Here’s something I’ve learned recently: Always look beautiful.

This is because:

1. Those other people who are all wrapped up in their own trips will think you’re some kind of angelic being, and will just fall in line.
2. Those other people who are tuned in will recognize that you’re not actually faking it and that you’re actually really awesome.

This is not about showing off, performing, flaunting, or being conceited or narcissistic. Flaunting is bad if it’s just prancing around like a pop starlet, but it’s good if you’re just showing off what you’ve got.

It’ll get you where you need to be, and you’ll be sharing your beauty with the world while you’re at it.

After all, nobody likes a shy peacock.

i wonder whose rain drove it out of the warm, safe mud.

my vision flips, unwillingly, and i'm looking  up at the Observer, angry and afraid.

my vision flips again, willingly, and i smile at the wretched creature.

i consider making it rain again.

The light grows warm, and differences glow
Spaces stretch between trackside flashes–glimmer, glow, glint, and flash again–
Memories ricochet off passing images–a voice, a glimpse, a brief passage, now and then–
What I see flying by window is mine and mine alone, you have your own net of edges

The forest is thick here, the spaces between trees more subtle than at home
Differences here align with possibilities, not disconnection
Maybe the fog holds it together
…..The fog that blew it all apart
Droplets forgive: they refract, not reflect
…..I’ve given up on reflection
…..Mirrors lie

It’s a simple trick, but hard to pull off
…..A trick of vision
……….A trick of memory
To see through the mist now settling over the green ground
…..Becoming dew
There’s connection where loss once was
…..Things fall apart, then come back together

Something about a lost connection, a memory flashes by:
The space between here and then
Held open by the pressure of millions of tiny droplets

I woke up today on the train in the Pennsylvania fog
I remember this cold mist, now golden
…..And a time when it didn’t feel so friendly
And now for my next trick…

Red rover, red rover, send you right over
The rules just remind us we’re playing a game
They’re meant to be broken, but arms are not
So hold the girl’s hand gingerly
Since you’re running right over
And you’re unlikely to stop

Let it slide
And we can keep playing
Hold too tight
And someone’s going to the principal’s office

The space between games is a tricky one
Stay close
I wouldn’t want to lose you

Intent on moving outward
It all starts with sense
About to try this ego trip
Since I’m tired of being alone

A line, a dash, a color
Just makes an impression, lasting the length of a glimpse
Then it’s something
…..Lines connect, dashes overlap, colors blend and separate
…..Suddenly I’m surrounded by things
Then things connect, assembled together into a space
…..Spaces connect, and overlap, then blend and separate
…..Then I’m in a space, a point in spaces
What’s my location, it asks, What’s our destination?

The conductor passes, but doesn’t stop, I know he doesn’t care
The highway seems slower, sadder from the train
I’m tired of being alone
I’ll get my bags in New York City

There’s a long way to go, and I’m thinking about power
Will there be enough?
What kind of connection will it be?

Passengers crawl on their feet, tracks move forward but forces pull us to the side
All that momentum, and occasional announcements
Is a destination necessary?
Smoke break one hour and a half
For now, back to your cages
Aren’t you tired of being alone?

I know I shouldn’t feel so lonely when I’m by myself
I know I shouldn’t feel so lonely when I’m with you
Why bother knowing when all you need is momentum

The yard says Santa Fe but I know I’m in Iowa.
I remember that out here words are not to be trusted
They slide over the surface of things, and surfaces are everywhere
We’re looking for depth, these days
We’re tired of being alone.

Up down up down, you really like the highs and lows, don’t you, baby?
God smiled at me, and was amazed
I’d never before seen such a thing
Frozen in ecstatic terror, I could do nothing to stop my words
It’s really hard, I cried, it’s too bright, I can’t look

I smiled, knowing that words were just sounds
Lights and flashes
Words are fireworks, bright and beautiful but they’re just decoration
The real show happens in your chest
You can find me between the speakers
With everybody, you guys, hey there, welcome home
We’re all tired of being alone.

I can’t wait to see you again
Maybe we can get some of these threads tied together
Since we’re still a little loose,
but definitely
……….definitely
……………definitely
Writing

The philosopher must be sufficiently perverse to play the game of truth and error badly: this perversity, which operates in paradoxes, allows him to escape the grasp of categories. But aside from this, he must be sufficiently ‘ill-humored’ to persist in his confrontation with stupidity, to remain motionless to the point of stupefaction in order to approach it successfully and mime it, to let it slowly grow within himself…and to await, in the always unpredictable conclusion to this elaborate preparation, the shock of difference.

– Michel Foucault, “Theatrum Philosophicum” (1977)

The pain, the cut in his scalp, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs.  It flashed on him instantly that he didn’t hate the kitchen cabinet: he hated his wife, his two daughters, his whole house, the back yard with its power mower, the garage, the radiant heating system, the front yard, the fence, the whole fucking place and everyone in it…But in this dark world where he now dwelt, ugly things and surprising things and once in a long while a tiny wondrous thing spilled out at him constantly; he could count on nothing.

– Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (1977/1991)

How can ethnography achieve “the effect of the real” (Barthes 1989; Gallagher & Greenblatt 2000)?  Is it enough simply to expand our definition of the field, to allow (post)modernity to redefine our object of study as one that is not limited to particular temporal and geographic sites?  Or is something more required?  If “realism” need not rely on representation, then what might a non-representational realism look like?

For Deleuze, the alternative to the logic of representation is the “logic of sense” (Deleuze 1990).  The logic of representation is what we typically refer to when we speak of Platonism, and is the ontological distinction between bodies and ideas, substance and form, copy and model.  This is the order of the “limited.”  It is the order of that which stays still, of the present, of adjectives and nouns, and of the fixed relationship between what gives shape and what takes shape.

The logic of sense, however, exceeds and defines the logic of representation.  It is the distinction between what falls within the logic of representation and that which does not, between the real and the simulacrum.  This is the order of the unlimited: not without end but without limitation.  It is the disorder of that which resists staying still, of the past and the future, of verbs and the infinitive.  The logic of sense puts static categories and states of being in opposition to possibilities and “rebel becomings” (2).

Deleuze finds within Platonism the key to subverting it—the logic of sense destabilizes and brings into focus the logic of representation by placing it in irreducible contrast with that which exceeds it.  In Stoic terminology, the distinction between what falls within the logic of representation and what falls outside it is the difference between “things” and “events.”  In Deleuze’s reading, everything contained within the logic of representation are “things,” while everything that exceeds that logic are “events.”  Forms, ideas, models, and categories are granted the same ontological status as substances, states, objects, and bodies—they are all things, static and defined.  Events, on the other hand, resist definition and do not belong to the logic of representation.  They are the effects of things coming together and moving apart, and have either already happened or are yet to happen.  They are “becoming[s] whose characteristic is to elude the present” (1).

Events happen “at the limit” or “on the surface” of things in that they are the effect of an impact or collision, something that happens when the order of representation is perturbed or rendered inadequate.  They are felt as surprising moments, as feelings of uncertainty, as affects that resist our attempts to categorize and delimit them.  Sense, then, is “the thin film at the limit of things and words” (31).  It is what happens. The logic of sense is the (dis)order produced by our attempts to make sense out of the contradiction between the dissonance of events and the order of things.

This juxtaposition of sense and representation—or, more precisely, this subsumption of the logic of representation under or within the logic of sense—and the rethinking of language that it entails has potentially dramatic consequences for how we think about the writing of culture.  If moving away from representation involves collapsing the distinction between the material and the ideal, then what is the ethnos in ethnography?  If what matters is not the order we impose on the world but how we make sense out of it, what kinds of narrative tools will allow us to call attention to this process of sense-making?  Can language be used to explore its own nebulous boundaries?

Language attempts to impose static categories on things, but it is consistently unable to do so—the moment we attempt to describe something, to capture it in words, we find that it is no longer what it was before we attempted to name it.  The significance of language, and therefore of culture, does not reside in the stable relationship between what we say and what we are referring to; rather, it resides in the play between them.  “It is language which fixes the limits (the moment, for example, at which the excess begins), but it is language as well which transcends the limits and restores them to the infinite equivalence of an unlimited becoming.”  To consign language to the order of representation is to ignore its capacity to both fix and transcend limits.

When we speak of anthropology, who is this anthropos and what logoi does it inhabit?  Paul Rabinow sees us as living at the intersection of multiple and heterogeneous rationalities, each of which presents us with a unique set of problems and a unique way of engaging with ourselves and with the world.  “The act of thinking,” he writes, “is an act of modal transformation from the constative to the subjunctive.  From the singular to the multiple.  From the necessary to the contingent” (Rabinow 2003: 19).

Thought is the act of loosening the grasp of categories and rationalities.  It is a matter of identifying the assemblages of things and events that come together in particular times and in particular places, and which give form to the experience of the contemporary.  For Rabinow, ethnography is not about creating a faithful representation of the real, but rather about using language to hold it still for long enough to see what is happening.

As Foucault wrote in his 1970 review of Deleuze’s work, to speak in terms of sense and events is to see the real not as a static and predictable system of causes and effects but as something very different, something that resists our attempts to constrain it within a representational framework.  “Let us imagine a stitched causality: as bodies collide, mingle, and suffer, they create events on their surfaces, events that are without thickness, mixture, or passion; for this reason, they can no longer be causes” (Foucault 1977: 173).  Instead, the reality of the logic of sense is a space of shifting assemblages held together by “a more complex logic” than that of cause and effect, signified and sign, form and substance (173).

What is important for the philosopher—and, it would seem, for the ethnographer—is to be attentive to this uncertain excess of things and events in such a way that “the shock of difference,” when it happens, prompts us not to retreat into the darkness of the cave but to continue writing.

***

• Barthes, R. (1989). The rustle of language. Trans. R. Howard. Berkeley, University of California Press.

• Deleuze, G. (1990). The logic of sense. Ed. C. V. Boundas, Trans. M. Lester and C. Stivale. New York, Columbia University Press.

• Dick, P. K. (1991). A scanner darkly. New York, Vintage Books.

• Foucault, M. (1977). “Theatrum philosophicum.” Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected essays and interviews. Trans. D. F. Bouchard. Ithaca, Cornell University Press.

• Gallagher, C. & Greenblatt, S. (2000). Practicing new historicism. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

• Rabinow, P. (2003). Anthropos today: Reflections on modern equipment. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

There seems to be a misunderstanding here.  Drugs are tools, technologies of the self, material objects that allow individuals to work on their bodies and minds in certain ways.  Of course, they haven’t always been seen in this way, and they certainly haven’t always been available to the degree or in the same way as they are today.  Today, drugs are everywhere and individuals are at the same time encouraged to use them and taught to fear them.

But to say that drugs are tools is not to claim that they’re just like hammers, ladders, crock pots, rakes, combine harvesters, toothbrushes, keyboards, paper, or ankle braces.  Drugs are not necessarily benign.  In fact, they are usually quite dangerous and many drugs just seem to demand that we use them irresponsibly.  Of course, hammers, ladders, crockpots, and toothbrushes have their own dangers, but for the purposes of most situations they are relatively harmless.

It will not do to think of drugs as tools in the sense of benign, stationary-until-picked-up, unproblematic devices for getting done what we want to get done.  When I say that drugs are tools, I do not always have in mind forks or ballpoint pens or barbecues, but rather something far more nefarious and uncertain.

To see drugs as tools is not to make them easier to deal with, not to somehow justify their (unexamined) use.  Bombs are tools, too.

A relatively young man hobbles, in good spirits, into a medical marijuana cooperative.  He’s proud of having made it to the co-op today, his new aluminum cane giving him the style, confidence, and stability to find new places to interrogate, explore, and (yes) even to obtain his medicine.  And mirrored windows notwithstanding, this place showed promise: a quiet waiting room, clear instructions for how to fill out the new patient form, and an elegant display of free stickers and fliers.  Maybe at one point these publications were to be found only in head shops and sex toy emporiums, but (today at least) they were just another glossy mound of magazines in just another doctor’s office.

The rest is pretty typical of cooperative practice these days.  The usual forms, the usual friendly-and-knowing eye contact with the man behind the desk, the usual minute of tense conversation while the patient is verified over the internet, the usual moment of unsurprised relief when the clearance is granted and the unmistakable scent of lovingly grown hydroponic cannabis oozes out the open door.

This, the young man told himself, is what a cooperative should look like: a clean glass counter, a well-stocked fridge in the corner, and row after row of tall glass jars containing well-pruned flowers of every shape and shade.  And let’s not forget the genial capped fellow behind the counter.  It’s a good situation.

“What can I get for you?  You’re definitely one of my more legitimate patients–do you mind me asking what the problem is?” He smiled, a look of real compassion of the kind you’d expect in a place like this, and pointed with a single finger at the aluminum cane.

If the patient had had just one more moment to think, one more second to remember where he was and what he was doing in this place, his words would have come out very differently.  But the question was honest, and the genuine look of care on the pharmacist’s face pulled him out of whatever cleverly constructed rhetorical response might have emerged instead.  Instead, he responded thusly:

“Actually, it has nothing to do with this,” gesturing briskly with his free hand to the wavering prosthetic.  “Actually, I’m looking for something good for anxiety and sometimes depression: a hybrid certainly, but indica-dominant.”

But as his eyes and nose surveyed the selection, the fellow’s words continued to echo in the young man’s brain: “You’re definitely one of my more legitimate patients.”  Never before had a human being in this man’s position hailed him in this way.  Not once had a pharmacist, a bartender, a drug store cashier, a hospital administrative assistant, or a drug dealer ever asked what it was that ailed him.  That had always been, if not exactly beside the point, but certainly silent in transactions like this.  The uses to which drugs–or, for that matter, the cane on which our protagonist now leaned–would be put were always a powerfully present absence in such places.

In the politics of psychopharmacology, some of the bad guys are good and some of the good guys are bad.  All is up for grabs when personal technology changes hands in the high-stakes game of drug politics, a more heterogeneous field than we may think.  Articulating the stakes of a politics of psychopharmacology is as much for the benefit of those who resist dominant regimes as for those who refuse to hear what other voices have to say.

Compassion, too, is a fluctuating field.  Not all care is created equal.  A revolution can be done wrong.  These are the thoughts that the young man should have been thinking as he calculated the differences between Cotton Candy Headband, Green Crack, Hindu Kush, and Bubblegum Skunk.  But he was too placed, to certain of his surroundings, too confident that in this liminal space all words spoken would be spoken from the side of Truth.

And that’s when the jolly fellow behind the counter nodded his head and smiled.  “Anxiety, huh?  I know just what you mean: that’s what I use it for.”

“Habit” and “inhabit” have more than a passing affinity.  To remember that we live in a space is to remember that certain habits are encouraged and others are not.  Driving an automobile, we might say that we are “encouraged” to drive on a certain side of the road. We might even say that we are “in the habit” of driving on one side or the other.  But it is hard to imagine that one who was not in the habit of driving on the appropriate side of the road would be at it for very long.  When we live in a space, a space that we design in cooperation with others, there is a fine line between habit and compulsion, its evil twin.

An unfolding entanglement of reasons, immense and cloudlike in its scope and organization, is suddenly and without trepidation quietly brought together in a single point.  It dissolves into fragments whatever it touches, slicing things into bits and allowing them to fall gently into neatly arranged stacks.  This-is, this-is-not, this-could-be, this-will-be.  The groping feeling is gone, and it is no longer necessary to wonder if a thought will attach to its object or simply fall away.  Thoughts are sticky now, and what was once a hesitant touch is now (though only for a short time) a confident incision.  Things just get done; it just works.

There is a compatibility with boxes, inscriptions, categories, lines, points, things, and surfaces that was not there before.  It has the feeling of what-should-be.  It has the feeling of something I should have already been doing.  It has the feeling of being restored to a state that I was never in to begin with.  It has the feeling of being elegantly and invisibly persuaded that all is as it should be.  It has the feeling of truth.

Perhaps there are other options, other ways of negotiating this line between what-must-be-done and what-it-is-possible-to-do.  No solution is a solution for very long, and no problem is ever really fully solved.  We need to be strategic in our choices, and get comfortable moving between habits and opportunities.  Even though thought may, for a time, “just work,” it will not do so forever.