". . . speech does not only register or express a traumatic psychic life; the entry into speech is in itself a traumatic fact. . . . speech does not simply express/articulate psychic turmoils; at a certain key point, psychic turmoils themselves are a reaction to the trauma of dwelling in the 'torture-house of language.'" (Slavoj Zizek, "The Poetic Torture-House of Language." Poetry. 2014 Mar. 566)Speak, tell, say.
What can I say? What can I say?
What did he say, she say?
He said, she said.
What do you say?
Is it something I said?
Say, now.
You don't say.
Or do you?
Let the witness speak. Tell us what you saw the night of the twenty-third.
What do you have to say for yourself, young man?
Speak up.
Who can say?
Who am I to say?
Some masters of old, so it is said,
whacked their students to jolt them into awakening --
Knock away ego
Reveal that death is impossible
Because the thing thought susceptible
Is an illusion
A brief eddy in the river of being, or not even --
A fleeting ripple
Given a name and spoken
into a flash
of delusion of
self-existence.
Other masters, or the same ones on different occasions, grabbed a student by the collar,
shouted, "speak!"
And tossed them aside when they stammered, faltered, could
Not in that moment injure being, shove it into the torture-house of language.
Hence, the point.
Speak.
Join me in this dungeon for putting the thumbscrews to each other.
Speak, which is to say, scream the pain of screaming.
There's nothing for it.
"Life," "speech," and "dukkha" are synonyms, co-referential.
I could say:
"Touch the silence. Shut up and sit still and be with silence until you feel it around and within all the chunky flow of words."
But that would just be me talking,
Prying out your/my last
fingernail.
White Plains, NY, 2014.03.07
