Words Appearing on a Virtual Page (Thursday, October, 2008)

My impression is that words do not exist up until the very moment my fingers start tapping on the keyboard in an interaction almost wholly out of my conscious control as if I were steering a process that runs all by itself, as if I were participating in the work of a machine of writing that in a post-structural turn of operation does not need an author anymore, as if formulations were falling on a page as leaves off the wilting trees that can think no more than the squirrels running up and down their trunks, as if the coming winter were sending its primordial chill forward into the still serene and gossamer days that come before a coldness fills the air, as if a general malaise in the global economy were finding its way into the metaphors that usually cheerful arts and letters shower upon the consuming masses that take up easy credit as easily as their pick an ice cream off a stall or up from a crate, as if the void of the virtual page I am filling were drawing me into itself with a bothersome intention of verbal fruition, as if my memories were looking for vehicles of their arrival to expression locked up in faraway domains of my unconsciousness, as if I were transforming myself into an imperfect likeness of another writing personality that visitates my efforts to put words into sentences that are at a loss for a structure that could lend them a meaning reaching beyond the need to make a transition from one world to another.

Everyday Life. With Asian Characteristics

Daily screenful of words. Should I turn to carefully ethnographizing my every twitch of reflective behaviour? Reflectio ergo sum? Possibly a movement from me present to me virtual that is not likely to arrive at any given destination. Visiting today my old residence right in the middle of the campus that was converted into a university office building made a quaint impression. Two exhibit cases in the lobby have artifacts and books make a grounded impression of area and subject studies that find their home under the room of the former hospital that the building historically is. Second floor greets its wanderers with posters on career in Japan, Chinese and Japanese language tests, and a Chinese trade show at the local exhibition grounds. A whiff of opportunity on paths not taken. I wonder what comes of the common Asian heritage of the countries of the region given the preeminence of Chinese culture and civilization - just consider Chinese characters and arts - now that a certain threshold of economic, political, cultural, and social achievement has been arrived at. It may be before long that not only cool Japan conquers the gaming consoles and widescreen entertainment but also other Asian countries become unquestioned leaders in growing niches of everyday life. Merchandise in supermarkets maybe one thing, but a self-reflected awareness on a mass level of an epochal reorientation away from the West and towards the East could be a fascinating transition to observe. And comment on.

Blogging Exercise Redux (Friday, October, 2008)

To manage transitions does appear to be a skill anyone would want to have, me included. It is just that when one has to summon what it takes to make a transition, a real process of looking for sources of the self, especially as they are likely to go through a mutation, has a chance to start in earnest. At the site of multiple negotiations of memories, discourses, and languages, a tentative way of approaching space, of imaginations, of cities, and of movements, becomes being accessible - not because of knowing beforehand how to do it but because of the mere necessity of making a next move, like in a game of chess, when a succession of alternating strategic and tactical steps lets a judgment on overall success or failure to be made. However, in a situation with far more alternatives, far less transparency, and far reaching absence of stakes, I wonder how one can reformulate the playing field of choosing, acting, and evaluating. Sounds resigned. But even in breaking rules, roles, and moulds, a new and tentative form of ordering strives to emerge. As in our everyday life I suppose. Repetition and difference of the routinized ways of behaving oneself - and strange that behaving others come linguistically across as a contemplative turn of speech and, upon a reflection, thought - reveal themselves to work both ways - expectedly and unexpectedly at once, given that this once is an element in a series, very much like a singularity in Deleuze's logic of thought.