Growth and the Economy of Subsistence
Raphael went to look for Father Leon, whom he hadn’t seen for a week because of the festival of flowers, and found the door blocked with branches. It took hours to clear away, and when he got into the room, to his amazement all he could see was the rocking chair Father Leon used to bask in the sun. It was held prisoner by many branches that clung to the wooden frame like twining lianas. -Cathedral of the August Heat
This image seen daily is forgotten. The world view, stable, necessarily, forgetting about flux, about the possibility that is always blossoming, the becoming of things everywhere, even in the most distant places. The world view of the age is impoverished, the feeling of a doom bearing down, but, the grass grows, the tress bloom, and the branches work there way into everywhere that they can. Nothing is off limits to life where life can be, except for where life has not yet made an assault. As long as the sun is present, life will overrun. Though, all of this is reflected, out of immanence, back into immanence. In the beginning there is only growth. It is only later when growth has turned to consumption, that where growth is can be discussed. Since where this growth is discussed is our story.
There is the sun, and the sun creates light. Light feeds cells, which reproduce. Eventually, the flowers and the planets arise. This arising is growth. Growth occurs in a horizontal and then vertical movement. Stretching outward before stretching upward.
"The earth first opens to life the primary space of the waters and the surface of the ground. But life quickly takes possession of the air. To start with the importance to enlarge the surface of the green substance of the plants, which absorbs the radiant energy of light. The superposition of leaves in the air extends the volume of this substance considerably. In particular the structure of trees develops this possibility well beyond the level of the grasses. For their part the winged insects and the birds, in the wake of the pollens, invade the air" (Bataille, 31).
This developing of structure, the moving of the branches into the room around the dead man in the chair, is named pressure. Pressure is the effect that matter, the living, and the unloving, earth, have on space. Space is the space between matter. One does not feel pressure in large spaces like deserts or fields. There is a sense of freedom present, freedom relating to the movement that one can make. Though, there can also be a reversal, a feeling of being lost in the desert, as the Borgesian Babylonian King who tricked the Muslim with his labyrinth found out, after his kingdom was sacked and he was set free to wander in retribution to his joke.
Pressure creates Zones. Zones are dead zones where matter is not. These places, in a sense, do not exist. We exist in the zone, though there are also zones in the zone, pockets in the zone within the zone. The zone is like the path. The path that can be walked through, that has yet to be covered over, grown over. Houses abandoned, what’s inside, zones do not exist because they are places lost in matter. Cities of El-dorado. Pressure creates tension points, where matter comes to explode in a violent outpouring. The body that can no longer support itself, bones breaking at the weakest section.
When the grass has not been cut, we clear the path, in clearing the path the creating of possibility, of speeds through the zone. Keep Clear! Matter must travel freely through matter. Images of cars on highways flash through the mind, stop motioned, sped up, Philip glass playing in the background. Urban planning, motion is necessary, motion is freedom. Where there is matter, we cannot be. Man fights growth for pressure. The cutting of the grass, the construction of the road, ease, and speed.
