1.
It is with profound ambivalence that we inform you of our feelings.
We read feelings as a victory of the particular over the universal.
We cannot read feelings as there are always feelings between feelings and under feelings.
If we read feelings they would be called readings. Feelings are what we feel.
Can we name feelings and do they respond to their name.
The name feeling suggests there is something to feel for here.
Does it give us hearing. Is it even here.
If it is not here is it even there.
Also if a feeling responds to a name does it correspond to the name.
Or is to respond to a name to correspond to it in part and in part to part from it.
Or is correspond what it takes two to, when not there to give one another hearing.
To give one another hearing we repeat once more with feeling.
Here are our rings taken off, here we lie to play, we play with feeling.
Where can we read if the name of the feeling we play with corresponds to the feeling.
2.
We ask if we feel the feelings that we call ours.
Feelings fork like the capillaries of a leaf in the forest.
We feel this forest is special. It is formed of numbers.
Between one tree and another there always is a third. This is why it is called forest.
As for number, is it so named because it is numb.
Between numb and numbest, there it is. Nonetheless it too is a limit.
No one has ever held or beheld a limit, uncoiled the leaf to roll out the life of its color all over the fingertips. That was a pleasing sentence.
The outlines of our feelings lie without the amens of our names.
If the forest is dense then the numbers are real.
If the numbers are real then the feeling is squeezed.
If the feeling is squeezed then the feeling is crushed.
If the feeling is crushed then the feeling is stifled.
If the feeling is stifled it touches no one.
If it touches no one there is no one feeling.
4.
We are trying to make sense of a feeling.
Making sense of a feeling is like building a boat from water.
Feeling is a field. It is uneven. None of its points is like any other.
A field of what. A field of being afield. Afield of what. Afield of being a field.
Or feeling is fieldwork. For it involves an other.
When it does not involve another, it is called fooling.
Even when it does involve another, it may still be called fooling.
It never fully involves another.
To fight against fooling we think of feeling as feeling about.
Feeling about means trying to touch the object of your feeling.
It is often done in the dark. We feel about when we cannot see and grasp.
How do we feel about each other.
We feel for each other. We feel for each other in the dark.
We feel for each other in the dark, trying make sense of the feeling.
Artwork by Anne and Eugene Timerman (detail)
