I had a very, very clear image….going back to Africa, of course….of some sudden military contact along a sandy fork in the Road in the Rhodesian bush. There was extreme fatigue, and horror, like you get when you are suddenly knocked to the ground. I’ve been felled in that way before, because I have very unstable ligaments in my knees. I’d go to do a leaping kick and landing slightly wrongly, my knee would give way and the perspective would suddenly change. I’d be on the ground, shot through with adrenalin, with the intensity of the pain producing a slowing down of time and mental numbness. People would slowly, slowly, walk over to me and say things looking down at me. And I would want to laugh and say, “I’m not in the same zone as you are, anymore. Can’t you tell? I’m having to relate to things on a different level and I can’t give you a logical answer right now.”
We can break the spell and say we are talking about the Lacanian Real – but it is a very familiar state to me. In the vision I had last night, all the soldiers were recoiling at the fact that they had actually been hit. I could feel they were on their radios – and this was the end of MY civilization, all over again.
So, what does one do but relive it? Immanence isn’t always a choice, but if one can enter it more deeply, it becomes more voluptuous and worthwhile.
As Marechera says, “One scratch and the sky bleeds visions.”
So there are ruptures in the mind, certainly, perhaps in all of our minds, but they can produce beautiful visions. I do take those visions as a consolation prize. They are clearly not the first prize one could wish for in life, which is to have both one’s immanence and one’s transcendence in place, but if there is nothing else to be had, they will do.
In a situation where we have all been damaged and fractured – such as Bataille’s World War 2, or Marechera’s and my cruel bush war – we need to make do with what we have. As Bataille says, “We feel each other through our wounds.” These mental fractures become a basis for an experience of solidarity.
We can break the spell and say we are talking about the Lacanian Real – but it is a very familiar state to me. In the vision I had last night, all the soldiers were recoiling at the fact that they had actually been hit. I could feel they were on their radios – and this was the end of MY civilization, all over again.
So, what does one do but relive it? Immanence isn’t always a choice, but if one can enter it more deeply, it becomes more voluptuous and worthwhile.
As Marechera says, “One scratch and the sky bleeds visions.”
So there are ruptures in the mind, certainly, perhaps in all of our minds, but they can produce beautiful visions. I do take those visions as a consolation prize. They are clearly not the first prize one could wish for in life, which is to have both one’s immanence and one’s transcendence in place, but if there is nothing else to be had, they will do.
In a situation where we have all been damaged and fractured – such as Bataille’s World War 2, or Marechera’s and my cruel bush war – we need to make do with what we have. As Bataille says, “We feel each other through our wounds.” These mental fractures become a basis for an experience of solidarity.
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