Walking Through Walls (1/3)
Φαῖδρος: παρὰ Λυσίου, ὦ Σώκρατες, τοῦ Κεφάλου, πορεύομαι δὲ πρὸς περίπατον ἔξω τείχους: συχνὸν γὰρ ἐκεῖ διέτριψα χρόνον καθήμενος ἐξ ἑωθινοῦ. τῷ δὲ σῷ καὶ ἐμῷ ἑταίρῳ πειθόμενος Ἀκουμενῷ κατὰ τὰς ὁδοὺς ποιοῦμαι τοὺς περιπάτους: φησὶ γὰρ ἀκοπωτέρους εἶναι τῶν ἐν τοῖς δρόμοις.
Phaedrus: From Lysias, Socrates, son of Cephalus, and I am going (πορεύομαι) for a walk outside the wall. For I spent a long time there, sitting since early morning. Persuaded by your fellow and mine, Acumenus, I take (ποιοῦμαι) my walk down the paths, for he says they remedy weariness better than the racetracks.
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Two verbs get Phaedrus outside the wall, with Socrates following behind: πορεύομαι, from πόρος; and ποιοῦμαι, related to ποίησις.
Πόρος/Poros
πορεύω (Phaedrus uses the verb in middle/passive voice.) - to be driven or carried, to go, to walk, to go over, cross, pass over, traverse. From the noun πόρος - a means of passing a river, a ford, a ferry (e.g. Πλούτωνος πόρος, the Stygian ferry); the paths of the sea, a pathway, way, a passage through the skin (i.e., pores); a way or means of achieving, accomplishing; contrivance, device, resource. From πείρω - to pierce, to run through.
Phaedrus passes through the wall by poros. As through a pore in the skin, as a spear through your shoulder, as ferried across the river to Hades, as a way through an impossible problem.
Poros, who is a person, is mentioned at a symposium.
(A summary of Symposium, 203b-204a:)
Plato writes about Apollodorus,
(who is obsessed with Socrates),
who tells the story of Aristodemus,
(who is in love with Socrates),
who tells the story of Socrates,
(who is an expert at love),
who tells the story of Diotima✨,
(who has taught Socrates about love),
who tells the story of Poros (Πόρος),
who gets drunk at Aphrodite’s birthday,
and how Penia, (Πενία, Poverty),
who is a-poros and stuck at the doorstep,
schemes to lie beside Poros and conceive a child,
who becomes daimonic Eros, (Ἔρως, Love).
(A daimon, says Diotima✨, is what passes between human and divine, between not-having and having, and she spins the tale of a drunken hookup to show it.)
So. According to her story, (within a story), (x3 or 4), Poros is:
- A drunk.
- Easy to trick into sex.
- The father of at least one daimon.
- The subject of a lot of gossip.
Other examples of poros include: Leaving a country, entering a country, im/migration in general and laws concerning these, imports and exports. The penetrability of political states, invasion, colonization, occupation, tourism, expatriation, migrant workers, the welcoming in of guests or strangers. Breaking or “bending” the law. Tax havens, other leakage. Doorways and windows into a house, out of a house. Small boats taken to big boats, ferries across rivers or between islands, cruise ships, other maritime vessels, airplanes, rocket ships, trains, other vehicles of ground transportation. Pores in the skin. Through which pimples, cysts, rashes, perspiration, body odor, hairs growing, wings growing from shoulders, a sprout breaking through the wall of a seed, a bud breaking through the wall of a stem. Other holes in the body, mucus membranes, organs of sensation, consumption, excretion, the mouth, the ears, the nose, the eyes, urethra, anus, vaginal canal. Sexual intercourse, sexual reproduction, birth canal, giving birth, producing a child or menses or a windegg. Eating, drinking, vomiting, passing gas, sneezing, burping, hiccuping, pissing, shitting, ejaculation, etc. Piercings and tattoos. Catching a virus or bacterial infection. Breathing in, breathing out, respiration, inhaling smoke or pollution or perfume. Taking medicine or a drug orally or intravenously or topically or as an inhalant. Seeing, listening, tasting, smelling, digestion, persuasion, education, miseducation. Conversation, dialogue, correspondence, gossip, rumor, media, news media, social media, “the internet”, blogging. Translation, metaphore, semaphore, analogy. Odysseus. Achilles is aporos, until he isn’t. The permeability of boundaries, membranes, definitions. Beliefs or opinions shattered, catharsis, to be wonder-struck, laughter, crying, compassion. Psychedelics. Scents, including the aromas of certain plants or plant parts (animal parts also?). Passageways between stages of life, changes in form, metamorphoses. Fantasies, dreams. The penetration or removal of any obstacle. Hermes, Hekate, Thoth, Ganesha, Hanuman, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, prophets and messengers and psychopomps, the Muse, Eros and other daimons (including Socrates' daemon), (who, almost always, says only “no”), angels, etc. The crack in every thing, the finitude of finitude, double negation, dialectic. To find a way through. That a person can change. Coming to be, passing away. A passage or transformation between life and death, death and life. Divine becoming human becoming divine, etc.
Human ingenuity, perseverance, desire, are drivers of poros. As are foolishness, recklessness, hamartia (missing-the-mark). Inherently ambiguous (vis-à-vis justice or injustice, good or bad, healthy or sick), always a risk, a vulnerability, in relation to the unknown. Poros is the empty eye of 0. The Fool, and the passage of each trump into the next. (Example, it is poros for me to write and press “publish”.)
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(More here.)