Monday, October 5, 2009

the inexperience of dying

our exercise for the next two weeks is to pick a sentence from blanchot and perform textual installations. at least five a day. i picked this sentence:

the inexperience of dying

which reminds me of this poem i love by franz wright:

on earth

resurrection of the little apple tree outside
my window, leaf-
light of late
in the april
called her eyes, forget
forget--
but how
how does one go
about dying?
who on earth
is going to teach me--
the world
is filled with people
who have never died

and then i was thinking about this article i read over the weekend about a man who died for twenty minutes. he talked about his experience and at one point said, in regards to the end of his relationship, "my death put immeasurable strain on my relationship."

it also made me think about how much of an embarrassment death is. i remember my mom telling me that when she was young, she and her friend would be getting high and he would insist on her not dying because, he said, if she did, he'd be too embarrassed to tell everyone.

selah also told us a beautiful dream she had about a room of thrones and roger told us words for pray, which, from what i gathered, i was one of the words. we talked about bilocation and the essay, bewilderment, by fanny howe, which i am going to read now.