Before and After

The logic of the event
Obscures the event’s befores and afters
The event vanishes from one day to the other
Displaced by a new event that breaks in
No after for the event that just was
No before for the event that is

Once I wrote “evnt”
Then left it standing alone in a see [event here/now] of white
And named the document “Event”
The event on the page

The event is clearly the point of arrival
The after, the belly that disappeared, the muscles
The body to which everyone responds in awe
Deleuze thinks the event is actually the before,
“the incorporeal effects of corporeal relations between things”
[You can find this in “What is a Political Event” by Ian MacKenzie
It is in my “Event” folder]

So, then, the accompanying photograph
Which I took before Big Sur but after Provincetown
Is the event, more than the fire
—the lit candle, the cigarette, or the cooked food—that will be

And if we see this as event
If we see the world
As being shaped by things in corporeal relations
Which are in themselves events
Then, when, and what, is after?

Published in Itch Journal #9. Before/ After: a small book of predictions, outcomes, and paradigm shifts. 2009.