Trio for a Joint Consciousness and Two Dogs
The Philosopher
Taking a break from Hegel, reading the poems of saints, making lunch. Defrosting chard. Dreaming of language as pure as ice, precisely defined virtutes, limpid truths. Conversations like theorems, unrolling in ecstatic clauses, sizzling like garlic when they land. “Ansich! Fursich!” Dogs skidding around corners. They sublate me, dancing pirouettes of bright, toothy joy. Children looming, drifting in and out doors, remote as clouds. Einzelnheit’ing off to their friends. Gutters clogging, radishes growing wild. No one cares. Smell of garlic and onion, chorizo, tomato paste. Rain ending. Down below, in the basement, sump pump at the ready, equipped for life’s woes, the effluvia of evil, sloppy thinking, ill-considered speech, all pumping harmlessly into sewers and pipes. Far away, to the swamps where bad moments are composted, Negativitat, exhaling its vapors and fading, leaving a brighter day, right now. Sun. Words falling, without sharp edges, into waiting ears. Fools now eager for understanding. Selves and their obligations, rendering down, fully braised. “Ansich! Fursich, come to me!” Hegel, finally subsumed. Braised greens are more real. “Eat, dogs!” Order of a saint’s dreams. Limpid speech.
The Saint
Immured in her cell, lost in metaphors for the divine, waiting for her lunch, transported by sonorous, Latinate phrases. Her self is a palace of burning ice. Room after room opening out, dissolving as she passes. Enfilades of memory, shame dripping onto puddling floors, hems of her habit driving tempests and storms. Nothing is real but her ringing phrases. The light fills soaring halls, drives the clouds sailing beneath their high ceilings. Remote as stars, her eyes pierce forests of columns deeply rooted as trees. Rippling banners, exhortations, the correspondence of kings. Bending the powerful of this earth to my will. Nothing changes. I am still hungry, alone – waiting … For peace? Self’s palace of dreams dissolving at my feet, revealing convents full of novices coarsely habited, infested with lice. Scratching. No that is wrong, she’s not thinking of that. I am dreaming of divine union as they sigh out their prayers towards me. Where is lunch? I am a saint. Lice infested coarse habit falling around me as the last door opens. Light filling my soul as I pass through, falling… Oh, no, towards barking dogs and braised greens! Ansich! Fursich! Shut up!
And the Dogs
We’re Ansich und Fursich. No one knows it, but we are the divine. We’re making no phrases, we’re moved by no dreams. No one is listening and yet we are here. Ansich und Fursich, we are die welt. We bark and we bark. It has no meaning but it is all truth; nobody listens because it’s not about them. Saints fall through windows into their minds. Philosophers develop antipathies towards words. Who cares? The world smells of garlic. Light shimmers outside. That is what matters. Sausage and sausage, onion and garlic, the here and the now, the light in the trees and the sun barking outside. Life is like sausage. Not sausage in dreams or sausage in memories, not words about sausage but just plain old sausage falling towards dogs. We’re Ansich und Fursich and we bark and we bark and it’s just about barking right here and right now! Barks have no meaning, and they open no doors! Saints get no sausage. Philosophers cook lunch for themselves.
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