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Ethics in Psychoanalysis
J
ACQUES-ALAIN MILLER

Ai no Korrida: The Cutting Edge of Feminine Eroticism
F
ABIEN TRÉMEAU

On Joan Riviere's "Womanliness as a Masquerade"
V
ICENTE PALOMERA

The Real Aims of the Analytic Act
C
OLETTE SOLER

from The Suburbanite
R
ICHARD FOREMAN

Preface
R
APHAEL RUBINSTEIN

Plastic Fantastic Lover (object a)

The Rules of the Game

Interview with
Ashley Bickerton


























        

from the Suburbanite

 

Richard Foreman

 

So vast, soft, clouds of the cloudless sky over the roof of gas stations on the road into (out of) the city. So traveled, so travelling, so much the held he held to. He held to his idea of travelling, which was like life was, was held. And the suburbanite was located in that passage to the center of the city which remained elusive in a way that the part that circulated, almost center, almost displaced into itself, center center like an echo, did not.

So here we are, suburbanite, headed central, and the tiny bits and pieces are road hitched, and the travelling eye is almost lost into its own seeing with ice, and the gasoline station and the restaurant and the motel, vacant, is but a leaf torn from the book of the center you balance under your nose as the steering wheel spins in space, too late to travel, only oscillating there under your reptilian hands because YOU have no hot and cold running through an entire system, no, you have nothing but an apex of look, turn me in this direction, turn me in that direction, isn't that what we call AIMING?

And the suburbanite found himself out of town before he was in town. It passed — out here even if off to the side somewhere, but the experience, drug-like, would never wear off because everything that was glued in was still glued no matter how much it faded.

Yes it was time that did the fading, only the fading was backwards, not INTO time, but OUT OF time, and the road, strait was its eatenness of miles, hitched itself to that cause like muscle, and here was one motel still open, and the sleep it offered — ah, there find the elusive center.

So the suburbanite bedded down for the night, after coffee and rolls has been served — backwards? That's what we already started rolling through the suburbanite on wheels. Backwards. And no night took over a whole life, just bits and pieces, far as always from the center (of town) the suburbanite. Motel ensconced. Drifting. Slipping by rote, under the sleep that knew no doubt. Ultimate affirmations, between ticks of the alarm that never went off.

Ferraris image

He had a watch, it counted for him.

He had eyeglasses, they made circles.

He had a wallet, no story there.

He had shoes, vibration effect, a whole body like a travel bureau.

He had keys in his pocket, did he have pockets? Maps, to find out distance, but nobody knew how much.

He had pockets, they made maps of themselves.

He had a comb, it ravished by turning over.

He had a tie, worn out, licked.

He had a belt, circling the body it smiled. Was that a face?

He had a face. It smiled, therefore.

He had a brain, it glowed like a stone, so blunt, so to the point, he kicked it and it flew down the road crying this is my life, this is your life.

He had no sense of direction. Like a flower, petals blown in the wind, more flowers, covering the mountain and death moved something. Something immense.

He had death. He sat there.

He knew that the babble of words babbled something quite beyond itself. And yet. And yet.

Silence also pushed through him and searched for the light. Silence plowed through his tongue, his eyes and nostrils, looking to lie exposed to external light, as if an inner light desired full union with that other light.

So babble rose, from a certain source, sped into space but a true bubbling that bubble-like, babbled into the shape that was explosion after explosion releasing, centering the call to silence with each sphere of punctuated, something-to-be-said. And those pin-pricks of a million calls to silence did call forth the silence from a depth that either was or was not the same depth.

So silence and babble, so both, so linked, so opposed and coordinated, in that new, next attached level of babble, laid forth blanket-like under the light, always the light re-showing itself outside which was only a way, finally, of being inside.

 

Illustration: Carlo Ferraris, Dear M., Speaks and Listens,1990 iron, shoes and nylon


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