TIME NOMAD
A Short-Story of Death and Resurrection
Is our travel in time nothing more than a space travel? The usual, we have to move. Come on, give me at least an illusion of space! Well, another flight starts in a non-place -- airport. Forget the rest. On the plane -- what is it? Not place, but the movement. Or an illusion of it?
Why was I thinking about it -- the video? What a strange name! "We watch this video yesterday" -- what do you say, idiot?! I know what did start it. The madness of the whole situation when two stewardesses were demonstrating how I must save myself in a case of the crash! What the hell are they talking? To put on this yellow west? If after the end of me, the crash, death, scream -- I will end up in the water! They must be out of their mind -- if I will end up alive in the water, it will be a miracle! Did I paid them to scare me? What is that? The two silent girls and the third on the screen, all voiceless -- I heard the sex talk on the head phones -- were pointing at the their young female bodies. I watched the real ones and the digital woman on the screen. I would like the real girl communicating with me, but they all were dead. They weren't communicating with nobody! Did I missed something? Am I dead already? Did I missed the crash? "Fly Friendly Skies"? What kind of language it that? A translation from some rare tongue? "Friendly Skies"? Are there un-friendly ones? Just leave me alone!
I was sitting next to him. An old man reading a book, must be a Greek, a foreigner.
"Tom," he introduced himself. "Thomas Aquinas."
They were serving drinks already. Who would read Bible on
the plane? He must be a new born Christian or something.
.... I think I am Jewish. Like that Wandering Jew, who couldn't die, I keep changing places and countries. As if I am cursed to be a tourist.
I have to get use to the idea of airport. How different it is from a bus terminal? A train travel is unreal, too. You sit and you move -- I think it's a miracle. There is nothing "real" about driving a car. Did I accept an elevator? The real per se has very little to do with my regular experience. The real ends outside of my body.... The real has to be searched and discovered. But is it there to be found?
"Yes, sir, but you have to catch it," Tom said without looking at me. He continued to read his Bible. Did he say it? I wasn't sure and I ordered another drink. You can't do it to a male. Put on the yellow jacket and take it off and all this striptease stuff! Then they come and bring a drink -- after they said that I could die any moment!
Tom was reading his book, the girls did get him.
I imagine things. The man was reading. We were "flying."
Yes, it was my thought. The real is out there -- the world to see
and to expose for a sight. Ready? And prepared to be taken? It
offers itself to all. The hidden and secret? Oh, you don't know
how to turn it on! Invisible? Only from itself, better understood
from outside. We believe that everything is open and transparent.
Everything man-made has a plan, designs, and copyright secrets
which could be stolen.... The naked propaganda! Shop displays and
the spectacular -- is it apocalypse or resurrection? Pornographic
is only a mental act. That's how it looks.... Yes, vodka-tonic,
please.
It was a commercial! The instructions with the porno life
jackets. An advertisement for life and death. Maybe, I should get
my own Bible. Why don't they put them for everyone on the plane
like in church. Did the girls advertise the existence? The
digital girl was the best. She came so close, she smiled -- they
call it closeup. Yeah, very close and up.
Relax, commercials are an assault on "critical thinking" --
you, apes, watch your language; "thinking" is always critical.
The tv is the real critic and critique of the real. Camera is the
REAL THINKING! Let me turn it on.
(Conversation. I read his books. I had so many questions to
ask. I screwed it again. Every time I meet a great man, Victor
Skhlovsky or Alan Rob-Griere, I behave like a fool.)
"You have an accent, Tom," I said. "What is that? Italian?"
"Close," he said. "Latin."
We both had a good laugh.
[ Anatoly, you are all over the place! Why don't explain it straight? Why don't you put together what took place during your lifetime and what happened to you? Yes, the fact that you don't have a family no matter what you try do and the movies (the big family language humankind speaks to children) have the same cause. We left the earth with everything human and lovely. It's not about you anymore, my man. Why don't write how we, the Americans, the new nomads, got ourselves into a war of the 3rd mellennium with the old nomads, the Arab world? Oh, we will rock and roll the world! Nothing we can do about it! It's beyond our control! ]
I. 30 SECOND APOCALYPSE
1. ECONOMICS OF THE END
You have to be blind not to see it -- the shots, the signs!
What else do you need? The demons is about to sell you the
paradise. Oh, how the angels sing!
Watch out! The car commercials: contradictive message --
speed and safety. More speed, more pleasure and more peace! You,
suckers, do you know that somebody has to pay for all the
comfort? The tickets into an apocalyptic chronotope cost money.
.... I cannot write. Because I can't read what I wrote. I can't edit it. Bercause I want to cry. How unfortunate that I am pomo-write and can not say anything straight! I call this chapter "Nomads" (trying to be proper postmodernist), instead of saying "homeless"... Or Americans. You see, nomads are those people without home and this fact doesn't bother them at all. They move to survive. So, do we. Refugee, displaced... No, I think I have my little American dream. The house with the white fence, the car (or two -- camels), my TV (those mirages in the desert)... Of course, I would lie that I am not a beduin. I am not an Arab!
I told you that I will lie....
Are they "human," the feelings introduced? Would animal in
me like this super-speed? The Speed which is not produced by my
body. Mind is the source of such anti-natural pleasures. Even the
horse was a dangerous innovation. Four horses of Apocalypse
indicate the speed. Not birds. Their speed was of an angelic
nature, they sing in paradise. Use your headphones if you don't
believe me. The music is there, inside your seat. Rhythm and
tempo came into music. Instead of the dominance of melody. Flute
and drum. Harmony used beat as its inner micro-structure. It came
out again, the beat. We do not notice all the radical expressions
our daily life because we ourselves are the extremes.
Angels are present, and -- the Beasts. Who are they? The machines. Us.... Film is the song of the watch. Can you hear the sun raising? Let me teach you poetry of glances.
.... All right, I will say it here. America doesn't know what to do with itself. Yes, this nation of escapists and isolationists, which arrived to the stage of imperialism. Oh, poor, vistum of it own success! We work in order to feel it. Never mind thinking. We are the machines of the postmodern. Angels, Beasts? All the above. Just a thought. A half-thought. A feeling.
A machine or an angel can't do it.
The Machine came with Its Ideology. How else?
Car and cinema, the legitimate children of a century of
modernity, were born out of the same sensitivity. Motion pictures
and pictures of motion. Existence = movement. End of motion =
death. From photo to film. From a steam engine to oil. Age of
electricity! It was present with Sony corporation.
Age of electronics: speeds beyond comprehension. Computers
only pretend to understand us, the sub-super-humanity. They are
the super-men and we are the para-machines. We have a lot to
learn, man.
.... Let me finish, please. One world? Yeah, man, but different times. My fellow Americans, didn't you get it? Don't you understand how slow is the rest of the world? Don't you remember how many centuries it took for Europe to move from poit A to B? Don't you see what a miracle America is?... Of course, you don't. What can you see? You watch too much TV. The "reality shows".... New one -- "Iraqi Freedom" (2003).
Too bad that I lie. I am an American, a new American. but others lie even more...
"What do you do for living, Anatoly?" He asked.
"I teach. What about you, Tom?"
"Research."
We were flying over the Atlantic. Or maybe it was some other
ocean, they all look the same through a window of the plane. I
never understood why airplanes have windows. I am not a child,
could you get it?
[ How unfortunate that I do not write about the most important things! My feelings. About what I feel looking down on the desert of clouds, covering everything as far asI can see. There no more earth anymore. What about the heavens? No, it's almost this open space -- do I really need to become an astronaut? Didn't you live enough, didn't you see enough, Anatoly? ]
2. FLYING PLACE
Point (of view) v. Place: place of non-place? A sight.
Aristotle observes (Phys. iv, text 48,57) that "it is not
everything existing which is in a place, but only a movable
body."
Accordingly there is no need for saying that an angel can be deemed commensurate with a place, or that he occupies a space in the continuous; for this is proper to a located body which is endowed with dimensive quantity. In similar fashion it is not necessary on this account for the angel to be contained by a place; because an incorporeal substance virtually contains the thing with which it comes into contact, and is not contained by it: for the soul is in the body as containing it, not as contained by it. In the same way an angel is said to be in a place which is corporeal, not as the thing contained, but as somehow containing it.[1]
Good and evil spirit: "the soul is its form, while the demon
is not." Very constructivist, this statement. Thomas, how to
separate the two while watching a movie?
.... I still don't know what do we, nomads, value. Space where we travel? But not place. Time? Souls know "home"; spirits don't. Are we demons, my Lord?
Yes, my friend, I do not know. We are ahead of ourselves. We do not know the world we create. Look at my writing; think about my preferencers (pomo) -- what do I know? I can't put otgether the parts of my day into this whole (big) picture. More dots, more pauses, more silence....
According to Aquinas, movement is "the act of an imperfect
being," as the Philosopher says (Phys. iii, text 14). The
Philosopher is Aristotle. So, Movement is the way of
beautification.
For since the angel is in a place only by virtual contact, as was said above (52, 1), it follows necessarily that the movement of an angel in a place is nothing else than the various contacts of various places successively, and not at once; because an angel cannot be in several places at one time, as was said above (52, 2). Nor is it necessary for these contacts to be continuous. Nevertheless a certain kind of continuity can be found in such contacts. Because, as was said above (52, 1), there is nothing to hinder us from assigning a divisible place to an angel according to virtual contact; just as a divisible place is assigned to a body by contact of magnitude. Hence as a body successively, and not all at once, quits the place in which it was before, and thence arises continuity in its local movement; so likewise an angel can successively quit the divisible place in which he was before, and so his movement will be continuous. And he can all at once quit the whole place, and in the same instant apply himself to the whole of another place, and thus his movement will not be continuous.
.... You, my reader, you think I am silly and my writing is fussy. So, do I. What the hell, you say, and what the above quote has to do with the topic? You are lost, Anatoly!
Yes, I am.
Aquinas. Objection 2. Further, an angel is of simpler substance than the soul. But our soul by taking thought can pass from one extreme to another without going through the middle.
.... Kristiva (early postmodernist) said that the only honest position in our world is to be a foreigner. So, I am. So, we are, the Americans.
People who do not belong anywhere. Who live only in time. That's why we crave for changes, without them we die...
Film director Tom Aquinas speaking, "the continuity of time comes of the continuity of movement, as the Philosopher says (Phys. iv, text 99)."[2] Without movies time stops. We better move on. Watch the movies.
[ We need to study angels, we need to study ourselves. Angelology? ]
II. LANGUAGE IS OUR FATE: THE VIDEO
Between Addis Ababa and Khartoum, even between Khartoum and London they showed no movies. Damn it! I had to wait for the trans-Atlantic flight for signs of apocalypse....
The problem is that we don't remember dreams and movies. Is
it so? Or do we have a new kind of memory -- visual memory? My
computer doesn't "remember" what it remembers. It's my business
to remember what I have put on the hard drive. But it's there, if
I had loaded it.
.... Give me a break. I tried. Next time, when you get in your car, think about it...
The final gift of God on his deathbed -- the cinema. What a trick -- mimesis in film: media still IMITATES reality (in photographic forms). Technology is "the state of the art" culture. Now I melted in the human race -- it's called montage. McLuhan called it (poetically) mosaic. I am recorded, negated, stolen, cut into pieces, photographed, deconstructed, encoded, reassembled, constructed....
Finally, I am free, asocial, a-historical, non-material.
Free to deal with myself. Free to live....
Don't you know how it feels to be a close up?
Yes, sir, we suffer.
And we love it. Especially, in color, on video.
Our ancestors dreamed of utopias, we live them. No wonder
our desires are reversed. We want the real. We have to produce
it, to get to it through the virtual. This is the dream of an
utopian man, the immortal and free. They said that angels are
crying over the fate of the people, and devils suffer -- I know,
I cry and I suffer. I don't know how they do it. I can do it
because I am both -- I suffer and I cry over my sufferings. Read
Dante.
Enough, don't call it the postmodern. It's insulting, it is
too obvious. We are post-everything. I (current, modern) am a
post-myself. Control (Foucault), speed (Virilio), duality
(Baudrillard), etc. -- the PM saints named all the elements of
paradise without telling where we are. I know how scary paradise
is -- the final stage, where even the biblical dreams end.
Yes, sir, I was a member of the communist party. I don't
have a party ticket anymore, too many cards. Too many members --
all. Not a privilege but circumstances. Could we admit it? Not
yet. Not ready yet. We still think that the communists are in
China, not on internet. Trust me, you don't have to believe in
communism to be a communist. Pomo sapience is a communist a
priori. Who else did you think would live in global village?
Of course, you are human, darling, of course. Animal and
mammal too. You are all of that. You can be a communist and own
CNN. Communism is an ideology, not your age. Nothing personal.
You don't need Marx to figure out that paradise has to have only
one (social) religion -- communism. And one language --
non-verbal.
Read the Bible, Koran, Torah, or better watch TV -- it's in
there. Apocalypse was an extreme text. Ultimate Catastrophe! Not
anymore. Communism regarded itself as post-apocalyptic structure.
The bad things were behind. Isn't that an idea of apocalypse?
What is a super-catastrophe? Something so radical that it loses
the qualities of catastrophic. Super-catastrophe is beyond of our
perception. It's a negation of itself. Life could be torturous,
but the sudden death of total wiping out in nuclear explosion.
Make it big, make it extra-fast -- you won't even have time to
blink.
They didn't know the laws of big masses, supersonic speeds,
high energies -- radicalism is its worse enemy. How could you
shock somebody in shock, how can you kill somebody who is dead?
Communists never understood that apocalypse is not a full
negation of matter. That behaved as if an existence was
completely virtual. They made one mistake, they should read two
books not one. Bible never insisted on pure virtuality of
paradise. There some corporeality in heavenly kingdom. The truth
is that ideas, they loved so much, have bodily forms in the next
world. Check the medieval sculptures and paintings -- Mercy,
Grace, seven mortal sins, and other virtues.
We like to talk about global history without thinking it
through. The cold war was the war or super-ideas. Two dreams --
collective paradise and personal. No, one dream. The collapse of
super-powers, no more powers. Russia knows about it, America
doesn't know it yet. We think that Castro is a communist. We
think that Disneyland is an entertainment. We think this way
because we do not think. Why should we? Hey, it's paradise!
Does superman suffer?
Does it matter?
Apocalypse isn't an act but a non-ending process, since its
occurrence is a dismissal of time and therefore -- dramatism, we
can't say, the principle of uncertainty. Maybe. Who knows? Only
anticipation of Apocalypse is dramatic, the Apocalypse itself is
a non-event (or anti-event?) Could apocalypse be experienced? Or
even be noticed? Apocalypse must be invisible. Non-ending or
no-starting? Non-event is always an anticipation. Apocalypse is a
waiting for Apocalypse. Our pain is mental. Use the pain killers.
Because it's real.
And Hell comes with the territory. Paradise has to see a lot
of hell on TV. Blood, death, tortures. This fact of hell as an
integral part paradise is in all holy books. We have to remember
that we are in hell, we have to be reminded. It's a hell of
entertainment. Hell as an entertainment of paradise. Very
cleaver. Apocalypse is pleasant as entertainment. When you can
watch it. Dramatic, you know.... Apocalypse is anti-apocalyptic.
What do you say? Enjoyable death? Absolutely! Make it
virtual and it becomes invisible! The actual sex is invisable,
too. Good sex, I mean.
[ image ]
III. THE BOOK OF LIFE? VIDEO
"And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death." -- the screen! the lake! the fire! That's where the hell is!
Oh, that is interesting -- the second death! Apocalypse
isn't the final death but a prelude to an execution. Just to get
some taste of death, so you know how it feels like. the actual
death is ahead. After the judgement.
The lake of fire is the place where death and hell live. We
call it the second nature, man-made universe. We manufactured
this lake which is fire. You see, apocalypse and resurrection
have to be produced. According to marxism of any make --
communist or capitalist. In order to control death we have to
master its production. To have powers for resurrection we have to
know how to create the apocalypse. In order to prevent the
ecological catastrophe we have to make it first.
In order to destroy the real we must work on crafting of
virtual reality! Second death is the death of the immortal (soul,
evil, devil) and we have to control the time. Existence of
non-existence of time must become a matter of our choice.
Resurrection is the process of overcoming first death (physical),
which could be possible only through creating the super-death.
Death of death, deadly death.
Resurrection/Apocalypse is a simple judgement call. Up to
you to see it or not. It's up to you to see it as the end or the
begining.
.... No, no more...
"Human kind"; only human, and only kind.
There are other kinds of humanity -- myself, for one. Yes, I
depend on my race as much as I depend on my body. It's my
origins. Of course, I'm treated as property. This position is
more natural than my fight for independence.
J Day is infinity (or eternity?). Televised trails. I remember TV Court with the grey uncle-type judge, dealing with little claims. After Simson America turned into a jury room. Paradise gave us freedom to be ourselves and it turn our life into hell.
Thank you, Lord. Opinions become theories. [G] Theories are
"strong opinions" in pm philosophy. Knowledge has to be concrete
and personal. Math is too abstract, it lost its ideological zeal.
Hard science is there to serve only.
Why is any judgement important? Doesn't God know who and
what is right? Oh, this is for us, it's PBS show trails,
educational. It's another discipline for overcoming the law.
Based on law? Our laws are on trail as well.
The judgement is a heart of the resurrection process. The
End (life), the New (paradise), the Progress (resurrection).
Resurrection depends on the end, apocalypses. Death is required.
And the judgement. Hear me, before we were mortals, now we are
sentenced to death. In our justice system every sentence has "and
death."
Since we judge ourselves, we are between hell and paradise.
We have to understand hell. We are forced to know and to identify
ourselves with evil. It's our business, we are the jury, we are
in charge of our own sentences.
What a world to live in!
Not the future, but the past could watch us in disbelief and
shock. Is the future even more terrifying?
How did it happen that the future, the unknown (therefor
promising) became the threat? Why? Because it became real,
because we're in charge. We make it. Oh, too much responsibility.
And no matter what we do, we won't be happy, because it's our
choice. We took this turn and we have to pay for it. We are
afraid of ourselves. Judgement?
Are we afraid to judge?
Everything what could be said is both true and lie, because
we see every statement simultaneously from two worlds. The world
of light and virtuality and the world under the light. The
judgement itself is in question.
.... I saw a man walking on street talking on two little phones.... Young man. I should write down the time and place. For souls after us. For them , if they are interested. If they want to know anything about our American Age and their origins....
"And whosoever was not found written in the book of life..." What book? Fifteen minutes of fame, our entrance into our history? Don't worry, the surveillance cameras are everywhere. You're booked. Immortalized. Everything is recorded. There is no escape from the dragon of history....
IV. LABORS OF RESURRECTION (SPEED), APOCALYPTIC EROTICS AND
CATASTROPHIC SENSIBILITIES
To be on a plane is a sexual experience. We love to fly.
Oh, the ecstacy of the oblivion! Glory of honorable death on
battlefield. We were about to attack the earth, the way we
stormed the heavens before. We were about to re-enter the mortal
space, crossing the sacred border. The plane was going through
copulation of the heaven and earth...
Next to me is a woman covered with tatoo. Swahili foot designs
painted with henna, black flowers -- she is married. Waq, the
sky-god of Oromo, never promised the end and I pray to him. The
plane is shaken in ecstasy of faith, we are the pilgrims to
shrine of heaven. Now I understand! It has to be Virgin! The
pornographic nature of the end of times could be seen in
masculine feature of apocalypse. Agony, as Rasta would say. I
remember, the phalluses were everywhere, big, powerful --
airplanes. We all made to heaven!
Where is my friend? Tom? It doesn't take much time to die.
You turn back -- and a man is gone.
.... I better stop. But I can't. I keep writing, thinking, living.... I still want to have a home. It must the memories of being man, they don't go away. So childish, so silly....
I picked up his Bible, maybe he has some special addition.
And I read it.
Catastrophe functions as apocalypse in creating a historical rupture that obliterates forms of identity and cultural narrative. But apocalypse in this sense must be understood in terms of trauma, for these identities and narratives are not fully obliterated. What is forgotten eventually returns, changed and misrecognized. (B 27)
And they called it Resurrection, JB, -- the return when we
don't recognize ourselves. Amnesia is only natural for the those
who come back from the grave. I died in the plane crash -- and
came back! I remember nothing! I don't remember my death. The
plane was about to land. I'll never know what a tragedy I lived
through.
.... The world around me is the true nomad, it leaves behind yesterday and my hopes, faster, faster! Why the race? Who do we compete with? As if the future has the gravity center, almost as the earth which grabs everything that gets into her orbit... Is there an end of the long journey, which we call "history"? Are we indeed serious about controlling the universe? Oh, than we better rush!
"Apocalypse as the continual destabilization of every
meaning, origin, and end is, finally, for Derrida, inherent in
language."4 The only silent music I know -- the movies. That's
our language after the end of language, the looks and gazes! What
language?
.... I write about nomads, because our mirages, which we call "movies," are the effects of the desert. What desert? The place where you do not settle, the place to leave behind. The space where we can't live...
"Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which
are, and the things which shall be hereafter..." My Biblical
attitude. I feel it when I went through my cultural death. The
camp in Italy. My absence in Russian culture (or absence of
Russian culture) is death continued. I died as an animal, too.
Only a dead man could dare to get on the plane. When you are
dead, you are not virgin anymore, you can have many deaths.
.... I think we do not understand the Arabs. We don't understand them, who live at the edge of the deserts -- and we do not understand why would they prefer Islam to Christianity. We don't understand ourselves and why this place between the desert and the sea dave birth to the idea of God-Man".... And this dream of Man-God moved west, not east.
We were to land. The signs went on and everybody buckled up.
The flight attendants collected the plastic glasses. The seat
next to me was empty. Tom never returned back from the bathroom.
I never saw him again. What is a connection between spirit and
spiritus? This is what I wanted to ask him.
If only I could describe the landing and find the right words (if words are still can do it), you would understand everything! The Resurrection and what take place in you when you watch TV, what is ahead and why it all makes perfect sense....
NOTES:
See DIGITAL -- and list the related chapters! Plus, Film600: Bad Theory & Wrong Subjects
...
