talent: n; if i have any talent it is for renunciation.

Talmon: n; “It is a harsh, but none the less necessary task to drive home the truth that human society and human life can never reach a state of repose. That imagined repose is another name for the security offered by a prison, and the longing for it may in a sense be an expression of cowardice and laziness, of the inability to face the fact that life is a perpetual and never resolved crisis.”

tapestry: n; human being-in-the-world is a weave of human creation(s) and human moment(s).

tattoo: n; what rises from within the body pushes against the skin and can be traced there. the absence of imagination, the darkness of the cave, of the body, the long dark night— this is what has marked me.

tautology: n; cogito ergo sum is tautological. it was arrived at by a strategy of radical doubt— Descartes decided i will doubt everything. however, he could not doubt that he was doubting, therefore he was / i am. this should not be surprising since the i had already been posited in the directive i will doubt everything. to escape the dilemma one would have to say thinking is being or something in that direction.

tear: n; 1. there is a rift in living, a tear in the fabric of living. the fabric of living is sadness. a tear is the rift of living experienced and made visible. 2. tears are arms that reach into places, small, insubstantial places where much of our living hides, or gets lost. unfortunately tears are only arms, they do not have hands— anything they find in the places they explore cannot be recovered. 3. a baby cries because it exists. and anything it might say or do after its initial response to existence will be a footnote.

tearist: n; collage is an act of tearism.

technique: n; never let technique get in the way of art. sometimes the work of a technical master which has attained the realm of art beguiles us into believing that art is attainable only through technical virtuosity. the truth is that for one who has reached a technical pinnacle the only place left to go besides an exquisitely rendered banality is art.

technology: n; 1. technological innovations serve to foreground realities which have always been active. it was only the technological darkness which kept them conveniently hidden. this foregrounding is often seen as revolutionary (e.g. computers and the issues of intellectual property, virtual sex etc.) whereas in truth, it is merely revelatory. one could think of a technological advancement which foregrounds something as described above as delivering something which has always been postponed. 2. technology is very good at creating problems it can solve in order to avoid dealing with questions it may not be able to solve, questions it may not want to solve. 3. every technological advance is a revelation of a human problem / dilemma.

tectonics: n; our cultural inheritance, our modes of thinking shifts, undergoes disturbances. some things then fall off the walls, some things fall from shelves, some things collapse. after the disturbance, when again there is calm, some things are rebuilt, others are not.

telephone: n; when it rings we hold it close to us, like a lover's face and say yes to it. but what are we really saying yes to? silence, nothingness...

television: n; televisions are much like humans in that neither is inherently evil yet both manage to abuse children.

tenant: n; to be held. thinking of tenancy and the root tenir i am led to the weed that this root supports. what i experienced is as follows:

tenant (as opposed to) fountain

| |

con-tain abs-tain / ab-stain

|

de-tain / sus-tain / enter-tain / stain

|

cer-tain

|

maintain at-tain +

(attaint)

what is outlined above might be expressed as follows: to contain the tenant one must sustain the detention by entertaining. entertaining is a staining which leads to a certainty. this certainty is revealed in contentment, which is a con-taintment, which is an alteration in the tenant which allows the container to be certain that the state of tenancy will be maintained. the term certain i derive from an old verb cere and the latin cerare (wax), which is to wrap a corpse in cloth coated in wax. to be certain of the tenant's state is then to hold the tenant by wrapping it as though it was dead. to be a tenant in another's house, to be held by another in certainty is to be held in this way, as a corpse would be held and wrapped.

opposed to this is a fountain. opposed to containment / constainment / contentment is the fountain's flowing, its uncontainableness, its unstainableness. this flowing, in its opposition would appear from the entertained to be an abstaining of the highest degree. the nature of this flowing, the essence of its being is its attainment. in other words, what is flowing, the uncontainable, is always flowing towards and through and over, is always encountering that which would try to hold it, contain it. should anything try to contain it the result would be a shattering of the container. for this reason the uncontainable is left to flow in its well-worn stream-bed, ignored by the self-contained stones and the self-contained cities. such an attainment always runs the risk of being attainted (condemned to loss of property and civil rights) by the contented.

tend: v; the artist can stably maintain a relationship to things that the general population cannot. for the artist creativity and its expression is a part of this ability and is, in fact, normal. for the general population their inability is abnormal and can only express itself in neuroses, psychoses, and all forms of aberrant and asocial behaviors. what could be the value of this ability of the artist? the artist can exist on the margins and of course, the margin is where art is. at the margins all sorts of things grow: horrific and beautiful, intoxicating and poisonous. the artist tends all these plants ensuring that they remain in their natural habitat on the margins. the characteristic of these marginal plants is that they are extremely potent. the mass of humanity has no defense against their effects regardless of whether they are beneficial or harmful. keeping the plants at the margins will result in people having to make an effort to encounter them and in so doing will recognize the special status of such plants, regarding them with caution, respect, perhaps even reverence. Also, people will understand that when they have encountered such a plant it means they have come to their margin, to that place where they end and all else begins.

tension: n; the experience of the universal encountering itself in the particular (body) of living.

terror: n; 1. “terror binds together completely isolated individuals and that by so doing it isolates these individuals even further.”- Hannah Arendt. 2. the infinitely ignorant will be terrified by the simplest idea. 3. unlawful combatants, pre-emptive strikes, targeted killing, a coalition of the willing… when i hear language, my language, crying out for help and pleading to be released from its incarceration, when everywhere i look i see evidence of the tortures it must endure and the degradations which it has undergone i find myself reaching for a silence which may be of no help at all but will at least put an end to an intolerable condition. 4. terror is a characteristic of infidelity. terror is a mental construct and does not exist in our world of appearances. formed from the adjective, as in a terrorized person, terror as such does not exist only the terrorized, or terrorizing. and so, to propose to fight a war on terror is to fight apparitions, hallucinations. as always, in such a war eventually a real, living person must stray between one’s oppositional apparitions and one’s weapon.

testament: n; my first book of poems (let's say house of misfortune is the first and arizona is a sort of preamble to it). these poems had to be completely concerned with the self, a world of the self, there was no other book possible at the time. with the basis of my personality being romantic/surreal, of which the two speak as father to son, it then becomes obvious that such an orientation must first learn how to transcend the self, that is, find the universal inherent in the self. only after this is done can the non-personal be approached in a truly creative manner. the non-personal such as evidence, which of course must be the blind yet manic quest for the individual in the impersonal. 2. the artist dedicates itself to its task; it works, developing its skills and its range and always with the modest expectation of engaging some part of its world, its society, in a dialogue. fame is not what the artist is after, not reward either. the artist just wants to be a contributing member of its society. importantly, the nature of its contribution and its ability to contribute are things which the artist learns through a dialogue with its society. if after much time and effort it finds its society has still not deigned to include it in its affairs then it is a sign that the society is ill. at this point the artist must persist for a time, desperately but with without humiliation. if there is still no word forthcoming from its society then it is obvious that this society is dead. and so, the artist must leave it. a corpse becomes filled with contagion and if the artist wants to live it must go elsewhere. wherever it goes it must, as a part of its work, proclaim that its society has died. this is to warn others who may be looking for that society as much as it is to speak the obvious to those who are still trying to suckle from the carcass. if, after all this something rises up and proclaims itself as the artist's society, if the artist hears i have come to reclaim you my child. i am so proud of you, etc. one can be assured that it is an impostor of some kind, a hallucination, a ghost... whatever it is it is irrelevant and, like any restless spirit that does not know its proper place, must be reminded that it is dead. this spectre of a society must be reminded that it has no place amongst the living.

testicle: n; an absurdity, an affront, an infinite ferment of future suffering packaged and motile and borne in a sack which is held away from the body as though the body is ashamed of it, as though it is a form of refuse which the body is unable to dispose of. perhaps the pleasure of masturbation lies in the knowing fulfillment of one’s power to expel the seeds of suffering that continue to proliferate even as we decay, to discharge them harmlessly and decisively into oblivion.

testimony: n; a testimony is a deferral (in an infinite chain of deferrals) which is (mis)understood to be a final deferral. it is an event where there is a public turning towards the witness which has been granted authority to speak, and to provide a basis for interpretation. though the witness may be questioned, the testimony is not made to answer for itself, is not questioned. testimony is expected to be, is (mis)understood as, and is depended upon as being, the final word in any matter where the meaning/interpretation of an event/reality is contested.

the: adj; be wary of a definite article.

theatre: n; 1. a demonstration of multiplicity, a splitting of an absolute (vision) into multiplicity (characters / narrators / acts / scenes etc.). this is to be a mirror (ontologically) of the living reality of those in the audience. the audience-theatrical performance relationship is to be viewed in the same way one would view a play with two characters— both are parts of the absolute whole who only appear to be separated from each other. as well, the audience, with all its individuals, can be seen as a similar manifestation of the absolute (audience) split into multiplicity (individuals with their reactions and their interpretations). 2. life is death's understudy. 3. if a film-maker truly cared about its audience it would ensure either that a private, one-person theatre would accompany its film, or that the film would only be allowed to be viewd by one person at a time.

theology: n; an obsession with adjectives

theory: n; 1. a prejudice which is either reinforced or overcome. it is organizational in its effects. history (the interpretation of) is symmetrical to theory in structure and in its effects. 2. related to theatre. 3. when a person writes the “present forgets”, or, “the present, when heightened as successive instants forgets that it cannot be contemporaneous with itself” (Blanchot) the writer is as far away as possible from theory— they are in the wilds of fiction. and there is nothing wrong with being in fiction. what is unpardonable is to misread such writing and, for reasons which can only be attributed to ignorance or deception, insist that it is a theoretical utterance.

thinging: v; the persistence or the active duration of a thing (active existence). it is related to thinking (active thought) linguistically by a g to k change, that is, by a voiced element becoming voiceless. this means that the world, in becoming thought, loses its voice. on the other hand, the relation of thinking to thinging is the result of a voiceless element becoming voiced. this means that thought, in becoming the world, gains a voice.

thirst: n; 1. from the same bottle art and science are poured into separate and functionally different receptacles. 2. from a pessimist’s glass there is still much to drink.

thought: n; 1. a rearrangement of reality using perception and memory (see GoP). 2. as far as the essential difference between reason and gnosis, i believe it involves the ultimate concerns of these modes of thinking. reason is a partitioning of reality/experience into an ordered, accessible arrangement. the arrangement is hierarchical and is analogous to a library where there are many levels of organization from the building itself, to the arrangement of shelves, to the physical ordering of books, to the internal arrangement of each book into chapters and paragraphs and sentences and words, to the actual language itself, its letters, its usage. reason is concerned with the acquisition of such books, their ordering, the construction of such libraries. gnosis on the other hand is concerned ultimately not with the books themselves, physically speaking, it is not concerned with all those things that reason is concerned with. as a mode of thinking it is concerned with the substance of the books, the ideas which the words are used to convey. gnosis is knowledge as illumination and as a mode of thinking it is concerned with the reception and the preservation of such illuminations as well as with the preservation of the ability to receive new illuminations. where reason deals with what is already there (in our alluded to library) and is therefore manipulative, gnosis is generative, creating new books for our library to shelve. 3. a thought exists as itself in isolation (in the individual) and in a social arrangement. however, any determination, characterization, or value of a thought is only possible in a social arrangement. the socialization of thought is its link (no matter how tenuous) with other lives and other thoughts (this socialization is a hermeneutic event; see revelation). these links are not necessarily static relationships but often are perceived to be (e.g. ideology). any value or determination given to an idea or a thought (or a creative work) by its creator is a delusion and often seems to be a necessary delusion. 4. right wing think tanks (Fraser Institute etc.) like to promote themselves as centers of research. however, it cannot be called research when you fail to reach conclusions which may undermine your presuppositions / hypotheses. research, that is, thought, sometimes causes crises in the dominant world-view / theoretical framework from which it issued. when such crises never arise it is not thinking which is occurring but only ideological sandbagging. 5. nowhere is the absence of thought more evident than in statements and/or arguments which use economics as the basis for action/decision making. the severe reductionism of cost-benefit analysis which is nothing more than a refusal to think into and perhaps through the complexities of human predicaments. any ethical considerations and responsibilities are abrogated in favour of heeding the delusory simplicity and certainty which economically deterministic arguments dangle in front of their servants. 6. the catalyst required for the transformation of despair into effort. 7. the honest way of thinking is the development of a well-crafted linguistic representation which one can then hold up to thought (and to the world) and say not this either. 8. Unamuno stresses the notion that thought is an inheritance. in that case, the un-thought is also inherited. 9. all thoughts are not equal. some thoughts may make living possible, others may make living impossible. there is a type of thought, end-thoughts, which must be thought because their absence leads to an existence characterized by hesitancy, denial, regret, misery... unfortunately it is precisely these end-thoughts which most people believe are the type of thoughts which make living impossible. because end-thoughts are necessarily critical, because end-thoughts cannot help but lead to questions they eventually draw habitual living into uncomfortable positions. in fact, it is no small achievement to be able to have end-thoughts, to maintain the practice of thinking end-thoughts, and to keep living. it seems as though everything is against such an activity— adjectives, admonishments: depressing, cynical, cheerless, ungrateful, naive, idealistic, narcissistic, masochistic, banal ... however, just what a thinker is up against is revealed when the fact that any successful integration of life and marginal thinking is rarely even recognized as a success by the only person who might ever be able to know it as such: the thinker. 10. freedom of thought is a redundancy. thought is free or it is not thought at all. 11. a thought is an obstruction. it is where every city has been founded. 12. if freedom is the ability to pass from thought to action then removing or severely limiting the field of possible action is the functional equivalent of destroying the thought… yet, the thought still remains, as a ruin, as a ghost. 13. thought does not necessarily lead to a specific action. the thought of murder does not necessarily lead to murder. even though it may be argued that a thought may pre-dispose one to a specific action, pre-disposition is not necessity. in fact, when compared with a corresponding action a thought reveals itself to be different in kind. in the presence of action a thought seems much less— a belief, a fantasy… pallid, spectral. that a thought of murder is not murder should be obvious to all. moreover, to think something is to allow one to adopt a moral position with regard to the thought’s corresponding (or most likely) action. conscience may be nothing more than the ability to think without confusing thoughts with actions while at the same time allowing certain thoughts to lead to action as an act of freedom, of will. the inability to differentiate thought and action expresses itself as intolerance. a failed conscience then is necessarily intolerant. conversely, a functioning conscience requires tolerance in order to think at all. 14. every thought, while one follows it, encounters its own sub-thoughts, anti-thoughts, etc. all of which plead with you to stop, to be content with them.

threat: n; every threat is an appeal for thought.

threshold: n; my words are cracks in the ice. ice is the boundary between living and un-living. if you are lucky you may feel a crack giving way. the reason why this would be lucky is that you are below the ice struggling to break through to the surface.

throne: n; sitting on the throne of irrelevance it soon becomes evident that one must flush what one is responsible for.

thwart: v; the poet, more than anyone, experiences the full force of the Nietzschean dilemma of learning upon completion of a task precisely what one needed to know before one began the task. the poet, in its pursuit of the most subtle and jealously guarded secrets of language and the bases of communication only discovers such truths in isolation. the converse is also true— for those who are not poets, for those who do not pursue the secrets of language and communication, immunity from enlightenment can only be found in the presence of others.

tic: n; an attempt (sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle) to throw oneself off, to rid oneself of oneself.

tightrope: n; a bridge of privilege.

time: n; 1. the authority of time is evident when we only experience its shadow, that is, when we experience time as a quantity, as something of which there is too much of, or too little, or is something we must fill up or spend. (anxiety and boredom would then be examples of the domination of time / the experience of the time-shadow). this authority of time is broken only when time is transcended, that is, when time is experienced as it is (and not as it acts), for example in a creative act, or in a celebration (birthday, funeral). 2. time is the distance/space that presents itself when a (localized) being becomes co-incident, or, in conjunction with the neighborhood of another being. time is all that is implicit in this event; it is the structure necessary to support such an event. 3. time is our support, our constraint, our organizing principle. it is as though time is host to our parasitic existence. what we call and experience as time is just our awareness of our constant (existential) dependency on this host. 4. time is the possibility of conflicting states of the same matter resolving itself. 5. i want my clock to have a mind of its own.

Tinguely: n; “the artists still making art in the future will either be fantastic artists or they will be decorators.”

title: n; 1. it may be that the title is the most important element of my visual art. a work of art often produces the illusion of autonomy. the title effectively links the object to the world. it does this by de-stabilizing the object (and its identity) and thus requiring the viewer to resolve the contextual and semantic ambiguities that exist between the title and the object. the viewer then becomes the locus where the illusion of autonomy is resolved (or at least negotiated). 2. the title of a poem gives the illusion of containment. it is a lid put on a jar in which an insect has been trapped. the insect belongs to the outside world. while it remains alive it will struggle to re-integrate itself into its proper world.

tool: n; art and science diverge at the locus of the tool. the activity of science is based on reproducibility; a tool is an unchanging element through which scientific activity must pass; a tool ensures a limited range of possible productions / consequences. art, on the other hand, to create (and not just to repeat or mimic) must destroy/abandon/transcend its tool; such an activity, besides producing a particular work of art, will leave behind an artifact: a tool which was the mold which allowed the particular work of art to emerge. seen in this way, a tool is a response to spontaneity, to chaos. science and art then represent two ways of regarding a response to spontaneity, to chaos.

tolerance: n; 1. tolerance discloses the insufficiency of ethical positions. 2. the sharing of abstract universals (e.g. we are canadians, we are free, we are tolerant, etc.) allows for indifferent co-existence, like machines in a factory. 3. extreme hatred (e.g. neo-nazis) render tolerance impotent. strategies of combatting them with some form of enlightenment or with vigorous demonstrations of their opposite just serve to ground the conflict. what is required is radical/subversive irony. for example, during a neo-nazi rally, instead of holding another rally, all those protesting the neo-nazis should join in the neo-nazi rally and carry the same signs and shout the same slogans. the entire event would then be raised to the level of ridiculousness.

tomorrow: n; tomorrow is an untested hypothesis.

torment: v; my second favorite word.

torture: v; 1. the idealized representation of science, that of a scientist prodding and coaxing nature to reveal its (her) secrets reads like an apologist’s account of torture. 2. military training, the systematic annihilation of intellect and conscience, is a form of torture that the victim consents to, perhaps because the intellect and conscience are too much of a burden. 3. “torture is a requirement of racial hatred”- Sartre. 4. satisfaction is related to desire in the sense that it completes a cycle which provides necessities for a meaningful, integrated human life. to break a human life, desire is too refractory a target. instead, satisfaction is chosen. there are two ways to render the cycle of satisfaction-desire non-functional. the first seeks to eliminate satisfaction by radically devaluing the efficacy of all personal action, obscuring desire with complacency and obedience. the second radically overloads satisfaction, providing an infinite variety of trivial satisfactions which become severed from desire leaving only a seemingly unbridgeable gap of ennui. both methods are forms of torture. 5. a population is prepared to accept torture when it is able and willing to identify public displays of humiliation as entertainment. moreover, such a willingness is only possible from a population which is being tortured and which is producing torturers… a population which in all its forms is in dress rehearsal for its total breakdown (H. Arendt). 6. torture attempts to force the will to accept the truth of the body (and its immediate world). illness initially achieves the same thing; however, because illness originates and is experienced within a realm beyond the body (and its truth) is glimpsed, felt, endured… as real, as true. medication, or the fetish of medication, is the retreat from this truth and is a proscription against it— and so it is, in its effects, akin to torture.

totalitarianism: n; if it is true that the cult of youth is indicative of a totalitarian presence then the use of children in advertising and the well-worn political and ethical justification for action think of the children… we are doing it for the children! are not symptoms but successes of a totalitarian society.

tourism: n; 1. i had a dream. there was a large hotel. every year it was completely filled. some years an old face would be gone and a new face would have replaced it. there would always be enough faces to fill each room. somehow i knew this dream was nothing more than history and man's residency in history explaining itself to me. and then i saw this was not my dream at all. i saw my dream as though falling away from this dream at a great speed. as though i was falling away from myself. as though it was late in myself and everyone inside me was asleep. 2. an artist does not just describe the particulars of the human predicament. an artist must descend to the depths— everything of value can be found there. the surface is for tourists.

tradition: n; 1. tradition depends upon the assumption of a knowledge (no matter how slight) and in this differs from conformism which depends upon the assumption of an ignorance. the only time tradition is conformism is when what is assumed is a coherent complex of ignorances. 2. in speaking of tradition and the(ir) present renaissance writers used the metaphor of a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant. what they failed to mention (and consequently what escaped their dialectic of history/society) was that the giant was standing on a pile of bones. 3. a blind respect for tradition is the expressway to injustice.

tragedy: n; 1. why is it that it often takes a brutal, inhuman act to force people to admit to what is essential in life, in living? why is it that the excessively human acts of art, of poetry, are so often incapable of leading people to such realizations? 2. the impossible approaches me in the breathtaking attire of possibility. 3. the creative possibilities a tragedy discloses are usually sterilized, bandaged and then ignored.

train: n; 1. if all acts of separation are purifications, trains and train stations are alchemical equipment. 2. as time is a train i sit at its end. and what the end of this train is connected to is too much to accept; however, it has already accepted me. the past is beneath me; the future is unseen and irrelevant. and the present… the present: the hum and click of the rails, an unceasing cradling motion, a hypnotic presumption. i open my eyes at the rear of this time-car. soon i will disembark.

trait: n; genetically speaking, a trait is an hypothesis, an object of research that is often confused with an object of fact.

trajectory: n; every thought has its own trajectory. to write means to promise oneself that one will make an attempt to retrieve every thought that one can throw.

tranquillity: n; tranquillity does not imply a just society. there are always inequalities, contested positions... and so, there are always injustices to be, on one side, supported, and on the other side, resisted. those who insist on a tranquil (non-confrontational) society are evidence that the ideological battle waged by those in power has / is succeeding. after all, tranquillity literally means exceedingly quiet—. as quiet as the dead for instance.

transcendent: n; 1. the most accurate word with which to compare the transcendent, that is, the most appropriate metaphor one could make is this, as in this is x. this is unbounded and all encompassing yet undefinable ultimately as it can only be defined as, or in terms of, something else, something definite as in: this is a word. 2. to be obsessed with the transcendent does not mean one is religious, it merely means one is alive. 3. the notion of a struggle, of an effort is contained in the word transcendent which means literally to climb beyond. notice it does not mean to soar or to be lifted beyond. there is nothing effortless about it. to transcend one must climb. to climb one must at all times remain in contact with the ground, the earth, and earthly things. 4. subversion is a form of transcendence. all transcendence is subversive. 5. it is best to ask people to strive for things you know you can't do because they might succeed. this i think is the seed of the concept school.

transformation: n; 1. suppose there are two entities, A and B. let entity A be dependent upon/involved with entity B. if entity B is altered and entity A can still relate to it approximately as entity B, if it can still identify it as such then the involvement/dependency remains. in such a case it will appear from the perspective of entity A that nothing has changed with respect to entity B and its relationship with it. if, however, entity B is altered in such a way that entity A can no longer relate to it as entity B, so that entity A can no longer identify its involvement/dependency as an involvement/dependency with entity B then the involvement/dependency is undone. in such a case it will appear from the perspective of entity A that a catastrophic change has occurred which has eliminated entity B leaving another entity in its place.

if there is a necessary involvement between entity A and entity B (for instance, between my self and the world) the above would allow for the world to change, but the world of my involvement to remain the same. (this suggests a definition of identity which is as follows– identity is the sum of involvement between it and another entity. for instance, i may look at a house and identify it as a house whereas a person who grew up in that particular house could provide a much more complex identification of it. all identities, no matter how complex and elaborate are never complete; they are always approximations which represent our involvement with that entity). if there is a necessary involvement between entity A and entity B then any change in entity B, and transformation of its identity is therefore a transformation of my involvement with whatever it is that was entity B and is now identified as some other entity. since entity B no longer exists, since I am involved in a wholly new way with another entity, this transformation has been catastrophic for me. if such a transformation also changes entity B for others into some other entity, then it is catastrophic for others as well. all transformation is catastrophic in this way, the value in such a process depends on one's feelings for the entity which was annihilated compared to the entity which was brought into being. 2. Mark Johnson outlines our understanding of a conversation of a man talking about rape and sexuality as depending upon the following argument:

a woman is responsible for her physical appearance

physical appearance is a force (exerted on other people)

a woman is responsible for the force she exerts on men

he points out that the central point of the argument is the metaphor physical appearance is a force. it is the lived acceptance of this metaphor which justifies rape as something the victim brought on herself. for the situation to change, that is, for the inference a woman is responsible for the force she exerts on men to be changed, the central point in the above experience-organizing construct must be transformed. the good news is because it is a metaphor, it can be changed. the bad news is that such change necessarily affects power structures (modes of domination) and so is chronically resisted. 3. in order to live somewhere new, somewhere better, you must move. the physical act of moving, the logical necessity packing belongings, vacating an old residence and travelling to a new home is never easy or pleasurable. often, it is much worse (more effort, frustration etc.) than the home one is leaving. however, this disruption, this trouble, is the only door which leads to a better existence. 4. the human cannot be convinced to change. it must be danced into transformation. 5. i see a caterpillar and cannot fail to see the burden of its not-yet wings buried within it, the visions of dizzying futures which inhabit it, the dreams of the sky and the breathless feeling of being carried by the wind… all of this is a nightmare of possibility from which the caterpillar tries to escape at all costs, crawling and climbing on its many legs petitioning the earth and all its associates for an answer until a weariness which issues from itself overtakes the caterpillar and envelops it in a profound stillness, a tomb of the possible from which it will one day awaken.

transgression: n; the more extreme or revolutionary a creation/work the more levels of rules/systems/concerns it attempts to transgress. conventionality, on the other hand, is that which is content with, or unwilling to exist without, existing boundaries.

Transtromer: n; moths: small pale telegrams from the world.

trinity: n; 1. love (with the eyes of Miranda) and poetry (with my eyes) are the two horses which pull the world's carriage and on which madness sits with an eager whip. 2. a human as an intermediary between two possibilities (p1 and p2) results in a trinitarian structure. in such a structure, one possibility could be represented by darkness, the other by light. then again, the two possibilities could be represented (oedipally) by father and mother. once the structure is established the nature of the intermediary and its relationship two the two possibilities must be established. there are a number of possible ways of doing this. for instance:

intermediary is both p1 and p2 or, a)

intermediary is either p1 or p2 b)

once the structure of the intermediary is decided upon, is chosen, the dynamic or drama that is possible becomes determined. for instance, are p1 and p2 antagonistic towards each other? do they battle each other or are they complementary? the living of the intermediary, the nature of its being-in-the-world is determined by the nature of the drama to which it has placed itself or in which it is placed. (for instance, the orthodox christian drama declares the father/light in opposition to the mother/darkness. the being-in-the-world of such an intermediary is one of submission to the father's authority and a denial of the mother's power. such a submission is an acceptance of creative impotency.)

Note: see imagination, the section which defines the configurations I, II, III. for the discussion above these would take on the values of either light or darkness or intermediary.

triviality: n; culture is a conversation (or many conversations). those who cannot bear to allow a conversation to develop— the trivial comedians, the overworked and overtired, the entertained, the subservient megalomaniacal citizenry… neither can they bear culture. they always get their wish.

trope: n; something to hang yourself with.

true: adj; the true has the ability to initiate interpretation and re-interpretation. this conception opposes the general understanding that truth is something timeless and unchanging. what is timeless and unchanging has lost its meaning, has been transformed into a relic and any meaning it possesses concerns its identity as a relic. on the other hand, the true is change, it is contentious, its meaning must be negotiated not only personally but socially. once this process of negotiating meaning ceases, the phenomenon in question becomes a relic and truth has no business with relics.

trust: n; the trust one encounters on the well-travelled path will (in reality) always be suspect. trust clears its own way; it is a path in itself.

truth: n; 1. functionally, truth is a measure of the explanatory power of a statement concerning the perceptible world. in this way some things are truer than other things. in this way a lie is something which exists in the presence of a known truth. also it follows that the continuum of truth extends to infinity and for that reason any ultimate truth, any `i am a part or an explanation of all that exists' is only a theoretical ultimate, an approximation. 2. that aspect of an experience/idea which renders it hallucinatory/irrational. 3. functionally truth is a goodness-of-fit measure. from this then one can see why "the truth of one man's vision is proportional to his fidelity in himself" (his goodness-of-fit with himself). 4. if functionally it is a goodness-of-fit measure, the way it used is not what it is. the functionality of it is related to what it is. (from GoP), truth is the phenomenon (original stimulus, revelation) upon which thought, memory etc. acts. truth is the original to which we compare what we have made of it. if the fit is adequate we call our memory/thought of it true. but what is true is not what we have made of it, it is the original which is true, what we have made is a rough sketch, a truth-shadow. to insist on the functional aspect (the goodness of fit aspect ) of truth as being identical to truth is to become susceptible to the greatest distortion which one can fall prey to, which is, to consider true only those things (perceptions, statements etc.) which agree with one's own beliefs or expectations. to live under such a distortion of truth is the nest of all evil, all inhumanity. 5. truth is not harmony; harmony is an apparent consequence. truth is a conflict, a banging together of two heavy stones. this conflict produces a spark which in turn emphasizes the darkness, the coldness which makes the spark a necessity. the spark and the darkness (or coldness) are opposites. if one is harmonious, the other is discordant; if one is knowledge, the other is ignorance. but truth is neither of these two things, truth (the banging together of stones, the conflict) is what brings these two opposites, this conjunction, to be present. 6. truth appears linguistically. 7. truth is a glove for a conceptual system. 8. truth emerges from the contradiction of a phenomenon with itself. everything else, all factual truths, descriptive truths, are trivial in comparison. 9. there are moments, the greatest moments, when the truth is intelligibly insufficient. 10. if there is such a thing as truth it must be absolute. and a mind in pursuit of this absolute follows a process of disintegration until in the presence of the absolute it suffers complete dissolution. therefore, it would seem that the unity of the mind is dependent upon untruth, delusion. 11. it is a weak truth that nails a man to a cross.

turban: n; death-shell.