𝖚𝖕𝖔𝖓 𝖉𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖍

Why "phenomenology"? The term signifies a study of "phenomena," that is to say, of that which appears to consciousness, that which is "given." It seeks to explore this given "the thing itself" which one perceives, of which one thinks and speaks without constructing hypotheses concerning either the relationship which binds this phenomena to the being of which it is phenomena, or the relationship which unites it with the I for which it is phenomena. One must not go beyond the piece of wax in doing a philosophy of extended substance, nor in doing a philosophy of the a priori spatial forms of sensibility; one must remain with the piece of wax itself, describe only what is given, without presuppositions. Thus a critical moment takes form at the heart of the phenomenological meditation, a "denial of science" (Merleau-Ponty) which consists in a refusal to proceed to explanation. For to explain the red of this lampshade is precisely to abandon it as this red spread out on this lampshade, under whose circle I am thinking of red; it is to set it up as a vibration of a given frequency and intensity, to set in its place "something," the object for the physicist which is not, above all, "the thing itself" for me. There is always a preflective, an unreflective, a prepredicative upon which reflection and science are based, and which these latter always conjur away when explaining themselves.

I feel things happening around me that are not real. I must be in a dream, or in a movie, or watching a movie on an airplane in a dream. On the other side of the field there are blossom trees in full bloom. They are pale, barely pink, like branches covered in fake snow. I hear the wind begin to rise and think of how in movies, the wind is always a sound at first. I push my hair out of my eyes and see petals fall from the trees in thick waves like something from a Miyazaki film. The sky is that same imaginary blue. My first thought is not of snow but of volcanic ash, of children shaking white dust out of their hair. A layer of white petals on the grass. If the wind kept shaking the trees and the ash flowers kept falling and everything became coated in dust petals they would soon get in our eyes, in our pockets, in our shoes, inside our mouths. You belong nowhere in this spring apocalyptic scene—I didn’t build it for you—but soon you are standing next to me looking at me but not straight at me and we are laughing and making handprints in the dust, listening to the wind blow them away.