"I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies."
"I am in here"
"Three faces have resolved into place above summer-weight sportcoats... I do not know which face belongs to whom"
There is, it seems, a good deal of importance placed on the fact that, for our narrator anyway, heads and bodies are separate. But a mind/body distinction is nothing new, you say: Descartes, the Apostle Paul, Socrates. The Head a symbol of the intellect, the mind, the soul, the rational, reasoning being; The Body the symbol of instinct and desires, of our animality, the flesh, our baser, mechanistic aspects. These two symbols representing different elements of the human condition, of parts of the whole.
Here, however, it is not that these aspects of Hal himself are in conflict or at odds, pulling in opposite directions, but that they seem to have become completely independent of one another. Hal, himself, is in there, but the lines of communication are, to say the least, strained between these two camps. Hal himself is within his body and unable to interact effectively with the outside world. He can, in fact, “interface [them] under the table.” He is beyond them in many ways. It is here that there may be some clue into why he cannot type a legible essay but can somehow operate on the tennis court to such a degree. Perhaps Hal is only able to illustrate his existence in this way, in similar ways as it might be said that goD writes hiS story in nature, demonstrated in a leaf the way Hal is able to verify his existence, verify his presence through demonstration on the tennis courts (later blatantly referred to metaphorically as the world entire, in world-wide wars, even).
Hal says he believes with Hegel, that transcendence is absorption. The only thoughts I could drum up, in a brief exploration of some brief elements in Hegel’s thought, is that Hegel felt like everything that Is, Is God, the leaf, that fire, this ice, and the laws that govern both of them, but that, unlike Spinoza, God extends beyond. In this way it is possible to transcend, but since God is Everything, the only means to transcend, is by way of ceasing to exist as a thing, to be absorbed into, and participate in, a beyond.
Hal has then gone beyond us in that he has, as a consciousness, been completely absorbed within the body of Hal, he is no longer able to cross over from intellect to body in free will or control of his actions. He hopes what he is doing conveys his intent, he imagines that his expression or action is congruent to his willing that action. Call it something he ate.
Digestion is present here. The room has a digestive odor. Hal digests, found thus, in italics, things. Hal as a child has digested… something. My son ate this is, in fact, my son did this. My son contains this action. My son is and my son becomes. My son became something that did something, something that ate something. Something that now exists containing something else, now a part of itself. After all this light and sound, that is within himself, itself.
The above may or may not make any sense. Please tear it apart, add to it, question it, whathaveyou. The first 17, the first 50 even, pages are incredibly dense with information and I barely, if at all, scratched the surface of what's going on.
On a different note, can anyone speak to their thoughts about the "(sic)" found on page 11? My only thoughts are that it is Hal as narrator/editor (because if he was just a narrator would he use (sic)?) saying that Orin actually remembers more than he says, or that what he says he remembers is misremembered...?
Also, on the topic of digestion as transcendence, note, "a cold tile floor whose mosaic pattern looks almost Islamic at this close a range," and, "U.S. restrooms always appear to us as infirmaries for public distress, the place to regain control" (13).
"I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies."
ReplyDelete"I am in here"
"Three faces have resolved into place above summer-weight sportcoats... I do not know which face belongs to whom"
There is, it seems, a good deal of importance placed on the fact that, for our narrator anyway, heads and bodies are separate. But a mind/body distinction is nothing new, you say: Descartes, the Apostle Paul, Socrates. The Head a symbol of the intellect, the mind, the soul, the rational, reasoning being; The Body the symbol of instinct and desires, of our animality, the flesh, our baser, mechanistic aspects. These two symbols representing different elements of the human condition, of parts of the whole.
Here, however, it is not that these aspects of Hal himself are in conflict or at odds, pulling in opposite directions, but that they seem to have become completely independent of one another. Hal, himself, is in there, but the lines of communication are, to say the least, strained between these two camps. Hal himself is within his body and unable to interact effectively with the outside world. He can, in fact, “interface [them] under the table.” He is beyond them in many ways. It is here that there may be some clue into why he cannot type a legible essay but can somehow operate on the tennis court to such a degree. Perhaps Hal is only able to illustrate his existence in this way, in similar ways as it might be said that goD writes hiS story in nature, demonstrated in a leaf the way Hal is able to verify his existence, verify his presence through demonstration on the tennis courts (later blatantly referred to metaphorically as the world entire, in world-wide wars, even).
Hal says he believes with Hegel, that transcendence is absorption. The only thoughts I could drum up, in a brief exploration of some brief elements in Hegel’s thought, is that Hegel felt like everything that Is, Is God, the leaf, that fire, this ice, and the laws that govern both of them, but that, unlike Spinoza, God extends beyond. In this way it is possible to transcend, but since God is Everything, the only means to transcend, is by way of ceasing to exist as a thing, to be absorbed into, and participate in, a beyond.
Hal has then gone beyond us in that he has, as a consciousness, been completely absorbed within the body of Hal, he is no longer able to cross over from intellect to body in free will or control of his actions. He hopes what he is doing conveys his intent, he imagines that his expression or action is congruent to his willing that action. Call it something he ate.
Digestion is present here. The room has a digestive odor. Hal digests, found thus, in italics, things. Hal as a child has digested… something. My son ate this is, in fact, my son did this. My son contains this action. My son is and my son becomes. My son became something that did something, something that ate something. Something that now exists containing something else, now a part of itself. After all this light and sound, that is within himself, itself.
-Eric
The above may or may not make any sense. Please tear it apart, add to it, question it, whathaveyou. The first 17, the first 50 even, pages are incredibly dense with information and I barely, if at all, scratched the surface of what's going on.
ReplyDeleteOn a different note, can anyone speak to their thoughts about the "(sic)" found on page 11? My only thoughts are that it is Hal as narrator/editor (because if he was just a narrator would he use (sic)?) saying that Orin actually remembers more than he says, or that what he says he remembers is misremembered...?
Also, on the topic of digestion as transcendence, note, "a cold tile floor whose mosaic pattern looks almost Islamic at this close a range," and, "U.S. restrooms always appear to us as infirmaries for public distress, the place to regain control" (13).