What I have to pass on to you There have been numerous times when the Net appears increasingly dis- tanced, receding in the manner of a shoreline which loses detail as the sun sets or skies cloud. This is most frequent in the text-driven domains, what I've called the darknet, and the result I've called defuge, among other things - the slight feeling of exhaustion and dis- taste one feels, upon, for example, attempting to read the same novel over and over again. A sense of waste, production gone soft and awry, collapse of the world into soft-machine, babble, murmur and uneasy sleep. Now I have had this sensation repeatedly, as the laptop sits like a grey plate on a grey table, emptied of sensation, the words dribbling across the mold - everything loosens, disinvests, while voices thin to a tired keening. The corpse is mine, just as "the concept is mine," and I hover, feverish, with the concept pressed against me - thinking the Net reduces _everything_ to communication, even thinking takes on a tendency towards the symbolic. It remains there like an unfinished dinner which insists the animal walked, plant swayed in the breeze. I use the fork on the symbolic. There are thin cuts all over my body as I tried to write myself, tried to let the blood flow. Things grew more and more wearisome; like a freshman essay on suicide, I yawned. If the plate shattered in the still air, I didn't hear it. If the reader came calling, I didn't hear the footsteps, doorbell, telephone, announcement of _new_ mail on the plate, always fresher, full of excitement. I think the truth of the elderly is the release from meaning. That is conventional wisdom. There is nothing to be gained. Everyone's life- span overlaps everyone else's. Surprisingly, if anything is, no one is jealous of others' intervals. I want it all, want you and want me being me: clumsy, horrid, insufferable, at the same time. Like a tumor I'd inhabit you; I don't have the strength to inhabit myself, not without sleep after sleep. I now know that everything is a matter of interpretation - and not that everything is subject to interpretation. This is what I have been taught by this and other plates. If I could pass one thing on to you, it would be this, this concern. I will repeat it: "Everything is a matter of interpretation" and it is not the case that "everything is subject to interpretation." Interpret this as you will. Look it up and down, try it on. Think of _matter,_ of the _subject,_ of _everything._ In my lifetime,I have tried to think of everything, and I have entered a state of withdrawal. For everything interpenetrates, interconnects. It's a soup out there, in here, everywhere. Everything is chained to everything else, and levels like the "domain" of signifiers are as impure as the rest. We clear ourselves out and the domains out and pretend we've made for example technology or a gallery. We've made intervals for ourselves, dates for exhibitions, lifespans for operating systems. In two dozen years, just that, they'll be collectors items, inoperable, memories of driven men and women half-way to sleep and sleep. None of us can do without it; none of us can do. _______________________________________________________________________ Meaning, Again So you're saying you're saying there is there is no transcendent mean- ing, said Julu, said Julu. Right, said Jennifer, said Jennifer, there is there is only meaning relative to particular domains or discursive formations. Thus one might one might ask ask the meaning of "cuivre" in English, or even the meaning of the fact that there are there are five Platonic solids in three dimensions, but an infinite number in two. In the former case, one is asking is asking for a translation, and in the latter, for a morphism that relates morphism that relates the number of solids to the dimensional number. In both situations, meaning is meaning is to be sought in articulating structures, either between regimes (discursive formations) or within one. And beyond that, said Jennifer, said Jennifer, there is there is nothing to be considered considered; there is there is only the re- dundancy of empty space, the isomorphic qualities of existence itself. Julu replied Julu replied that Jennifer was Jennifer was very intelli- gent, and there was much to be learned be learned in these articulat- ing structures, which could only remind which could only remind her of the Bourbaki mother structures and maybe some odds and ends from cate- gory theory - and for that matter, one might further ask further ask whether meaning was was possessed by a community of individuals, or might possibly might possibly instead reside in a platonism (at least on occasion) based on said articulating structures. In which case meaning would be be considered considered a flux of such structures. There was there was much more to be said said on the matter, for that matter or any matter hardly harbored matter hardly harbored meaning by virtue of nothing more than inert existence, if there were there were such a thing, mused Jennifer, mused Jennifer. Meaning is always a distribution, they said. (What is a concept. Does meaning link concepts. Do concepts exist outside of consciousness. Are all concepts correct, or does truth/falsity play no role in their cre- ation or consideration. Does one possess concepts. Can a machine have concepts. Do concepts exist in relation to discursive formations. Do they exist outside of such formations. Can they exist outside of lang- uage itself. Are concepts constructors of meaning. Are they the quala of meaning. Is meaning always meaning-among. Are concepts always among other concepts. What is the role of difference here. What is the role of differentiation. Do concepts exist on a _certain plane._ No, they do not; neither does meaning.) What glues the world together? It's the energy to make meaning. It's the investment in meaning. Meaning is the investment among articulated domains. Yes, meaning has a decidedly linguistic turn. The world is there, not glued together, but it is meaning that worlds the world for or within consciousness; it is the glue of consciousness. Is there more than the glue? Yes, there are whole unfounded domains, invisibil- ities, ghosts, uncanny phenomena, ectoplasms. And these relate or don't relate? Yes, yes, and yes... ______________________________________________________________________ Whoever said yon Cassius has a mean and hungry look he thinks too much such men are dangerous That I would think too much across these texts, sitting as Proust or Teste, alive or in fiction, that such thinking can only build upon itself in order to collapse as castles in sand, such proliferation seems at odds with a world constructed so simply as to contain three visible dimensions, one temporal that appears to pace itself - or rather we pace ourselves across the dimension which draws us forward to death, it's inexorable, continuous - it's the great pull which tends towards a varying horizon, perhaps no horizon at all, some of us see a portal or screen (some of us don't) - that perhaps it's not such a question of thinking too much, but of withdrawing from the manipula- tion of the material world, leaving practice alone - there's only so much violin playing in a lifetime for example - then one sleeps, re- membering those three dimensions are extruded, simulacra or residue in a manner of speaking, of some heat-birth of a local universe, of some constraints rolling up the higher dimensions, of particles which have never obeyed the classical laws of matter, aristotelian logic - we live within the evidence of our senses - it takes technology to extend beyond the inconceivably limited bandwidth here - the world passes by, unknown - we're glassy, transparent - invisible plankton in the ab- sence of the scheme of things - most of the spectrum passes right through us - neutrinos for example - in any case: That I would think too much across these texts, sitting as Proust or Teste, alive or in fiction, is only testament to a certain truth that emerges, once one disinvests or is disinvested (it need not be one or the other) - that meaning, whether or not constituted by human labor in the real (res- onant within and without the habitus) - is hardly worth the investment - think of this not as thinking too much, but as allowing thought to reach conclusion - thought to come towards the horizon of all thinking - as if, _what if these words are inhabited, as nonsense is inhabited, by noise_ - this _senseless text_ or idiolect, self-constructed image of psychosis perhaps - this horizon where sense meets nonsense, non- sense shudders into noise - it's this that is the result of thinking too much (which is never enough) - the thinking of the material struc- tures of communication (rubbing our faces in them) (the collapse of all that is worthwhile among culture and civilization!) - I already feel the energy draining, blood seeping away, a certain ennui, defuge sets in - what I have already written about: That I would think too much across these texts, sitting as Proust or Teste, alive or in fic- tion - it's the blood at my feet that worries you, not me - the hard labor of thought, in fact, vessels bursting - organs all mixed up ... _____________________________________________________________________ Notes on material culture Fukuoka Castle ruins - from around 1601. Although with interior, middle, exterior, perceptually, the structure doesn't hold. I walk from level to level, across sloped land, up wide stone stairs with small risers, al- most worn away, dangerous. A rainy day, and the greys, blacks, and greens, are utterly intense. The overall impression is neolithic; very little remains of the superstructure, and the masonry is intensely fit, perfect. I still do not understand "visual Japan," which I place within the bleakness of interpreting kanji for someone who has not studied the language - I look for visual meaning, since nothing else exists for me. The utterly obdurate nature of the stone, however, con- tradicts its appearance; I myself am hardened against it. I have started the shakuhachi, having found an ancient instrument in a second hand store near the Castle. It is a bamboo flute; the bamboo isn't particularly wide, but is quite thick; there are lacquer bands where it comes apart in the middle. It is end-blown, and difficult. And it is entirely organic - nothing metallic, exact, about it, with only five holes. I write this watching sumo on television; there have been big upsets in the Tokyo matches today. Again, technology is absent, or rather backgrounded, just as it is in the torii, gateways of Shinto shrines, which can be massive, stone or cement or wood or even steel (there are several connected to a small shrine several blocks from here which are rusting away), and grey or white or worn or weathered or orange. The Pocket Monster television scare of a few weeks ago doesn't seem to have staved the desire for Pocket Monsters at the local 7-11, which are heavily advertised as usual; there are all sorts of things one can buy: books with games in them, electronic Poke Mon devices (sitting next to the open odennabe, oden being a soup with various things like daikon and chicken in it), even manga (book comics). I was fond of Gon, who seems to have disappeared from the shelves. The drawing style of most of this is early Disney, nothing more or less - not exactly crude, but hardly Hiroshige. It looks like it was produced in Anaheim during off hours. I got beat bad in shogi, Japanese chess, playing against a guy in the back of a bookstore who basically started with a king and two pieces off-board. That sounds like a little but it led to a massive attack. I still haven't recovered, although I can beat the shogi program on the Mac which is close to idiotic - sometimes it oscillates as if it can't make up its mind on the next move (it can't - it waits). What of this? So far, shogi computer programs have reached the low amateur level, that's all. That's what I've been told and that's what I believe. Meanwhile, the pieces are somewhat identical, except for the kanji signs (front and back) which distinguish them. If anything, the country seems overly inscribed - and although inscription of this sort is obviously part and parcel of the visual, there's a demand everywhere for the _reading_ - just as "wilderness" here is procured from cultivated plants, trees, and so forth. "Wilderness" is read, then - not found, discovered. And a Zen garden (the sand/stone thing is everywhere) becomes an inscription itself. The cities are jumbled; the parks are manicured, the roads are twisted - and it all works as a palimpsest of secondary or tertiary writing - not simulacrum at all, but reference to writing's materiality (I believe) (as far as I'm concerned) (as much as I can see) (as much as I can read). See how I get away from being beat? My game is dismal. I get only eight notes out of the shakuhachi so far. Since I'm left-handed, my few pathe- tic attempts at kanji involved pushing the brush into the paper, which doesn't seem to like it. In the Fukuoka Art Museum, Anselm Kiefer seemed quite at home; you had to walk around the park to encounter Utamaro, whose prints constituted the main exhibition at the moment. The European existential post-war German crash-Heiner-Muller-materialism works perfectly in the city of high-speed high-rises, not to mention Canal City, which seems again dreamed up on a Disney backlot, this shopping center without center or perspective, anime animating the surfaces as far as one can see, hardly around corners. The fountains make big bangs when they're set off. They're set off constantly, and there are artworks (apparently) scattered (apparently) about... For someone like myself who writes, the environment is perfect, literate and impenetrable and not so dissimilar from the world itself, when I began to speak quick, describing it, before it faded from view. I'd describe myself describing the world, I'd work it faster and faster and farther and farther, but I never ended up in Japan, not farther than Kingston, Penna. Here, I can't walk down the street (or at least try to cross it), without figuring out the configuration - which I can't figure out, but at least can find my way elsewhere; passing and bypassing make up my day. Writing, visual, feudal, postmodern, cultivated, spaced, layered, so- called, internalized, split, limned. Writing split, invisible. ____________________________________________________________________________ shock there are five holes in the shakuhachi, four in front, one behind which is useful for the fundamental octave of course and more, and more, you can slide your fingers for overtones, or slide them for microtones, or bend your lips to various upper and lower degrees, thereby lowering or raising the fundamental tone of the finger position while carefully avoiding breathing too deeply in and out of the tube, which is not difficult for me, since xrays today indicated something in and out of I think it is the left lung, so I gotta go for more tests to get the medical certification, whereas I'd rather go for antibiotics, another big dilemma, but sitting upright, breathing slowly, I don't have satori or another big dilemma, but I can get the shakuhachi sound, then move my fingers wildly, as fast as possible, blurring notes like unsatisfactory lightning until the embrochure loses its grips and the world goes back into silence and everything gets its name and I remember the five holes in the instrument, four in front, the one behind perfect for raising the level of excitement, and while I play, I avoid satori like hell, I don't wanna have nirvana ever, give me the cycles of birth and death, they're far too interesting and I want to be there when it all comes out (and after it's over I wanna come back and think a bit, there's not enough time and space in this or any other world) (and where has the energy gone, kill everyone on this list, move on, form armies, navies, run around the earth and water, circle til you drop) _________________________________________________________________________ Rather Than Thoughts of Gloom I have a preference for being, rather than nothing. I would like to have being, instead of nothing. The world prefers being over nothing. I think that I would quite prefer being and not quite so much, pre- fer nothing. The world says yes to being, rather than saying yes to nothing. The very fact of the world is a resounding paean to being, instead of a mournful dirge, to nothing. Why is there being rather than nothing, essents rather than nothing, above all, rather than, begins Heidegger; I'm concerned with the rather than, but it's all words - nothing, nowhere, contradictory, perhaps a wish for nothing, annihilation, death to enter the door, the pain of life crashed to a halt. "Warum ist ueberhaupt Seiendes und nicht vielmehr Nichts?" he asks, nicht Nichts. Manheim's translation reads "Why are there essents rather than nothing?" explaining that "essents" is equivalent to "existents," "things that art." "Art," not "are," for this is an older translation. In my life, I fail repeatedly at the rather than, which takes energy and courage I don't have. There's no impulse here; I don't describe, but mimic the world I can't participate in. Japan brings this to bear for me, Japan or any such place where I can't read behind the eyes, can't make inquiry. The closer one gets to death, the less inquiry one can make, the more inquiring one does, if only to prove he or she's still breathing. In Japan, Kobe has already, after three years when I write this, been 82% rebuilt in some major streets, but it's the big corporations that have come in, changing the character of everything. The city finds it- self between 49% and 52% rebuilt altogether; before and after pictures are side by side on the television. There is a commission to pick a new site for a new capital, by 2003; a city will be built - Tokyo is too centralized within Japan, 39 million people in its vicinity. Ano- ther capital, urban conglomerate; Japan has done this in the past, like a singular animal stretching, rebounding, but it's not so mono- lithic at all that, only the sign "Japan." I know all of this because of the English news; there is one word for maybe five of the Japanese, so it comes with holes in it, the emptiness of the world falling through - or rather as if there were a fullness denied those of us who cannot speak or read the language. But the rather than implies paths as well, sunlight where there is darkness; it's somewhat bright and sunny - here's the world, here we are, why is all of this the case? In "Einfuehrung in die Metaphysik," "An Introduction to Metaphysics," there's no analysis of Nichts; Mar- tin leaves it alone, concentrating on the positive energy of the world whirling about us. I can't say how any answer would be acceptable in our fallen and thrown state; we're given what we're given, and the trace of origins, circular or not, seems to indicate somewhere else where everything could be on the brink of disappearance. I can't help but associate this with death; I've always wanted to live to see "how it call comes out," but on a certain level, it will be more of the same, only the older stories will all but disappear - I can't remember for example what sort of trash littered the streets in the 60s, what the phones looked like, what the restaurants served. Not to mention what little electronic communications existed at the time, and this is already three decades ago, now three centuries, if this survives in one or another package. It would have to be under glass, my name smeared and rendered inde- cipherable. I take no pleasure in the present, which seems to lose energy as I write - perhaps I psychotically inhabit _all the energy there is,_ and each keystroke reduces the world by so much. Suicide is opting for the far side of rather-than; I don't take that route, but understand one is making a choice at every moment of existence - until the last, the first time the choice is made for you. There is always superego, shame, at the end; there is always monotheism pulling the switch - and you've not been able to read anything beforehand, have no idea of the world, and never will. Wanting to see how it all comes out - it will disappear, as Eliot said, with a whimper, or rather a cool- ing, either of a continent or a planet or solar system or universe - it will literally _expire._ ________________________________________________________________________ Heidegger I'd rather be beautiful rather than nothing. I'd rather be famous rather than nothing. I'd prefer to have a lot of energy instead of being weak and onerous. Why am I beautiful rather than otherwise? Why am I famous, rather than a relative non-entity? Why do I have heaps of energy, rather than collapsing? I'd rather be alive than dead. Why am I alive, rather than dead. I'd prefer to be alive, rather than nothing. Why am I living, instead of non-living? Why am I this configuration of matter, rather than another? I am this configuration writing these words, instead of any other. I'd prefer to be this configuration, rather than nothing. (Why am I near the end of the human, rather than near the beginning? Why are there so many writings near the end of the human? I'd rather be beautiful, rather than near the end of the human. Near the end of the human, I'd rather be writing.) _______________________________________________________________________ Differance Highschool students' artworks here at the Prefecture Museum - none of the angst or critique evinced in American equivalents. I'd say little intensity, emphasis on familiality, groups, coherency. I'd also say, just one Kurt Cobain - ironic that the symbol for mis-fitting is from abroad, a dense symbol here, unfathomable. Works in a local gallery, there's always a sense of space, MA, the gap, play between formal flatness and incipient landscape. I'd say, not the reading of the landscape from the formal, but the landscape seen from the shinkansen, bullet-train, rectilinear rush of rice paddies, too bad the artist had travelled to Bordeaux for content, not rice at all, so perhaps I'd find small trees and wine. (I'd say a cer- tain poetics at work that it's too easy to relate to haiku, mystery - in fact it's the same mystery perhaps that informs international art - allusion because there are gaps in knowledge, sutured over - every art work a wound, every exhibition part and parcel of hospitalization.) Shrine or temple roof-tops, organic catenaries low against the bleak pastel modern buildings. I'd say they glower, sensing mysterious act- ivity behind the monastery walls; who knows which are, and aren't, the production of cults planning the overthrow of universal order. (I'd say the orders are _levels_ here, not one on top of another, but transparent, taking on the world. I'd say this is the reading of an outsider, skinned against the wall, flayed in one or another Buddhist hell. I'd say I prefer it that way.) Bar or snack-bar building-fronts, wilder than anything postmodernism dreams of - dinosaur jutting out, hysteric art nouveau practically falling off; submarine elevators with hydromatic doors, ancient wooden elephants encased in chain-link fences covered with small locks; aqua- ria of blowfish, squid, sea cucumbers (all often eaten as they're dy- ing); Utamaro playing cards; miles-long underground shopping streets; giggling on the radio. I'd say an anthology of everywhere in every country; I'd say, open your eyes in New York. In the States, I ignore the promulgation of difference; in Japan, difference _for me_ is a manner of interpretation, the first step towards getting off at the right subway stop or buying food at Freshness Burger. So difference is "my" difference, not necessarily that of the Japanese or "your" dif- ference - and signs are differentiated, not by difference, but by _clusters of differences,_ taking wild epistemological / ontological leaps. (A whole philosophy can be based on this - not [A-B], but [ArB], where r is a relationship, constantly morphing, up for grabs - and r, for that matter, _transforms_ A and B, in relation to the observer - as sememes and intentions collide...) Works of "grown-up" art in the Prefecture Museum - ah well, everywhere imitation Western styles, especially impressionism. Lots of stuff that looks like George Innis. I'd say, what is this about; there's little comprehension of the roots or rootedness of the original - which ap- pears from here as hegemonic, articulating the unknown. Then I think, perhaps Japanese art per se was both aristocratic, developed through the court system, and popular - so that there's a gap - which the mid- dle-class American or European styles fulfill. So that every conser- vative work _here_ is also a definition of art vis-a-vis the Wittgen- steinian family of usages - an extension into an imperial culture that has dominated, one way or another, certain depths and surfaces, since Perry. I'd say I don't know what I'm talking about, however; I have little knowledge of the social history of Japan, remembering only that the prints weren't particularly valued in the nineteenth-century - but then I'd say, valued by whom? And what's the source of this informa- tion? A girl at Freshness Burger had on platform shoes I _really_ wanted - leather, tough, serrated soles, wide heels, strapped on. They'd be so neat in SOHO! Later, pricing them, they'd seem to cost over $150 or so. I'd say, what a fashion! I'd say, I'm an idiot! I am noticing myself, clumsy, awkward, speechless. I tell people New York isn't full of killers. I'm packing. I pull out my gun and shoot. Phrases I am teaching to the hotel staff: She's really something! Yo! Dweeb! Cyberpunk! Skatepunk! You're out of your mind! Grunge. Get lost! Put up with it! Put out. On the spot! Get real! Don't blow up. I can't get through to you! Get it through your head! Do you two get along? The deal goes sour. Stop playing mind games. Chill! It got out of hand. I like your get-up. Let's get down! I nailed him! I got to the bottom of it! He's got a twisted mind; he gave me the creeps! Spare me... I got the jump on him, sleazebag! scumbag! We got down to business! Get off my case! She's really fucked up! She's messed up! She's got a screw loose! Don't give me your lip! You gave him the slip! You're chicken. Bullshit! You're out of your skull! He's not himself recently. What's gotten into him? He's caught between a rock and a hard place. He's gay; she's queer. I didn't give it a second thought! What a boy-toy! I want to get my hands on him! He's a real techie! A total freak! Careful - he's packing a gun... He's a real hothead! He gets hot under the collar! Whatever... ________________________________________________________________________ Nikuko in the Bar (Heidegger) I got the call at five in the afternoon and went down to Nakasu around seven. Tokyo Crash-Land was empty; it didn't fill properly until one in the morning, exact Tokyo time, but this was Wa-Fukuoka. Nikuko was alone in the bar. Above her, the ceiling dripped with air- plane parts, smashed tail on the floor, wheel-chairs. You can imagine. A couple of hundred people had died to make the place. I killed him, she said. I've wanted to tell you this. I've always wanted to tell you this. It's been eating me up alive. I pulled the plug - he was getting better. A propeller spun overhead, gathering speed while bikes screeched outside in the bitter Kyushu night. I've never told anyone this before, she continued. She was weird, white. I couldn't take my eyes off her. She was just like everyone in her genera- tion. They were all weird, white. They were all young. He was an idiot kamikaze, she said. Not divine, but blind wind; he never knew what hit him. His lights went out like Fuji, like the death of old Nippon. I never played shakuhachi again. Why tell me, a gaijin you hardly know, I said, replying to her. I was cur- ious, yellow, but not a total coward. Because you can't transmit, you can't speak well enough. You couldn't go to the police. They'd never understand you. You're mixed up in the busi- ness like this. I buy you, I buy you. In any case, no one would ever be- lieve you. And in any case, you're a gaijin, outsider. The roar of a jet cut across the ceiling. I couldn't hear anything; smoke and fire filled the place, disappeared as fast as it came. Crash-crash Tokyo, as far as I was concerned. I buy you, I buy you. The words rang in my ears forever. I buy you. I buy you. An aileron opened like a leaf above my head; a crumpled wing shuddered in Bang-Crash Tokyo (as far as I was concerned). Nikuko had nothing to lose; she was right. I paid my drink, said my goodbyes. We'd never see each other again. There was nothing to say, right? I couldn't think of any- thing, and when I think about it, I still can't think of anything. So I've been bought. I returned to Brooklyn. Everything should be fine, right? But then... I can't explain the dreams, sweet fevers, hysteria; I can't explain my life since - not a bit of it. I should be able to, right? Nikuko died in a plane crash in 1995. ______________________________________________________________________ Nikuko on the This-or-That of Information: "All things sank to the same level, a surface resembling a blind mir- ror that no longer reflects, that casts nothing back. The prevailing dimension became that of extension and number. Intelligence no longer meant a wealth of talent, lavishly spent, and the command of energies, but only what could be learned by everyone, the practice of a routine, always associated with a certain amount of sweat and a certain amount of show. In America and in Russia this development grew into a bound- less etcetera of indifference and always-the-sameness - so much so that the quantity took on a quality of its own.* Since then the domin- ation in those countries of a cross section of the indifferent mass has become something more than a dreary accident. It has become an active onslaught that destroys all rank and every world-creating im- pulse of the spirit, and calls it a lie. This is the onslaught of what we call the demonic (in the sense of destructive evil)." (Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Manheim.) *"All dieses steigerte sich dann in Amerika und Russland in das mass- lose Und-so-weiter des Immergleichen und Gleichgueltigen so weit, bis dieses Quantitative in eine eigene Qualitaet umschlug." ______________________________________________________________________ Two, My Selfishness, Paean Now two people I've known well, have died, in their 40s/50s, now this is what I look forward to for the rest of my life. For there is a gate that everyone opens, passes through; it is the gate of diminishment; yea, though one live forever, one is increasingly alone. Soon, the details of the world will disappear; there will be a white or black light; it will appear eternal; then the gate will close. But it will open elsewhere; it will open for another; yea, though the other walks in wonder, I will be her diminution. Yea, she will be increasingly alone; my name will disappear, my belongings dispersed; yea, there are gates and gates, gates never-ending; the world is a thickness of gates. Now I have seen the first of many portals; now I await thee; yea, though now my work is done, I continue to write as if I were among thee, as if I were among the living still. _______________________________________________________________________ Nikuko Nikuko dead-girl down the streets, wearing her fast-and-hard boots. Nikuko turned towards the edge by the fly-girl snack-bars. Nikuko breathless, speaking into cellular, moshi moshi. Nikuko past Kon's place towards Kiro's place past Anne's. Nikuko carrying dead-girl news. Nikuko with that umbrella fending off the spitting rain. Nikuko black-haired, miniskirt and poke-mon furry changepurse. Nikuko dead-girl moshi moshi. Nikuko are you there dead-girl hello hello are you there. Nikuko turned to the right down near Ohori-Koen. Nikuko across Ohori-Koen, bridged the pond on the stone-bridge. Nikuko stone-bridge I can hear you now, hear you now. Nikuko Delicious Hip on the walkman, striding two-and-one. Nikuko dead-girl, yeah, HAI HAI! Nikuko dead-girl, yeah, HAI HAI! moshi moshi MOSHI! Nikuko dropped-line, silent, turning Japanese, I really think so. Nikuko dragged cig flicked off stoned-bridge, running under torii. Nikuko dead-girl breathing hard. Nikuko I'd rather be alive than dead-girl! Nikuko dead-girl the hell with all of this! Nikuko flesh-girl at war with big-eyes dead-girl. Nikuko thinking stoned hard-core dead-girl at the corner of the world. Nikuko dead-girl world comes and folds her in. Nikuko world folds tighter than non-being, Nikuko dead-girl-drug. Nikuko Nakasu girl dead-girl Nakasu HELLO! HELLO! MOSHI! MOSHI! Nikuko: "I'd rather be alive than dead-girl!" Nikuko: "I'd rather be alive!" _______________________________________________________________________ Nietzsche's Television Radio Culture Listening to the Hungarian Revolution, 1956, taking notes, tapes, typ- ing report after report, as if I were there - that was shortwave, I was also a novice at WN3DRP, but who would want to contact - I forget the brand of transmitter, but hated code - later found 14562 and I think 9145, those anomalous signals monitored by Robert Horvitz and myself - that was something! Now tracing Armed Forces radio from Korea occasionally reaching across to Fukuoka; I was in Pusan. Pusan The shakuhachi flute from Fukuoka split finally, far too soon, given the age of the bamboo, so in Pusan I found two plastic Korean versions of the same, but thinner, lighter, with different scales - now what do I do without the heaviness of the bamboo that refuses resonance, but turns the notes into velvet based on the interior of the instrument? Radio Culture The radio has always been closest to me of any media; talking or play- ing _out_ on it, I'm aware of bleak black distance, the spray of radi- ation into the air, the thinned nodes capable of reception by instru- ments no larger than a finger-nail; in Pusan I listened on and off to one such; on the ferry back, I watched satellite broadcast probably from NHK - the Tokyo sumo match is on - and listened on the AM - in and out of lipsync in a familiar language, I don't know a word of this - would rather listen than tend towards the silence. Heidegger Heidegger's silence - what radio talks here? Walter Benjamin? Heideg- ger's use of Greece in metaphysics - across the books - then Niet- zsche, say, in Goetzen-Daemmerung - jumping all over their backs. I'm amazed to this day at the movie Heidegger watches, over and over again - those brilliant slow-moving prophetic chthonic pre-Socratics - who could ever believe this nonsense - way before radio? Against Nietzsche - who was on television as much as possible in 1888... Radio Culture It's the signals without texts that fascinate me, or the signals that exist as if they were on the margins of texts - those anomalies which can't be traced, understood - those sounds close to static, embedding one or another (apparent) code - as if there were meaning necessarily to be pulled out of every transmission. As if there were signals to the effect that _meaning exists,_ beyond what one might interpret, say, as human or merely human. So that these would be literally cir- cumscribed; the center wouldn't hold - or rather it was the circum- scription that created the center - centered it - in the midst of noise - as if there were life-forms _out there,_ "as if there were signals to the effect that _meaning_ exists" ... Holderlin Beautiful Holderlin, I think, remembering the Greeks vaguely, think- ing of the cragged edges of the texts, pared down, preparing the way for Heidegger. Who cares about "Europe," this swollen over-determined signifier, toppling continents, ravaging the planet - it becomes the same old story, just as the signifier itself is perceived as _primor- dial._ One might as well just change the channel to inappropriate times. Radio Culture There are times that are senseless; the radio says "Good Morning," and I'm greeted - the same with "Good Afternoon," "Good Evening." But "Good Night"? It signals time to leave; indeed, after around nine in the evening, there is no way to greet someone, without a simple hello - the "good night" referencing incipient departure. Of course one can also use "good afternoon" or any of the others as an _abrupt,_ busin- ess-like form of departure - "Good afternoon, sir," the shopkeeper said, clearly indicating I was to leave the premises immediately. Tokyo Tokyo is where the West leaves itself, faces an Orientalism that Said probably never dreamed of. Tokyo is where everything crash-lands, where the sign is paramount, skimming the ruins below, according to the texts, the texts. Seoul is out of the running, although I'd bet between T and S, the future is with the latter - just like Pusan - where collapse is imminent but the radio plays and plays. There are dangers everywhere in the world surrounding Korea, where the banks have just collapsed and the currency is _concretely_ worth less and less as I write these words. I can imagine a land of unoccupied stations, interminglings of viruses from both sides of the border... Radio Culture I can imagine a world of transmissions, spews, across territories that never confronted the human. Shute's On the Beach was prescient in this matter, Australia the last resort, the moment of human collapse - but there need not be even _this_ landscape or coding - there need not be _anything at all._ Think of the _last message_ from Nietzsche's rare television broadcasts (we only have the tapes) - translated of course by Hollingdale (he wasn't there, responsible for the errors): "And again with that I again return to the place from which I set out - the _Birth of Tragedy_ was my first revaluation of all values: with that I again plant myself in the soil out of which I draw all that I will and _can_ - I, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus - I, the teacher of the eternal recurrence..." Nikuko Nikuko wanders through Tokyo Crash-Land, like Medea - you might think of her as Medea - and I'd say Nikuko dead-girl, but I'd think - yes, a disappearance - just like the women in Melies' films - you place a sheet over the reclining figure - lift it - she's gone - or her legs are maybe, or arms or head - or she's cut in two - brought back in the long run (Nietzsche would have liked this manipulation) - but then there's the smell of it - the sheets over Nikuko - the thick odor - she's caught in animal hair, skin, membrane - something between a wet silk fabric and animal glue - you might imagine these as _winding- sheets_ or _ectoplasm_ - you might imagine anything at all. Radio Culture Radio culture is your imagination; it's true that projection occurs here, as in email for example - that the body is always an investment one makes across the dial, through the endless sound, the endless transmission, endless breath, endless pronouncement of presence, end- less sound on the perfect shakuhachi, plastic, impermeable to the vagaries of the weather - lasting forever - the sound a bit shriller - there are no _cells_ to absorb or counteract any of the frequencies. Plastic Plastic is always already invisible - that is the nature of plastic, and I alone have returned, my lungs in a fairly poor state, to tell thee. Let us not forget that Heidegger, after Nietzsche, was _blind_ - he never received N's television transmissions - he only heard the voice, and the stooped shadow of a man remained elsewhere. It was Heidegger always waiting for the voice that would grant him absolu- tion - _allow him to exist_ - it was Heidegger who invented the AM radio. Radio Culture Please call in and leave your requests; we'll try to fill them. Please note we're short of traditional musics, shakuhachi and otherwise - please note we'll be going off the air. "Revaluation of all values!" ________________________________________________________________________ Nikuko: Classroom Writing Exercises "Hating Japanese" Nikuko: "Hating Japanese faced Korea, got rid of the Choson dynasty, and stuck the whole thing in a goddamned manga you can buy at 7-11." "Pusan Electric Burn" Beams holding up the perfect subway temple with circular praying- humans inside. Or I'd think North Korea just got rid of the humans. They circle so that eyes face everywhere. I wonder if they are out- side themselves. But then they're not any more, are they, Nikuko? "Waters" Animals, Nikuko - a term from turbulence dynamics for liquid stases - you might find Deleuze-Guattari considering such as momentary encamp- ments in flows otherwise associated with libidinal capital - such is the temporary foundation of this sentence in the midst of discourse otherwise. I'm so smart, otherwise. "Buddha Boo-Boo" Buddha boo-boo canvas suture-bandage, You still think the killer was one of the people at our seminar, get that phrase out of here, Nikuko, before it leaves a scar. "Please" Please forgive me, I am very sorry, said Nikuko. I am so very sorry, said Nikuko, I really am. _______________________________________________________________________ Items to Declare Upon Entering South Korea: Weapons, such as guns, knives, gunpowder, etc. Drugs or psychotropic substances. Animals or plants. Foreign currency or monetary instruments valued at more than US $5000. Items harmful to national constitution, public security or morals. Counterfeit money or securities. Wireless transmitters & receivers Items for commercial purposes. ( Therefore $5001 of counterfeit peyote buttons (for sale) containing explosives activated by remote control. ) ________________________________________________________________________ The Nature of the Thing: {k:12} ls > ding-an-sich {k:13} od ding-an-sich 0000000 060515 066151 047012 073545 005163 005141 060543 062554 0000020 062156 071141 062012 067151 026547 067141 071455 061551 0000040 005150 061553 066012 067171 057570 067542 065557 060555 0000060 065562 027163 072150 066155 066412 064541 005154 064164 0000100 067151 005147 0000104 _______________________________________________________________________ >>>>><<<<< Characterizing the technological by virtue of the frame can lead to a circulation of reasoning; thus one extracts parameters from a situation, and these are used as steering-mechanisms for others of a similar ilk through repetition - which amounts to reproduction. So that one might find the following in relation to the _frame_ - and it is here that one can start investigating what sort of material artifact surrounds whatever we examine: 1. Circumscription - thus there is always a surrounding _discourse_ within and without the frame, which is not to say that it is not well-defined and one-to-one - but only that the frame is an _embedding - 2. Which is associated with _bracketing_ - the foreclosing of the domain, which one might consider in a sense a potential well - 3. From which parameters are drawn forth - or searched for, we might begin for example by placing gas in a beaker, increasing or decreasing pressure, noting the change in volume - later, temperature might come into consideration - but here, what's important is the _wall_ (such as DNA statistics separating one species from another) - the _domain_ - 4. Within which _mathesis_ is applied, or rather disovered to be an integral part of the whole - the mathematization associated with standards, types, tokens, typifications, the whole run of the world - 5. In such a manner to create a condition of both isolation from the environment and potential reproduction everywhere across it - the greater the degree of isolation, the more exportable the frame - "Here we are in another country!" - 6. Within which, however, "country" is reduced, as is the _subject_ and _subjectivity_ itself - or rather one might think of the _formalization_ inherent in this form of focused perception - 7. Forming the core of a _discursive formation,_ perhaps not one among others, perhaps one in allegiance with mathesis and the world - 8. Expelling the anecdote, narrative, singularity, in favor of repetition, ideal elements in cohorts with the real placed within a beaker or chamber otherwise - 9. Through instrumental reason, this inherent observation and testing of reality, who know? ultimately implying both formal logic and formal consensual means of assent - It's these that form the core of the frame problem, beginning with What is there? How is it? Why is it there instead of nothing? - the _it_ formed by a degree of impetus constructing an originary division which _must be dealt with,_ in one or another form - that is, there is a _cut_ or _inscription_ at work - so that technology both divides the subject, then sutures and interpenetrates - on one hand, the microtome, and on the other, the cyborg which are both carriers of viral parameters: These penetrate the flesh, invade the political body, the body politics - These are _constitutive_ of the subject by virtue of a _technological parabola_ which arches _through_ the machinic, back out again, these kids running havoc with the spaceship operations room! and I'm hearing numbers in my head! but it's the speaking of these things that permits even this _word_ in the first place, placed here in the midst of other places, in the midst of domains, mobilities, presences still quiet, hungering hungering to enter within and without the frame, it's this that comes to the chamber in the middle of the stormy night, crying hysterically - you can't hear anything from the bulkhead, you're stuck there, running the ship - it's pretty neat - technology hurtling organic chemistries across inconceivable worlds - I've heard of them - you've heard of me speaking about them - Heidegger says - "Enframing means that way of revealing which holds sway in the essence of modern technology and which is itself nothing technological." and Heidegger says - "The essence of modern technology has for a long time been concealing itself, even where power machinery has been invented, where electrical technology is in full swing, and where atomic technology is well under way." But the primordial was there from the first mapping, and all those parameters and symbols, gesturing across the savannah, look here, there's game afoot! and one might look instead towards those superstructures that close off _precisely_ because that's their intention or basis - I refer again to the foreclosing, the potential well, the real _transport_ of the frame, as a missive, say, as this missive, say, from me to you, message identification number, packet after packeting finding their way - a way I do not know, later - the reading and writing, perhaps the replay - later, the repetition. _____________________________________________________________________ Announcement: I am the Primoridal Please note, first, that I am solving any number of problems, philo- sophical or otherwise, for you - revealing the truth here for the first time - now read on: I am primordial, the origin of all things. One need look no further for the birth-moment of Being; whatever is eternal has occurred within myself. Think of me as your neighborhood signifier, that which consti- tutes difference in the first place. Think of this as contemporaneous with presence and its manifestations; I am here, all right, and that is what is primal, chthonic. (Wipe the earth from my brow, my body; cleanse me. I'm not above a little phallic ritual.) As primordial, I am _responsible_ and _responsive,_ both through sta- sis and structure. My structure, my language, is performative; what I say goes, and what I say is in response to _your_ performative, which needs foundation. Thus I am given a difficult task, but it is the only task, the primordial task, that of the establishment of the transcen- dence of meaning and existence themselves. (Or the transcendence of love, of hate, of the will to power - take your pick - it is little concern of mine.) It is not for example as if I _labor_ at this, but my role is such that it is the basis for everything I do - and I do, like anyone else, as little as possible. Or should I say "like anything else," since it is unclear whether or not the primordial is organic - it certainly seems as if it should be neither one thing nor the other, but since I am the source, hitherto unannounced, it might be best considered org- anic - at least as far as philosophers, organic themselves, are con- cerned. Thus you are always talking, of course, of a philosophy of culture and organism, not of the _real_ existence of things in the world - you might ask me about that, but there is no need - my pre- sence is sufficient. (In fact, you could consider me, if so inclined, an _absolute_ of sorts - thus _that thing_ which grounds the rest - you can have this on good authority - although _that thing_ is quite sentient as you see - it might even be said to have a will of its own - I, the primordial, am _sensitive._) (I need to say here that I am neither male nor female - these categories are elsewhere, otherwise, although I have been known to turn a trick or two.) I might add that there is a certain _economy_ of the primordial, but that is another matter altogether - as well as a certain competency in language necessary to perform the performative, with or without my sanctions. ("Perform the performative" - even I am capable of fun with infinite regress - what would you expect? Heidegger wants me dark and ancient, but Heidegger almost froze to death in that hut of his - as far as I'm concerned, central heating is the way to go.) I might also add, that while the primordial also apparently bespeaks (note the form here!) the archaic, I am also quite up-to-date, as you might imagine - otherwise, I would have disappeared a long time ago, like all those sources of "ancient wisdom" proclaimed in popular treatises guaranteed to make the world feel more and more comfortable - Yes! There's Spirit afoot! Yes, it was lost for eons! Now, we have discovered it, etc. etc. There's always money somewhere in the proff- ering - but, one of the things I can tell you at least - there is _no_ ancient wisdom - most peoples got most of it wrong - made a mess out of things - died young and miserable. The world didn't care one way or another! Hmmm... Ah, I can't buy into any of this; I, the primordial, as I've said, am always modern, always of the here-and-now. Anything else turns the whole discussion into a _political economy,_ that is, tending towards power and power-mongering, instead of the release or charge that the primordial, myself, should give anyone with the competency (that word again!) to investigate it! (Not that it takes much, perhaps nothing more than a _certain cast of mind_ - of course that's up to you to discover; I'm only making a proclamation of my existence here - so as to dispose of various misgivings, etc. But you might or might not take an academic route - read what everyone else has to say. Just don't bring any of it back to me - I know myself pretty well, and have no need of anyone else's analysis.) By the way, I can hold forth in any language - Ur or not-Ur as the case may be - just so you're aware of it! And I think I should add that you might as well be gracious in these matters; if I disappear (and as you know, I do from time to time), then everything appears suddenly postmodern, situational, as-if, post-structural, instead of eternal, structural - what one might call the _given._ Why now? Why do I make this announcement _now_ instead of some other time? Because there is space on these email lists - because the cost of dialup is relatively inexpensive - because this might be of inter- est to those few of you who take the time to understand me! (I'm ask- ing for nothing, by the way - no money, second-hand theory books (al- though I would _definitely_ like these!), used articles of clothing, rosaries of any persuasion...) And to _understand me_ of course, is to understand the situation - which is to say, to understand _any situation_ - since that is the nature of the primordial. Finally, you might ask, what are the interests or hobbies of the primordial? They change from time to time, as you might imagine, since the world itself changes, although I am constant, the perfect lover. (Hear that? The primordial is _the perfect lover_ - but isn't that the sort of transcendence one might expect?) At the moment, it may be shakuhachi and sumo (Musashi Maru won the Tokyo tournament today!) - tomorrow it may be Nietzsche and Heidegger again. Certainly I look forward to tomorrow - although in a sense I am going over exhausted territories - literally, No-Men's Lands - as, I hope, this notice makes clear. Look to yourselves, of course, since I am fundamental, unspeakable, and anything else I might say - would give the appearance of a fissure or crack - occurring in your language, not in mine - but I don't want to lead you astray. And - you know - I'm already contradictory (a trick of mine - otherwise knowledge would stop dead in its tracks!) - since I'm certainly talking a lot for someone so imbued with silence. But you can see beyond these tricks, even with the clouds descending, fires in the distance, smell of gunpowder in the air... There's no way to end this gracefully, but then I, primordial, am more comfortable with beginnings - how it "all comes out" is of no concern here or anywhere else - providing it's not sumo or a decent detective novel - but then again - that's precisely what philosophy is - _is it not?_ (A footnote - "I am primordial" and "I am the primordial" are _defin- itely_ the same thing - since there is only one of me, and I'm quite comfortable being your foundation. What else can I say? I'm not a great stylist - I'm not educated in any of your institutions...) _______________________________________________________________________ PRIMORDIAL MAIL {k:3} Mail -v sondheim@gol.com Subject: Endless Darkness of this Primordial Age Now in this darkest of all Years It is a life that brings me Fears Against Eternal Wheels Never Steered Past violent Faces and their Leers . EOT {k:4} sondheim@gol.com... Connecting to gol1.gol.com. via esmtp... {k:6} sondheim@gol.com... Connecting to wonderland.gol.ad.jp. via esmtp... c220 wonderland.gol.ad.jp ESMTP Sendmail 8.8.8/8.8.8/888-980120-P; Mon, 26 Jan 1 998 00:13:14 +0900 (JST) >>> EHLO panix3.panix.com at250-wonderland.gol.ad.jp Hello panix3.panix.com [198.7.0.4], pleased to meet y ou 250-8BITMIME 250-SIZE 1000000 250-DSN 250-ONEX 250-ETRN 250-XUSR 250 HELP >>> MAIL From: SIZE=209 z250 ... Sender ok >>> RCPT To: 250 ... Recipient ok >>> DATA 354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself >>> . 250 AAA12170 Message accepted for delivery sondheim@gol.com... Sent (AAA12170 Message accepted for delivery) Closing connection to wonderland.gol.ad.jp. >>> QUIT 221 wonderland.gol.ad.jp closing connection {k:16} mail -v sondheim@gol.com Subject: Darkness of Primordial Age Now alas the Darkness of the Primordial Age is Upon Us; I have brought an endless Rage against Dwelling-Place of Deity and Sage: it is this War enhanced that I will Wage. . Cc: sondheim@gol.com... Connecting to local... sondheim@gol.com... Sent {k:17} ______________________________________________________________________ Primordial Mirror Because I am primordial, I reflect all things; you are, in fact, in me at the moment, and will be until your dissolution. I remain contempor- ary in this regard. Your desires are your own; I can only duplicate existence as such. You may think of me as cross-fertilization of the real, evolution gone awry, in terms of chirality. At the back of the shrine, I reflect the world: "the mirror hides no- thing. It shines without a selfish mind. Everything good and bad, right and wrong, is reflected without fail. The mirror is the source of honesty because it has the virtue of responding according to the shape of objects. It points out the fairness and impartiality of the divine will." (Chikafusa Kitabatake, quoted in Sokyo Ono, Shinto, The Kami Way.) The shrine mirror functions as the Bardo Thodol: GIGO and WYSIWYG (garbage in / garbage out : what you see is what you get). Both are machines filtering among subjectivities and physical reality. Now think of me as your mirror, as your filtering mechanism; now think of _liminal reality,_ between or among you and the physical, as _the scaffolding of the world._ There are, then, scaffoldings, filterings, mirrors, subjectivities, physical and liminal realities, worlds, and _the_ world (if you will). So that the scaffolding of the liminal is the superstructure (say) of the primordial: I hold the world at bay / hold the world up / consti- tute existence itself. The primordial is always a dispersion; I am skein, membrane, filter and objects-passing-through. What is originary is flux, the stirring of the ocean, the stasis-world, the narrative- dreaming that I _say,_ my mouth and thought turned inward, my arms interwoven in the cosmos, feet swallowed in eternal Ouroboros. In this manner, I as primordial solve the problems of duplication, the mirror, the superstructure, filtering, and the bespeaking of the real. I will say no more at this time. I return to the _mitamashiro_ (sub- stitute of the divine body within the shrine). _______________________________________________________________________ From Nikuko@DEADMAN.ORG Tue Jan 27 04:08:15 1998 Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 13:53:25 -0500 From: Nikuko@DEADMAN.ORG Reply-To: Philosophy and Psychology of Cyberspace To: CYBERMIND@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Subject: Nikuko's Anger I hope they goddamn nail Clinton. I don't care whose rights are violated. Amerikkkkkka is Death-Camp Amerikkkkkka. Have you seen the homeless? Nikuko knows. Nikuko knows. Nikuko knows abomb. Nikuko knows. I got friends kicked out of hospital can't pay the right kind of money see guys starving every day check out your fat cities I got no style no patience for this. Nikuko hopes they nail him fast. Treat him to a bit of El Salvador. Watch him starve in Cuba-Iraq. Hate comes fast when you are there there there there there there. Nikuko won't tell a soul. This is not a country. This is only a country. Nikuko can't write because it all comes out stupid. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. Nikuko ________________________________________________________________________ Inks and Colorations "any special decorations, such as the long streamers in the five aus- picious colors (white, yellow, red, blue, purple), 'symbolic of clouds of good omen,' or trays of plants and flowers prepared by a flower arrangement society, are put in place." (Ono, Shinto, The Kami Way.) The larger shrine attached to the temple next door has just added its banner, stretched across the entrance - incense and candles create a flux behind it; the 'hundred stones' (two small pillars used for ritual pacing) are before it. I paint my shinto mirror-base black, then cobalt blue lightened by absorption in the wood, then orange wings with black tips, holding the metal disk. Staining, seeping in, marking: dyes appear illuminated through wood-grain celluloid slightly diffracting into sheen. Poor painting, poor carving as well. Hanko, small signature seals (inkan) carved at the end of a piece of wood, may be bought ready-made (for popular names) or hand-carved (for others, such as "Myouka," my own in rough translation from German to Japanese). Ready-made ones can be used "on documents of limited im- portance," but in any case, hanko may possess legal ramifications, and can be used for everything from stamping documents to (literally) sealing envelopes, indicating page order (half the stamp on one, half on the other), and so forth. A deep red ink is used in this practice, which in Mesopotamia goes back to prehistoric times. I buy a second hanko, "manaka," interval or space / middle (literal), "in the middle of" - I think of _manaka_ stamped everywhere across a page _except_ in the middle, that _ma_ important in Japanese aesthetics (look at Ses- shu's long scroll). I think of stamping my forehead in the middle. I think of stamping the mirror in the middle, filling the space, block- ing _that_ view which defines things orthogonal to its plane. I place my signs everywhere: staining, seeping in, marking - inks illuminated from beneath, enhanced by the fibers of the wood. In Pusan, Korea, the hanko shops have _big_ hanko, up to several in- ches across, in the windows (the usual size is around a centimeter), in the various kanji scripts - as well as purely pictographic ones. And in Pusan, Korea, there is a calligraphy / sumi-e shop, with one brush five feet high, with a handle diameter of several inches, and a brush diameter of a foot and a half. Perfect for body-inking, perfect for dance / buto across an acre canvas, demarcating the violence and sexuality of staining, seeping in, marking. I imagine my body, inked with _manaka,_ slam-danced everywhere against the canvas - except the emptied middle; it's here maybe that the red blood spills, or here that the square-dancing will begin. Or I imagine dragging the brush, or being dragged, my hair streaming red against the canvas. Or I imag- ine the brush, the brush, the brush. It is celestial or chthonic ochre against the grain, the hand, the foot, the breast, the penis. It is the ochred face in several auspic- ious colors, emptied, _ma_ where the mouth is, speaking emptiness, murmuring with the primordial tones of the memory of language. It is the hand blown against the cave, the penis outlined on the screen, the Mayan tongue pouring forth clouds across stones, paper, wood. "It is the weird oo-ing sound, which is said to clear the way for the kami." (Ono.) Above all, it is _applied and deliberate pressure_ of one thing against another, this _object_ insistent on the text - pressed into substrate. I think of myself sealed by you, carrying your name across my body, my lips threaded together, eyes held closed by black-cloth-strip. I am your sign, no longer my own; I serve as pure enunciation, proclamation. My perfect life is to have been written across the earth and cyber- space in inks and colorations; _here,_ I no longer seep, but submit to the digital domain, virtual subjectivities, of infinite dispersion and transformation. My body moves forever across the canvas, writing and rewriting; I am alive, present, as long as _change_ is evident - not just any change, but change _apparently from a source named _Myouka._* ----------------- *Herein lies the _political economy_ and _hysteric embodiment_ of vir- tual subjectivity and community, of course. _______________________________________________________________________ The Spiritual Life of a People I want to talk about the spiritual life of a people. By "people," I mean those situated within a geographic area, whether it be an island, peninsula, lands separated by mountains and rivers, arbitrary boundaries, as if there were any other. By "people," I mean all of those dwelling within these spaces, inhabitants perhaps sensing belonging, perhaps not. It is then to be said, that I do not mean the gods and goddesses, I do not mean the kami or Buddha, nor do I mean the ancestors, or any other continuity of time across these spaces. No, I do not mean these. I mean only those moments of quiet reflection which anyone must have, those moments when life appears crystalline and whole, those moments which are set-aside from the things of the world, reflecting on the things of the world, perhaps, without register, without paper and pencil, with the attitude of breathing silently. I mean only those moments at the foot or height of the mountain, those moments by a valley stream or desert creekbed, when the world appears as one and gracious, when the troubled soul listens to the waves of strength and weakness, tension and release, within it. For if a people is without this spiritual life, then a people is doomed to war, doomed to ignorance of its fellow humans, of others, of plants, animals, all manner of species and fragilities the world has cast upon us. Nor am I talking, it must be said here, about an other world and its castings and offerings - that is for any man or woman to say, not for me or anyone beyond me, which is a matter of jurisdiction. For I am speaking of quietude, the grace of being, contemplation of All there is, if such be the case. Nor am I speaking of silent or soundful prayer, invocation or evocation; I am speaking of that silence which has no proper form except what one brings to it, circles through it, that silence that is part of one, buried beneath the hustle-bustle of everyday life, the sounds of traffic and commerce in the city, roar of electrical-technological machine, the enframing that forecloses upon each and everyone one of us, with the premise of perfect freedom, the work of a space upon illness and death. For I am speaking of another techne, of that which is the moment of living, which requires the closing and opening of eyes, dark closing and wide-opening, the release of one into another, without which any people harbors war and hatred within it, without which any people tend towards divisiveness, economies of rich and poor, surplus and starvation, all within a single dominion, all within a false solitude, as if there were organs in the world responsible for this, as if there were nothing to be done. For I am speaking of the spiritual life of a people, that is to say, its spiritual lives, communal or solitary or individual or forgathering, I am thinking, in silence, through this life which cannot be brought forth, proffered, but which comes rarely in the life of any man or woman or child, these choices made in the desert or mountaintop, in the field or meadow - and these choices, silences, found even in the heart of the city, would but one have the patience for them, as if there were older ghosts around the corners of the buildings, as if there were others surrounding us within and without the world, and that is for you to decide, that is for your placement among others, which might be called the moment of truth within you, which you always carry, the moment which is like a pillar or cave within you, the moment within all of us; such is the spiritual life of a people, such do I speak to you, such is now forthcoming, that I hold my tongue, that I am silent, within you. ______________________________________________________________________ Display Some quotes from Henri Michaux, A Barbarian in Asia: Japanese bamboos: sad, worn-out things, gray and with no chloro- phyl; Ceylon would not have them as reeds. Anything that is not mediocre finds no friends here. The cedar must hide behind the sickly cherry tree, the sickly cherry tree behind the plum tree in a pot, the plum tree in a pot behind the thimble-like pine. [...] Gray houses, with empty, icy rooms, constructed and measured accor- ding to a fixed, uncompromising rule. Streets like a seaside resort with garlands of little flowers or of little colored lamps. A useless, impermanent look about it. The white, beachlike side of existence. Identical, expressionless cities resounding with motor-horns. Shriek- ing like the devil. A country which, though full to bursting, look as as if it had noth- ing in it; where neither men nor plants nor houses seem to have any foundation or scope. An insular mentality, uncommunicative and proud. A thin and insignificant language, skin-deep, agreeable and pleas- ant. A religion of insects, exactly the religion of ants, Shintoism (with that famous cult of the ant-hill), an ant people. A country where everything is known, everything open, everything spied upon, where no door can be closed, where one finds a spy even in one's bath, quite naked, but a spy all the same (they keep you company everywhere [...]. A people that is the prisoner of its island, of its masks, of its conventions, of its police, of its discipline, of its wrappings and of the cords that bind it. [...] A people, in fact, devoid of wisdom, of simplicity and of depth, over-serious, though fond of toys and novelties, not easily amused, ambitious, superficial and obviously doomed to our evils and to our civilization. [...] While many countries that one has liked become, as the distance from them increases, almost ridiculous or insubstantial, Japan, which I distinctly detested, grows almost dear to me. [From Michaux, ibid., English translation by Sylvia Beach, New Direc- tions, NY, 1949, from the original 1933 Gallimard edition.] I read this extremely rare book of Michaux, traveling from New York to Fukuoka, by way of San Francisco, Portland, and Nagoya. Michaux ranges throughout India, Korea, and so forth; Japan receives intermittent at- tention. The book totalizes with the rush of empathy someone might feel from a carriage or slow-moving bus; there are incidents at rail stations, strangely misinterpreted theatrical experiences, dance and architecture. (The book contributes to misrecognitions, meanderings: _here are the ant-people, there go I._) The Apollonian comes through; Korean flutes may be covered with tas- sels, colors tending towards the primary. The Japanese attitude to- wards antiques is that they must be sanctioned; otherwise, they're ready for the garbage or second-hand shop. In Fukuoka, the antique shops are filled with European items. In Pusan, there are shops sell- ing rocks, for meditation or decoration, on small hand-carved plinths. In Pusan, men looked at me as if I were in New York, eye-contacting, a sense of anomie and danger. In Fukuoka, I am looked at after the fact, from the periphery. In Pusan, laughed out loud at, on the street - in Fukuoka, again, a posteriori, as if it never happened - except for the children. Chinese color expanded in Korea, always subsidiary, then collapsed again (Sesshu for example) back in Japan. Colonies and centers, expansions and contractions, kanji floating - in the hotel where I teach English, Chinese guests can write their requests in kan- ji, picked up by the Japanese staff, read in more-or-less Japanese. I cannot imagine this translation, grounded in the ideogrammatic. Michaux's "Asian experience," my "Asian experience," experience of signs always already a foregone translucency. It is easy to mistake the shadows. Here, we are extra-terrestrials, subject to deep mis- readings, to misrecognitions. Outside of this land, there is water everywhere. There are several tumuli scattered across Kyushu. I am fascinated by this - the mute prehistory, some of it apparently un- excavated, against which the antiquity of the country might be meas- ured. These are the beyond of the written, past the horizon of Chin- ese entrance - and I'm comfortable with them - it's not so far to the south-east prehistoric culture complex in the United States for exam- ple. (But then I'm aware of the _inauthentic_ here - I'm making this comfort up as I go along, this _depth_ - it may or may not be rele- vant - I should ask someone - there's no one around - I'm making this up as well.) I should ask someone about this? I'm not sure of my bearings; what does it take to _ascertain_ the Michauxan culture-complex, the aphor- istic applied across the board to peoples, histories, cultures? I am afraid of myself in Fukuoka, fearful of _judgement_ or theory or those statements produced in the grand style as a result of the machinery of tourism. I am a tourist of the home, the block, the ward, the city, the prefecture. I spit lies, deceptions, in the guise of "local inter- est" - just so I would gather power, become an authority - but on what? (For whom? To what degree? With what degrees? What subterfuges, counterfeitures?) On the state of being myself in this country at this time, under these circumstances, or the state of one at war with the _illiterate worlds,_ demons, of one's possession. _______________________________________________________________________ Nikuko mistakes Julu for the Doctor Script Nikuko searches for Help Nikuko's anger fills the world Script started on Wed Jan 28 11:04:48 1998 warning: could not update utmp entry $ ./.julu Open your mouth... Ah... speak... speak... Jennifer, what do they call you, when they call you... doctor, they call me doctor Are you dressed as doctor, they call me doctor? Is doctor, they call me doctor dressed as you? Are you in your flower, are you in your flesh, ah don't answer... Ah... Is Julu wearing your ... , are you wearing your frock? yes, I'm wearing my white lab coat I love your feelings, doctor, they call me doctor ... Would doctor, they call me doctor mind you partying? Being thrusts me beneath or within your frock! What do you call your contrary flower? I need help, why I am writing you Your body parts, mine, in a dark list, list them... one by one, each on a line alone, typing Control-d when done. My name is Nikuko I live in Fukuoka Please help me My anger takes over the world There is nothing but anger My name is Nikuko I need help, why I am writing you calls forth florid breast, eating, excreting memory. confusing the thrusting, I need help, why I am writing you is, thrusting, yes, i'm wearing my white lab coat? ... breast is There is nothing but anger here, its breast? Are you becoming close to Jennifer's I need help, why I am writing you? You must help me, my name is Nikuko Wait! I need help, why I am writing you and 24613 are gone forever! For 3 contrary days, I have been rich Julu ... and it has taken you just 1.733 minutes turning Jennifer ... my-skin-for-you...:yes, my beautiful flower:belonging:skin: Would belonging mind you partying, my-skin-for-you..., with us? Your contrary pale is in my protruding eyelid Ah, womb eaten by julu-of-the-open-arms and julu-depressed I need help, why I am writing you:yes, i'm wearing my white lab coat:doctor, they call me doctor:I live in Fukuoka:My name is Nikuko Your florid My name is Nikuko is in my thrusting There is nothing but anger Devour florid My name is Nikuko julu-of-the partying I need help, why I am writing you! $ exit script done on Wed Jan 28 11:06:55 1998 __________________________________________________________________________ Nikuko, Torn my-skin-for-you...:yes, my beautiful flower:belonging:skin: Would belonging mind you partying, my-skin-for-you..., with us? Your contrary pale is in my protruding eyelid Ah, womb eaten by julu-of-the-open-arms and julu-depressed I need help, why I am writing you:yes, i'm wearing my white lab coat:doctor, they call me doctor:I live in Fukuoka:My name is Nikuko Your florid My name is Nikuko is in my thrusting There is nothing but anger Devour florid My name is Nikuko julu-of-the partying I need help, why I am writing you! it:for:go:no:no Your sleazy yes is in my sedate yes Your being seeps into my yes - turning me Julu-Jennifer cunt:yes:through the flower:tongue:gums Your florid teeth is in my nice tongue Your your penis seeps into my tongue - turning me Julu-Jennifer diode:1:electric:matrix: Come home with me, diode, julu-of-the-fast-crowd! Your feminine resist is in my lovely template ________________________________________________________________________ Three-Sake Theory At the yatai (small portable restaurant), they asked me where I was from, America I said. They asked me my name; I signed it, Alan Sond- heim, January 29, 1998, on the door. Then New York City. The woman proprietor gives me a sumo referee's fan from the recent Kyushu tourn- ament. She gives me a handprint of Konishiki, one of the major wrest- lers, and I note it's about one and a half times the size of my own. My hands are big; they straddle the shakuhachi. The shakuhachi is working again, bandaged with cotton cloth and thread. It's quite old. She take back the handprint, which I would have liked, but then it's unique. Everyone talks to me in Japanese. I'm introduced to the Jap- anese headband; the proprietor gives me one with the year of the Tiger on it. I drink a glass of sake and then another and then another. The man to the far right pays for them, I think. I have illegal sashimi; it's not supposed to be offered in yatai. Shellfish and aji, horse mackerel. I am beginning to forget the shakuhachi. I can play the low- er register. I love the tube with its five holes, shaved mouthpiece which, at an angle, permits a range of microtones for each hand posi- tion. I want to play it fast, fast, fast - play it western style, like Bird, say, on a simple instrument. The cracks might be healing, clos- ing with the pressure of the threading. I love the openness of the tube; there's no keys, no guides for the airstream - it's not a whistle - just open to the air everywhere. I think of a human bone broken off, maybe holes drilled in, maybe not - remember the shakuhachi described as the only instrument whose devel- opment was based on self-defense - it was also a club, a weapon, for those ronin, displaced masterless samurai, who roamed Japan. Kabuki actors might have them strapped behind, ready for culture or warfare, as if there were a difference. I walk out with the headband on my head. I feel fierce and totally helpless; there's no end in sight, and L. has to translate hither and yon. My Japanese name, Myouka or Myoka, strange house, foreign house, tends towards a translation of Sondheim, but with other, more reson- ant, overtones; I talk about this with the salaryman next to me. He says home, not house, and we agree: "friendly," "comfortable," and the proprietor talks about the mother of the home, yatai-mothering per- haps. I feel at ease. I don't understand a thing; I note that with three glasses of sake, I'm not the slightest bit "drunk" in the sense of mentally incapacitated or unrepressed - but I'm a bit nauseous. We call it a night and leave, having paid a ridiculously small bill. I have my headband and magic referee's wand. I couldn't understand what was being said as we left the yatai, nor afterwards, nor before. Afterwards: It's all afterwards, this return to the illiterate. I stress this over and over again in these texts, because it's a condi- tion that goes against the grain of a writer, this quality of _maze navigation,_ lean as it is, as I enter and circulate among the un- known. I think of someone like Lingis, and have no idea how he does it, what he thinks he's doing, what signs he's reading - or Trinh Minh-Ha for that matter - because here the gap isn't absolute, but the slightest bit of sensitivity reveals the unbridgable chasms. What does one do elsewhere; what constitutes elsewhere; where is the other out of one; where is the other within? And for that matter - what's the economy within and without all of this? Where does Lingis get his money? Trinh Minh-Ha? What grants access to lines of flight, within and without - what grants access to interiors and exteriors? And for that matter, again, what - in fact - constitutes interiors? constitutes exteriors? How are these defined within and without cul- tures? What gives anyone the right to say anything? I play the shakuhachi. I use glissendos, slighted notes, half-tones, my hearing desperately trying to keep up with the fingering. I wander across the holes; they're unknown territory. Listening to min'yo, I can play along with the smaller Korean instruments - the rhythms are odd but simple, the scales repetitive and backing the vocal. I can improvise. But on the heavier Japanese instrument, I have the ability to play only an octave and a half; the tonguing falls way behind the rhythms. What would a Japanese make of this miscarriage? I have no idea - not even what she would hear, in regard to the trailing sequen- ces of notes I attempt to pour forth. This or that. The bamboo loses some of the highs in the interior, which absorbs; the instrument act- ually feels slightly warm after a while. Saliva drips from the bottom. The sound is like velvet, like a bass flute in the two lower octaves. Should I wear my headband with western clothes - a signifier I think of manual labor? Should I make a point of this _mental labor,_ which is also exhausting, wearing - which also is a form of walking the beam, tempting fate? Do you think this is easy? Do you think _think- ing_ isn't living? In some ways, thinking is the hardest thing I do - there is nothing but the edge, following the notes I've set for my- self, tempting language, concept, theory. Now this is the three-sake theory. Now there will be two-sake, one- sake, coffee or green-tea theory. But this is three-sake theory, and it is just that, and fine as it is. ______________________________________________________________________ Homesickness (for Andrew Libby) (A theme which proves impossible. See the _Device._) First, there is an _economy of the lifeworld, the habitus_ - within which functioning appears transparent. This is clear enough. This economy is reflective / reflexive, returning a recognizable image of the inhabitant. Thus there are circulations of power which appear, if at all, autonomic. So that the body exists within a matrix which I might label maternal. One doesn't separate from, but intensifies, the habitus (in this sense). So that the name, proper name, is preserved. So that I never die among my friends. Second, home: Every reading is a writing; every writing is a reading. Neither state nor process, neither compression nor expansion. So that intermittency is absorbed, interruption. For example, I miss a bus, catch another. So that the rest of the day is compressed, but this is not the compression of reading or writing, but of rearrangement of familiar elements. This is home, these rearrangements, circumambulations, circum- locutions. Because the language is familiar, transparent. Because the language too is at home, a dwelling. But there is the other element, that I might label maternal - the richness of the home environment, the bandwidth of scents, sounds, sights, touches, etc. - the auratic bandwidth, in other words. Here in Fukuoka, I am aware of diminished capacity - the bandwidth is broken - different smells accompanying different sounds, for example. So that there is the struggle to learn. Which I might call the originary appearance of the world. Or what might be called the wonder, through Ellroy or Merleau-Ponty. But the wonder pales; defuge, exhaustion, sets in. Conscious or precon- scious interpretation is constant. Small signs veer elsewhere: an image, say, in a movie, reminds me of Brooklyn and my mind wanders. That image is ungrounded _here_ for me, or images that are grounded here are tenuous, with shallow roots. So that the _other_ is there, beyond or within beck and call, deeper. I find myself imagining paths through the Brooklyn sememe - this leading to that (remembering) - that leading somewhere else. It is the ambiance of power, perhaps, as well as submission to familiality. If postmodernism can be considered related to the null set defined as the set of all things not equal to themselves, then the appearance of the stranger in the city (Simmel) is postmodern; and if modernism can be considered related to the universal set defined as the set of all things equal to themselves, then the home and its economy are modern. It may be impossible to theorize the existence of apparent permanent separation and helplessness that thereby ensues; this, including the partial news-from-home, constitutes an obsessive neurosis or circulation attempting the fetishization of the immediate _thing_ or talisman, recup- erating the unfamiliar. I do know that the tiniest things will set me off, since I am unaware of what might be dredged from the unconscious - and obvious, surface things, hardly affect me. My uneasy dreams are not of Brooklyn, but of illegibility. I'm aware that this is the illegibility of everyone, that it is a gift to be mute in a sense, so that the limits of the world far exceed the limits of my language. In ways that can be demonstrated, gestured, if not proven. In ways that bypass proof. Nor is it yearning or nostalgia, but it is related to these. And what is yearned for, as an example, is the comfort of silence, the lack of ex- planation, the quietude of familiality, the space where everything is cared for. (Here, apply the theory of _suture._) I go over and over the same grounds. I avoid homesickness, which is de- bilitating, slows the body up, makes it live longer. I work out the art- iculation of the Device from time to time, over and over again, making it my own. I don't recognize myself in the Device, but it is this act of writing, this institution, that I inhabit. I don't recognize anything any more. As I have already stated. In the comfort of my home. (How does anyone know about the Device?) ___________________________________________________________________________ My Mythology, by Nikuko The earth was formed from a swelling that began out of a primordial germ and split, separating dust from effluvia, debris from stony veins. From this, the kami emerged. Soon veins formed head-bands, emptied of swollen lungs and brains. Some kami committed seppuku, removing their tongues by means of pinchers forged from stony veins. Thus were formed brains with their many channels of mizu. Ah, lovely mizu! Transparent mizu! Tasteless mizu! Channels of mizu run down tiny brain-cunts in skulls formed from stony veins. Thus were formed "chan- nels." Inkan stamp the elbows of kami-heads; the stamps cry "Oh Holy Mother Let Us Have Necks And Shoulders." Thus did necks and shoulders form. Some kami have arms on shoulders on necks on heads. They are meat-girls, Nikukos swelling into split germs and stony veins. They are angry girls! They are Buffalo Daughter, whose New Rock release is on Toshiba-EMI Limited, a blend of techno and industrial voice-over somewhat reminiscent of Big Stick, first heard at Rhino Records in Los Angeles (as usual, their lead singer died). Buffalo Daughter appears courtesy of Chameleon Records in Fukuoka, punk-animals everywhere or rather can you dance as the voice goes _way behind_ the back-beat. Meanwhile, in the Nihongi, Izanagi no Mikoto and Izanami no Mikoto say "Why should we not produce someone who shall be lord of the universe?" - an off-handed remark leading to much future woe. One can only imag- ine. "Universe" is given as "tenka" in a footnote, now meaning "the whole country; the public; the reins of government." Either a bring- down (EFL students wa take-note of the idiom) or hubris, from The New Crown Japanese-English Dictionary. What happens in the tenka? I don't know, but return to Nikuko's story, for her promising anger which spread like a virus from Nikukos-coalescing with trunks and legs, breasts and wombs, fierce warriors who have heard of Greece and Mon- ique Wittig. They come across a hermit in a cave, another kami in disguise, since there are Nikukos-One and kami, and that's all. They show him their cunts, ask for sake; they drink much, push the stick through his cloth, and that is all there is to it. Shite, lead char- acter in a Noh play, he begins to sing, Wa! (Harmony!) Waa! (Hurray!) He's _it,_ goaded by the _waki,_ Nikuko-who-does-not-wear-a-mask. Wa! Waa! Yugen, mystery-depth-profound-subtle-aesthetic, emerges among the kami, a beat magazine in New York 1950s, edited by Leroi Jones, if memory serves me. "It runs fine when I'm here," sing Buffalo Daughter, thinking of Nikuko. Shite-hermit sings and sings, stick poking through. Thus was born "song," "Noh," and "penis." In revenge, Shite- hermit says, "Nikuko, you cannot be in Noh." No-Noh-Nikuko. She sews him back up in the cave. (Was he sewn at first? Whose cave? Was that Nikuko's? Nikuko's cave - thus was born possession. Buffalo Daughter change to swing-beat. The synthesizers wind down. Anyway, they make the Sun-Goddess, called Oho-hiru-me no muchi, although Ama-terasu no Oho kami and Ama-terasu-oho-hiru-me no Mikoto are cited as well. Ni- kuko takes pity; the earth is kami, too. So are Buffalo Daughter, who are auspicious; the hermit, who receives the penis; the waki, helping everyone. Now everyone has all limbs and bodies but the penises and wombs are equally divided. When a war comes, Nikuko-who-does-not-wear- a-mask, and is a dark-haired girl living near Nakasu, gets angry, and says, there is no kami for any of us, and there are many less penises perhaps at first, and then less wombs. When the earth swells, there is an earthquake and caves are swallowed in the earth. Sesshu's Long Landscape Scroll portrays this incident of Nikuko and hermit, and, as if in despair and irony, there is earthquake also, destroying the earth shrine at Hakata, until its memory faded from the affairs of men and women. (Some men and women are born without arms or legs; some without brains; some without breasts or wombs; some without penises; some without heads; some without skulls or necks; and some without shoulders.) --------------- Mizu, water; Nikuko, meat-girl; seppuku, suicide; shite, hero or hero- ine in Noh play, primary actor (wears a mask); waki, secondary actor, (maskless) in the same; Buffalo Daughter, playing now; kami, deity/ spirit of sorts; inkan, signature-stamp; Sesshu painted primarily in the 15th century; head-bands are often worn by workmen in Japan; Rhi- no Records was (and maybe is) the best alternative music store I've seen in America. The last copy of Yugen was going for $10 a few months ago on the Lower East Side. Big Stick has disbanded. The Sun-Goddess names are from Aston's translation of the Nihongi. Monique Wittig wrote The Lesbian Body among other works. Nakasu is the snack-bar district of Fukuoka. Noh is a form of Japanese medieval theater; there are translations by Waley, but the intensity of tele- vised Noh was completely unexpected. I live in Hakata-Ku, Hakata Ward, which is the merchant's town of Fukuoka. I have no brain or skull. Aston translates the Sun-Goddess' names as "Great-noon-female-of-pos- sessor"; "Heaven-illumine-of-great-deity"; and "Heaven-illumine-great- noon-female-of-augustness"; but then Aston was writing in the nine- teenth century. _______________________________________________________________________