Galileo: n; someone at a party who falls from a balcony falls at the same rate as someone who willingly leaps to their death from that same balcony.

gamble: n; consciousness was a great evolutionary gamble existence played, for, with consciousness comes knowledge— specifically a knowledge of how things are, of how existence is. and with knowledge comes pain. and with pain comes a desire to negate existence, to not be. you could say that the emergence of consciousness but existence at risk.

garbage: n; if you can afford a garbage bag you cannot afford garbage.

garlic: n; a wedding dress.

gaze: v; there is much more to the desire of the monied class to rid its streets of what its living excludes— the poor, the homeless. what the monied class really desires is to rid itself of having to encounter the last thing that the excluded own— their gaze. the monied class cannot bear to be observed, cannot bear being subjects of this gaze that has escaped their domination.

geek: n; one who is as uncritical as they are enthusiastic towards the subject/discipline which they are interested in.

genealogy: n; habitual problems may be born of ignorance but they are nurtured by stupidity.

generality: n; there is nothing wrong with general laws. they demand negotiation, interpretation. they demand that a particular historical moment finds a just solution to the interests the law constrains and to the problem the law has been asked to answer.

genetics: n; 1. in observing my pedigree i notice that in all past generations until the time of and including my grandmother's, at least one child was lost per family within the first few months of its life. at least one child deleted from a story before it had a chance to develop within the story. i have always believed that i should have been one of these children, i some sickly child who escaped deletion and is currently involved in a story in which the author did not intend me to be. it is as though everyone and everything in the story realize that i shouldn't be here. i feel as though my deletion is imminent, if only because the story (or the author) seems unprepared to allow for what happens when my presence affects the storyline. 2. the use of the term code in genetic code implies a concealment. it implies a message represented by the code. to crack the code then is to understand and practice the method of transformation between code and message. to understand and practice this method of transformation allows one to read the message. from this terminology then, the geneticist becomes the interpreter of the message, an intermediary, priestly. in practical reality there is no code for what has been and what is being written into matter (DNA) will always transcend our abilities to understand it. this is because our abilities are themselves what is being written into. only the geneticist interested in power and in exercising authority believes in a code and believes the code has been broken and that they are interpreters of the message of life. the others, the power-weary understand there is no code and that their work becomes simply a dwelling in a microscopic country full of familiarities, regularities, landmarks, paths.

genius: n; 1. a favorite card in the hand of power. to understand the purpose to which the concept of genius is put by power one only has to look at how the original meaning of genius has been limited/disfigured. originally, genius was the guiding spirit of every individual, their inclination. it was related to kin. the important semantic kernel was that genius was not privileged to anyone but was a (human) birthright. power, in order to consolidate itself desires that all individuality, all plurality of experience/understanding be silenced. the concept of genius as a human birthright, as an individualized inclination (towards everything) was/is a subversive concept. either the concept was to be abolished or it was to be appropriated and dismantled and then re-cast as a tool to maintain servitude in the (despised / feared) masses. what was a human birthright became a privilege. moreover, the achievements of this privilege, the works of genius, are regarded as supreme achievements and as such serve as warnings / chastisements to everyone else— you cannot do this, you are not talented enough, do not even try. it is crucial that the masses not even attempt to try anything creative because even with first attempts something amazing is experienced, that is, a realization that I may not be able to reproduce these so-called 'works of genius', but I maybe able to achieve something else, something that originates in me, something that is not re-production, mimicry, but is instead creation. power will go to extreme (and insane) lengths to ensure that the above realization is never achieved by any more than isolated pockets of people. 2. a dismissive term, a dismissive response. 3. people are always far more eager to proclaim genius than they are to encounter it. 4. those artists in the past and are called genius, or innovators, are always attributed with accomplishing something which was ahead of its time. in other words, their achievement was beyond that which was possible for the rest of their contemporaries. the truth is something different. to those credited with genius there is a clear sense of the obvious, of something that must be done but which is not being done— and so the genius does it. quite the opposite to being ahead of their time they are instead filling an absence in their time, completing their time— a courageous act and one which is often unrecognizable. 5. if there is any such thing as genius it is the specific path of evasion a person travels away from what is authentically, or properly, theirs.

genome: n; latin for greed.

geography: n; 1. the landscape of living, the geography of being, are features of possibility which may determine our passage (our progress, our retreat), which can be avoided or encountered but which taken as a whole we cannot live without. such a geography is literally our ground. 2. the heart of my work is not progress but is a geographic experience of nothingness / transcendence.

geometry of perception (sphere model): n; briefly, it hypothesizes that the psychology of knowledge/thought/perception at a biological as well as an abstract level is/can be represented by complex shapes or geometries.

1. thought: a re-arrangement of reality using perception / observation and memory. a process. 2. meaning: a particular configuration of perceived reality. a state. 3. an idea: a particular configuration which contains a bias for other transformations which is either immediately obvious or soon will be evident to the observer. an idea is a container for the future. a state, yet a state which implicates process, an active state. the idea is analogous to Couliano's ideal object however i believe it is in reality a space (a negative object) which is as is stated above, a container or clearing or environment for possibilities, for futures. an ideal is a limit, an extreme case etc. 4. knowledge: the sum of psychological replications of specific configurations that have been experienced (meaning, idea, etc.). is also the end result of learning. a state. 5. learning: the process of transformation and erasure of pre-existing configurations. a process 6. experience: the process of psychological replication of phenomena. a process 7. memory: the act of imposing meaning or an idea upon external reality. an in-tending, a dependence upon what has been, what is in as opposed to what is out or external. a process. 8. recognition: the ability to find a psychological configuration which will appropriate the new experience. a process. 9*. imagination: a re-arrangement of reality, it is thought without immediate or direct perception / observation of the external world. it is the development or sudden appearance of a configuration(s) which is the result not of the circuit below but with the mind's dialogue with itself and the worlds (inner/transcendent, yet still real) which it can perceive. * note, the imagination is a special case, which deals more with another plane of perception and for which this geometric model wasn't intended.

implications:

in-form-ation /

perception 1

EXTERNAL2 REALITY ——à OBSERVER/INTERNAL REALITY

i.e sight

ß——

memory imposes

meaning etc. /

projection

1. physically look

2. photons hit my eye

3. internal replication

= experience

4. best-fit configuration

searched for

5. aforementioned

configuration imposed

on external reality and an

identity of the experience

is therefore achieved

the relationship/activity of something (external reality) towards/upon us (see identity) is specific/particular in its effect, that is, its tendency is to act specifically. our (internal reality) relationship/activity towards/upon something is general/universal in its effect, that is, its tendency is to act universally. ( ??? i haven't yet decided whether this is true, but it sounds more likely than if the effects were reversed). there is a correspondence in this diagram with Heidegger's concepts of re-lucence (influx of world) and pre-struction (internal reality at hand).

(Notes: 1 for a correspondence see Heidegger "Because all modes of human behavior are, each in its own way, overt and always must relate to that which they must, it follows that the restraint of letting things be, i.e. freedom, must necessarily have given man an inner directive to approximate his ideas to what-is at any moment." from the Essence of Truth

2 external reality extends inside us, what i call internal reality is not internal to our body but is internal with respect to the experience of the world. external and internal are just forms of comparison and do not represent any structural fact. for instance, this internal reality may be a plane or region of contact between external realities ??? also, what is considered internal may be simply that which acts simultaneously with what is external across a distance that has become stable. for example, an ocean continues being an ocean and acting as an ocean at every point and every shore even though one shore we may consider near (or our shore) while other shores are far (and foreign). what i call internal reality i would consider to be a highly structured surface which interacts and is shaped by the world of which it is a part. the apparent difference between things, is the result of a distance which involves a relationship (activity) across the distance. the varying distances and varying organizations of things and varying relationships result in many identities. and so the universe appears and is experienced as a very complex system of things perceived from a subject (a distance).

idealization, or abstraction, may be the result of increasing demands on the recall of remembered objects. idealization represents an organizing principle which represents a complex structure of relationships (which are implicit in the ideal or abstraction). another way to say this would be that an ideal or an abstraction is evidence of much remembering (at some time at least, and by someone).

the difference between what i call in-form-ation and projection can be seen in the yearning of some systems of thought and some systems of faith for the absolute, whereas others seek the particular. the absolute corresponds to a submission to the power of in-form-ation (and the power of archetypal formation, see below) over that of projection. the particular favors the reverse (that is, the application of what has been, of what is known, remembered).

if there is no recognition at stage three then a learning event may take place, that is the aforementioned experience, this configuration, will be remembered and the process of thinking will alter the experience until it fits into some pre-existing pattern ( walking up my front steps will be assimilated into the walking up steps configuration) whereas if even thought cannot produce some configuration of the event then the experience will be remembered as its own category (walking upstairs while neighbor shoots himself in the head in his front yard). however, if there is no pre-existing pattern to fit this novel experience into, the experience becomes archetypal (see archetype, below), that is, it becomes a standard and is thus a new structure, neurologically speaking (there is a correspondence here with Heraclitus when he says incredibility escapes recognition). in the sense then of memory as defined above, such an archetypal event is not remembered; in fact the formation of such an archetypal structure or standard is the opposite of memory (which is an imposition onto external reality). memory is the shadow of such an event. think of our minds as wax, such an event then affects us as though it were a seal. (there is also a correspondence with Roussel. his narrative process, his requirement of double-ness, of the spectacle and then the repetition of the spectacle dressed in explication is representative of cognition and the archetypal as described above. where there is no explication, where this double-act is missing, there can be no re-cognition).

what has been described in the preceding paragraph illustrates the in-tension caused by experience, that is, an experience always has two options available to it: i) become archetypal ii) fit into a pre-existing configuration. these options are mutually exclusive and compete with each other across each experience.

these configurations are not independent geometries. they are connected and are a very complex superstructure. some of the aforementioned processes therefore may alter other configurations as well as that which is of immediate concern. the location of the configuration in question, its size and complexity, and whether it is central or peripheral, will cause the subsequent psychological changes, the changes of states, to vary in degree.

being of any kind is always a result of limitation and emanation, of retreat and propagation. this is the primal conflict of our being-in-the-world. we are a compromise, a negotiated, contingent solution to this conflict (see understanding).

a) let an object be a perfect sphere. when i the observer look at the sphere, there is a spot on the sphere. it is this spot which i perceive as the object. the spot could be termed the identity of the object. i cannot see the entire sphere from my vantage point and there is no vantage point which would ever allow me to see the entire sphere. the object is not really this spot, but is an infinite number of spots which would cover the entire surface of the sphere (depending upon one's vantage point) of which i can only see one. as we look more and more closely at an object it suddenly breaks into two or more spheres, all of which contain a black spot. for instance, from a distance i look at a nickel. i call it nickel. as i move closer i now see edge, beaver, stone, one leaf two leaves, 5, c, e, n, t, s, 1, 9, 7, 9, c, a, n, a, d, a, log and then closer still if possible 1 atom two atoms and so on. in this manner a single sphere called nickel contains within it a number of spheres all of which in themselves contain a larger number of spheres. the practical message is that each thing is therefore composed of virtually an infinite number of spheres and one might even say that a single sphere contains within it the totality of everything that both is and that possibly can be. as well, as we move away from the spot or identity of a particular sphere things become ambiguous and unseen regions of one sphere are no-different from unseen regions of other spheres. and so what this reveals is an image in which all spheres are different at their particular spots/identities but as one moves away from these identities all spheres merge into a common form.

(see Lyotard for correspondence: thinking indicates the incompleteness, the lack inherent in what has already been thought, in what we have been immersed in. as well, he states that every looking, every thinking, has its horizon, its limitation and so propagates (necessarily) a lack which prompts other looking, other thinking.

b) meaning is imposed on states of being by the process of observation. meaning is a particular configuration involving the spots as mentioned in a)

archetype: configurations present in our brains due to the nature of the brain's development and the simple fact that the brain has structure and therefore a geometry. as well, (see above) the structures formed by novel unclassifiable experience, and perhaps by persistent (repetitious) imaginations.

also, Jung's anima/animus/unconscious projects onto external reality (in the diagram above it is the imposition of so-called internal reality onto so-called external reality. however, as i have tried to demonstrate, these configurations (of anima etc.) are mutable, that is, there is an ongoing interaction (dialogue) between our internal reality and external reality. external reality has the ability to alter our internal configurations the result of which is a correspondence between what will be projected by the internal reality and the external reality which is interacting with it. such in-forming is critical so that neurotic and psychotic mis-alignment between internal and external reality do not occur or are not allowed to rule unchecked. our inherited configurations (anima etc.) are necessarily immature. the transformation or sublimation of these inheritances is the challenge, the struggle of being humanly alive.

as described above, re-cognition presumes an initial, or primary cognition of something related (in some essential way) to what is re-cognized. in the same way this primary cognition is itself a re-cognition of an even prior cognition, a meta-cognition. this meta-cognition is what we inherit, it is the given-ness, the ground for all subsequent re-cognitions. this meta-cognition shares an essential relationship with all re-cognitions (or what we would call, from above, primary cognitions). the nature of this relationship is that of continuity. for instance, the nature of our inherited meta-cognition is of a kind that it is able to re-cognize (delimit) elements from the continuity of being in a systematic way. an example of this re-cognition, of this delimitation of being is the relationship between being-as-language and our linguistic faculty; there is a continuity, an essential commonality between them.

thought: if the perceived/experienced object is different, and even if it will fit into a pre-existing mental shape, one constructs a new mental shape identical to the perceived/experienced shape. (note, our organization of experience is necessarily idealized, that is, reality is compared to it. functionally, our memories are ideal and the act of imposing meaning on an aspect of reality is an act of idealizing that object. thought however has the ability to fashion new ideals/configurations and destroy others by making them obsolete or redundant. a dilemma arises when we ask are we simply at the mercy of ourselves? are we not really experiencing anything, just living through an idealized life we have imposed on reality? (this is an echo of the in-tension created by experience, see above). in order to escape such a self-created prison one's experience must become more precise, that is, the shape that one perceives must be experienced as unique and not simply be allowed to fit approximately into some pre-existing shape. see Wittgenstein, PI. no.101). in other words, the phenomenon must not be appropriated, must not be turned into a thing. we must be appropriated by what is revealed. in this light, it appears that one must be passive; however, this is not the case. one must actively keep oneself from automatically appropriating the phenomenon, one must actively keep oneself from doing what comes easiest, that is, speaking for the phenomenon instead of letting it speak for itself.

absence of thought: putting the perceived/experienced geometric object into a mental shape/configuration already in existence. (every experience/thing is able to be recognized as something it is not).

cleverness/wit is to wisdom as doodling is to an accurate expression of an internal shape/configuration. creative adolescence is mistaking this wit for wisdom.

figure 2

experienced as

sphere ——à ——à circle

to be ——à is barrier ——à be-ing

(possibility) (ideal/absolute)

the sphere is the transcendent realm of to be. it is involved or interpenetrated with no-thingness. we as living be-ings experience the sphere as a circle, or as be-ing. experience is then a metaphorical event which occurs across a barrier as or is. the process could be represented by the expression that as this, or that is this, where that = the sphere and where this = the experienced circle. we could say that living is the penetration of to-be across the is-barrier, perceived as be-ing.

according to the geometry of perception as described and defined above, the resultant experience or circle elicits a response. there are two responses one could make. first of all, one could recognize the experience, that is, using one's knowledge and memory a configuration is found which fits the circle adequately or inadequately. recognition could said to be an event of thinging, that is , embracing a phenomenon as be-ing , or a thing. conversely, one may allow the phenomenon to speak for itself, to form itself, as a unique configuration in us. such an act would not be recognition as it would be novel. such an event would be thinking as compared to thinging.

what is important to remember is that i have idealized the realm of to be as spherical. in reality the shape is transcendent in every aspect. it casts infinite shadows. some of these shadows we are able to perceive. we have developed faculties to deal with certain kinds of shadows (e.g. vision, language). these faculties are analogous to standards of measurement which allow for individual experience to be combined in meaningful and telling ways. what is also critical to understand is that all shadows, when combined, will never succeed in re-creating the shape which caused them to appear. this means that any statements which claim to be absolute are not quite so; that is, such statements refer always and only to the realm of be-ing, not the realm of to-be. what is important about this is that it is the realm of to-be which affects us, which penetrates us and we must always bear this in mind whenever we think we have all the answers and whenever we act on decisions based on conclusions or assumptions based on be-ing. i refer to lives which deny the realm of to-be its influence and which are totally absorbed in the measurements and predictions and economics of be-ing, lives which are in a circuit of ignorance. the following allegory will illustrate what i mean.

a civilization lives in a shadow. this shadow is cast by a large meteor which is on a collision course with the earth. the duration of this civilization is the time it takes the meteor to impact with the earth. (the meteor takes the place of its shadow). the meteor, with respect to the civilization, is a transcendent reality. its shadow is all the civilization can deal with. the shadow supports the civilization and is the basis for all wars, economies, love, food etc. certain members of the civilization are involved in analysis of the shadow. they measure it, propose theories. quite often these shadow-analysts believe they might one day explain completely the phenomenon of the shadow. over time, the shadow-analysts observe that the shadow is growing larger. new means of measurement are developed and employed and the observation becomes dogma. reasons for the expansion of the shadow are searched for. certain paradoxes appear. for instance, how can new shadow appear? can a shadow make more of itself? does this imply the existence of something other, some non-shadow? certain theories are developed, some of which over time are discarded. measurement and analysis is unceasing. certain theories enjoy more success than others. no theory (arrived at by measurement/observation of physical reality) is ever reached which can answer the question of why the shadow is expanding. the evidence required by such a theory is immanent but transcendent.

one day the meteor impacts. the shadow is no more. the civilization is no more.

what this allegory shows is that any knowledge of the shadow, regardless of what it achieves or what ends it serves, is at most a knowledge of the shadow and not a knowledge of what casts the shadow.

as far as we are concerned, be-ing is everything to us. it is shadow-like. and the reality of every moment is that each moment is apocalyptic, at each moment there is an impact where to-be eradicates its shadow of be-ing as well as the civilization which depends on be-ing. the personality (physical and psychological) is what lives through the apocalypse and is what survives as be-ing and becomes the substance on which the civilization of the next moment is born. the ability to survive the impact of to-be increases if one has an intimation of the nature of the be-ing / to-be relationship (shadow / meteor). such intimations are an openness to the possibilities (the to-be-ness) of the transcendent. such intimations therefore provide a means of escape into the next moment. such intimations are a means of survival.

the process outlined in the above figure leads also to a philosophy of art/creation. the above process which i have defined as the process (phenomenon) of being alive is exactly the same in structure as the creative process (this may be what is meant by the ancient term mimesis). we therefore have access to the transcendent realm (which is penetrated with no-thingness) by two methods. the first is by living. the second is by creating. as above, we experience art as be-ing. however, i believe it is possible and crucial to experience art (as it is to live) by allowing be-ing to be open to the realm of to-be, that is, to experience not absolutes or ideals but possibilities. when creating, as well as when experiencing creations, it is important to keep in mind that it is not be-ing but the realm of possibility that in-forms the work.

gesture: n; a (non-verbal) gesture can be an instantaneous negation of language and especially of a discourse of power which may have the ability to appropriate every attempt to speak against it.

ghost: n; 1. ghosts are those things that touch us and then are gone. ghosts such as: i am sad, i am empty, i am? these ghosts pass through us and we are affected by them. this interplay, this traffic of their feet moving through us each day and night, the text of their presence and activity, the civilization of these ghosts is what we call our everyday life. 2. fear and hope are ghosts which secure the ends of an impossible life.

gift: n; 1. like the drum my heart is beating i did not win you in a game of chance but was granted you long ago before the carnivals, before the parades had begun. 2. spectacles of gift giving (birthdays and Christmas) function partly as rituals of indoctrination into the cult of objects. these holidays function as loci where consumerism as a form of social control is introduced and reinforced. 3. in every act of giving, there is an odour of dying (an anticipatory sense of death). 4. we are considered human by default, on the basis of our biology. it is a gift that often seems unwarranted, a gift that is often left unopened.

globalization: n; colonization.

god: n; 1. when i hear the word god, when i hear someone invoking god, i see people frantically running away from themselves towards an ocean which will effortlessly swallow their madness. 2. the only reason an omniscient and omnipotent being has not sat with me to talk is that it is afraid of my questions.

Goethe: n; “you must do some degree of violence to your self in order to get out of the idea.”

gold: n; three men decided to go looking for gold. they decided they would devote their lives to this task. they all went to the same stream. the first of the men decided he would pick one stone at a time from the stream. he found a small nugget of gold when he was very old. the second man panned for gold. he had some early success which he could never duplicate for the rest of his life. the third man ran to the stream and dove in and was never seen again. he drowned and his body decayed, his bones settling further downstream. over time gold became deposited in the cracks in his skeleton. and so, all three men were indeed successful in their own manner.

golf: n; 1. no child has ever dreamed of golf. 2. a socially sanctioned form of male feminization.

gossip: n; an emotional hallucination informationally attired.

grace: n; there is rage in grace.

grapple: v; when there is no longer anything to grapple with in thought, in another’s thinking, then there is nothing more worth understanding.

grave: n; a grave, as in gravity, falls downwards towards the center of the (its) universe.

gravity: n; power speaks itself into presence, into a situation of apparent self-evidence. power grounds itself but this is an illusion— power defies gravity, it is floating in air. its position is therefore maintained not by some miraculous suspension of natural laws, but by belief. when the suspension of belief occurs, the entire edifice comes crashing down. the reality of its previous condition is evidenced by the rubble. this rubble is the true material of collage and assemblage.

Grendel: n; one vs. many (or the absolute vs. the numinous; or transcendence vs. immanence), this opposition as experienced from the perspective of the one is war; it is the brother-killing, the urge to inhumanity, the surrender to pure immanence.

growth: n; 1. the replication of DNA embodies perfectly the metaphysical reality of growth in general. in order for one cell to become two cells the double-stranded DNA molecule must be separated into two single strands. this intermediate situation is a necessary one even though it is highly unstable. this unstable state enables the replication of each strand, effectively doubling the genetic material and ensuring that each resultant cell receives an adequate and equivalent amount of DNA. and so it is with any action, any decision— true growth requires a highly unstable intermediate condition from which new state of being can emerge. 2. since all personal growth is closer to death it is a form of decay… necessarily.

guarantee: n; literature can only be called great if it can exist in the context of death-camps, of mass starvation… in other words, if it can face the suffering that is this world. only great literature will be able to bear this.

guardian: n; if you claim not to have the time or the energy required to think for yourself, if you readily consent to letting another be a guardian for your thoughts you should not be surprised when these thoughts return to you beaten, poisoned, unrecognizable... yours.

gulf: n; what you want and what you receive is separated by effort. this gulf is conveniently bridged for you when you are a consumer. unfortunately, the bridge never leads to the proper destination; instead of your desire proclaiming i am home at last all you can say when you have crossed such a bridge is this is not what i wanted at all.