Performing Science
Marie Garlock
Dr. Jules Odendahl-James
February 23, 2011
Click this link for piece below with full formatting in PDF. there is something beyond this time
The doctor feels this pressure to make a decision, to tell you a number,
because you’re right there in the room with them. Maybe.
They need to come up with an answer, to give you an answer.
But it’s not like ‘you’ stop after the doctor’s appointment – ‘you’ continue.
And the doctor continues too – {and so does what’s happening inside of you} –
Friend (age 25), whose father passed away last year from stage 4 leukemia/myloma.
Accept diagnosis, as law immutable.
Is this time? What does it do if it is true?
The fact is, I’m a thinking, free agent, with the ability to choose, how I interact with these facts – there’s that whole thing about ‘you’re not the boss a’ me’ …but it’s not a denial thing, it’s an exploration thing…I’m willing to see if there’s another way to see these facts.
- (Family Friend, 50), dealing with stage 4 cancer for 4.5 years
[Among several interview portions,
recently held,
which inspired the below]
—-
[Movement to accompany.
And various “doings” –
the physicality pulls it in from the abstract, as reeling without a ground,
this was seen as a “transition”piece perhaps
between other larger parts of an evening length
dance and installation work,
the physicalizing as context to “open the chasm” – into which we step]
the clock speaks
[a clock, sitting on clinician’s wall]
[a breath and gesture to open up the space]
[indicating, invitation, that this is the opening between secondhand and time
that into which we step,
physically, here for a moment between world and body – decision and volatility, the known, and, interacting, a concept of mutable dis/continuity ]
there is something beyond this time
between the secondhand
stopped short
a moment
I sit poised on a frame of concrete and blocked
fixed
frames
your doorway
between seven minutes
and counting
sharing curiosities
with the careful careless
breeze
of diagnoses
swept in
like a storm,
in a breath.
curving and carving apart
your bones
from their flesh
tumultuous,
my linear line
stopped at the fracture point
the fraction
of months and days
normalcy’s median, maze
….you found it rather tough to
navigate? to balance inculcate with propagate,
the healthy cells with their nemeses, found wanting
by these/your very premises
of divine and divination
of reify and recalculation
we don’t have it right
nor do we hope to
…your right is the mid section
between correct and death
when carcinogen carcinoma angiogenesis
is the term marker of time
instance immediate that is beyond itself
Constance onlooking, falls to fell and fell to falls beside itself
with surprise, shocked
and willful eyes
that fairfully observe
the witness
from the seat
of consciousness unconscious
curiosity
which does not hear (its) limits
but (its)
prophecy
that reverberating, time
is responsive,
recalcitrant
Divine
the excess interior
infolding at feedback loops the channel
red and parting
to reveal the ulterior
motive
who bears no markings of the rules
but only the cogency
to live
not defiant
just creative
the resonance exceeds
unit, united measurement
of
intensity unbound
of virtual autonomic antinomic
double function double body double time
(myth and symbol are not exhausted,
the signifier’s just not mine)
in moment of relations
between motion, and rest,
emergent
deleterious
material,
ethics
unreduced
ethereal
it is not a war
dialectic
but tension between
the released
and the venture
the unresolved
potential
knowing you shall die
how then shall you live
knowing you shall live
how then? ————————————–
To choose.
( I choose )
( to use my autonomy to maximize my hope )..
(February 20 and 21)
there is something beyond this time
in this
moment
there is,
dotted
like vein walls
and affect
pulsing through our frame
with the how
a current
(finding you against
it
it
swirls,
in the capillaries, cillial expanse
the wind, alone,
knows
your name
and calls to
the seaboard – neurons spread –
that it is yours to run
yours to fall or step or glean into
this stream of unbridled
phrase
the careful
planning it took,
all for this moment,
has become automatic,
(it is not even a thought)
the discursive (verge)
the biological urge
we are not afraid to die
but to live
all your Presence
has led us to anything
But the same.
How then shall we live,
knowing we will be Living?