Barthes writes about how the key to reading Sade is to perceive the cracks or collisions embedded within the text. These cracks appear when things are brought into contact and create edges of meaning: an obedient and conformist edge, and a blank or mobile edge. Barthes argues that both edges are necessary for bliss. This is one of my favorite photos of my two boys at a soccer practice. I have long forgotten any more context than that; I have no idea what it is Jonas is on the verge of saying. There is something wrong about this photo: it is out of focus, and you may even miss it at first glance. But the distortion of the photo creates that second edge, a blank edge, that makes me question the image. Who is this? What is it that these figures are doing? This is an image of my sons as they never really were; the fog of memory.

Barthes writes about how the key to reading Sade is to perceive the cracks or collisions embedded within the text. These cracks appear when things are brought into contact and create edges of meaning: an obedient and conformist edge, and a blank or mobile edge. Barthes argues that both edges are necessary for bliss.

This is one of my favorite photos of my two boys at a soccer practice. I have long forgotten any more context than that; I have no idea what it is Jonas is on the verge of saying. There is something wrong about this photo: it is out of focus, and you may even miss it at first glance. But the distortion of the photo creates that second edge, a blank edge, that makes me question the image. Who is this? What is it that these figures are doing?

This is an image of my sons as they never really were; the fog of memory.

To begin The Pleasure of the Text Barthes “posts” a quote from Hobbes that is translated: And my mother was then filled with so much fear, that she simultaneously gave birth to twins, both me and fear.” Here is Barthes remembering, but of course not remembering, this trauma of fear on the part of his mother. Bliss will be part of this fear as he writes on page 14 that it “brings to crisis his relationship with language,” or the text and writing of which it too is a part. Birth is an event of both fear and joy. Here is my daughter being born at our home in Clemson, SC, a memory that makes me feel anxiety and relief at the unaccountability of the situation. Pleasure accompanies certain controllable situations. Bliss cannot be accounted for, and yet, like birth, it cannot be suppressed.

To begin The Pleasure of the Text Barthes “posts” a quote from Hobbes that is translated: And my mother was then filled with so much fear, that she simultaneously gave birth to twins, both me and fear.” Here is Barthes remembering, but of course not remembering, this trauma of fear on the part of his mother. Bliss will be part of this fear as he writes on page 14 that it “brings to crisis his relationship with language,” or the text and writing of which it too is a part.

Birth is an event of both fear and joy. Here is my daughter being born at our home in Clemson, SC, a memory that makes me feel anxiety and relief at the unaccountability of the situation. Pleasure accompanies certain controllable situations. Bliss cannot be accounted for, and yet, like birth, it cannot be suppressed.

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Here I am during one of my last days in Clemson at our favorite restaurant, Brioso. I sat in the corner next to a large window, we could watch people as they came in from the summer heat. My image, on the other side of the glass; the camera, looking through the lens. What does the image want?

Here I am during one of my last days in Clemson at our favorite restaurant, Brioso. I sat in the corner next to a large window, we could watch people as they came in from the summer heat. My image, on the other side of the glass; the camera, looking through the lens. What does the image want?