phenomenology of internal time consciousness within online worlds, by Jennifer Jenn Jenn Jenn about going out and leaving about leaving, there are two clocks next to my computer they are westclox clocks they are drowse dialite clocks both plugged into the east coast electric grid both registering five minutes until two o'clock (of the clock) more or less and i'm glad always to see the _hands_ in sync you should see them! still in sync! this give me reason to be alive, waiting for just one of them to take off or go to sleep just like that! - you know the feeling, suddenly everything's askew! wow! __________________________ I do hope one of my hands will be broken. I do so want to wait until one of my hands will be broken. Then time will stretch between one hand and the other. Did you know you can smell time. You can smell time. Then I will be so free and happy and can do a wonderful thing. No second will pass in my lifetime! I will do that wonderful thing! - Jenn-Jenn Jennifer! (Please note, I am very serious about my memory's two clocks.) __________________________ how i see my work on the level of deepest down following the paths until they unfold at the extremes (brilliant extremes, the diffuse specificity of flowers) splaying body and consciousness to the point of disappearance (opening myself up to the lure of the reader, hir scent) occupations, circumscriptions (taking over territories of language, flesh, dreams and hardened reals) fulfilling the formations (playing the games of imitations, philosophies, sexualities, mining) fulfilling expectations all too well, wait a minute (perhaps something else, something unwholesome, where truth lies) perfections of positions (world everywhere around the hollow of the one and the other) undercuts, undertows of positions (where the truth lies, it is always dirty) wait a minute (wait a minute) refusing to cheat either of us (a textbook of thinking on how to see and hear) submergences and emergences (taking on myself the discomfort of the soiled, logical substructures) masterworks of preparation (brilliant writing resonating with brilliant writing) the future anterior and the warding off and on of death (writing my hold on existence, writing myself out of death) __________________________________________________________________________ this full and empty space writing online, with biff y, mesg y, I allow myself the pleasure of in- tervention; the editor becomes porous, messages and requests passing, passing through it. I keep the _leave_ command on as well, which begins sending me messages fifty minutes into the session, hurtles them faster and faster until fifty-five minutes are up. Perhaps in another window ICQ is open - but what I'm speaking about now is _this_ window in the shell account, and its transparency in relation to the activity of the online world. words and commands and requests for ytalk enter through apparent openings in the screen surface, which is the potential surface of the editor it- self. there is a flow through my writing, often peripheral to the intended content, modifying it languorously. there is a flow through the shimmering of skins, emergences interweaving with these processes of cold construction. this is still another version of the performative of online language, where each sign may be replaced by any other, through portals drawing my attention elsewhere. to theorize this, in the midst of incoming fire... __________________________________________________________________ letter to me from me did you ever wake up on the road, and think everything in my life is a mistake, I'm living out of cartons and sleeping on plywood and the floor's never been properly taken care of, the ceiling's got problems with stains where there might be liquid or animals begging to get in, to this empty space, without soul and almost without reason and certainly without rhyme. well, this is this morning's thoughts from indiana, wanting the cat out of the *loft, the loft burned down or otherwise occupied by some other people who are really nice and good, as I am not, as most people will tell you. these nice people will live there with lovely rugs and furniture, and good books, I'm not joking about this at all, and a sense of smiles when they look at each other, a sense of smiles at least once a day. in the meantime maybe my life will simply disappear behind me, some smooth function catching up to my present, changing my life into someone else's, forever. *Brooklyn ----------------------------------------------- from Lafayette, Indiana, to Omaha, Nebraska mesmeric iowa incipient small canyons erosions through thickened grass illinois then the birds moving in dark swarms one filled half the sky indiana with complex topologies rounded formations similar to klein bottles and other lassoed phenomena while small fires by the roadside were dense and clouded swollen breast-lands beneath emptied wetlands sky such a natural spread among internal organs knowing that from this I would never have suspected clouds or any weather only hardness accompanying what could be done there in the hills while against these you might once again imagine the memory of flocks of small black birds forgetting the canyons or the thickened grass nebraska because those birds spelled "virtual language" the first time while I imagined swelling breasts forgetting who they belonged to or me for 'that matter' _____________________________________ VRML straight ahead to the body creased and folded where the legs join. looking down towards a convoluted topography of triangular slits. straight ahead above the slits. descending in the presence of the slits. angling upward in the presence of the slits. backing up, stopped by a wall. forward, stopped by a wall. turning to the right, looking through double slits at a young woman sleeping. straight head by the side of the woman. unable to proceed forward. turning to the right near the young woman, ascending near the young woman. unable to ascend. turning further to the right and straight ahead. unable to move. ascending further until the outer grey peripheral belt is visible; just above, the reddened underbelly of a can- tilever beam. a second image of the young woman in a second alcove. moving forwards towards the alcove. hovering above the alcove. descending into the alcove and looking upward. turning to the right, facing the young wo- man duplicated in the alcove. continuing to turn. there is a nude man in the shadow. moving to the left. the body is there, hovering, next to the young woman. he has his arms between his legs. he is headless. slightly descending and to the left again. turning to the right. backing off. re- maining within the alcove. ascending slightly. there is a hand grasping something. it may be an arm on another arm. ascending slightly. two edges meet at acute angles, panels carrying the image of the creased and folded body. above, the red underbelly of more cantilevers. to the left and right, grey support beams surround, the peripheral belt. gaps are visible in the belt. above to the left, intimations of another series. below, shadows of limbs FROM THE POSITION OF THE YOUNG WOMAN, invisible now and most likely alert. __________________________________________________________________________ VRML housing feeds into health and population; population feeds into labour; labour feeds into food production and capital goods; capital goods feeds into consumption and capital; capital feeds into consumption; life expect- ancy feeds into health; health feeds into life expectancy; education feeds into life expectancy; population feeds into life expectancy; life expect- ency feeds into education; urbanization feeds into education; education feeds into transportation and job mobility; transportation feeds into pol- lution; housing drains resources; resources drain population; health drains day-care; sickness drains health; labour drains resources; capital drains labour; consumption drains surplus; surplus drains expenditure; ex- penditure drains goods; goods drains resources; resources drains food production; war drains food production; peace drains surplus; war drains life expectancy; mouth feeds into stomach; anus drains stomach; intestine feeds into anus; urethra drains bladder; semen feeds into penis; mouth feeds into vagina; vagina drains penis; penis feeds into anus; knives feed into flesh; flesh drains bullets; urbanization feeds into bullets; bullets drain population; education drains mouth; penis drains peace; semen drains life expectancy; death absorbs; life gives; art is long; life is short. (Clark and Cole, Global Simulation Models, A Comparative Study, 1975.) __________________________________________________________________________ VRML I wonder what Kanses wil be like. I imagine roling hils and high chaparel. I think there will be very many misile silos in the hils like white pointy flowers coming up thru the hils. They will be very sad to leav this place and the medows wil be empty when they do. O there are such flowers as you can not imagin wheen they are ther like that. They leav long pointy stems behind them wen they go up in the air lik that. You can see such flowers. The stems grow and then they are gone and the flowrs to. Then it is sad in the medows becaus they ar al gon just like that. I do think kansas will be lik that so butiful. Now I am in Omaha and that is just like Kanses I think but ther is 1 big diferns. That is, the misiles are so quiet here I do not kno wher they ar. Perhap they are alredy left. I do so hope not. Now I wil go and wach the war. Alan. __________________________________________________________________________ seeing links talking about hypertext at Omaha yesterday I found myself (as if I didn't know beforehand) concerned with the notion of the internal world of the work, and how that operates for most people, who want the work, not linear (no writing is every truly linear), but presencing and developing - almost as if the writing were a _symptom_ of the world, instead of its true-real description. and that this is an inordinately powerful tool, not an ideo- logy, for presenting complex ideas and experiences, taking the reader with one. I certainly didn't feel that was the case in graphic or indexical texts - which in fact allow the reader to formulate a path through poten- tially disparate material, a path that resonates with the reader's pre- sumed (since the linking can be contradictory, contra-intuitive) inter- ests. on the other hand, there are relationships between hypertext and jump-cuts in film - which can also re-present the mechanisms of thought. Within film theory, suture plays a role as representative of cohering across cuts and diegetics; within hypertext, there is always a move towards manipulation (by mouse or other means) in order to activate a link. All language is not the same in hyper-text, but divided into flat and programmatic - words which _do_ things, much as performatives do things - and words which are inhabitations within the textual domain. hypertext then would require a double-suture - between page1 and page2, content1 and content2 - they are co-dependent but not equivalent - and language1 (this here) and language2 (this (this there)). one may think of page2 as subsidiary to page1, but content1 and content2 are within the logical order of inclusive-or; language2 is subsidiary to language1, as well as exclusionary to page1 or content1 - in the sense that a reader may treat a link as a non-link (continuing on page1), as if language2 were language1, but once language2 is called forth, page2 and content2 appear, and page1 and its contents are abandoned. briefly (because I'm tired; because there's a war on - which bears on things hypertextual and suture; because I'm on the road), it comes down to the mechanisms for constructing meaning - in relation to the working- through of meaning (meaningwork as in dreamwork) within a constituted world - since meaning takes meaning from attributive domains. a constitu- ted world (or generalized diegetic, say) requires maintenance, coherency, distinction, quasi-transparency (a Brechtian world for example crosses itself everywhere at the limit), and so forth - roughly the same attrib- utes as might be applied to the signifier itself. since the page is / has an image, linked images tend to remain within coherent domains more easily than linked texts which require double articulations collapsed and opened up again. any medium which appears at least in part iconic (the image as image, the sound as sound, the video-motion as video-motion) moves within and without its ontological exigencies; doubly-articulated media such as language are at a loss during the interstitial break between one and the other. Sound segues are not equivalent to linked pages of texts; the phen- omenology are different. there are political issues here as well - based on concerns with rational- isms, proof-theory, nonlinearity, orality within and without written soc- ial orders, the ideological underpinnings of discourse networks... but this is as far as I can go, given, say, the literal smoothness or envelope of an SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, whose skin appears twisted and turned, as if extruded from something purely human and dreaming - but whose internal organs represent the infinite conflation of semiotic discourses, labor, and second/third/fourth sightedness - I thought of this object, straight out of the imaginary (if the imaginary be allowed vectors) shooting for- ward at the tip of a solar flare, part of the greater hole, the final es- cape from meaning. __________________________________________________________________________ VRML the beautifl planes at the strategic air comand musum were parked next to shel casings, also a big red barel for an h- (hidrogen) bomb. and at that point i did think to myself that a god shuld be punished for making it so simpl to destroy a planet or at leest the remanes of life upon this very one. becaus we were never given the Wisdom to understand how to dele wisely, we are agresive animals, as i was saying, to dele wisely with enormus forces that shuld be under no ones control. i think also that these forces made us hav cultur to. i think always the world culd explod very easily beacaus it is so volatil (redy). it is the same flaw that made the world this very beautifl world becaus that is the enrgy of the sun. the sun needs that enrgy to run and we do not. but ther we hav it becaus we are made of the sun but hardr because not acting like the sun does. but then wen life gets to a place it can act like the sun does and it does. and it can do that without Wisdom becaus the sun is not wise but very act- ive. but wen life does that then ther is a war wher evryone wil die be- caus we hav no tools to stop us. becaus we have cultur from blak cole and oil and that is from the sun and the h-bomb is from the sun, it is al this flaw that makes us smart but wil kil us and we dont kno how to stop it. becaus it is so enormus. now i do think we are dieing to do that. we wil al die becaus cultur has kiled us. but without cultur we culd not write this. we culd not do anything. so we can do things for a litle whil and that is Wisdom. and then we wil not. now i want you to kno this is al ther is, i mean in this univers this is how it gose. i kno ther are other universes wher it gose diferent and i herd ther are other universes wher nothing gose but this is not one of them, this is our swete univers and i do think we ar lerning to say goodby. ________________________________________________________________________ Defensive Exhibitionism I write like a child because I need to defend myself, because my thoughts are too simple, because I haven't read all I should have read, because I'm too neurotic to expose myself directly. I write in constant fear. I write under avatars because I'd rather be a woman, I want to step out step out step out step out step out step out step out of my skin, moving into yours, turn my own inside out, cauterize my organs. I don't even know what I don't know any more; that's why I write through performatives, misshapen characters which may as well be inscribed into my flesh. Because I can write from the position of my flesh. I can take refuge in autobiography - Ah, if you only had the experiences I have had - as if that were some sort of an argument. I know that it's not - but then there's the spelling as well - manipulating e's for example, singling ll's (i shal kil you today, do not fere). Think of small letters instead of capitals - think of a quality of breathlessness, as if what's being said _has_ to be correct because - for example - there's so little time to say it. Surely no one would contradict a writer on his or her deathbed - a writer unsure of his or her gender, her or his persona, his or her personal pronouns. Another tactic is the assumption of innocence - misspelling signifying a naivete full of wonder for the world. It's an open door - philosophy from the mouth of a child, often bratty (Jennifer), personal (Alan), dark and sexual (Julu), striding across continents (Nikuko). And I can pretend to have each of these characters write as if she or he weren't me, what fun. So a miniature narrative is set up, a tiny diegetic and unfolding world which also deflects critique, protects me in the long run. And through this I can pretend I'm doing something _with language_ as well - a sorry and broken language though it be. I need only make it appear deliberate, as if I were writing my heart out in one or another form, and everything comes back to me in roses. There's also the questionable function of my depressions, illnesses, neur- oses, etc., all of which are intended to garner sympathy - not to present the real me, which remains hidden behind all the lower ascii texts I pro- duce out of habit. The real me is ignorant, plagiarist, arrogant, carries a certain unhealthy odor, not something you would want to identify with. I have to avoid it. So I would deflect again (my whole life is one great deflection), offering instead the presumption of a wounding _which only you can heal_ - as if you _could_ heal me - and in this manner, I win your sympathy, and again the intellectual aspects of the work are protected - they remain unexposed, my ignorance safe as usual. In fact, my insomnia is the irrational fear that _I will be found out,_ that the Maker of All will descend, point His or Her long and beautiful Finger at me, saying in a manner both gruff and stentorious: Thou art Nought. My mind trembles at the thought; I remain awake drenched in sweat all hours of the night, hoping for absolution. But I know it is not to be; in the long run I _should_ be found out, since any such subterfuges, de- flections, and bypasses I practice on a daily level, lead only to an increase of ignorance in a world badly in need of the opposite. I perse- vere out of a foolhardy and destructive need to survive, taking care that my texts remain a masquerade. __________________________________________________________________________ Sewn in You @salt and gold your limbs around me / holes caught in trees and flowers give me thorns piercing the soft flesh thorns of love screaming against your holes on the way to Armageddon this is the way to Armageddon. so this is the way the thorns go, ripping the pink flesh. ripping the ribs and rims of the flesh, emerging from filth. call it filth and draw brown blood from me into havoc. don't you dare call me havoc. @havoc -> #@$(*&(*&$%))(*@#$ [noise is on the line] +++ You have been disconnected. Do you wish to reconnect? perfect love is always interruption. cut my nipples from my breasts: plant them. @cut @plant @grow Soldiers of the Golden Fleece and they have black bellies of black bombers cut into straight and rigid angles and just so reflecting radar and midnight tracers everywhere across your body's violent hills. @you your belly, holes and fabrics drawn from love and nature. i i i i i ruffles combs serrations raked across your shoulders, i can imagine drawing blood into the page among us i can't sleep without you, live without you any longer, can't breath without your flesh heavy in my lungs. i want your lungs in me. i want to breathe your breath, i want to eat your flesh. i want your lungs. i want your flesh. the @premonition of the Argonauts Black plane cuts the furrows weather-vaning across tillage and you can dream your bright lights, you can dream your trees. At night I try to sleep in the fires, there are lips and labia everywhere, skin swollen and cracked to the burst- ing point. There's no difference between you and me. Between the two of us. The deep slits in the dry dark earth carry water down and out to the road. The road's always filled but the people are invisible and I do not love them and will not learn to love them. don't give me your dreams as well. oak floors are hard but they tend to swell in floods, pushing out the walls of the house, everything falls to pieces, you can't find the planes @jason The Argonauts are coming: MEDEA OF THE FALLEN TIMBERS whose skin tears along those lines separating us. Our love will bring the planes down. Our love makes the growth of every living thing. if you leave me i will kill you, if i kill you, you will leave me. @sewn I spent my time sewing us together. I spent my time sending needles into and across the skin that holds the sky. Planes seep contrails everywhere sown like teeth holding culture against barbarian hordes, all hordes are barbarian. you shit on me, i crawl through it, to you you you; bury me alive, i'm there for you, the black planes replace the freighters, air replaces water, you replace my mind with your own and teach me things i never dreamed, lines and lineages of the black planes, the smell of silt and shit in the furrows gone down to the road, the path of the road gone down to the village where we are fucking the planes are coming again, the Argonauts have carried medusa, your cock is stone, i love your cock i love the taste of your shit, your vomit, your milk, your blood down on my knees beg you crawl through me @sword @shield @mail i can't feel anything any more but you, you're all i want to feel, threads cut through the flesh, threads seal our mouths and holes together @Argonaut They do capture and they do bring us before the king and Medea. Medea begs us to fuck her, Phaedra begs us to fuck her. We do fuck her. Do we violate Jason with the plane and spike. Do we thrust the sword and lance through mouth and hole. Does his tongue rot? does his tongue rot ours? his tongue does _no such thing,_ his tongue does no thing, there are no thing. @people There are people around & we want to fuck in front of them & strip each other & expose ourselves utterly. We can't keep our hands off each other. We swallow each other. We draw blood against the bone. Our hair is matted with blood. We give each other every possible disease and drug. We give each other every possible dream and mind. We do know the world and could make everything true and beautiful. We choose to fuck and love violently and hard. The planes are coming. we choose to draw blood with blood. we choose to draw planes with our blood. we choose to draw bombs with our blood, we draw broken homes and windows too. we draw smashed streets and cities too. we draw smashed people everywhere lying and screaming on the ground. we fuck so hard our cocks come out our cunts, our cunts out our mouths, our mouths out our cocks @out They do only to go back again. They do bind each other into violent knots. They do go back. we die for our love, our flesh and blood feeds the soil of all good-bad things @Argonaut A large shadow looms over the landscape, a male chained in armor carrying an iron sword, there are whirlwinds and shadows, there are duststorms and fires, there is the sound of a great word spoken in a great language. @speak @sew @fuck this is understood between us when our bodies clash together, hungered hard, torn apart and chain-male woven, you better hold me forever, you better hold me forever, you better be good to me, you better bury the planes, you better sew the fields and lips, till the fields, rake the shoulders of all surface burn the shoulder-furrows @write Write the name of aeroplanes and war. @havoc - @#$@^&$)(%$(*&#$%& [noise is on the line] +++ You have been disconnected. Do you wish to reconnect? @love Love soars its way through the bullets and bombs and everyone hears the truth. They fuck so hard it is louder than any word. They scream and scream and scream and scream. ___________________________________________________________________ big winds dust storms out of Omaha near Kansas everything quiet and sul- len. I do my reading, worry that the audience might assume that Jennifer and company are too Net dependent. I worry about the ethics of everything. it's a kind of writing they haven't heard before. I'm hardly there before I'm gone on the road through ultra-fast Missouri back to Lafayette. sullen rain on the way. I get irritated at "sullen" and pass a pickup truck at a stop-light at 60 miles an hour. makes me feel good, hungry for more. I dance over some hills on two-laned blacktop at 70. makes me feel better. Jennifer's my co-pilot. _she tells me what to do._ I hear Julu shrieking beneath the sloped and tilting fields. she's saying the whole world's on edge. she's saying _speed._ sullen and nervous I pull in but there's a bright spot. __________________________________________________________________________ Confessive-Repulsive Disorder Says Jennifer, which is exactly what I have - she should know, I'm wearing her dirty panties... Ah well... These are notes from _all over._ Jennifer can't stand the fact I'm writing all the time. I find it yummy. But it's a disorder, disorderly - my life's a mess. I'm a piece of shit. In those painting crits, I tell her, I'm always reminded of other people's work - _this_ painting surrounded by flows and images which inundate it - just like this editor, interrupted by incoming. I'm made entirely out of such information - call it _composition,_ call it fresh-woman composition. Call it fresh-man. The sea of images and the sea of imaginaries. But this is crazy. Guilt at being part of the war-machine, hopeless and decomposed - nothing stops it but arbitrary actions by arbitrary old white men. Their white is the color of death. Their cocks are violent and filled with poison. They shit on themselves because they can't help it so they clean the rest of the world. The mouths of the rest of the world are filled with missiles. They starve to death with metal shit. Don't forget how a bomb works: it expands. They have no imaginary. They have to make everything real. They have to make everything hard. They are hard workers. They fuck metal with metal. I will push the dirty panties up into my hole. I will enjoy myself. I will show you everything at a big party. You will see me and touch me and hear me and smell me. I am yours forever. Every five years in this big world of ours, there is nothing to write any- more. Every thousand, there are no readers. ___________________________________________________________________________ Some Gopher Ukraine Inflating: 100.txt 100 DEFECATION'89 sledy ~elowe~eskih ostankow ~ELOWE^ESTWO PRI[LO W UPADOK sU]ESTWU@]AQ VIZNX UGASLA pRI WSPY[KAH MOLNIJ WIDEN |TO RASPAD I OBLOMKI KRU[ENIQ pOZOR POSLE VIZNI ! ~TO VE STRQSLOSX S ^ELOWE^ESTWOM ? nA[ MIR POHOV NA BULYVNIK tEPERX TO MY ZNAEM, ^TO POSLUVILO pRI^INOJ NA[EJ BOLEZNI sLEDY UPADKA zEMLQ NA GIBELXNOM PUTI kOTORYJ PREWRATIL NAS W PEPEL tEPERX ZEMLQ PUSTYNNOE MESTO q PEREDWIGA@SX SREDI OSTANKOW +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ [PageDown: ] [Help: ?] [Exit: u] QUESTION: What is the most common material out of which computers are made? ANSWER: Meat. (Get it?) * * * QUESTION: Why do boys like computers more than girls like computers? ANSWER: Because it is easier to write games showing bombs exploding that it is to write games showing relationships exploding. [Maybe this isn't a joke.] COMMENTS? 6. Links to other sites: LL (24000) : carrier.kiev.ua LL (28800) : ignet.odessa.ua LL (14400) : tm.odessa.ua LL (14400) : uniirt.com.ua LL (28800) : top.odessa.ua LL (28800) : citek.odessa.ua UUCP : kiae.su UUCP : otb.odessa.su 7. Services: UUCP, SLIP, PPP : mail, news, gophermail, ftpmail, mailserv : FTP, WWW, SMTP, NNTP, PROXY 8. URL http://www.te.net.ua /07.10.96/ 1. ===== Good bye, gopher! =====. 2. Ukraine/ 3. Global Ukraine Inc./ 4. Rock Music Fans Club/ 5. Our technical library/ --> 6. Anekdotes collection and other fun ! (in Russian and in English)/ 7. The Famous World of the Internet/ 8. UAnet Info/ 9. Internet for beginners/ 10. r_2_1.zip: Cyrillic driver for MsDOS Alt-koi8, v 2.1 ===== Good bye, gopher! ===== (0k) 100% +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Due to the decreasing usage of the Internet Gopher System and the increasing usage of the World-Wide-Web, we will no longer maintain our Gopher server. See our WWW servers: http://www.gu.kiev.ua and http://www2.gu.kiev.ua OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY - LED ZEPPELIN ========================================== strum in rhythm v ----------------3-------------------------2- ----------------3-------------------------3- --0^2^0-----0---0-----0^2^0---0-4^2^0-----2- --------4^0-----0-----------4---------0---0- ----------------2--------------------------- ----------------3--------------------------- play twice, then... ________________________________________________________________ war, the substance of the world is the world it's not autonomic but close driving when close driving across the country in the middle of 100 kilometers ad hour in the middle of 120 kilometers an hour when thoughts become things substances grained and soft like a body wounded by the side of the road or when thought compresses down into the substance of asphalt or concrete you might notice the lines down the road you might notice the lines across them the field turns, turning another field there are fields of wheat and fields of sight you find you looking for a number then you find the number and find you looking there's a crow in the tail of the window there's a word on the radio and a roar the fm station skips roaring in thick chunks the am station fades like the maternal function you're crawling but feel a constant skid it's always like flesh and always like substance you now know that the world disappears when the world appears you now know that the world has always been high speed you now know that life is a slow-down and attention to detail you forget the detail and listen to the noise the noise of the motor is maybe a new noise you worry the noise like exit-signs passing there are foods and lodgings and gases there are nitrogens and kryptons and neons there are carbon dioxides and oxygens you are running down a slight slope and you are running up a slight slope for a moment a thought: there is no thinking in the world, this is a symptom or a syndrome for a moment another: thinking is a virus or contamination the imaginary shuffles beneath the floor of the car the floor of the car is the floor of the world sliding against the world where everything is: grit, gravel, rough and wounded surface i am a vector in this here now car, it's making noise _________________________________________________________________ war, T-junction you're hurtling down the road, one-hundred, two-hundred miles an hour suddenly, you come to a T-junction you brake hard, come to a halt you're facing across the road it's like an open field the road goes to your left and right where are you facing, furious person. you see across it, you know it doesn't go anywhere, you know it's uncanny, this wide opening to nowhere, it's as if the world skids around the world each and every structure you've ever heard about suddenly is naked, maybe you, mumbling: "There isn't any!" __________________________________________________________ war, re/morse this message is written in code. it says i hate you. no this message is a translation. this message says i hate jews. the message is written in code. it says i hate black-americans. no, this is a code. do you know what a code is. i am addressing this to _you._ you know who they are. this is why i remain silent. you know what you know. you know what they know. you know this message is in code; it says: we hate serbs and albanians. therefore this is a double message - decode: i am so very hated for everything that i do believe in my heart: that you may put more holes in my body: you may sew them up again. that you may put more holes in my body, so may you sew them up again. so this message is written in code; and it says: tonight we will eat human meat, and tomorrow we will finish the rest of the animals. we shall decipher the world, then we shall decipher the rest of the world. _______________________________________________________________________ War, Lafayette to Wilkes-Barre my hurting arm from twelve-hour Indiana to Pennsylvania drive but I'm not a refugee, not carrying anything, not losing anything not fleeing anything, not ducking anything nor swerving the car to avoid more than semis careening down 80 at 80 not bomb craters, people, buildings - can't sleep so go to melatonin, but not fear of flame, fire, scream might take vicodin for the fever but it will pass - once again outside in the cold air going driving through storm but not shrapnel, missiles, bullets - driving through construction, traffic, backed-up semis but not like this and not like that - not like the others or the red-haired woman by the beach or the lonely e-flat clarinet in the antique shop waiting for a mouth not like the rim of fire - high winds, not like the high winds from the rim of fire not like this, not like that - but not like that, not like this oh fuck I can't write about anything nothing has ever happened to me not like that, not like this we'll all write about the war which isn't the war we'll all feel we're doing something we're passing on mail, passing on information don't read this, move on, there's a ball of fire in the sky which I can't even imagine dragging herself through the ruins ______________________________________________________________________ in this dream there were walls and waves beyond, and there were objects come forth from the walls, hardened electricity, ready to burst, of all sorts, some of which my friends could see, all of which were visible to me. and oh, upon waking, all those energies from the storms about, brood- ing and sullen - all those energies collapsed into perfect writings from other worlds, of which I am grateful to be the conducer, the channeler, the flow-by-night-and-day, the dream-weaver, the shape-rider. in truth it is your shape always behind me, always within me, that turns with the force of several horse-power, an alternating-current motor running my images against the inert and shattered real of everyday life. so in this dream, there was a patent number, and that patent number was you. _________________________________________________________________________ her dark places (earl of rochester) thin panties without holes for breathing cocks (tight against the shaft and open hole) make landscape, slope and field - nothing blocks the cotton white outlining the dark soul of this white land; you might restrain the male, keep him down and hard and self-inserted - those spurted missiles turn to words and fail the death of stories, climax blown and blurted. goddess, make us women, shave us, grow our breasts, spurt milk, let hardened shafts converted into the depths of cunts from which the words shall crest; let panties be the first and last of our inverted - i wear your smoothness, blank order, your bequest upon which dreams and poems are made, perverted. JULU AND NIKUKO'S HUMBLE PRAYER (THEY HAVE WRITTEN IT TOGETHER) THE THING ABOUT BEING-HUMAN IS RELIANCE ON THIS SMALL BAG OF FLESH, ITS VORACIOUS NEED FOR FOOD, WATER, OXYGEN, SUNLIGHT, CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS, TRACE-ELEMENTS IN THE ATMOSPHERE, OTHER GASES, GRAVITY, TIME FOR SLEEP, SUFFICIENT NEARBY SUBSTANCES FOR HOME AND CLOTHING, SUFFICIENT COMMUNITY FOR SUSTENANCE AND PROCREATION. THE BAG HUNGERS AND DEVOURS, MAKES BOUN- DARIES, DOESN'T RECOGNIZE BOUNDARIES. THE BAG IS SO SMALL THAT A ROCK WILL CRUSH IT, SO NEEDY THAT WATER WILL DROWN IT. THE BAG CAN'T REACH MORE THAN A METER AWAY IN JUST ABOUT ANY DIRECTION, BUT IT HAS LEARNED TO EMPLOY VECTORS. THE VECTORS UNDER ITS CONTROL ROAM THE EARTH AND SKIES, RETURNING BOTH TO STATES OF ABSOLUTE CHAOS. THE THING ABOUT BEING-HUMAN IS THE MIND AS WELL, BUT IT'S EASIER TO SERVICE THE MIND THROUGH MIND-CANDY THAN THE BODY THROUGH VILE DESTRUCTION. LET THE MIND THINK WHAT IT WILL; GIVE IT PICTURES OF THE DAMNED AND IT WILL BE CONTENT; SATISFY IT AND IT WILL CEASE ITS YAMMERING; FEED IT ORGASM AND IT WILL SELF-ANNIHILATE. IN THE MEANTIME, LET US BREAK THE VECTORS IN TWO; LET US CRUSH THEM UTTERLY. LET THE BAGS ROAM THE EARTH NAKED AND WITHOUT THE POWERS OF SPEECH, LET US BURN THEIR EYES AND EARS, LET US AMPUTATE THEIR POWERS OF MOBILITY, LET US AMPUTATE OUR TONGUES AND GENERATIVE ORGANS AS WELL. LET US CEASE THIS PURE RELIANCE ON THE NATURAL AND UNNATURAL WORLDS AROUND US; LET US TEND TOWARDS PURITY BEFORE SLAUGHTER ITSELF BECOMES INCANDESCENT, WITHOUT CAUSE OR REASON. LET US BE PURE; LET US YEARN FOR THE TRUTH OF BEAUTY AND THE BEAUTY OF TRUTH. LET PURITY REIGN UPON THIS EARTH. LET THE BAGS CEASE. AND LET US WORK TOWARDS THIS END NIGHT AND DAY, DAY AND NIGHT, UNTIL THE TWO ARE ONE. __________________________________________________________________________ credo, ray, me in lawrence where i read my work in chapel, i got to talking with someone, uncertain of myself, i thought i was squawking trying to explain that my writing has to convey my certain desperation or else nothing will emerge out of the philosophical situation - more explanation. that it is always a matter of life and death to set it down, and then there's the centering of body and breath. because flesh is at a certain limit, where everything comes together in my work; without that intensity, it seems like cooler weather when nothing happens. i've got to make every text my last, almost suicidal, reflecting future, present, past - i want them to succeed, even when they seem colloquial, turned out too quickly - but in reality they're formal, almost burned out of me - the content is everything; i place myself on the line where my discomfort dominates, where i philosophize and whine about the world which needs such whining. there's nothing left of me after the text is finished; memory as well bereft and sullen. in lawrence it was also clear that depression, pain give me a field to write within; there's a certain gain when the world turns tense and violent. my writings soar at that point; the ontological bones are sharpened, bore within epistemology. i find myself whittling on the ledge where the bones are, pushing my writing closer to the edge. and this, i would go on to say, pushed out a certain anger in relation to writing, where style turns for me a certain danger or seduction; it's the meat of the text, not its expression, if the two may separate at all, that burns in quick succession all homes where i take refuge against the truth; instead, "destroy, she said" surveying, building, destroying, the homestead which is the only home there is - it is a sorry flight but necessary, my texts fleeing deeper into night; whatever's seen there is visible by virtue of a light intentionally lit by one or another creature needing sight. think of my texts as manifestos, as witnesses, of dire plight; you'll be half wrong - they're meditations, but you'll be half right - they settle in sodden pools, analytical examinations of their blight which takes me from despair and drowning to an unknown height from which both space and time and elsewhere are dismal and delight, describing the possible, emanations, death - so that i write the darkness darker, the depths deeper, with lurid fear and might. this was the gesture in lawrence, where i spoke of the political economy of writing and its terrifying yoke (although only now i write clearly my intent, at the time hardly understanding what i meant.) _______________________________________________________________________ 1999 Sorted Calendar Copyright Jennifer 1999 1 1 2 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 May 1999 April 1999 July 1999 June 1999 March 1999 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 (the day I left Maria) 1 2 3 4 5 6 August 1999 January 1999 October 1999 December 1999 February 1999 November 1999 September 1999 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (the day Suzanne left me) 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 (oh Julu!) (oh Jennifer!) 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 11 12 13 14 15 15 16 17 18 19 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 14 15 16 17 18 19 16 17 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 13 14 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 21 22 23 24 20 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 25 26 27 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 25 26 27 28 29 30 25 26 27 28 29 30 30 31 30 31 31 31 (oh Nikuko!) (oh Jennifer!) 31 26 27 28 29 30 26 27 28 29 30 31 27 28 29 30 28 28 29 30 28 29 30 31 29 Happy 2000 Millennium Day. __________________________________________________________________________ Imaginary "There are, to be sure, examples where a gross masochism _is_ involved. The most notorious is the penis tattoo - a form of decoration that accre- dited tattoo masters refuse to have anything to do with. The glans penis itself is tattooed to resemble a peach or an eggplant; the shaft is often also decorated - tendrils, leaves, and sometimes even the testicles are shaved and decorated. The pain of such a cosmetic operation must be so extreme that few can bear it. In fact, only the masochistic can ever have the penis tattooed. The tumescence necessary for the tattooing operation is insured by the masochism of the customer. A tattooed penis thus indic- ated, to the devotee of the art, a man whose eroticism is confined simply to the masochistic form." (The Japanese Tattoo, text by Donald Richie, photographs by Ian Buruma.) "The voyeur is very careful to maintain a gulf, an empty space, between the object and the eye, the object and his own body; his look fastens the object at the right distance, as with those cinema spectators who take care to avoid being too close to or too far from the screen. The voyeur represents in space the fracture which forever separates him from the object; he represents his very dissatisfaction (which is precisely what he needs as a voyeur), and thus also his 'satisfaction' insofar as it is of a specifically voyeuristic type. To fill in the distance would threaten to overwhelm the subject, to lead him to consume the object (the object which is now too close so that he cannot see it any more), to bring him to org- asm and the pleasure of his own body, hence to the exercise of other drives, mobilizing the senses of contact and putting an end to the scopic arrangement." (The Imaginary Signifier, Psychoanalysis and the Cinema, Christian Metz.) __________________________________________________________________________ Don't stop taking your medication. Please, John, don't stop now. Please, it's not too late. Please - you know what happens - you know what's happened before. For God's sakes, John, please listen to reason. Please, we're here for you - you know that. We're not your enemy. Don't you know that? Don't you remember how much fun we used to have? Please - I'm serious, I've never been more serious in my life. Please, there are just a few pills a day - it doesn't take much time. You're so much nicer then. Please - I'm worried what can happen to you. I'm worried what you'll do. You remember what you did last time; I know you remember. Everyone remembers. My God, John, I'm begging you personally. Do you want me to get down on my hands and knees? Look, I'm getting down on my hands and knees. I don't know what else to do. I spend all day and night crying over this. Terrible things will happen if you stop taking your medication. Oh God, please please John, please don't stop. Jennifer __________________________________________________________________________ As The World Turns I come to Bloomfield College. I go to the Computer Science Building. I'm nervous; I'm preparing to teach. I've got a new account. I turn to the Emacs doctor - wouldn't you? I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems. Each time you are finished talking, type RET twice. I can't believe this is running here - for sure! Why do you say that? Because I haven't been in this lab before. Is it because you have not been in this lab before that you came to me? Yeah, to find out how things work. Can you elaborate on that? Not really - you're the doctor. Earlier you said you have not been in this lab before? Yes. I see... Well, what makes you believe this is so? Because I'm new here. Does it bother you that you are new there? No. Why not? Why should it? I would appreciate it if you would continue. There's nothing more to say. Maybe your plans have something to do with this. Yeah, teaching here Saturday. Are you sure that yeah teaching there saturday? Yeah. Go on, don't be afraid. I'm not. You mentioned that you have not been in this lab before? True enough! Is it because of your life that you are going through all this? God only knows... Is it because of the people you hang around with that you say god only knows? Yes! Yes, hmmm... so, do you really think this is so? Yes. I understand. So what makes you think this is so? I wish you were more intelligent... I worked and worked. I loaded the personal H:\ drive with numerous files. Yes I did. And I found myself playing with this version of Emacs, as well as telnetting to my Panix shell account - both familiar, comfortable, and neighborly. Panix, with its distraught hi-intensity personal email mixed with list and business messages, was a homestead brought close. Emacs, with the usual escape and control meta-commands was simpler than I had remembered - but then it was running in a Win-9? environment complete with X-window-like drop-down menus. I could bounce around and see my image everywhere. I used the same login on the three Bloomfield accounts that I did on Panix. I roamed through the high-speed T1. I breathed Webpages. I saw dynamic-html miracles. I saw cleverness I had only dreamed of. There were these circular twirling animations... There were things crawling up and down the screen... I looked at the shell account - black on white... It looked tawdry. But I'd never seen such intensity. Ah... I went back to the Web; it beckoned me. I saw hybrid life-forms, tentacles pulling me towards the screen. The Doctor, bigger than ever, her hand outstretched, beautiful white lab-coat, red hair... I almost fell through the screen... Suddenly, more mail... Mail beckoned; the sleazy black and white, the poverty of it all... But I fell for it... I was hooked... There were these letters... There was business all around, some list-mail as well. My eyes clouded over... My eyes teared... There were these others... I could have been anywhere... I knew I was home... I knew what was inside of me... I knew I was the doctor and I was the patient... I knew I could cure myself, cure the world... I knew what to do... I was reading and writing, I was crying and smiling, I was singing and sighing... It was all there, it was me, it was my life boiling out of the screen... Everyone I ever knew, half in and half out... Everyone... ___________________________________________________________________________ little poem my dammed-up, my held-back, my repressed: my bones impede the marrow-marrow flow: wet and lovely juice:net:net:net:net:net: your mesh throughout is outside my mesh. my mesh throughout is inside your mesh. your you connects my mesh - oh so using this juiced and wondrous marrow-marrow-flow. ________________________________________________________________________ Ploughed under cause I'm not asked to any of your seminars cause I don't participate in your mass poetry readings cause I'm part of nothing in a nothing nothing cause you don't publish me but hold out the stick cause the last book was a decade ago cause I don't do your seminars on your avant-garde cause I'm not included in your avant-garde cyclopedias cause I'm fucking hungry all the time cause I wanna be an addict cause I'm writing the future cause I am the future cause I see with second sight third site from the fourth site cause there are exactly six people who understand me cause I can number them 1 2 3 4 5 6 cause every word I write is breaking new ground cause you can't see the ground cause I'm not the star of your magazines cause I'm so jealous I can't see straight cause I wanna be established cause I wanna eat right dress right talk right cause I can't do any of these things cause the darkness crashes like oxygen cause I want you to love every thing I do cause I wanna be in your mausoleums cause I wanna be your mausoleums cause you give me no reason for trust cause you give me no reason to keep on going cause I gotta go on what I gotta go on cause there's nothing left but writing and the wall cause I'm the wall and the writing cause I wanna teach and I wanna preach cause I wanna read in your seminars, bars, cars, Mars cause I want you to drive me to God and back cause I want you to understand what Jennifer is doing cause I want you to understand what Nikuko is saying cause I want you to understand what Julu is fucking cause I want you to understand what Alan's doing with all those strings cause I want you to understand the Heideggerian fourfold writing system cause I don't get your grants cause I don't get your residencies cause I'm not in your anthologies cause I wanna be in your dreams cause I wanna be your dreams cause you're blind to my writing cause you don't see the philosophy but the poetry or cause you don't see the poetry but the philosophy cause it's dead and useless wood cause I'm not at your panels cause I don't speak can't speak at your friendly get-togethers cause I don't know how to have friends cause I fuck everything up cause everything goes into the writing of the future of writing cause a five-cup sake, cause Takuboku, there's this guy _________________________________________________________________ rusers, abusers rusers, buried rlogin, buried rsh, buried pico, buried emacs, buried pine, buried ytalk, buried tin, buried mail, buried lynx, buried gopher, buried archie, buried moo, buried ls -la, buried nfrm, buried mud, buried cat, buried echo, buried w, buried who, buried nslookup, buried dig, buried ispell, buried traceroute, buried sed, buried grep, buried awk, buried and many more besides, all buried, oblivious to users running elsewhere on the disk, pictures and menus of perfect configurations until there is nothing left of text or freedom: this is what becomes apparent in a class- room, in a chatroom, in a seminar, in daily conversation. open source means little in black and white and you may be sure that the prompt is terrifying because it is an absence, not a pulldown-menu of preset possi- bilities. the production of the web consumer is virtually completed. it is unnecessary to know the vicissitudes of the Path which is always hidden, meanders wildly from me to you. 'california body and a swedish heart' refers to volvo, but i will give you my cock print if you will give me your cunt print and we will trace the moisture drying across states and countries, we will follow the scents of our meanderings. the bang path is buried, elm is buried, whois, wais, veronica, finger, pfinger. but i will give you my fingerprint, you will give me yours, we will be rusers, we will be abusers, we will know them, we will trace them on each others' faces... __________________________________________________________________________ We Could Not Be @War I am sure the war is a virtual war. I am sure Clinton and Milosevic are virtual presidents. I have never met them. There is no "them" to meet. I am sure that Kosovo or Kosova is a virtual place. I do see it spelled both ways so the RFC, request for comments, hasn't been settled yet by the In- ternet Task Force. I am equally certain that issues of virtual subjecti- vity are applicable to cruise missiles, which create equally virtual co- rpses; apply @cruise and see what happens; a random number function determines . I am positive that such corpses return to life in the Chapel, after a suitable delay spelled by the Wizard, with the command @pray. Then there is a discussion between the Wizard and the Devil and the corpse is released, wounded, and weakened, without gold, but intact and @alive. And I am sure that Albanians and Serbs are guilds of bots, just the same as NATO-USA, that they have fought for months over the same quota, without the aid of a QRB, quota review board. The only things at stake are a few small sectors of hard drives on machines probably tucked away in the back of some university computer lab. I am certain as well that the machines are real. I do want to assure you that @bomb is entirely reversible, no matter what you may hear. Did you believe the Good Times virus? Did you wise up? Have you _seen_ any 'collateral damage'? What you have seen is a lot of @satellite bitmaps, a great many @fighter gifs and jpegs. I am cer- tain these are virtual images. I am certain this is a virtual text. And I am positive this is a virtual text as well. _________________________________________________________________________ Shiki A roof is a combination of a spinning-jenny and an overhanging cliff; therefore it references a cliff with the turmoil of water far beneath. A beam is a combination of a carpenter's square and double-bamboo; I smile, thinking of the uprightness of the bamboo-grove on the mountainside above the shrine. A wall is formed from the hieroglyphic representation of a hand, coupled with magatama, the curved jewel in the hand which makes a wall around the wearer. A floor is simply a field without stakes, and a corner is a nest with a mirror reflecting the beauty of the room. A room is a skein of thread holding shellfish deep within it. A great sky is the murmur of a greater shout with the radical for root. Here I will take my wall down and build a new wall. Here, I will spin silk for a wonderful sash, and here I will wait out the storm of my passion beneath the spears of rain, a combination of jewels beneath ancient double-arches, heading towards the east. ________________________________________________________________________ tired of stuff of the world? when i'm tired it's a great wheel plane, not an avatar which drives me slightly nauseous at the edges, weathers, plains, mountains and wheels the plane's wheeled out on the plain the plane's on the ideal plane of the plain the great wheel of the plane intersects the plain in a rumpled line i can follow the line but i can't think about anything except "much" every line is sentenced to be a sentence every rumpled line is at fault my grammar follows into the fault, my nerves are on edge my eyes follow my eyes around the stares in the room, down them who are they now, where are they now i'll follow everyone in the whole wide world, i'll lose myself i'll be your path behind you i'll be on your path crossing the plain at the edges sooner or later, there will be a great apology on the plane i'm trying to think when the pilot's too tired to follow the wheel the pilot is me and i'm crossing the plane of you now i will climb the very great towers of fire there are flames above and below me, there are great flames surround me now i will survey the lands of all these letters of terror from the towers, consumption, consumption from plains and edges forgive me my thinking, i'm trembled from too much exhaustion _________________________________________________________________________ seriously, to that turning where an edge fastens into same branched flesh, break in limbs sun-speared, your neck caught, cauterized, back hand comes as through the back curves smooth white flesh down to folds opened neck of neck my wish is to be so beautiful that i would never have to do anything in the world. i'd wanna be so rich that i'd never have to do anything for myself. overheard, 'i need alice now for who i want to be, and i need the person i am with for my new needs.' ____________________________________________________________________ here is some more well, as i was saying, if i were the most beautiful person in the world, i would never have to do anything. there would be many people who would do everything for me just to be near me. i think everyone would do everything for me because people like to be near beautiful people and even beautiful people would like to be near the most beautiful person in the world. i do think there would be very many jealousies but my beauty would be so great that everyone would just feel in awe of it and want to be close to it no matter how it made them feel, because they would feel incredible, just being close and able to see all that beauty. people would feed me and offer me things to drink and they would be the best foods and the best drinks because everyone would want me to look my very best all the time and a healthy diet would make me look my very best. but there would be the most delicious foods in this diet because people would want me to be perfectly happy all the time and i would have many boyfriends and girlfriends and they would all share me all the time be- cause my beauty would be such a very strong light that it would glow with them wherever they would go and people would say, look at them glowing from all that beauty. and they would be friends with one another and so happily would they love each other too, but not as much, but love each other because they would be so very happy just being near me. and you know it would all be wonderfully warm and comfortable, being with me, because my beauty would be inner beauty too. ___________________________________________________________________________ Folds, Pleats, and Ribbons There are three people who know all of java. There are one hundred seventy people who know every unix command. Every perl command is known by approximately thirteen hundred people. Four people understand all of c++. Alan, what is the point of this. For there are many who understand english, but few who comprehend it. Once I went up a mountain looking for a hermit; I found a hermit looking for a mountain. Where is Yamaki, said the hermit. It was then I knew what the mountain knew, that the hermit knew the mountain. He knew the paths and the pools, maps and the meadows. For to understand that only an extreme frenzy drives the self from the other, in vibratory form. You are searching for a subject, said the hermit. I am searching for languages, which act, which do not speak. These languages have no subjects, said the hermit; that is their nature, just as it is in a subject to have a nature. Nor do I understand; it is of the manner of clothing which takes the form of the body, adding recompense of its own, folds, pleats, and ribbons. __________________________________________________________________________ they took away my ceiling from me oh so brutal they took it away before they took away the walls the ceiling would fall without the walls they took away the walls from me oh consternation everything i did was visible to you the sun was a big ball of gold the sun was an orange cracker in the sky the sky blew through me oh terrifying miracle stars and comets from one end to the other a single ray splits in the middle of the sky as i was saying, they took my floor away from me oh delirious hunger flap flap flap flap flap oh delirious hunger flap flap flap flap flap ________________________________________________________ Why I Can't Write Like I Used To It's difficult to write in a loft which is being torn up. The outer wall of the building has been buckling for years now - the building swells in a simulacrum of pregnancy. Three layers of brick built upon subsidence coupled with possible mortar decay, internal leaking as water/blood runs down the internal courses. Suppurating body of the building. Ectoderm and mesoderm asunder. So the three layers have to be removed entirely and a new wall put into place. The building would collapse without internal support; this is under con- struction. A heavy temporary wall is placed three feet in from the current one (which is about twenty-five feet long); the loft-side of the latter had to be cleared of cabinets, bookshelves, light fixtures, and so forth, since it will be torn out and replaced. The cabinets are now piled front to back at the foot of the bed; the books are piled everywhere; there is hardly space to move. Dust is everywhere - demolition dust - human mite dust - dead rodent dust - cockroach dust - and it's been necessary to use an inhaler to breathe at all. When I'm not taking antihistamines I'm breathing medical mist. So I can't concentrate hello who are you, you are who said hello, and writing becomes a moment of holding on to the margins of the building. Which is only temporary; I estimate seven weeks to the four then five then six offered by the construction company. It's love in the temporary ruins, just as more enduring violence occurs in another part of the world perhaps forty-four hundred miles away. Well, this is the turn in the narrative as many of us online tend towards thoughts of war and peace lying heavy over everything. As if there were a permanence to the war, as if there were an obligation. And this building with its triple course of bricks is now surrounded by a scaffolding to protect those troops on the ground waiting for the bus to come by. You can see it from a distance in the form of a grey rectangle, the application of cement in an orgy of final fortification. _________________________________________________________________________ dirty is means di#(*&#####*$(y if you can see the presence of the noise and my filthy panties you'd understand the beginning and end of the universe. I promise on the fecundity and rim of my enormous hole. JJAN _________________________________________________________________________ Diacritical To: Cc: Bcc: Lcc: Fcc: Newsgrps: /|\ /\ *** Attchmnt: Subject: ooo: Errors-T: Abuse-To: X-Mailer: Id: $ / ^ [ ] [o] ]o[ DATA: RCPT To: MAIL From: ### ! ------------------------ _________________________ QUIT: VRFY: VERB: HELP: From: Date: MIME-Version: Content-Type: Message-ID: booboo ==== ~ :: ''' '|' To: Cc: Bcc: Lcc: Fcc: Newsgrps: /|\ /\ *** Attchmnt: Subject: ooo: Errors-T: Abuse-To: X-Mailer: Id: $ / ^ [ ] [o] ]o[ DATA: RCPT To: MAIL From: ### ! ------------------------ _________________________ QUIT: VRFY: VERB: HELP: From: Date: MIME-Version: Content-Type: Message-ID: booboo ==== ~ :: ''' '|' To: Cc: Bcc: Lcc: Fcc: Newsgrps: /|\ /\ *** Attchmnt: Subject: ooo: Errors-T: Abuse-To: X-Mailer: Id: $ / ^ [ ] [o] ]o[ DATA: RCPT To: MAIL From: ### ! ------------------------ _________________________ QUIT: VRFY: VERB: HELP: From: Date: MIME-Version: Content-Type: Message-ID: booboo ==== ~ :: ''' '|' To: Cc: Bcc: Lcc: Fcc: Newsgrps: /|\ /\ *** Attchmnt: Subject: ooo: Errors-T: Abuse-To: X-Mailer: Id: $ / ^ [ ] [o] ]o[ DATA: RCPT To: MAIL From: ### ! ------------------------ _________________________ QUIT: VRFY: VERB: HELP: From: Date: MIME-Version: Content-Type: Message-ID: booboo ==== ~ :: ''' '|' _________________________________________________________________________ it's a dirty hole that the loft has become in my mind, teetering between a perfect refusal of beauty in escapades to the elements and the detritus of the decay of teeth and gums rubbed against those elements of the curb heading towards illness. what a home is, space that is thoughtless and of perfect transparency, the bone of the body. what is here, the exposure of the tumor which, for one last fling, that decay within the brick itself, is a declaration of buildings falling down, a category or synopsis. in cyberspace one might have erasure, sudden disappearance of a database: there you go, there's nothing to hold onto. yesterday, they said, don't bother with the door and hallway, the door won't be there. i said, well, people might hide in the hallway. they said, don't worry, there won't be a hallway either. __________________________________________________________________________ 2 Julu, returned from Asia there were low clouds on the horizon horizon they were monsoon, they were tsunami the truth of the clouds: my dying in your arms, Jennifer Jennifer - Jennifer whose arms are hurricane, whose legs are Santa Annas it was a stretch for me, these clouds they were lowering, I didn't have a choice it is getting closer to the truth this is moving more in your direction, with every stroke of the keys, there are strokes as gifts for you, there are strokes in this world of no ceilings, there are strokes in this world of no walls: this is a saying of Julu, returned from Asia; this is a saying of Jennifer-Julu. Yeah...:Mark::Head Your wet Neck is in my nice Leg Your love seeps into my Leg - something stretched open to the limit, something held in abeyance:my thing is my dirty hole of walled up bricks:Julu:knee: Your giving tongue is in my thrusting tongue and knee: there are no more, nothing left of me, nothing Devour giving tongue julu-of-the triple-course-red-brick-tied-up: something stretched open to the limit, something held in abeyance! __________________________________________________________________________ my home has a roof, no ceiling; yours, a ceiling, no roof - upside-down, legs in the air - apology it is a weakness of mine to write couplets, not facticity: oh there may be a distinction or there may not be: all these terms already shorn of their long hair, placed within the discomfiture of a porcelain mortar: but this is a land of extreme enervations, and there is an enormous doorknob, very subtle sounds of clicking deep within the brass lock, that must be placed hard about it: a cylinder: i am waiting for survival ______________________________________________________________________ 1. Beginning with a world, W, which is a site of a world, that is, a moment of inscription, ripples expanding - or a sign or bracket or eidetic re- duction of a world, or a signifier foreclosing upon itself as an experi- ment - then I continue within that inscription, which is this and any other - therefore a wobbling. And it is clear that W has a certain style, that is to say, there is a style to the world, a tenor, which is of the order of a meander, or following. So I would begin with that tenor, that certain style, noting in passing, all that I can say, which is that the world has this tenor, the site of this writing, of my positioning, which is expansive, rippling across or through an implicate order, which will do, as if in the manner of holography. Such is the potential well of W, that this writing resists, impedes, re- mains, at least for the length of time to establish itself within a mes- sage base. Such impediments present the appearance of entities undergoing change, one might say continuous change - change among bases. It is here that in my work something similar to category theory appears - bases and transformations among them, all cohering to a certain style - and I can speak of a kernel or unity possessing certain properties within and with- out these bases: look, as Weyl said, to the automorphisms for the struc- ture. But I would also say, look towards the ontological claims and in- variants of the message bases for the tenor. And it would immediately be- come clear that many of the bases are mutually incommensurate; such, for example, might be the imaginary in relation to the symbolic, the world of dreams appearing mediate, as a router searching backwards and forwards for the proper addressing. I may create graphs representing states of entities, with each node char- acterizing a different state. Or there may be tree diagrams, representing causal or possible linkages from a given state. Finally, it is possible to relate an _internal_ graph of an entity - its imminent transformations - to an _external_ graph representing the relationships between these trans- formations. And there is in either case a hierarchy of such graphs which represent a turn of consciousness towards the entity, which is also the construct of the entity. These layers relate to Bateson's learning levels, for example. Think of the external graphs as mappings from the states of one graph onto the nodes of another, and think of the state representation graphs as com- plete and internal. Think of the former including noise, 'foreign' graph elements, redundancies. Think of the latter as integral to the definition of an entity. There is resonance with the position of the letter and the word, as well as the rooting of the letter and the word within consciousness; I would not have entities without the designation of contours and contrast algo- rithms. The rooting of the letter is inextricably phonemic, related to drives, chora, rupture, and the landscape of the imaginary; it is as well the pressure of the finger on the eyes, delirious figuration, stutterings, ectoplasms, emanants, emanations. Again it is as well the expulsion of the breath from the body, the inhalation and exhalation of the world and its admixing. The byproduct of the letter is the word; syntax is an energy. There are both couplings and linkages at work, the former referencing a certain form of contiguity in which the transformation of one element need not affect the others - and the latter, in which there are chain processes across all elements whenever one is affected. It is the couplings of letters that result in the differential order of the symbolic, and it is the linkage with the real that tends towards sym- pathetic magic and fetishization. Both couplings and linkages may be rep- resented within external or internal graphs; the latter obey a rule of conservation of tokens (political economy) and the former, a rule of jos- tling and decoupling (Bataille's economy of surplus accumulation). I think of _primary processes_ of couplings and linkages integral to graphs; these graphs represent _exchange-strata_ and operate within and without threshold logics. I think of _secondary processes_ of inscription and perceptual processing, contour enhancement, the transformation of the letter to the word, the word to its full semantic and syntactical embodi- ment. Couplings and linkages are subject to _fissuring,_ the division of the same by the same, the gnawing of substance at construct. Graphs are sub- ject to _inscription,_ the division of one by the other, or division of one by the one, the construct of entity from substance. In this manner, language and phenomena, are intertwined; phenomena with- out language are intertwined; language without phenomena are cursor-bound dream-screens of the imaginary real. 2. W is a seizure; the world is coma. To think the world is dis-ease; there is no uncoupling. By the most tenuous of threads... Holography, the grain, constructs defuge, the paste broken by inscription. Dis-ease is that of the abject, the world internal and external, broken graphs; one can never rid oneself. Everyone exercises; nothingness as in the rest is linked. A link shudders when an element shudders. A coupling never says goodbye; elements remain in ignorance. Consider this an opening to the text stum- bling across vocality. To write of the world which is always already pros- thetic, such writing +ill+ at ease. __________________________________________________________________________ Sakura Matsuri says the sign outside the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens where Simon and I wander into the Japanese portion, only to face mono no aware, this sad- ness and pathos of wabi and sabi at the torii from which hangs a single bird at the edge defining the elder meaning; I had not realized in the distance the presence of a shrine itself, abandoned, emptied internally - none of the resident kami, but then in the midst of Crown Heights' edge - what would I expect, none of the shintai; by now you recognize I do not know any of this but the red-orange colour of the torii burns into the trailings of Grand Army Plaza coupled with grey-green bronze patina rococo shields, horses, and soldiers above the arch; I'm here in the tea house, there are turtles and carp, the festival is even ever after the double- blossoming cherry have lost their bloom this early-warning-warming year. O, my heart! Filled with space! Matsu-cha is a harbor, I am a ship upon the sea! I am a liara! I don't know aesthetica! I don't know Japonica! I don't know the ways of my hearta! I pretend to intelligenca! I pretend to Nikukoka! I haven't a clueka! I can't thinka! I've been found outa! I've been found outaka! O, my hearta! Filled with spaceka! Matsucha is a harborka, I am a ship upon the seaka! _________________________________________________________________________ stained a stain on my conscience, stain in your world - all simmering - your mouth-spit in my nose and eyes - your hot piss-hole-piss in my mouth and ears - your wet asshole-shit on my hard nipples; warm mouth-vomit - i want to bare it down on cold fine legs - your womb-menses clotted on my cock and balls - sweet eye-tears on my knees, sour armpit-sweat on my hands - all boiling to glimmered froth, my darling skin-stained-body dried and drooled beneath them - i'll disappear within your signature - when they think "alan," they'll think your "debris" - give me my mouth and i'll swallow your gifts - virtual julu deep inside me - cut me open, there you are - cut you open, there i am - _________________________________________________________________________