Found Things
by Jacob Russell on August 05, 2008
Originally posted at: Jacob Russell's Barking Dog
tags: aesthetics of process, fadi abou-rihan, winnicott,Leave a comment
About Found Things: from The Psychoanalytic Field.
other-than-me-more-than-me-more-than-mine
Links to posts on other blogs and websites, these too, are found things. They do not come from me, they are other and more than what I’ve experienced or thought, and they are not mine. Precisely why I… and I would venture to say, why we post them.
There are degrees of “foundness.” A link that reinforces an opinion or idea I already entertain is only weakly “other;” dependent on style, freshness of expression, a change in perspective, a view from a different camera angle. Tainted by the role I’ve assigned it: “look at this, this is what I believe, this is my idea of things as well.”
I have a folder of “Found Things.” Scraps of paper with children’s drawings, enigmatic lists: a letter from a young man in prison to a younger friend, advice in urban black vernacular: this note written on an index card.
Lisa,
Clean the toilet and anything else you did not clean in the bath room you have my work number and I don’t understand why you could not call me at work to find out where the toilet brush is. Even still I don’t understand why you did not clean the outside of the toilet. You live here just like I do and since I don’t have a problem with cleaning up and doing other things pertaining to the apt. I should hope you would not either. You were home all day and I don’t understand why the bathroom is not completely clean.
Linda
Here is a fragment of two lives, charged with feeling: anger, disappointment, household resentment… and nothing to do with me. Entirely outside of my life. There is a kind… mystery would be the wrong word--too strong, the wrong associations… wonder… it sets my mind to wonder, launches me on courses that are never fixed, like a Kafka parable.
The Psychoanalytic Field is one of my favorite blogs. I looks forward to new posts--which I experience like “found things.” They don’t make me “think,” If I were a serious student of psychoanalytic theory, perhaps. Then I would be obligated to “think” about Abou-Rihan’s explication of Winnicott. More a kind of play. Following the synoptic circuits, the associations set loose by their reading… the kind of play that opens into my writing. And isn’t that what we hope for in imaginative writing… to pull out of ourselves something no longer me, more than me, no longer mine?
There it is. The pleasure of “getting it right.” When the work is complete, it no longer matters. As an object to market, as something we would like to use to gain the good opinion of others--all of that, yes--but not for what it is, what is was as we worked on it.
Not me. More than me. Not mine…
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