Canto I
“The Nice Man with his Wife’s Last Name’s Form of Annihilation”
1859:2546
.730
(3rd edition: block-as-line macrotonal)
Cloud was sitting at Seventh Heaven
drinking a Fernet on the rocks
engaging in light conversation
with a cocksucker he’d never even met
about a Queen’s Blood play-in game
that he’d—this particular cocksucker—
requested to be put on the TV at the bar.
Well, actually Cloud corrected,
for the record,
that he’d actually been reading
a few pages of Timaeus
prior to all this,
making a few disparate notes,
finding himself puzzled at
the sensory information
that continued to be relayed into his brain.
Cloud basically alleged he was flummoxed
about the sensory information that became,
in some way, relayed
to what he guessed was his brain?—
how any of that was corroborated,
but more so Cloud contemplated
the static nature of said images—
that’s what he was specifically contemplating
when a guy with a round-ass face
leaned onto the bar,
seeking to close his tab,
obviously excited to tell the bartender
that he may need to show her his ID,
just because he took his wife’s last name
and hadn’t had a chance to change
his license yet?
The patron with the round-ass face
noted how nice the bartender was (Tifa!),
but what was her name again?
He could definitely display his ID
if she really needed,
just because, again,
his last name was different now—
taking his wife’s name and all!
Of course, Cloud noted,
that it was clear that no one gave a fuck
about the printed name on a credit card in that bar,
and Tifa, for her part,
didn’t exactly seem like she was ramping up
to suck this dude off
just because he was a radical feminist.
For Cloud’s part he was still, you know,
attempting to get behind the blunt sensations
being smuggled relentlessly
into his so-called conscious existence.
Everything was an image to some extent,
right Aerith?
Touch itself was a fucking sensory image.
It was a quaint Spring evening
where Cloud felt more or less
destined to philosophize,
having started drinking wine
in preparation for a Friday night dinner,
only to have Tifa bail last minute,
because she needed to pick up a bar shift—
leaving him completely free
to continue this wine drinking
in a ritualistic way
that would be conducive
to philosophical ideas.
Yes, Cloud continued to Aerith,
it was basically only via drinking alone,
but in a ritualistic fashion,
that he’d achieved any sort
of philosophical inquiry.
You couldn’t just sit at a desk
and "become philosophical",
at least not for Cloud!
Maybe some people could!
But, no, not Cloud.
He’d imagine that there were probably
a litany of possible ways
of becoming philosophical—
like, for instance,
for the round-faced albino chap,
perhaps telling Tifa
that he’d taken his wife’s last name,
maybe that could be seen
as possibly ritualistic in a way,
a gateway to some sort of
becoming philosophical.
This was "actually science",
Cloud told her he thought at the bar,
successfully avoiding making any eye contact
with the round-faced man.
Was it necessarily strange at all
that once the Greeks went extinct
philosophy went more or less
completely and utterly downhill
and never looked back in the least,
that the last group to really reach
much of any philosophical success
made a sincere effort to conjoin
getting fucked up with
contemplating intelligible phenomena?—
that these Greeks attempted
to marry inebriation and rigorous dialectic?
That all thought since—
to paraphrase North Whitehead—
had been a minor footnote to Plato or whatever?
The thing was, according to Cloud,
you just couldn’t willy nilly
"delve into metaphysics"
completely sober!
But that wasn’t to say a person
should necessarily become some
degenerate alcoholic either,
because a degenerate drunk
would in no way make a great meta-physicist either—
that was basically impossible, because,
like Cloud said,
the solo mode of inebriation
should be done ritualistically,
in spurts, at certain times.
You couldn’t just be like
hitting the bottle
as soon as you woke from a slumber!—
after said inebriation sessions
you’d require sobriety
to parse through whatever it was
that came to you
via said contemplation, no?
In fact, the actual science
was nothing beyond this parsing through
of inebriation sessions
of rigorous contemplation!
That was it—
what laid behind logic and metaphysics,
in Cloud’s mind at least!
But inebriation could be anything really—
Cloud could enter a state of inebriation
in a car alone on a Tuesday AM,
without consuming a damn thing.
Aerith more or less agreed,
adding that on the one hand
a philosophical mind
should be able to analyze,
interpret, extrapolate,
all of that scientific stuff—but,
on the other,
if you fail to place yourself
in a position to receive anything to analyze,
interpret, or extrapolate
then you were basically screwed!
Cloud more or less agreed
but added that—sans this type of
“inspiration,” so to speak—
they’d be stuck sitting
at a table just noodling
around nonsensically,
vacillating back and forth
between two types of nothingness,
and then just probably knocking off
someone else’s work by accident.
But none of this was new!
It wasn’t like Cloud was breaking news
in any way.
At this point Aerith asked—you know,
was this albino douche bag,
he was an element of this analysis?
No, not really—according to Cloud—
maybe the guy was trying a tad too hard?—
to present himself
as a specific archetype
to the general public,
as a guy who decided
to spit in the face
of his own chromosome count,
which was something Cloud
"personally endorsed!"
Granted Cloud probably
wouldn’t do it by taking his wife’s last name,
because Cloud personally
was obviously more prone
to a type of isolated
and overly dramatic
self-annihilation
than a subservient
and disingenuously muted
feminist annihilation,
but he wasn’t ipso facto
opposed to either!
Aerith agreed
one hundred percent!
But Cloud still would go
a little further,
noting that in the intelligible sphere,
as someone like,
say, Proclus would note,
that so-called forms
were somehow able
to participate in one another
without mixing,
whereas within the sensible realm
they participated in things
and subsequently got dirty.
But Cloud thought that it was worth
going one step further—
since they were discussing
annihilation and stuff anyway,
that the perceived mixing
between forms that took place
in the sensible arena
was itself just a projection
of mixture but not actual mixture.
The intelligible sphere,
being purely emanated,
participated within itself
without mixing itself,
while in the sensible sphere
it didn’t seem like that was possible,
that by participating
within sensible things
they became essentially mixed
with them,
assuming they were categorically sensible.
Essentially nature was tainted,
which of course
Cloud and Aerith knew all too well!
Way too well!
Hence their shared acquiescence
toward occasional annihilation!
But even this sensible filth,
so to speak,
Cloud thought,
this perceived mixing up
in the participation of sensible things,
wasn’t it also a projection?—
an emanation,
just as the participation
of the intelligible sphere
was also an emanation
of the primary unity of all things?
Which, yeah, brought Cloud back
to that albino round-faced fuck
at the bar,
taking his wife’s last name—
because ultimately
the albino’s vantage point
wasn’t remarkably divergent
from Cloud’s or Aerith’s,
Cloud thought.
This albino was promoting
a certain type of annihilation
of their cultural-sensible realm,
thinking that the patriarchal lineage
of their society was basically
something objectionable,
something essentially tainted,
that should be annihilated
in the service of something more pure.
Okay, well, Cloud thought
that made a modicum of sense!
Maybe taking his wife’s last name
was in a sense a greater form
of purity than locking a woman
in a kitchen and expecting
a blowjob every other evening,
Cloud thought.
Just as Proclus and Socrates
sensed that the intelligible sphere
participated with itself
yet not in a way
where it mixed with itself,
that this was distinct
from our further descended,
sensible sphere
where things participated with
one another but got mixed up
in the process—well,
maybe this albino man
was noting that the patriarchy
was a participatory mixing
that left unseemly cum stains—
"for lack of a better phrase!"—
on human experience.
Patriarchy, in the albino man’s mind,
should be annihilated
because of this sensible mixing up,
this putrid tainting
of what would be better off pure.
And taking your nice wife’s name
was a proper mode
of annihilation in response.
Aerith remarked that she knew
Cloud would inevitably bring
the discourse back to this poor chap
closing his tab,
but, just to be clear,
what Cloud was saying was that
this mixing that occurred
in the sensible realm was itself
just a separate projection—
just a lesser mode of projecting!
So while the material world
may have disgusted them,
perhaps moving the two toward
some sort of all-encompassing
conceptual annihilation,
and as much as the patriarchy
might have seemed putrid
to the albino husband at the bar
who looked to annihilate himself
by taking his nice wife’s last name,
it could be wise to consider
that these disgusting aggregates
were themselves simply derivative projections,
that they weren’t actual mixtures,
that they were just derivative emanations
as opposed to tattoos
of what they thought they despised.
Aerith was aware—
she wasn’t distressed about it,
but she knew this poor albino guy
would in time
take the brunt of it from Cloud.
Cloud questioned whether he didn’t deserve it?
Plus like they’d already implied—
they must to proceed
from the immanent
to the transcendent, no?
