this and that

1.

The unexpected smell of solvent through
an open window, the hand that brushes past
a deep scratch on an old wooden desk,
a mistaken push and a large, white piece
of paper sailing off the edge. How it glides
across a slippery hardwood floor with the
whoosh of random acts that trigger memory.


2.

The alchemy of etching.
A warm waxy seal melted across the surface of a
thin copper plate, scratching lines through wax
to expose the metal underneath and then a slow
slide into nitric blue. An acid bath that bites
exposed metal into copper canyons that will
hold ink. Lifting out the plate and wiping off
the wax with solvent. A leather dauber pushing
warm ink into the incised lines, then wiping
surface ink away with tarlatin. The inked
plate on the press bed covered with a dampened
sheet of paper and sandwiched inbetween wool
blankets. The roll that embosses a mirror
image; editioning the plate with a series of
images that repeat. But each copy wiped slightly
different. A series with slight variations.
This is the repetition of difference that
originates in the fifteenth century and connects
one to an archival past. Each particular series
of events and the chance encounters inherent in
every step congeals in the specific smell of
etching ink on a particular day. It is felt in
the particular pull of the printing press,
each roll regulated to suit the specific
thickness of the paper and the plate. An
alchemy that does not translate accurately
into words.


3.

I find myself looking down into the cracks
and crevices of every decomposing surface
for those qualities of line and texture
that I can translate into marks etched across
a copper plate. Self-expression flows from this
unexpected chain of events; an exploration of
percepts without the need for words. And out
of each unspoken interval between a line drawn
and subsequently etched, out of that gap between
an event and its meaning, sense flows. This is
Deleuze's "becoming of thought", the thing
that causes one to think a different way.
To think beyond the either-or.


4.

Deleuze calls for such a proliferation of series
in his Logic of Sense as a way to etch new meaning
into the cracks and crevices of tradition
and as a way of thinking horizontally by
inhabiting the intervals between words and
subjects. Like rhizomatic lines of flight,
cracks and crevices grow laterally in nitric
acid. Not vertically downward through a metal
surface (into its depth), but laterally across
the surface, creating a line that is not sharp
or precise, but grows increasingly gradated
and fuzzy. Blurring boundaries, the etcher holds
vigil over an acid bath, watching the bubbles
of gas collect along the lines of exposed copper,
continuously brushing them away with a feather.
This is a printmaker's tradition that goes back
centuries, and serves to control the amount of
lateral etch that regulates the thickness of the
line. Likewise, one interacts with each new
series of chance encounters by etching each new
pattern of learning across particular habits of
mind. The boundary between an event and its
meaning signifies the place where everything
gets confused by language. To speak of an event
is to abstract its meaning into a series of
translations. Like variations on a print, its
meaning is found in an infinite regress. This
is the paradox that language creates, one that
Carroll illustrates with nonsensical dialogue
throughout his Alice adventures, and one that
Deleuze explores through each series of
discussions in his Logic of Sense.
The only way to speak about meaning is to
recognize that knowledge differs with each
new perspective and in each new context.
In summation, there is no totality.
To gain a sense of meaning, one can
re-construct self-perceptions, in part,
through a discovery of the interstitial
patterns caused by the evanescence of
unplanned events. Until words get in the
way of meaning, until language intervenes
to concoct the bubbling-up of
events-in-series within a particular context,
there is that characteristic whooosh.


5.

And oh.
The wind,
the night,
the words,
the flight.