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Yesterday I went in seach. Of some undetermined thing.
To move beyond the ordinary. Found a poem lined up
along a storefront sill. Each black plastic sentence
stuffed inside a mason jar. Ten, separately submerged
in liquid. And although I liked the look (at least
enough to stop), it was the colour that appealed.
A floating text submerged within a pthalo pool of blue.
To slowly sink the eyes inside syllabic space.
Its silence safely capped within. I did not read each
line, but stopped as if I might. And wished there was
a book that I could hold. To drag my fingers down a
page. Across the ink of all those thoughts. To touch
the singular event of letters left, that no one else
would read like me.

Beside that liquid poem, a store was selling white.
White soaps and linens. Wrought iron, painted white
and hung along brick walls. White lampshades
punctuated by white fabric roses bordering their
rims. I told the salesgirl how much I preferred
the clean white sweep of unencumbered shades,
the curvilinear contour of soft light seeping
through uninterupted silk. And in response,
she handed me her (white) card.

I preferred E.'s tiny storefront space further down
the street. Positioned exactly in the middle of a local
antique district, where, on any given day, her collie's
chin rests upon her feet. Her waist-long hair and
optimistic smile. But she wasn't there. So I wandered
sideways down cluttered aisles. Spaces much too
narrow for her wheelchair to fit. How this might force
a customer to shout from the back of the store.
Erasing pretense.

I went next door. To speak with F the painter in his
gallery. He was just about to brush the inaugural stroke
across his next new canvas when I walked in. Something
abstract, he declared. His countless paintings lined up
along the floor. Some not so good. I pointed to a
monochromatic piece depicting a slice of something more.
Nothing but sand and sky with two feet planted on the
water's edge. Truncated just below the knees. Perhaps a
female form but deliberately ambiguous. And vaguely
reminiscent of Coleville's work. After discussing it,
he asked if I would consider placing a ceramic tea pot
in his gallery. I laughed. Explaining that mine are not
functional. And much too large for his space (also not
yet willing to let them go). But he ignored my comments.
Placing both hands in the air, to suggest how one would
fit in his front window.

"But one at least 24 inches tall. Okay? I take 40 per cent.
The going rate. It's fair." To frame his paintings with
something sculptural, something unusual, he added.
I said I'd think about it. Knowing that I didn't really
want them there. That the making of those tea pot forms
served a certain catharsis right after my father's death.
And that those objects needed to remain with me. Vessels
containing something unnamable that perhaps I wasn't
quite yet finished with. After stating this, he replied.
"One day, you will run out of space. Meanwhile, perhaps
they have something to convey to someone else." I left,
wondering why anyone would deliberately chose to share
such personal thoughts with strangers. To have such
intimate ideas objectified. Art for Public Spaces.
What a curious compulsion. And why?

Meanwhile. Moments earlier.

While in E.'s store, I uncovered a small picture amidst
the clutter. The image of a Parisienne estate. Poorly
framed and at first glance, a bad reprint of some obscure
painting by a seemingly unnotable artist. Still. I asked
if I could remove it from the frame. But the nails were
too tightly wedged into the wood. So I purchased it.
But back at home, beneath the frame, I uncovered a pencilled
signature right below the plate mark. A plate mark. And a
handwritten title, reading "Maison de Mme Roland" scribbled
in the lower left hand corner. An oil painted monoprint.
An original piece. I wondered how old it was. What compelled
the artist to paint it, to pull it off a plate. Was it meant
for someone else? Or was it just the languid remainder of
some random autumn afternoon spent beside a riverbank,
sketching an estate?

Non semiotic communication.

Derrida writes an entire overview of his philosophy of
language in chapter one. Of Grammatology. Systematically
expands upon these ideas throughout the remainder of this
career. Ideas that ground his later writings. And if one
is aware of his Judaic-Algerian World War II childhood,
one is able to read his early theories of language
differently. With a view to understanding why his later
writings evolve into political issues and ethical concerns.
By first glimpsing early Derridean writings, his mature work
unfolds differently for the reader as a philosophical
oeuvre that is always autobiographical. And always
distills back to the notion of language.
Back to asking what it is.

When D speaks of epochs, he means the span of Western
history. That indetermiate moment in time, when Greek
philosophy is born and unfolds into the here and now.
Some linguists suggest that Greek philosophy is only
born by the invention of alphabetic writing,
twenty five hundred years ago. That governing this
epoch is (his sense of) logocentrism. All of Western
intellectual thought viewed as a logo-centric epoch.

In 1971, JD writes an essay entitled Signature Event Context.
He examines (the meaning of) the word communication.
Asking this. Is the concept that corresponds to this word
communicable? Does the word communication actually
communicate a determinate content? An identifiable meaning?
Does it have a describable value? His question has obvious
implications for educators who build theory-into-practice by
assuming that language disseminates common understanding.
To pose this question, D anticipates the meaning of
communication by first noting that he has been restricted
by its predeterminate meaning. By the fact that communication
is traditionally viewed as a vehicle, as a means of transport,
as a transitional medium with a unified meaning.
By these metaphors.

But if the word communication houses many meanings, if its
plurality is not reducible, one cannot justify defining it
as the transmission of meaning (even if we could agree
upon the meaning of the words 'transmission', 'meaning',
etc., that make up its definition). Instead, the word
itself opens up a semantic domain that does not limit
itself to semantics, semiotics or even to linguistics.

But forget that Chinese Box.
It is why any artist paints.
To move beyond mine-fields-of-meaning-lost-in-words.
Past linguistic labyrinths.

The word communication also designates non semiotic
movements. That one can communicate or transmit a movement,
a tremor, a force or a shock. Like the gesture of F's hands.
To speak of remote places in terms of how they communicate
with each other through a passage, a bridge or an opening.
Like shouting through the wall of pretense from the back
end of a store. More metaphors. In this sense, what gets
communicated or transmitted does not involve phenomena
of meaning (or signification) since there is no semantic
or conceptual content, no semiotic operation or linguistic
exchange. This is why one can say that a painting
communicates (non-semiotically).

The non semiotic meaning of the word communication.
To transport sense.
To disseminate non semiotic moments from a day.
To move beyond mere words.
By floating letters in blue jars and painting images
on plates that, years later, write new meaning nonetheless.
And by making tea pots that (still) contain my father's eyes.