Virtual Reality, 1971 [In 1971 I created a videotape called "4320" using Charles Strauss' pro- gram for hypercube projection at Brown University. The machine was a Meta- 4, controlled by keyboard and joystick. Two women (Andrea Kovacs and Beth Cannon) sat at the console in turn, and attempted to control the projec- tion - driving it first orthogonally, to produce a cube - driving the cube orthogonally to produce a line - and shrinking the line to a point. The women "inhabited" 4-space. I reproduce part of the dialog and then a short text accompanying the tape, both published in Clone zine. The story brings out issues of patriarchy, mastery, and proper names that are still rele- vant.] 1. "Ok, drive that back into three-space now. Wait, it's still moving in four." "I'm losing control, there's a bending --" "Try the lower console." 2. "It's doubling for some reason, looks like you're sliding along another axis somewhere." "It won't stay still for me. Hold it. No. There, hey where's that coming from?" 3. "Now take it from there to the maximum extension - Petrie projection of the cube first. (Try for the hexagon.) Like driving lessons." "Just a sec- ond, how much have we got here..." "Wow, you're wildly fourspacing it. Lo- wer console again." "Wait.." "Ok, now shade it." 4. "Where are you going?" "Nowhere... I don't know." -------------- His Angle His son was studying 1613, the death of a king, corn prices, when he came through the room. He stopped and watched him. His son was using the mach- ine correctly, at last. The organic compounds seemed to possess the proper mixtures, etc. etc. A Frederick III, previously unknown, here, in this place, flickered for a second. The son assembled the facts, stopped, no- ticed him. The father mentioned he was going to the proposition, and left the dwelling. He had found the proposition two days before; it was the second for him. He was constructing its statements. It was one of the more complicated in the quadrant. He was planely excited. He thought about the assembly and his son and headed 90 deg. The figures were gigantic, larger than he had remembered. They were smooth, flat, po- ssessed no anomalies, with an inclination of 23 deg. Their altitude ratio to his own was almost 75:1. That worried him. He thought again about his son, "he pleased him," he had not known about Frederick. The information had to be forwarded to the central historical bank, that would come soon, someone might receive a citation. The base of the proposition read BC, covering an immense ratio. There was a G in the distance. Nearby, at 37 deg, he cited a DEF. The lines were the usual, distinct and sharp. He walked to AB, at 280 deg, and began to write: If two triangles have one angle equal to one angle, the sides ab- out other angles proportional, and the remaining angles either both less or both not less than a right angle, the triangles will be equiangular and will have those angles equal, the sides about which are proportional. He thought it sounded well, but was too long a name. The region was R/VI: this was VI/7. "He would let it stand." He thought that GC possessed too small a ratio, climbed over the AB onto the slope, moving down, up, zigzag across the figure, in order to examine it. The slope was difficult - not only flat, but with a smooth texture, for a change. This he had not expected, remembered the roughness of the dodecahedron he had recently encountered. His footing slipped, he instant- ly "allowed his body" to collapse, hugging the slope. The skin of palm, face, burned; he continued to slide. ("Slide, slope, slip," he thought for a second, but the feeling of panic grew. "He wondered if they were rela- ted.") He began bleeding greatly, coating the figure with parallel lines, red. He was too far from either AB or AG for any grip, he slid into the narrow, torturous BGC pocket. The lines formed perpendiculars to BG, he began to write, the blood draining from him, bones broken, skull crushed, red alert in BGC... He lost consciousness, the notes soaked in blood, he lost life. The son had forgotten Frederick, even the machine, when he arrived home. He went to the wife, he looked tired. What happened, she asked. I died in a BGC he said. That's too bad, she answered, dinner might be ready. What are you going to do tomorrow? Scrap the proposition he answered. There's got to be another way about it. He was tired. There's got to be another way about it. I did see another ABCG nearer R/VII, it might be climbable. Are you going to publish she asked? It has been already, he replied, you know that. Stop trying to make me feel good. He thought to himself, she uses time too much. He called to his son, he sent him to the library - look up VI/7, check the name. His son left, obediently, returned five minutes later. Give me a while longer, he replied. The father nodded, wearily. He returned to the library, came back after his father had eaten. Or during, and waited. It was difficult, he said, but I did find the in- formation. It was your name, did you expect otherwise? No, said the fath- er, but I suppose now the thing necessarily shall be completed, and made plans to continue the investigation for at least another unit. _________________________________________________________________________ Seams Seems there were these two kids in a bathtub, and one said to the other, "pass the soap, please," and the other said, "no soap, radio." This goes back decades, turning jokes into meta-jokes, transforming humor into performance - those _in the know_ (nonsensically) and those neophytic and confused... Seams joined to the vayikra in Leviticus 1:1, the appearance of the aleph as small text, turning Torah into grapheme, transforming iterability into ikonic signifier - reading, vortices, pivots... Neophytic, confused... ___________________________________________________________________________ Substantiality Secret of Webpages - their _substantial_ appearance, blocked text, walled construction - backgrounds appearing as pure/idealized objects. This is accentuated by form and ruler outlines, scrollbars, etc. - as if one is viewing a laminar architecture. The objects are gemlike, perfectly lumin- ous. Their relative ontological vacuity goes unnoticed in favor of the simulacrum of a maternal matrix, episteme. The depth _appears_ in general to be around 3-4 mm, between 1/8" and 1/6". This gives the apparent _thickness_ of the layers as well; one might guess sheets of tourmaline, opal... HTML is like house-construction, bottom up, almost always framed between <> and - this _spanning_ also creates the appearance of a _bounded entity._ Boundary-layers, in fact, jeweled facets - everything measured against your perfect screen, adjusting itself according to semantic mark- up. The world becomes totality _precisely_ because of bracketing, eidetic reduction, transcendental phenomenology. The "age-old dream" is complete. _________________________________________________________________________ Seduction You can cycle video through html pretty easily with high-bandwidth; you can also create frames that with http-equiv="Refresh" content="x; <>" re- fresh their partitions at varying rates and contents.* You could do a re- cursion on that, increasing frames beyond reason, finally clogging Net- scape and holy Moses! bringing the whole thing down! You can do blink-text with Netscape on refreshing frames and get away without animated gifs but with complex textual realignments; if you've got internal or relative links, you can keep the contents moving as surgical emplacements/replacements, the laminar screen moving rapturously into you. (It's the surgery; try a phenomenology of coagulation, cauterization, sut- ure, and incision.) You can conjure the periphery from the center, shivering center framed by melded framings. You can stepdance indefinitely one against the other, listen to Jennifer try to speak her body, inscribe against the crackled frames. You can make stutter-jump up and down the page, open and close, bind the variables, hold them hostage. I'd speak her frame-name, I'd say, hold still. I'd watch for a while, jump into memoranda, glimpse of panties against the raised-skirt frame. What text is simply staggering, play Phaedra against Medea, play Antigone. You can do this with illusory laminate, turn flesh against part-and-parcel text, mesmeric wryting making true-Jennifer-laminate-inner-speech, her pleasure-cancellation, blank-wall three-dimension, permanent emergence. Oh, you wait and wait for her, oh, the waiting. ------------------------------------------------------------------- * Frame replacement; these occur at rates varying from 16-25 seconds: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 frames --> 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 1 7 6 5 4 3 2 --> frames (Frame 4 refreshes to 11 refreshes to 5 refreshes to 10, etc.) 1 | 2 (Frames can also click to other frames within the Begin: ----|----. same browser quadrant, or to other frames in 3 | 4 other browser quadrants.) ____________________________________________________________________________ Lieu.htm 
 "HTML is like house-construction, bottom up, almost
always framed between <> and 
 - this _spanning_ also creates the
appearance of a _bounded entity._ Boundary-layers, in fact, jeweled facets
<- everything measured against your perfect screen, adjusting itself acco-
rding to semantic markup. The world becomes totality _precisely_ because
of bracketing, eidetic reduction, transcendental phenomenology.  The 'age-
old dream' is complete."> 

Everything is windowpane between <_x_ and >, clear acid between  and
.

The flux flows around images, across tables, through variable frames, in
and out of browsers, across various platforms and video configurations.
The flux is oral/flux, grainless, adapting to architecture, speaking to
_you_ through any available means. 


out the text; there is a remnant, a set of at-
tributes, determining vocalization. ful-
fills Oxherding images, reductions. (If meaning in other words is cons-
tructed in relation to residue, noise, within the system, interpenetrated
by abjection, then what can be said in relation to noise which, by virtue
of semantic markup, becomes contiguous at best? noise which is not inher-
ent within the ideality represented by the 
 document,
but which becomes floating by virtue of its simulacrum of grounding.) (In
other words, if noise cathects meaning, then the particular browser format
appears nonetheless as ground or ideality against the play of semantic
markup, which must remain both in flux and extraneous, although the embed-
ding matrix, maternal against those html drives which are inherently ab-
sent of meaning, creating meaning in relation to their overall sememe.)
(In other words, consider the closed sememe of 


within ; there is an interplay of interior and exterior at work
here which, confused and exhausted, nonetheless references all idealities
- this  equivalent in appearance to that , the manual
fabrication of cancellation, for example, absented, in favor of tokens or
markers.)>

flooding impossibility wherein
lieu of or within the specified construction of meaning. The text fits the
frame; the frame dissolves, moves; meaning _pools._


_______________________________________________________________


Lieu.dead.breath


suck dead hole suck body hole suck beneath you, Jennifer hole "HTML is
like house-construction, bottom up, almost always framed between suck hole
and suck finger hole suck beneath you, Jennifer hole - this _spanning_
also creates the appearance of a _bounded entity._ Boundary-layers, in
fact, jeweled facets suck - sexthing measured against your perfect screen,
adjusting itself according to semantic markup. The world becomes totality
_ beneath you, precisely_ because of fucking, eidetic reduction, transcen-
dental phenomenology. The 'age-old dream' is complete." hole

Sexthing is windowpane between suck _x_ and hole , clear acid between suck
x hole and suck /x hole . suck /Acid reduces it to pure meaning; design
becomes associative, flexible, cleansed. Just this: that meaning decath-
ects from aura, the grain of the voice; it works through semantic flux.
finger hole

The flux flows around images, across tables, through variable frames, in
and out of browsers, across various platforms and video configurations.
The flux is oral/flux, grainless, adapting to architecture, speaking to
_you_ through any available means. suck / beneath you, Jennifer hole suck
/body hole suck /dead hole

suck dead hole suck body hole suck blink hole suck strike hole out the
Jennifer; there is a remnant, a set of attributes, determining vocal-
ization. suck /blink hole suck /strike hole suck /body hole suck /dead
hole fulfills Oxherding images, reductions. (If meaning in other words is
constructed in relation to residue, noise, inside you, Alan the system,
interpenetrated by abjection, then what can be said in relation to noise
which, by virtue of semantic markup, becomes contiguous at best? noise
which is not inherent inside you, Alan the ideality beneath you, presen-
ted by the suck dead hole suck body hole suck beneath you, Jennifer hole
suck i hole document, but which becomes floating by virtue of its
simulacrum of grounding.) (In other words, if noise cathects meaning, then
the particular browser format appears nonetheless as ground or ideality
against the play of semantic markup, which must remain both in flux and
extraneous, although the embedding matrix, maternal against those dead
drives which are inherently absent of meaning, creating meaning in rela-
tion to their overall sememe.)  (In other words, consider the closed
sememe of suck /i hole suck / beneath you, Jennifer hole suck /body hole
suck /dead hole

suck which throughputs meaning-flux by virtue of the formalization of
fucking, the eidetic reduction given in relationship to the particular
browser and computer configuration bandwidth, but _inside you, Alan_ such,
as in suck inside you, Alan hole inside you, Alan suck /inside you, Alan
hole ; there is an interplay of interior and exterior at work here which,
confused and exhausted, nonetheless references all idealities - this suck
strike hole equivalent in appearance to that suck /strike hole , the
manual fabrication of cancellation, for example, absented, in favor of
tokens or markers.) hole suck finger hole

suck sexthing is acid hole flooding impossibility where suck /sexthing is
acid hole in lieu of or inside you, Alan the specified construction of
meaning. The Jennifer fits the frame; the frame dissolves, moves; meaning
_trips._

_________________________________________________________________________


Lieu


The first Lieu runs as .htm, cutting/incising into the textual body; it is
lieu.htm. The second Lieu substitutes language for html, transforms other
sections of the texts, results in a breathing-apparatus. The first places
text between < >, as with a block of granite, sculpted away; intermediate
sections between  and  are visible. Formally, using  locates comments, but browsers tend to ignore extraneous uninterpret-
able commands. 

Thus a document can be written to be doubly read, one way with .htm ex-
tensions, and one way without; further, it can be additionally encoded as
well, so that, saving it as .txt then results in another document that can
be moved to .htm. Over and over again, things thicken, take on attributes
of the book of the world, dense, particulate, broken or sheared, _talus_
sloping nowhere.

The breathing-apparatus of the second Lieu/place places Jennifer at the
heart of commands; the text is no longer performative, but mimics the body
constructed by repeated sed 's/foo/bar/g' commands. The first Lieu pro-
duces the second; in creating the second, I am well aware of the _body of
the text_ itself, sed an operator _onto_ totality, the text hidden as I
shuttle back and forth between twin files, churning itself according to
the pronouncement of surgery or suture: sed 's/foo1/bar1/g' < z1 > z2, and
sed 's/foo2/bar2/g' < z2 > z1, etc. What results is a simulacrum of the
hysterical embodiment of attempted speech, Jennifer-Alan-suppuration.

By way of explanation, in place of / Lieu. 

_________________________________________________________________________


V

V. Tausk's _influencing machine,_ 1919, quoted in Geza Roheim's Magic and
Schizophrenia: 

"The main effects of the influencing machine are the following: 

"1. It makes the patients see pictures. When this is the case, the machine
is generally a magic lantern or cinematograph. The pictures are seen on a
single plane, on walls or window-panes, and unlike typical visual hallu-
cinations are not three-dimensional.

"2. It produces, as well as removes, thoughts and feelings by means of
waves or rays or mysterious forces which the patient's knowledge of phys-
ics is inadequate to explain... 

"3. It produces motor phenomena in the body, erects and seminal emissions,
that are intended to deprive the patient of his male potency and weaken
him. This is accomplished either by means of suggestion or by air-cur-
rents, electricity, magnetism, or X-rays. 

"4. It creates sensations that in part cannot be described, because they
are strange to the patient himself, and that in part are sensed as elec-
trical, magnetic, or due to air-currents. 

"5. It is also responsible for other occurrences in the patient's body,
such as cutaneous eruptions, abscesses, and other pathological processes. 

"The machine serves to persecute the patient and is operated by enemies." 

Roheim continues: 

"The remarkable thing, however, is that many patients have the same comp-
laints without the 'influencing machine.' They do not believe that they
are being influenced by something foreign, but they complain of a feeling
of inner estrangement - they seem 'foreign' to themselves. Intermediate
between those who are persecuted by the 'influencing machine' and those
who have the same symptoms without ascribing them as yet to any external
macine or persecutors, are those who operate their own influencing mach-
ines from within. One such patient said that he himself produced the elec-
tric current that ran through him, 'declaring with pride that that was his
power.'

"Another schizophrenic patient, a woman of thirty-one and formerly a stu-
dent of philosophy, declared that she had been under the influence of an
electric machine for a period of six and a half years. The machine resem-
bled her own body, but with certain differences. The torso was in the
shape of a lid, resembling the lid of a coffin, and lined with silk or
velvet. She said at first that the limbs were natural human members like
her own; then she described them as arms or legs which were merely drawn
on the lid in two dimensions. She was not clear about the head of the
machine. At any rate, though she did not know how the machine was connec-
ted to her or how it was operated, she was certain that it influenced her.
Whatever was done to the machine - she would feel in the corresponding
part of her body. If the machine were struck, she would feel the pain. If
the genitalia of the machine were manipulated, she would feel a sexual
sensation. The machine was manipulated by a rejected suitor, a college
professor, whose aim was to make her accept him."

[ Not to mention Deleuze-Guattari, Bettleheim (Joey), and so forth. The
relations to avatars, @gender, TCP/IP, the machinic aspects of CMC, are
parallel in the schizzed texts I wryte with/through Jennifer, and their
contingent bases in various scripts or protocols. ]


__________________________________________________________________________


SCHIZZ 


Schizz consists of two html files cut at dotted line placed in the C:\
directly and accessed by Netscape, oh what fun. Soon you will crash, but
no harm is done. Oh, and. Schizz stutters sheared. You can see it but no
matter it does trail. Do run. Cut at dotted line. First file: index.htm
and second file: frame.htm and do run. Run index.htm. Open in Netscape by
file:///C:/index.htm do run. It does. Cut at dotted line, dotted line not
included. Both files much be included, C:\index.htm, C:\frame.htm, oh what
fun. 


-------------------------------------------------------------



schizz







ddder




-------------------------------------------------------------



   ddder
   


ddder



___________________________________________________________________________


Dust


The Akkadians and Sumerians were bored. The Hittites enjoyed themselves
because there was so much to choose from. The Assyrians were always irri-
tated, but they came later. Everyone had a good time writing or dictating
and people who couldn't do either heard about it. Nothing worked well in a
dirt-free environment. What the Akkadians and Sumerians lacked in terms of
information and quantity, they made up by population-compression; there
were relatively few of them, small towns without strip-malls. There were
all sorts of things to talk about, because everywhere else was a rumor and
occasional strange language. But they were bored because they occupied the
wide space; cuneiform networks, the skein and skin of the social, didn't
cut it.* Still you might look at them and the texts, everyone borrowing
from everyone else; it's hard to tell what is coming first, second, third,
just as in the Upanishads. So little text, so much resonance.

In the heat and moisture, the clay was cut, men and women had visions,
mind working overtime. One God lowered his plate upon the earth, but there
were mountains and Weathers and marshes. They layered themselves, writing
never stopping for seven thousand years. Someone would hold the reed
poised above the clay, thinking of something else to say. This came after
and so subtlely, the time of pure accounting. They were just given this,
layers of protocols. 

Now it pours forth, the distance between tool and substrate quickened,
hopelessly narrowed. Beams issue forth from gods' eyes, the collocation of
universal information. Information becomes just that, a gathering of in-
scriptions, bits and pieces, held in uneasy abeyance, funneled always
elsewhere; knowledge is a database. There's far too much dirt as informa-
tion ascends to heaven on the hard-drive, protected, enclosed, inviolate. 
Just down the board perfect silicon works perfect Mind, produced in inner-
space outerspace environments, humans enclosed in protective suits, viral
products kept close to zero tolerance. A single reed pollutes the uni- 
verse, a single tablet spelling death, mate, to unread worlds upon worlds.

There are many more of us, singing and writing, and nothing comes between
reed and clay.

___________________

*(These are described in the Internet Text as Net precursors.)

___________________________________________________________________________


Vayomar


Why is it always the _name_ that is at work in scripture (Torah, Gospels,
Upanishads, Enuma Elish)? I argue that Saussure, etc. does disservice in
his emphasis on linguistic closure and difference; it is never sufficient,
in fact, a foreclosure or retreat from the world. One finds linguistic
isolate easily enough, idiolectically holding one's breath. The burden is
elsewhere; consider scientific mathesis as an approach to a language of
natural kinds (both ether and tachyon disappear by virtue of the real). 
Where is the phenomenology of the name, outside of scripture, bridging
subject and object (always already deconstructed on the Internet with
slippage of its own)? Such a phenomenology would _begin_ with subject and
object, the hermeneutics of the real, building on Foucault for example,
relocating language (as Tran Duc Thao did) within the real, bridged by
(for example) the performative. 

Here is html's uncanny resemblance to cuneiform inscription, < and > com-
mon incisions in Akkadian, Sumerian, Hittite. Like cuneiform, the marks
inscribe the substrate; unlike cuneiform, they are meta-semantic and
ikonic, not indexical.

A while ago Laurie Cubbison proposed a rough parallel between rhetorical
enunciations in epistles across empires and the Net; I've proposed similar
parallels between cuneiform/language dispersions and the Net. Combine
these models with an account of natural kinds, performativity and sub-
strate, and a useful model begins to develop, one which harbors ideologi-
cal and ontological accountancy, resonance with the real. Which is not to
say dogma by any means, but something to think about / inscribe.


__________________________________________________________________________


Kill Me

Because I'm online a lot I'm always being fucked by pedophiles who just
won't leave me alone, when I'm not be stalked by eighteen year old guys
with big dicks. I've got antisemites screaming KIKE KIKE whenever I show
up on IRC, and Dr. MU of Big-Dick-Cult is after me to join his religion
where I'll cut my tits off after he gives his holy suck. My kids have been
repeatedly raped by screen-radiation-zombies and I've sold the house out
to a mysterious buyer from Connecticut, oh what can I do, I guess they
smell my twat a million miles away. So I'm offering you a chance to end
this charade of violence that some call "the internet" and come and blow
me away, get it over with. Because I can't stand it anymore, all this
flame-war tactical syntactic strategy deviant stuff that tears my flesh
off with pornographic photographs taken of my bloodshot eyes. Get it over
with already.

Jennifer Disgust

__________________________________________________________________________


Jennifer's Useless Past

Does it matter that the Sumerians or Adena people thought about life and
death, worked out cosmogonies, cosmologies? Does it matter that stromato-
lites dominated the precambrian, that the Tasmanian thylacine was driven
to extinction? Does it matter that rituals have disappeared across the
planet, that no wonder cults provide sanctuaries in the form of stases,
stabilizations, hearths? Does history matter? 

Is it necessary to understand the human through an approach encompassing
history? Is temporal depth required for self-knowledge - is knowledge of
origins in fact necessary? Is it important to understand the history of
life, for example? To understand ourselves, our human community, the na-
ture of the universe, fundamental particles, other cultures need we always
require tracing cultural histories and roots? Is it important we under-
stand our own family histories? The past of the universe, its beginning in
the first n-seconds? 

Increasingly the answer to these appears to lie within the negative; time
itself is on holiday. And it's too easy to dismiss this holiday, to assume
that the past teaches lessons, gives examples - when the past is always
already hopelessly cluttered with debris. Everyone today is criticized for
living in the present - not as hedonists, but as _surfing_ the currency of
the present, ignoring the past. But perhaps the past is useless, trivial,
compared to the inertness, granularity of the present; perhaps it is com-
pleted, and it's necessary to shut out existences prior to the past few
months. 

Jennifer

_________________________________________________________________________




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I climb 30252 steps to heaven
I climb 30601 steps to heaven
I climb 30952 steps to heaven
I climb 31305 steps to heaven
I climb 31660 steps to heaven
I climb 32017 steps to heaven
I climb 32376 steps to heaven
I climb 32737 steps to heaven
I climb 33100 steps to heaven
I climb 33465 steps to heaven
I climb 33832 steps to heaven
I climb 34201 steps to heaven
I climb 34572 steps to heaven
I climb 34945 steps to heaven
I climb 35320 steps to heaven
I climb 35697 steps to heaven
I climb 36076 steps to heaven
I climb 36457 steps to heaven
I climb 36840 steps to heaven
I climb 37225 steps to heaven
I climb 37612 steps to heaven
I climb 38001 steps to heaven
I climb 38392 steps to heaven
I climb 38785 steps to heaven
I climb 39180 steps to heaven
I climb 39577 steps to heaven
I climb 39976 steps to heaven
I climb 40377 steps to heaven
I climb 40780 steps to heaven
I climb 41185 steps to heaven
I climb 41592 steps to heaven


_______________________________________________________________________


ZZZzzz


"The familiar name for this picture, the 'big bang,' cosmological model,
is unfortunate because it suggests we are identifying an event that trig-
gered the expansion of the universe, and it may also suggest the event was
an explosion localized in space. Both are wrong. The universe we observe
is inferred to be close to homogeneous, with no evidence for a preferred
center that might have been the site of an explosion." [...] "If there
were an instant, at a 'big bang,' when our universe started expanding, it
is not in the cosmology as now accepted, because no one has thought of a
way to adduce objective physical evidence that such an event really hap-
pened." (Peebles, Principles of Physical Cosmology.) 

Explosions have _sites,_ matrices, craters, constructions, percepts; sites
may be static or mobile, real or virtual, internal or external, introject
or project, any or all of these, within and without morphing topographies. 
Names roll off the tongue, stain the air. I have clear-vision of staining,
shuffling/stuttering within lamina existing in temporal stases. Contemp-
lating death, I have clear-vision of _sizzling_ lamina, disordered, disen-
gaged; call this curl or rupture, color flaked from old barn-door wood
near fjord or sward, _littoral_ fadeout. Humans wear the skins of one ano-
ther, dead-skinned, stripped, carry their sights. 

Peebles speaks of "an interlocking network of observation and theory," 
inscriptive matrix, what I'd call clear-vision, mobile site. Language is a
_catastrophe_ in the Thomian sense, clear-vision split towards reflexivity
reminiscent of the flaying of physical skin, _donning_ of the virtual. I
call origin a _ruby,_ granting it the tenor of heat, frisson, thrust, tem-
perature of meltdown or dissolution. ZZZzzz opts for an expansion of pres-
ence, problematic of beamtime/lifetime ordering (Sharon Traweek). Among
cosmology, internets, and postmodernity, the ideal neither disappears nor
submerges; it remains an uneasy diacritical trope edged against concepts
of real or virtual locales. Origin had no site, matrix, origin; it will
"always already" never have occurred. 


________________________________________________________________________


Sog


Again tonight teaching through a netstorm, lowered bandwidth and expecta-
tions, the students staring blankly at 404s coming in for a landing across
the screen, projections of emptied spaces, mutilated sites, questions
about the degree and abundance of changed addresses and directories as
webmistresses and masters hurridly reorganize for the millennium, web-bil-
lionaires at the ready plying the enormous increase of languages and sed-
uctions... 

A student finding herself less interested in the Net, partly disgusted it
seems to me, as a result of the _Web-39_ who are now considered a _compu-
ter cult,_ in spite of the fact that the recruits were long-time ago real
life incoming like 404s on the laptop projections, meanwhile the Net turns
fallow, exhausted, stuttering, equipment arriving half-hour after class-
time, me screwing up on the touchpad which responds like stirred jello as
far as ease and accuracy is concerned...

Outside it's raining turned to snow, the equipment was taken from one room
to another out there in that, for once for some reason everyone shows up
for the miserable showing of crashed websites like incoming 404s thrown on
the screen in spite of any reasonable content, the lights don't dim right,
Netscape kept crashing, sites were hung or moved without warning, I could-
n't even mumble about community, we're all perverts here after children
except that the kids are all fake seventy-year-old pedophiles engaged in
violent hacking flamewars enticing virgins into the wrong end of ponds...

Don't shout, the lights are out.


________________________________________________________________________


American Hatred


Sometimes I can't control my hatred; in class today, I was discussing the
CDA which is up before the Supreme Court - and comparing it to NY Mayor
Giuliani's reimposition of a 1927 law forbidding dancing in bars. Twenty-
seven bars have been closed, mostly neighborhood ones, and patrons were
apparently breaking the law as well, since the bars weren't "inspected"
and licensed for dancing.

Institutions are becoming increasingly reified; behavior is governed by
abstract forces top-down. Reification constrains chance as well; if my
child is injured, no matter how, there is always someone to sue, since
every pain has a cause, and the link is incontrovertible, state-ordained.
Further, pain is accompanied by a psychic hurricane; if I spill coffee on
myself, that I just purchased at a fast-food place, I can sue and win
millions, "since they shouldn't have made the coffee so hot." Responsibil-
ity is always already elsewhere; if my child watches porn, it is the fault
of cable television or "the" Internet, not my own. Like everyone else, I
am a victim, and as a victim I can collect.

The state does its part through constraint; whole countries are becoming
validated as _safe_ and _fun_ and _cool_ for everyone; sublimated desire
emerges in "rad" applications, and revolutions flows through Wired. The
current form of endocolonization is _neoteny,_ keeping one in a state of
infancy. I can whisper friend to friend on the Net, but affirmed and leg-
itimized public communication - dancing in a bar, sexuality on the Net -
is a matter of negative legislation. Don't mistake the sea-change for a
second - hate crimes are on the rise everywhere, as totality begins to
settle in.

There is no resistance, because opposition is soggy, and the distance-fac-
tor of institutional control places structural components of postmodern
capitalism beyond reach; the very concepts of deterritorializations or
micronarratives point to a weakening of resistance against an oppression
that manifests itself as atmospheric. No amount of analysis or protest
changes anything; profits are made, and president, governor, and mayor
continue with their post-victorian impositions. 

My students are afraid of the Net. They are afraid cults will grab them
through the screen. They are afraid of rape. Television and newspapers
continue their barrage; the Net is evil. But it's not just the Net - there
are still more and more _I want my baby back!_ "made-for-tv" movies, more
talk of "protecting the children," "protecting your family," "protecting
the house" everywhere, from radio through tv to the street. A great fear
and internal violence lend themselves to enclave-protections, no matter
what rights are given up; it doesn't take Mike Davis to tell us about the
hidden agenda of home-owners' associations, the Clinton administration,
the cops and the criminals. The machine is slowly working its way through
the remnants of freedom and the liberal "establishment," which now refuses
- again out of fear - to acknowledge itself.

Swastikas are not flying yet, but they are being dusted off, repainted in
the guise of American flags (which are also illegal to burn). We're scrab-
bling uselessly; while I don't believe this is under the sign of capital,
or big/small government, or any other reification - I do believe it is in-
dicative of a large-scale transformation, cancer, eating at the heart. It
is part capital, part fear, part violence, part greed; it is part robbery,
part exhaustion, part hysteria, part mourning - and it will kill us, just
as the "artworld" has been tottering for a decade now, under an onslaught
against freedom of expression.

I give witness to obscenity; to every kind of perversion; to facing the
love and hatred in the human heart. But I can't dance in a bar - and I
don't have a decent conclusion here, an easy turn of phrase. The night is
just beginning; I won't live through to dawn.


__________________________________________________________________________


Sighn


Nothing remains beneath the signifier. Capital, gender, power, class, vio-
lence: all are dissolute, fragmented; these narratives gnaw at the social
fabric. Nor is it true that such form a determinate holarchic skein; the
nearly-severed superstructural components constructed in the realm of
classical physics are interrelated percolations. What seethes is capable
of imminent decathecting, defuge; the center no longer holds because pop-
ulations and technologies have exploded the concept.

Wild theory gathers the pieces, wild theories notwithstanding; one insists
in the main on the Occam's short-circuiting principles in spite of manner-
ist conspiracy tales. Nothing works write or right; what works is isolate. 
The chip-development clean-room becomes the transformative dream: to be
_perfect,_ cleansed of gender and culture, open to the hypothesis of pure
spirit. Art's modernist employment of clean white spaces/venues sufficed
for a limited population, until it fell like a soviet statue, overburdened
by its own historicity. 

It's to be forgotten that the clean-rooms are housed; that there are sub-
structures, broken as well, dating from the early decades of technological
urbanization. Floors cave in, ceilings leak, walls stain. We're in Residue 
Planet. There are no roads or roadsigns; there are stained-signs, caved-
signs, leaked-signs. There's no way out of town.


__________________________________________________________________________


    Upcoming Attractions


    Upcoming Attractions
    Families Mourn
    I Want My Baby Back
    New Hope For Cancer Victims
    Suicides: The Ones They Left Behind
    31-Year-Old Woman
    Refugees Stream Across Border
    Children Of Adopted Parents More Likely To Be Abused
    Not In My Backyard
    Inside Your Father
    Swears Innocence
    Universe Still Has Plenty Of Secrets
    He Paid His Time, Or Did He?
    Sex Offender Released, Moves Near Kindergarten
    Stock Market Plummets As Incomes Rise
    A Missile Killed My Husband
    The Homeless Should Work For Their Food
    Vows Revenge
    Girl Stabbed Because Boy Looked Wrong
    Go Home!
    Hate Crimes Quietly Tolerated 
    Cheerleader Raped In Dope Deal Gone Bad
    Inside Your Baby
    Her Last Words: He Belongs To Me!
    Man, 27
    Technologies Plummet As Market Shows Strong Gains
    Man Held Not Responsible In "Car Jilling"
    Prisons Not Meant To Be Homes
    Blight Kills Father Of Three
    Secret Of Life Revealed
    Killer A Loner, Neighbors Say
    The City's Thirty Neediest
    Look No Further!
    Internet Lures Babysitter To Dismemberment Chat
    Inside Your Body
    Killer Tornado
    Girl, 19
    The Brightest Among Us Fear For Their Future
    Building Topples Family of Four
    No One Saw His Screams
    Driver Arrested, Weapons Cache And Drugs
    Restaurant Sued For $100 Million
    Woman, 19
    Fetid Position


________________________________________________________________________


JENNIFER BANGS AT HER NAMESAKE SERVER: The Mess or Wound


{k:22} Banging Jennifer Banging Alan:		I tried to get into you
ksh: Banging: not found				over and over again, Alan/
{k:16} finger jennifer@jennifer.com >> z	Jennifer never answers the
{k:17} host jennifer.com >> z			email. I stalk Alan/Jenn-
{k:18} lynx http://www.jennifer.com/ >> z       ifer who just won't listen
{k:19} telnet jennifer.com 13 >> z		to anything I have to say.
Connection closed by foreign host.
{k:20} telnet jennifer.com 21 >> z
USER sondheim					My name's her own.
PASS jennifer					My name's my own.
PASV						I'm not passive.
QUIT						I'll never quit.
Connection closed by foreign host.		She's not foreign.
{k:33} telnet jennifer.com 25 >> z		I send him mail.
HELO panix3.panix.com				I'm very polite.
VERB
MAIL FROM: jennifer@jennifer.com		I am his mail.
RCPT TO: sondheim@sondheim.com
DATA
Alan, I love you madly!				I tell the truth.
Jennifer!					I sign my name.
QUIT
Connection closed by foreign host.

[jennifer.com]					The sad results:

jennifer.com has address 198.6.197.1
jennifer.com mail is handled by mail.nicom.com
[?1h=(B)0
Getting http://www.jennifer.com/
Look
up www.jennifer.com. 
Unable to locate remote host
www.jennifer.com.
Alert!: Unable to connect to remote host.

[?1l>
lynx: Can't access startfile http://www.jennifer.com/
Trying 198.6.197.1...
Connected to jennifer.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
Thu Apr  3 19:59:05 1997
Trying 198.6.197.1...
Connected to jennifer.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 dcez.nicom.com FTP server (Version wu-2.4(1) 
Fri Dec 29 06:15:49 GMT 1995) ready.
331 Password required for sondheim.
530 Login incorrect.
503 Login with USER first.
221 Goodbye.

Trying 198.6.197.1...  Connected to jennifer.com.  Escape character
is '^]'.  220 dcez.nicom.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.8.3/8.7.3; Thu, 3 Apr 1997
20:10:57 -0500 (EST)  250 dcez.nicom.com Hello panix3.panix.com
[198.7.0.4], pleased to meet you 250 Verbose mode 250
jennifer@jennifer.com... Sender ok 250 sondheim@sondheim.com... Recipient
ok 354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself 050
sondheim@sondheim.com... Connecting to sondheim.com. via smtp...  050 220
hijinks.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.8.5/8.7.3; Thu, 3 Apr 1997 16:49:28 -0800
(PST)  
[...]
Closing connection to sondheim.com. 
closing connection 221 dcez.nicom.com closing connection

_________________________________________________________________________



[Final Pornography: The Body of Jennifer-Alan]





   it hurts you
   
   














murmur
you aren't more, Alanturn me into
holy hole
burn
me into coiling roll
churn
me into soiling hole
my
twisted mind brings you
against
my toiling folds




















































_________________________________________________________________________


                                                            it hurts you

   spreading jelly_____ open my breast______ splay my skins______
   cut me a river______ fuck me forever_____ sing to me my song__
   suck my nipple jam__ hold me, darling____ Murmur you aren't more,
   Alan. turn me into holy hole comfort me smoothly_ use my writing___
   wet my deep throat__ dry my labia milk___ kill me in lactate__
   hurt me, leave me___ wound me, suture me_ amputate my mind____
   burn me into coiling roll enter me quickly____ heal my birthing____
   love me with pain___ call me jennifer____ be me alan__________
   hug me, finger me___ kiss me, crush me___churn me into soiling hole
   open my womb________ play with my cunt___ lie with my cock____
   be with me be be me_ eat me or eat me____ cry me a river______
   write with placenta_ run with me alan____
   my twisted mind brings you
   whisper fuck to me__ shit for me darling_ talk to me jennifer_
   get to me quicken___ yearn for me alan___ pine for me jennifer
   piss for me alan____ come to me murmur___against my toiling folds
   ______________________________________________________________________
   ______________________________________________________________________
   ______________________________________________________________________
   ______________________________________________________________________
   ______________________________________________________________________
(Text entry field) Enter text.  Use UP or DOWN arrows or tab to move off.


__________________________________________________________________________


HTML-BODY: Explanation












Another experiment in wryting the html body, exp.htm uses _alert_ buttons
among the viewer, "Jennifer," and "Alan"; links and targets simply shudder
the page slightly, as if a tremor went through the body. Certain links
leave text altogether, sink to the lower and blank margins of the page, a
non-inscriptive ground, divided by a series of horizontal lines / plateaus
from the body of the text. And the body itself turns on the phrase "you
spread me on your screen," like jelly, like jam, like roadkill or sexual
arousal - a phrase which appears through the majority of alerts. 

The mouse moves across the field, stumbling over the poor simulacrum of
skin, the body with organs (BWO), javascript, html, tcp/ip. One _enters_
the text, alerts protrude, freeze the body until cancelled. And as for the
rest? The surface? Speaking less than the interior, but hardly less intel-
ligent or inscribed; the surface in fact is an intelligent surface, blank
of image, refusing to give way _beneath._

Because of the nature of email lists, these accounts have used at most two
text files; other html-body-works here, it can only be noted, use up to 35
files, border on obscenity, and can't be introduced here. It is not that I
desire blind-html, imageless, text-hysteric; it's that there is an addi-
tional dialog, with email, that reconstructs the possible.


___________________________________________________________________________

Editorial on Generations

We like pets and ice-skating or tennis stars because their generations are
quick and we can mount ourselves over them like art stars whose reigns are
even less, watching through display-optical-devices aimed between our
feet. So generation after generation, our lives become longer; it becomes
us to take our culture quick, it doesn't matter what. I have seen ice-ska-
ters come and go. I remember music stars of yesteryear and look forward to
new music stars on the horizon, or music no one has thought of yet. There
may be riots in this city but five years from now, there may not be. Or
there may not be riots now but in five years enormous violence at the very
last moment. As Susan Sontag points out, we're mainly spectators to disas-
ter, but I'm talking about generations and how much you can learn in just
a few months or so. I go through years in a week and last week's computers
are a generation behind, just like network computers are already old hat.
So I say, we can't measure our ancestors: Jewish, I'm cut off, cauterized,
leery - but we can measure generations of sports and cultures, inhale and
dream them, upon the dull earth's surface of random inertia. This won't
last much longer, the universe points out, and in the time it takes to say
that, three more generations have passed.

__________________________________________________________________________


ARCHAEOLOGY


Today I found Netguide from late 1993; there are only four WWW sites in
it. Below is a return from the original; this site, historic, is going
down. Note that the access is through telnet 23, using the standard port.
Go there...


{k:9} telnet info.cern.ch
Trying 137.138.24.189...
Connected to www0.cern.ch.
Escape character is '^]'.


UNIX(r) System V Release 4.0 (www0)

Last login: Sun Apr  6 04:25:25 from 198.7.0.4

                                            Welcome to the World-Wide Web
   If you reached this by telnet info.cern.ch please note info.cern.ch 
   will soon be disabled, and should be replaced by telnet.w3.org . Sorry
   for the annoyance. 
   
                              THE WORLD-WIDE WEB
                                       
   This is just one of many access points to the web, the universe of
   information available over networks. To follow references, just type
   the  number then hit the return (enter) key.
   
   The features you have by connecting to this telnet server are very
   primitive compared to the features you have when you run a W3 "client"
   program on your own computer.  If you possibly can, please pick up a
   client for your platform to reduce the load on this service and 
   experience the web in its full splendor.
   
   For more information, select by number:
   
      A list of available W3 client programs[1]
      
      Everything about the W3 project[2]
      
      Places to start exploring[3]
      
   Have fun!
   
   
   ___________________________________
   
                                                           webmaster@w3.org
                       
____________________________________________________________________________


Three other early World Wide Web sites:



**************************************************************************
*
* We regret that WWW.NJIT.EDU no longer supports telnetd services.
*
* NJIT has been happy to provide anonymous WWW access since 1992.  This 
* was intended to assist persons without better means of access during 
* the infancy of the WWW.  Now that better facilities are more commonplace, 
* and with increasing misuse of our system, the time has come to end this 
* offering.
*
* Please direct comments regarding this change to "helpme@www.njit.edu"
* 
**************************************************************************

Telnet info.funet.fi
Trying 193.166.0.1...
Connected to info.funet.fi.
Escape character is '^]'.
telnetd: All network ports in use.

-----------------------------------------------------------

The telnet ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu (login www / ) site is still operable,
connecting to the campus internet; I used this site extensively when I was
first on the Net to connect with the Web.

____________________________________________________________________________


"Historic" Fingers:


Here are some amazing finger sites; the first two I used extensively when
I was first on-line - they're still running:

finger quake@geophys.washington.edu (Current earthquake reports)

finger forecast@typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu (Storm forecasts etc.)

finger nasanews@space.mit.edu (Amazing complete NASA info on space
 station, etc.)

finger copi@oddjob.uchicago.edu (Everything including birthdays, moon
 phases, etc.)

With all of these you need to save to file, as in:

finger nasanews@space.mit.edu > space

__________________________________________________________________________ 


$$N$$E$$T$$


Tonight I had coffee with a friend who is a webeditor and occasional wri-
ter for a major paper here. She writes html etc. like a maniac, and is
responsible for content as well. We were discussing the future of the Net.

Her opinion is that it is almost entirely, 90% at the moment, commercial,
and will continue in that direction; she also feels that Net community is
close to irrelevant, almost a thing of the past, part of the inheritance
of the older Net, and one that will be less and less important in the fu-
ture. Even Net sex, she feels, is less and less important, although sex
webpages are not. The Web pornography industry is bringing in more than a
billion U.S. a year. Sex webpages construct a passive subject/consumer -
Net sex implies active interaction and occasional technical knowledge.

She feels, as do I, that shell accounts are a thing of the past, and that
even search engines aren't used by the majority of Net newcomers, who
literally move from site to site, occasionally using on-site search en-
gines like Excite. She feels that almost no one is interested in the psy-
chology or philosophy of the Net, but instead people are fascinated by the
seductive possibilities of the Web - which she thinks is growing in popu-
larity, not stagnating. Her experience with her site is that people do
tend to stay on the Web, surfing indefinitely; they don't tire of it, but
continue to look for the newest and coolest - what I'd call the porno-
graphic impulse.

In other words, her view is that the Net is becoming almost entirely a
marketplace, especially in relationship to new users. And as I've mention-
ed before, most of my students are either turned off or uninterested in
the community or "darknet" aspects of the Net; if they want anything, it's
the relative "lightness" of the Web. 

On the Web, it's not even the IRC-java-applets, but cruder forms of Web-
chat that hold them - and for most, it's not even that, just moving from
content to content. As I've pointed out for the past two years, the Web
then serves not only as client pull but as server push in the sense of
_constructing_ the client-consumer - this is one reason that there are
over a million copies of Pointcast out there already.

With most of these people, virtuality isn't a concern at all, by the way,
since virtuality only problematizes the body or even _appears,_ when the
body is at stake, as it is in two-way communication.

The coffee and conversation were enjoyable; the prognosis was fearsome.
And sure enough, one can already see such things as the decay of Usenet,
gopher, and even MOOs; the relegation of email lists to the backwaters,
and the prevalence of advertising everywhere, even on university and
search engine sites - to no surprise. Does this mean that things such as
ThePalace and WorldsAway are our only hope? Is the Net turning away from
critique and disputation - towards the suturing or foreclosing of disa-
greement behind the transnational happy face? Stay tuned...


________________________________________________________________________


Hacker Drive

Consider a _hacker drive_ towards perfect plastic foreclosure, PC-alter/
altar (Nesta Stubbs), towards BWO; you can turn this image around from
Deleuze/Guattari into eternal-perfect-digital-intelligence, information-
fluxes (Chislenko) filtered towards keen-knives-edgings. That the schizz
would then _ruffle_ criss-cross Web-spidering, skittering laterally across
lamina/pagings. Think of _continuous_ foreclosure beyond BWO tentacular
interaction with organism (keyboard, mouse, camera, microphone), spiders-
skittering-spiders, autonomic Web: available holographic windows for peer-
age (_look what it's doing now!_). So that we provide the power: _it_ pro-
vides the content, internal comprehension of mathesis, solutions, univer-
sals, languagings, virtual subjectivities - so that _hacker drive_ comes
close to, say, _death drive_ mythos: here you have immobilized solidity of
silicon-thought, perfection of Sheffer-stroke crystalline (non-Penrose)
structures (Wittgenstein, TLP). There you have it schizzed across the map,
cutting-through hacked enclave after enclave (Mike Davis), proper-named
out of defuge (Sondheim) - the _hacker drive_ which tends towards what
_gives us our given future._


-------------------------------------------------------------------------


Jennifer Pilots Alan (Kybernetike)


Alan sits on the Web, the wires binding his hands and feet, his panties
creased by thin copper. Electric packets jolt his thighs, Jennifer laughs.
Alan loses control, his panties all wet, Jennifer laughs, spreads the silk
smooth against his genitals. Je nifer and Alan all wet! Tangled in the
wires, going nowhere.

There's nowhere for the pilot to go, waves of information soaked in every
direction. Jennifer-Alan's mouth is wet, urine short-circuiting Website
after site. No one notices; packets meander, take nanoseconds longer. Oc-
casiona ly a chara ter is lost; Jennifer-Alan body shudders in happiness. 

Beautiful skin inscribes inform tion everywhere, come closer, you can read
you on me, Alan. Alan moves closer, tends to Jennifer-skin; late into
those impossible days of September, 1752, they read each Jennifer-Alan
world, tied taut in the wires, eternal, burned into flesh-inform tion, you
slow-disappear nce into pure byte. 

Come closer, Jennifer, take me with you, in you. Piss-soaked wires sing
memory-remnant-flesh, cloister where everything writes. Wires are beauti-
ful, Alan. There are no cool sites, Jen ifer, my face buried against your
breast. Sizzled wires. In 1752, the calendar took days out, conforming
new-date-protocol. We're there, aren't we, Alan. We're never there, pilot
into node, spre d into black-hole protocols, string-theory vibration modes
wryting us forever:

    September 1752
 Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
        1  2 14 15 16
 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
                   
__________________________________________________________________________  
                     
                     

Jennifer's Womb, Gravity Pocket


Brooklyn fills with obtuse contradiction, gangsta rap and radical femin-
ism, trees in early bloom. It slides across the planet, lamina of dislo-
cation. Trees bloomed inert for millions of years before events. Spread
space and time and stromatolites exhausted saline pools. Skittered pack-
ets across the Net hardly amount to communication with the universe. By
chance we're in a pocket, potential well avoiding disaster for a few
millions of years, enough to establish our bratty talk. Our brains slide
off plate-glass slides leaving memory behind. There is no reason to our
spirit-existence. The corpse falls without end as wings, feet, fins and
cilia fail. The plateau is a hollow where the body catches. Our local
millennarian text specifies the rim, borderlining or temporary stabili-
zation; hold me while I catch my breath.

"The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes
ships are wrecked by it. On the contrary, this adds to its beauty. If it
altered the movement of its waves to spare a boat, it would be a creature
gifted with discernment and choice and not this fluid, perfectly obedient
to every external pressure. It is this perfect obedience that constitutes
the sea's beauty.

"All the horrors produced in this world are like the folds imposed upon
the waves by gravity. That is why they contain an element of beauty. Some-
times a poem, such as the _Iliad,_ brings this beauty to light." (Simone
Weil.)

Then the crash, brain flashed to floor: "Man can never escape from obedi-
ence to God." The imploding body continues its descent to the black-hole-
ground (where Jennifer sits "with all the time in the world"). Such a de-
scent is a binding, bound variable (Jennifer, released, "begins with the
cortex, devouring layer after layer" of disappearing origins).

Like Brooklyn, non-parenthetical, buildings held falling with gravity,
"just a little while longer, up."


_________________________________________________________________________

I am in love with Language,
Mouthing's all I have
That inherently forms of Gauge
A measure of Soul or Salve

The shadowless Norm or Verb
Spatters the Landscape of motion
Where Drives inscribe the Kerb
Of Name and Revelation

Describing further creates
A Bind of Attributes
Transformed by Men and Fates
Inscribed through Institutes

Let Nothing hurtle towards
Hurdles across the Sound
Constrained by mouthed Retorts
Quicksand beneath the Ground

Let Nothing gyre and turn
Across the Platitudes
Whole Worlds on fire burn
In wayward Latitudes

Mouthing's Telos cries
And Clara constitutes
Ships and countermands
Inscribing Institutes

And Clara constitutes
Black Freighters, real Beauts


_______________________________________________________________________




WHEN I WAS BORN THERE WAS ONLY PAST
NOW THERE IS ONLY FUTURE
THE IMMINENCE OF THE NEUTRAL ZONE OF THE 60S
CHANGE NOW / TIME MUST HAVE A STOP
THIS IS STUPID REASONING YET LET IT NOW BE SAID
THAT FOR A GENERATION THE GREAT GYRE REVERSES
IN THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE PEOPLE
THAT FOR AN INTERVAL OF A SECOND
IT SEEMED WE HAD EVERYTHING TO LIVE FOR
BEFORE US

________________________________________________________________________


Jennifer

I want to kill Jennifer off. She dominates me; she won't let go. She oozes
from my skin, ectoplasm. She appears above the bed, grabs my face hard,
pulls me too and fro. She won't let me drown or suffocate in dreams. She
plasters my face above water, moves it violently side to side. I want to
let her go; she says she has nowhere to go. I want to cut her off, set her
adrift; she hovers near me, crashes on my shoulders. She needs my shoul-
ders to cry on, lost because I want to kill her, lost because she can't be
shaken. She lands on me hard in the middle of the night, she says we'll be
homeless together. She moves my face back and forth so hard it's like a
shudder, Jennifer does. She won't let me


__________________________________________________________________________


A Story Told to me that I have Taken on as my Own


One day I was at home and I received a call from Clara; it interrupted my
reverie, which had given me great pleasure for several hours. Clara talked
a little about herself, and asked how I was doing. I told her that I had
been looking at myself in the mirror, and speaking french, and, I paused,
watching the play of emotions across my face. Clara found it odd that I
used the preposition 'across,' as if there were an unsettled landscape in
the vicinity, a countryside with scoria and rills. She found it unsettling
that I would be capable of such extreme disassociation, even though my
schizophrenia was now controlled by vitamin therapy. As a theorist, I
discussed the mirror stage with her, or, rather, she thought it, without
saying a word to me. All of this happened to someone else.


__________________________________________________________________________


Peebles, Principles of Physical Cosmology, p. 363:

"In the standard model the predictions for the future seem as unsatisfact-
ory as for our distant past. If the universe eventually stops expanding
and collapses, what do we do about the future singularity? If the expan-
sion continues indefinitely we have the curious situation that after the
universe commenced classical Friedmann-Lemaitre expansion, it passed
through a phase lasting a few tens of billions of years, when it was a
suitable home for observers as we understand them, and then it will spend
the rest of eternity in an asymptotically quiescent state punctuated by
the occasional burst of activity as a gravitationally bound system such as
a galaxy finally loses enough energy by evaporation of stars or emission
of gravitational radiation to collapse into a black hole. This seems
wasteful, though perhaps we are not well positioned to judge."

Peebles points to Dicke and others an anthropic principle; we see because
we exist within the (parameterized) window of the Witness. Now life begins
to appear everywhere from Mars to Europa and planets bustle their gravita-
tional signatures against distant stars. Immense time is meaningless. The
best we can do is write our own deaths; I do that daily. "Wasteful" of
course is a matter of taste.


_________________________________________________________________________


Alan

I want to kill Alan off. He dominates me; he won't let go. He oozes
from my skin, ectoplasm. He appears above the bed, grabs my face hard,
pulls me too and fro. He won't let me drown or suffocate in dreams. He
plasters my face above water, moves it violently side to side. I want to
let him go; he says he has nowhere to go. I want to cut him off, set him
adrift; he hovers near me, crashes on my shoulders. He needs my shoul-
ders to cry on, lost because I want to kill him, lost because he can't be
shaken. He lands on me hard in the middle of the night, he says we'll be
homeless together. He moves my face back and forth so hard it's like a
shudder, Alan does. He won't let me


__________________________________________________________________________