27 may 2001
unable to integrate
(despite the example of S T Coleridge)
10:37:
12:21: That empty entry came of my wanting to write something that would integrate or connect previous entries - and of finding that I couldn't.
Now, having read some of the earlier entries (that I haven't yet edited or put online) I see that they are connective enough - so I will edit them as soon as I can and see what else they may provoke. 'The whole' is best left to take care of itself and not made the object of conscious striving. I know that instinctively - so why do I keep forgetting it?
Which reminds me of something that Walter Carrington said...
... but I see that the whole of the note (of 1998, in which his remark appears) is about 'wholes' so I decide to insert it here:
23 0ct 1998
08:37 Awake, after dreams and longish sleep... Now to keep my promise and write whatever comes (during twenty minutes of legible handwriting)...
(I was in the midst of an experiment to try out writing on a 'public writing place' with an imaginary 'digital pen' three years before getting such in the form of this handheld computer.)
09:01
Whatever comes, but not without whatever sense or wish for wholeness or connectiveness that comes also ('a whole that is presumed by its parts' - how does that (incorrectly remembered?) remark of STC relate to to all this?
I fancy (one of STC's key terms!) that it evades what I'm calling his enclosing of 'imagination' in (or as 'reason' in my sense of the word, at least... ) ...but what of the presumed 'digital pen legibility' with which I promised to write this? ...
OK I will try it though doubtful if I can write legibly in this posture, leaning against a board and hardish pillows and cushions, - shall I get up to write at a table? - and shall I read this (a previous note) (from last evening's sudden change to seeing through STC's ratios) before continuing?
...well, at least I'll read this morning's ... and I did.
...but I decide to continue, though more slowly, trusting whatever is deeper or older (and thus newer) more than (trusting) what is possible by my conscious ratio of this to that, to what I wrote last evening. I'll leave these comparisons to any one who eventually reads both, in what ever circumstance (this digital diary as it happens in 2001) he or she or I happen to perceive them ...
So now, pausing briefly to await what comes, with whatever potential wholeness it may presume, I decide to continue.
.
Which brings me, I realise now (09:18), after a paragraph consisting only of the timeless space between two full stops, whatever wholeness exists, or is perceivable, now or later, or quite possibly is seen not as wholeness but as split-a-part-ness, as disconnective, even bad in some way but I hope more than anything as neither good nor bad but of the unconscious wholeness of as things are (the 'primary imagination', as C said and wrote and which it seems neither I nor anyone get away from ... not true, for didn't Hazlitt, and don't all such perceivers of the social as the primary, or the only, connectivity, deny and thus escape what Coleridge said and wrote? ...
...no, I think not, I don't believe that the social priority is enough, for STC's connectiveness, imposed as I'm seeing and saying it was, is still with us, inescapably, though I still persist in this thought that it's mistaken, and surely (it is) the origin or form of his evasion of something more than even he could consciously describe without destroying it -
- ah yes, that's it, a or the hidden destructiveness in his theory (of construction, of artifice and creation, and of supposed goodness shorn of evil which each time came back to haunt and to inhabit his thoughts and dreams and relationships, his socialities.
And yes again, as I perceived dimly while writing that sentence, that sociality (the social realism I reject) returns in other guises as his (and the Christian) sense of love in place of power and of aggression.
Mmmm ... I feel that this is beginning to touch blindly at some unacknowledged parts of the second reality which I feel that's in everything before it's named or distinguished into parts, a naming and a separating that is of course most necessary to any conscious thought or even impulse ... at which I recall faintly (but perhaps as my right pathway in this) ... a resolve to try and understand (or to deconstruct?) the ideas of other semi-religious modern thinkers, namely Heidegger, and who was the other one *?)
*space to insert the name later (I think now it was W B Yeats)
I've forgotten for the moment, and that forgetting could be Freudian ... but I remember that after resolving to study thus those two thinkers I added Neitzsche, not as a semi-religious so much as a consciously post-religious one (who also, I see now, fell into that abyss (of suicide or madness) that I was once told awaits or threatens thinkers who attempt theories of the intuition itself, the not to be spoken of.
What was it Walter Carrington said at my last lesson in the (Alexander) technique?
-all wise people are religious but they are wise enough not to put their religion into words -
or some such formulation, or anti-formula.
Well, I've been writing for 45 minutes so I'm free to stop if I wish and get on with the more mundane and worldly things I've been neglecting for days or weeks, unless I feel there's something that is still waiting to emerge if I continue...
09:56
Having read all I've written since nine o'clock I'm drawn back to this place and moment, realising as I become aware again of the things before me, the picture postcards cards and invitations on the gas heater, the round mirror above it, the strange image of a lamp formed of a cone of clustered light bulbs (on the invitation to Ralph Ball's exhibition - shall I go to see it - it's still open?) and the irritating reflection of my bedlight on the chromium-plated understructure of one of my tilting writing tables ... as I become aware of these I feel a little thankful that they're there, ... No, more than a little, for the false priority of ideas and thoughts as superior to all such realities is what I'm fighting, is it not? ...
I feel as I write that that I'm losing track and undermining all I've written and perceived of STC and Christian thinking re the wholeness and even the loveliness of all such things, whether they dazzle me, or irritate me, or not.
Well, at this point I'll let common sense or tiredness intervene and leave it for the moment, thankful for everything, physical, social or explanatory, allowing also for the unknown, as we call it, writing nonsense.
Next: the notes of the previous evening (referred to above) in which, after attending a lecture by Richard Holmes on Coleridge's life, I was drawn to think and write about the 'metaphysical terrors' of a 'romantic hero of inaction'.