Slid-Jennifer Unable to draw a distinction among wire, body, fraud, I die wracked against the triode that belongs to your presence. This is a capability of understanding , Jennifer who could not that can occur only after the fact abide to read herwise. But Jennifer- these words would have told you ot disassociationeing that belongs no long- is true to herself, a beautiful b er stretched aureless; you know who you cross an expanse that remains feat are, and know scribes black lines in thewhat I am. Her blood, my blood, in snow. There arain true to the eternal ase writings which penetrate and rem long as the we that, the other. But thenather's below freezing. Other than there wouldn't, cozy, turned towards the even be a room for interpretation wall where theair, her call, her inter- chair was. This was Jennifer's ch pretation. I rsnow fell out, words in ested my case against it; opened, disarray. Jenn me, and that turning fellifer smiled, turned slowly towards towards the asymptote of a complete stop as a black hole opened between us. My clothes fell open, and I could feed her forever. And in that manner of landscape, breasts worthy of slip-fault, milk: desire in the house of death, dead of speaking wires, "Cloth." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --++-- Jealous of other theory, of the difficulty with theory, I proceed with fear, with care, delineating/inscribing a territory I can call my own. This is the only work I do comfortably; my life _elsewhere_ is a matter of confusion, and anxiety that leaves me sleepless. I am well aware of the fragility of theory, its past-anterior ex-formation which slots it back into the death constituted as a movement or firm rec oject these texts as a wager, always alre earing further dis- location, although i his is coupled with absolute exclusion f happy, or rather po- ssessed with the abi ness, when I am writ- ing on-line, with th _further_ mail I await which shall foreclos fact in read that _other_ theory which my own. I would state that such forestalli any would be bearable, that it would carry nings of narrative, that I would, for on rocesses of _survival_ itself, but instead granted, over a space or interval - a _gap s desire. In place of this, in _lieu,_ I f e absence of a tomb, wearing the needed shroud of death and immobility. I do not want to watch. I don't want to watch the decay of these words, epitaph as they are, the worn-out of the world, carapace or skin sloughed to the bone. I want to die when Jennifer dies. Jennifer wants to die when Julu dies. These are moments of little purport, but they present the world, and not only that: They are the world's pillars, without which nothing would survive. of all quaint language, what is uperation. So that I tend to pr ady lost, against this death, f t were only a matter of time. T rom any other realm; I am only lity to defer thoughts of happi e potential for new mail, that e pain, emptiness, allow me in shall, in addition, forestall ng in the pleasure of your comp the seeds of love and the begin ce, no longer worry about the p take _this body, this mind_ for _ that opens both to the world' ind myself doubled, lost for th ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Everyone, Ah hell, I'm just worn out. I've been trying to put courses together for the coming fall and spring, and getting just about nowhere. I go through intensive negotiations and hysteria on my end for a basic access course on their end, or a course dealing with Net psychology paying almost nothing, and I've been trying to do this over and over again at any number of ins- titutions in four different cities. I'm getting worn down by this. I just don't care. I think of starving myself. I've actually lost twelve pounds but I needed to lose twelve pounds because I was up to one sixty which is high for me mainly because of continuous depression. Now I'm going down I hope to one forty-four but I weighed down only to one forty-eight which comes through if you do the math or even if you don't. Some of this is funny, like talking to myself, catching myself up because I sound either like my father or that old bachelor (me) that lives up- stairs on Dean Street which I pretty much am, but don't want to own up to. I do spend some of my time secretly thinking I'm a genius, but even more time wishing I had a girlfriend here so that I could finally relax with someone so that even if I'm homeless or not eating all that well there will be someone to talk to without making a long distance call, but even Jodee has moved away and everyone else is in the protective custody of their own coupleship, so who cares. I can always do another text. I hear from Alice by snailmail who says I don't respond, but my printer doesn't work all that well so I try calling her but I never get an answer; either I'm calling at the wrong time or something's up with the phone. I do have other close long-distance relationships, but they are always splintered, never quite real, no matter how extreme the occasional writing. The lists don't hold me like they used to - there's a lot of repetition of course, and I need more than the presence of disembodied language at this point. And I always feel responsible for some of the administration, now ongoing for more than three years, as well as advertising, etc. It's never-ending, and doesn't seem real. I get up around noon (nights are hot, sleepless, insomniac), sometimes in tears, get on-line, do whatever cor- rections I need to do for the day, send out personal letters and impers- onal answers, etc. I eat at a place called the Silver Spoon for lunch. I return here and nap or work on-line. I eat at home for diner, or "find something" cheap at a bodega. I watch the news. I nap. I read all the time through this. Out of pure defensiveness, I'm never without a book, without reading. I may watch a sitcom or two at night. I continue writing, answer- ing letters, reading on-line stuff, reading off-line stuff. I go to sleep now around dawn. I stare where the clouds are light. That is my life. There's usually a phonecall a day, but this is over-compensated for by three-hundred messages or so. I send out around forty still, sometimes as little as twenty, sometimes as many as sixty. I live half-disembodied, have drowning in writing. Eric Anderson, Danish Fluxus artist years ago, told me I was destined to be a "bookmaker" (screamed Buchmacher). I think I've more than fulfilled this useless ambition - useless, because the writing's without context. I eat tofu, applesauce, instant coffee, cold cereal, light pasta, bamboo, artichoke hearts, peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches. I have two luxuries - a cordless phone (I'm always pleading somewhere) and sending my laundry out - it comes back folded. I buy almost everything used. I pass on what- ever I can, whenever I can. I take losses, get more reading. I need a new modem, PC monitor, battery for one of the laptops. They'll have to last me a few more years. I'm still married to Allison, but when I find the time, I'll apply for divorce; I feel too encumbered by everything around me, still, to do this at the moment. I will probably stay in New York the rest of my life, living close to the edge. It's a _bad_ existence, in the way that existence itself, in Sartre's early imagination, might be said to be _bad,_ the stuff that Nausee came out of, but without recompense or money for the tune. (I do stay in touch with my family. I couldn't survive with- out them. They're across two countries, however, and it's difficult. Noth- ing is _within the reach of an arm's lenght._ Nothing at all.) (Speaking of _arm's length,_ I fell asleep last night trying to think of the longest words with one vowel - from "length" I went to "strengths" - this is of course including _y_. There is also "syzygy" which could be considered voweless, and my favorite "cwm" which has to be, in spite of its Welsh origins.) Meanwhile I try and think of new things to teach; I could teach PC stuff at this point, linux, creative writing, theory, studio, and tons of other stuff but no one wants to hire someone fifty-four because I'm supposed to be past retirement; anyway, there must be something wrong with me because I've taught part-time at I think 16-17 institutions so far and I don't have great clothes even for interviewing, were I ever called. So I'm dis- placed in the social order of things, but then again everyone my age is - although the others my age (I don't know anyone who's not a lot younger than me, so I have to change the "others my age" to "others in their forties") are all relatively secure with houses and lofts and apartments and galleries and stuff like that. (I'm supposed to be be not only past retirement, but useless, abandoned, collecting my rewards, relaxing, an old man in a leisure suit. I'd _literally_ rather be dead.) So there are two people, small press people, who said they were bringing out some of my Jennifer stuff in hard-copy, but I think one of them is screwing around with me, and the other is delayed because of no money so it won't ever happen. Now I'm supposed to get a book out of my art and theory stuff, and there is a publisher lined up and all that kind of thing and it will be my fourth commercial book, not to mention all the other published spew, but you can see that and about $.75 will get me a cup of coffee at least for the time-being, not much more. I can't help but dream of getting involved with everyone for friendship sex love within four-hundred feet of me walking down the street, because I can't see clearer much farther. And my long-distance relationships remain long-distance and there's nothing I can do about them, whether they're hate, love, friendship, raconteur, or colleague, although I've never had the last which seems the rarest. Sometimes people say they want to collab- orate with me; that would pass for colleague, and there are two dancers here in the city that want to work with me, and I keep think of surgery/ prosthesis as part of the content of what would be the dance. I can't keep up with them because they're both brilliant dancers, well-known here, and I'm submerged in my loft. Sometimes when I walk around now, having lost twelve pounds, I feel an enormous freedom in my body, as if it's leaning against the air, and I dream of going anorectic so that I can finally make an exit; the grandfather of someone I was involved with starved himself to death after and when he felt useless, and I don't know what the family's attitude was about that, but it seemed to be one of acceptance, I'm not sure. I'm going to my brother's home in Victoria in about six weeks, August 19, if any of you are up in B.C. I hope to get back to the old-growth forests which create stability even for the most borderline of us, and I can pre- tend I'm moving there, to somewhere civilized, to teach, climb, and think. In the meantime, I wait by the phone for a call offering relief, a real job, anything here. I dream at night of sexual enslavement, taking on the position of the masochist; I move in and out of Jennifer-July identities, and all of this is admittedly escapist - there's nothing to worry about if I'm tied up, controlled by someone, or churning through the J-J files in linux, or losing myself in the obscure vagaries of emacs, the linux editor which I've been using for my recent work. It's always the work that carries me, that gives me a reason to exist, al- ways trying to break new ground, before the ground breaks me. Sometimes it's a stand-off, and sometimes I feel I've actually done something. While I have a fear of academically-trained theorists, who can recite far better than I can, I continue to hope that I'm still moving ahead in this regard as well. I'm most frightened of being left behind, of my work becoming ir- relevant, and the longer I write about "cyberspace," the more I think it won't hold up in the end - the last thing I want to be is a social commen- tator, broke, with now around three thousand pages of relatively useless writing sitting on a site. Then secretly I'll turn around within myself, and think, I'm making pro- gress, I'll get a job, I'll be in a loving relationship, there's even a community around the corner - I just have to get the next phonecall, try again for that elusive perfect text which will cement everything, fore- stall the depression at my door. Like believing in a talisman like the object of Lacan, always out of reach, sliding in and out of the imaginary. It's the teaching in fact, as well as programming errors, that keeps me in bounds, allows me to function at all. (And it's not that I expect happi- ness at this point - I don't - but just the opportunity to exist with _the presence of another voice_ and a sense of stability.) In the dead of winter, I would still like to make it up to Newfoundland, but I'm out of touch with Lisa - I'd love to go and see the icebergs, feel the gales. I've been in blizzards before, and never so much alive. love to Everyone, and say hello for me, Alan _________________________________________________________________________ Subject: Dance Collaboration All dancing is diirty. ( bodies sweat, contact, anorexia sets in, a dancer just died here today, the body wants from nothing ) I think of the dance as a whirl without consent, like the body burning, on fire, like frozen in hysteria: and then I think I do that and my heart bursts open, and blood everywhere, this burst heart! And then I no longer think, my whirling body-heart, body-burst-heart! ( like a singer without a song, totally open to the world, no computer, no prosthetics, glasses, tampax, nothing encumbering, the dance opens up as if there were no need, as if there were heavenly bodies, as if there were floats and floatations, as if suspensions ) I think of an inverted hysteria, the world as symptom of this burst-heart-body, world roiling and heaving system fast rotation and wobble ( the world's subsumed within the dance, it's a symptom, it's there as an extension or an afterthought - the world is the afterthought of the dance - it wobbles on varying pivots, it gyroscopes in varying axes, it twists and turns, it turns away the face, the face of the world is the dance ) I think the hands hold old-fashioned canes and crushes these could be quite dangerous wobble turn around ( I think you leave holding hands ) ____________________________________________________________________________ Further Notes Towards /this/ Dance All dancing I think of the dance as a whirl without consent, like the body burning, on fire, like frozen in hysteria: and then I think I do that and my heart bursts open, and blood everywhere, this burst heart! And then I no longer think, my whirling body-heart, body-burst-heart! dance- body-body _unfettered,_ that is, motion or postures dance- through repetition (arms attached in a particular manner, dance- gestures formed by virtue of _the easiest thing to do,_ in the dance- manner of a potential well, as the body falls from itself, dance- within the gravitation-work dance- I think of an inverted hysteria, the world as symptom of this burst-heart-body, world roiling and heaving system fast rotation and wobble body- which is doubled/doubles itself (as a moment of repetition, or body- calling. for it is the _freest_ body, as offered athletic or body- motion-body-body, one might speculate an allegiance with the body- world. of course this is unnatural, bracketed for deconstruc- body- tion; _every_ body is encumbered, _every_ body is always already body- cultural. body- I think the hands hold old-fashioned canes and crushes these could be quite dangerous wobble turn around cane- the _cane_ is a diacritical mark suturing the body to the earth, cane- augmentation, ordinary phenomena of the world. the _cane_ de- cane- marcates the the outline of the flesh, _borderlining_ (as in the cane- case of the _borderline personality_) a transitional body, one cane- that is internal, external, technological, and foundation, the cane- boundaries dissolved, blurred, inscribed throughout the regime cane- (not regimentation) of the world. cane- dance- body- cane- can only be imagined as _cane_ hyphenates the repetition of _body_ in can only be imagined as _cane_ hyphenates the repetition of _body_ in can only be imagined as _cane_ hyphenates the repetition of _body_ in dance can only be imagined as repetition pulling forth the cane from the body can only be imagined as the body breathes into a rhythm which is the dream of freedom: the body is the dream of freedom the dance is the dream of freedom dream of freedom, the cane [[[this is trying to work out the body in the guise of freedom, the [[[cane as hallucenic whirl/whorl, the repetition of the breathing, [[[footstep, shoulders' shrug, lips' smile, tumescent tissue [[[repeating origin mythologies of survival, or rather ]]]this is trying to work out the myth of freedom in the guise of ]]]dance or the body, the body as drawn-grave-gravitational haunted by ]]]leap or arch, or that is the _acculturated_ body which carries the ]]]tenets of long hours of practice and abstinence: | the body of the bar and the mirror, the body freed in the course | of mirrored (spatial) doubling, repetitions (temporal) doubling | or the _coursing of the body played against itself, always | something of the dream of the future, the cane, the body trudged | up-hill, across-stream, around-bend, into the presence of food, | water, sex, sustenance, sleep >><< _________________________________________________________________________ Losing Track At the age of 25 I decided I wanted to write philosophy. To write a text implies working through domains without guideposts, recuperating older strata, looking up through the dissemination of the wide world's information. Part of me believed that I was writing the world itself, that a secret would manifest its bones, and with that would come power. Never earthly, the power would equate knowledge with interstitial longings, and hence with a triumphant mastery of death. Space and time were not far behind. I could never listen to music with pleasure because of textual ab- sence; instead, music became a dialog I abandoned after a furious wager with high-speed sound. Music took far too much for granted, lending itself to pure jouissance. I would head towards video, film, writing, and always writing - writing which could describe the world in a singularity, the compression of everything into - not only the symbolic, but also a token such as V, a set-theoretical universe. Once V was announced, it was criss-crossed by rules which in fact exhausted V: V was nothing but the domain of those rules, Godel not- withstanding. The rules of the real of course prove much more intract- able; in fact, they may not be rules (which are top-down) at all, so much as part-objects, bottom-up operations with superstructural mani- festations that take on the appearance of relative simplicity. The unsolvable n-body problems are good examples. Eventually, I became certain I had nothing to contribute on this level - that is, to the concrete progress produced by science and technology - for example, solutions or heuristics for fundamental particle the- ory. I was too undisciplined, too resistant, for that. Instead, I became concerned with the interrelationship among these abstract systems and consciousness, the interstices of structures, bodies, minds, and the symbolic, plateaued throughout by an imagin- ary. Such was the case that _muck_ necessarily surfaced in this in- vestigation, a muck that created _discomfort_ among those workers on the surface who took the mines for granted. My work has been in the mines, in the shafts, across the occasional surface irruption. It explores the depths, not recursively, but with a sense of ennui, longing, and the depths are not infinite, just as the symbolic is not an infinite concatenation of broken strings. More like a Sierpinski Sponge imagined without the recursion, depths are unfounded, unfounding, and as I am fond of saying, unaccountable, and unaccounted-for: hence, an other. And more than or to this, I am also fond of saying that they generate and reflect _the neurotic style of the world,_ a style necessarily repetitive, obsessive, scarred and sutured, a style which has always already effaced itself, just as language as the appearance of each and every determination. Thus the neurotic, not schizz, may have a hold or grasp on the world, just as the paranoid comprehends sociobiology in its entirety. In relation to everything here, there is institutionalization, the conundrum of institutions. Wild theory is incomprehensible in the face of the propriety of regulated reference, footnotes, and a dedication to reasoned argument. I would argue, wildly and unsuccessfully, that this reasoned argument always already precludes, firewalls, forecloses the _muck,_ which is not just a matter of a psychoanalytical and/or rational approach, but also a seeping, oozing, within and without the discomfort of the (borderlined) reader. In this regard, the muck-text is as much performative, process, as it is discursive formation. And in this regard, it remains difficult to translate, suitcase. On the other hand, it is easy to descend or ascent to a superstruct- ural surface that purports, through skimming (surfing) to present a laissez-faire chaotic mapping of nomadic chains, in lieu of comprehen- sion. And it is easy for me to fool myself that something has been accomplished, beyond the demonstration of a new command, application, or Net phenomenon: And if anything salvages these texts, it's the embarrassment, shame, dirtiness, muck, psychotic flirtations, that refuse to let go, after the command, application, or Net phenomenon has been deciphered. When I began years ago, I developed the notion of two regimes, the construct and the experiential. The former was external to temporal systems, and an idealized graph of equivalences or transforms; the latter was messy, carried motility within it, and problematized the very nodes and vectors that created the appearances of entities and processes. The two modes intersected in what I later called state or process-oriented graphs. Within this scheme, wild theory is, of course, experiential; traditional discursive formations, on the other hand, appear as-if-grounded in the construct. Thus an ideal academic discourse might be considered a database, allowing the recuperation of argument, revisitation rights/rites, and footnoting allowing the dis- course to partake of others observing the same protocols. While this constructs a language-practice ultimately based on the Enlightenment (or for that matter Euclid), it also precludes both the problematic of reception (beyond reception-theory) and those very cognitive proces- ses that grant the text its semantics in the first place. So that, by harboring texts within the experiential as primary (as my texts attempt), grounds and reasoned discourse are instead problemati- zed - not in favor of anarchic feeling - but in terms of those tradi- tionally analytic part-objects (such as this text to some extent) that appear within them. This certainly reduces the necessity of grounds for 'em. * * And also unfortunately reduces the community of readers, who are no longer guided by those tokens of footnote/reference/etc. that I have referenced here, and that provide the ability to cross-translate, as well as reaffirm a foreclosed but relatively friendly academe. _This_ work, instead, is wounded, refusing to heal, apparently establishing no discourse, critique; and in this sense, it is a corpse of work, not corpus. Later, a corpse will give birth to new forms of life; now, it is an uncomfortable object in the room, leaking onto the table, spil- ling onto the floor. __________________________________________________________________________ Library_____________________________________________________________ Buffers Files Tools Edit Search Help Hell is catching the presence of the file thrown against the glass doors of the library where no one goes anymore nor should they; hell is buffered realities, salvages, contusions of alternative readings, always another, perfect file; hell is _tool_ or tools modified to search for help, editing out those words me dead that you would act & what heaven. That would never read again. That tomb. & for the glass door covers with blood your reflection. & that the buffered real binds you. & that they pass files & whimpers. & that your bloody tools hack flesh from brain. & that your thoughts are edited. & that you search for help. --**-Emacs: zz.txt (Text Fill)--L7--All------------------ Auto-saving...done __________________________________________________________________________ clearly unsustainable." (United Nations Chronicle, XXXIV, 2, 1997.) soil, and marine fish stocks, continue to be used at rates that are solid waste. Renewable resources, particularly freshwater, forests, top- ate, with rising levels of toxic pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and "Overall, the state of the global environment has continued to deterior- and poor have grown, both within and between countries." number of people living in poverty has increased, and gaps between rich tries, but many, especially in Africa, continue to be marginalized. The globalization of the world economy has benefited some developing coun- majority of people are living longer and healthier lives. Accelerated world population is slowing, food production is still rising, and the Governments noted that some global trends appear positive. The growth in NOW" and I do "kill -9 0" for all-time. "Assessing progress since RIO, of PROTOCOL PASSWD. I do " (header (nolock." I do "shutdown -h shattered holes to ACK. Nipple to nipple, node to node, I sew hard STRING I think NOMAIL. I close shattered eyes to MAIL. I make NOACK. I close cols in proper obeisance. the poverty of presence, I who am about to enter these ports salute proto- hard-penis useless flailed appendage. The computer always gestures towards cancel entertainment-modules, clearing thought for corpse-mind. Ribs show, skim-milk, walk naked in hot loft, shield from sun. With "rpm -u " I sion among physical. Loosening called for, I eat grain, fruit, rubdown- never sustenance. Letters crackle in skull, brain seeps, there is no divi- NOMAIL lasts periodically short time, before set-in occurs, one phone-call life's give-and-take resonates with internal exchanges. empathetic convo for real. In the busy-world, face is acknowledgement, and them together produces the busy-world, the beautiful world of full and lists, building up supply of posts for simulacrum of community. Reading tend towards lesser time on Net, with varying results, going NOMAIL on lost, flaked from remnants of consciousness. It's in this stage that I lose their moorings, swim; it's impossible to concentrate, and subject is furrowed with desiccated tears; parched tongue refuses its socket. Letters In last stages, the skull protrudes through stretched skin; eyes split, In Last Stages _______________________________________________________________________ Two Consecutive Spam Posts Forwarded From Jennifer: Let us examine this. From Jennifer - who forwarded the spam, not created it. And the spam, as part-object, has a beauty of its own, reference to Jennifer, back into the matrix. As the novel itself (Austen?) was trans- formed into matrix itself, devolved and splayed across newsgroups, turn- ing ISP connections into overload, collapse. Who is Chris Lewis? I knew him, one of him, in Atlanta, but hardly a pedophile, Canadian or otherwise. And why his name across this group, what sort of revenge, or is it in fact disguising other structures? For not all of the posts (and there are many of course) utilize the same subject; in fact, the subjects are scattered in parallel decoration in columnar format. But there is enticement as well: the _broken speech,_ _broken subject_: "When I was a girl at school " Which falls from a _visual cliff_ Into ? I downloaded pornographic image after image tonight, from several news- groups, trying each out as desktop, central or tiled. Nothing worked; the woman, Jennifer, perhaps, was absent; there was no sign, no signifier, nothing but parallel attitudes, the bodies inscribed by genetic differ- ence, lure (which elsewhere I have related to primitive mathesis across dyads, strange attractors, absorptions, as in rings and other structures). One found a causeway in the breast or raised and open eyes. But here, in alt.2600, _across_ other groups, grouped others, a skein pours plateaus, lineages. The body has become transparent membrane, much like the Net itself; it can be said truly of this novel that there is no author; it can be said it is a writerly text, writing itself, performative; it flexes culture as obstruction: Thus it is of the order of the _throat_ or ululation: Sun, 13 Jul 1997 20:36:01 alt.2600 Thread 6595 of 6626 Lines 1 Canadian Pedophile Chris Lewis Sucks Wet G No responses old.salt@worldnet.att.net Yetii Genetii Research Institoot a promise made last Easter holidays--"When I was a Sun, 13 Jul 1997 20:36:02 alt.2600 Thread 6596 of 6626 Lines 1 Canadian Pedophile Chris Lewis Sucks Wet G No responses old.salt@worldnet.att.net Yetii Genetii Research Institoot girl at school," said she, laughing--a promise that he, ___________________________________________________________________________ Game, Perhap On machine, I have play xjewel, xtrojka, hangman, pinball, solitaire, chess, I have watch life, I have set qbasic quasi-fractal measure mode, I have tweak constant r, s, t, n, m, x, y, z, I have see work from machine. I do work from machine measure-_k_ as me-measure col- lapsed into single thus-moment. Thus perfect, this _k_ which become me. It is clear: I say: @ @ @@ @ @ @@@@ @@ @@@@ @ @ @@ @ @ is last vestige of measure-totality present in this our wonder-world. Is perfect ideogram-talisman. Thus perfect-game also perfect-symbol, you see that! Christological quincunx, Pythagorean certain-number, or take-me command hieroglyph, masochistic inscription of cord-bound skin. It is this control which pass to other-side, which is, in _real,_ con- struct of other-side. None-other-than: thus other-side recuperated: It's part-parcel of total-me. In other word: Part-object sutured whole again as _body-transcription,_ hence game as measure of all things is thus construct of thing, body, to-inscribe. I do eliminate xjewel from repertoire, nervous await xtrojka as next- to-go. Then I will exercise other brain-region, hangman perhap. If it is single and I can win. ______________________________________________________________________ On Fire I have been working on the Internet Text for the past three and a half years. There should be 3000 pages of text, 50-100 images, some of which are at Paula Davidson's site, and some of which are scattered among the Virginia and ANU URLs. I have written daily, with perhaps 3-5 days break during this period. Posts have ranged from 1-4 per diem. There has been, not so much an evolution, as a circumambulation, roaming from community to community, OS to OS, up and down layers (protocols, MOO hierarchies, languages), across sites (Jennifer and Julu accounts on clara.julu.net, surfing the Web, Netscape from 1.0 to 4.+) and machines. I have pushed neurosis, hysteria, depression, and psychosis to the breaking point; I have turned discursive formations into performative spew, wild theory, Marianne Faithful, Broken English. I am on fire; I am hot on-line, burning through letters to the hard core of something indecipherable, monstrous. I place ice in my hole, one hole and my body tenses, hardens into perfect arrow. Hair burning, language sears itself in the stars. (Burn of first, second, third degree. Your- skin-graft across me, your surgery-gift, sutures. Death, crystal, mud, sound, feather, web-server. My last memory of lights gone out.) But why the constancy of writing, the obsession against which the text is measured by ream, weight, megabyte? This addiction underlies all others; it rebuilds the world, and fills it. The condom-balloon of semen-text, sement, hangs the skein together between myself and what penetration you succeed in, what bullets hole the skull. I can never see through your eye nor would I want to. Younger, speech was my fear and hysteria. I'd prop the world up until I discovered the violence of humor. The prop moved to the talking-cure, self-employed. I wouldn't let myself alone. I'd rip my chest open, demon- strate my organs; blooded text guaranteed some truth, now replaced in the Internet Text with the pain and sweat of continuity. For it is an accomplishment, a continuous meditation that won't let go. I have never spoken so consistently, or for so long, before. I have never worked so carefully, uncompromising, pressing face against the window as the train pulls out. It's a smoggy night in German, 1943, and my con- sciousness is slamming out in small-town Pennsylvania. Now I must go to sleep and attend to my Jennifer. __________________________________________________________________________ The Writing "Writing is a kind of Black Mass he celebrates every evening (before, when he did nothing else, he preferred writing late at night, between midnight and three in the morning) when, alone in a room he thinks of as a hole in the world, a room silhouetted against universal darkness by the single pool of light from his lamp that reveals a white page, he annihilates the world and himself merely by the corrosive work of his mind, constructs out of ink a universe which is drawn from - outlined against - the real and which, in a bundle of pages greedily accumulated and counted, is the only one which belongs to him: the Non-Universe, the annihilated universe." ( From The Traitor, Andre Gorz. ) ( You will recognize his name, the illuminated screen. You will understand the mode of reminiscence, the open hole, the corrosion. You will read into annihilation that violation-fabric which constitutes the building of the tawdry, sleazy, world, from the remnants of drooled ink, tattered pages, dim bulbs against a war-time real. ) ( You will know that all real is always already war-time. You will think through this, the mode of reminiscence, into another scene. But there is no other. ) ( And you will call this _the curtailing._) __________________________________________________________________________ HANGMAN: STOP HER!!! RECEIVED: (FROM jennifer@localhost) BY clara.julu.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) ID XAA00311; TUE, 15 JUL 1997 23:11:34 -0400 DATE: TUE, 15 JUL 1997 23:11:34 -0400 (EDT) FROM: RHS LINUX USER TO: sondheim@panix.com SUBJECT: DO SO MESSAGE-ID: MIME-VERSION: 1.0 CONTENT-TYPE: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII DO SO HELP POOR JENNIFER CAUGHT IN TINY EMAIL HANGMAN DEAD PROGRAM DO SO DEAREST DO HELPEST POOREST JENNIFER I PLAY HANGMAN DO PLAYEST HANGMAN DEAREST JULU I AM SO AFRAID-AND-FEARFUL-JENNIFER DO HELPEST POOR DEAREST JENNIFER THE MOON IS WAXING GIBBOUS (81% OF FULL) THE HANGMAN IS COMING OUT: {B:1} HANGMAN Error opening terminal: unknown. {B:2} /usr/games/HANGMAN Error opening terminal: unknown. {B:3} pwd /root {B:4} TERM=VT100 {B:5} HANGMAN {B:6} {B:6} HANGMAN HANGMAN Error opening terminal: VT100. ______ | | | O Guessed: acefikloprstuy | /|\ | | Word #: 1 | / Current Average: 6.000 __|_____ Overall Average: 0.000 | |___ |_________| Word: KILL-YOURSELF Guess: You got it! Another Word? ONE LEG OFF THE GROUND I CANNOT GUESS SUICIDE BECAUSE I AM TOO-GOOD-JENNIFER BUT I DO GET THE TRUTH AS THERE HAPPEN TO BE 1-2-3-4 WAYS TO PARADISE AND I DO SO TRUE CARRY OUT BEAUTY-JULU NOW I SHALL CUT MYSELF OPEN AND NOW I SHALL JOIN BEAUTY-ALAN _____________________________________________________________________________ Fragments of Colonization quiz Asian Capital Bahrein Manama Pakistan Jakarta What? Djakarta What? Islamabad South Yemen Aden Nepal Katmandu Laos Vientiane Taiwan Taipei Right! Turkey Ankara Right! Indonesia Djakarta Right! Bangladesh Dacca Philippines Quzon City What? Quzon What? Quezon City Vietnam Hanoi Right! Cyprus Nicosia India Delhi What? Iran Tehran Right! South Korea Seoul Right! Lebanon Beirut Iraq Baghdad Khmer Phnom Penh Sri Lanka Colombo Israel Jerusalem Right! Qatar Qatar What? Doha Afghanistan Kabul Australia Canberra Right! China Peiping What? Peking Right! Bhutan Thimbu Japan Tokyo Right! Syria Damascus Jordan Al-kuwait Burma Rangoon Right! Thailand Bangkok Malaysia Kuala Lumpur Maldive Islands Male Mongolia Ulan Bator North Korea Pyongyang Right! Singapore Singapore Papua-New Guinea Port Moresby North Yemen San'a Oman Muscat Rights 12, wrongs 29, extra guesses 6, score 29% ________________________________________________________________________ ThEjPrIncEjofjthieves XeNajburbleSjaLl-gRowlyjonjthEjtEllYjbecause ShejpushesjoutjthroUghjthEjboDyjOf ThEjPrIncEjofjthieves WHojijamjtOjbejcerTain,jandjCertainly,jhAvIngjStOlen ThEjIdea,jamongjoTherjthIngs,jFromjHEgEl, OfjJennifer-julu,jnotjtOjmenTionjthEjDeSertiOn OfjthEjCoNceptjofjclarajandjFrAnz,jhaVejijforgoTten alljthOsejJeweLsjhiddeNjinjsMalljtOwnSjaCrOsSjAmerica, ButjAnYwAy,jI'vejgoTjaplOmbj(sToLen!) WithjAjcerTainjGracej(UnDerjFire)j(sToLen!)j(FromjProMethEus) DOjYoUjhaVejaNyjIdeaj(hegeL)jwhatji'MjTaLkingjaBout!?! No!jSuRely,jthenjijhaVejDonejThEjPErfEctjJob JeweLsjfalljlIkEj(stolEnjkIngs!)jrEignjhERE: ijbidjYoUjFoNdjAdIeU!!jj--jThEjPrIncEjofjthieves ______________________________________________________________________ Woman, Writing, Hand i Are you going to tell me I'm the first one to have discovered this stuff? That it was hidden for centuries, for all time, that no one but me had the slightest clue? That this simplest of things, trivial, really, was com- pletely unknown, or at least relatively so - that it was just a matter of time until I came across it? ( The beauty woman has left the room; if she was reading this over my shoulder, if she was listening to my heart beat, she gave no sign; not a movement or expression was out of step; she seemed placid, calm, in the face of my usual hurricane, wreckage, debris. She took no notice of me, my face, hands. ) ii I'm sick of textual gaming when people are dying. Every word is worth its weight in gold; it may be the last cry of someone heading into the darkest space of all. Anything else is surplus, privileged, the wealth of the rich over the violent anger of the poor, hysteria of the starved. Beware the game which sutures the wide smiling face. iii I'm ill; the apartment temperature is 90 f; I can't think, went to bed at 7:30 this morning, woke up on the floor near the airconditioning with bad dreams; shuddering and nauseous, unable to think; what happens to writing in this condition; _it_ vomits; whatever I say, passes out. iv Dreaming of a girl who doesn't exist, meeting her at a non-existent party in Victoria, pale with glasses, short; she presses her body against me; I can't remember writing like this; there's a future in it while the alarm goes off; scene changes and she's dead forever. What did she say that I can't write? Nightmares of solitude. v Wasting time when there's no time to waste; I have 25 more years, that's all, and I find myself playing games, reading detective novels, not work- ing, not thinking; thinking, in the sense of empathetic investigation, should be full-time; otherwise, my project collapses. Writing should be peripheral, on the horizon, the result of careful, planned thought and experience. Writing is called forth in the continuous face of death; I remind myself that some text will always remain unfinished. vi A _writing-jag_ when the text no longer matters, when it escapes, takes on a foolish life of its own: _I_ escape into triviality; it sustains me; later, I erase. vii What I come across is myself, in the form of a _featured_ woman across ap- plications, desires, protocols, softwares, regions, countries, internets. This is never a matter of pure comprehension; she allows me to take on a life of my own; she pushes me into the borders; the borders had not pre- viously existed; I inhabit DMZs; I wander; stuttering, I chant her words or the words of the other. She gives me name. I give her head. viii What I come across is another, sitting across from me in this computer lab; she is typing with one hand, and I notice her other hand, resting comfortably on her lap, remains fixed in a singular position. I cannot help but wonder if it is prosthetic, at rest; if it is in fact a sculp- tural implement; or if it is simply cramped. It is a beautiful hand, at easy with the body that contains it. ( She is about 30, lightly dressed in the heat, brown hair. She sits sideways at the console. ) ix The writing, uncontained with the body, seeps out across the editor. The distinction, one editor rubbed against another, is what creates writing's _stuff,_ its weight, its exhaustion as it imitates breath. _Sounding_ the depths of a text transforms it back into the body's resonance; your speak- ing is the breathing once again of the space of your throat and lungs into me. I dream of our slow and mutual exhalations. x Her hand has still not moved; perhaps her arm, her right side, in fact, is entirely artificial, attached, just as the other approaches across the do- main of writing, of and not of me, a disturbance in the field of this con- sciousness. xi When I save this text in Pico, Control-O, there is a fast and furious er- ror, a quick scrolling adding hundreds of empty lines, until I bale out. Writing constructs its own void through misapprehensions, misrecognition; I remain elsewhere, fielding correction, as if there were an inherent eti- quette to the text. xii The woman has left the room, her arm extended, her hand remaining in the same position; her everyday life reveals the limits of her prosthesis, no longer what is or is not essential. Writing is my equivalence, all that keeps me from death, borderlined as my dreams are of dream-screens, spit language, splintered teeth, the raw roar of unencumbered sound. xiii The woman has left the room, her chair, computer vacated, blanked, dark. xiv The woman has left the room. _________________________________________________________________________ EARLY IMPORTANT NET DOCUMENTS (1972) SCENARIOS for Using the ARPANET at the INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUT- ER COMMUNICATION (ICCC) from 1972 is the first guide to what later became the Internet. The front page of this is illustrated in Peter Salus' Casting the Net. The conference ran from October 24-26 in Washington, D.C. The 62- page SCENARIOS was published by the ARPA Network Information Center of the Stanford Research Institute, in Menlo Park, California. A copy of the guide is with the BBN Library, and I have been tracking some of the material down. The ICCC was the first real introduction of the Net to the (professional) public, and this then becomes the first how-to, with examples indicating the thinking of the Net community vis-a-vis usage and implementation. This is the sociology, not the technical history of the Net, then. At the ICCC, there were a number of terminals; participants could walk among them, and log in. Each "scenario" connected to a differ- ent application, located somewhere across the United States. The following, which I have now in xerox form, are the programs and the scenarios: PROGRAM SCENARIO English Language Conversational Programs DOCTOR BBN DOCTOR [Eliza-type program] SCHOLAR SCHOLAR PARRY SAIL PARRY TIMMY UCLA-NMC Sigma-7 Data Base Query NIC SRI-ARC ["general intellectual tasks"] NETWRK MIT-DMCG PDP-10 APE SAIL AP HOTline [Associated Press] Games CHESS BBN CHESS CHESS MIT-AI PDP-10 LIFE BBN LIFE [Conway's game] JOTTO MIT-AI PDP-10 Network File Transfer [developed later into ftp] SMFS SRI-ARC RJS Remote Job Service Miscellaneous ABACUS UCLA-NMC Sigma-7 HELP UCLA-NMC Sigma-7 Programming Languages SPEAKEZ SPEAKEASY PPL HARVARD PDP-10 FORTRAN BBN Tenex FORTRAN UCLA-CCN 360/91 TSO Remote Job Entry RJS Remote Job Service Symbolic Algebraic Manipulation MACSYMA Mathlab's MACSYMA There is a table of contents, which also lists MIT H645 Multics, which apparently provided mail; mail was also available through BBN Tenex itself. For those not familiar, BBN is Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., responsible for the first IMP, basically routers, that were the founda- tion of the Arpanet. IMP = Interface Message Processor. SRI-ARC (NIC) was set up at HOST #2 in the room. Control characters were indicated by an up-arrow sign, which later must have transformed into the current ^. For example, Control-a allowed backspace with delete; Control- c returned control to the TENEX EXECUTIVE SYSTEM (which roughly parallels Control-c for ending execution in Unix, linux, or DOS); and Control-t "checked to see if the system is still there," similar to the "are you there" command in some telnet programs. Other commands included, of course, DEL, CR (carriage return), etc. Com- mands were preceded by @. The SAIL AP Hotline was at HOST #11, "a direct Associated Press news line carrying national and international news. The AP Hotline has been interfaced to the SAIL system at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Any terminal on the ARPA Network can be turned into an AP news line by running program 'HOT' at Sail." The following setup had to be performed first: echo remote; insert linefeed after every carriage return login to SAIL LOGGER says you're being connected T R OPEN says you're connected, both transmit and receive. Then a second login opens the particular program; the word is "hot" with some other commands: r hot (in other words, type r, space, hot, carriage return). You then get the linefeed from AP until you type... Control-c. Finally, let's look at the UCLA-NMC HELP at HOST #1. The description is probably that of the first on-line example of hypertext (and very very early hypertext as well): "HELP is a subsystem at UCLA-NMC which permits a user to interrogate a database which is organized in directed graph form. Each vertex of the graph has a paragraph of information, including some information about further details which can be obtained from vertices which are reachable from the current one. "Thus, the user moves from vertex to vertex, investigating each item as his interest directs." The login sequence is six steps. You then login: LOGIN iccc and get a return: JOB STARTED Then you type help and get NNN HELP STARTED where NNN ps the PID, or process number assigned to HELP. You next read DO YOU KNOW HOW TO USE THIS PROGRAM? no and you get a tutorial. Or you can answer yes, and then read: ENTER A SERVICE NAME, X, or ? to get a list of things you can get help about... Here are the help functions: HELP - short description LOGIN - ditto MSG - "how to use our message processor" NETWORK - "tutorials on network resources" SRVYGRAPH TELNET - note this early appearance of TELNET for the public! SURVEY - "some random comments" ----------------------------------------------- One of the critical papers presented at this ICCC is "THE NETWORK CONTROL CENTER FOR THE ARPA NETWORK," which monitored the IMPs. It was written by Alexander A. McKenzie, Bernard P. Cosell, John M. McQuillan, and Martin J. Thorpe. I have a copy of the preprint. Here is a list of node from it, from TABLE 2: SUMMARY OF NETWORK OPERATION May 1971 15 nodes June 15 July 15 August 15 September 18 2,892 Average Host Intersite Output October 18 5,329 (packets/node/day) November 18 6,473 December 19 5,679 January 72 19 9,055 The average line outage during these segments ranged from .59% to 3.21%. The average IMP downtime ranged from 1.77% to 5.50%. Here are some of the reasons for the IMP downtimes: Main frame problems, repair, unknown. High voltage, test, repair power transients. Intermittent core stack IMP move. Software, repair, site Host test. Site power down. Blown fuses. Software bug. New system reload, NCC error. [NCC = Network Control Center] Then as now, the questions at the end of the paper concerned issues of bandwidth: "What are the peak hours of network use and what is the peak-to-average traffic ratio? "What percentage of network traffic do single-packet messages constitute, and how does this percentage vary from Host to Host? "What is the ratio of weekday use to weekend use? "What percentage of line capacity is used during peak hours, and during weekend?" Note the oddly religious overtones from the capitalization of "host." Processing of information was done by paper tapes; BBN had another Host for dealing with the tapes, which was going to be used for analysis as well. Finally, here is the abstract to the paper: "The ARPA Network allows dissimilar, geographically separated computers (Hosts) to communicate with each other by connecting each Host into the network through an Interface Message Processor (IMP); the IMPs themselves form a subnetwork that can be thought of as a distributed computation system. To detect failures in this system each IMP automatically and per- iodically examines itself and its environment and reports the results to the Network Control Center (NCC), at Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., for action. The NCC computer, like any other Host, can itself fail without affecting network integrity; further, the NCC central processor can easily be replaced, in case of failure, by any standard IMP. "The present paper briefly describes the NCC hardware; discusses such software issues as NCC-related routines in the IMPs, data-collection and interpretation mechanisms, line status determination, IMP status and pro- gram reloading, and Host and line throughput; details NCC operations (man- ning, problem-handling procedures, track record); and summarizes overall NCC experiences and future plans." ------ Thanks to Janet Abbate of the Center for the History of Electrical Engin- eering; Alexander A. McKenzie; and BBN itself. Note in relation to a timeline: the first four nodes connected in late 1969; the growth was slow at first, as the machines were tested. These nodes were UCLA, UCSB, SRI, and UTAH. Two final points - the NCC hardware used a central processor with only 12k of 16bit memory! And this was at the core of the net at the time. Second, and more important, according to Abbate's handwritten notes on the xeroxed pages she supplied (for the Scenarios), the BBN Tenex had, in add- ition to mail, games, etc., the commands who and talk (in one or another form) - so there was real time chat in operation at a public demo in 1972. This means that both synchronous and asynchronous user-to-user applica- tions were being rapidly developed by then. _________________________________________________________________________ Speed How fast everything changes! From the viewpoint of evolution, the medieval period collapses upon our own, yet no one reading Jacobus de Voragine's The Golden Legend could mistake one mindset for the other. There is no bridge, no comprehension possible, across these plateaus; the gap is per- manent. Time layers upon layers; moving across my life, as across a pla- teau, I come across moments or habitus that remain without explanation; in fact, I am lost among them, currying incidents only as examples, leverages for present argument. Further, I am well aware that time past is only construct for time present - that is to say, tags occur which create the semblance of past environment, but this creation proceeds by means of algorithms, reconstruction. One no longer thinks reconstruction-_of_ since X may or may not have existed; assuming it _did,_ it has bequeathed only name (address) and tags for future assemblage. I would not know myself now, that is, as I once was, that is, five years ago or less; I would recognize only similarities, equivalences even, but no deep identity. I would _scan_; it's a scanning that skims laterally across history, the Web, a life "my own," bringing to the surface only incommensurabilities - and these, not from any depths, but from the rub- bing of wounds that will not heal, stitches that fall out before their time, suppurations. The leakage of the past always results in a surplus of documents, part-objects, glances, and the political economy of historio- graphy, _as-if,_ and _as-if_ the present were capable of recuperation. We do, literally, _anything,_ to absorb the other, construct it in our own image (and perhaps lower on the scale which we also construct, as proof); other-wise/ways, _it_ will not let us go. Staring at a saint in stone, a shard of pottery or last year's novel, everything appears to come together. We make the glue from inscription, desire, foreclosure. We make a world we call our own, a world with a past. On the Web, the past seems no longer necessary; the world's propped up by other means, not least of which is the fast-forward heady rush of capital. But it is all the same: But it is all the same, because it is all _precisely_ different, and we are incapable of tolerating that. Men and women in fact are not siblings under the skin; they are unrelated strangers, and consider the rising hysteria, were that, for a second, to be universally acknowledged. (We kill the species not our own; we _preserve_ them.) __________________________________________________________________________ Pico-boo! Written in dana: It's like this, this and every other editing system, imposing the com- plexity of memorization upon the format. Here, word-wrap seems useless; all that happens is that the margin turns in upon itself, while the images at the left-hand side of the screen do nothing for me but take away the size and shape of the whole. The control-j of blessed pico, allowing for quick and easy formatting is missing; dana does some min- imal wrap, but I'm not sure where the decisions are made - they seem to be somewhat nonsensical - as if the structure itself were reading from a dictionary and deciding where and when the breaks should be placed. But that's not the whole of it; emacs at least creates the phenomenolo- gy of _sliced grids,_ in which everything is accessible, half drawing, half image, while pico, similar to the edit in DOS, scrolls. Here is what? Is a picture or a window, is a frame. Emacs has the minimal, pico next and of course one can simply write at an empty linux prompt. The less, the better, as text defines its own space, sutures its world close to the memory of wilderness. Everything is deconstructed, but lines in dana are already subdued, in pico transformed into rhetoric, in emacs deepened with always-present buffers and plateaus, with vi, a case of construct. (But I'm ignorant of dana! Ignorant of emacs fine-points, sliding back and forth among major and minor modes, or vi modes, or simply common usage...) Think of _word-wrap,_ absent, say, in teachtext or DOS edit. It's word- wrap that constructs the scroll, invisible breathing of the text; with- out it, the materiality of the letters asserts itself - the line devel- ops _length,_ disappears from the edge of the screen, or the beginning disappears as the line takes cursor with it, continuing indefinitely. Word-wrap is a function of geometry, nothing more; still, it references the positioning of the body, the bandwidth of the screen and subtended viewing angle. Languaging in these editors possesses: graphemes within the symmetrical substructure of the grid; the _stuff_ of the text, its materiality; the _sound_ of the stuff; the _breathing_ of the sound; the apparent flood- ing or _spew_ of the text; the text's _inscriptive tropology_ across applications, nets, editors, etc.; its existence as binary coding; its existence with specified hidden symbols such as or ; its po- tential performativity (program-text, script-text, html-body); its sem- antic universe and semiosis (semantic function-construct); and all the usual linguistic structures, deep/surface, etc. (not to mention the is- sues of the full graphemic lexicon, the language lexicon and dialect, its synchronic and diachronic relationships etc.). Continuing, one should also bring information theory into play, not to mention psychoanalytics, deconstruction, reception theory, issues of gender, class structures, Chomsky's language (as a dialect with an ar- my), and everything just _pours_ across screens, with or without tab marks, rulers, gridlines, icons, menus, scrollbars, help commands... I am an idiot. _______________________________________________________________________ ^ when i am stable i am like a table with four legs down and no questions and when i am down like now, the maple outside the window rings its bastions o----- with brancherly concerns, and when -----o like now i think of suicide and hills because sadness stems from treacherous fern and fen then i hunt for something stronger than pills to kill memories and mocking-birds singing each to each something different like snow flakes covering this corpse high and winging-o flaking your cunt from me as if a throw winged it higher until the throat's loud course crossed the trajectory of horse and hearse where nothing treds across the hedge and gorse, no lines of song and dead you fuck me, cursed v v v v _________________________________________________________________ Mira Beloved of the Lord Mira I will wash the feet of my Lord and Will Sit Mira at this Washing of the Feet and they will Mira make of This a Shrine of a Pool of Water and They will Mira Make of this a Goal of Pilgrimage and I Mira Mira Will be Your Slave, and I will Tend Mira the Lines of Men and Women, and I will Be Mira the tears from Your Eyes, And I will Wipe your Eyes Dry of These Mira Yours Tears, and I will Wipe the Sweat from your Brow and Oh So Mira Careful I will Dust by thy Footprints on the Road and Oh So Mira careful They will be Hide from You Know Who which is of My Name Mira of Mira will be for you Of That Darshan and You Will Know Him and Mira You Will Know Her and There is a Red Thread Across the River and Mira There is A Red Path of Red Dust by the Thread and I will be Your Mira Guide by This River and I will Walk along the Red Thread by the Mira Red Path in the Red Dust and I will Wash your Feet and I will Mira Wash your Feet ______________________________________________________________________ prAyEr < of computeR-dEpArtMent-gAmeS-of-sAlvAtIon-and-DesPeraTion,**** thAt bEaUtIfUl paRtNeR***** WaitinG fOr me on thE oTher Side < Where she has maRked Code, me, and GueSs what, i'M gOd******* B8) + ,, E] CALLI AC,-5 OR CALL AC,[SIXBIT -IMPUUO-] ERROR RETURN... ERROR CODE PLACED IN E+1 OK RETURN... FUNCTION COMPLETED ... E: SIXBIT /NAME/ ;DEVICE LOGICAL NAME O ;RETURN ARGUMENTS ;LOCAL (8 BIT) SOCKET NUMBER ,, ;INITIAL STATE(BYTE SIZE, ; ETC.), REMOTE HOST ;REMOTE(32 BIT) SOCKET 2A2 Operation Upon execution of the IMPUUO, the exec first identifies the requested function and verifies that the user is privileged to use the facility. The device identified in location E is then found and assigned by console to the user. If the device cannot be found and the function is of the connection type, then a free IMP is given to the user. If the specified name is null or "IMP", then the physical name of the device (IMP1, IMP2, IMP3, etc.) is written over it. Otherwise, the supplied name is given to the IMP as a logical name. The NCP(Network Control Program) is called to generate the proper control messages and the current socket state (see section 2A5) is updated, as ap- propriate. If the function is one of those that wait for a reply from the remote host, the user's job is placed in I/O wait until that reply arrives or a timeout occurs (timeout occurs) timeout not yet implemented). When the operation has been completed, the skip return is taken. Whenever an error is detected, the proper code is deposited in E+1 and the non-skip return is taken. 2A3 Function Codes The function codes are not yet fixed and are subject to immediate altera- tion. The current set is: 0 Return the status of transmit socket in left half of E+1 and the receive socket in the right half of E+1. See 2A5 for an explana- tion of the state codes. 1 Start making the connection specified. 2 Start closing the connection specified. 3 Same as (1), but wait for completion. 4 Same as (2), but wait for completion. 5 Listen for external requests for connection. 6 Flush all requests. 7 Get the next external request. 8 Accept the latest request. 9 Reject the latest request. 10 Connect the user's teletype to the specified socket pair. Both must be open. 11 Specify a translation code. (unimplemented) 12 Send an interrupt on link. 13 Trap to specified address on receipt of an interrupt on link. Address is in E+!. 14 Return the version numbers of the IMP service and the NCP in the left and right halves of E+1, respectively. 64 Send a "RST" 65 Send an "ALL". Arguments in E+1 and E+5. 66 Send a "GVB". 67 Send a "RET". 68 Send an "ECO". 69 Send an "ERP". 2A4 Error Codes When the non-skip return is taken, an error code is deposited in E+1 as follows: 0 The function is not available (illegal or not implemented). 1 There is no such device (IMPn with n too big). 2 The device is not available. 3 The device is not an IMP. 4 The socket must be closed for this operation. 5 System error -- socket wouldn't open. 6 Socket must be open for this operation. 7 System error -- socket wouldn't close. 8 Socket must be listening for this operation. 2A5 Socket States 0 S.CLOS Closed 1 S.LSTN Socket is listening for incoming requests. 2 S.RFCN An RFC has arrived on a listening socket 3 S.ABRT A CLS was received for a socket in S.RFCN state. (aborted request) 4 S.RFCW A RFC was sent. An answer is expected. 5 S.OPEN Open for data transfer. 6 S.CLSW A CLS was sent. A reply is expected. 7 S.RFMW Waiting for a RFNM before issuing a CLS. 8 S.CLRC Awaiting a CLS for the logger 9 S.RMLW Awaiting a RFNM for the logger. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [This constitutes the first 3 pages. Punctuation has been preserved. The fourth page is handwritten and contains a diagram, Module interaction for a Telnet-logger Connection. The date on this is 12-May-71; both are from Harvard. The diagram demonstrates the central role of the IMP, NCP, Data Control, and Logger modules, as well as Server and User Processes. Thanks to Peter H. Salus for the xerox. It's unclear whether the diagram is part of the Guide. Salus states that Guide is "four pages long," but the diagram is dated later, and is not necessary for access. The third page ends half-way down. I recommend Salus' Casting the Net; he is also producing two larger vol- umes on the early history of the Net, which will include various repro- duced documents. __________________________________________________________________________ Subject: Advertisement, Virtual Love Advertisement pay me five dollars and when i come, i'll cry out your name pay me five dollars, and, coming, i'll cry your name out, in the empty room pay me seven and i'll caress my naked breasts, whispering, I love you, and for eight, i love you your name my love, your name, and for nine, your name my love, your name, and for nine pay me ten and i'll grasp air, calling you softly i will wrap my arms around the empty air and i will grasp the empty air for fifteen you'll be in all my dreams, and for twenty i'll promise anything, tossing and turning in the bed alone, tossing and turning in that empty bed and for twenty, you will have me, you will have my name, for twenty, you will have my name and for thirty, when you come, i will write @hold you, @hold you in my arms you need not fear escalating prices, i promise you, they remain the same for all time, and as for forty, you dream of naked me, you dream of naked me and now there are no higher prices, this empty air expands and covering your body, and penetrating you, in my dreams, and forever you will have your name upon my lips you will have your name, upon my lips, forever _________________________________________________________________________ Badly-Written Text: What can we learn from the early history of the Net? It's here that we can study the first usages of computer-mediated-communi- cation, the domination of equally-spaced text, message bases, and an ab- sence of excess/curlicues such as might be found in ordinary letters. In other words, literally, what happens when the fullness of speech becomes constricted - and what happened when this first occurred in CMC? (Note that a _symmetrical substructure_ is always present as well, with the ex- ception of vector graphics, at this stage.) It's here also that we can examine the first appearance of virtuality, virtual embodiment - the body taking its first steps onto the wires. When was the first purely online relationship? How was it constituted? How and when did online sexuality develop, beyond the obvious later newsgroups? (How does this relate to early uses of the telephone? What sorts of lib- idinal investment occur in either? Note that a call promises the imminent presence of the voice/vocal body of the other, but email permits the _caress,_ as text is saved.) What did it mean at the time to log into another machine at a distance, to have this sort of control? What did it feel like? What was the phenomen- ology in the beginning? How was the horizon of the subject constituted? In other words, one has to shed the current tacit prosthetics of CMC, withdraw, begin again without familiarity (as if this were possible). Such is a phenomenological wager, here within the deployment of historiography. For it is a culture-in-the-making that we are concerned with, a culture beyond the face-to-face epistemological structures of everyday life. There had already been a series of stages - telephone, television, radio, phono- graph, etc. - but CMC is different in its relative fullness: Even given party lines, telephones quickly became a matter of one-to-one. And television, radio, phonograph can be considered _delivery systems,_ control systems (in other words, similar to theater), rather than _lived spaces._ For in spite of proscenium-space, the notion of an inhabited spa- tial alterity did not really take hold until the Internet. (I am not con- sidering the spaces of dreams, shamanic spaces, the Bardo plane, etc., al- though all of these are relevant.) And there's more: The enormous quantity of information that slid from ma- chine to machine, slides today. The postmodern collapse of space and time (or rather their fragmentation or deconstruction). The new political econ- omy of the planet that may emerge as a result of _contact._ The realign- ment of the socius as a result of a reweaving of personal and impersonal relationships. The new networkings and potential empowerment that may em- erge as a result of physically-dispersed populations suddenly finding themselves as communicative-body. The interweaving of protocols into hu- man affairs, the deepest concerns of the heart... In short, a certain _voyage_ started in 1969, always with dispersed roots elsewhere, back and forward. Shedding ourselves, we live the adventure again. (I couldn't resist this. I recognize how badly this is written, how little history or historiography is considered relevant to the current state of the Net, in spite of Salus and others. What we forget leads to a decay of freedom here, a deep ignorance of roots of any sort. Thinking through the early Net and its uses helps. We're not "living the adventure again," but recuperating our own (textual/virtual/physical) bodies along the way.) --------------------------- *Re: eidetic reduction. __________________________________________________________________________ alan writes to derrida list in his first-ever email 4-5 years ago, a true account: when i come on, and begin to write, there is great fear. i will be writing to derrida himself. there will be others laughing at me. perhaps they will not allow derrida to see my writing. perhaps yes to have a good laugh at my expense. but they are deep inside my skin where my writing is made from. they are too sharp for me but now when i write my Postal they are silent. they wait. they see the first mistake. they see the second mis- take. they see more and more and they wait. they are so smart i am scared! i want to write about the hymen-infiltration. i want to comment because of my thought! they will catch me out. they will know what i know, that i'm a fraud, that i'm dumb, ignorant, dumb. i'll be sure to be found out. ii i hit the control and x keys and i hear a silent wooooshh as the Postal is sent to derrida. perhaps he will be kind. i will see. i will wait. now this is what i'm doing, waiting. now nothing comes, only the Postal re- turned to me from derrida-l or l-derrida, that's all! i read my Postal! i wait patiently for derrida's reply to me about my Postal on derrida-l or l-derrida, and i'm so excited! iii i await you o great derrida of derrida-l l-derrida! i am so scared because this is my first Postal! i imagine you see the image of plato on one side, combined with saint socrates and van gogh shoes too, all pictures! there's a beautiful full header frame! i'm so excited! iv tooovooo later i'm no longer waiting! i've grown, he will not write to me, i'm sure! maybe didn't read my Postal! i no longer write derrida-l or l- derrida. i move on! i am no longer scared tooovooo to write, and when i write Postal now to someone, where, i hear back. i am a valuable person to them! i do know the transubstantiation of all linguistic categories! i know nouns never reply beneath the proper power of the proper name, but there is much excitement for me, and i am tooovooo! tooovooo be sure, i'm no longer scared, and say more whenever and wherever i want! i'll be with you, be you on net-l, l-net. i'll tooovooo be derrida tooovooo your derrida! _________________________________________________________________________ Deflationary Culture: Weather Report, Which Way the Wind Calms Down { For the past few years, I have served on an jury for the experimental section of a film festival. This year, there were around 150 entries in the category. The specific festival is irrelevant here; its demographics are broad-based, and calls for entries are distributed by mail, brochure, and the Net. The following is a somewhat biased, somewhat open, weather report; errors in interpretation are totally my own. } Jurying films creates a cultural image, for better or worse - a landscape, and the landscape this year, built on those of previous years - is that of a _deflationary regime_ - not postmodernity's _implosion of information,_ but a regime of exhaustion, in which collapse combines with expulsion or DMZ (demilitarized zone). Implosion intensifies, the key to nuclear weap- ons; deflation weakens (one might speak of _weak theory_ again), the pres- sure reaching _degree zero,_ an entropic balance with the surround envir- onment. Cinematically, this is reflected in stereotypical reiterations of style, ennui, boredom which doesn't kill, images of breeze-driven waves, oceans beneath grey skies, a neutral, somewhat politically-correct sexuality, confused boys, boys and girls concerned with _the look._ Script-urally, look for the voice-overs, confessionals, flat voices which have nowhere to place emotional registers, no _site_ for them. They're historyless, because history has overdetermined them. They're ahi- storical, occupying the neutral zone as well. With Warhol it was the _oth- er_ that was boring, within the factory, looking out; now, boredom has been replaced by the inoculation of novelty; the planar (lateral) skimming of the Web immediately comes to mind. A deflationary regime levels epistemological domains, confuses ontologies; the _same,_ Irigarayan and _other_wise, dominates. The signifier turns tentative; the signified is recuperated as a stain against a backdrop of unnamed fetishization. Virtual/real, in/out - these terms, and others of similar structural import - are not only deconstructed, but turned barren, as if the distinction had never mattered at all. Acts of violence are mu- ted; the wide-angle, precise-angle replaces the camera too intent to probe. Texas-flat, midwestern-flat scenery suffuses content, which turns back, not towards, say Michael Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip family tragedy, but towards the anecdotal, story-telling, autobiographical. Being-born replaces the annunciation; bearing birth replaces enunciation. Where we are in the culture is waiting for Terence McKenna _to be right,_ knowing exhaustion perhaps only goes so far - but then remembering, say, Duvignaud's Change at Shebika, where exhaustion was all that went... ii During day 2, the piano music was marked - slow, moody, in so many of the films, somewhat romantic, slow or absent rhythms, the quiescent decay of European/classical tradition. A shorter category included digital image manipulation, often reminiscent of blue-screen effect, but harsher, fast- er. Female nudes, very little frontal, no frontal male nudes. People a- sleep, _arrayed_ beneath sheets, of course lent back into the dream. More non-sync voice-overs - a result to a great extent of increasing difficul- ties obtaining funding. Foliage, or aestheticized cityscapes. Meadows without direction or vector, wandering. Figures in black. Very few rela- tionship or overtly queer works. A largely young white demographics, but with new work from Asian-Americans. Flowers, opera, exhausted magic. As if our culture were no longer doomed, as if there were "our" culture, say Corso, Burroughs, but was past all memorization. As if there were few others, cultures, multi-cultures, multiculturalisms, those tentative with- in this our Euro-American topography. What to do when the advertiser comes carrying no promises, but occupying the landscape with improper media noise (and that landscape of impropriety in collusion). Every body has a shell, that is to say ectoplasm migrated from the mouth to desire's image as coating or masquerade. Little energy, as if to speak were fear, or rather to speak were theory, but theory has gone to sleep as well. It's as if everyone dreams everything. Capital _fits_ less than in past years, that is it's no longer clear that everything is beneath the Sign. As for signifiers, now of the plateau itself - the plateau signs itself, languor, lassitude, loosened. A certain loss of saying _I_ in these environments designed for the precision of _eyes,_ occasionally undercut by female pain or rage - _there_ at least the voice crosses space, defining it, id, loud or pleading, as if no one remains within hearing. Surely there is work to do if a cultural fulcrum were evident - the symptoms are all present, lend themselves to the Web, zines and anti-media, media, fractally spiraling everywhere. But what to do, what to do, fretting. Pacing where the bed's unmade, the breeze flows through the window open to the meadow, white cur- tains stilled in a landscape perfect for cinematic recuperation. There are numerous drones, almost metallic, on numerous sound-tracks, and they muf- fle, sometimes suffocate, almost by accident, perhaps by accident, some voices of _telling_ display. (Perhaps by accident, perhaps by accidental purpose, perhaps a purpose.) The fulcrum, lever, requires a structured topography and a subject of means. Playgrounds were not in evidence, but a seesaw metaphor might hold in these withholdings. It is a question of what can be done on the planet, within certain domains where the signifier has spilled, leaked, dried up - where the signs are, even the simulacra, and where the crust has broken through. Weakly theoretical in the undoing, deflationary culture spreads globally, absorbing inscription itself in its path. There's nothing to fear but the closing of film labs, increasing hunger of the empire of the digital; soon hunger becomes consumed by bytes, and both human and other uneasily coexist within the threat of extinction's future anterior. _________________________________________________________________________