Pieta

Mazen Kerbaj's stricking art sums it all up.
http://mazenkerblog.blogspot.com/

Repositioning

I have come across this before. Frankly, I never paid much attention to its possible implications. Perhaps, what it meant at the time was different or that I was hearing it in a context which was not so loaded. And then it came up in “tittuping with Interality” by Ruth, and even then I could not see what was bothering me but somehow it stuck with me like a piece of well used chewing gum which is melted in the heat.

Repositioning or is it re-positioning?

In order to re-position, one has to have a position. Most of us here (and yes I include myself) are yet to establish a position. The great debate is often on the definition of such position. And the position if at all possible may be the great desire. But, why do we need to re-position something which is yet to find its position.

Position has a sense of stability; it may give us a point of view or indeed a sense for territorial. In warfare it is the deciding factor, it is your position that makes you the aggressor or the defender. Position provides us with the role that we play. Position is power, position is a platform, position is a place, position is a culture, position is a tribe and more, and position is the absence of all the above as that also is a position. Whatever it is, it is not so much as to what it is but that of the attachment to it. Is the attachment the same as the belonging?

And yet we need to re-position.

If I was in a bunker and I was advised to re-position, I would read it as a necessary tactical withdrawal, that the position is no longer sustainable and that I had to re-position. The intent is clear and the act follows. When I do re-position, I may begin to reinforce my initial position, so the re-positioning is a shift of the artillery but the aim remains the same. But the experience itself, the act of the re-positioning may change my position. Or indeed my re-positioning may be strategic. But do I need to re-position myself in principle. And what if the re-positioning has become a continues act, and the principle itself?

The temporality is an attractive prospect if you are in resistance but if it becomes a status which it often does, it is exposed. The need for the-in-betweens brought about the idea of interdisciplinarity. This differed from the cross-disciplinary approach and indeed it was not multi-disciplinary, it was not a position and not a hybrid. It momentarily offered the imaginal, the possibility of the none-place. Yes it challenged the position and perhaps we may have started to re-position. The intent was fantastical but not euphoric, there was no romance and clarity, no it did not exist. How could it? The imaginal took over, the complexities of the continues transitional.

So, why the re-positioning bothers me? It has become a formula, it has been diluted down, saturated with sugar, it is strategic or tactical and all is well if the intent is so. But what if it is a general prescription? An invitation for a continuous withdrawal and if I am on the run, I want to know what is it that I am running from or running towards. What is my intent?

This is not the first time and it is not the last

But it is real. The moment of silence which we observe is for this very reason. No word can possibly describe the real. We live in the world of fictions and this is our privilege. The pain is great and it is not borrowed, it is for every child. And that child is not the others but it is mine. Am I to be absorbed into this, perhaps there is no other way. Dust and blood has a familiar smell. This I did not choose, it was part of my inheritance. I chose exile, the land of fictions. The choice is that of a mad man, how could it not be? And the fool can laugh when there is nothing else left to do. The coward that I may be in the land of fiction can make up big words in the midst of laughter to obscure the real. I could not choose the real but it kept chasing me. In a different dimension I can run in parallel and look into its face eye to eye. In the land of fiction I am safe. Eye to eye I may find a way and I am still here and tomorrow may bring another day.

This could happen to you

This is what happens when one only crows about THE MEDIA (the big word that we often brandish and feel oh so contemporary, so, so postmodern).

This is what happens when we let our politicians wreak havoc.
“I don’t understand politics” what a lame excuse.

Apathy is GREAT. Its terror is omnipotent.

Please do not read the news about the Middle East. Read your own countries’ news.

Be prepared.