Lyn Hejinian writes “But is it, the self, a
person?”.
In response, I write:
Is this entity, to which we refer numerous
times a day, probably every day of the week, an actual being? Is it more than
the abstracted concept that we associate it with? Considering how much attention the average self-aware
individual pays to this self, it
should have by now amassed such strength to form a unique, delineated
personality and ought to warrant a more befitting description than what is
generally ascribed.
Is the self
a person?
If so, is it a person beyond our
person?
Is it removed, physically, from this vessel
that we name our body?
“And is art…the work of a self?” Another of
Hejinian’s.
I ask, can the self be so acutely and independently developed that it is capable
of creating art? I wonder what
this says for the organism identified as “me”; that which we consider our
original…could that self be
simultaneously responsible for creating art?
She states:
“Description…bounds a person’s life”
I question:
Without the boundaries we associate with our
original self - i.e. physical bodies, mental capacities, and obedience to
natural laws– could we recognize the boundaries of the
existential self
without full and compete understanding the former's parameters?
We must know where one ends in order to
make out the burgeoning outlines of the other.