The Dark Wood Where There Is No Error

Dante journeyed for over thirty cantos.

I'll leave the rest a mystery.

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a city dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this city savage, rough, and stern,
For even then I was losing my grasp on all quiddities!

The buildings around me dissolved first,
Becoming mere shapes, then but blankish blurs
Like the gray paint splotches of an impressionist canvass.

Next the cars and street signs shed their very whatness.
Then even the trees and rats. So too,
That great bridge whose arches I presently crossed under.

And last the people, first becoming swinging masses
Of arms, head, and legs. Then so many lumps of flesh,
Until each of nine million was made up of its own millions.

Below the East seemed not so much a river,
As so many individual droplets, mixing in a frenetic
Haze, their boundaries boiling in a burning blur.

And lo! Across the East a beam from Heaven alit a park—
Full of trees, and children, clear and distinct!
To Brooklyn must my legs carry me thither.

Yet upon that great beam planned under the Emancipator,
Confronted me three foul beasts, savage and rapine—
Although I cannot say just what they were.

(All quiddities fled, my noema but flux and flow).
Fearing them I turned back to Gotham.
Perhaps a man attempted to speak to me just then,

Or perhaps it was merely a shade—another blotch.
All I could hear was sounds, ‘Sub Julio…’
Or some such nonsense.

Into the Earth went I, desperately descending downwards.
My hope I did not for one second abandon,
Though I could no longer read the great sign above.

Once atrain I caught a glimpse of a maiden—so clear!
It was like a thunderclap in my mind. Bold ousia!
I dids’t not hold back the words that flooded frothing forth:

“Please, I beg thee, come near that I might grasp thine quiddity.”
I smiled, joyful in illumination, but her face fell.
I heard something then, not so clear as that angelic face.

“Tommy, this guy just said he was going to grab my ‘quiddity!’”
Her nose wrinkled on the last word in disgust.
And then a great dark shape resolved from behind her.

“Ah,” I exclaimed, “your quiddity is strength!
This I shall grasp!” And as I stretched out my mind,
So too my hands in shaking supplication.

“Ain’t no dude touching me and my girl’s quiddity
Ya pervert.” Then the blow struck me in the gut—
I collapsing as the angel called out “creep!”

I swooned then and I know not how long I slept.
Awakening I found no thing around me, but
Furiously frenetic frothing, an oozing of oozes,

(One step above prima materia). Yet still,
I glimpsed another through this mire,
One in the shape of a young girl.

And others too, began to resolve around me,
Though none so much as her. (“Sophia,” I think,
Some ooze called her.) “Please,” I implored to all sides

“I need ousia, quiddity, I’ve had none since
I crossed that fell land where two towers once fell,
Dissolving downwards into fiery multiplicity.”

“Hey rumpot,” a voice whirled me about,
“Do you not know where you are?”
And I to her: “no, please tell me.”

“This is the Upper East Side y’stewbum.
Ain’t no one selling drugs around these parts.
Get yer ‘quiddity’ and ‘ousia’ somewhere else.

Decent folk live here. Folk with important jobs.
I was content to let you sleep it off before,
But if you’re going to harass them, you need to

Head downtown, to Lexington, and take
The N or Q to Coney. That’s where we let
The bums sleep in peace.

But lay off the sauce bud. Or whatever
This ousia stuff is. It’s no good for you.”
And with that, I jumped with joy!

And would have kissed that angel, had she not
Gripped tightly her nightstick and pepper spray.
“A coney!” I shouted for joy. “Yes!

A coney, a rabbit, a gavagai. To that,
Island then I shall go at once.”
“Lay off the sauce” she repeated again,

Although to this day I cannot be sure
What she was referring to here.
And so it was that I came to have a quest,

An aim towards which I moved,
As all things do (though nothing around me
Seemed to be such a thing anymore.)

For I had heard it said of old,
That if a man loseth his grasp on life,
On things, and aims, and principles,

Nevertheless he might still prevail, if he
Should meet with the celestial entities who
Dwell upon that fair isle.

The Lingua Civitatis who might restore
To one such as I, the loss of all things,
And from inchoate shifting sands construct

An entire world upon which to walk.

Do whales sing?
Do whales speak to each other?
What do they say to each other?

Are they sad because they know that they will eventually die?
Is that why they beach themselves when they are sick?

Why do living creatures have to die?

I suppose that in the spirit of Dante I shall include some commentary on my own work. The first two tercets are from Longfellow's text of the Inferno, with just a word replaced, before the sudden shift.

In the first Canto, Dante faces three beasts representing the three major types of sin into which hell is divided, a leopard (sins of fraud, involving the intellect), a lion (sins of violence), and a she-wolf (sins of incontinence). I cannot recognize them because I have lost my damned quiddities! Of course, one of the fears of any moral realist when it comes to social construction theories is that they will make it impossible to locate moral realities, since the distinction between the words of moral discourse, and associated behaviors, will collapse with the things referred to.

"Sub Julio" is among Virgil's first words to Dante, but I don't recognize my guide as a man, nor recognize his words, and brush past him because I lost all my quiddities (alas!).

I descend into the Earth like Dante. I pass a "great sign" but do not "abandon all hope (ye who enter here)" because I can't read the darn thing (misplaced quiddities and all).

My disastrous interactions reflect the problems of invoking the ol' quiddity and ousia in foreign contexts.

Prima materia is "prime matter," which is nothingness, sheer indeterminate potency, the chora.

Sophia is the Greek for wisdom. If I had it to do over, I might choose something about St. Lucy (illumination), and not recognizing her eyes (which were famously gouged out).

One cannot "lay off the sauce" if the whole world is dissolving into a mere sauce of indeterminate multiplicity.

"Although to this day I cannot be sure what she was referring to here," on the view that words have no reference.

I'll leave the rest a mystery.