All Heaven in the Sphincter

Well now there IS a germ-free alternative to traditional necking.

There are two ways of looking at the natural opposition of yourself and everyone else. The first, mostly influenced by Kant, describes an impassible void that mediates any experience between the self and the Other. This void is both compelling and repulsive; it attracts and denies the advances of the individual towards those outside him/herself. It is described as the focal point of human relations.

I think this is horseshit, and so does Jean Genet. He holds the opposite opinion, essentially that there is no void--that the chasm between self and Other is perpetually recreated by the self in an interminable effort to preserve the self. The real horror is not the idea of an impossibly unfathomable line separating oneself from the rest of humanity, but instead the concept of no differentiation at all. In his essay titled, "What Remains of a Rembrandt Torn into Four Equal Pieces and Flushed Down the Toilet," Genet describes the experience of realizing that he is exactly the same as a man with a "disgusting moustache" on the Paris Metro. The experience, for him, is more jarring than any difference between the two of them could be. In fact, he longs for difference to provide a source of solace as his realization is broadened.

Portrait intended for Genet's unpublished work, "What Remains of a Giacometti Torn into Four Equal Pieces and Flushed Down the Toilet."

Sleep-eating is perceived initially as a phenomenon contained wholly by the self. This would seem self-evident*. But the number of cases of sleep-eating that involve onlookers and bystanders has begun to pique my interest. Besides, one never remembers nor ever wholly witnesses one's own sleep-eating act. While it is taken as a matter of cause that the sleep- and food-lust that intersect in the act are universal, to what degree does the mediation of the act provide its own cathartic release of these universal tensions?

This post serves as notice of the development of a new branch of parasomnial investigation: the realm of the self v. the universal within the tradition of sleep-eating.

*I apologize for the pun, but I really can't help my self.