der Hammer in Berlin: Erinnerungen

L’appareil photographique ne serait-il pas un appareil subjectif, tout entier construit à l’aide d’un x et d’un y qui habitent le domaine où vit le sujet, c’est-à-dire celui du langage ?
Lacan

I go inside, or in; or perhaps I even go out in it—through it. Ich bin um, ich bin hinter, ich bin nichts.

Das ist Geschichte, das ist auch mein Gesicht. How do you face your own memory, what has constituted you since before your ‘own time’? Eigenschaft, was ist eigen—vor das Sein. “Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften”. I cannot help it, I have been named a Philosopher—by my father(s).
That is how I walk, I split from everybody, and start going down (in, around, in the middle): als ein Philosoph. (“als das Kind Kind war…” “als der Philosoph als Philosoph geht”) Thus, I walk as one who thinks (“you’ll never get paid for thinking, that doesn’t pay”), as one who owes to thinkers, especially German ones. Thus I walk in Deutschland. Although this is Berlin, although this is where it happens, the place of the event. Das Ereignis passiert hier.

I walk camera in hand (meine Kamera ist kaputt jetzt, consequences), and in some way defend myself. The old history, virus or symptom of abstraction, tendency, penchant as I recline for a better angle. But there is noise. In this place without history (how could History absorb it, apprehend it, make it history?) there is the noise that allows me to complain, to try (versuchen) to retreat myself from it—yes, even here I can attempt to abstract more. Abstraction makes us (we philosophers and all), just as we were first an abstracted moment in a hotel room, a car, or on the familiar bed—moment which in its turn we will abstract, make it trauma, and thus, last abstraction.
(I) follow my tracks, little squares, rectangles, Spuren, Fußspuren, Weibspuren, Wahrheitspuren.

Ab-straktion: was ist ‘ab’? z. B.: “mein Knopf is ab (I’ve lost a button)” or how I read it first “mein Kopf is ab”. You get what I mean, what I mind. A track is always a good way of losing yourself, of stopping worrying, or just of focusing—here I still had the camera, and I kept focusing.
But even here there is a way, and you can follow it—without abstracting the noise. (As I listen to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins now, Little Demon—at a different time, 10:34pm, being tired, with a glass of wine and a cigarette, thinking on other place, around other place—can I really had been there? Where?).

But we get lost. We are still in. Not mind the Deutsche Leute, nevermind the cameras, except for yours. Yes, it is your language—nicht Deutsch, Französisch, Englisch oder Spanisch. Nur Bilder jetzt. From here, from these images, can you think? As you are still inside, or as you realize that you will never get out, have never gotten out. (Yes, yes, another question, never an out-side, all sides ‘neben’, at least here). Thus, gegen was? All sides, all rectangles, against something, against all, unless you look up.

Die Sonne. Hier sie ist eine Frau: Wahrheit, Weib. (There is a gesture with the lips for these words that you cannot yet make, and you remember when you started learning French—or even before, when they explained to you the difference between ‘b’ and ‘v’, which no one uses in your land—how you could not do it, and how you still cannot do it, and you even remember that perhaps you will never be able to do it, and it is this memory—vielleicht—that does not allow you to do it—just as any memory, another limit, abstraction, loss of tracks—you follow me?) I remember, was? Loss of track(s).

(Perhaps that is why you put so many parenthesis, so many blocks in your text, in your way, as if you wanted to force yourself to stop again, for once, knowing that you cannot do it—must I get out now?)

“Wo sind wir?” Every time you hear this, every time you remember it, yes, it is Wagner, it is Tristan und Isolde, it is this year, und so weiter und so weiter… Es tut mir leid, I lose track. Noch einmal.

But this text is supposed to be about a Monument, where we are. Unless once again we have lost ourselves, have gotten lost, and now we do not know how to return there. That is, of course, if we have gotten out.