Post 36: Getting from an image to a thought

This post began (but also begins) with this photo:

which I took because the sight of what it contains prompted this incomplete thought:

[something about when stripes are combined with another thing that very much doesn’t look like stripes.] 

It’s interesting to me that what I’m calling the “incomplete thought”--the first thing that happened after my viewing, what immediately took place--is really only a template for a thought. The incomplete thought includes simply what’s present in the photo, plus the words “something about”--the template idea here being that “something about” seems to stand for a thought that hasn’t yet happened. These two words that have very little specific meaning were all that got added to what was already given by the image, which feels merely like a demonstration of what it could be to have a thought about this photo--a thought in full being what would theoretically replace the words “something about” with an actual/specific thing. But I suppose the lack of replacement that occurs (the replacement that doesn’t occur) explains why I’m calling the thought incomplete; it is a setting up of the structure of a thought (of language), without yet filling it in. (Is this structural setup enough to bring an image into the terrain that can be called thinking?) I enjoy the idea that adding something mushy (I’m labeling the phrase “something about” as mushy because of how little it says or does) to an image--any kind of presence that’s predominantly visual--is what can do the work of bringing it into the realm of thought (I’m not even sure if I believe that thoughts have their own realm). For an image to become a thought by this logic, it has to get despecified (+ mush) before getting respecified (clearing of the mush).

It feels worth pausing here to reflect on all that has happened so far. I can’t remember if I’ve said what I’m about to say already--in a previous post--but I’m leaning more toward having not said it before, and so I’ll say it here. It’s the fact that I always find myself needing to experience the feeling of the present moment in order to write, to be writing (both the general action and the action currently in progress). If I had a way to characterize the kind of occasion that the above occasion was (the tiny thought-spark of seeing my striped sleeve and bracelet together) (though perhaps I do have a way to characterize it and what it is is a moment of seeing that produced some [maybe specifically the beginning of some] thought activity), I’d be able to define it as an opening or entryway that allowed writing to come through its frame. Maybe this is what access to the present is like--feeling it to be a place that can be entered. Generally, it seems that the movement this present moment sensation brings is what I become able to write off of. Does this movement come from the previous moment becoming (tricky to feel secure about what verb should be here) the one that is the current moment? Or is it a movement that the present moment gives off after its arrival? A push or a gust of wind. Ultimately it is the feeling of new that either of these actions bring, gravitating toward the open space that has been offered. How big of an opening does a thought-template provide?

Somehow I want to include this line from Laura Mimosa Montes here: “First sentences are opportunities to produce a sense of embarkment.” (I’ve been holding onto this line, wanting to put it somewhere.) ("Sense of" hits me in a funny way. Does this imply only the feeling of embarkment, rather than the actuality of it?) How does this thought pertain to the idea of an opening?

Stepping back from the notions of moments and movements and, again, openings, I think that the focus of importance could actually be the fact that I only can write “off of” altogether; there are not specific nouns or actions of essentiality, but instead an angle that needs to be struck between the act of writing and the more concrete forms that surround it. This is to see writing with a relation to a surface--the surface having to be something other than writing itself. The surface I seem use is the surface of an image. Consequently, the writing gets attached to the image, and keeps some attention outside of the activity it is on its own. What kind of attachment is it? I can render an answer that is: the attachment of a bond a similarity; things can be attached to one another when they have something in common. This feels like the attachment that's at play in all my recent works:

Sky on top of two styles of Santa hats

I see this as a double attachment--each of these hats is attached to sky and each hat is attached to the other one because of it too being something that has sky. With writing that feels connected to something imagistic (this writing), the writing and image become further drawn into each other's ways through having this shared something. (I think I'll write a separate post about this.)

Often, I get lost on the path of trying to describe the arrival of words. In having realized this, I claw myself back to the original concern I came out for: something about stripes combined with something they are not. Do these words need to be looked into or outside of in order to be further explained? (In what direction do I want this post to progress? Or, what direction will inevitably be taken through words being added here, in continuing, lengthening?)

First and foremost, “something about” is the designation of a thing being inaccessible (at least temporarily or partially). The vague phrase sets down an air of mystery--of words stuck far back in the throat. It also is somewhat of a trap as a place to start from, for it leads to the next question being something along the line of, "Well, what is it about?", a question which overshoots fertile territory for exploring possible answers by plunging into too deep a place of specificity.

Really what I want to say is that I find something strange to happen when the black and white stripes of my long-sleeved shirt can be seen in the same frame (simultaneously to) this thick, stringy, woven, and single-buttoned bracelet. It’s that the stripes, as a pattern, and I think this applies to any other pattern too, are like a fully completed world. Because of their repetition (same with polka dots and whatever other patterns exist--stripes and polka dots always feel like the only two nameable patterns to me), and the certainty that repetition implies, they are closed systems. It is as though stripes, in their patterned way, exist all over, everywhere, stretching out endlessly, and my shirt is just one carved-out section of them. The completeness of the stripe domain becomes threatened by the bracelet (somehow the bracelet more than anything else visible in the photo as I feel it's the least pattern-like, least familiar form present) in it being an introduction of incompleteness, an additional form outside of the cohesive world. I think the presence of stripes is the more established presence, by virtue of having a category name--pattern--whereas the bracelet has something of a more nomadic presence in its not as clearly categorized, more idiosyncratic look. The bracelet is the variable that gets introduced to the constant of the stripes. What takes place when a constant is faced with a variable that it cannot absorb? (A "something about"?)

Not fully understanding the progression that just transpired, feeling like I just did a lengthy skim of a surface, led me to create the following symbols to describe this post in diagrammatic terms:

1. This is the template for a thought. What I see from my current stance is that it is the template that presents itself as an opening (an open circle).

2. The arrow indicates the movement that goes into or maybe onto the template. The arrow begins from either nowhere or an as yet unknown place and is directed into the new inner space that is the depth of the template's insides.

3. This stage is the questioning of why that movement takes place. Why does it occur this way and how does it happen?

4. Here is a finding, a capturing of a reason to begin to answer the questions asked in stage 3; movement gets translated into the thought-template from the place of an image. The movement is one that begins at an image and aims toward the written word.

5. Finally, the template becomes filled in with explanations of the incompatibility of stripes (as a completed world) and something lacking the appearance of this same solidity of completeness (the bracelet).

The diagrammatic breakdown of this post feels like the culmination of a holistic despecify to respecify process. The bulk of the post itself was the despecify (mush) and this diagram functioned as the respecify (the clearing of mush).