Subject to All

Every word on this page has a story. They are all historically and grammatically conditioned within each interpreter's narrative to be an effect and then a cause in the chain of meaning. Words can mean an infinite number of things because of the infinite number of possible contexts in which they could be spoken or heard. The first time somebody gave me this account for the phenomenon of misunderstanding, there was a feeling of betrayal. There was a sense in which everything that I had come to be so sure of through this whorish medium of communication called language was suddenly unveiled as a beautiful but artificial utopian world, and I was Truman. I had experienced my good morning, good afternoon, and goodnight with the myth of metaphysics. The fact that my ability to know to what degree my understanding participated in reality was so culturally conditioned and subjective refused to let me pass through the gates of dogmatic philosophy, assuring me that the red-lettered paper wizard had no more of an understanding of the way things really were than I did.

I was confused. I misunderstood, and subsequently experienced what some would call "enlightenment", and others "the event of understanding." I realized that I had completely objectified myself in relation to reality. I thought that since I knew that I had masterly crafted a correct understanding of the mechanism of truth, I could then look over the harvest fields of human minds entranced by the idea that truth could be known at all. I was changed by this thought: I am a subject, and I am subject. I am a subject in the grammatical sense, one who produces an act as an intention of will, who lays bare his existence to the world regardless of public scrutiny, and who communicates meaning from himself to another subject. Also, I am subject to language, culture, and time, which does not prohibit me from participation in real knowledge, but rather, allows for an infinite number of possible intersections between two horizons: my mind, and all of existence! I am subject to my surroundings, and if it were not so, I am not convinced that beauty would exist. If it were not so, I am not convinced that meaning would exist. If it were not so, I am not convinced that I would exist. My hope for this blog is to, just as Bon Iver seeks to do, not simply express a feeling, but communicate one. I hope to paint some great horizons. I am subject.