Since all knowledge is a knowledge of sense-objects, truth is simply the correspondence of our impressions to things. How are we to know whether our ideas are correct copies of things? How do we distinguish between reality and imagination, dreams, or illusions? What is the criterion of truth? It cannot lie in concepts, since they are of our own making. Nothing is true save sense impressions, and therefore the criterion of truth must lie in sensation itself. It cannot be in thought, but must be in feeling. Real objects, said the Stoics, produce in us an intense feeling, or conviction, of their reality. The strength and vividness of the image distinguish these real perceptions from a dream or fancy. Hence the sole criterion of truth is this striking conviction, whereby the real forces itself upon our consciousness, and will not be denied. There is, thus, no universally grounded criterion of truth. It is based, not on reason, but on feeling.”
i know the way that you look at me
is the way that you look at some,
and the way that you look at those
that you find you like like that,
like me, like this,
but when you find me there, here,
like this, like that
what will it be like, feel like?
Because i have been
preparing and building
and making for it.
Memory and remembrance are different. Memory is the ability to record information about things and recall them later. Remembrance is the act of remembering; a holding in mind, or bringing to mind; a recollection. Bergson calls it “pure perception,” where knowledge of a thing takes place within the thing it represents. Matter is images, perception is attached to the real, and the image of a material thing becomes a representation.
You are now a representation,
a material thing that has since crossed over.
The image that I keep,
that now represents,
is the image of your body
attached to mine.
A moment of multiplicity,
where divisions occur in fits
and your organs are aligned with mine.
We were alive together.
We shared a time of being-aliveness,
conjoined like little snakes on dissenting paths.
{...} though we cannot know these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in a position at least to think them as things in themselves; otherwise we should be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without anything that appears. -Kant
——-
Molecular bits keep disposing themselves in my bones.
Always already in constant interchange,
radical openness causes trouble,
but what other option is there?
You care enough to tell me you care about me
but not enough to behave as such.
The mountains in this town surround us
and we can’t see outside.
We’re inside the object
and the breathing is thin.