dance: v; “the thought of death is a good dancing partner.” – Kierkegaard.

death: n; 1. it may be that our lives are simply a succession of memories, an arrangement of memories, and that this succession comes to an end when we at last remember our deaths, when we remember perfectly how to die. curiously it is the moment we remember how to die that is the moment we forget how to remember. this is our end. 2. in a chaotic system, such as life, death or the state of non-being is the strange attractor. it is the inevitability towards which all things living are directed. 3. “the shelter of Being in the play of the world” - Heidegger. 4. to say one is surprised by death, that death arrived silently, in the night, is to admit that one has not lived. living implies an accommodation of death: when you love, death makes the bed; when you cook, death washes the dishes; when you paint, death cleans the brushes; when you sleep, death plans your day. 5. death has its own axioms, its own universal constants, its own insoluble problems.

debasement: n; after a certain level of debasement is achieved, after a specific incapability to encounter reality is fixed as normal, it is foolish to expect acceptance of true poetry. what such poetry demands of the debased, what it demonstrates to them almost naively— the minimal requirements of understanding and courage in the midst of reality— will be too disruptive. in fact it will seem to them to speak of nothing and reveal nothing but their limitation, their end.

decay: n; 1. decay is often taken to be a bloom. this happens when appearance occludes the content, the implications— which are of course eventually devastating. 2. in the dead culture, in the dead mind “thoughts are rarely allowed to move other than in the measured steps of endless processions” (J. Huizinga).

decency: n; nothing heals in decency.

decision: n; it is certain a decision must be made when you can feel the oroboros licking your ass.

decline: n; 1. as images move, as information moves, people become inert, both physically and mentally. 2. the decline is well advanced when a society is so structured that any transcendental experience is unable to engender consequences. in such a situation a society has insulated itself from transformative influences; in other words, such a society is dying. the artist, the poet who has such experiences can try and save such a society... or, more appropriately, a wake can be performed.

defeat: n; 1. i have always held a belief in the catalytic power of another's suffering. i have hypothesized that when someone is confronted with the suffering they have caused in another they will necessarily alter their behavior and seek ways to minimize the suffering. but when this belief is constantly refuted, when the evidence points overwhelmingly against the validity of my hypothesis then the world which i share with those who refuse to be moved by suffering does not seem a world worth defending. during such moments, when all that is to be done is to raise the white flag, it takes all my strength to find a reason for persisting... white flag, white paper, words... 2. when you resort to common sense in an argument the argument is lost. 3. the idolization of children, the fetishization of infancy, is an illness that characterizes those whom living has defeated.

defer: v; at an old lover's yard sale you will find all the tools that have scarred you, unsold.

deism: n; pessimism.

deity: n; when a human attempts to describe a phenomenon (especially a foundational event) and is frustrated by the limitations of the human descriptive ability often a deity is invoked to explain what cannot be explained.

delusion: n; 1. if we say that life is the ability to recognize oneself from that which is not oneself, and if we say that we (or i) am a part of this universe, then the universe is alive, as we are spokesmen or spoke-organisms for the universe. however, there is a contradiction in the above in the form: i am not this, yet i am this. therefore, what may make the definition of life possible is this contradiction, life in fact may be this very contradiction. this may be nothing but the equivalent of maya, or the life-illusion which can be looked at from either side: i am not this yet i am this, or, i am this yet i am not this. these two expressions are equivalent. 2. it is often assumed that there are attendant benefits for the one who escapes delusion... this is itself a delusion. 3. privilege in its intelligible forms mistakes contingency for necessity and, moreover, focuses efforts in order to defend and valorize its misconception.

demand: n; my desire cannot be translated into any demand. it can therefore only be represented as a negation of a demand— i desire nothing. anything that i or another might consider an achievement or a realization of a desire is really only a rest-stop on the road to impossibility.

demonization: n; demonization is indicative of a failure to conceive a stable and sufficient understanding. the evocation of a demon is a replacement for understanding. the more unassailable the demon; the greater the failure to understand; the more pervasive the demon the greater the need for understanding.

demonstrate: v; often understood or used in the sense of to de-monster (to de-wonder, to take what would be ominous and tame it). however, the opposite is true (where the prefix does not mean to do the opposite of but is taken to mean to do completely). to demonstrate is to demonster, to omenize, to warn, to seek out/feel (completely) something that is to happen (or be). every demonstration is an attempt to touch, to find, to present a monster.

denial: n; an agony magnet

denotation: n; 1. a newspaper report or a slogan as compared with a poem. a wirephoto as compared with a window or an illuminated creative work. 2. there is an old story in which a person created a lamb with words. a world, a set of possibilities was brought into existence simply with words. in the story the person, instead of using the lamb for its proper connotative purpose (symbolic or contemplative), ate the lamb. after eating the lamb they forgot everything they had learned. in other words, nothing had been learned; what the creation represented, its connotation, had been forgotten in treating it as pure denotation (food). in this example, denotation is to connotation what substance is to instance.

deoxyribonucleic acid: n; 1. it is an utterance of some sort, a reply to something. 2. Watson and Crick set out to find the chemical basis for heredity. this they did. other scientists/historians/commentators are always quick to extend this discovery into the discovery of the secret of life, or some similar hyperbolic expression. Watson and Crick of course found no such thing, they only found the chemical basis for heredity. the passage from this to the secret of life is one that moves far beyond the limits of science (and scientific inquiry) into metaphor and ideology.

departure: n; when you arrive on the platform where the train that is your train is preparing to depart there is no excuse not to be ready, with your bags packed. the journey should not be a surprise. if it is a surprise, if you arrive without luggage and with empty pockets, perhaps you will be leaving with everything you have earned.

depths: n; many things live in our depths. strange, unknowable, eyeless creatures that are at home in ourselves in precisely those places where we seem to be absent. if raised to the surface these things perish. unable to bear the light and the extreme change in pressure they become so deformed that it is unimaginable that such a thing could ever have been alive, could ever have been at home in ourselves.

depression: n; depression... elation, depression... elation— my life is the breathing of some larger being.

Descartes: n; i think therefore i am… a sloppy instance of philosophy. actually, not philosophy at all but a leap of faith. as a statement of fact there is also an inversion as it is precisely the i which is thought. i am an effect, not a cause. in other words— thought, therefore i… a tautology.

desert: n; a divine mirror ground fine - Jabès.

desire: n; 1. this is an evening when hands become birds that fly to a lake. there is a cottage on this lake and a woman swimming out from a dock. she follows the birds. in the morning pillows have been torn apart. a man shivers alone. he can't remember a thing. he follows wet footprints out to the dock. neighbors in a nearby cottage watch him as they do every morning, they argue amongst themselves about why he stands on that dock all day long. they wonder what he is looking for. 2. i like real horses, not the wooden painted horses that travel up and down in an unchanging and predictable circle. 3. desire is an idealism; it is a submission to a universal, a striving to live within an arche. 4. desire, as longing, is always conscious of being earth-bound. this consciousness means that desire is a complex, earth-involved, thing. the urge to simplify desire, to detach it from its world is to move in the direction which culminates in pathology. desire simplified is isolation; desire as isolation is represented by the idol / the fetish. 5. the world changed and the word unchanged is deception; the word changed and the world unchanged is reality, in chains; the word changed and the world changed is the field that stretches beyond all known fences. 6. desire is a blanket rolled up and laid across the bottom of a door so that the warmth of home does not escape into winter. 7. de-sire is ambiguous, amphibolous. it suggests both a complete siring (begetting) and an un-siring. 8. try not to put your desire into words because you will immediately desire something else. or, maybe this is a good reason to put your desire into words. 9. no matter how much knowledge i acquire, no matter how wise one may claim i am or have been, my ignorance proclaims itself radiantly whenever i am asked what do you want? what do you need? 10. the fever, the mania of desire results from either desiring that which one is unwilling to realize fully or desiring the impossible. so much is desire infected with this imbalance that the desire for the possible is not even considered to be desire at all.

desperation: n; consider the poet who must live in the din of all those who deny poetry— the vile and hypocritical mass of undifferentiated assemblages who deny the existence of what they spend their lives destroying. think of the poet who must search out spaces where poetry has miraculously managed to escape the poetry torturers, the poetry rapists, the poetry murderers, the poetry eradicators… think of such a being and then you will understand why eventually a poet may choose to seek out the only place where poetry exists in dignity and without the fear of violence or defilement — even if this haven of desperation and resolve may seem a fleeting gasp, it is in fact eternal.

destruction: n; 1. any instance of pain (historical or in the present) has the power to destroy the conceptual abilities of those who are not experiencing the pain directly— the witnesses, the commentators, the reporters, the voyeurs… a similar thing happens with fully realized, potent, art— conceptual abilities are destroyed. such destruction can be resisted but resistance denies the value of this form of destruction, which is, to build new conceptual structures. of course this is rarely undertaken. in the presence of a radical challenge and in the wake of their unnoticed personal devastation, a person will wave their opinions and slogans as though victorious while depending upon the comfort of familiar ruins rather than attempt to mend their broken bodies and rebuild. 2. the destruction of the human spirit is always effected by those who are not burdened by it. 3. any being which has the ability and/or the desire to eradicate its entire world must, as a matter of principle, destroy any chance for redemption from such a state… wherever and in whatever form this possibility may sprout.

deterioration: n; “the two most virulent causes of deterioration are misery and excessive wealth”. Condorcet.

determined: adj; a deterministic state is one that is limited. since in our state, in our mode of being there exists impossibilities, our state can be said to be limited. therefore our state may be determined. to exist in a deterministic state does not imply that one can determine something about that state absolutely. practically speaking our determined being appears or acts as though free. we are involved in and must participate in this pseudo-freedom because it is our being. the appearance of freedom(s) in a determined system is an event of our human being.

development: n; social planning, urban planning, is sustained by the false equation (effortlessly adopted by any human) between development and progress.

deviance: n; deviance is always deviance from the mean.

devil: n; there is a devil— the devil is the knowledge, the lived and unendurable certainty that one is in hell. though it may be true that such an understanding burns unbearably, such a being is also able to ignite and engulf all that does not admit to its truth, all that would stand, opaque and erroneous, in opposition to its light.

devotion: n; a disease of the imagination - Meslier.

diagnosis: n; with respect to disease, the following is the paradigm: cause(s) (A) ® disease (B) ® effective treatment (C) where effective treatment is dependent upon an understanding of the cause. one might say that C is an action taken after the state B is observed which is understood to be a manifestation of A. This paradigm is functional only where a number of B's (B1 to Bx) can be defined. Such a paradigm is essential in its outlook and scope and relies completely on an essential view of reality (a reality that is absolutely essential). By essential I mean that it works on the assumption that there is a thing (represented by B) which is unique in itself by nature of an essence or character which differentiates it from other things (B's). such an essence or character is in fact the cause(s) or A in the above paradigm. the success of treatment lies in the success of diagnosis which is dependent upon the uncovering of the essence or underlying character. But what if reality is not absolutely essential, meaning that it may appear so in certain manifestations but in certain other manifestations reality cannot be said to be essential? In such a case effective treatment would be lacking because of a failure to precisely define (B) and therefore understand (A). Such a case for example would be psychiatric disorders: mood, personality disorders etc. If reality is capable of manifesting itself non-essentially (meaning that something perceived has no definite identity, no essence, no A and hence no B, only approximate forms of both), then any paradigm which depends on an essential view of reality is going to be necessarily ineffective in these cases. what is required is a new outlook, a new grounding. however, science depends on reason and an essential view of reality (A=A and B=B where both A and B are differentiable, definable things and are not equal to each other)— such is the field of science's ability. a non-essential view of reality would be one where the essences or causes permeate other essences or causes and therefore while A=A and B=B they can be equivalent while not being equivalent and vice versa. science can not operate under such a view of reality (transcendence of reason). but, because science cannot operate with such a view of reality does not mean that such a reality cannot exist. if, as indicated above, psychiatric disorders are manifestations of non-essential reality, any diagnosis will only be effective approximately, superstitiously.

Etymologically, diagnosis is a knowledge across, that is (from above), across the category/space B where B has definite boundaries (i.e. can be comprehended, crossed). where there are no definite boundaries then, there can be no crossing, no dia-gnosis

dialogue: n; 1. sometimes i believe i'm no more than an artifact of some ongoing dialogue, a grunt perhaps, or a clearing of the throat. 2. the poem is written in English but it does not end there. There is another language, a meta-language which is arises from the construction of the poem. the poem, its language and construction is a mouth and a tongue and a throat which comes to be filled by a voice. In this way the poems are part of a dialogue. only i will know when this dialogue is completed or if i have even been successful in developing a dialogue for it is always more likely in matters as delicate as this and as prone to failure that one will become fooled. there is always the danger that what one takes as a dialogue is nothing more than the echoes of your own wandering, unsuccessful voice. 3. the only meaningful dialogue (in literature) occurs between the reader and the text. instances of dialogue in the text should be avoided because they transform the reader from a participant in a conversation (in the process of determining the meaning of the text/experience) into a voyeur/eavesdropper. in other words, dialogue renders passive what should remain active.

dick: n; it is suicidal "to live in a musky meadow" when in truth one is in a vessel plunging into darkness. - Leo Marx (quoting H. Melville)

dictionary: n; 1. a dictionary is commonly understood as the anus of language. 2. this object, like all objects which are personally created is more than an object, is more than it appears to be. the structure of this dictionary opens up a space, a space in which my living is stably maintained. the specific aspects of this structure which allow this living to exist (thereby enabling encounters with others) are the years of attention and mindfulness and faithfulness regarding all aspects of its development. it has reached the point where, no matter how i consider this dictionary, it has all the attributes of something which is alive. it is as though i have not only created it, but nourished it and raised it. 3. “a good dictionary should have the character of changing the general way of thinking” - Denis Diderot.

digest: v; in the cathedral in Gerona i saw myself as in the belly of an enormous animal, the arches were its ribs and its head was at the altar and was where it took in its spiritual food, a sort of spiritual respiration. and as far as i was concerned as i walked from display to display i felt as though i was some sort of plankton which was being digested and after intermingling with the breakdown products of its spiritual respiration i was shit out into the world again

dignity: n; 1. an opposition to the nature which is one's own prison. 2. dying with dignity may be the only thing a person can truly expect another to achieve on their own. moreover, such a success may be the only thing we should expect from another person. in other words, we should at the very least not be an obstruction to them.

dilemma: n; 1. the unthinkable is always the unwritable but the unwritable is not always the unthinkable. 2. i can see the impossible and the impossible can see me; the impossible can touch me but i can't touch the impossible; i can imagine the impossible but the impossible can't imagine me. 3. you wake up. you have a task to do. you know exactly what you want to do and you work towards its realization. you finish your task successfully. only at the end, only after you have finished what you set out to accomplish do you realize that this task and its product were not what you desired at all. yet, paradoxically, this was all you could desire and all you could work towards.

disaster: n; no one is ever led to the brink of disaster. they are always forced there, either blindflded or against their will.

discontent: n; there was an entity (a planet/a civilization/a woman/a man) which was content with itself, which was stable, which felt no need to search beyond itself for some other. this entity therefore made no sound. its silence was a means of ensuring it would not be found.

there was another entity which was not content with itself. it was unstable and always felt the need to search beyond itself for something, for some other. this entity therefore made a lot of noise as it searched for others, as it tried to attract others. since the only others who would be searching would be similar discontented entities, such discontented ones must inevitably find each other. such contact, such finding is always violent (like a large stone finding a window). the result of this violence is that one proves to be stronger than the other thereby establishing a master (worthy)/slave (worthless) relationship.

* note: if a silent, content entity happens to be stumbled upon by a discontent entity, this silent entity will be very quickly eradicated since its strength (its togetherness or integrity) is to the discontented entity invisible and incomprehensible. the silent entity is viewed as being extremely weak, so weak in fact it is reviled to the point that it must be eradicated.

discontinuity: n; if the unconscious appears, presents itself in discontinuity, it is still there, in continuity, only it is not apprehended, does not present itself — it has receded.

discovery: n; 1. discovery is the shadow of preparation. or is it the other way around? 2. i am lost in the best sense of the word when i can find happiness in even the idea of you. 3. simply by looking one becomes lost. it is really that easy. but becoming lost is not the desired goal. discovery is the goal. but for there to be discovery there must be a search. and a search is nothing more than being lost with a momentum. and this momentum is simply the will to look, it is vision with a direction. 4. every artist should be wary of any person who claims to have discovered them. like Cortez these claimants should never be allowed to moor their ships and come ashore. such people who have done nothing more than discover a thriving culture can only promise the same future that was delivered to the Aztecs.

discrepancy: n; the media (and entertainment) have become the public means of dealing with the discrepancy between fact and ideology. in this contest it is ideology at all costs under the mistaken belief that ideological integrity is necessary for security, stability, harmony… truth. by disregarding fact the act of doing so in the name of ideology projects its own substitute truth.

disease: n; 1. a disease is not an error; the diseased body is doing exactly as it should be doing given the fact that it has a disease. an example of something wrong would be a body which exhibits the symptoms of a disease without possessing any reason or causes responsible for the disease. it is important to understand this as such an understanding does not stigmatize disease. 2. when considering what are termed behavioral disorders (panic, depression) it is often assumed that the behaviors are inappropriate. for instance, it is often assumed that depression is an inappropriate response to the world. what if the opposite were true? that depression is the proper response to a world which is repulsive and full of sadness and misery? what does it say for those who are happy, for those who pride themselves on their care-free styles of living? 3. “disease of english is specifically and cunningly disguised to work on the half-awake, half-informed mind. it aims neither at comprehension nor at clarity. automatic responses are its measure of success.”- K. Hudson.

disfigurement: n; if a truth seems hideous, unbearable, it is because we have lost the ability to see— we have been disfigured.

disintegration: n; “indeed, psyche, character, and individuality seem under certain circumstances to express themselves only through the rapidity or slowness with which they disintegrate.”- H. Arendt.

dislocation: n; all my happiness and all my dreams reside in a city that has never existed.

disquiet: n; disquiet is measured in books.

dissatisfaction: n; “dissatisfaction provides reason with reason to search beyond an impulse that wagers accomplishment” – David Appelbaum.

dissipation: n; everything has some power. perhaps not much power, maybe just enough to say no! loudly and clearly to something that does not want to hear it. the point is, all power must be dissipated. the one who is alive understands that dissipation is the opposite of exhaustion and that the true and worthy life can only end in dissipation.

dissolution: n; 1. identity (relation to others) is in a constant state of negotiation. the locus of negotiation, which appears as a point of stability, is in reality a place always on the brink of dissolution, a place where one says even this is negotiable. 2. when things become too much i think dissolution and i am comforted. 3. “organized matter has a limit of expansion that is very quickly reached; beyond a certain point it divides instead of growing.” (H. Bergson). and so, if you will not divide— that is, procreate— you will be broken, reduced… and there are many ways to achieve such a thing.

distance: n; the creative act and its performance are separated by a distance. this distance can be thought of as a postponement of the extinction of the creative act. the greater the distance (or duration) the longer the postponement. however, for their to be a creative act (recognized) at all, there must be this performance (i.e. the limiting cases of distance ® 0 and distance ® ¥ result in no creative acts). this is because a performance is a retrospective admission/recognition of a particular example of the distance that i have been describing.

distinction: n; the wealthy are distinguished by an excessive sheen, like that of a new toilet.

distress: n; there are two possible reasons for the distress experienced by one who feels that a human life, the life to be striven after, is a creative life where human interests can be pursued freely and unselfishly. according to the enlightenment philosophe, such a life as described above is a virtuous life and is in accord with the natural order. such a life cannot fail to be happy and fulfilled, that is, free from distress. therefore, if one is distressed then the life one is leading is not the virtuous life lived according to the way of nature at all. the other possibility is that the way of life is not the problem; what is at the root of the distress is a world that is so flawed that the virtuous life is isolated and completely neutralized as a social force.

disturbance: n; perhaps my third favorite word

divide: n; it is imperative to understand the difference between the noun and the adjective, specifically. justice is not the same as a just act— and the divide between the two is equivalent to that which separates the ideal and the immanent, death and life.

doctor: n; 1. a doctor is a covenient disguise for an insidious vanity. to heal one who is not sick, to save one for whom death would be a release from evil company is nothing to boast about and is certainly nothing deserving of idolatry. 2. often the only essential thing asked of a doctor is that it prevents an inescapable encounter with one’s unlived life at all costs. it is a fortunate person, and one who has lived a life, an examined life, who will never require, or seek out this service.

dog: n; 1. the only thing a dog can say must be collected in a bag and then disposed of. 2. it is preferable to be petted directly and not by proxy.

dollar: n; grief, pain (in Latin).

domination: n; 1. two men will fight to the death over the love of a blind woman. 2. the aim of any form of domination is to direct those who would oppose it into an active sterilty.

door: n; “kings never touch doors”- Francis Ponge.

Dostoyevsky: n; 1.“recognition of their situation shows itself, however, only when they bow down their heads in common and the common hammer descends upon them”. 2. it may come to this: when considering another we may not be able to know where their struggles persist and where they have ended. judgement in such a case is impossible (it is here that the concept of mercy is presents itself). the most to be expected is that i know where my struggles persist and where my struggles have ended. i am responsible for both; i can be guilty of and pitied for only the latter.

doubt: n; 1. the common hinge of all things. 2. evidence of an experience of the possibility for something better; an expression of optimism. 3. the total acceptance or rejection of the state of things reduces an artist to silence and paralysis.

dracula: n; the motif of the fortress home of a monster which becomes a shelter (and then tomb) of some wayward (virginal) soul is descriptive of the situation where someone who is experiencing something authentically panics and seeks the shelter, the security offered by someone else. this desperate act, this retreat of course ensures that they will meet their end and either be consumed or irreversibly transformed, dehumanized.

dream: n; if it is true that dreams make poets of us all. perhaps then poets make dreams of us all.

dreaming: v; 1. theater of desire that most often plays to an empty house 2. system of information processing which simulates a trial of possible or impossible scenarios which allows our bodies to physiologically and psychologically prepare themselves. 3. if our dreams could be distilled we would never be thirsty. 4. when we dream our mind is capable of speaking to us with words that do not exist in our language. Only rarely do we remember these words and if we do remember them, it is visually, not cognitively (because they have no meaning).

drowning: v; 1. a cat was being carried downstream. a man jumped in to save it. someone later asked him why he risked his life. the man answered, i had no choice, i was drowning. 2. in my dream Benjamin Peret was in every street. he had a message for me. someone was drowning in the meta-Seine. when i arrived at the river i was pulling Paul Celan out. when i had pulled him completely out i noticed that he was in the process of pulling someone out of the river as well. that other person was myself. 3. to find that the hand pulling me from the river is the hand of my imagination is to suddenly feel the full weight of myself. i understand at once the downward tug of my being. the struggle of each moment, the gasping for breath is the only true ground of being available. 4. i fall into a river. someone appears anxious to save me but i am uncooperative. i am asked, but don't you want to be saved? i answer no. so you wish to drown then? i am asked. and to this i also answer no. I would like something else, another option, another possibility.

Duchamp: n; “i want to grasp things with the mind the way the penis is grasped by the vagina.”

duplicity: n; the belief in the necessary duplicity of anything written, or more broadly of concealing true intentions within a discourse, is nothing more than the literary equivalent of a theism which involves an omnipotent and hidden god. the structural importance of the hidden god, like the hidden intention of textual duplicity is a means of calling forth the chosen ones, or those who understand and believe, from the ignorant and faithless masses. those who believe and practice such textual duplicity are children who have always needed to be padded on the head whenever they solve a math problem or answer a question correctly. for such disciples the intellect is a means to achieve recognition. and of course, the intellect can do this; however, like finding someone using Remembrance of Things Past as a doorstop, it is probably because this is the best use they could ever imagine from such a thing… and for them, perhaps they are correct.

durability: n; canada dreads durability because it cannot bear persistent scrutiny, because the monumental is a burden… because it is soft.

duration: n; 1. every life has its hour of truth. and no one else will ever know even one second of it (and this is the essential ingredient of this truth). 2. duration is an enemy of media.

dynamic: n; the forces in the world i inhabit render insensible all that is sensible.