Winnipeg on November 26,1995

In the center of a thought there is always some kind of confusion. It seems almost when two or more words come together, forming an essential thought, that they tie a relationship like a chain, a knot in between each word, which is called the connection. (Especially in English were you cannot put one sentence into another one, compared to German Schachtelsatzgedanken, English thinking is more of a chain than a web.) These knots seem not to be easily possible to untie, seems to be source of confusion, although the connection is temporarily and you know theoretically the two words and more words can only come together once in a while, will be disconnected again. (is this why to thoughts that I have in english translated into german seem sometimes banal). Still the energy seems to be between the words, in the knot. In German there are much more connecting words that stay together all the time and form a couple that, regarding them solo, is confusing to judge their relationship and the content. What happens when I think about a word like begreifen and understanding. Greifen and begreifen (grabbing touching and understanding) seem to have this kind of relationship. And why is it so different to understand and to begreifen. begreifen is to make something tangible I am able to fit it into the proportion of my thoughts, I can embrace the theory, the theory gets to be customized to my proportions, there are many essential in-sights that are forming into a sculptural perception of the thought itself. Sculptural I mean in the sense of moving around an idea which is to be defined by different sights and positions that you might be able to take. To make this more understandable an example or maybe just a thought about the difference between image and sculpture (Bild und Skulptur). Certainly an image can have a room and a depth but there are only a few positions my body might take to perceive it. I can go near and take distance, which is about what I can do. With a sculpture I can move around it, there are different images that I put together in my head when moving around it. Although this is not a matter of understanding and not this is a perfect example for the not that delivers the energy for a thought between two words. The process of begreifen might be what happens in between the two images and the hundreds of images that you put together while moving around the thing and by touching it at a certain point. More abstract this will be the chain of thoughts that leads to understanding...begreifen. Once you were a child and you started with trying to make the world understandable by putting everything in your mouth. You had to learn not to put certain things in your mouth and also experienced that most of the things are too big to eat or take in your mouth or they don't taste well. You started to be able to know two groups of things, things to eat and things not to eat but to touch. So everything that came near your eyes that you couldn't put in your mouth you wanted to touch, begreifen, to experience by your hands and your body. Much later you start to be able to express thoughts and you start to "begreifen" without having to grab or touch "greifen". For some reason I think here is my deep problem between my motherlanguage "German" and my fatherlanguage "English". Understanding is completely different than begreifen. To under-stand means that the thought really still doesn't fit your proportions your ability to think or the thought is smaller you get some kind of oversight about the thought. So, what's happening. Unfortunately the thought is not under-standing at all, and your not under-standing either. ( The German word Unter-stehen means something very different...Untersteh Dich! means Don't dare!) I do not understand why I should under-stand nor do I know why I should over-stand. Another issue is the German translation of understanding is verstehen. OK still I am standing in German but I do not under-stand I FOR STAND maybe or I was able to see it in the right proportion. Often you see more when you stand. sitting (understand oder verstehen while seated might be more comfortable) but for some reason I cannot understand how to understand something that I under-stand, something that is much larger than me, much stranger, I am under it, beneath it and that means that I would only have one perspective. the perspective of a worm, being bound to earth, crawling. I am looking up, cannot see the thing from different sides...waht a narrow way of perception. I think understanding as a word doesn't make sense. It is for me a completely unfruitful combination of two words where the knot in-between them leads to confusion. You cannot really begreifen when you understand, and that's the point. Is this the reason, why certain philosophies are not easy to understand in English. is this why people like popper where explaining their perception of world in English and were English and the Existentialists were using French and German to explain the world. Com-prendre is much more imaginable than understanding the world. Also here I touch grab make something tangible....What the fuck am I doing here...trying to understand the world and would prefer to try to begreifen. Nobody ever had a problem with the introduction of the word kinder-garden into English or the expression (Be-griff) Zeitgeist. Nobody ever probably had the desire to translate Kindergarten into a children's garden or time spirit. A German Griff is a handle a Begriff an expression and everybody can handle that. Oh, dear, I was trying to untie a knot and I ended up tangled already. This is what you get, classic frustration, your pay-off for stupidity. I lost the starting point and still I am able to move freely. A weak comfort: I am tangled but not tied in. But I would prefer to begreifen the world rather than to understand it. maybe there is a truth in both ways. I tried to go deep cause I imagined to find gems on the ground. Once being on the surface again I just found pebble. What about you? OK. You have to imagine one thing. Each of my thought-buildings (Gedankengebäude) is like a child. Each of my dresses are like children, I educate them like I used to teach my dolls and fill them with what I seam (seem) to know. So the thoughtbuilding are like patchworks coming together like one piece.