New York, Scene Report

21 05 2026 morning

To speak at all is to speak against P — to “knife her in the abdomen,” as she put it.

Put on the leopard skin (Romanian), no, take off it… wear nothing for once (French), now get in the water… let your body dry off in the sun (Chinese) —

Life surprised itself into existence and life will surprise itself to death —

Christian amendment: life lived itself into existence and it will live itself to death —

To speak — a species-level responsibility. As long as one person is talking, you don’t have to —

She described herself as one of God’s missed appointments —

Otherworldly precarity —

22 05 2026 morning

To think is to think that you haven’t, as yet, thought —

To believe x: [1] to think x, and [2] to think you “have the right” to think x. Hence the thickness — hence the pleasure — of belief —

In other words, belief is the secularisation of the ontological argument.

Nietzsche: if the world had a goal, it could not fail to have been reached by now —¹

“If you were going to love him, you could not fail to have loved him by now; if you were going to message her, you could not fail to have messaged her by now; if she were going to bear your child, she could not have failed to have borne it by now; if I were going to do that” — message to employer — “I could not fail, by now, to have done it —”

Against which Beckett’s fail again, fail better is revealed as what it is: the most reactionary statement of all time —

Nation-states arise out of convenience; America arose out of desire.

23 05 2026 morning

What one sees in the eyes of a woman — basically in every case — is the possibility of absolute recognition, constitutively (i.e., non-deliberatively) withheld — what one sees in the eyes of a man is “eternal outflow of mitigated recognition” — proving that reproduction is prior to life — proving that seeing is a million miles downstream of divisibility — on the other hand, it’s possible to hear without wanting — to taste without wanting — to smell without wanting (easiest of all) — to touch — here it gets slightly complex —

My love language, disdain sufficient to out-leverage death, C cups —

Restraint is attractive because it implies consent, that is, the consent to be restrained, that is, ‘mental pliability’ (for which ‘physical pliability’ helplessly stands)—

Yes, but show me the day when pliability and consent are reconciled —

Kink, then, is “denial of contradiction made flesh.” (Normal sex moves denial of contradiction into the future, i.e., into conversation, i.e., into infinity) —

Kink thus recollects, by “the most embarrassing means possible,” the original biological relation (itself originally understood as “the most embarrassing thing possible.”)

The hand on the dildo is the hand on modernity’s brakes, or rather on the fantasy that it has some —

To have tied oneself up, to have been tied up by someone, and then I suppose a third — more erotic — option, in which one has been tied up “naturally” (e.g., 1963, a woman, having ejected from her hard-nosed forest surveillance jet, gets shibaried in the canopy, perhaps that was the origin of the whole thing, in what other situation does a woman fall head-first into a collection of ropes —

You have to rescue her, and will — promising situation in its own right — but first take five minutes, where’s the rush —

To assert power, throw it away. A king who ties himself to the bed in some wet basement, tells no one, waits to see what will happen —

Potluck shibari psychosis —

Spinoza —

23 05 2026 evening

Just as all buildings in Europe over thirty-nine foot seem terrified of the fact they exist, so it’s terrifying, in New York, to see a flower (as if it had been relocated against its will, enslaved) —

Art Exhibition

Carefully selected twenty-six-year-old women parading backwards and forwards in states of increasing undress, then redress, drifting between brazen and penitential, drifting ultimately towards unified nudity, the goal being: “to persuade a man to do something, literally anything…” —

“Floating around the room by means of air blasted up from underground, ten of us afloat on azure wings, steadying ourselves and then sinking, with the gradual release of pressure, down, nipple to mouth, as per a rocket returning vertically to earth, to some fixéd self-luxuriant point” —

“We’ve added more dates to our sold-out show… “

“We’ve added a hundred million more dates to our sold-out show…

“Despite a cumulative audience in excess of nine million, in a total of zero cases did we succeed in provoking what could rightly be called a creative response” —

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When a woman blushes, it’s an argument for the existence of God, when a man blushes, it’s an argument against the existence of God; when a bird stops singing, it’s an argument for the existence of God, when, two seconds later, the same bird starts singing again, it’s an argument against the existence of God. This last argument is irrefutable — unless you want to shoot a thousand virgins? In the head? Hm?

24 05 2026 morning

Church

To Jesus: “I, this worm, by some bizarre accident, just so happen to know you better than you know yourself — hence this cathedral, this service, this garment, this procedure, this song —”

Easy enough to believe that I have to believe — the belief following the have to — close enough to be confused with it —

But for my belief not to travel via the communal edge —

To believe that community is effective — i.e., causal — is “the irreligious as such” —

Man, the hermeneutical byproduct of God —

Most hypocritical of all statements; “I am a hypocrite—”

Then let these wretches cease from such a blasphemous perverseness, as to impute the darkness and dullness of their own minds to the scriptures of God, which are light itself!² Haha! I love you!

24 05 2026 afternoon

Poorer you get, less surprised you are by the existence of breasts — up to a point — but at a certain level of unrelenting poverty you “become a breast” — basically the idea of Buddhism, monasticism — “look at us, we are totally uninterested in breasts!” — yeah you have become one —

Empathetic sacrifice is not sacrifice — since the one for whom one sacrifices oneself has already been sacrificed —

Empathy: “orgasm, without having to do anything” —

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Call X, first thing she says is: “the unfairness of monsoons” —

Only love for her, for whom fair and unfair are the only dependable, perhaps even the only non-deceptive, categories (for whom, correlatively, the only word that bears shouting, screeching, if it comes to that, is liar — )

You’re not even from monsoon country, I say, makes no difference, she says, the monsoon curse is onto-national, once a given culture has been cursed once by a monsoon, it’s monsoon-cursed forever, everything around here [waves arm] is monsoon-cursed, inwardly and outwardly, and down the middle, especially down the middle, down the earth’s rainwet navel, she says, think about it, monsoon Hitler? You don’t hear about Hitler being driven around in a private monsoon —

Mao saw a Europe cowed by its architectural past and —

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To speak only to one person — i.e., to never repeat oneself — is that not the highest liberty? Hence prayer, qua repetition, means: “it is impossible that the one I am addressing is listening.” (Whoever improvises in prayer — whoever neglects to say only what they have said already — is either mad or lying)

24 05 2026 evening

When one’s friend dies, one immediately starts organising one’s thoughts, seeing what thoughts one has about “the matter at hand,” selecting the one which “suits,” silence, on the other hand, never gives up its rights —

One must abandon oneself entirely to whatever one has no rights over; to have rights over anything is enough to drive one to suicide, from boredom (i.e., “the state of having rights”), as Nietzsche would have known if, at any time, he’d had any rights over anything (went mad at precisely the point he became aware of the rights he had over himself) —

“Father, why have you forsaken me,” this sentence that Nietzsche was crucified by, that Nietzsche crucified in return, etc.

She described herself as God’s least effective remedy —

She described herself as God’s most private joke —

Empire State Building. Greatest artwork since Letters to Felice —

“Semaphore³
across the canyon wall
my prayer on every stone and tree

Let the last be beauty”

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1. The original: Wenn die Welt ein Ziel hätte, hätte sie es inzwischen erreicht [if the world had a goal, it would have reached it by now. I have a feeling that in the Late Notebooks version, it’s translated as it could not fail to have, but perhaps not.]

2. Luther

3. The lyrics are apparently:

Sun will fall
across the canyon wall
my prayer on every stone and tree

let the lass be beauty
all in beauty
all in beauty

Karen Dalton, covered here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXMTRwbzu84&list=RDXXMTRwbzu84&start_radio=1