further, multiply

since yesterday afternoon, i have been so hopped up on Modernism that i could hardly breathe. Akhmatova was somewhat responsible, but the culmination of this lay primarily in the fact that, after working all morning, i found myself claiming the Russian (in particular) and Central European (retroactively and as possibility) varieties of Modernism as my grounds. any delimitation, of course, has the possibility to send me reeling and raging; perhaps there is something about the particular combination of these three boundaries and their inherent ill definition that, in some way, tempers them ("not really encroachments, now, are they?" one could be heard saying). the three being, just to be perfectly clear: region, a ±/from-to span of years, and the mere fact that the dates are close enough to contain my great-great-grands.

(admittedly, this last may be a qualm of a different colour, but perhaps one which casts light, by getting right up close to an uncomfortability, on the functioning of limits themselves: these, even which we squeam from only to realise that, just as it is impossible to think without doing so in/with categories, there may also be ones we should like to choose otherwise—but have we not, already, begun to think? and if surprised by [thought], already clambering the mountainside pitch, belayedly secured with bolts driven into rock by tiny hammers. and if zigzagging a playacted ascent, not entirely in a position to question (beyond the tug at intervals which assures in intervals) that stony face to which our rope is, in fact and sufficient for its purposes, fixed as it traces out behind us the way we've, inexplicably perhaps, come.)

the whole enterprise, which finds me embracing many forms of specificity—and multiply (which, by the by, is a grand word in its coy waver between verb forms (infinitive, imperative) and adverb, its resonant bounty and the absolute determinism of pronunciation))—serves as a reminder of how my thought has changed over the course of the past few years and how its fluctuation will likely continue. if my desire to know everything has not diminished, i find myself in a honing pattern—call it "settling," a hyper-attention to the having of categories. or maybe something like an epistemological Mother Theresisation: to know small things with great love. only specific passion is sustainable: hug the universe, and arms tire rapidly. but work a little fragment—a corner, a patch—and, lo and behold, the world is not only locatable, but already located. everyone needs a point of access to something long open, but imperceptibly so—so as to be, practically and perspectivally, moot.

much of this became evident when i started researching for Malynne back in February, seeing in my position both the responsibility and license to be utterly specific where glib pseudo-generalities (of the impure, caricatured variety) would have sufficed. sticking to historical documents and more "careful" arguments seemed a choice of depth instead of breadth. ultimately, it meant opting for both. but to focus minutely, as a way of achieving something more expansive—and to do this, which seemed an imposition and a limitation, and, moreover, to recognise its necessity almost without being entirely conscious of it (insofar as i was "choosing," instead of debating (in) immobility)), was new.

this, in conjunction with the decision to apply to graduate school. i remember what now must have been some sort of crystalisation, with Best Favourite on the bus, feigning sleep and thinking in grinding quartz between Sarajevo and Beograd—and now my language has changed even further along these lines, my response to questions regarding whether i could, yet, be talked out of said decision: in the affirmative Negative (ah, the Yes and No...), a growing certainty reflected, if only by volume (in both vessel and decibel capacity) and vocabulary. at this point, to lean so heavily towards "straight" Slavic programs is no less a marvel than that it sounds authentic, supportable, logical—and containing of great joy. i move towards the formally academic, and (at least some of) the apology sloughs off. that perhaps by the time i actually apply to programs (this autumn) i won't even blush renders it good, in some way, that i have so much work to do in the garnering of confidence about my project and existence in academia. otherwise, this next year and a half would make wholly intolerable what, now, in its creeping towards and waiting, is merely and dully anxious.

in the meantime, i've been thinking about a series of words that dream and conjure into each other. with each passing day, new ones are hooked onto the chain. it's hard to believe they all didn't exist from the start, although i could date their additions—the accompanying reasons, the conditions for their inclusion. elide, elision, illusion, elusion, elude, elution, evolution, volition, volute.... the disarray of an isolated and spontaneous movement whose wrest could not have occurred without the most stringent of internal structuring. and so lovely: each element could be included solely on its high marks for pronunciative beauty.

there was an age when all things could be known, and by a single individual, but it's not such a call for lament that this era is bygone. the important thing: to create meaningfully within the explosion of knowledge. maybe it's about tagging, maybe about interdisciplinarity, about unflaggingly engaging in conversations that involve (in that they could) everything that is known. [secretly, i think it's about the language of rock-climbing. but that has nothing to do, ahem, with my present and impeccable, ahem, consistency of structure.] what seems most necessary is that we are as rigourous in our generality as we are in specifics, knowing that these two are inseparable and, moreover, that the inseparability is something we can, only and at worst/best, be lulled into forgetting—but that cannot, in actuality, ever be smudged out.

on the way to Union Station tonight i was going to stop at Harold Washington library downtown, to pick up a book of which Uchicago is currently out of stock—but Best Favourite went there himself and navigated some unwarranted complications regarding volumes, their numbers, systems of numbering, and availabilities. his doing so saved me considerable time and for this i am grateful—but now that i'm reading it, en route and entrained to Grand Rapids (bound by obligations and interests, all of which seem to have converged in the single weekend i'd rather they not have: for Erica's graduation and birthday, the matter of a certain dress, and time with Ben that has been much-too-long delayed), i realise that, back there, on the corner of Michigan and Jackson, he handed me, concealed in orange library binding, my (hitherto unrecognised as such) favourite book.

so now i'm bumping my way out of Chicago, in the usual inside-compartment darkness of Amtrak's failure to pay the electricity bills (and other incompletely disabling measures of thrift), reading away as the rain weakly strikes, streaking, the stretched rectangular windows and halfway watching from them—until i get to this, which solidifies my bi/tri/[multiply]furcated sense of happening, entirely and resolutely, into position and activity of its own:

"To be no longer able to do something one used to be able to do, no matter how foolish it was, is exactly as if apoplexy has struck an arm and a leg."
[R. Musil The Man Without Qualities]

because, of course, the passing and passed forest is the one in which twice i slept, both times after having raced down a setting sun and the tenuous state of Indiana—and the paradox that might well be, in a pithy form i cannot remember, some day etched on a license plate: Where One Both Must Not and Will Be Caught After Dark. oh, wait, i guess that might be implicit in the whole "Crossroads" thing and, while we're on the painful subject: apparently i'll need to totally revamp my conception of Indiana, as i will likely be spending most of the summer in its clutches. and i do mean that in all its en-taloned, don't-give-me-your-fancy-Greyhound/Amtrak-talk sense. at least i'll be doing the things i very love.

there's something about tracing things over and over—and still more about doing so in a sensible, easy way the "again" time something that was first done arduously; the pause to consider whether ease is objective or derivative (in some way of the original) serves either to elevate or denigrate the initial attempt. having approached this forest only without light, to have slept so deeply in leaves and the unconscious clenching of muscles that would rebel were it not for the faint clutter of the train in the periphery, graspable but rejected, then—and now grasped, or at least carrying me. though the train is moving so slowly, i can see the road, paralleling and then intersecting the tracks. were we flying, i could probably even make out an indent in the flinty soil: a screech mark of treadless tire, a fetal curl.

indeed, there is a parallelity of durable things: they find each other, and run as close as the old highways, railroads, and inlets around here. perhaps it is not in their power to do otherwise. the ancient ordering logic that devised them and flung them out along their lengths has been forgotten. for this reason, we call it "traditional." the Midwest, between its lakes and with its friendly-accented speech patterns, nods and smiles.