Logically Unimaginable, Yours Truly

I began this blog as a way to jump-start my dissertation proposal.  I was frozen up in fear and worry and the fecundity of my mind seemed a cacaphony.  I thought--true to my methodological commitments--"I'll use some photos to both capture some ideas that are mutli-layered and in danger of being lost AND to puctuate and catalyze the writing I need to do."  It has worked.  My advisor on psychoanalytic theory--Mari Ruti--shared a CRUICAL tidbit on on to survive the amputational process that is writing:  Put the deferred ideas elsewhere and let them be your next books.  That, too, has worked.

Hence Imaginary Logic.  I named this blog because I was buried deep in discerning my philosophical influences.   The name simply came to me.  As a poet, I know that little "ka-chnk" when some phrase or thought finds its momentary home. So sweet. So good.  I know to keep it simple and move it on in with as little fuss as possible.  I tend to mess with these later, after I live into them.  I did "mess" with this name only in researching it... and I found two incredible facts when I conducted a quick search on the name.  First--there's a lovely poet named Rodney Jones who wrote an award nominated chapbook by this name.  Here's from a review from Poets.org:
"The Art of Heaven" opens with a parody of Dante and a down-home, twisted humor that Jones’s readers have come to rely on: "In the middle of my life I came to a dark wood, / the smell of barbecue, kids running in the yards. / Not deep depression. This nice hell of suburbs. / Speed bumps. The way things aren’t quite paradise."
Frighteningly close to my own poetry style, I might presumingly say. 

Poignantly:  I cannot be sure this is the guy.

And then an even more spooky discovery, given that I can trace familiar roots spiraling rather close to Eastern Europe: A small treatise praising the prescience one "Nicolai Alexandrovich Vasiliev (Russian: Николай Александрович Васильев), also Vasil'ev, Vassilieff, Wassilieff (11 July [O.S. 29 June] 1880–1940) was a Russian logician, philosopher, psychologist, poet, the forerunner of paraconsistent and multi-valued logics."  (Wikipedia)  The paper is by Valentine A. Bazhanov and basically states that this gentleman was painfully far ahead of his time, anticipating the the post-modern understanding that what can be defined is temporary in definition and--to put it over-simply--open in odd and important ways. Logic folds back on and into itself.  These notions dovetailed rather neatly with my Wittgenstein obsession, and carried me beyond it, as well.  Ah bliss! 

All of this is to say--one cannot orchestrate such "accidents"-- such coincidences.  I am humbled and a little baffled and a lot inspired.  I shall take this all further, I promise.  Buy the book, okay? 

Vigna-caracalla-bean vine

But, for now, I see why my blog statistics show a strange pattern of site visits from Russia.  I'm sure my visitors are disappointed; this is my notepad, not my thesis.  But, dear ones, stay tuned.  I shall give tribute where tribute is due.  Who's to say that lines of thought don't ride our DNA?  I shall endeavor to be one small blossoming on the forgotten genius Vasiliev's vine.  Thank you weird universe, for my Imaginary Logic.  Better than logic alone, this poetry of logic, this synaptic leap across tradition allows the small petals of synchronities of idea and insight to unfold from an old, much abused and mysterious calyx.