Iroiro The weather began to turn around the beginning of November. I dreamed of fire, sparks flying in the night across the wooden houses. We were jammed against the cemetary, bad luck in any season; Hokusai's ghosts spoke across hideous red lanterns, their teeth waiting for the skin to fall. Fukuoka was ruptured by uneasy presences; the foreign community talked and talked, waiting for something to happen. Rumblings from Eastern City penetrated Nine-States Island. These were the States at that juncture: State-of-Hand-Joined-to-the-Body State-of-Being-Perfectly-Not-Here State-of-Disconsolate-Thought-of-Wings State-of-Hand-Not-Joined-to-the-Body State-of-Beauty-Futon-Winter-Comfort Electric-State-of-Coming-Wonders State-of-Seeing-You-Around-About Eighth-State-of-Fukuoka-City State-of-Siege-of-Hardly-Kanji Eastern City was in State-of-This-Main-Origin-of-Book, still spring, I would say still April, the murmur of brook-larks heard high in Shinto trees. For truth, I did not recognize talons where hands were joined, words wired to electrical wonders not yet evidenced on the way from Kyoto to Fuji, by way of Wheat-Rice-Island. Thinking of wings, I flew, these were my thoughts: Winged Thoughts, Iron Thoughts, Fire Thoughts, Singed Thoughts, River- Water Thoughts, Electric-Coming-Wonder-Thoughts. There were seven flowers, six elements, perfect nights. In Northern- Nine-State-City, it was autumn, late-blooming chrysanthemum engraved on lacquer-bone poet-box, crane-flight, swimming-turtle careful gold design. I would write wonder-haiku, one two sorrow five six mountain eight pine ten e- x leven twelve autumn four- x ox oo and win honor at go-moku, xxxxx o in summer-Kurume, waiting near Wide Island, very many tower down to Nagasaki. For to be sure, I was fast disappearing. I dreamed of fire, sparks flying in the night. I dreamed of wooden houses. I dreamed of shogi sets, the sound of game pieces scraped across the wooden boards. I dreamed of the fluttering of go boards, the sound of stone-and-shell game pieces scraped across the hollow tables. I dreamed of mother-of- pearl orderings from Eastern City, dreamed of the Origin of All Things, dreamed of State-of-Siege. _______________________________________________________________________ From the outside looking in, signified by language and ideogram. Not to penetrate longings, asides, whispers, but also not to penetrate street-signs, newspapers, cries and nighttime fights. To circumnavi- gate by landmarks, one or two kanji at one's disposal. To attempt not to interpret, reinterpret, misrecognize the simplest landscapes, images, sounds. To not think too much. To ignore children's glimmers of alienation and their directed attentions. Not to re-invent the world. Not to lose oneself in the fantastic or history of the fantas- tic. Not to remember elsewhere. To remember matrix. Not to desire. To eat, devour, with equanimity. To show respect, not to lose respect. Not to accept language's loss. To refuse and submit to labels. To tremble at the vestiges of culture. To comprehend lag and make all necessary decisions. To decide to do. To recognize the security of unknown languages, ideograms. To become other within oneself. Not to tremble at the presence of this other. To refuse to recognize oneself in a mirror or photograph. To hear the call of the name and not re- spond. To refuse to call. To be effaced and silent. To make no dif- ference. To constitute a signifier of difference. Not to be consti- tuted. To be accounted for. To be unaccountable. Not to be. ________________________________________________________________________ Clara in Fukuoka Tall and stately Clara walks into the Darkroom. Clara dominates the stage, Clara's eyes are samurai daggers. Samurai have no daggers, pointed out by Travis glaring fiercely. Travis moves to a corner of the room; he's nervous. There are drinks falling off the edges of the tables. There are drunks fucking off the edges of the tables. Someone requests Hole again and again until the player breaks. She reaches for a silver cigarette. It's finely made mesh-of-an-afternoon good gaijin smoke. Travis glares; he's high on thought and screaming. Travis is screaming inside. Here are the words of Travis' scream: Wah wa wa wa. He turns slowly towards the door, careful avoidance of Clara-stiletto. She moves. She doesn't know what she's doing, fucked up on methamphet. The light swings cause of an earthquake. It's the biggest earthquake ever in Japan. Sparks fly from the CD, Hole crashes to the floor. Now or never. Clara whips out dagger-stiletto, cuts his veins. Before it's over in a blue moment. Travis falls towards table-rim kanji-cut, you can read iroiro iraira. Rim-job Travis topples as aftershock levels Fukuoka Tower. Tower, baby, tower. Everywhere in town sparks and wires down. Crash-land Canal City flames cause of the earthquake. Travis dead, Clara screams shampoo, here is what she screams: Wah wa wa Wah wa wa Wah wa wa Wah wa wa. ________________________________________________________________________ To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Voice Always bringing up, that I've lost my voice, can't speak, can't say, can't walk, can't talk. Always bringing up, that I've lost my hands, that Yasu- sada already ripped them from the beauty-body. That I can't use the word for the street or district. That I can't tell the stem from the flower. That I am engulfed by Hana and her Sisters. That it's got nothing to do with Japan: Jopon b17cous17 it is th17 most difficult country, th17r17, I hov17 soid it to my fri17nd, I hov17 soid, so v17ry difficult thot I writ17 in kotokono to tronslot17 17och ond 17v17ry konji out of th17 17t17rnol fix it's in. "b17caus17 it is th17 most difficult country, th17r17, I hav17 said it to my fri17nd, I hav17 said, so v17ry difficult that I writ17 in katakana, to translat17 17ach and 17v17ry kanji, out of th17 17t17rnal fix, it's in." Now on17 will writ17 th17 miracl17 r17nga, said Clara, sitting in h17r kimono-panti17s, sur17 th17r17 ar17 drunk17n bon17nkai now and I'm on17 of th17m! H17r17 com17s anoth17r Japan17s17 word, "hon," th17r17 it go17s, taking th17 book with it. Th17 Miracl17 R17nga Writing thus, I pass it on to my fri17nd. Writing thus, I pass it on to my fri17nd. Writing thus, I pass it on to my fri17nd. Writing thus, I pass it on to my fri17nd. This was compl17t17d in Fukuoka, among a clos17 circl17 of "Japan17s17 l17arn17rs," th17 flow17r of Am17rican soci17ty, 17ach unawar17 of th17 oth17r. All think lik17 17xquisit17 corps17s: it's th17 17xotic w17'r17 looking for. I'd say som17thing about the walls of the house, calling the floor "tatami mat," watching the internet collapse over and over again, cauterization of the voice, say something about the high-throat ululation of certain song styles, the rep- etition of ignorance I display, loss of the alphabet. but the book is be- ginning well, I would say, learning the subservience of the subject which is always already a fiction. I'd say som17thing about it. I'd say: virtual truth isn't simulacrum, isn't sub-level on the way to broken commentary. I'd say the commentary is broken. I'd argue for the break. about the walls of the house, calling the floor "tatami mat," watching the internet collapse over and over again, cauterization of the voice, say something about the high-throat ululation of certain song styles, the rep- etition of ignorance I display, loss of the alphabet. but the book is be- ginning well, I would say, learning the subservience of the subject which is always already a fiction. I'd say som17thing about it. I'd say: virtual truth isn't simulacrum, isn't sub-level on the way to broken commentary. I'd say the commentary is broken. I'd argue for the break. __________________________________________________________________________ wen grean flowers burn then: wen the laun hissed: kneeling: grean flowers grean stemSun flows across stasis of walled village grean flowers grean stemSterms now you sea light flows now you don't grean flowers greawho you are, you know you're grean flowers greawisth the sign, that doubt has grean flowers grearom this world, that doubt and certainty flou signs beyond this, "beyond" I and certainty floun open archistectural field: in and certainty flound pawn and ... and ... never and certainty flouflourishing into the grean of and certainty floua moment for doubt, I would capture you wisth chess queaNumbering in millions the strength of capture you wisth chess queaNbright-light daughters, numbering in any capture you wisth chess queaNform of building's quean, etc. etc. the plague now n stemSbut you know n stemShut in along n stemSdisappeared f risheDreams of other risheDmean to say, a risheDshogi, lance a risheDlooking back, risheDbattle, never , never rekishi ist's all in bad shape, ist can't recover* looking down, stone flowing at my feet "now you sea light flows" *now. ______________________________________________________________________ japonisserie: rekishi history shogi japanese chess tea ceremony shinjinrui ________________________________________________________________________ J--- Julu wanders Chiyo; it's night, there are dragonnes beyond Ears of Buddha wings, there are sighs from jinja pond You don't go beyond. There are dark waves, valves, not fucking Hokusai sweet Hiroshige - What gaijin know of art can't be placed on bamboo map Or prefecture off it, the map where - how can I write mishap Of Julu, what she found, crashed pottery - there was blood Between the cracks (tan dust) from three thousand or more Years of Jericho, but this was elsewhere, temple store, Three squares for goods. She died. There were hoods Down the street. They thought she was meat. _____________________________________________________________________ Color Words: I Buy a Photograph and Can't Think About Anything MA time interval space room TANBO rice field IMEJI IMAGE WITH FIFTEEN SHIPS YAMA mountain NAGATO where the north shore turns towards MINATO harbor in Yamaguchi-Ken where I would walk out on the HANTO peninsula 1943 FOURTEEN SHIPS 1931 TWO SHIPS 1945 IMEJI WITH FIFTEEN SHIPS YAMA there in Sesshu FADEOUT, not a person in sight, these MA in MA, o per- fect MU nothing in o-perfection MA of TANBO NO IMEJI, E IMAGE WITH 15 SHIPS FIRST CLASS DESTROYERS, I'd say quite a distance from HIROSHIMA wide-island, wouldn't you? WHITE RAIN in KITAKYUSHU TONIGHT up THRU HAGI, Japanese bush clover, wouldn't you say quite a distance, TANBO walking in the dark? I heard Fukuoka almost got hit. Recently, these kids got zapped on a TV Pocket Monster cartoon - just when the action got good, they got flickers on the screen and they got quasi-epileptic convulsions. You can carry the digital versions around in your pocket NAGATO. The words hang out; they got what it takes. The photo's eerily calm, as if the ships were the outgrowths of roots taken in the harbor floor. Suspended by virtue of mechanical perspective above the rice- fields. I wasn't able to breathe for the first two years of my life. The truth is, I'm a victim of permanent suffocation. Why is it always me, me, me. __________________________________________________________________________ (From someone named Sarah Kanji) there are three strokes to the river, two strokes to the man there are three strokes to the number, one stroke to the wand the man strikes a feather with the wand the feather bends in the fifteen strokes of the wind the feather bends in the sixteen strokes of the wind wind cries, you don't hear me anymore wind cries, you don't see me anymore "there are three strokes to the river, two strokes to the man" there are five strokes to the fire, seventeen strokes to the iron and there are sixteen strokes to the mercury, seven to the plant from which springs all things and the man strokes the fire with iron, and the man springs hard against the plant, there is one stroke to the woman, "men are not all things or plants" and "a woman is writing" "a woman is writing this" and the wind cries you don't and the wind cries you don't and the man flows like mercury down the iron fire woman plant river "the man flows like writing" there are four strokes to the mountain, feathered like the wind and there are a number of wands [...] ______________________________________________________________________ New, Fukuoka Radio, Longwave: Unknown Radio, Mediumwave: Japanese Radio, FM: Love-FM 76.1; one European Classical; Japanese Radio, Shortwave: ABC (Australia); VOA; Radio Netherlands; BBC Newpaper: Japan Times which J brings in to Kyusandai on occasion Magazines: Manga, Japanese; Byte, etc., which my brother brought over Television: Late-night Malcolm X, Reservoir Dogs; middle-night actions pics, English; Kabuki, Enka, and Minyo, Japanese; cooking programs; weather-with-symbols Computer: sondheim@gol.com IP and shell account (accessible only by IP), two PC laptops, one Mac desktop, one Mac laptop Books: Occasional purchases at Maruzen (Deleuze/Guattari Thousand Plateaus, which I already have in the States); Sotatsu (classical painter), Japanese; borrowed books on linguistics, Bourdieu, Japanese, current Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973 and Ian Buruma, A Japanese Mirror, as well as books brought over, including Shelley, Lacan, Levinas, Kristeva, and various computer books covering Unix, Javascript, and HTML Photograph: Harbor in Yamaguchi-Ken with ships, pre-war or war Prints: 4 Hokusai and one other I brought with me Records: None Videotapes: Rented from local video stores or borrowed, Australia, US fare, films including Natural Born Killers Audiotapes: Shared collection including British and Australian rock, Cape Breton fiddle music, some Japanese from the gomi (garbage heaps), some industrial (my old Damaged Life group) CDs: Numerous, see above. CD-ROMs: For Macs, various software programs, 1998 New Years' CD-ROMs Fliers: Snack-bar-girl fliers taken from phonebooths and phone poles Telephone: Full-service including computer-assisted international Films: None, except for television ________________________________________________________________________ Bourdieu Note [That what appears cleansed from within, the purity of form and con- tent, is context within the habitus. See The Field of Cultural Pro- duction and Language and Symbolic Power. Read on. In Language and Symbolic Power, Pierre Bourdieu takes Austin and oth- ers to task for presenting a naive view of performativity from a form- alist stance. Institutions and context are not taken into account; in order for performative competence to occur, members must both recog- nize and empathize with authority. Language is seen as communication within a linguistic community. Language does not operate on itself. Nevertheless, computer languages provide an instructive counter exam- ple. Within the aegis of a program, the language itself is the ins- titution, articulated through other languages, all the way down to software implementations in the midst of hardware. This is clean-cut; the program need only be started for it to run independently of com- munity. It carries out tasks in what appears to be a rather essential interiority, and one might consider that every action in the universe might be considered one sort of program or another. The computer language, then, is both formal and leaky, residing in the midst of other languages; what appear to be objects and life-forms may only be the surplus productions of a program that continues to develop on its own. Such a language, in fact, _can_ operate upon itself, as any owner in 1974 of a TI59 calculator can attest to; even within such a small device, there are self-modifying programs - and the develop- ment since then has been exponential. Thus the program could be considered almost purely performative in the Austinian sense, constructing by virtue of compiled or interpreted commands. While the context is the computer itself, as well as the particular implementation of the language, etc., this is formal and well-defined and conceivably inseparable from the language as well. One could argue that there is always an operator in the background, but this parallels human evolution with an Operator in the background. I would argue instead that there is a qualitative difference between human languages (as constituted by speech and writing) and computer languages - precisely in this aspect - that performativity within the computer (which is all there is vis-a-vis the language) is context- free, in a sense which human languages are not. I would also argue that this constitutes a turn in representation itself, which becomes both construct and _dynamic,_ performative, just as any virtual real- ity is necessarily performative, if not to be reduced to the old- fashioned stereograms of the nineteenth century. Thus it is relevant now to ask: What does it mean to _perform the real,_ which is a question that, previously, would have been consid- ered nonsensical, or literally the theater of psychoses. _____________________________________________________________________ Memory, Circumlocution, Phenomenology When I decided to come to Japan, I had already been six years in New York, living in the same loft the while. I had established routines for shower- ing, going for early afternoon coffee, the programs I watched on late-night television. I had a circle of friends who tolerated me, often trading or giving books and other theoretical paraphenalia away. In short, I had est- ablished a habitus of customary dispositions of reasonable depth, including jacking in to cyberspace on my Pentium desktop several times a day. I would program on the desktop or explore the Linux system I had installed. Over the years, the number of phonecalls I received dropped off drastically as the Net took up more and more communicative space. In the last several months, I had negotiated a trade with Tom Zummer, receiving an old Mac in exchange for some other equipment. I set this up on the top of the bureau (which also bordered the top of the sink in typical New York style), and used this for email; it was quick and easier to use than the desktop for these types of tasks. There were also two laptops in the apartment, both 486/25s, which I now have with me in Fukuoka. One was set in front of the futon, providing a third station; the second was usually packed away, taken out for trips and other distance applications. Although both are slow, the Aero is very lightweight, and the NCR has one of the best active matrix screens I've seen. I'm typing this, for example, in crisp black, white, yellow, and green. In short, I had established a personal environment interpenetrated with var- ious forms of communication technologies - phone, radio (shortwave, etc.), mail, magazines, computer (internet, etc.), television, cassette tape, CD, CD-ROM, and VCR. The phone machine linked me across my departures and arri- vals from the loft; the mail continues to come. I left quickly for Japan, two months or so after making the decision. A large part of this time was taken in translating goods from one site to another, which I had never seen. The translation consisted in either phys- ical sending of material, or packing and storing. Before either, I sold a number of books, gave a number away, including some which I regret at this point - including a sale of two shopping-bags of "theory" for one-hundred- some dollars, well below market value. The transition eventually transformed the loft into a space emptied of per- sonal history; I'd wake in the morning, along with the cat, facing a mute range of cartons and boxes, shelves half-empty, books out of order or askew. I was draining the signs of my life, the clutter and trinkets which separate the everyday familiality of the world from the impersonal spaces of capital and implosion on the street. I left through portals, through other transitional spaces. The night before flying from New York, I did a poetry reading; the night before that, I pur- chased the loft. I flew to San Francisco, spending part of a night and the next morning with my daughter; the next morning, I left for Portland, then Nagoya, then Fukuoka. Each of these occasions released or gathered; each provided a distancing from everyday life in Brooklyn. Things slipped away. I had shipped two cartons of books, took others with me. Whenever possible, I jacked in the Net, thanks for the memories. I used this account or that ac- count; I was turning unaccountable. In Fukuoka, the alterity of inertia has been everywhere. I have written of kanji and the language all the way down, the necessity of interpretive stra- tegies across common everyday activities - mailing a letter, picking up a package, buying the proper kind of milk. I have written of the obdurate nature of the sign, so evident in its unreadability - on one hand, I'm in the midst of the physico-inert (practico-inert); on the other, I'm excused from the textual world, so I skim, render surfaces back into surfaces. Thus material depth in a world of signs which appear as further gestures, signi- fiers into the void. All dissolves in the knowledge that for everyone around me, the world is everyday, slipping by. Nothing slips by here; hijoguchi, emergency door, requires a series of moves in order to comprehend the phrase or kanji or even what door is meant, for what purpose, and wherefore. _Wherefore_ which is the condition of birth. _Wherefore_ which is the state of death, descent, as well; once I knew what to do in case of fire, and once I recognized the State for what it is, was, will be. But this is an essay on memory and reconstitution: Who do I hear from, still in New York or elsewhere in North America? How is the process of neighboring discontinued by flight, lines of flight? New York implodes constantly; once there, the rest of the world is withdrawn or absorbed, transformed into the same thing. So that I do not hear from New York from outside New York, and I would say that New York is emblematic of foreclosure itself, that no one hears from New York, that New York disappears into itself, perhaps in the way that any large city does, and perhaps not. But I was there, leaving after just having purchased a loft, and it is this, the loft and the people and taking a shower, that I am writing about, the necessity for reconstitu- tion, and the operations of memory described by Sartre, say, all the way back in the Psychology of Imagination, or Schutz on relevance theory, or even current work in cognitive psychology, emphasizing the constitution of the world, not its given - for it is here that this essay unfolds, in its reconstitution. For example, the shower, which I do not remember in its totality or as a sign or signified, but only in the detail, which I begin to reconstruct - the need to step over the weathered piece of wood on the step in order to enter it, the stains on the cheap plastic, the sealed drain which leaked into the downstairs hallway - all of these things which do not come to mind immediately, but are reconstructed as a chain of signifiers - or more prop- erly, as a narrative - so that there is on one hand a "feeling" of the shower and its environs, but on the other, there is the need to create a story about it, similar to the stories necessary in learning kanji - only _this_ story reaches out into the physical world, bringing it back to me - although, again, perhaps it's a reconstruction of fiction, something that never existed - it would be hard to know without returning - so that New York is becoming, increasingly, both "New York" and an _unfolding_ that exists _qua_ unfolding, and it's the _qua_ - the narrativization - that is the core of historiography, I'd dare say - that is at the heart of things - [There might be another example from the process of creating "measure poly- topes" in dimension theory - in other words, moving from the two-dimensional square to the three-dimensional cube - you can do this by "sliding" the square at right-angles to itself, just the right distance - there's your cube - and it's just as easy to slide a one-dimensional line-segment "side- ways," creating the square in the first place - this all beginning, of course, with a single zero-dimensional point - you slide it, and form a line-segment - so that it's as if there is a beginning, middle, and end, to the segment - it doesn't matter where you begin, which end is the beginning and which is the end - it's the sliding (I realize I'm creating a dynamics here) - all sorts of things emerge from this approach, needless to say - but here the only point is that there _are_ points demarcating the segment, which consists of - and you can imagine this as a _track_ telling us something if you want.] So that now, I carry around a triple structure of the past - first, those memories which are "ordinary" ones, highschool prom for example - anything that was in the past, that presents itself, that demarcates itself, perhaps those things that create traumatic structures or even at the time seemed emblematic - then there are those memories which are "foreclosed," which appear as nodes or intensifications, emptied of content - or rather, with inaccessible content - such as "New York" before leaving, my habitus in relation to my friends, the socio-cultural landscape for example - and third, there are those memories that are "on the verge," "on the tip of my tongue" (langue) - which appear, are apparent, only by virtue of reconsti- tution, a re-creation - and of course, all of these are intertwined, one lending itself to the others - I live in a world of half fictivities - our worlds always border, "just about," on psychosis in this regard - what is true or not - and there are the issues of what strategies are necessary for the reconstitution, dredging, in the first place? And for me, back to the shower, it's the _path_ or _action-paths_ across or into the shower that are germane, the moment of the body _in regard_ to the shower, in regard to its space - I can see my hand reaching for the shampoo for example - the smaller bottles kept in a shallow cavity on the shower rail (in the right-hand corner), the larger kept in a shelf with "fencing" hanging from the shower head itself - then there were the left-over bottles - what hadn't I finished using, what did I use, what remained of the liquids and solids that constituted my everyday hygiene - and I can remember further into the mouthwash on the poorly-constructed shelf above the toilet, and so on and so forth - even with animals - The cat, Boojum, imagining her, the tenor of her fur, quality of her eyes, her movements across the floor - I'd have to think of something to toss - she'd play for a little while, then drop away - she'd lose interest quickly - and I think this is because of the way she was probably brought up - she was a street cat who was kept as a tiny kitten, I think, in the basement of the Cuban restaurant next door, as a mouser - she got out - we heard her mewling and mewling in the back garden - went out there, found her - took her in - no choice really, she's been with me every since, except for a few months - tears up the furniture - a particularly loving cat, by the way - I can remember, I can remember - And so it goes, even with people, even with the quality of space and time, even with the constructs of dimensionality - when did the world appear quite so _real_ as it did, say, on a certain afternoon I can imagine, create, in 1969 or 1973 or 2004? What a swirling here! And what difficulty to decide where virtuality occurs, what is _hardened_ and what's not, what is "really" present and what's not - and how one defines "really" - which loses as soon as it's formed in the mouth or by the fingers - everything carries ghosts - It's the reason, I think, for ghosts - they're carried as the organs or structures of reconstitutions, they're the remaking of the world and its hollowing at the same time - they're simultaneously birth and death, pre- sence and absence, fullness and lack - there's no accounting for them - and now, we live adjacent to a graveyard in a Buddhist temple ground, and I'm waiting for the next typhoon - the dead will rise, or something will, or something will sink, something of life or lifelessness, not this eternal circling or cycling, just the _building_ of the world - its scaffolding - you can almost see it toppling - rather perhaps our existence as stains upon it - memories for no reason whatsoever, memories for no occasion at all. Oh, this is to those ghosts who swell our bodies, harden them into the ves- tiges of life! This is for those strategies, those operations! This is for the moment of foreclosure, completion, return to the beginning which gives everything a name, proper or otherwise! This is for occasions! Once, I was living by the side of a valley, there was a factory and a machine in the valley, and I saw the factory, heard the machine. And I remember [...] Ghosts, which I have created for the occasion - or, to be precise, which have created me - and no more can I remember, they're part and parcel - just as DNA courses, for example, or the air itself - they're together, I'm human after all - whatever I remember, you can be sure (are you there?) - passes - this is a species in fact concerned with _passing,_ the on- slaught of time as one example, hiding, effacing, as another [...] Part-object ghosts, irreal ghosts, nanotech ghosts, machinic desire [...] [...] ___________________________________________________________________________ "saying 'girl'" saying "something" about writing, writing the "something" which turns _in a manner of speaking_ into something, which you might hear sounding out the antecedent of the word to your virtual self, although not the obdurate quality of the grain of the voice certainly, but "something" that you had processed, constituted (without image or sound, without text or reference) by virtue of a _textual disposition_ as a result of cultural capital (for example), not to mention processing something which might be interpreted through the signifier "something" dependent on its interpretation in the first and last place ... saying "girl" about writing, writing the "girl" which turns _in a manner of speaking_ into girl, which you might hear sounding out the antecedent of the word to your virtual self, although not the obdurate quality of the grain of the voice certainly, but "girl" that you had processed, constituted (without image or sound, without text or reference) by virtue of a _textual disposition_ as a result of cultural capital (for example), not to mention processing girl which might be interpreted through the signifier "girl" dependent on its interpretation in the first and last place ... saying "children of the apocalypse" about writing, writing the "children of the apocalypse" which turns _in a manner of speaking_ into children of the apocalypse, which you might hear sound- ing out the antecedent of the word to your virtual self, although not the obdurate quality of the grain of the voice certainly, but "children of the apocalypse" that you had processed, constituted (without image or sound, without text or reference) by virtue of a _textual disposition_ as a res- ult of cultural capital (for example), not to mention processing children of the apocalypse which might be interpreted through the signifier "child- ren of the apocalypse" dependent on its interpretation in the first and last place ... ___________________________________________________________________________ motd -v From sondheim@panix.com Sat Jan 3 03:11:46 1998 From sondheim@panix.com Sat Jan 3 03:11:46 1998 Return-Path: Return-Path: Received: from panix3.panix.com Received: from panix3.panix.com (Z6WT/rseBxAPuVf9CpwaVzDsy1tpL0K8@panix3.panix.com [198.7.0.4]) (Z6WT/rseBxAPuVf9CpwaVzDsy1tpL0K8@panix3.panix.com [198.7.0.4]) by gol1.gol.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id DAA08648 by gol1.gol.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id DAA08648 for ; Sat, 3 Jan 1998 03:11:27 +0900 (JST) for ; Sat, 3 Jan 1998 03:11:27 +0900 (JST) Received: from localhost (sondheim@localhost) by panix3.panix.com Received: from localhost (sondheim@localhost) by panix3.panix.com (8.8.5/8.7/PanixU1.3) with SMTP id NAA00694 for ; Fri, 2 (8.8.5/8.7/PanixU1.3) with SMTP id NAA00694 for ; Fri, 2 Jan 1998 13:11:25 -0500 (EST) Jan 1998 13:11:25 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 2 Jan 1998 13:11:24 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 2 Jan 1998 13:11:24 -0500 (EST) From: Myouka Sondheim From: Myouka Sondheim To: sondheim@gol.com To: sondheim@gol.com Subject: Message of the Day Subject: Message of the Day Message-ID: Message-ID: Errors-To: sondheim@panix.com Errors-To: sondheim@panix.com MIME-Version: 1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII motd -v The Panix office is closed this morning because the water main break in the area makes it inadvisable to travel to that part of town. There will be staffers available by email, but we do not expect to be able to answer phone calls. Sometimes I get tired working here, wondering what you are doing over there in Japan. Then I think to myself, I'd better look in a mirror. Then I go into the sendmail configurations and work the troubles. Then I think, these troubles are worked. Then I know I've accomplished something. Then I can forget the mirror and just love my identical twin sister, M. Then she says, this is interesting, so send it to everyone. Then I do. M. __________________________________________________________________________ Telegraph Hill "Hello, Hello." The redoubling of effort. The valiant defenders. The stalwart citizens. The militant heroes. Meanwhile The homefires burning. Everyone does his duty. The emblazoned sun. The flag held high. Meanwhile The roaring factories. "There go our men." The wheels of commerce. "Daddy I can hear you." ______________________________________________________________________ Twice the Speed! Desiree rides herself, O Beauty! Latest Shinkansen bullet train in operation, the Nozomi, at 300 kilo- meters per hour! Fukuoka to Tokyo, minus the stops, Nozomi, "desire" among other readings - the pure vector of it - the momentum generated by the _wish_ itself. It's a hurricane! tsunami! typhoon, "table wind" winding across the plains of Japan! Suddenly: No Nozomi, cancelled for the day or night. Desire travels everywhere except to the far north! Little desire in Hokkaido! The brain is where the stem is, things fall to the ground, gather in Kyushu! In Kyushu, I become Hakata-Doll, which makes me special. I gather Desiree in my Kimono. She is very cold! She has been out all night in Nakasu, now collapsing on the tat- ami mat! We feel very sad for her. Later, we tell her that there are new Shinkansen under development, right now! They have reached speeds of 550 kilometers per hour! They levitate! There is no desire! My brain tracks her to the end of the line! I am cannibal! So long, Desiree! Hello Nozomi! "Thinking of these beautiful Islands, vectored beyond reason, I am re- minded of the fragility of all Life, the frailty of being Human, and our dear mortal Souls, given to miserable Trespass." (Jonathen Swift, Gulliver's Travels.) "There is too much desire in the world." (Wittgenstein.) "There is just the right amount." (John Cage.) "I've never been to Japan, but I was born there." (Three Dog Night.) Desiree breaks the sound barrier; she's traveling now, faster than the vocation of the real. Beautiful streamers behind her; Diogenes Laertius reports that the Chaldeans could read the invisible spirits streaming everywhere in the air. Aw, it's all so sad when desire loses itself among the rigidity of protocols and tracks, on the way to paradise. It's all so sad when I can't remember what I'm writing, when my virtual body collapses as a result of physical illness - but it's then that clarity surfaces: _Who is Desiree, and why is she saying those terrible things about me?_ The fever throws plates off my stomach; the ground is cluttered with parts of my body, fits and starts. I can see my arm from my eye. I can feel my wrist from my foot. The Nozomi hurtles through the night and every feverish shudder (I have) tends towards a slight inhalation - O Japan! O Desire! True and false gods - look how the world's barred. I missed the train and spent the night in the Hakata station. So what? Well, there was American coffee, and I met an itinerant shakuhachi player who taught me everything I know! Such as cancer is the leading cause of death in Japan. Such as, peo- ple rush rush rush! but get nowhere! Desire burns out, and Desiree's stuck on the track, sick, as the typhoon hits and the train just stalls out! Subscribe to shinkansen-l@listserv.aol.com! Now it's almost time to leave, now I'm on the train, Tokyo! O Tokyo, big Eastern City of the Korean Peninsula! How are you today! ______________________________________________________________________ The Truth of Dis-Ease, Illness, Lesions of Thought and Affect I cannot gauge the destructiveness of my fever without a thermometer; I can only recognize the current demobilization of my body - sheets of convulsive shuddering, for example, across the upper chest region, and a certain weakness in the skin of the legs and arms. This is accompan- ied by a continuous cough, possible water in the lungs, insomnia. I bring up these _conditions_ or illness, dis-ease, in relation to writ- ing, which is always apparently constituted by the physically healthy body - thus philosophy, say, based on the _red patch_ assumes a lack of color-blindness, and a phenomenologist sitting at a desk is presum- ably not subjected to continuous burning sensations, as a result of the sunlight entering through the window. Years ago, in Disorders of the Real, I thought through a similar ill- ness, writing through it, through the hallucinations and sweats; I was unable to function, but wondered, marginally (to the extent I could wonder at all) whether the image or construct of the world given to me _under those conditions_ might not be somehow "truer" than otherwise. If this seems far-fetched, think of those writing within depression, and depression's hold on reality. So to what extent is the philosopher not only healthy, but a model of health and sanity for that matter? And here are some quotes from the book: "Bury "I have the flu. It is a violent case; I find it difficult to concen- trate. Things seem lighter; my body twists and curls. There are mom- ents of tension, dizziness. Nothing resolves. "What resolves, reverses, is the memory of a fantasy. Which reduces to an image, is captured by an image. A hole in the shape of a funnel, an inverted cone, into the ground. About thirteen inches; somehow this depth is significant. When I do not have the flu. Which I do at the moment." This is from The Sickness I. Here is more: "Does the flu take over the fantasy, as chills begin. They are typical chills in this abnormal, atypical December weather with the tempera- tures reaching into the mid 70s. What about the fantasy when the body convulses, or is the result of the fantasy, the same, and therefore the necessity for its presence? In the midst of my sickness, the flu." And what if the image, the fantasy, is a guiding metaphor? What if it constitutes the heart of philosophical exegesis, something later on perhaps that I would bring back, from sickness into health? What are the insights offered? What have they to do with the structure of the world? "A smoothness somehow tied into the cause and effect relation of the flu. To itself. The flu which consumes itself. Disappearing into the blending of reason." Becoming the heart of reason, the dis-ease at the core of philosophy, taking the world apart, nothing for granted. And from The Sickness II: "Even then in the midst of my sickness (delirium) I speculated on this apparition. The fever insisted on telling a truth: this was verified by the fever itself." The fever deconstructs the body, holds it in abeyance. An addition: I don't feel well, I don't feel myself, I don't feel anything, I'm some- where else, where am I? Then there is the practical inertness, The Sickness V emphasizing the stone or ghost-like apparition of the self. For both interpenetrate: The stone is hollow, transparent, and the ghost thuds to the ground. Words choke in the throat; language vacates itself, meaning is no longer present or an issue. As in depression, everything decathects, and it is this loosening, this disinvestment, that tends towards a truth that topples, that can never be recognized, since there is no healthy subject to recognize it: "All this stupid thing does is sit around and watch television. That's the first line. It always forgets what it's talking about. Half its mind is gone. That's another line. It just had its temperature raised to hell and back. It just had its ear smashed [tinnitus]. That's something. It just can't hear the high notes. It just can't tell where the low notes are coming from. That's one of them. It watches its body collapsing each time a breath is expelled. Someone has to remind it to breathe. That's whatever. It gets sick at night; it can't remember where it comes from. That's it. It misses the point; it can't remember what it was you said just a moment ago. That's maybe what it meant. It can't even make a point; it just writes and writes and makes errors, errors not points. That's a line or two." [...] "It can't even rot; it doesn't have enough mind left for the rot of it. That's not even the truth. It just had a bloody hot fever; it remembers the fever, whatever that had been, wherever. Isn't nothing at all. Isn't the first or the second. Isn't meaning anything. Isn't a head or anything at all." Isn't meaning anything, because _there_ would be the locus of meaning - instead we'll foreclose illness, cancel it, cancel depression for that matter - cancel neurosis, schizophrenia, psychosis - look for the truth in health - in the post-therapeutic subject - well-adjusted - now you see the problem - already this has been deconstructed in rela- tion to the psychoanalytical - but with the physical, yes, there are still ailments, these carry - if anything - misrecognitions, misrepre- sentations - or so it seems - I'd say, here, otherwise - let's look at fevered texts, convulsive or epileptic texts - let's look at cancered texts or texts in-formed by tumors - let's look of the truth of the waning mind - the consumed body - the body of lesions - body of wounds - I don't mean here, the political economy of this body, or its wit- nessing - I mean specifically the contribution to philosophy that emerges - yes, I know otherwise, but bear with me here - next time you're sick, reread these words - note the transparency of things - watch the draining of meaning when you're no longer around to main- tain it - you see again what I'm getting at - _It's infecting you -_ _______________________________________________________________________ Byting the Program of My Secret Japan: ;********* File: c.exe ************* ; code SEGMENT ASSUME CS:code, DS:code ORG 100h strt: OR AX,0D0Ah OR CL,[BX+68h] AND [BX+DI+74h],CH AND [BX+DI+73h],CH AND [BP+DI+6Fh],DH AND [BP+SI+65h],AH POPA JNZ J00189 IMUL [BP+75h],AH INSB AND [BX+SI+65h],CH JB J00183 AND [BX+DI+6Eh],CH AND [BP+75h],AL IMUL [DI+6Fh],DH IMUL [BX+DI+21h],AH AND [BX+20h],CL DEC AX OUTSW IMUL [DI+73h],DH POPA IMUL [BX+DI],AH AND [BX+65h],DL JZ J0015A INSW DB (65h) AND [BX+69h],DH JZ J001A9 AND [BX+DI+6Fh],BH JNZ J001B8 OR AX,6C0Ah POPA JZ J001B4 DB (65h) JB J00170 AND [BX+DI+66h],CL AND [BX+DI+6Fh],BH JNZ J00177 POPA JB J001BF J0015A: AND [DI+79h],CH AND [BX+68h],AH OUTSW JNB J001D7 SUB AL,20h JNS J001D6 JNZ J00189 JA J001D4 INSB INSB AND [BX+SI+61h],CH J00170: JNZ J001E0 JZ J00194 INSW DB (65h) SUB AL,20h DEC DI AND [SI+73h],DH JNZ J001EC POPA INSW IMUL [BX+DI],AH OR AX,000Ah code ENDS END strt _________________________________________________________________________ Wh