"Home Is Where The Hearth Is"
So I entered Sloterdijk’s Academy without the knowledge of geometry,
but when approaching his home, walking past the surrounding cemetery,
He called to me, gave me an amulet key,
invited me in.
I walked past the atrium, approached his doorway and turned the key
portraits from the Titanic and Liebestod caught my eye
Music playing in the background, spherically lyrically spherical.
In his living quarters, I felt warm and I felt death
The fireplace was dancing with heat and destruction and life.
I viewed this plaque above his mantle with the phrase
home is where the hearth is.
Hark:
We have hearth
We have heart
We have heat
Then, with a wave of his hand
He tells me to have a seat
he tells me a story:
We heathens share and discard our bones…alone, alone again and again…until then
The bones surround us, ground us, frame us
searching no more for
Warm space…for it is here in this place.
Home is where the hearth is.
It is a womb with a view
Then
like an arrogant lover
After having me hang upon each elegant word,
He discards me, like a bone
Picking a new partner to dance with
As I exited his academy.
was written about an hour before the conversation.
My poetry or creative writing
My poetry or creative writing rarely comes from conscious thought. Two spaces access the necessary muse:
1: While telling the nightly “story minutes” to my son; I request five words from him and “magically” create a story from these words…I try this out sometimes with myself; just pick 5 words then see what story appears…definitely taps into the subconscious brew.
2: while I am commuting by car to work or back home, I practice singing and let the words flow, typically in a rhyming sea shanty, I suppose…this bringing forth the subconscious realm provides me with an awareness of what I cannot articulate in normal speech. I let loose a Sloterdijk Shanty the other day and it went from a lone abandoned ‘monstrous’ wild child (similar to Ayla in the Clan of the Cave Bear series) that comes to the ‘fire circle’ of another clan…at first she is seen as the monstrous outsider; then she was given a space within the fire circle, allowing her to be a part of the first ring or circle, thus a part of the family.
I do not fully understand what I meant, TBH. The discarding of the bones, forming bone circles, is Sloterdijk’s archive, possibly… his own collection in his human zoo. He took me in, extracted whatever he needed from me, then let me go, though I am still wandering about the grounds…
I had the thought while reading at some point that he is like an aloof lover. He seduces us with his prose (at least in Spheres) and once his ‘verbose vignette’ is finished, he goes on to something else, he retreats back into his study and becomes engrossed with his fat mind, not concerned about the reader.
Other notes on the significance of first two chapters:
As i have but only a surface level reading of this text, with little socio-political insight to contribute, I tend to embody the direction of his prose. I was a bit frustrated with myself during our conversation for not allowing myself the space to speak up about this embodiment and the relevance to the text and to the entire Globes project. My interpretation of Sloterdijk is far from correct, far from the public interpretation, but if we are to read the text without preconceived notions of what side Sloterdijk is on or the controversies he has caused or bubbles he has bursted, then we can open up to this slow crawl that is Spheres. Many say there is nothing new in Sloterdijk, just a rehash of old ideas with “cute anachronisms, and cascading neologisms” … I feel differently…
Home as where the hearth is was quite literal for me. I have a potbelly stove in this house purchased 2 years ago and it has been put to use quite frequently this year (didn’t touch it last year). About the same time I jumped into Globes last month, my wife, child and I had set up camp around this hearth, for we are humble and I am cheap and do not wish to have heating unit run 24/7…I sawed the wood with my new electric chainsaw and chopped the wood with an axe (this feminine fellas first foraging into the world of the “man”) and carried the wood into our abode. As I read “Vascular Memories” I was taken into the realm of the prehistoric life, the monstrous outside, the fire that brings together the individual, the couple, the family, the clan (in The Clan of the Cave Bear, one of the male leaders preserves the previous day’s embers as they nomadically go about the day.) and the most basic cult formation that occurs as they gather around the fire and later, the alchemical cookery that is abrewing.
Reighn and I shared stories that we normally would not have shared because of our separate paths, even within our own home (blame the phone!)…the hearth and the heat really brought out the heart. We shared coffee as she told me stories of the fishermen in the Philippines of her village who would awake at 4 AM and gather around the fire, sharing food and stories before setting sail. @achronon and I somewhat concluded that we are in separate sandboxes for good reason…our Venn diagrams of life, even the most connected of us, have only a few overlaps with the rest remaining in the monstrous space, no matter how good our intentions may be.
I have been on a search for the ultimate deep connection through deep conversations and deep understanding, as we all are here on some level. This has been my question guiding me in each action: How do we share a deep connection with anyone at any given time in any given space? How do we expand our hearth, forming one circle around the fire, including everyone that we can and not let anyone feel they are on the outside, in the second ring, the ring of cold, conspiring, conniving thought? I believe what Sloterdijk is doing is attempting to show us new metaphors, in a new language. I mentioned the text is not long enough for what I would like for it to achieve…which is a stepping away from the feeling that we have the answers or that we need immediate answers to our problems, a stepping away from that which lay before us, which is life. This slow thinking from within our own experience is what I believe will save the world. This is where the beauty is found, the playful love of life that is missing from politics and media and public versions of life. It can be found in small groups of us, but as a whole, we are searching in all the wrong places.