When we were blind

Posted on March 22, 2009 | 6 Comments

We started asking ourselves what might be built out of rubble while living in rubble. What we could shore against our ruins. What we could hope for while withdrawing from any real object of hope. How to laugh while depriving ourselves of any real object of laughter. How to die while living, to live the death-in-life we dreamed of. And love — how even begin to love? Was this our real work? We started telling ourselves it was, at least; that we were like Rilke’s bees of the invisible. Because what were our ten-hour days in the office and the warehouse compared to these soundings, these questions upon questions?

About these ads
This entry was posted in Writing. Bookmark the permalink.

6 Responses to When we were blind

  1. notesfromaroom | March 22, 2009 at 9:20 am |

    We ask ourselves about our time. This questioning is not pursued at privileged moments, but goes on without pause; it is itself part of time, harrying in the harrying manner that is proper to time. Scarcely a questioning, it is a kind of flight. Upon the background noise constituted by our knowledge of the world’s daily course, which precedes, accompanies, and follows in us all knowledge, we cast forth, walking or sleeping, phrases that are punctuated by questions. Murmuring questions. What are they worth? What do they say? These are still more questions.

    Where does this concern for questioning come from? And the great dignity accorded to the question? To question is to seek, and to seek is to search radically, to go to the bottom, to sound, to work at the bottom, and, finally, to uproot. This uprooting that holds onto the root is the work of the question. The work of time. Time seeks and tries itself in the dignity of the question. Time is the turning of times. To the turning of time corresponds the power to turn oneself back into question, into a speech that, before speaking, questions through the turn of writing.

    – Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation (trans. S. Hanson)

  2. notesfornothing | March 22, 2009 at 9:20 am |

    We ask ourselves about our time. This questioning is not pursued at privileged moments, but goes on without pause; it is itself part of time, harrying in the harrying manner that is proper to time. Scarcely a questioning, it is a kind of flight. Upon the background noise constituted by our knowledge of the world’s daily course, which precedes, accompanies, and follows in us all knowledge, we cast forth, walking or sleeping, phrases that are punctuated by questions. Murmuring questions. What are they worth? What do they say? These are still more questions.

    Where does this concern for questioning come from? And the great dignity accorded to the question? To question is to seek, and to seek is to search radically, to go to the bottom, to sound, to work at the bottom, and, finally, to uproot. This uprooting that holds onto the root is the work of the question. The work of time. Time seeks and tries itself in the dignity of the question. Time is the turning of times. To the turning of time corresponds the power to turn oneself back into question, into a speech that, before speaking, questions through the turn of writing.

    – Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation (trans. S. Hanson)

  3. aporia | March 22, 2009 at 9:39 am |

    I think a new perspective is needed here.

  4. notesfromaroom | March 24, 2009 at 4:24 pm |

    It doesn’t really matter that there’s nothing before you, she said: Ask enough questions, and you’ll end up creating something, all the same.

    - Yes, you’ll end up creating some kind of answer, I agreed laconically. The prospect was hardly enticing; I was not in the mood today anyway for anything that was clear or true.

    - No, not at all. Just a place for your questions to live, that’s all.

    http://noanswers.typepad.com/noanswers/2009/03/questions.html

  5. notesfornothing | March 24, 2009 at 4:24 pm |

    It doesn’t really matter that there’s nothing before you, she said: Ask enough questions, and you’ll end up creating something, all the same.

    - Yes, you’ll end up creating some kind of answer, I agreed laconically. The prospect was hardly enticing; I was not in the mood today anyway for anything that was clear or true.

    - No, not at all. Just a place for your questions to live, that’s all.

    http://noanswers.typepad.com/noanswers/2009/03/questions.html

  6. marianne | March 24, 2009 at 9:01 pm |

    There is a patience in you which is very beautiful. I find myself exhaling.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s