Noumena of Limbs

Bailey Cooper

Zero | Language and Dialogue: Synthesis, Systemisation and Definition

the Earth rests below the World as the World rests beyond the Earth,
     as the World did not exist before that moment which saw it formed from matter in the hands of man, 
     it has no mouth with which to speak and no eyes that allow for sight. It has no conception of breath beyond the iron lung of the Earth to which it has been connected,
    because the progression one makes from a space of non-existence into one of definition is a convention of mortality, but only in the context that definition is the accompaniment perception, for mortality desires the capitulation of its being, to return itself to that state of absence describing divisions representative of noumenal understanding, 
     and words are spoken across barriers of sound, across and into spaces resonating with vocalisations constructed of images, telling us that: the Earth and the World are one and the same, as if the latter had not been grafted onto the former through these perceptual mechanisms of which we speak, as though our conception of definitions and our understanding of what constitutes them is not a product of observation and its ensuing synthesis, 
    we desire to understand the World as the Earth rather than through it, as if by confining the two within the closed dynamic of an algebraic equation we can reimagine the inherent fragility of the world to be one of stability, where the subjugation of the latter being necessary to promote the former is an articulation of the natural processes of reinforcement, not conscious application of violence being embedded within the cells of dialogue and language, 
     as words which have taken the shape of definitions have begun to move along those arterial walls issuing from within the body of the Earth to where they emerge into the World resting upon and beyond it—the veins of dialogue being the oxygenated impressions formed within this vascular relay—where that which is considered ambiguous and amorphous is the design of such a synthesis rather than a surplus of its process,
     so by opening a vein, are we cutting into a system dependent on its own implied lack of direction, a place where the dialogue predicating the language in which it moves, does so only once having been painted in oil upon the film of the World’s sclera? As sight is intimate with the blindness standing adjacent to it—the synaptic interplay connecting the light to the non-pupil to the non-existent vocal cords that becomes the aphasic fog, solidifying only when made under conditions established by an ideology resultant of synthesisation, 
     and we are to understand the World as a system in a manner which the Earth is not, as systemisation can only be produced of synthesis though the conduit of amorphous definition. It can never be innate, a requirement of its existence being that it must be constructed from a place of non-existence from materials without any conception of mortality—this logic being circular, as conception can only conceive of itself once already having done so, 
     we should not attempt to understand such a logic in the conventional sense, as a system’s presentation of its own redundancy is what allows for the outlines of what is ‘objective’ within it to be hemmed with a sense ‘clarity’, 
    as again, we observe words without shapes wavering across the field of perception in search of definitions in which they may reside. But these words, whose migration across the plains of the venous dialogue in search of the ‘objectivity’ implied by definition, can only be understood in the sense that their outlines grow thinner relative to your approach,
such that we risk the potential of psychotic deformation, where our proximity to the contours of awareness is proportional to the shapes of iterative perception,
     as one lives on Earth but lives within the World. Just as one lives within their mind as it has become their World,
    as before the word of God had shaped the World, we had first uttered Thy name, had stripped from those walls made of aural stone our inscriptions we then placed within Thy mouth. We had fitted a ‘speaking machine’ onto the exterior of the vascular system connecting the Earth to the World and called thee God, pushing out beyond Thy lips into that transient space whose form is that which is required of it: language carved from resources embedded with information that had only come into existence at the precise moment at which it was conceived, 
   whereby enclosing of the mortality of our perception within lines of substantiation, we are attempting to dispel the discomforts of ambiguity and incongruity arising from the sense of control we perceive within language. It being an attempt to deny that language is systemisation, is confinement, control, oppression. Language and System only being distinguished from another by the shape and the sound of the words they inhabit, 
      as System is known by many names. One may know it as Language. Just as another knows it as Violence,
      as Language does not exist anymore than the World does, it has never been a means of communication beyond the asking of answers without a question. The only true form of dialogue being one that advocates for its own misunderstanding, implores those who listen to steal from it rather than conform, as confusion is the path of liberation in a world whose names have no words.

One | The theft of Violence and Language 

Where from within that darkness emerged the waveforms of its constraint, envisioning the shadows that would climb from out of cadavers and into the world, spreading their wings as the noise of blinded visions over those who had remained still, had moved their lips over the fractured residue of silence. Shadows raised themselves to those walls which man had been turned towards, where one palm had slid across the blackened composite in search of another, reaching out and across and into the depths of mortality where the accumulation of night closes itself around the imagination and its capacity to love.

As it was not until Prometheus had entered the realm of the Gods and stole from them the language of violence that man had come to know annihilation. Man had wandered through that world sat beyond the earth, the one effused from the substrate lying below it through the product of his unconscious desire. 

He had been born of his parents just as his brothers and sisters had been born of their own. Had grown up through his childhood into the man he was to become. Had fought illness and prevailed and witnessed those who had not. Had felt love and its subsequent death and learned to cherish that which had been borne of its ashes. Had walked across the plains of his own mind as it grew outwardly and into the world. Had felt time reach inside his body and return him again to that place of which we have no memory. 

As before the world had known the name Prometheus, man had lived and died, had breathed air into the lungs of mortality and watched on with sightless eyes as all others had done the same. He had no conception of the World as distinct from the Earth, of the frailty of the bones about which his reality had been conceived, the scaffolding to which his mind had been fitted so that he may live in that stone room wrought with darkness amongst all others. A mass meditation stripped of the senses, where the walls enclosing within themselves the flickering visions of the world beyond the earth, dissolved daily into night stretching itself both inwardly and outwardly, outwardly and inwardly into spaces unimpeded by the prospect of definition. As definition could only take shape once having been given the flame of language and violence to do so.  

As was the flame burning in the hearth of the gods which Prometheus had taken into his hands and carried back down with him into that boundless room, placing into the mouths of all those who had roamed its quarters the capacity for language, a language composed of the infinitely many dialogues that would define those dreams of shadows and structures that would seek to reveal to us the walls we had never known. A universal language fractured into infinitely many dialogues revolting against one another and turning those who did not speak the same tongue against a wall of his own confines.

For violence was meant as the plaything of those without conception of mortality, an amusement between those who would peer through the omnidirectional lens of history into time without space for it to expand into. It was never meant to be held by those who had been given names rather than learnt them. As when violence is placed alongside mortality, it produces the prospect of annihilation. It becomes the spectral presence of absolution sitting forever upon the periphery of mind and world as the forces of subjugation and control; the assurance that, if you turn from your place upon the wall and stare into the lines of definition taking shape in the flames burning within the mouths of your oppressors, that the world will be purged of its name. That it will return itself to the earth, regrowing itself within the make of the day as the liver hungered upon by the accomplice of your suffering.

Two | I: Prometheus speaks to the Eagle

— But names are only matter stretched into paralysis 

—

— As you recognise my beak as a tomb only now

— Only now?

— Only now. Only now that repetition has ordained it so.

— Yes, I suppose. Only now. 

— As now has evolved past convention 

— Just as when has been subsumed by now?

— Just as now has enveloped when

—

—

— The albumin of time having dissolved under the weight of the familiar

— In a sense, perhaps. Movement being, after all, just an illusion conveyed by perspective.

— And I suppose then, it being the place where my bonds are woven with the speech at which you eat

— No. I eat only that which decays

— At that which decays … 

— Decomposition being the portrayal of progression, after all

— But where lies the progression in that which has been reimagined?

— Beyond

— Beyond 

— Beyond the lyrics of the crossing, spreading their voice through history

— 

— As repetition is the corruption of the familiar, the imperceptible deformation they understood into something laying beyond recognition

— My liver made whole come dawn being the capacity of imagination

— Of imagination. And of fear. Fear of what resides within time’s intent

— Time’s intent?

— Its intent, and its meaning. As to you, I was once your tormenter, but now I am your routine

— My routine.

— Your routine and your accomplice 

— The ever-changing constant into the world beyond the mind

— And the mind beyond the world.

— And the mind beyond the world

— Where the walls of its labyrinth are erected by accumulation  

— Those who exercise definition in hope of … 

— In hope of what?

— In hope of … I don’t know

— No.

— No

— Perhaps I never did. 

— No, perhaps you never did

— And how strange

—

— How strange a voice sounds when left to itself

— 

— How strange

—

—

II: Prometheus speaks to Himself

As night hath cometh now to those who spake the day
To fields whar singeth those minds from matter 
Environs of my shadow, I hath roamed through visions
‘Allied!’ sayeth thee who wears my face

Erelong will thou reach byond my tongue 
And reform light from morrow’s fog
Whar I hath bent thee breakers built of time
At angles the noyse a liver makes

For moon coverts darkness ’pon which those feathers
Turneth dust from ages realm 
Thou who had spake life unto skins
But who hath forsake now the court of man

Whar once commeth thee sounds of nyght
Of memories moor draggede and sought
Whar civil strands have brok the nave 
For I nameth he who cleymes Ulysses’

And on till shores reigns thy beak
Of Zeus and stranger struck of sight
Sweeping vistas of thou history 
Hath the growth of yore bent thy sky

To roam and venture from clay and marrow
My name is but a memory of another
He whose wrists hath broke thy channels 
But cleymes the darkness formed of worlds

Bailey Cooper (he/him) is a writer based in Narm (Melbourne). He is currently undertaking a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing at RMIT. Within his practice he seeks to dissolve the lines bounding memory and language through the means of experimentation. He is currently working on a long form prose poem.