On Stillness & Inscription

'To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.' - Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein 

I take up stillness because  it is an increasingly rare facet of today's world. And, really, to do anything worthwhile, we do require a measure of stillness. The other concept from the title is inscription, a term smeared with its associations with writerliness, ink stains, and old stationary. Yet, I would like to take it up in a way that may not be entirely novel, yet to my eyes, vital.

Recognition requires an acknowledgement within oneself of a similarity between that which is before us and a memory from our past. Another way we may identify this without recourse to memory, is when two identical objects are placed before us, their presentation to our senses as identical is recognized. 

Inscription however is not mere recognition, though that indeed is the beginning. To be able to inscribe a perception is to be able to represent it in a way, which, crudely put, is analogous to its encounter. Analogous because in its mere recognition, either with an object from memory, or with an identical example, we may not know anything beyond the mere similarity or resemblance that we witness; and what the object may be remains here, a perception in whose repetition, we recognize another.

Perception, as I am sure you will notice here, is also an act which requires the exercise of one's faculties, whether of memory, or/and sense perception; and in a way, I have already begun  elucidating what inscription is. 

To acknowledge that which is present, as may be evident, may draw on the faculty of memory, if what is present is recognizable; that is discernible within the vocabulary of concepts which we have at our disposal in the cognition of the world and ourselves. 

Inscription however, is not merely recognition - but, also the act of its representation. Here, we may have an example of thinking through writing which appears to be what I was getting at. 

The presentation of a thought however, or a perception, proposition, argument, etc. is, perhaps unlike cognition itself, necessarily, a spatial phenomena, if only in the sense that it takes into account a site (paper, screen, audience etc.) which is not simply the body which perceives. We as bodies, and as senses encounter the world spatially. The exercise of movement enables the traversal between points of interest - home, work, a friend's place, school, and so on. Knowing where these are however, remembering that, is an example of stillness in the world that the self remembers. 

A self, any self, animated with life, requires various degrees of movement to enable the full expression of vitality and experience which the endowment of life facilitates. And the self, within this matrix, can become paralysed in indecision, amidst distractions, discomforts, noises, pains, hungers, horniness, longings, addictions, and epic quests for salvation. Stillness is really necessary here lest one lose oneself, which is increasingly easy in a world which inhibits inscription. 

We sleep, we wake up, and in the middle we may or may not remember our dreams. Our bodies rest and recover. We age. Life, like anything else really, always gets in the way, and today - a grumpy tiredness to me is good humour from a neighbour.

I mean, we wouldn't want our neighbours to be doing better than us would we? Lest he or she gets a cushier job, affording forms of social security, maybe a better car, a fatter salary that may provide for a quieter house; there are always a number of things we can be resentful of, and here is another situation where the practice of stillness, in its slowness, simplicity... may allow us to adjust our breathing, calm our nerves and prioritise that which we would like to put our attention to.

An acknowledgement of simple inanities is also a practice of inscription, but, as you may have guessed - this is not all :)