Short Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories

At an art gallery in a mall in Chinatown, for a reading, the 6 '3, 60-something- or 40-something-year-old owner of the gallery is wearing a coat lined on the outside with mohair and on the inside with whatever sleeping bags are made of. Stuff like that. 

But really, in order to start: Always begin with interpretive categories. 

Within the genus person at the gallery, there are two species: bicep guys and not bicep guys. Guys, here, is neutered because it’s too hot inside for anything, including grammatical gender, to stay attached to anything else (nouns, categories) for too long. 

It’s so hot that anything can hang in the air and mingle with other things (humidity, breath, sweat, biceps). The temperature is approximately 90º inside and 40º outside. The coat is purple.

We are all in the process of dissecting layers of clothing off ourselves, except for the bicep guys, who are in the process of conversing with one another and feeling each others’ biceps. The not bicep guys are sequentially passing a layer or a drink or a bag to the person next to them, in order that they might take off another layer. The bicep guys had gotten this out of the way beforehand, already sleeveless—they had some bicep-feeling to do—so the not bicep guys were behind in dis-layering, which is, at this point, a prerequisite for anything to start. For anyone to start looking at anything or listening to anyone.

Everyone is frantic not to make a snail puddle of sweat, except perhaps the guys who are into that. 

Everyone, here, = not bicep guys since not everyone is a bicep guy, logically. We are simultaneously and politely and hastily performing this ritual of passing and removing a layer, until everyone is down to tank tops and not everyone has biceps to accompany them, though some in fact do, and no one has their own coat or bag or drink because it’s made its way to the other side of the room simultaneously and politely and hastily. 

The bicep guys are still touching each other’s biceps. Everyone else, the not bicep guys, remarks that this is an activity specific to, proper to, the species bicep guy. It’s theirs. 

No one really minds, though. On the contrary, we love that bicep guys have their biceps, and have each other, and do what they do. We watch them. It’s ours now.

At the same time, as entertaining as it is to watch them, one oughtn’t call it “delicious” or “delectable” because, as a rule, one should avoid the overuse of consumptive metaphors anyway.

The Dream Image

He enters my room, in which I am facing away from the door, in which I am facing towards a mirror. Like I said: he enters my room. And this startles me, [Fermata.] and I turn towards him [Fermata.]—the so-called “cultural turn.” The dream ends there.

Upon waking: I understand that he is in the next room. The understanding that he is in the next room and its accompanying sensations, which resonate just underneath my surface and leave me stranded there; that he may any day now, any moment now enter my room in just the same way and startle me, startles me.

More likely than not, some he will, someone at all will, enter my room, and more likely than not, I will be looking away. Someday I will be startled and [Fermata.] turn—the so-called “narrative turn”—towards him. [Fermata.] I will. Because of this I am startled [Fermata.] of how telling a dream is. Superimposable. That it might turn around, impose itself onto you, even if you made it, displaced from its home in your bed to its home in your bed. Maybe the promise of melodrama. 

What is the situation I found myself in? The quality of the image was bad; or, something occured before, which is always the case and, so, likely. Why did I, in being startled [Fermata.] in the act of shuddering, turn my head [Fermata.] away from the mirror—after all, where I could clearly see his face and mine. Turn— the so-called “affective turn”—towards his face alone? Maybe I would find something commensurate, as a pause. The image was bad, and that motion felt disastrous and mealy.