there was everything. I didn't want to waste a single second more worrying about trivialities. Worrying that I'd never match up to an ideal that didn't even exist. Nobody is normal. We are all different. I had to make sure that every moment I had left on this planet counted.

Choosing to accept yourself is a political act. An act of liberation.

The ultimate reality from which the path of this becoming could start off again will no longer rest on a ground of 'causa sui.' in any case the sense of a God who would alone be capable of giving an account of self. It is rather from the human and from what the human most irreducibly is that it is a question of starting off again. From the human as it objectively is before it starts to construct a language and a thinking which help to distance it from its beginning, from its prematureness without thinking it in the totality of its being.

It's not about outward appearances but inward significance. A grandeur in the world, but not of the world, a grandeur that the world doesn't understand. That first glimpse of pure otherness, in whose presence you bloom out and out and out.A self one does not want. A heart one cannot help.

Too many thousands of opened books yawned between them and him. He had exiled himself.

I suddenly remember how different I am from most of the kids here. Nobody would have to drag me or my brothers to the Bahamas; we'd swim there if we could. For us, a family vacation is staying at a local hotel with a swimming pool for a weekend.

They were laughing and their hair was shining like leaves in moonlight, their limbs long as saplings. I thought, Girls are magical at this phase, girls are invincible, nothing can touch them. I didn__ think __s_ because I didn__ feel that; I felt other, on the outside, watching them.

According to Melanie Klein, we develop moral responses in reaction to questions of survivability. My wager is that Klein is right about that, even as she thwarts her own insight by insisting that it is the ego's survivability that is finally at issue. Why the ego? After all, if my survivability depends on a relation to others, to a "you" or a set of "yous" without whom I cannot exist, then my existence is not mine alone, but is to be found outside myself, in this set of relations that precede and exceed the boundaries of who I am. If I have a boundary at all, or if a boundary can be said to belong to me, it is only because I have become separated from others, and it is only on condition of this separation that I can relate to them at all. So the boundary is a function of the relation, a brokering of difference, a negotiation in which I am bound to you in my separateness. If I seek to preserve your life, it is not only because I seek to preserve my own, but because who "I" am is nothing without your life, and life itself has to be rethought as this complex, passionate, antagonistic, and necessary set of relations to others. I may lose this "you" and any number of particular others, and I may well survive those losses. But that can happen only if I do not lose the possibility of any "you" at all. If I survive, it is only because my life is nothing without the life that exceeds me, that refers to some indexical you, without whom I cannot be.

Beyond thought I reach a state. I refuse to divide it up into words - and what I cannot and do not want to express ends up being the most secret of my secrets. I know that I'm scared of the moments in which I don't use thought and that's a momentary state that is difficult to reach, and which, entirely secret, no longer uses words with which thoughts are produce. Is not using words to lose your identity? is it getting lost in the harmful essential shadows?

When I think of what I already lived through it seems to me I was shedding my bodies along the paths.

I carry out sun rituals on the slopes of high mountains. But I am also taboo for myself, untouchable because forbidden.

While we are curling down in our comfort zone, the perverted talents of connectivity-designers drive us surreptitiously into a blind alley of addiction. If, however, we succeed in impeding mobiles' unlimited rule, we may be able to relish the fragrance of the __oment_ but also sense the vital spark and spirit of __therness_. ("Even if the world goes down, my mobile will save me")

When words remain unspoken and emotions are left unexpressed, just a glint in the eyes from otherness can inflame the mind and rouse a shower of empathy. ("Only needed a light ")

You are not white,but a rainbow of colors.You are not black,but golden.You are not just a nationality,but a citizen of the world.You are not just for the right or left,but for what is right over the wrong.You are not just rich or poor,but always wealthy in the mind and heart.You are not perfect, but flawed.You are flawed, but you are just.You may just be conscious human,but you are also a magnificentreflection of God.

Bring something incomprehensible into the world!

When we feel fractured, redundant and nonessential, only bouncing back from lowliness may brighten up the story of our life. In this endeavor, __therness_ might lend a helping hand in making the road less parching. (__e did not know that she knew_)

In the ordinary jumble of my literary drawer, I sometimes find texts I wrote ten, fifteen, or even more years ago. And many of them seem to me written by a stranger: I simply do not recognize myself in them. There was a person who wrote them, and it was I. I experienced them, but it was in another life, from which I just woke up, as if from someone else's dream.