Walking Through Walls (3/3) // Phaedrus 227α-β
Poros (and Poiesis) and Socrates (and Student)
Socrates is famous (then and now) for being without, (or against?), these two “things".
Socrates is (was) (generally agreed to be) a-poetic. That is, he doesn’t (didn’t) write.
Also, a-poretic (to be a-poros, to have no way out or through, at an impasse). He never leaves Athens. (Whadabout when he fought the war for Athens, Alcibiades slurs, symposium-crashing.) (And Meno claimed, that everybody agreed, that) Socrates inflicts a-poria on others. Anti-poros, as a weapon. They feel angry, embarassed, humiliated by him, so they put him on trial (and, by jury, convicted). Socrates sits (like Buddha) in a cell. Declines all plans, (from students et al.), to help him escape. Builds extra arguments to wall himself in. Invokes the law. (To be only himself, within only those walls.) (Admitted no poros. Other than,) he dies (died) in that cell.
(Deep in the city, a dead body where her heart should have been.) (Aporia Herself.) (Is it tragedy?) (Almost like that,)
wrote the student. (Never as herself, always of the other.) And she left the city. (Oh, she was angry? She didn’t like hemlock?) (She was sick of assholes with speeches?) (Some gross politicians?) (Her “pussy hat”?) (Well, things got weird.) (She abandoned her teacher. Her friends, her school, her family, civic responsibilities.) (She seduced a king? She was sold as a slave?) (She was run off and/or exiled by tyrants.) (Gave birth to a monster. A creature of gossip.) (Well, where was her heart?) Subjunctive, contrary to fact: Without her getting out, and writing a lot, (of SEO content), the words would have passed, with the man.
(The poros at the dark heart of Aporia. Is… what leads beyond city walls.)
Each soul is an argument. Across from, opposed to, in need of, the other, a romantic entanglement, a war between worlds, (the after, the before). Their interplanetary logics of love and their lawless reunion by meta/physical coup. (In a Platonic jungle. As dark hearts go, it’s lovely, and well lit.) (By following the law, he broke the law. Like, it’s broken now, like a chipped tooth on a fractured jaw. And they can’t fix it. So.) The lover lays a trap, (for the soul of the youth), while the poet lays a trap, (for whom?), (are they dead?), (are they mortal?), (do they even know Greek?), set ‘twixt crossed stars, in time out of hand. Spanning written word, and word, alive. Each being nothing if not caught in the snare of the other. (Marriage, divorce, remarriage, and?) And Phaedrus in the middle.
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