No matter how complicated anything is, if it is not mixed up with remembering there is no confusion, but and that is the trouble with a great many so called intelligent people they mix up remembering with talking and listening, and as a result they have theories about anything but as remembering is repetition and confusion, and being existing that is listening and talking is action and not repetition intelligent people although they talk as if they knew something are really confusing, because they are so to speak keeping two times going at once, the repetition time of remembering and the actual time of talking but, as they are rarely talking and listening, that is the talking being listening and the listening being talking, although they are clearly saying something they are not clearly creating something, because they are because they always are remembering, they are not at the same time talking and listening. Do you understand. Do any or all of you understand. Anyway that is the way it is. And you hear it even if you do not say it in the way I say it as I hear it and say it.
I say I never repeat while I am writing because while I am writing I am most completely, and that is if you like being a genius, I am most entirely and completely listening and talking, the two in one and the one in two and that is having completely its own time and it has in it no element of remembering. Therefore there is in it no element of confusion, therefore there is in it no element of repetition. Do you do you do you really understand.
And does it make any difference to you if you do understand. It makes an awful lot of difference to me. It is very exciting to have all this be.
from
LECTURES IN AMERICA
by Gertrude Stein
pp 179-181
Cucurbite 
April 25, 2010 at 11:54 am |
It seems to me extraordinarily difficult to be always in the present (talking and listening) without ever pulling back to try to get some insight into what is going on (remembering what one just said or heard to try to integrate it with other things). I will accept on faith for the moment the idea of trying to be only talking and listening, but it seems a bit like a blind bumping into things, when there can be an occasional gratification of backing away a little bit and making sense of things.