It was a tenting trip ad vision quest in the Smokies. Vic and I, we brought survival guides to entertain our Walden whimsy amid our Creeley credence. We painted our cheeks black with the soot from squelched campfires, and howled hungrily at the high bright moon. We invented a new language, one without vowels, and we almost fooled around a couple times because we were naked a lot, but we didn't because I really didn’t find him attractive in the slightest. We said, "Jjtkglln mcnrm gng gng flt." We said, "Vr mnz plncr." We said, "Shhh." We noticed that the angle of most survival guides is one of professional caution, which after awhile we found tiresome. A survival guide should never read like a text book; it should read like the last book you'll ever read. It should talk about the phenomenology of especially aerial snakes; ways to evade mountain bandits; robust black berries that emerge from primeval roots and how if you are on proper alert, you might eat them for supernatural glimpses; the consequences of finding yourself at the summit; the vapor burst of your vanquished but intrepid woodland creature self. On one occasion we left our site to survey the deep forest around us. We stomped off with rucksacks full of food and water, flashlights, survival guides—as if we weren't coming back. We clamored deep and deeper through the timber and as the sunlight became more and more taken by umbrage, Vic started to use our new language. He said, "Klmbgm flnn crl mstcnl trp lp bnfwllm nrtl hnn nn przll." He went on and on a little longer and eventually I had to stop him. I said, "Shhh." I said, "Do you hear that?" He said, "Zmphvn vn." It was a scary moment for a moment. I had heard something. I told him I wanted to go back, that I was a little frightened and that it wasn't normal for me to feel frightened. So we went back and ate beans straight from the pot and smoked pot and went off on each other's own for awhile to read or wriggle our separate ways out of the uncomfortable hysterias I could tell were potentially encroaching.
After a few days of clapping our imaginations together we sat down to really talk. It was late night. We had a longstanding fire flickering at our heels and a bottle of bourbon between us. Through the warbling haze I could see his eyes were becoming glassier so I asked if he was getting tired. "No, not at all," he said. "In fact," he said. "In fact what?" I asked. "Nothing.”
In context of some previous stream of conversation, I started talking about Hegel, specifically about a paradox of consciousness. "In order for a consciousness to perceive an object, the consciousness first must fix a pre-determined idea of what the object is. Insofar as the object does exist externally, which of course is up for separate debate, from where does knowledge of the conditions of the object come? Does it come from the object itself or from the realm of consciousness? If it comes explicitly from the object, then the power of consciousness is relegated to simple perception. However, if there is an epistemology borne solely of the consciousness and not from the incalculable conditions of the external elements, then the boundaries of this power are limitless. So…" I said.
"So, I've been thinking a lot about death." "Well that seems a little obvious," Vic said—soft consolation. He tried to keep talking but I stopped him. I get like that when I'm drinking bourbon. "So," I said, "if as artists we would defer more to the idea that knowledge of an object does not come from the object itself but from each our own catalytic consciousness', then there arises a true problem in determining not only what happens after death, but more importantly, what death actually is. Of course we don't know what comes after death. We never have and we never will. This isn't purely because of its nature as uncharted frontier, because, especially in terms of something as grand as death, the ‘unknown’ is a benign, or at least elementary concept—maybe more literary than anything else. We don't know what happens after death because we don't know what death is. All we know about death is that it's one manifestation of Terminus—a particular land of the end. We know this because of course, when someone we love dies, there is a pure acknowledgement of finite things. We can talk about how the love for and effects of that person will live on forever in our hearts and minds, but what does that really mean? It simply means we cannot avoid the combustion of consciousness, which uses only the elements of what it knows to form ideas. Therefore, the influence a person has on you in their life is similar to the influence they have on you after their death, minus any subsequent grief of course. This explains absolutely nothing beyond a resistance in most people to allow their perceptions to evolve. It does not clearly tell what happens to the person, the self, after death. But again, nothing can since we're basing our ideas about the afterlife just on what we know about life or, that window between two portals. Between beginning and end. From this we have to ask the more relevant question: what is death, as an object?"
Within minutes I was throwing up.
"We should get up early tomorrow and maybe go fishing," said Vic—hard consolation.
The fish were jumping. I caught five and Vic caught four. We beat their heads over the side of the boat in order to prevent any further suffering. I cried a little, unsure if it was because I felt bad for killing the fish or if I felt bad because the fish probably had no understanding of why they were being killed and that seemed pathetic and unfair. Either way I felt bad, a little. Anyway, there were two trout, a big bass, three carps, two catfish and a walleye. We skinned them adroitly, referring to our survival guides, and roasted them, delicious, a little fresh squeezed lemon juice over top from lemons we had kept chilled for whatever purpose. Two nights later, the last night of the trip, Vic started talking about words. Aside from my soliloquy on death, words seemed to be the dominant topic of our musings during that time in the woods. I was very sad about recently losing someone close so I couldn't help myself. Plus, the bourbon. But words. Vic, who knew three or four languages, was a compelling source for linguistic theory. I never held anything more than my firm grip on English, so I could never conceive of the psychological effects of having to choose between one fluent language and another. I always wondered what language polyglots think in, dream in, and if there is a dilution of contextual or inferential reasoning when you can understand ideas in terms of multiple unrelated tongues. Is a banana the same in English as a banaan in Dutch? Of course the object is the same but what does the utterance of the concept suggest to the speaker and listener?
So Vic started talking about words and I listened intently.
"Really, grammar is far less relevant to human expression than semantics. Grammar is established, along with syntax, by a series of postulates that connect and determine a mathematical system on which language can be based. Grammar is an infrastructure. Grammar is a lot of buildings and business and bureaucracy. Semantics is more of an outer space, theoretical, a place for exploration and interpretation. The written bible is full of grammar but its effects are all semantics. This is evident in the almost completely futile division of Christian sects and also in the lack of absolute moral solidarity among fragmented adherents. If people are a filter for the words they use, and if every person's filter is made up of unique components, not only will one's definition of a word be variant, but their impression of the word will as well. How many times has Armageddon supposed to have come and gone, how many generations have prematurely accounted for its stake? Still, most would say the world is still undeniably here and spinning round as normal and will probably continue to do so until a quite indeterminable point. Ok, so, take phonemes, the smallest particle of lingual structure. They are the way the /a/ resonates in the word stand as opposed to in the word bake as opposed to in the word ball. Of course each phoneme is a direct condition of the other phonemes surrounding it, which speaks even more to my point. A person will filter the resonance of a word in their own way—stand, stah-nd, stee-and, and so on—and as that happens, any number of unique lexical cognitions will occur. What is the definition of standing? Is it the opposite of sitting? Is it simply the act of standing or is it an expression of the state of mind while the act is taking place? How does the one speaking of standing stand? A person's impression and delivery of a word, along the lines of what you talked about with Mazer, directly, if subtly, manipulates their definition due to the implications of the speaker's veracity, speech patterns and general personality. The disparities cause the universe of semantics to infinitely expand, affecting our principles of communication to such a high degree, it's a miracle we can understand each other at all. So, that miracle has to play into a somewhat more rigid theory—that of Truth-conditional Semantics, where the meaning of a word or thought is reducible by the environment, the clause or concept of the sentence or greater thought, which begs for a consensual relativity of ideas. A silver necklace is not only silver and only a necklace, it is the linkage of the two concepts and it is an object based on the compound. Perhaps certain cognitions of silver and of necklace differ slightly from one mind to another, but the sequent words proffer a logical and empirical assessment of the object. We all call the same silver necklace a silver necklace. Then there are words that cannot be defined by empirical concepts. What is blue, love, the Devil? All of the minor discrepancies of communication—remote definitions—force you to consider language as a living, breathing, growing being, always in a preternatural flux due primarily to the charge and influence of its users. The creation and evolution of argots, rises and falls of patois, Nimrod at Babel, this is our history as it is in a telling of perceptions. All the funny accents and ancillary lingos executed by changeling cultures within cultures within cultures, and how these transformations affect periphery beyond periphery beyond periphery tells a remarkable biography of language, which arguably has been the single most powerful element of civilization across time. What we say, how we say it and the subjectivity of understanding is perhaps a greater mystery and stronger force than your object of death. We're talking about abstraction on top of abstraction on top of abstraction unfolding itself like a boundless map as long as speaking and writing exist. Language lives in Infinity, a slightly more alluring land than the converse Terminus. I believe because of this sweeping subjectivity one never truly understands anyone else. We're locked into an asylum of each others' cognitions and I think it's beautiful. Beautiful." He smiled wildly.
"I feel like my body is a bee and my brain is allergic to bees and you're like a piece of honeycomb, like Vietnamese honeycomb," I replied, smiling less wildly.
He was still lost in his own breaking lake wake, baked.
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