Unmanifesting http://www.alansondheim.org/ima.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/unmanifest.jpg In ten years I will be close to 90, which is inconceivable, being 79 is difficult as well. Which makes it difficult to make any long-range planning in terms of studying, publication, being in the world - I want to deal with adjacency, neither this nor that, textimony, testimony, body interiority in relation to computation and artificial intelligence at a distance, the shifting landscape of philosophical ontology, mathesis and what there is, avatar and human behavior and embodiment, the structure of virtual worlds, and - and these fields among so many others are changing so rapidly that whatever I write or think is always already outdated - that thinking itself and thinking-through might be outdated as well - that I no longer have the time for long thought - that the presumed future deterioration of my mind will prohibit this sort of speculation - that I will be more concerned with that, with the symptomology of that - than with anything else in terms of a philosophy somehow not violated by that symptomology - and so forth, always within a time, unknown temporal interval, that is decidedly shrinking to the point of uselessness or an untoward simplicity - that I will no longer be able to think _thus,_ that therefore the world and its complexity will begin and continue to recede, not towards some sort of mystical unity or truth, but towards irretrievable decay, loss, sorrow at the loss (which may be at best a distant memory (if that)), that the tail end will be death and the grounding of any implication of such, for which I will not be witness, will not bear witness, will always already (again that metaphor) be beyond me, and how, now, do I deal with this, this mourning, this unexpected but expected sorrow, which occupies my thought, bringing me often to tears in the early morning, this retro-future sense of mourning in fact, the future in reverse, there is a word for that, already forgotten, but in other word this forgetting, this forging of emptiness, so that for example such things as the unity of the universe if such, the suturing and development of particle physics, the knowledge of life on other worlds and contact with that life, the potential healing and extending of viable life-spans, all this unknown and continuing unknown, the building blocks of a universe whose pathology may extending indefinitely and humanity's realization of that, the politics and sociologies of dwindling resources - wars, famines, desertification, floods and unforeseen enormous monsoons and fires - all this I will not bear witness to, nor to the last human dying on earth - under what circumstance - and my decade at best, and probably much shorter time than that, as I watch myself, with my limited senses and more limited body (itself), mindfulness dissolving (again into tears, even now) - my decade at best, a withdrawal (already friends abandoning me, almost no contact with anyone in my family now, most are hardy and fine, the passing from one generation to another) - do I mourn now, continue on a journey increasingly misshapen - to I give into despair, suicide, walking away from a body turning into a conglomeration of failures - I will never ever desert Azure, my partner in so many unforeseen ways, my best friend - that amazing sphere or lifeworld of intimacy - but then, outside of that, increasing, the maelstrom... ...these are the truths of my life, breaking it apart even now, sintering on the edges, geodermatological phenomena unforeseen, one can only imagine, how should I, how should one, go on, continue within and without the theater of failure, the shimmer of curtains and auroras, the call of nothing, call of absolutely nothing, call of the absolute - which must be fought against, with every breath I have, with every turn of the sun into darkness and descent, with whatever powers I have left, with being and remaining within this world of miracles and still, yes still, inconceivable thought - and this, these, are among that, dedicated to that, as if, out of the corner of my eye, I could see myself years ago so clearly, walking, I will not say where, and seeing even then, what was yet to come, what was yet to come... _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
