Beware the loop of Moat Mobius over which you must pass…
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Today the wonderful newsletter, A Word A Day (AWAD), combined two aspects of Cinnamon’s multifaceted theme for the current phase of the Tenth Daughter of Memory writing exercise: Trapped. They seemed to unlock a trap I’d laid for myself by requiring my entry to be in a story about Dick and Jane or the three bears so artfully entertaining in themselves that the metaphor for how we spring our own traps in life I intended is barely bold enough to bear detection. The preamble above is such a mordant meditation on the traps language lays when we trigger them with desire for uniformity to replace variety in the evolution of language.
The first aspect was suggested by the word for the day being: mortmain, n. dead hand, which immediately evoked the trap of tradition as a limit on contemporary thought and thereby behavior. Such dogma and orthodoxy ranges from faith that, if each generation over millennia maintains a behavior whose ritual and purpose they understand less and less, their seemingly impossible prophecy will come to pass, to citizens who believe the words, “…all men are created equal,” knowing full well they were written by the rich white founders on the backs of their slaves and simultaneously trust their rich progeny to not be like that, to brokenhearted divorcees because marriage was 'sposed to work. I'll call this aspect the mortmain momentum trap.
The second aspect is characterized by the quote for the day:-
“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them.”- Nietzsche.
It represents the neomortmain traditions we've invented for ourselves since being educated to bury such unruly spontaneity as treating each new day as if it was a new day. I'll call it the memory momentum trap within which we paint the vastness of the universe as it exists in the present as a mere sliver squeezed between the bulk of our retained memories and our impatience to be rewarded for bearing them. Acquisitive people cannot spare the time to be inquisitive about the source of the loot and so are trapped by minimizing the present, the only time or place anything exists.
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Unlike the limited ingredients of a Big Mac, I AM one with everything, even the Big Mac. One cannot build a bridge from here now to here now without employing the circular logic that creates the greatest distance between the same point. This is the function of Moat Mobius, by the way. There is no bait but our desire that imagines a separation, designs a bridge then draws it. How artistic. If there is no preexisting gap, bridge is the new wedge.
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“This is not a pipe.” — René Magritte
12 comments:
I dunno why, but I just love your sentence structure.
I've read this several times. I'm still trying to find its full meaning. It's one I must walk away and think about it, then come back to take more in. It is very deep and written with such passion.
Good essay. We create past and future from the present. All is now.
"...the bulk of our retained memories and our impatience to be rewarded for bearing them"
the depth of self-examination required to make this observation takes my breath away - bravo!
As with all of your most intense writing, I truely appreciate being allowed to follow your meandering thoughts - earth tremors for the soul.
JeffScape, it usually draws complaints from seekers of page turners, thanks for going deeper.
Lilwave, glad you are taking your time through the meanders, as Pisces would call them. Also happy you decided to submit your piece, very haunting because I still don't understand that more-perfect-creator-than-the-body-I, who supposedly feels trapped for life in a body, or is that even the same one? Schizophrenia? Visiting Deity? Alien possession? You folks from around the Pascagoula River are all pretty weird, but not too weird for Austin though they or you never make it this far. ;D
Mike, exactly, today only serves as a reminder of what we think we know already and what that prepares us for next, like the shopping list repeating what we eat so we know what we're gonna shit, despite the healthier food to be eaten spontaneously during one's day outside the store.
Pisces, my body/mind/ego loves thinking it has learned to express such thoughts to necessarily (bridge/wedge) other minds and tingles knowing universal conscious can perceive and understand itself; one eye on the sole soul potato winking at another.
To be honest, I do usually dislike too many lengthy sentences in a row, but it's highly appropriate for this piece and its theme.
Loved it.
Bridge o'er troubled waters?
"mortmain, n. dead hand, which immediately evoked the trap of tradition as a limit on contemporary thought and thereby behavior. "
- Interesting. I will enter this word into my vernacular.
Oh dear friend, I am going to have to take a course in logical thinking to 'get' you! My brain is aching with the gymnastics required to understand your concepts such as 'neomortmain traditions'. I'm going to have to take myself off to the moat in my city, sit awhile overlooking the drawbridge and meditate on this. My brain is a Big Mac!
Yoork, Welcome
Cinnamon, so I can put you down in the "not too facile" column then?
intriguing post...your play with words and sentences drawns me in...i will admit i had to read this one twice and i am sure there are much deeper thoughts as each ingredient is seperated to be appreciated along with the whole. i do like the word mortmain, though i doubt i have ever used it, i have seen it in action over and over. enjoyed the journey, be back soon.
Yes, that'll do :)
How interesting. From your subject matter to your sentence structure to your meter. I am awed at the way you weave words into thoughts rather than sentences.
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