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death. week 12.

date. 2022

city. jerusalem

Image by Vladimir Soares

Morning of July 3 - while in Machaneh Yehudah

As I was drifting off to sleep last night, feeling miserable, pathetic, lost... the issue of my death project came to mind.

 

Through all of my efforts, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m still missing the point. That I’m still resisting death’s call. Death’s face.

 

For example, I’d spent most of my time this evening ‘searching’ for death. Wanting to discover something worth thinking about, something worth writing about. Of course, I didn’t find anything. Of course, I failed. Yet again.

 

And now I lay here feeling like a failure.

 

With nothing worth writing. Nothing worth thinking.

 

My last thought before falling asleep was that I still haven’t allowed myself to give up. I still refuse to fail, refuse to die.

 

I refuse, because I am afraid. Afraid to accept what I already know.

 

“Futile! Futile!,” says Koheles. “Utterly futile! Everything is meaningless.”

 

 

Afternoon of July 3 - while in the Church of the Flaggelation

 

I wish to write an entire book while sitting in churches, shuls, mosques, and temples.

 

Hashem created the perfect world. It is I, with my many calculations, who twists it.

 

But didn’t god create me too? Isn’t he then the one who twists?

 

 

Thank you, Jesus, for your constant reminder that suffering is inevitable.

 

Thank you for your constant demonstration that suffering is love.

 

Thank you for admitting

That the holiest amongst us are sinners.

That greatness is a performance.

 

Thank you for holding me

So that even in my deepest loneliness

I am not alone.

 

It is in my deepest loneliness

That I recognize your presence.

 

Your presence, the only presence,

My own? A shattered memory.

 

I must die

So that you may come more fully to life.

 

I must let go

So that you may more fully support me.

The notion of the real is perhaps best introduced as being precisely that which escapes and is lacking in the other two registers [of the imaginary and symbolic]. Neither figured in the imaginary nor represented by the symbolic, the real is the always still-outstanding, the radically excluded, the wholly uncognized. As Lacan puts it, "the real is the impossible.” In Lacan's sense, then, the real has very little to do with common "reality." By the measure of everyday reality, the Lacanian real is closer to being un- or sur-real. The real is sheer, wholly undifferentiated and unsymbolized force or impact. It is an experience of the real, therefore, that lies at the heart of trauma. However, the real is not simply a designation of something unknown external to the individual. It inhabits the secret interior as well. The real is therefore also to be associated with the active yet ineffable stirrings of organic need, the unconsciousness of the body.

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