Claims

In the aftermath of Yom Kippur I just wanted to start with something light and not so defined, I worked on several ideas during this weekend, watched a couple of films and also rehearsal from good old American TV; you'd say it doesn't really match my personality but I guess you're mistaken. In between all my heavyweight I can't claim I'm a true intellectual for I sicken with a very high dose of self-infatuation and banality, in that order of ideas I've been very interested lately in finding those cores that make of me a perfect example of what a victim of post-modernism is, of what a fighter of post-modernism is. Somehow despite my acute sense of observation and diseased emotional condition I'm urged to explain those things and develop them as much as I can cope with them. Life isn't such safe ground, it's more like a stage and I seem to like it in some kind of way.

I walked through many different paths in the previous days and my just-about-to-come notes will reflect it all throughout, I'm still not satisfied with my English and my level of vocabulary as I still believe I'm very poor in expression.That will eventually be made up for. I don't think Isobel will ever be a coherent story neither a series of poems. I think in the end of the line Isobel will constitute a daring example of extra-linguistic writing, probably Isobel will be concluded with no more than a few words. I'm still overly wordy and intellectualoid to do that but a bit more of flow with the Logos will certainly show me the way. I'm convinced of it.

Why did I title this note as "claims"? Because in the future I want to be a lawyer, probably the only real profession I'm emotionally qualified for, despite my Tracian sense of morality which has been by a large extent discouraged by the situations I've been myself at during the last two years. I don't want just to be a lawyer but I want to open a trial against myself and to find myself guilty; let's not say guilty but rather unfit to be a writer, unfit to be a philologist.

I've attempted to write such a note several times and have royally failed, probably because my language is still not expressive enough or my general knowledge not sufficiently broad. Still I've come to the conclusion this note shouldn't be the first of my notes but rather the last and the discovery of the ground for my claims should constitute a fulfilling career and an art despite the fogs of the storm I'm walking through, which is simply called life. The life of an average young man. My claims are rather a process than an end.

Ironically enough everything I write in order to proof myself unlikely or just not suitable to be a writer is highly literary and everything I write in order to proof myself unlikely or just not suitable to be a writer is highly philological. People will certainly disagree with me but I pretend to be nothing but a lawyer and my client (myself) is paying the bucks for me to find him guilty. This open-ended case might last for a lifetime.

Perhaps I'm most likely not to be found unsuitable to be a writer for everything that is in the background behind my notes is fully representative of a writer's life and deeds. Yet I pretend as a talented lawyer to sell them an idea instead of the real facts. It's not my literary or intellectual talent what must disquality me from being a writer but rather my idea. The most powerful force right after my animal killer instinct.

I pretend to spend the rest of my life disqualifying myself as a writer, even if that demands attending law school for the honourable sake of my purpose. It's like being torn apart between two different worlds, no matter how much I yearn to return to the classrooms of St. Anne's and St. Claire's where my adolescence was spent among the Classics, I could perfectly forego that since I'm not interested in becoming a philologist or a writer by all means. A year ago I could constitute the perfect example of what a philologist is and actually I was one.

One day near the peak of my knowledge and just right before pursuing my way into the graduate school at Tel Aviv University I desisted, too I desisted from writing and ironically enough that boasted my literary talent to a point in which writing became something more than an obsession, a way of life. But the point here is, I started to find myself too ignorant and uninterested and emotionally unsuitable to become a philologist. My humanist attempt to start my readings all over again since the scratch proved nothing but the fact that I never really learnt anything and that my head is nothing but an empty canvas. I also desisted from writing my own personal manifesto (not Isobel's) in which I would lay out the principles of what I would call hyper-structural poetry, hyper-structuralism, a linguistic-literary school. Almost Semiotic school. I desisted from my conceptualization of what poetry should be like in our days and looking up into the future because I'm simply no writer at all. Even in the language I command the best (which is English) I'm unfit for writing.

I rather become a lawyer to support my claim. I will prove myself as an average man of the 21st century, a victim of post-modernism and gay American life, a victim of television and consumption, a victim of selfishness and individualism. I will not prove myself just unsuitable for being a writer but also innocent, for I'm nothing but a victim of my own generation, a victim of modern times. I've just been victimized by my own talent, just like gay men are victims of freedom constitutional acts and just like feminist women are victims of ultra-liberal working environment policies.

In the meantime there're many things I want to write about so I can finally conclude such note about me being unsuitable for being a writer, and one step before another note about the victims of post-modernism. Those notes above mentioned don't constitute real notes themselves but rather mechanically engineered processes that require a modular progression, simple processes. In the meantime I'm in need to delimit the thematic axes on which my writing will rest.

1. My influences
- The Classics above all (The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, Tragics, Early Mythology, Homer, Aeolic poetry, Schools of Thought)
- The Bible
- Romantic, Victorian, Symbolist and Existentalist Writers
- Theory of Chaos (as a methodological idea)
- The Protestant Ethics (in particular Calvin)

2. Thematic axes
- Gay American life
- American media and women
- Post-modernism
- Secular Judaism/ Israel-Diaspora Social Constructions
- Echoes of the Protestant Society, deconstruction of values, social cohesion
- Religion and women
- Archaic poetry
- Linguistic Schools
- Bible hexegesis
- Mythology
- Social Anthropology

3. What will I write (about) ?
- Isobel
- Thematic articles (see above)
- Poetry
- Personal Notes
- Legal framework of my claims (based on American law)
- Hyper-structural poetry (I've coined the term)
- Streams of Consciousness

4. How will I proceed to achieve all that?

In the meantime I've already re-started the Classics and the major texts on the subject such as Kerenyi, Jung, Otto and other scholars. I'm pursuing my grammar lessons from scratch and I pretend this work will conclude with some serious contribution to the field within the two subjects that interest me the most, Archaic poetry and mythology. You would wonder how I pretent to disqualify myself to be a philologist by factually becoming one, I must say as a vissionary person that it's probably the only way. The only way to disquality myself from this profession is by exploring it in depth. I will prove not only that I'm no philologist but that I'm emotionally unable to approach the subject better known as philology. I'm not ready to study philology.

I'll pursue investigations in other fields and recreate the real persona of Isobel by writing about her and thus, be able to disqualify myself as a writer as well. During my writings (like I did in my early writing of 2003) I'll explore in depth the shallowness of my generation and to which extent belonging to it disqualifies me from being the type of writer I'm expected to be. Yes, I'll be a writer and a philologist, only in order to prove my claims that I'm not either. Isobel requires even harder work than the philologist for her scope is pretty broad, it will include reviewing a few languages I attempted to learn in the past, complementary readings and the study of comparative linguistics.

Then I'll pursue some law studies but I'm not sure about how this point might come along, we'll eludicate better in the years to come. Attempting to be a philologist and to recreate Isobel might take me actually a whole lifetime, hence we might try some parallel kind of thing. I have no intention to be a lawyer whatsoever and it's one of the professions I most highly despise and would certainly regret, for I'm aware enough of the unfairness of this world and its lack of justice as to become the signifier of those predicaments. Again, I'm just being the thing I hate the most: An American. The Classics themselves will introduce me to the foundations of Western law, I'll take it from there.

I'll live my life, a writer's life to prove that in the end of the day I'm unsuitable for such life and that it would be too pretentious to say I'm emotionally built for that, my readings of Elliot have elucidated this point extenstively but I won't dig deep down into it for sometime.

Unfortunately I must say (sorrowfully) this note constitutes not only the first of my claims but also the manifesto of my artistic work, and shall hereinafter any doubt on my pursuances revert to this note. I also omitted one obvious point; I've got to learn some good English instead of this quasi-Chinese pidgin I'm writing in.

Since this is a blog this note shall perfectly constitute simply a brain trip, but let time decide. I might not live long enough to see all this coming through, or life might just take me on. I hope you all can understand me but these claims shall constitute the obsession of my life only the ground that I need to save me from myself, from my heavy weight, from my intellectual obsessions. In the case I don't live enough to see all this happening I will have been proven wrong and whoever will read these pages will wonder about my mental condition. But I'm not to blame, I was just born in the wrong generation yet lacking of enough emotional skills to cope with the life I was meant to live. If my last wish would be granted to me today, I would ask without hesitation to be able to sleep, slow down and die in the procrastination of post-modern life. I would just ask not to sympathize with female frustration.

Yet such pleasure wasn't granted to me, "I'm from beyond the grave and there's nothing I can do for you" in words of Rimabud the poet. Let me endeavour this ultimate purpose, for my life is a constant search, and whenever I reach an end I just step back and return to the search. Let my life be a process, not an end.

Ari