metonic showers/long hours (the subversion of Descartes and Kant)

the 60s generation subverted Decartes's axiom "i drift thereofre i am" and founded the self affirmation "i am therefore i drift." amongst the stuggles of labor and civil rights, vietnam shattered the crooked mirror of a rational american society. this sense of vulnerablity, and a burgeoning globalism found a new name in president Carters refutation of american exceptionslism. the sense of 'us' and 'world' came to overlap, cosaturate "i am" in and about these real and lasting moments, the infinite moments; a closet identity crises which brandished itslef upon the suffering, imagination, and fantasy of ordinary americans. what was new was the undeniable place of the other within the very place of 'us'. "i am loved therefore i drift " found recourse in Ronald Reagan, the american narcissist, "i am, therefore there is love (therefore love)" as two sides of the same falling down. the wall of berlin was the defining moment, the euphoric reconcilliation, the traumatic finale'. in the nineties when the reality set in we found the 'we are' to be a rather loose unity because 'we wont'... But we are still frustrated and anxious by thye fact that "i am nothing therefore i drift" is a coded "i am no narcissist therefore pay attention to me" or a literal falling apart of self and world. all the while most of us blind ourselvbes to the semblencing involved (we have to), as its varrying names share the same treading towards meaning in a world void of substantive content. our constructive phobia is a covering up of a something uncertain, by virtue of this it has the charecter of embodiment. sentience, uncertainty, are experienced as the un= prey of bigger and more spectacular contingent certainties. slowly the real is creeping into the age of irony (we were never as Kant said, an unfathomable truth embodied in imperfect certainties, but in fact imperfect certainties were giving birth to new unfathomable truths). the revolution which began in the nineties was a pandemic explosion of technology and communication, and economic syncronicity, where the death of 'real icons' coevaled with an incredible empowering of social bodies. and so empires became 'new orders' and social struggles became 'solvable problems' in short, a politics of management emerged. it is in this context that the dillema of harry tuttle takes foot and M.L.K.'s classic 'refusal to wait' becomes ever more important. 'wherever you go there you are' is corny but true, place and time are right infront of us obviously. here is an excerpt from the "Letter From Birmingham Jail"

My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

thinking about place is important, for one the situationist international was right to protest place commodities but in all their diagnostics politics of mangement was again their ultimate end, another vision of utopia. but because we reflect on negtivity and absent centers doesnt require cynicism or the dadaist 'abolition of the future'. the proper consequence is in fact the wisdom to our own semblenceness. peeling off the fantasy to reverse or alter something like 'american exceptionalism' is totally over shooting the mark. the work of metonomy and myth-bending has never been a more relevant task. henceforth let 'the incredible lightness of being' be your anthem to 'the time is out of joint'. the strange euphoria in the wake of tramau is allways its keynote experience. in this new millenium are we in some whatever place or cynical time cruxx... do we give ourselves to a schitzophenic time siezure or constitute a new spectacular continuity? i for one would love to ceate a big fucking spectacle, i wonder at a radical reorginization of common sense in this country.