Panic is a moment, an affect, a condition. Panic is at once objective and subjective condition. Panic establishes an order of continuity where the difference between inside and outside is obliterated. The horror – the obliteration of the boundary between inside and outside. The affect of the Boundary reveals the boundary and thus the boundary is obliterated. The boundary is possessed by a force. The rupture of time becomes a rupture of the ‘inner sense’, a rupture of ‘subjectivity’. The paralysis of reflection, of ‘one’s self’, reveals ‘one’s self’ as a lapsing into the infinite moment of selfness. The self becomes Legion.
When I was young I went alone
into the dead of night;
my hair was thick
and touched the ground.
Night was everywhere
and oh it was lonely,
wanting friends
and wanting a self.
I set my hair on fire,
threw the bits in a ring around me;
I burned my fields and trees
and things felt better.
Arson in Khlebnikov Acres!
Burning ego flickered in the dark.
Now I depart
with flaming hair,
not as I, but WE —
(Velimir Khlebnikov, 1921/2, translated by Paul Schmidt)