Morningside Heights

We couldn't be more different.

I, seeing dark punched out of
Light, drawn by the
Sweep of a wasted city --
Fuses blown, black soot
Halos -- what pulses
Forbidden, misplaced?

I, raising my eyes to steel
Teased out of sky -- desire
Elongated -- vertical lines.
Framing its own picture
Starkly against grey.

Building blocks of dark.

You laugh,
Tugging on leashes of
Our obligation:
Darkness on a body of light
Is a dangerous gash.

Traces

Deconstruction -- misused to mean taking apart and then to analyze discretely. Heard misused since I was an undergraduate. Misused by everyone from clever students to maths teachers. Of course used correctly if one never knew about DECONSTRUCTION. But probably safer to approach the thought through its specifics: its paradoxes, the collapse of metaphysical certainties, the questioning of "natural" binaries, the erosion of "presence", the rubbing of the interior against the exterior, the play of writing, the violence of writing, writing as inside language as language, and always, traces.

Overheard --
Int: "So what is it like to see your theories, like deconstruction, being played out in popular culture?"
Der: "?"
Int: "Like the American sit com -- Seinfeld. Critics have said that deconstruction has influenced comedies ..."
Der: "Seinfeld?"
Int: "Yes, it's an American comedy ..."
Der: "Deconstruction is not about comedy."

"Rousseau knew that death is not the simple outside of life. Death by writing also inaugurates life.... Death is the movement of differance to the extent that movement is necessary finite." Of Grammatology