Lipton’s Journal/February 22, 1955/659

First comes “back and front.” More and more I have the feeling that concepts and abstractions come from bodily frames of reference. Thus, the idea of one’s back, or more accurately the sense of one’s back and the sense of one’s front have an enormous influence on such ideas as past and future, identification, introjections, etc. For example I do believe that our sense of the past in “time” is closely related to the idea of the back, the ass, the ass-hole. Which is why most conservatives are tight ass-holed people—they try to impede the flow of the present into the past, and their rigid faces are a muscular contraction to prevent the entrance of the future into the present.

On the other hand there are probably people who relate their front to danger instead of their back which would be true for most people. These ideas are all still vague, but it occurs to me that the positions people take in fucking, their preferences are a continuation of baby-states where the universe was located first by front, and then by perhaps the first abstract concept to enter the infant-child’s mind, to wit that what is behind him or her also exists. One can see this bewilderment in a kitten chasing its tail.