[Bracket]ing

Bracketing has the power to decipher by putting things on hold. Bracketing the rotten parts shall deliver a more continuous and merry narrative. What Husserl has to say about bracketing is long lost, but what I will begin to do is to degenerate certain beloved tendencies and reconcile with a less progressive romanticism.

Walking with a rotten left arm is unbearable. Chopping it off is a constant desire. That’s where bracketing comes in. All I have to do is to [the left arm.]

As for the past that was at times rocky but at times tender, Bracketing shall also stretch and smooth it out. It would be like picking stones to pave roads. [The letter, the grope, the utter disclosure of affection, and the inability to classify the status of the relationship.]

Outcast of my own life, I glare at myself not through a mirror image, but with the back of my head in the foreground. Bracketing the distance between the I and the self allows me to take refuge in the intimacy. Nothingness is infinitely closer than being. Always. [Nothingness.]

I secretly wish I can also bracket the elapse between the present and my destined future, shy of a lifespan but exceeds the hour. Happy thoughts suspended and optimistic hope confiscated, the harshness of my language forbids impulse. By this I do not mean free-float impulse, but well-intended images that gesture toward a completion of the desire. If my language can adopt a finer tone but maintain the same endurance, [negativity.]

To be plain: the aim is not to neglect responsibility, but realize that within the limitations of my present status, to release myself from the self-imposed immobility is to first affirm myself by bracketing traumas. The whole should not take blame for the awkwardness of parts. To re-posses comfort is to re-establish a reality on rigid positivity. Baby steps to the door, baby steps to the end, baby steps, still, to exteriority.

To bracket is neither to avoid nor detour, on the contrary, to connect. Brackets are the spaces between the baby steps.