⩩ 2
The stagestranger represents what is contrary to expectation; he stands in, he barges in for what is against the grain, what is out of place. And this distinction is worth examining. On the one hand, you have what goes with the grain, according to plan, what happens in order, under orders. On the other hand, you have what happens against the grain, outside the plan, apart from or contrary to orders. With the grain is usual, habitual, experientially smooth, while against the grain is unusual, original, a rupture. A rupture of some kind: a disruption, an eruption, an interruption, — choose your own prefix. It is a wound, a puncture, and the stagestranger stands for it, the break in, the out of place.
And here again is something worth tripping over, looking at explicitly: the out of place. What is it for something to be out of place? What does it mean to be out of place or in place? How can anything be out of place? A person wanders onto stage. She does not fit in, she has no role, she is not in the script. She is out of place. But there she is, playing a role, fitting herself in, in place, in the place she is in, on stage. In fact, everything is always exactly in place, in its place, in the place it is in. Nothing is, nothing could be out of place. So what does it actually mean to say something or someone is out of place? How do things come to have places, places they can be in or out of? What is it that assigns them their places and maintains them in their absence? The answer I give is habit. Habit, repetition, regularity – assigns and establishes and maintains place.
Socrates was out of place. He strayed, he wandered from the path; he arrived late; he didn’t accept the usual names and beliefs. He was in the habit of stopping, wondering, looking again. He saw a thing as strange, unusual, wonderful, questionable, which is the first step toward approaching it, toward holding it up to the light, making it the object of study, poring over it theoretically. Seeing something as strange is the condition of examining it. More strictly, seeing something as strange is the condition of seeing it: we see only what is strange. Socrates had a genius for seeing, for examining, and above all he was turned on himself. He examined himself, his own actions and beliefs. He saw himself as strange, out of place, until he himself became out of place to those around him. To them he was an entrance, an intrusion, a comingtorest. Action was at an end. He made things break down.
Walt Whitman had a gift for stopping, loitering, for not arriving at all. He had an eye for the unusual, the extraordinary, and he wanted to convey it to his reader. He says,
Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life
Set aside the riddle of this line, — how you habit yourself to the dazzle. What he means is that every moment of life is original, miraculous, worth seeing. And there is a third and highest entry I know of on this text, — and most succinct. It is the word Dean brought, the Word. When Dean came from the West he brought the Word and the Word was, Wow!
We must understand in our bones that each thing in this world is out of place. And yet this does not prevent everything from being in place. Indeed, the highest insight, the highest spiritual insight is that everything, everything is in its place. Perhaps: there is only one place and everything is in it. The letters, the letter-carriers, the planes, the ships, the steam, each freckle and footprint. The moss and the fisheggs, the suns I see and those I cannot, the palpable and the impalpable. Our world is place interwoven, each part accounted for, each particle perfect.
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*“I pictured myself in a Denver bar that night, with all the gang, and in their eyes I would be strange and ragged and like the Prophet who has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the only Word I had was “Wow!”” This is written by Sal, the narrator in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, toward the end of Chapter 5, but he is channeling Dean, who in the book epitomizes this ecstatic exclamation.
“… pouring over it theoretically.” Or, “… poring over it theoretically?” What a difference a letter makes.