Wednesday 8 December 2010

to see again

"I wanted to see Kafka’s tomb. Knowing perfectly well (having verified it so many times) that you cannot see what you want to see, I went to the cemetery to see what I could not see. It’s the law. All is law. It’s because of desire. The law makes its nest in the peels of desire. Go on: you will not enter. If you did not desire to go, there would be a chance that the door would open." (Cixous, H. (1997), ’Attacks of the Castle’, in Leach, N. (ed.) Rethinking Architecture, London, New York: Routledge; p.303.)



i had forgotten about it. about the law that nests in the peels of desire. so i stumbled upon it over the past fortnight. as time unhooked itself; the temporal unfolding of anticipation dissipated one by one. peel by peel. events undid themselves. never took place. took place elsewhere and without. a series of undoings unmark time: plans that did not happen. a fortnight that did not happen leaves the plans as unmade.


and still time passed. in not happening it passed nonetheless. interrupted by the occasional sound outside the window. another leaked cable. another emptied battery cycle. time structured by anticipation - vorfreude - making its own laws of desire. with anticipation pulled, linearity dissipates. time? never there in its everpresence.

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