by Peter Dimock
3.
a. The frayed scrim of continuity made from clichéd fragments of a national American exceptionalist tri-umphalism. (One of these is: “We the people.”)
b. The intuition of an ecstatic history of the real possibility of universal reciprocity among equally valued lives implicit in the natural language faculty as a counternarrative to accounts of New World slavery motivated by its beneficiaries’ perceived interests in minimizing the continuing enormities of its harms.
c. A new history of print-culture literacy as the anticipatory creation in the midst of material abundance of a nonmonetized duration of thought for the practice of unbounded reciprocity among equally valued lives.
“My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at the door,—a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had never had a slave under her control previously to myself, and prior to her marriage she had been dependent upon her own industry for a living. She was by trade a weaver; and by constant application in a good degree preserved from the blighting and dehumanizing effects of slavery. I was utterly astonished at her goodness…. But, alas! This kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon.
“Very soon after I went to live with Mr. And Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read.” (Frederick Douglass)
“But it is not alone for the sake of my poor brothers and sisters in bonds, or for the cause of truth, and righteousness, and humanity, that I testify; the deep yearnings of affection for the mother that bore me, who is still a slaveholder, both in fact and in heart; for my brothers and sisters, (a large family circle) and for my numerous other slaveholding kindred in South Carolina, constrain me to speak: for even were slavery no curse to its victims, the exercise of arbitrary power works such fearful ruin upon the hearts of slaveholders, that I should feel impelled to labor and pray for its overthrow with my last energies and latest breath.
“I think it important to premise, that I have seen almost nothing of slavery on plantations. My testimony will have respect exclusively to the treatment of “house-servants,” and chiefly those belonging to the first families in the city of Charleston, both in the religious and in the fashionable world. And here let me say, that the treatment of plantation slaves cannot be fully known, except by the poor sufferers themselves, and their drivers and overseers. In a multitude of instances, even the master can know very little of the actual condition of his own field-slaves, and his wife and daughters far less. A few facts concerning my own family will show this. Our permanent residence was in Charleston; our country-seat (Bellemont) was 200 miles distant, in the north-western part of the state; where, for some years, our family spent a few months annually. Our plantation was three miles from this family mansion. There, all the field-slaves lived and worked. Occasionally, once a month, perhaps, some of the family would ride over to the plantation, but I never visited the fields where the slaves were at work, and knew almost nothing of their condition; but this I do know, that the overseers who had charge of them, were generally unprincipled and intemperate men. But I rejoice to know, that the general treatment of slaves in that region of country, was far milder than on the plantations in the lower country.
“Throughout all the eastern and middle portions of the state, the planters very rarely reside permanently on their plantations. They have almost invariably two residences, and spend less than half the year on their estates. Even while spending a few months on them, politics, field-sports, races, speculations, journeys, visits, company, literary pursuits, &c., absorb so much of their time, that they must, to a considerable extent, take the condition of their slaves on trust, from the reports of their overseers. I make this statement, because these slaveholders (the wealthier class), are, I believe, almost the only ones who visit the north with their families;—and northern opinions of slavery are based chiefly on their testimony.
“But not to dwell on preliminaries, I wish to record my testimony to the faithfulness and accuracy with which my beloved sister, Sarah M. Grimké, has, in her ‘narrative and testimony,’ on a preceding page, described the condition of the slaves, and the effect upon the hearts of slaveholders, (even the best) caused by the exercise of unlimited power over moral agents. Of the particular acts which she has stated, I have no personal knowledge, as they occurred before my remembrance; but of the spirit that prompted them, and that constantly displays itself in scenes of similar horror, the recollections of my childhood, and the effaceless imprint upon my riper years, with the breaking of my heart-strings, when, finding that I was powerless to shield the victims, I tore myself from my home and friends, and became an exile among strangers—all these throng around me as witnesses, and their testimony is graven on my memory with a pen of fire.
“Why I did not become totally hardened, under the daily operation of this system, God only knows; in deep solemnity and gratitude, I say, it was the Lord’s doing, and marvellous in mine eyes. Even before my heart was touched with the love of Christ, I used to say, “Oh that I had the wings of a dove, that I might flee away and be at rest”; for I felt that there could be no rest for me in the midst of such outrages and pollutions. And yet I saw nothing of slavery in its most vulgar and repulsive forms. I saw it in the city, among the fashionable and the honorable, where it was garnished by refinement, and decked out for show. A few facts will unfold the state of society in the circle with which I was familiar, far better than any general assertions I can make.”
03:48
MISSION INTELLIGENCE COORDINATOR [speaking to the drone pilot about the helicopters]: … at ground force commander’s orders we may have them come up, action those targets, and let you use your Hellfire for cleanup shot.
PILOT: Kirk97, good copy on that, sounds good.
…
04:01
SENSOR OPERATOR: Sensor is in, let the party begin… Tell you what, they could have had a whole fleet of Preds up here.
PILOT: Oh, dude.
…
04:06
PILOT: As far as a weapons attack brief goes, man, we’re probably going to be chasing dudes scrambling in the open, uh, when it goes down, don’t worry about any guidance from me or from JAGUAR, just follow what makes the most sense to you. Stay with whoever you think gives us the best chance to shoot, um, at them. And I’m with you on that. So I’ll brief you up on the launch profile, we’ll hit a weapons attack brief when we know what we’re going to shoot.
…
HELIPCOPTERS: Kirk97, Bam Bam four-one has you loud and clear.
PILOT: OK, Bam Bam 41, Kirk97 have you loud and clear as well. Understand you are tracking our three vehicles, do you need a talk on or do you have them?
HELICOPTERS: 41 has them just south side of the pass of the reported grid, white Highland[er] followed by two SUVs.
PILOT: Kirk97, that’s a good copy. Those are your three vehicles. Be advised we have about twenty-one MAMs [military-aged males], about three rifles so far PIDed in the group and, ah, these are your three.
…
04:13
PILOT: It’s a cool-looking shot.
SENSOR OPERATOR: Oh, awesome!
“There is an emerald to adorn the crown of this discourse, and I must not forget to tell of it. For on one occasion I initiated a discussion of stillness among the most experienced elders there. They smiled and in their own cheerful way they spoke to me courteously as follows: “Father John, we are corporeal beings and
we lead a corporeal life. Knowing this, we choose to wage war according to the measure of our weakness, and we think it better to struggle with men who sometimes rage and are sometimes contrite than to do battle with demons who are always in a rage and always carrying arms against us.
“One of those memorable men showed me great love according to God. He was outspoken, and once, in his own kindly fashion, he said this to me: “Wise man, if you have consciously within you the power of him who said, ‘I can do everything in Christ Who strengthens me’ (Phil.4:13), if the holy Spirit has come upon you as on the Holy Virgin with the dew of purity, if the power of the Most High has cast the shadow of patience over you, then, like Christ our god, gird your loins with the towel of obedience, rise for the supper of stillness, wash the feet of your brethren in a spirit of contrition, and roll yourself under the feet of the brethren with humbled will. Place strict and unsleeping guards at the gateway of your heart. Practice inward stillness amid the twistings and the turbulence of your limbs. And, strangest of all perhaps, keep your soul undisturbed while tumult rages about you.
“Your tongue longs to jump into argument but restrain it. It is a tyrant, and you must fight it daily seventy times seven. Fix your mind to your soul as to the wood of a cross, strike it with alternating hammer blows like an anvil. It has to be mocked, abused, ridiculed, and wronged, though without in any way being crushed or broken; indeed it must keep calm and unstirred. Shed your will as if it were / some disgraceful garment, and having thus stripped yourself of it, go into the practice arena.” (John Climacus)
04:22
SENSOR OPERATOR: PID [positive identification] weapons, I don’t see any …
SAFETY OBSERVER: Got something shiny on the one at the right …
SENSOR OPERATOR: Right … That’s weird …
PILOT: Can’t tell what the [expletive] they’re doing.
SENSOR OPERATOR: Probably wondering what happened.
SAFETY OBSERVER: There’s one more to the left of the screen.
SENSOR OPERATOR: Yeah, I see them.
SAFETY OBSERVER: Are they wearing burqas?
SENSOR OPERATOR: That’s what it looks like. PILOT: They were all PIDed as males, though. No females in the group.
SENSOR OPERATOR: That guy looks like he’s wearing jewelry and stuff like a girl, but he ain’t … if he’s a girl, he’s a big one.
…
04:32
SAFETY OBSERVER: One of those guys up at the top left’s moving.
SENSOR OPERATOR: Yeah, I see him. I thought I saw him moving earlier, but I don’t know if he’s … is he moving or is he twitching?
SAFETY OBSERVER: Eh, I think he moved. Not very much, but …
SENSOR OPERATOR: Can’t, can’t follow them both.
MISSION INTELLIGENCE COORDINATOR: There’s one guy sitting down.
SENSOR OPERATOR [talking to individual on the ground]: What you playing with?
MISSION COORDINATOR: His bone.
…
04:33:
SENSOR OPERATOR: Oh, shit, Yeah, you can see some blood right there, next to the …
MISSION INTELLIGENCE COORDINATOR: Yeah, I seen that earlier.
…
04:36
MISSION INTELLIGENCE COORDINATOR: Is that two? One guy’s tending the other guy?
SAFETY OBSERVER: Looks like it.
SENSOR OPERATOR: Looks like it, yeah.
MISSION INTELLIGENCE COORDINATOR: Self-aid buddy care to the rescue.
SAFETY OBSERVER: I forget, how do you treat a sucking gut wound?
SENSOR OPERATOR: Don’t push it back in. Wrap it in a towel. That’ll work.
…
04:38
PILOT: They’re trying to [expletive] surrender, right? I think.
SENSOR OPERATOR: That’s what it looks like to me.
MISSION INTELLIGENCE COORDINATOR: Yeah, I think that’s what they’re doing.
…
04:40
SENSOR OPERATOR: What are those? They were in the middle vehicle.
MISSION INTELLIGENCE COORDINATOR: Women and children.
SENSOR OPERATOR: Looks like a kid.
SAFETY OBSERVER: Yeah, the one waving the flag.
…
04:42
SAFETY OBSERVER: I’d tell him they’re waving their …
SENSOR OPERATOR: Yeah, at this point I wouldn’t … I personally wouldn’t be comfortable shooting at these people.
MISSION INTELLIGENCE COORDINATOR: No.
Tallis Martinson’s Historical Method
(A Schematic Outline)
I. Seven Epigraphs
1.1. As soon as thought dries up, it is replaced by words. A word is too easily transformed from a meaningful sign into a mere signal, and a group of words into an empty formula, bereft even of the sense such things have in magic. We begin to exchange set phrases, not noticing that all living meaning has gone from them. Poor, trembling creatures—we don’t know what meaning is; it has vanished from the world. It will return only if and when people come to their senses and recall that we must answer for everything. (Adapted from Nadezhda Mandelstam’s Hope Abandoned)
1.2. By far the greatest use of language is for thought and not communication, despite virtual dogma to the contrary. (Noam Chomsky, from What Kind of Creatures Are We?)
1.3. What matters in poetry is only the understanding that brings it about. Imagine something intelligible, grasped, wrested from obscurity, in a language voluntarily and willingly forgotten immediately after the act of intellection and realization is completed. The signal waves of meaning vanish, having completed their work; the more potent they are, the more yielding, and the less inclined to linger…. The quality of poetry is determined by the speed and decisiveness with which it embodies its schemes and commands in diction, the instrumentless, lexical, purely quantitative verbal matter. One must traverse the full width of a river crammed with Chinese junks moving simultaneously in various directions—this is how the meaning of poetic discourse is created. The meaning, its itinerary, cannot be reconstructed by interrogating the boatmen: they will not be able to tell how and why we were skipping from boat to boat. Poetry is not a part of nature, not even its best or choicest part, let alone a reflection of it—this would make a mockery of the axioms of identity; rather, poetry establishes itself with astonishing independence in a new extra-spatial field of action, not so much narrating as acting out in nature by means of its arsenal of devices, commonly known as tropes….Contrary to our accepted way of thinking, poetic discourse is infinitely more raw, infinitely more unfinished than so-called “conversational” speech. Being raw material is precisely what brings it into contact with performing culture….What is an image? An instrument in the metamorphosis of hybridized poetic discourse. Poets effect change by being the actual instruments in the metamorphosis of literary time, in the withholding and unfolding of literary time which we have ceased to hear but which we are taught is the narration of so-called “cultural structures.” The usurpers of the Papal Throne could not but fear the sounds which Dante rained down on them, although they could be indifferent to the torture by instruments through which he betrayed them in heeding the laws of poetic metamorphosis. However, the breach in the Papacy as a historical structure is envisaged in the Commedia and acted out insofar as the infinite raw material of poetic sound—which is inappropriately offered to culture as proper, which is ever distrustful and offensive to culture because of its suspiciousness, and which spits culture out like water used for gargling—is revealed and brought to light. There exists an intermediary activity between the act of listening and the act of speech delivery. This activity comes closest of all to performance and constitutes its heart, as it were. The unfilled interval between the act of listening and the act of speech delivery is absurd to its very core. [Poetic] material is not [poetic] matter (Osip Mandelstam, from “Conversation about Dante,” and “Addenda to ‘Conversation about Dante’”)
I.4. 709. Hard winter; Duke Gottfried died.
/> 710. Hard year; crops failed.
711.
712. Flood everywhere
…
718. Charles devastated the Saxons with great destruction.
719.
720. Charles fought against the Saxons.
721. Theudo drove the Saracens out of Aquitaine.
722. Great crops.
723.
724.
725. Saracens came for the first time.
(From the Annals of St. Gall)
I.5a. Until the entry of June 22, 2013:
The piles of heads disappear in the distance;
I am diminished there; no one will remember my name;
but in the rustle of pages,
and in the sound of children’s games,
I shall rise from the dead
to say: “the sun!”
(Osip Mandelstam, fragment from “Ode to Stalin”)
I.5b. After June 22, 2013:
June 10, 2013
I am sorry that it has come to this.
The fact is, for as long as I can remember my motivation for getting up every day has been so that you would not have to bury me. As things have continued to get worse, it has become clear that this alone is not a sufficient reason to carry on. The fact is, I am not getting better, I am not going to get better, and I will most certainly deteriorate further as time goes on. From a logical standpoint, it is better to simply end things quickly and let any repercussions from that play out in the short term than to drag things out into the long term.
You will perhaps be sad for a time, but over time you will forget and begin to carry on. Far better that than to inflict my growing misery upon you for years and decades to come, dragging you down with me. It is because I love you that I can not do this to you. You will come to see that it is a far better thing as one day after another passes during which you do not have to worry about me or even give me a second thought. You will find that your world is better without me in it.
I really have been trying to hang on, for more than a decade now. Each day has been a testament to the extent to which I cared, suffering unspeakable horror as quietly as possible so that you could feel as though I was still here for you. In truth, I was nothing more than a prop, filling space so that my absence would not be noted. In truth, I have already been absent for a long, long time….