In his now infamous(ly incomprehensible) philosophical text Being and Time, Heidegger talks about the concept of flungness, the primal feeling of finding ourselves seemingly flung into the world and having to continually reinterpret what it means to find ourselves there as beings who are and have to be. Now, if you were to only read a definition of this concept, it may not seem so readily understandable, even translated out of Heideggerian into common English. But, if you were to find yourself flung into the middle of a street with a car bearing down at you at remarkable speeds, it becomes more apparent that yes, you are there, and have to do something about it. And quickly if you don’t want to be run over. Granted, most of our experiences do not seem to require such immediate interpretation, but that does not diminish the feeling of flungness that accompanies every moment of directly experiencing the world and having to interpret ourselves in it, even if that flungness is mostly subliminal. I wake up, and for a brief moment do not know who or where I am. I wait for the bus in the snow, it shows up late and I don’t have enough change, but then some stranger offers me a ride from out of nowhere. These are moments in between knowing the world in which we feel ourselves flung to the wolves, moments that bring into question everything we thought we knew enough of to get by on.
When I was in school I didn’t think I knew everything, though there were some moments when I felt pretty sure of myself. But everyone else seemed a lot surer, not because they actually were, but because they had read enough to back up their assumptions about reality. The teachers were particularly guilty of this, and seemed to suggest that this kind of book learning was enough to get by in the world. At the time I was a young punk, not at all satisfied with sitting in class all day listening to some old white dudes lecture while there was a whole world out there to explore. Even if that meant finding a new place to go get high during lunch. It wasn’t enough and I knew it, so I dropped out and moved out, hoping to fling myself into situations and experiences that might teach me in a more direct manner. Though I didn’t learn advanced calculus or how to write a master thesis out in the world, I did find myself confronted almost every day with questions of love and communication, politics and survival that seemed to reflect a much more basic understanding of human experience in the world. Small basic truths surprisingly not taught in schools that helped define my own flung place in this world better than anything I read in a book. Not that I didn’t read, but now it was less to learn something new than to find terms and arguments in which to express my own experiences in, which often would not have made any sense without the experience to back them up. When I found myself in philosophical discussions I couldn’t quote passages to those who had studied them extensively, but I tried to enlighten the conversations with personal anecdotes that portrayed the abstract points. It took a while to get to that point, and I often found myself having to rely on abstracts in order to fill in the gaps between my experiences and knowledge; but the more I was in the world the less I had to rely on the ontological maps of others. The understanding was fostered from my own interpretations.
But then I began to experience things that were far outside any interpretation I had found read about so far, synchronicities and acts of magic that did not seem to stem from any logical cause and effect. I was now flung not in front of a speeding car but a charging seven-headed beast that forced me to not only interpret how I would get out of the way but where it came from in the first place. Despite my wonder at this new spiritual dimension the world was rapidly taking on I also felt a terror comparable to Sartre’s idea of Nausea, like when the character in his novel looks at a single stone and feels himself flung beyond any possible interpretations. The Romantic poet Blake expressed this when he said "To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour." Except that such abstracts as infinity and eternity were utterly meaningless in face of this direct experience and only seemed to hide the experience itself. In the same way the texts I read on these type of magical world views only seemed to hide the experiences of it behind abstract mappings and symbols, and not say what it meant and felt like to perceive so intensely.
Poetry is one of the few literary forms enamored by direct experience and split second reinterpretations of being flung into the world. Images are called up to reflect the world in a single grain of sand and flung back into the face of the unknown. But even here there is the pull to use abstracts and well-worn expressions, even to describe the vastness of the spiritual experience. Blake and the other Romantic poets fell into this, relying on symbolic interpretations of old religious texts to augment feelings that seemed too ineffable to put into words. About a hundred years later Rilke tried his hand at spiritual poetry, but broke from the Romantic’s approach of grandiose iconography to show how the spiritual breaks through in the small details of our daily lived experience. This wasn’t a new approach, as Rilke was directly influenced by the 13th Century Sufi poet, Rumi, whose body of work is filled with the idea of finding god in wine, laughter and sorrow, in the face of a friend and the turning of stars. Here were images that spoke directly to my own experiences of the world’s mystery, and offered me a voice to describe what I also felt, a light sliding through the features of all things that was recognizable only in giving myself to it fully. The spiritual experience became a continual feeling of being flung beyond all interpretation, experience that never needs disclosing because we are always here in it.
Not that I still don’t try and ground myself in attempts at understanding, but the desire to pull myself out of the air no longer feels so necessary, or the precise words so important.
***
It is night and all around you
strange shadows dance beyond
the flickering streetlamps.
One approaches in the dark
and for a moment you think
it is your death, beautiful
and mysterious in the twilight.
As you watch, in fear
and more wonder than a single heart
can hold, it takes form;
a tree, a beggar, a lover,
any of the known things
that might stumble towards you
in the night.
Suddenly you laugh
for it is a face you recognize
from each night before;
your own, reflected in the dark
glass of an empty storefront.
Who says your death
will not look that way too,
flung so suddenly in your path;
and will not your relief
at finding yourself there
be like finding yourself
each time you look in a mirror?
Dying is only a metaphor
for each moment you realize
you are still alive.
But it only happens once.
Living is to die
over and over again,
the knife's edge
of finding yourself there
always pressed close
against your chest.
Will you flinch away
or fling yourself bodily
into its embrace?
Only the young and insane
want to die so readily,
the feeling of blood pushed
so close to the skin
draws them out of themselves
and into each other's arms.
They cut their hearts out
of the mirror's glass
and polish them in starlight
so they can find themselves
in the middle of the night
and quickly die again.
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