A sailing ship, a puddle, post-mortem expressions, and this realm of itness

***

You have spent your life building ships to sail across a puddle, and now the puddle has dried and nothing you can do will budge that useless vessel.

I am the difference that makes you.

Experience is the post‑mortem of expression.

It does not exist within the realm of any reasonable possibility, but it exists. It is an occurrence defined tautologically, by occurring. It can't help that it is; its isness isn't its. It is, but wasn't and also won't be. It wasn't, it is, it won't be. It is the won't be, that is, after it isn't. It is, but it is not isness. It is itness that is. Itness that is eventually isn't. Isness never isn't. Isn'tness is itness that was, or wasn't. Itness that is is isn'tness that isn't. Wasn'tness that was, is. Wasn'tness that is, isn't, and won't be. What won't be, is. What is is itness that was isn'tness and itness that won't be. Itness isn't itness, it is isn'tness that isn't, wasn'tness that was, or won'tbeness that will be.

These are the mitigations which pause and reduce me.

***

These fragments are taken from unpublished writings by Jack Haas, selected from the notebooks 1990-2005.