my speaking here
of a maybe-not-quite-an-answer
a response-of-possibility
a thinking-through
says more probably
about who i am
and where my head is at
than anything else
but i don’t know
(perhaps can’t know)
any other way to do it
because i don’t know what i’m doing
i don’t know what i’m doing
i don’t know what i’m doing
how is it
that the greater-than-human
(this unimaginable
unknowable whatness
stretched out
across a snowy field
from an old farmhouse
to a line of trees
that form the edge
of a darker wood)
is illuminated
lit up like the brightest
of all possible stars
in the darkest
of all possible nights
by the glowing ember of
your Mad heart
your Mad soul
your Mad life
i don’t think it’s meant to be
a simple question.
questions, of course
are more important than answers.
answers mean you’re done
finished with it
(whatever it-ness is)
completed.
questions, instead
are about
always-coming-to-know
growth and learning
striving and grasping for
that which is never quite
can’t possibly be
in reach.
and the answer
to the questions
is not to simplify
because the world is not simple
but to complexify
because only in holy complexity
outside monocropping
is the world whole
the answer is not in method.
method is the false hope.
the handle of epistemology
(the method
of knowing
how we know what we know)
leaves out ontology.
simply being.
just shoveling snow.
just slicing carrots.
just hauling water.
knowing can never be separate from being.
knowing, i am.
being, i know.
do; be. do-be-do.
know; be. do. know-be-know-be-do-be.
onto-epistemology.
stepping on from method
means, yes,
stepping away from autoethnography.
which does not mean moving on from the poetic
or from story
(stories, the best ones,
are never far from the self).
autoethnography was the first step.
but only the first.
it’s not the final step.
not the last step.
there’s another step
(and likely more beyond that).
instead of method
(and this is the hardest part)
(the part that is hardest to hold)
(because you can’t
it’s like holding water)
start from theory.
theory will tell you what to do.
what to be. know. do.
this is the place
of the post-qualitative.
a place that Patti and Betty
(Lather and St. Pierre)
two extraordinary feminists
have led me to.
it is no place.
no where.
there is no here
here.
an always-coming-to-know
and
never-quite-getting-there.
it is a going
a traveling
a stepping
not a stopping
(by woods on a snowy or any other evening).
Polonius said
that there is Method
in Hamlet’s Madness.
when i write Method
i mean something more
like the work of Stanislavski
than that of Shakespeare.
Madness IS the Method
(but really
a post-qualitative anti-method)
through which the Mad bodymind
can come to knowbedo
the greater-than-human
(though here i want to stop
and suggest that it’s not
a greater-than-human
but rather the collective all-persons
that human-persons have forgotten
that they are part of
equal to
one of
with-alongside-in)
Madness is the anti-method
through which we
crazy muthuhfuckas
can come to reclaim
and re-member
our place with the
personhood of pine trees.
the despair
desperation of separation
disparate separate degenerate
of being apart
from being a part
of that which has always been whole
until the thing inside us
(the thing that’s REALLY crazy)
tore us apart
from the water people, the stone people, the star people, the tree people
of which we’re all maid-made.
(i’ve said else-when
that this thing inside us
that tears us apart
is the thing we do
of making taxonomies
which at the root of creating hierarchies
a function of our start on the savannahs
to know predator and prey
before we get eaten
and who we will eat)
make a Mad theory
a theory of Madness
a pissed-off anti-method
about the desperation
about being pulled apart
from our sisters and mother
start from Mad theory
create Mad theory
make Mad theory
tell Mad theory
(let it be your tell)
be Mad theory
be the best holy Mad mind of your generation
(“burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night… who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated… because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas”)
write your Mad theory
in a story-pome
and act (it) out
regenerate
Phil Smith 