The Essay as Realm

[droqen]

Re: Elisa Gabbert's
"The Essay as Realm"

[droqen]

[AB]

[droqen]

"I'm making the place where thought is possible. I'm building A HOUSE to showcase THE TREE."

[droqen]

"I must have remembered the room so clearly because it's the room where I had an idea I've taken with me -- a thought I have re-thought, a thought that has remained mine.

I think this is important: memories and ideas happen in a place."

[droqen]

"The architect Christopher Alexander has written that "the experience of entering a building influences the way you feel inside the building." "If the transition is too abrupt there is no feeling of arrival.""

feeling of arrival. the feeling of being somewhere, in a place, has everything to do with the feeling of arriving there. and of leaving. without transition, there is no being. i am reminded of the part in Run and Jump when McDonald talks about transitions.

[droqen]

"by forming the intention to write on an idea or theme. . .I'm creating a site, a realm. . . . This place necessarily has structure, if it feels like a place. . . . the load-bearing elements, walls and beams and columns, . . . counteract quote-unquote nothing, so empty space becomes a place."

i am a butcher of sorts. slicing.
this forum, this place where i write for myself, is
a meat locker.
organs without the context of their appropriate bodies.
Gabbert has architected a space and i
when i have thoughts
pluck them out of her  garden
keeping them here
roots
leaves
bones
eyes
a liver.  here,

i am not a writer, only a keeper of things.
a hoarder.

[droqen]

in any case, there is the idea of these tools
for creating placeness out of nothing.

[droqen]

"the tether"

"We call attention to the tether whenever we make a transition. . . . Each break yanks the tether, as if the tree [the idea you're building your house or your essay around] is calling you back."

the tree is calling you back.
my imagination is captured
by the idea of the tether be-
ing yanked "whenever we
make a transition."

do i believe that? is it well
supported? is it, as a con-
cept, justified?

[droqen]

"You have to protect, with hyper-controlling vigilance, what is almost uncontrolled . . . complexity and chaos, its charismatic shimmer. . . the chaos that shimmers, the light that moves inside . . . Mood moving through structure . . . the energy that nearly escapes control."

[droqen]

how... frustrating. Gabbert's own writing illuminates what it lacks,
for me.
it isn't to say that i could do better
and certainly not that i am doing better here
(reminder that this writing is not writing).

"As I modify the house of my essay, all the corners and transitions and passageways start to create different wings, which have their own moods. They give the essay what we might call sub-realms. . . . the sub-realms must be distinct enough in shape or in mood or both that they could be named."

as i said, it is so frustrating to me, to think about Gabbert's essay
through the lens she presents with such clarity and find that i am
thinking:

this essay is not a realm, it has no sub-realms, and yet.

[droqen]

and yet information is being delivered to me.
i am honing my knives against each other in
excitement. it is ripe for the harvest.

[droqen]

"One part can become your metonymic key to the rest of the text, a mnemonic key to the whole memory."

(earlier) "It had, metonymically, come to stand as my memory for the whole interior. The memory was so strong; I cou ldn't believe it wasn't the first room in the tour."

[droqen]

"I'm trying to get the reader to feel the way I do"
"I want the reader to arrive at my thought and feel close to the way I felt when I thought it."
"I'm making the place where the thought is possible."
"I'm building a house to showcase the tree."

(emphasis mine: i missed "the" the first time)