- Blood Containing the blood, detaining it. I'm a bloody mess. Clean up that bloo- dy mess. @create container named Blood "One harbors the flesh against it- self; the skin chafes, reddens, blisters, scabs, in order that liquidity find its way towards the surface and give vent to the externalizations of form. Form, thrust out. Form, thrust away." (Sondheim, Disorders of the Real.) Opening a can, I cut myself deeply at the base of the index finger to- night; the blood flowed forever, through an opening about 3 cm long. I bandaged it tight and the bleeding stopped; after a couple of hours, I removed it and the blood started again, this time black. It's bandaged again; it should coagulate by morning, or tomorrow evening at the latest. @create $thing named Blood Cutters deliberately cut themselves, creating their own histories upon their bodies. "Winnicott presented the case of a woman who was fascinated by autocannibalism, as exemplified by her fanta- sies about lost Arctic explorers who ate parts of their bodies in order to survive. The woman mutilated herself by eating pieces of her fingers. Win- nicott considered her act to be one of 'experiencing.' He noted that each person who reaches 'the stage of being a unit with a limiting membrane and an outside and an inside...[has] an inner reality...an inner world which can be rich and poor or can be at peace or in a state of war.'" (Favazza, Bodies Under Siege.) Margaret cut herself opening a can (similar story) in the bathroom; she screamed for help, and I ran in and caught her falling on me, almost a- gainst the granite floor. She had passed out. @describe Blood as passing out Quoting Dr. Carter, William Acton states "Thus, blood is directed to the mammae by the maternal emotions, to the testes by the sexual, and to the salivary glands by the influence of appetizing odors" (see Barreca, ed., Desire and Imagination). When I was in Providence, Mike cut the tip of his little finger off and sutured it back on; he was a maverick medic. Earlier, he had mangled his hand in a press and operated on it, replacing bone and tendon with art- ifical materials he had developed. By 1974, he was cyborg more than most, with artificial ribs, kneecaps, fingers, tendons, and surgical procedures elsewhere. He was also good at stopping knives. @describe Blood as stop- ping knives Mike was an early hacker; he had pieces of satellites in his apartment that he had brought back from the high seas... "He is amidst six girls: one pricks him with a needle, the second uses pincers on him, the third burns him, the fourth bites him, the fifth scratches him, the sixth flagellates him. All that everywhere upon his body, indiscriminately. He discharges in the thick of this activity." (de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom.) When I was in Dallas, Denise savagely painted her menses across me, slid- ing me beneath her, and I dreamed an open plain a field a meadow a woods a forest a stream I bathed in her. @put Blood in Blood "Not a delusion. A rift. Things that have begun terribly badly end in bad blood. When a woman feels doubt, she should go and live apart. She shouldn't walk on the earth, touching the man who is her mother. She shouldn't soil the universe because she is unclean. I was pure. I had never felt doubt. The earth qua- ked. Blood ran out the body." "If the world is bleeding anything can hap- pen!" (Cixous, Angst.) Blood runs deep, runs rivers between the letters on the screen. Trajec- tories across the monitor create chaotic domains as runnels carry heavy flow to edges, down across contrast/brightness controls. @drop Blood Blood washes itself through itself, always interpenetrating, emblematic now of dis-ease. So many males fear the period, its levels of arousal, flooding, everything out of control. "Nunberg's patient got sick while witnessing a circumcision: 'When I saw this gaping wound around the head of the penis, I thought that the bleeding vagina must look like that.'" (Mary Jane Lupton, Menstruation and Psychoanalysis.) AIDS resonates; blood returns to the fetishistic enigma, a totality that nonetheless _trickles,_ interlocks. It cannot be contained, circumscri- bed; it extrudes some into safe cybersexual space, a space which refuses the _taint_ of blood and blood's exchanges. The exchange of blood by all that is Holy! @recycle Blood "At last, after all we had been through, I felt myself sinking into true submission to her, my ego bleeding out through newly opened pores in my skin, all my hope and despair became one ball of smoldering ash on the brink of burning its way out through my chest." (Clark, "A Civil Debate," in Porn Free #7.) Between the fetish and the text, lies cyberspace; Between the taint and the lure, lies cyberspace; Between female and female, female and male, male and male; Between the one and the other, between the self and the one: :From the direction of the blood, from the blood's seduction; :From the direction of the blood, from the flow of all that's. ________________________________________________________________________ - Depths Miscellaneous comments: What is the relationship between email and ordinary mail? I am a poor letter-writer in real life; what disappears, seems not only gone forever but an artificial construct, complete with its own rituals. Email on the other hand is instantaneous, of the measure of speech; I tend to great perhaps 40 email posts a day minimum, many back-channel and many to the listservs themselves. Left-handed, I cannot handwrite, or rather I cannot _read_ my scrawls. Typing is also a chore; I use the printer perhaps once every ten days, having reduced everything to bytes at this point. So there is no real precedent for my use of email, no precedent for the posts which I will often spell-check and justify, even though they are informal, ephemeral, off the cuff. I would be curious how many participants in the lists use or have used ordinary mail extensively. --- I am aware of the _depths_ of the Internet now, even when skitting across the World Wide Web. I understand TCP/IP to an extent, sense the routes of the packets, the nerves of communication. There are three reactions - even at this point, constant amazement; a fear of failure, given the in- ordinate complexity of it all; and a sensing that, at least on the Net, images and sounds are _constructed,_ and illusion, relying on compression techniques, protocols, transformation algorithms and the like, before the appearance of appearance. Listen: "The basic idea behind a transparent bridge is that it acts as a station on two or more LANs, listens promiscuously to each data packet, stores the packet for forwarding, and forwards it onto every other LAN to which it is connected when the LAN arbitration protocol for the destina- tion LAN indicates the medium is available." "Routers are not supposed to advertise too often; the default value is once every 7-10 minutes. Hosts or others soliciting router information should not do so too often and, if they fail to obtain a response after three attempts, should cease solicit- ing for a period of time." "Time to Live (TTL): This 8-bit field was orig- inally intended to be used to specify how long, in seconds, an internet packet could persist in the internet before being discarded by a router or a host." "The IP header contains several pieces of information to aid fragmentation and reassembly: a 13-bit Fragment Offset field; two flags, Don't Fragment (DF) and More Fragments (MF); and an Identification field." (Various writers in Lynch and Rose, Internet System Handbook.) The body appears to breath, its organs duplicated everywhere, laminated across the constructed world. --- What is the _least expensive_ full-text connection that can be established for the Net? I've connected my Psion3A palmtop, without terminal emulation but with some success - no luck yet with my HP95xl palmtop, even though it is supposed to be possible. Telnet tends to hang in a number of commu- nications programs. But what would be necessary: A subnotebook size keyboard; liquid crystal display 80 characters wide by at least 12 high; built-in modem and com program; 250k RAM for storage; no hard disk (programs would be in ROM); and an input/output port. There should also be a simple local editor, like Edit in DOS. We need these back-pocket devices which could be con- nected anywhere with limited battery power (like the palmtops, there should be the possibility of using disposal batteries) - even with, say, a pocket calculator, these could be sold for $100. So WHERE ARE THEY? Advertisements welcome... --- (These are just some random thoughts about the Net I thought worthwhile to assemble, place together in a text.) _________________________________________________________________________ - Althusser in Reading Capital "However paradoxical it may seem, I venture to suggest that our age threa- tens one day to appear in the the history of human culture as marked by the most dramatic and difficult trial of all, the discovery of and train- ing in the meaning of the 'simplest' acts of existence: seeing, listening, speaking, reading - the acts which relate men to their works, and to those works thrown in their faces, their 'absences of works.'" "The same connexion that defines the visible also defines the invisible as its shadowy obverse. It is the field of the problematic that defines and structures the invisible as the defined excluded, _excluded_ from the field of visibility and _defined_ as excluded by the existence and peculi- ar structure of the problematic; as what forbids and represses the reflec- tion of the field on its object, i.e. the necessary and immanent inter-re- lationship of the problematic and one of its objects." Marx, beginning of the Manifesto of the Communist Party "A specter haunts Europe - the specter of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance in order to lay this specter: pope and tsar, Metternich and Guizot; French radicals and German police." Derrida in Specters of Marx "The 'mystical character' of the commodity is inscribed before being in- scribed, traced before being written out letter for letter on the forehead or the screen of the commodity. Everything begins before it begins. Marx wants to know and make known _where, at what precise moment,_ at what _in- stant_ the ghost comes on stage, and this is a manner of exorcism, a way of keeping it at bay: before this limit, it was not there, it was power- less." Quota Review Board, PMC2 MOO Should old objects that are abandoned be @recycled? What about Wizard's objects? Should players be contacted? Should therefore their email add- resses be made available? If a player is recycled, the number is perman- ently set aside. __________________________________________________________________________ - Logic, Nyaya-Manjari (Jayanta Bhatta), from Ahnika I (first section): 5. Let the discerning wise people take their bath in this great flowing river of Sarasvati which ardenlty flows into the stream of Aksapada's logic. 6. We make an appeal to the great scholars to the effect that they may look kindly upon this work by a mere peep at it though their mind is fatigued, being in constant touch with the great works displaying wonder- ful skill in depicting matters of wide interst and arousing strong emo- tion. 7. I have culled this essential herb from the wild garden of herbs of logic and have churned this lump of butter from the milk of Logic of Aksapada. 8. We claim no originality of thinking to discover new truth but have fascinating style to express the old ones in an attractive form. Let the critics examine it for themselves. 9. The very flowers by which garlands have been repeatedly prepared arouse curiosity even in the mind of those wearers of garlands when they consti- tute a new garland, being arranged in a new order. 10. The good men appreciate even a work of little worth presented to them since they are unaware of turning down the request of a supplicant. 11. Let the great savants of learning who are about to enjoy sportive walk in the garden of words adoen their ears with this (Nyayamanjari) new blossom of logic. 12. The tree of logic, planted by the great sage - Aksapada, has grown in its bulk and is bent under the burden of its fruits of thick juice tasting like nectar. 13. I cannot climb up this tree because my powers are limited and hence it is further beyond my powers to test its merits in toto. 14. I take pains only to discuss some selected topics of this great work. ... (trans J. V. Bhattacharyya) _________________________________________________________________________ 3000 In the year 3000 my birthday falls on monday but I will not 3000 be around to celebrate it my writings will be ash this list 3000 our names smashed forgotten black dust everywhere it's gone 3000 untrue we're inside others just from the sheer mixing of the 3000 world september there were snows earlier than usual november 3000 oddly warm no fingers no memory 3000 Jan Feb Mar S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S 1 2 3 4 1 1 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 26 27 28 29 30 31 23 24 25 26 27 28 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Apr May Jun S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 27 28 29 30 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 29 30 Jul Aug Sep S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 27 28 29 30 31 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 28 29 30 31 Oct Nov Dec S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S 1 2 3 4 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 26 27 28 29 30 31 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 28 29 30 31 30 1996 now I sit past uncomfortable wednesday of that year that will 1996 end and the weight of the present smashes my body my mind and 1996 the weight of the present kills the spirit in me and there is 1996 no future there is none there is no future annihilation to the 1996 limit more than any of you I can hold my death in my hands I 1996 hold death in my hands I breathe it 1996 Jan Feb Mar S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 1 2 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 28 29 30 31 25 26 27 28 29 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Apr May Jun S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 1 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 28 29 30 26 27 28 29 30 31 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Jul Aug Sep S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 28 29 30 31 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 29 30 Oct Nov Dec S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S S M Tu W Th F S 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 27 28 29 30 31 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 29 30 31 0000 that last tuesday screams last swallowed _______________________________________________________________________ - Ill On the MOO a brief discussion about implementing disease. In real life, my cat's fur is clumped on her back, not falling out, but it worries me. $30 for just an examination; if it's diabetes, I can't afford the shots. My tinnitus is acting up, constant ringing, a subject for discussion on a late-night talkshow; the guest said it can lead to suicide. The cut on my hand has healed, but I still worry infection. My depression's flaring up again; I think of leaving the lists, closing down, but hang on in any case. One of my plants is drooping, too many yellow leaves and the cacti lack vigor; they're leaning too far into the dim light from here here here here here here it is so beautiful and cleansed, just like the camps before the Allies came. I regret the image, but not enough regret. Towards what great beast are we remaking ourselves according to the image of sterility? There's no way to thrust the body _out_ and _in_ - What happens? I write Blood, like Lautreamont bleed to the marrow, and the text becomes an ins- ertion, infinitely malleable, already rubble - but always already purified just like the blood's purified until it comes into contact with the air. here here here there's no opposition, no connect, no coagulation; there's no other to cyberspace, no air anywhere. The sterility of the body gives it substance in media res, in noisy dominion. It's precisely the break- throughs, the breakdowns, that give meaning to life, just as the inherent possibility of face to face negation constructs meaning* of a sort which is only borrowed in cyberspace. here here here it's the voices chilling in the vacuum - no wonder there's always opposition to wizards, staff, sysadmin, moderators, anyone who might remind us that power occurs in every sphere. I'd rather not have tinnitus, have my perfect lovely body, but the real is the dark snare that cuts through the sliver of the neck, results in otherwise than being here, thus otherwise than metaphor. -------------------------------------| *see various sections of the early Internet Text on issues of negation related to alterity in cyberspace and material life. _________________________________________________________________________ - Noise Rave Commercialism, which was suspect just a year ago, is rampant on the Net at this point; Web pages carry the messages of other Web pages, search eng- ines have advertising banners, and even Netscape is buttoned all over the place. Java creates moving billboards, and it's as if the millennium of capital has arrived all over again, after the laissez-faire of a century ago. What I call the darknet's almost all but forgotten; no one talks much about email lists any more, Usenet's noisy, I get advertisements in my Inbox, people using majordomo and listserv are developing spam filters, etc. etc. blah blah blah. Moving through cyberspace becomes continuous upgrading; Real Audio won't run on my machine, nor on the machines of my friends, since it's been changed to version 2.0. Unlike television, which has always, thanks to the FCC, been backwards-compatible (radio as well), the Net simply aban- dons those who can't keep up. The noise is in the magazines; I'd go so far as to say, within the US, there's a mass psychosis underway, as if being offline meant you're some- how deficient, in education, worldliness, style, income, and geographic location. Wired's got incredible quantities of advertising, not least of which is for itself. Spacewaste is common among the hip magazines. All of which would be fine, radical, edgy, even corrective, were it not for the intimacy with money, unchecked, unquestioned, that all of this entails. The more "revolutionary" Web pages are usually those driven by graphics, overly designed; you need money to read them, money to look chic. There was a period in the NY artworld when gallerists (their name, not mine), dressed in severely radical black with Eurotrash papamama money, took over; art became style, and has never left that position. Of course the gallerists were just following the course of the world; those running around following them wouldn't know the World Bank from the Left Bank. Now there's a movement called transformalism afloat, riven by pre- tention and money, and I'm holding my breath wondering whether to go to Netscape 2.01b or not. Where's the psychosis? In the assumption that all of this is _cool,_ a word borrowed from the 50s hipsters referring to the effort of music and style, bricolage, making-do, but certainly not buying into anything. What's cool now (I hate that button on Netscape, not the sites, but the title) is what's affordable, fetishized - it's Veblen's conspicuous con- sumption all over again, the century becoming rather insistent on repeti- tion. There's also an assumption that the change at work is somehow critical, not only on the technological edge, but on other edges as well. But what is really happening beyond alt.sex.bondage is the sublimation of critique, surprising in an Internet arena which has always stressed individuality, up to and including _personal_ home pages. Home pages by the way have gluts of links; too often they also read like advertisements. _Everyone_ connects to Yahoo, another style. The creat- ivity of hypertext becomes a porousness allowing one to constantly fall, enticed by billboards on the way. The idea of a homepage becoming personal is difficult enough - it's only screen-available in the midst of other pages, it's on only until the battery dies or power's turned off, it's fully public, etc. - but the personal becomes even more impossible when it's in the midst of noise, noise, noise. What happens in the long run, of course, is that, beyond the darknet, the very idea of the personal changes, becomes absorbed in the public - we're back to the concept of the one-dimensional man, but this time around it's ungendered and lateral. Introjections of simulacra do strange things to human beings; the fallout's just begun, and there's no end in site. What is worrisome is not only the personality made from corporate flotsam and jetsam, but the widening gap of haves and havenots (which the Rand Cor- poration, in a report released today, has reaffirmed), resulting in infor- mation/capital rich individuals on one hand, and street-smart social hack- ers on the other. Both categories leave out the majority of the world's population, but no worry while we jack into our pentium 77 for the long flight home. Fires look great from the air. Noise rave screech to a halt. __________________________________________________________________________ - Water Just as the water-sprite, formed from the motion of atoms in the midst of others of her kind, senses the world at large, fluxing through her chosen medium of transparency - so do we, in our bid to comprehend the universe, look inside of ourselves, formed from the same atoms, quarks, transparenc- ies. What floods us floods the stars; neutrons rush through, cosmic rays occasionally spray bright spots against the retina in the dominion of the dark-adjusted eye. We inhale the vacuum, thrust forward by the presence of air; our words perform the actions of sounds at the depths of the sun. Just so, the contemplative life, which permits us to filter all sensation, leaving us with the debris of the abyss alone - here we meditate upon the virtues of interior and exterior opened to the whirlwind. The water-sprite understands her world and ours, of the same; she changes oh so brilliantly into manifold shapes and specters. Thus do we move, motivated beyond our- selves, through a thousand thoughts, a thousand thousand words taking us into the realm of beautiful, true understanding. We are all the same-atomic, our quantum fields interact in a fashion close to specular - each providing a mirror of the same to the same, the stage in which we begin to coalesce our ridden form. Thus the dawn forever turn- ing towards us, revealing new shapes in each and every horizon, and thus the water-sprite has taught us, on her way somewhen and where, beyond our loving comprehension. __________________________________________________________________________ - Voyeur On the Internet, there are devices for Net sex that permit the same space to be used simultaneously for action and otherwise conversation. On PMC, I participated in Net sex while engaging in a theoretical discussion of postmodernism, in someone's homespace. In other spaces, there are situa- tions where virtual individuals watch virtual sex. In real life, I have been watched only a few times in my life. My second wife and I lived in Copenhagen for a month; we'd make love in a window at night, and someone across the way looked and looked. Sometimes we made love in a high-speed car, driving naked; what about this? Bodies hurtling across the world here, there, everywhere. When Kathy Acker and I did our tape, we had a camerawoman; explicit sex, talk. But I've never done a pornographic film, sex show, public display. And it's not that I would object to this; it would be something to slide into, meanwhile explore on the Net, watch the explorations of others, tabulate them. But I'm a coward; I've seen, in fact, very little, almost nothing at all. Fantasy: In real life masturbating in front of you. Net: Burrowing through each other's bodies, send out the texts, working them into some- thing (Kim McGlynn and myself). Why is the _gaze_ so persistent, in its absence, in this space? I can't sleep at nights, imagining your legs, my legs, splayed open, an infinity of organs intersecting, anonymous eyes prying us apart. They dismember us, take our flesh back to their dominions, swallow us whole from the seed. In my dream I can imagine being a stain on your wall, viral crawl through organic alleys, slab of daylight leaving/lifting the room. I can see everything. In my dream I imagine myself inside-out, displayed, dissected across the table, coordinate x/y/z motion through time /t anything for the databanks, anything holding back death. If I can hold my breath I can hold your motion. In my dream I'm available, always available. I'm available. I don't have to think any more. I don't have to type any- more. I don't belong in cyberspace realspace. I don't belong because there's no more belonging. Nothing belongs if there's no belonging. Things stick, split like static electricity. My hair's blown off my body. I don't have to think because you do all my thinking for me. You're look- ing at me through the window; I can see you. I perform for your pleasure and you tell me what to do. I can't hear you but I know, I know, what will please you. My body is your text. I open my body so you'll read me. If you read me, I'll live forever. You can read anywhere across the nipples; there's a lot of space. You can read down the arms, down the legs; you can read the blood. You can read between the legs while the writing lasts. You can read the trail of the two of us interpenetrated, wrapped like wire around each other. There's no space among us. You required that. You said no space and we heard. We're splayed just for you. It's as if: We're opened on the outside, not the inside. It's as if: You give us names, you make us. Oh there's some truth to this. Oh, Oh! "Brahmadatta, a great-grandson of Cikitana, while drinking the soma juice said, 'Let this soma juice knock off my head if I say that Ayasya Angirasa sang hymns through any deity other than this (vital force combined with speech.)' Indeed it sang hymns through speech and the vital force alone." So you can put your arms up into me, pull me inside out. You can do this: @create $thing called stain. You can give it nothing. @describe as if that were all there is. Once I slept with two women together and when it came time to cum it was so complicated the room dissolved. No one, no one was watching. _________________________________________________________________________ - Loss What's fascinating about loss is that it is a reverse emission, an absorp- tion reminiscent of an object of fantasm, uncanny, always construct; the node in fact is a coagulation or bracketing, and the circumscription is after the fact. (Loss is fact's abjection; the hardness of the word sticks in the throat. What is constituted by the imaginary: loss.) The present fills with diffusion. The present becomes the ghost; life is always already memory. Loss generates the abyss; the object disappears in time, a radiating black hole. The resulting suture insists on the presence of scarification, a process, not a product. There are the stitches them- selves, the writing from which it is possible to recreate the scene of the crime. (I think of life as funneled, of the origination of the vacuum, now crow- ded with neutrinos and virtual particles. Life suppurates, bubbles, on the verge of collapse. The collapse doesn't generate a singularity; death is a fissuring out, confused bumbling at what appears from a distance to be a horizon. Closer, it's fractal, filled with blunt eddies, lukewarm or tepid waters.) I can't write about loss, without loss. This is its nature, this inabili- ty to ascertain, procure, even in the abstract. Like seduction, the limit dissolves simultaneously with the effort of the text. Unlike seduction, nothing at all remains. (Not even theory remains; theorizing life, as Bowlby does, chokes the breath, fills space in an attempt usually considered the fetishistic ward- ing-off of death. But this isn't death; it's what happens to content when the voice ceases to speak, the tongue dries - when there's too much heat, too much of the appearance of height.) There are all the absenting signifiers, annihilations, of loss in cyber- space, but what I am talking about here is the heart of loss, the object which spreads, cancerous, as it loses border, becomes a matter of lang- uage. This is a necessary form of continuous mourning. There is no return; my losses, gathered, gnaw from nowhere for years. As a result, I continue to regret almost everything in my life, but this everything remains name- less, talks me down, takes me down, with the force of lumbering flesh. Buried, there's no room for language's breath, nor nouns to speak of. (Nor images, returning to the theme of emergence/submergence. In loss, what is submerged is _drowned,_ flayed and ribboned, decaying banners of skin written in no language, twisted like kelp, nor images.) __________________________________________________________________________ bluntness, dulled texts in cyberspace muted, almost inaudible imagine the letters smaller, maybe, blurred i want to drink to take the edge off things i want to write to take the edge off things look, i'm murmuring to you. closer, you hear : everything it's as if something came into the light it's as if the sound of a tiny bell came into the light knowing where everything is tracing the sound of the wound in complex realspace texts muted in cyberspace mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm not a grating, you (rang from his cock wherever he was in the house) (rang from her clit whenever she was in the house) truth or not, couldn't get away from the writing swollen beast dumb split : split dumb _________________________________________________________________________ the way yr gaze holds me, on line off line, your power in the manipulation of _sudden_ text, command of language, as in: Clara succumbs to Alan's swollen embrace framed by yr punctuation, ornament, ravaged lines you wryte the hole you wryte the hole _thing_ ____________________________________________________________________ - Mask I have never been able to comfortably take a pseudonym on a MOO; avatars don't work for me in ThePalace or WorldChat. I stay buried in Alan, a name I hate, from the Welsh, dulled like a knife that's cut through too many other countries. I can't wear masks on Halloween as well; there has to be the sign of the flesh present, as if I was re-marked for failure, for my self, letting go leading straight to perversion, the body dissolving in the vat of acid, gaze of the Other. I'd fall apart; I don't take drugs. When I took amphetamine that once, I almost slammed into traffic and it wouldn't have made a difference. The mask would make a difference; I'm led to believe it would be the death of me. Ridden with guilt always, I'd fear the mask bonding itself permanently to me; I'd wake up you, I'd be you, I'd lose everything, everything. I tell you all my secrets in cyberspace and real life; there's no facade. If I'm called on facade, I collapse. There's no collapse; I keep myself bound. You can dominate me. I keep myself an open book; there's too much information, information-glut. At parties, I retire to the corner. I can't piss in a men's room urinal if anyone else is there. Your look destroys me. I reign in tight; I'm bound to break. I break these sentences in two; they collapse on the semi-colon. Their parts are given to me; I swallow them. I've told you about swallow- ing; I can't swallow without a mask. I took mescaline twice, saw things; I wouldn't take it again. If I let myself go, I'd fuck everyone; like Janis Joplin, you'd find me on your floor. I'd be filled with needles; they'd mark my name, ever, never. There must have been a goblin when I was a child; it held me in its ten- tacles, promised me a life of burning coals. It added its mask to the others; you can still see its outlines on my face. Father, I can't let this go on any farther. Father, at night I dream; I dream of the prac- tices of the Other. The Other looms large, emerges its swollen head; it tries to take my name away. I scream; I hold on tight, name, name. Flesh falls from caverns in my body. I hollow out and become a space; people move through me. I awake and look for the name to recite; any name will do. I call on Clara, Tiffany, female names, anything but Alan; they're not masquerade. I have no name for them; they're burned into me. Goblins, perhaps her name was Theresa; I don't remember male. My life: I try, remember male. My life: I use Alan, seethe within. On the MOOs, I'm Alan; on the talkers, Alan. On IRC, I'm Alan; and even here, Alan, in this space, Alan. There's no doubt as to the depth of the text; burned. Masquerade: I strip you, we fuck like hell; I jump in your costume. We're both Honey; we flow. __________________________________________________________________________ - xviii emblemme This ys the Space of Memory From whych eache Room is Opening Uponne another; thus Sophistry Doth doome the State of Ripening Those forced madly Hyther, lightening Theyr Burthen of Artystry, tempering Theyr Reason: Thus Avatars, murmuring Names of Others, Castigate those Borne of Galls of Foreyn Mothers. And soe Allegyance spake, in full Repose, Agaynst the Foe; thus, angered Fathers At last, upon the Bairn of Dusk arose: Foresaken are Those beneath what Dysmal Sygn Transpose theyr Selves, and steal what is Myne. _____________________________________________________________________ - Disappearance of the Avatars ______________________________________________________________________ Bertolt Brecht, Die Hauspostille, Manual of Piety, trans. Eric Bentley, Das Schiff, The Ship, section 6: Fremde Fischer sagten aus: sie sahen Etwas nahen, das verschwamm beim Nahen. Eine Insel? Ein verkommnes Floss? Etwas fuhr, schimmernd von Moevenkoten Voll von Alge, Wasser, Mond und Totem Stumm und dick auf den erbleichten Himmel los. Fishermen from far declared they saw Something coming which dissolved while coming. Was it an island? A decrepit raft? Something was moving, bright with seagull dung, Full of algae, water, moon, dead objects, Silent and broad toward the washed-out sky. ------------------------------------------------------- Robert Creeley, For Love, p. 37: I KNOW A MAN As I sd to my friend, because I am always talking,--John, I sd, which was not his name, the darkness sur- rounds us, what can we do against it, or else, shall we & why not, buy a goddamn big car, drive, he sd, for christ's sake, look out where yr going. _________________________________ Where are we going; what will we do when we get there? Will we ever get where we are going; will the going be gotten? Will it disappear like the rainbow's foundation? Will it pass through us; will it be a mirage? In the morning on waking, these texts are forsaken, Drawn dreaming among the poets, whose footsteps are hardened by sea. I take up names and drop them in the registry of stars for everyone. I have no proof of reading; the letters slide among us. Tell me my name. _______________________ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Part III, stanzas 9-11: Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) How fast she nears and nears! Are those her sails that glance in the Sun, Like restless gossameres? Are those her ribs through which the Sun Did peer, as through a grate? And is that Woman all her crew? Is that a Death? and are there two? Is Death that woman's mate? Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was as white as leprosy, The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold. _________ The Tibetan Book of the Dead, translation Fremantle and Chogyam Trungpa, pp. 119-20 Shambhala pocket edition: "Oh child of noble family, those realms too do not exist anywhere else, but lie in the four directions of your heart with the center as fifth, and now they emerge from within your heart and appear before you. Those images too do not come from anywhere else, but are the primordial spon- taneous play of your mind, so recognize them in this way. O child of noble family, these images are neither large nor small, but perfectly proportioned. They each have their own adornments, their costume, their color, their posture, their throne, and their symbol. They are spread out in five couples; each of the five is encircled by a halo of the five colored lights. The whole mandala, the male and female deities of the familieis, will appear completely, all at once, Recognize them, for they are your yidams." -- _Your name is an error-message; tell me your name._ _________________________________________________________________________ - Murdered by TV Radio! I mean this literally; I feel the onset of illness, simulacra piled on, one atop another, lies so deep that the foundations themselves are sha- ken. Surely the producers know this. My skin is removed; I'm musculature, poor at that. It's not the programs, it's the in-between, news stations announcing "exclusives," the radio barking about this or that from the "weather center," back to television's "traffic central," advertising choked on the vomit of nuclear families, perfections, voices screaming as the treble's turned up. All these hero cops. A cop gets killed, he's a hero. A three-year-old kid calls someone, mom's lying on the floor, she's a hero. Someone doesn't smoke pot, he's a hero. The world's populated by heros and evil killers. Scum's everywhere. Everyone arrested has half-opened eyes or a jacket over his head. Women are always crying on television, the kids, the kids, the kids. McDonalds helps everyone. Someone is propping Dole up; no one wants to get on him. People are anxious. Someone / no one. Culture turns the planet into garbage; in fact, this apparent recycling, which tends more and more to non-biodegrading _stuff,_ is the very armature of civilization. All societies across the galaxy are similar, a few creatures in full ecological bloom subverting the energy of their environments, appropriating and circumscribing dominion - this is called both territory and writing. A trashed planet is simply the sim- ultaneous manifestation of the sign and its exhaustion. Signs are weeds; "real" weeds refuse the sign, are disposable. Worlds are weeds. Cyberspace presents the imaginary of infinite territory, signs, cultures, spaces, depths, storage, bandwidth; New World genocide is just around the corner. If as I would have it, the flood is the hardening and construct of new capital, new consumption - if the flood is, in fact, creating the new subject subtended to the maw of the idiotic-corporate (idiotic in the sense of Rosset, blunt, unresponsive, in-itself, _there,_ and not in the sense of _idiocy_), then we will witness a new form of anomie _within,_ in the midst of horrendous poverty and ecological catastrophe _without._ Which returns us once again to the phenomenology of the _cool,_ as applied by Netscape and just about anyone else on the Web. For what's _cool_ is what's clever, what applies a sense of neatness, graphics, reorientation, summarization, sensory seduction, the pastiche of historicism, the layered or morphed landscape, the promise of the digital-eternal - what's _cool_ is _what's got to_ the editors of the cool list in overdrive. In 2050 c.e.. at least 100,000 species have full genomic representation on the Net; at least 85,000 of these are extinct. Reconstruction is feed for- ward through artificial life/expert system interfacings; creatures walk among us once again. Bang! They're dead! Bang! They're back again! Bang! They're dead! Bang! They're back again! Recycling keeps trash to a mini- mum; in fact, I've never seen trash at all. __________________________________________________________________________ - Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. Knox: 59. By being taken into possession, the thing acquires the predicate 'mine' and my will is related to it positively. Within this identity, the thing is equally established as something negative, and my will in this situation is a particular will, i.e. need, inclination, and so forth. Yet my need, as the particular aspect of a single will, is the positive ele- ment which finds satisfaction, and the thing, as something negative in itself, exists only for my need and is at its service. - The use of the thing is my need being externally realized through the change, destruc- tion, and consumption of the thing. The thing thereby stands revealed as naturally self-less and so fulfills its destiny. [...] 60. To use a thing by grasping it directly is in itself to take possession of a _single_ thing here and now. But if my use of it is grounded on a persistent need, and if I make repeated use of a product which continually renews itself, restricting my use if necessary to safeguard that renewal, then these and other circumstances transform the direct single grasp of the thing into a mark, intended to signify that I am taking it into my po- ssession in a universal way, and thereby taking possession of the elemen- tal or organic basis of such products, or of anything else that conditions them. 61. Since the substance of the thing which is my property is, if we take the thing by itself, its externality, i.e. its non-substantiality - in contrast with me it is not an end in itself - and since in my use or emp- loyment of it this externality is realized, it follows that my full use or employment of a thing is the thing in its entirety, so that if I have the full use of the thing I am its owner. Over and above the entirety of its use, there is nothing left of the thing which could be the property of another. 62. My merely partial or temporary use of a thing, like the partial or temporary possession of it (a possession with itself is simply the partial or temporary possibility of using it) is therefore to be distinguished from ownership of the thing itself. If the whole and entire use of a thing were mine, while the abstract ownership was supposed to be someone else's, then the thing as mine would be penetrated through and through by my will, and at the same time there would remain in the thing something impenetra- ble by me, namely the will, the empty will, of another. As a positive will, I would be at one and the same time objective and now objective to myself in the thing - an absolute contradiction. Ownership therefore is in essence free and complete. ------------------------------------| Written before the advent of information, simulacra, theory of equivalen- ces, Hegel's notion of the thing re-marks it as simultaneously mark and obdurate, related to Kristeva's Thing (Black Sun); it is slave, depres- sive, unique, consumed by use, existing within the phenomenological hor- izon of complete annihilation. It is the thing of mechanism, thing of basic survival: what is necessary in terms of food, clothing, shelter, drink, community perhaps. Possession however also re-marks fetishization, as any attempt to elim- inate objects through a MOO Quota Review Board illustrates. @recycle remains tied to the Owner/creator of bits on a foreign hard drive not hers; there is a continuous question, in addition, concerning the labor of software development in cyberspace. Beyond the labor, however, fetishization implies the seduction of total control, the libidinal use of bodies by others; this, too, plays a role in the Hegelian concept. I would go so far as to say that cyberspace exists in a dialectic between the Hegelian/Kristevan Thing, and the problematic of information. (Note that the Kristevan Thing relates to depression, and does not characterize her view of physical reality. But its hardness, tumor-like quality, is relevant to the Hegelian generalization.) There is much to be considered here, not only in terms of the cyberspatial real, but also the real cyberspatial. Where does possession lie? (And in addi- tion, in addiction, one may consider the second meaning of possession, _to be possessed, in relation to the fetish, to insertion into cyberspace, to the convolution of projection/introjection among the subject and his com- puter.) Beginning with Hegel, one begins with the negativity inherent in ordinary existence as it pertains to our every-day life; one moves from there to the world of semiosis, from there out, towards those shoals where there are no moorings, temporary and imminent tetherings at best. __________________________________________________________________________ - The Parable of the Little One Hurtling through space on a wayward planet, we were born, not in the genesis of primordial oceans, or at least not through a line of direct ascent; instead, it is clear that we were seeded here by a group from another, ulterior universe, one disembodied from the original universal expansion, one that has learned its way through barriers that to us seem insurmountable. We are the first species cognizant of this truth, that we are drawn towards a destiny on a path that veers from side to side, through the thicket of mutilations. We are your sourcelessness. We have read fictions of information encoded in our DNA; that is not the real, which lies elsewhere, in the very conditions of our atmosphere, our local universal constants. But it is our role as witness that is crucial, what we bring to you, the existential burden that we shoulder. Tertullian knew of this; Job gave it a name: Its name was Siva. We state as well that this is hardly the concern of wastefulness; what is waste compared to thought, to the singularity of stasis a bit of infor- mation can supply? Our Occam was wrong; conservation, in fact, is just momentary restriction or barrier against the baroque forces that inundate us from every direction. The question is, that which haunts our dreams, our waking hours, and it is not so much a question, but a _condition:_ that we are to report _back,_ that we carry this with us, without knowledge of contract or terms - To whom should we speak? To what, in fact? Under what circumstances? The knowledge we carry is that of universal processes; perhaps, in our ignor- ance, we have discovered something even unknown to you? In the Rigveda, there is talk of an unknown god, but we are not concerned here with deity, only with protocol, etiquette: What is the nature of our address? And where is _back,_ external to our local neighborhood of space and time? What inversion, reversal, must we incur, in order to say what? Or are we, in fact, in a state of continuous emission, reports streaming through processes expanded in dimension, according to which our universal manifold is nothing more than a slice, an embossed plate, or cut of stone across what we call history? Our very foundation is without foundation. At one point, this was called death. Now even death is annihilated as you also begin the short process of dissolution and decay; so we would have it. __________________________________________________________________________ - mv sondheim clara Bound and gagged, the body held into place, fingers trembling above the keyboard, stupid caresses, over and over again; I can't for a moment leave the machine that spits errors back into my breasts, clogs my throat with bounces - it's worse than tending the fields that the Argonauts came out of, spearshafts slicing the organs of speech as they emerged. Humans ended up mewling to be sure. Dumb created responsibility, mute gestures, hyster- ia, by hands once holding urns, shields, amphora, now reduced to counting out routing tables. Arm muscles burst; nipples emerge, milk flows. The body is a river; it doesn't take much to figure that out. For two years I memorized Unix, learned "split" does just that to a file just as "last sondheim" does just that to me. Unix commands are ejacula- tions; someone makes a program, slams it into place, some bin, 5bin maybe, and we're off and running. Someone's got a dog and I memorize biff for the mail hello an error. Someone spews a quiz in my direction. Tend lists and you swallow the _stuff_ of the Net wholesale. Packets ooze from my tits (see "muscles" above); there's seepage, even among the parti- cles. It could happen to any of us. I dream pixels: a woman. They separ- ate, I fall through. Cartoon: land on my ass. Life: open it up. Packets flow. You might ask: pray for me. I'm troubled in need of salvation. I read identity-identification. It doesn't exist until it's got address, proto- col, recognition. I knew that when I started. Now I sit here, Medea, pac- kets flood from my tits (see "ooze" above); they clatter. The world's a plate for a' that. I remember your name. On the table, routing. My back is a bridge in an airless sky. I'm bound so tight wires up I'm inhuman. I pull tighter them. I stole the lines they're made of. Blood forms the shape of freedom in my face. I fuck Unix. Despair drags me back to the indigo machine. I still got the bounce. _________________________________________________________________________ - ALARM they closed my MOO behind a firewall they butchered my talker they cut off my legs my tongue they refused my nightmares they killed my haven they plucked my lily from my navel they ripped out my umbilical cord ALARM! ALARM! they hung me near your eyes your ears they cut off my arms my hand they cauterized my directories ALARM! ALARM! the MOO grinds on grinds on the MOO screams loneliness and the empty atmospherics wail on Phaedra the world whirls away there's no uptime downtime logins logouts ALARM! ALARM! no email no *Online MOO lists bulletins no news no deaths no births they cut out my eyes my ears the split my head they killed me firewalls silence ALARMS I offer you my tits clattered to the floor I have no solutions I'm dead I have no MOO I'm dead not a house to live in not a container a thing an exit NOT EVEN AN EXIT ALARM! ALARM! ALARM! ALARM! ALARM! ALARM! ________________________________________________________________________ - Memoir with Bodies In the late 1960s I recorded with ESP-Disk, run by Bernard Stollman, the subject of numerous articles at the time. I met his brother in Europe where I was traveling and formed a loose group with Joel Zabor, a drummer; we played in Copenhagan, hung out with Ted Joans a bit, two whiteboys in Denmark and later Paris. When we returned I picked up other players and formed a group with no name or numerous names; they never mattered. Joel had introduced me to the music of Art Blakey and I heard Dexter Gor- don and Yusef Lateef and others. Back home I had been listening to Albert Ayler, late Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, some Ornette Coleman, and things were coming together. My own music, totally naive, worked just as much from middle-eastern scales, taksim, listened to ragas as well, preferring South Indian. I listened all over. I met Marion Brown, but my circle was weird, moving away from Al Wilson who joined Canned Heat playing electric blues which wasn't my music and earlier on wasn't his. Paul Bley heard a recording of my stuff and liked it. But it was all loner stuff, listening to records, making three myself. I could never have done it. Leroi Jones' Applecores column in Down Beat at the time was incredible, talking about black aesthetic, the sound the horns/rhythm were making, Cecil Taylor's fingers dancing on the keyboard, movement that was in direct way spirit, the horns _talking,_ _crying,_ in ways that couldn't be annotated, spelled out, confined. Spirit Unity check it out. All true; you can hear it first in Albert Ayler's early Summertime and go on from there. The music had a fast 1/1/1/1 pulse sometimes and sometimes not that; Col- trane's Ascension brought it up into the group format. Writing was loose, drum and bass freed; harmony transformed into coloration, sometimes a roar. Ayler took this to and from spirituals, the Marseilles, everything like that. And the music was totally ignored by whites, by the jazz establishment press, everyone else then and still in cool withdraw. There wasn't any- thing like it and there won't be again, and why here in cyberspace? Be- cause it was stuff that refused the packet, protocol; it was anti-protocol so far back that it was as if protocol hadn't been invented. Not that it wasn't at times incredibly complex - Coleman and Taylor were and are, at times compositionally, but then there was freeform; I loved Guiseppi Logan for example, Sunny Murray, Sonny Sharrock on guitar. Or take Carla Bley, whose Tong Dynasty Funeral Piece was one of the most powerful I ever heard, Patty Waters' ESP album where she either got it all right or all wrong, it was hard to say and I still don't know. The music took the saxophone way back into the body, away from the equi- distant well-tempering that Adolph brought to his invention. The notes, the _holes_ in the thing, became plateaus of past practices, maybe even colonialisms; they remained strange attractors against the chaotic impro- visation, bending, cries, going on around them/in spite of them. Cecil Taylor - _no one_ ever commanded any instrument like he did/does. Recently he played on cross-streets in Soho and some fell in - literally - through a collapsed sidewalk grating. The rest fell in as well. But what happened? I look at the texts, listen to the sounds, and they're suddenly gone history; the whole ESP-Disk jazz catalog (including my work) has been reissued on CD, and you hear noise of being earnest at best in current music; if the New Music, Free Music, New Thing Jazz, whatever, is still there, it's not that much in evidence. Ayler died, Coltrane died, Hendrix (I at least see a relation) died, ESP folded, other companies came in and left, Miles Davis and others went fusion, no? Jazz is nice again, a coloration. That period, also that of Leroi Jones' System of Dante's Hell say, is gone, Jones gone too, Amiri Baraka continuing incredible writing everywhere. My own stuff. I learned the country blues from white Al Wilson, later met Son House, Mance Lipscomb, watched them. I was whiteboy all the way. I read Paul Oliver's Blues Fell this Morning, still the best blues book - it had to be, by an Englishman (just as the best overall book on New Music is Valerie Wilmer, As Serious as Your Life, also British, I mean beyond Jones' writings which were reissued) - and I couldn't play blues; I knew context before I knew multiculturalism, and it wasn't me. At that time, Al considered me city (since my guitar was/is fast as hell, ragged, raged), he country - then the turnaround and Canned Heat was doing Robert Johnson and doing it well, and Wilson turned around again and died at 27. I went on all over the place, formed Damaged Life in the 80s, recorded cassettes with post-industrial stuff, worked through my own thinking of music/sound. Ayler, Coltrane, Taylor, will always be up there. The music stops me dead in my tracks. You can't get it in the packets. -----------------------------------| Leading to a disturbing question, an obvious answer no, but with a resi- due: Is the Internet white? European? Based on rigid logic (not the five- step inference say of Indian reasoning, but Boolean or three-step Aristo- telian), potential wells, truth tables, etc. Or rather, not white, but rigid in its rejection of the body? I recognize the bandwidth issues at work - they're always able to filter down down down, increasingly fine-grained rasters for example - you can get 44 mhz on CD doing nicely - but all the way down they're just _not_ the analog cry, the life played out above the DNA, running around the social/sexual like crazy, the edge of speed, the _sound._ They're just _not_ that, petulant I am. They might be that, but that is not what was caught in what web at that point, there? What brilliant, there? (This music that brought the body back, never caught on, held, in spite of the fact that it was the most original thing this country had heard in a long time. So it goes, race and aesthetics clamping down nicely, thank you. On the Web you can order records, hear snippets of sound, surf, thank you, so kindly among products and productions, kindly thank you. Whatever might be missing isn't missing. Whatever might be missing isn't missing: This is the motto of the Web.) ________________________________________________________________________ Obsession, The Record of Three Days sondheim ttyp6 166.84.0.102 Thu Mar 28 02:18 still logged in sondheim ttyp4 166.84.0.102 Wed Mar 27 23:42 - 01:44 (02:02) sondheim ttyqb 166.84.0.102 Wed Mar 27 22:43 - 23:03 (00:19) sondheim ttyp9 166.84.0.102 Wed Mar 27 20:26 - 21:12 (00:45) sondheim ttyqb 166.84.0.102 Wed Mar 27 17:37 - 18:03 (00:25) sondheim ttyrf 166.84.0.102 Wed Mar 27 16:12 - 16:15 (00:02) sondheim ttyt5 166.84.0.102 Wed Mar 27 14:46 - 15:31 (00:44) sondheim ttypc 166.84.0.103 Wed Mar 27 13:47 - 13:48 (00:01) sondheim ttyr5 166.84.0.104 Wed Mar 27 12:00 - 12:26 (00:26) sondheim ttyp2 166.84.0.102 Wed Mar 27 03:24 - 03:33 (00:08) sondheim ttyp6 166.84.0.102 Wed Mar 27 02:22 - 02:23 (00:00) sondheim ttyq6 166.84.0.102 Wed Mar 27 01:44 - 02:21 (00:37) sondheim ttys0 166.84.250.149 Wed Mar 27 01:00 - 01:03 (00:02) sondheim ttypd 166.84.250.149 Wed Mar 27 00:52 - 00:52 (00:00) sondheim ttyra 166.84.0.103 Wed Mar 27 00:29 - 00:48 (00:18) sondheim ttypd 166.84.0.102 Tue Mar 26 23:54 - 00:09 (00:15) sondheim ttyp6 166.84.0.104 Tue Mar 26 23:08 - 23:11 (00:03) sondheim ttys7 166.84.0.103 Tue Mar 26 22:51 - 22:57 (00:05) sondheim ttyrf 166.84.0.103 Tue Mar 26 22:28 - 22:33 (00:05) sondheim ttyp8 166.84.0.103 Tue Mar 26 22:02 - 22:04 (00:01) sondheim ttyt9 149.31.1.100 Tue Mar 26 16:36 - 16:42 (00:05) sondheim ttyrc 149.31.1.100 Tue Mar 26 14:22 - 14:23 (00:01) sondheim ttyt9 149.31.1.100 Tue Mar 26 14:16 - 14:21 (00:05) sondheim ttysc 149.31.1.100 Tue Mar 26 13:51 - 13:51 (00:00) sondheim ttysc 149.31.1.100 Tue Mar 26 13:13 - 13:36 (00:23) sondheim ttyqc 149.31.1.100 Tue Mar 26 13:02 - 13:07 (00:04) sondheim ttys4 166.84.0.103 Tue Mar 26 11:25 - 11:41 (00:15) sondheim ttypa 166.84.0.102 Tue Mar 26 02:01 - 02:21 (00:19) sondheim ttypd 166.84.0.103 Tue Mar 26 01:01 - 01:02 (00:00) sondheim ttyq0 166.84.0.102 Mon Mar 25 23:50 - 00:44 (00:54) sondheim ttypf 166.84.0.102 Mon Mar 25 23:45 - 23:46 (00:01) sondheim ttyr5 166.84.0.102 Mon Mar 25 22:31 - 22:53 (00:21) sondheim ttys4 166.84.0.102 Mon Mar 25 21:47 - 21:48 (00:00) sondheim ttyr1 206.20.110.15 Mon Mar 25 20:59 - 21:09 (00:09) sondheim ttyp2 206.20.110.15 Mon Mar 25 20:30 - 20:40 (00:09) sondheim ttyr2 206.20.110.15 Mon Mar 25 20:26 - 20:28 (00:02) sondheim ttype 192.100.81.100 Mon Mar 25 16:39 - 16:40 (00:00) sondheim ttyt8 192.100.81.100 Mon Mar 25 16:10 - 16:32 (00:21) sondheim ttyq7 206.20.110.122 Mon Mar 25 16:07 - 16:10 (00:02) sondheim ftp netcom.netcom.co Mon Mar 25 15:55 - 15:55 (00:00) sondheim ttyt8 192.100.81.100 Mon Mar 25 15:47 - 15:54 (00:06) sondheim ttytc 192.100.81.100 Mon Mar 25 15:46 - 15:46 (00:00) sondheim ttyt5 192.100.81.100 Mon Mar 25 15:41 - 15:42 (00:00) sondheim ftp netcom.netcom.co Mon Mar 25 15:41 - 15:41 (00:00) sondheim ttyt8 192.100.81.100 Mon Mar 25 15:22 - 15:31 (00:09) sondheim ttyqb 206.20.110.122 Mon Mar 25 15:19 - 15:21 (00:02) sondheim ttys1 166.84.0.102 Mon Mar 25 11:43 - 12:09 (00:26) sondheim ttyp2 166.84.0.102 Mon Mar 25 03:53 - 03:53 (00:00) sondheim ttyp2 166.84.0.102 Mon Mar 25 02:34 - 03:40 (01:06) sondheim ttyq1 166.84.0.106 Mon Mar 25 00:33 - 00:57 (00:23) ---- - (S)MER Everything conspires to drag us into the past, where causation appears perfect, even if Babylonia and the Upanishads require emergence. Cause and effect is neat, takes care of death as well; what was, lives on; there's always the question of inheritance. We have names for this, so many names in fact, that it's the situation of an entire industry... Think of: memoir, paeon, obituary, recounting, memory, ode, recreation, accounting, remembrance, funeral, funereal, retelling, memorandum, biography, autobiography, epitaph, cenotaph, history, retelling, grave, genealogy, archeology, memorial, prehistory, commemoration, requiem - and there are more, innumerable others, in varying forms, some with the _re_ going over the same ground, a visitation and so forth (ghosts, wraiths, spirits of children killed in the plague); and some with the _mem_ or the retelling of it all, alas... We can't escape this, our own stories, already entombing us, pulling us back into the past, reconstructing the _problem_ of time as the dream screen against which we locate our own desires, projections, introjections in the form of violated beauty and horror. It's those strands of algae in Brecht's Manual of Piety again, it's the death of Ophelia, everything pulling us deeper, there's no end to it. The cast of forlorn times is always upon us; we try to make use of history, even make sense of it, forgetting that the only sense is that of sense- lessness, that cause and effect are not there for us, are only the desire of intellect gone awry. The tombs, graves, markers, shafts, stelae, do nothing but ascertain cause, construct the world from chaos, over and over again. And what is a masterpiece, (yes, gender-laden), say, if not already the signifier of demarcation: this is a _moment_ of comprehension, which usually mind you means _the most overdetermined moment_ - thus Rembrandt or Leonardo - you can read the world into them. In fact the only "truth" of Leonardo was his last sequence of global catastrophic drawings, every- thing occurring without rhyme or reason. _Memory_ and related apparently from a stem (S)MER-1, related to _mourn_ in Claireborne, The Roots of English: We remember the death of the other. We turn away: shame. We live _to remember._ Age pulls us down; just as death seems causeless and is recuperated through the suturing of mourning, entombment, so the origin is causeless as well, coupled with emergence, mythos, beginnings which apparently cir- culated around themselves. We're thrown between the two, thrown _in the midst of happenstance,_ constructing the Aristotelian as we go, the logic of causes, of vacuum, annihilation, and lack - of fullness, creation, and plenitude, inputs and outputs. It's all there, myths varying from one to another position; a compendium of the first quatrain of all the creation texts worldwide would tend towards exhaustion, language splayed apart, deconstructed. Never fear; _man_ is _resolute._ Never fear; there are _containers_ for the _thing contained._ Never fear: Tiamat gets angry; the guys try to deal with it, Babylonia. Never argue with male god/heads taken apart by their own irreconcilable logic. I have no order in which _I speak this._ I sense my own pull towards the grave. I sense the flash of memory and mourning burning skull-dry, in- creasing their loads. I hear them, hear you. I make them, make you. I put you together, put them together. I take you apart, take them apart. I remember, at last, these words sewn as the threads silence my lips, etc.: There is no cause for cause. The platitude rings true, doesn't ring. So there are two questions: why is there something rather than nothing?; how does this nothing begin causation? Infinite time places the origin elsewhere; this form of logic, applied to the cosmos is presumption it- self; one cannot legislate. What then? I prefer the pure grief of random acts to the fictions of narrative. This too is a leap, but at least out of the cycle, not of rebirth, but of implication: the _archeology_ of mourn- ing, the travails and history of the therapeutic, the narration of the sepulchre. And how could _causation begin,_ if not through the grace of the story-teller's art? _________________________________________________________________________ - Epitaph in Cyberspace --grounds for the epitaph "Someone dies; it's a movement of the lips." (Damaged Life) What is death in cyberspace? Where are the grounds of the epitaph, its holograph? --its authorship Can one ever be sure of its authenticity? Can one write one's own epitaph here? Does it pass from person to person, wraith to wraith? --read/write permissions Does chmod, changing the permission of the epitaph, violate the real or virtual body of the deceased? Can the deceased change her/his own? Do the dead have permissions? --downloading the epitaph In cyberspace, is the epitaph the grave itself? Can the grave be down- loaded? Does downloading the epitaph transform it into the _slogan_? --I write myself out of existence. Alan Sondheim 1943-2024 This is my epitaph. --its equivalence to each and every text If the epitaph is equivalent to every other text, does death, too, become lost in this dominion? Is the epitaph similar to a homepage, always under construction, torn down at a server's notice? --its standardization of form as lower ascii Is there an equivalent to _engraving_ in cyberspace, to the granite inscription, the tools of the stonemason? Or is the standardization of text so restraining that the epitaph is destined to be one text among others, a floating signifier, lost in hard drives and packet routing loops, gone from the world like the virtual or real body itself? Is the epitaph always gone from the world? --its detachment from the site of the grave Does the epitaph detach itself from the site of the grave, which is no site whatsoever, email address erased or reassigned? Is burial itself a gone thing? Mourning occurs forever, away from the computer: "I turned my head away in shame. I couldn't make clear, to myself, to any- one, what was happening to me in real life. He died and left this void, and no amount of writing or reading could fill it. I still keep his last story in my saved-messages folder; he sent it to me the day before he passed away. Is it a testimony to the eternal quality of the digital that the story remains there, now at the very top, a framework or bracketing for the messages that land temporarily beneath it, only to be deleted within a week or two? To grieve is to _disconnect,_ not to remain on-line, focused on the screen. There's never a latest in death, only the late de- parted. As for the story remaining, it's only witness to decent system administration on the ISP, nothing more. That too will change." --its further mobility and dissemination It travels elsewhere; it is forgotten. Nothing remains. Software goes back to beta. Software goes to integer. Software goes back to beta. You may find a letter lost and left behind. You may find yourself in tears, wondering why. You may reuse this. You may reuse what you have lost. _________________________________________________________________________ - Word (literally, I don't know what I'm talking _about_): Moments of pristine beauty from Edgar Sturtevant, A Hittie Glossary, Works of Known or Conjectured Meaning with Sumerian and Akkadian Words Occurring in Hittite Texts, 1936 (diacritical marks not included): watar, wetar (watar, uwatar, gen. witenas, wetenas, wetnas, dat. witeni, weteni, inst. wetenit, wedanda, pl.? widar, uwitar, dat. uwitenas), 'water.' kwis 'quis, qui, aliquis' (interrogative, indefinite, relative). kuwat(t)a(n) [kwat.an], kuwatin, 'whither, why.' natta 'not; no.' nu 'then, and; however, but'; the most common sentence connective; always the first word in its clause. tri- (nom. 3-es = *tries or *tres) 'three.' apasel, apasela 'is ipse.' sakkan (acc. saqqan), a kind of vessel. (Hebrew, sak, sack.) hassa- (acc. hassan, gen. hassas, dat. hassi) 'hearth, stove.' uttar (uttar, uddar, gen. uddanas) 'word; magic spell, magic formula; thing, affair; cause, law-case.' marmaras 'murmur, lamentation'?? I note in passing ALAN, ALAM [from the Sumerian] = essri, 'form, statue.' These words appear in Hittite, as does for example the following from the Akkadian: SUS(S)U (in Hittite texts Su-SI) 'sixty.' (Hebrew, shishim). SAMU 'sky.' (Hebrew shemayim). This is interesting; my Hebrew etymological dictionary also gives shmin, Aramaic and Egyptian, as well as shmn, Ugari- tic. SAMSU 'sun.' (Hebrew shemesh.) Native Hittite nepis is sky; Istanus, sun. These moments serve as nodes connecting the rest of the language, working through/into the interior. From German to Latin, we're at a nexus, nu? Akkadian borrowings go elsewhere, wander throughout the Middle East, North Africa? Cyberspace is Latin; we await the implementation of double-byte characters and multi-lingual sites without the necessity of special software. Still, these roots are absented; everything is fetishized. Don't forget that the letter "G" is an _invention_ (just as ascii itself); there are two Roman candidates for the honor (and I forget their names)... _________________________________________________________________________ - 'standiP upp, jotnar! ok straiP bekki!' Stand up, giants! And straw the benches! First get the straw! Then straw the benches! I'm getting married! Pick up a tree. You never know! upp-himinn there! We might fall down! Where are the women! Pykkir mer or augum eldr of brenna! I think to myself her eyes, wow! They're burning! Now how Are the elves doing! What's with the gods here! Hold on, Don't let the straw burn! Pick up the bench! Put the bench Down! You picked up the bench! ek I can't believe this! Sit down where you stood! First straw the benches! O giants, Sit down! ________________________________________________________________________