Standing:
A line made by the body, a single line, vertical and slim. Doestoyevsky: "The definition of man is one who walks on two legs and is ungrateful." Kafka praises the animal, the four-legged and low to the ground animal which must turn its head to look up. Close to the dirt, against the ground, the animal is a part of the world as much so as the grass where as man, for Kafka, is too high and distant. Connected halfway, just two feet. Man standing erect: he can jump, he can start a sprint, he can crumble, he can hold himself and urinate. Hemingway used to keep two separate metal filing cabinets five foot tall a piece, side-by-side, and atop the first was a yellow legal pad and pencil while the second was adorned with a typewriter. Description and Dialog. The standing writer, the man, shuffling between his two chosen mediums - pissing a little here and there.
Seated:
Knees comfortably bent and feet resting on the floor. Weight sits straight downward with the spine as a taught string strung from the base of the neck to the seat. Shoulders scooped back and chin held up. The posture never stays, the slump always wins: tops of arms curve forward and the back caves out, bent at the base of the ribs. Relaxed now, the hands are free to type. We see in silhouette a series of angles made by the limbs and think of all the many other things done from this position. Yes, the writing while seated is akin to the hoisting out of so much waste, the body's garbage, refuse and expelled bits and pieces. The papers all smeared and heavy. The bulky mess as prose. Blocks of text forced out by the fingers while sitting behind a desk; like this masses are moved. Nabokov explains his gravitational writing: first standing at the podium, then sitting at the desk, and finally I lie down. Homophonically hilarious, as ever. Stand up / Lie down.
[No photo to accompany the Description.]
Hands and Knees:
The crawling baby. The injured adult. The almost dead. No one chooses to crawl on hands and knees, scraping and clawing towards a gutter somewhere. Kafka praised the animal - but a grown man, scratching and having a fit on the hard ground is a very sad image and even worse as a lived nightmare. By choice, a person is upright. Slouched or slumped at times, but still standing. Hands and knees is inflicted upon the human and his body, something broken or taken aware. No writing then, just some pain. Even the most useless baby gets frustrated and eventually has to stand and leave his crawl behind.
Laying Down:
The full force of the body, the full weight and gravitational heaviness of the body's mass, pressed into, onto, through a flat surface - preferably a supple bed mattress. Only from a supine position can the body evaporate entirely. It's full weight pressing, yet it's a floating feeling to be off the feet. Standing on one toe, the surface area of a quarter, means a sharp pierce into the Earth, though laying down means the distribution of that same weight over a much broader area diminishes the way that weight feels. Instead, we float. Standing as urination through writing, seated as shitting through writing, then what is arms akimbo, legs outstretched and at ease, toes untethered, head pointed at the sky along with the palms, forming a T with the body on a nicely fluffed bed: the softness, the vulnerability. Oh, it's the bed - out of the bathroom and into the bed. It's love if it's laying down. Pure poetry - that is what laying down is, and is for.
Paintings by Schiele and Klimt, naturally.
