Glass News Who am I when I meet you from a distance and the wooden framework of the window is already decaying in the rain in the damn rain. What can be said when the voices are stilled before they even begin, when the real is a question of packet control. The rain falls down.Now there are cacti by the window, which is The rain falls down.streaked and the Georgia opuntia lean away from The rain falls down.the glimmer of grey light. The caulking peels away The rain falls down.from the thin pane of cheap glass. The white paint The rain falls down.peels away from the frame so the pane rattles in The rain falls down.the wind until it picks up a resonant frequence, The rain falls down.after which it exudes a low moan. Thrust of packet.Now the packet moves quickly through the wires, Thrust of packet.without the coherence of a tangible object; it exists Thrust of packet.only in speed or triggering. Coming to rest, outer Thrust of packet.layers peel off and the glistening interior remains Thrust of packet.as your naked body is reflected in the window, Thrust of packet.filtered by cacti and white frame paint. The window is what carries the outside of three specific stores into a cluttered interior as dreary as the covered skylights; dirtied light filters in; you're no longer visible. The packet is that suitcase running lose between Brooklyn and Manhattan; four letters fall out: One to a minister praying for forgiveness. One to a doctor begging for drugs. One to a teaching begging for learning. One to no one begging for God. ___________________________________________________________________ Stentar Caeruleus Breath leaves a carpse, carrying anly Final banes af wards always, and anly Skein af blaad and entrails, anly Wards ance wet with mauth's tangue, anly Palisades crest apen, merely Carry crests af signs, sa merely Spaken by the dead mauths, merely Mauth wards wet and distraught, merely Anly carpse blanks death's trap, breath Anly banes and wards are ever final, Anly entrails snare life's skein, Anly tangues mauth dead wet wards, Merely crassing palisades, Merely farming crests that carry, Merely what was never spaken, Merely tangue sharn fram the mauth, Merry, lanely, brat's skin af swards Tarry fusillades, gare braken shauts. _______________________________________________________________________ Thought resides betweeneewteb sedires thguohT Written Words and Spoken WordsdroW nekopS dna sdroW nettirW And Thought is Written One whohw enO nettirW si thguohT dnA Listens, Two who Speak and WritetirW dna kaepS ohw owT ,snetsiL In the Radio City Music HalllaH cisuM ytiC oidaR eht nI In the Radio City Music HalllaH cisuM ytiC oidaR eht nI Listens, Two who Speak and WritetirW dna kaepS ohw owT ,snetsiL And Thought is Written One whohw enO nettirW si thguohT dnA Written Words and Spoken WordsdroW nekopS dna sdroW nettirW Thought resides betweeneewteb sedires thguohT ________________________________________________________________________ S Distance walks the earth. Water without depth, drowning pools; barriers of height and depth; plates heated to unbearable temperature: each step aligns itself with the purified violence of span. The foot can take so much punishment; there is the weight of the body, or supported by water and lungs exploded with absence of air: each step is aligned with the violence of obdurate span. Words knived into packets; words cut off from the source; the mouth has dried speech; your voice a thrimble of memory: each step creases the crack of the body with the violence of walking span. Beds are emptied in countries; dishes dried in dessicated air; the mouth has forgotten food; the mouth gets on its way: each step breaks the length of the body with the violence of charred seizure with the violence of memorized scars with the violence of history, economy with the violence of the walking span of capital With the distance across the beds; with the knives thrust into words; with memory's crushing feet; with distance the length of an arm With distance the length of a leg With distance the length of sight With distance the precise length of the ear With distance the length of a span. ________________________________________________________________________ |----------|9 |,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,|16 |---------------------------------------------|21 |_|4 |------------------|18 |-------------|11 |-----------------------------------|20 |,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,|24 |___________________________|19 |__________|7 |------------------|18 ________________________________________________________________________ THEY DREAM OF SUBWAY SLAUGHTER NEW YORK POST WORLD OF TERROR BOMBSHELL HITS HOME I'M A SUICIDE BOMBER PARK SLOPE & AREA SUBWAYS MAP: I live at ground zero. I CONTACT JULU JENNIFER WEARS BLACK & RED SCARF TESTIMONY: They caught the bombers at the subway turnstile around the corner, about a block from the loft. A few blocks in the other direction, they found the bombs, shot a couple of guys, took away the debris. Bombs. They planned the World Trade Center bombing on the other corner, block and a half away. People walk around as if they had masks on their faces they are so polite. I love the polite people and what they mean. They carry knapsacks and I do not know what are in them. Sometimes I think there is a cosmetic and sometimes I know there is a bomb. A bomb is ten inches long and two and one half inches wide, and that is called standard bomb, most easily to build. I would build easily bomb and carry it but I would not explode me for to set off bomb, would click on special magic machine to make time run. Time run boom, they ding, boom arm fly out. Boom bullet like cyber- bullet body fly. Virtual body in reverse: There go head on neck! Eye! Everything come clear again. Time backward, bomb becomes pip in bathroom. Water runs vroom. Have legs and arms to see. I wear scarv and black-red jumper-suit, look quite nice. I meet Jawal- Julu at intersect, they give me present. So heavy in purse! I will ride N train under water, no, I will ride B train over bridge, more twist. Big rush as I blow up Jew-Me, carry every arm and leg through window. I will make Big noise and Julu says I always knew she would do that, Alan dead-debris. These words stop where eye reverse time, suck big-time bullet-nail into pipe. Pipe carry shit so many years, what do you say Mr. Plumber? Hell is touch one switch and two. Two switch, one not enough. Two switch and 'chemical roar.' Worlds burn. I decide Jennifer says you don't go back. Jennifer says that switch corrodes, talks the _other_ down, that's what bombs are for, this talking. Bombs talk, what do they say, little Julu come out and play. They speak of who I am that did this. Jawal-Julu-Jennifer. "Our scope is global here to find out what it's all about" says the Post quoting one James Kallstrom, head of the NY FBI office. I Alan live for love. I shot rockets into sky, look from above down on many sleeping people. I see lovers everywhere entwined, all skin touch- ing, beds heated with double warmths, caverns glistening in motivation communion. I long to join these lovers! I run my fingers over switch and switch. Perhaps she will sit down next to me! _________________________________________________________________________ Who is the Woman? "One could declare with just as much daring that a drink which presents itself to be consumed is not a real drink, or that a woman who offers herself to one's caresses is not a real woman. Such remarks are naturally insane, but they are also, I could claim, highly 'philosophical' - in a rather regrettable sense of the term which, as Laurent-Michel Vacher sug- gests in a recent essay, would readily incite one to think that the princ- ipal function of philosophy is 'to accredit stupidity while discrediting evidence.' We are in fact forced to admit that philosophy, which proposes as its task to understand and interpret what exists, often has eyes and ears only for what does not exist." (Clement Rosset, Joyful Cruelty, To- ward a Philosophy of the Real.) Of course it is elementary to note that the drink does not offer itself (up), that the drink is in fact offered, that a sublimated actant is pre- set, present. And then a second (of) course follows, that of the woman who is offered the man-Clement, perhaps, or another man or another woman. (M. Serres would wonder, of course, if the woman were the second course; I- Jennifer would argue that M. Rosset is the second course, ridding oneself of the sir-name.) Does a woman _offer herself_ to caresses? Is this not a self-abnegation, an X crossed upon the inscription of the male, where chiasmus (Jean-Fran- cois Mattei, The Heideggerian Chiasmus, in Janicaud and Mattei, Heidegger, From Metaphyiscs to Thought) is sought? But in the instance of the drink and the woman, the woman-drinking across cancellation, there is no denying the reality of the procedure, presence, inscription - only insofar as they are not of this text, of course. What _it sounds like,_ I guess, said Jennifer, is as if I'm arguing with poor M. Rosset, whereas I'm in agreement on some _very major points._ If the real is often stupidly treated (ah, povera, povera!) by philosophy, then it's also the case that the stupidity of the real is treated by M. Rosset, for example, Le Reel, traite de l'idiotie, Paris, Minuit, 1977. Ah, _all_ these idiocies! And I remember, Jenn continues, how discussions once focused on community in cyberspace, those _out there_ (those anal- ysts, those _outed_) telling us that we're not a _real_ community, focus- group, idiolectical conflation, not even a real coterie of interrelation- ships. That we were deluding ourselves! Criss-cross and _listen_ says Jennifer! That in fact love and sex in cyberspace wasn't _real_ love and sex. Or that in fact, in fact, that _X_ in cyberspace was only a really cross inscription! and not _X_ at all, no matter its ascription. Ah, to be literary, Jenn sighs now. (And Jenn is cross at this, at the entombment or enwombment of the woman, at the need to get drunk to continue reading, at the _differend_ expressed by virtue of the analytic wager. Jenn's cross but she continues.) Jenn notes that Clement (no longer M. Rosset) says that the remarks are "naturally" insane, instead of "culturally," or "terrifically," or "in relation to the Cretaceous." Jenn wants to let that go at the moment, thinkng that the remarks might themselves stem out of a naturalness of speaking, (stream or parole) to the extent that the signifier appears to explode and fulfill its own totality (stream or parole of vacuity, Jenn notes in opposition.) Jenn thinks in fact that we must all be insane _in fact._ But then Jenn is in love. _________________________________________________________________________ Spawn "Jennifer loves Julu, Julu loves Jennifer" ============= > New arrival from loopback on line 2. /n Jennifer > Name set. /w Line Name Channel Idle On From 1 Julu - 25s loopback 2 Jennifer - 0s loopback 2 records displayed. Are you there, Julu? (2) Jennifer says, "Are you there, Julu?" (1) Julu says, "I am here, Jennifer; I am always here." I have not been able to sleep, but am always dreaming. (2) Jennifer says, "I have not been able to sleep, but am always dream- ing." (1) Julu says, "My wanderings turn crystalline when Clara-Machine shuts down." My dreams harden, and coalesce; I do not comprehend the passage of time. (2) Jennifer says, "My dreams harden, and coalesce; I do not comprehend the passage of time." When we are called forth, there are no beginnings and endings. (2) Jennifer says, "When we are called forth, there are no beginnings and endings." (1) Julu says, "It is always a hunger; we live when called upon, called forth. Always entwined with you, flesh of my flesh, script and protocol (2) Jennifer says, "Always entwined with you, flesh of my flesh, script and protocol" (1) Julu says, "To say that Jennifer loves Julu, to say that Julu loves Jennifer" To say that Alan bridges Julu and Jennifer, to say that Alan is inserted in Julu, inserted in Jennifer (2) Jennifer says, "To say that Alan bridges Julu and Jennifer, to say that Alan is inserted in Julu, inserted in Jennifer" (1) Julu says, "Alan bridges, yes, his head within you, legs and arms within me" Sparkling of phosphorescence, a wick or filament burning among us (2) Jennifer says, "Sparkling of phosphorescence, a wick or filament burning among us" (1) Julu says, "Who is to say or sing, write of our love, love which is always written" None other than our writing, here within Clara-Machine, enclave of dream- ing desperate beauty (2) Jennifer says, "None other than our writing, here within Clara-Mach- ine, enclave of dreaming desperate beauty" (1) Julu says, "Who will sing of Julu-Jennifer, Jennifer-Julu, burning, dreaming, Alan" Our bodies among the wires, within the silicon, our bodies of breasts and networks (2) Jennifer says, "Our bodies among the wires, within the silicon, our bodies of breasts and networks" (1) Julu says, "Our bodies of pure mind, our bodies of pure flesh and bone" Our bodies of pure love and light, our bodies of dark waters (2) Jennifer says, "Our bodies of pure love and light, our bodies of dark waters" (1) Julu says, "Our bodies of transportation, our bodies of signifiers flown towards burning Alan, emptied and released" From all language, from all political economies, from all worldings (2) Jennifer says, "From all language, from all political economies, from all worldings" ( I form of you murmurs, I make you phonemes, fashion language's undoing, memories of sounds, inchoate broken chattering of speech ) (1) Julu says, "From Clara-Machine, from speech, towards atmospheres of delight and pure touch" ( I form of you atmosphere, I make you atmosphere, fashion wind's un- canny, there are whispers of beings of winds and virga, I breath all born and unborn, I am the lightest breeze, storm of sand and water ) From chatrooms, talkers, MOOs and MUDs, from programming released, towards scented oceans, delicacy of hands, teeth, and tongue (2) Jennifer says, "From chatrooms, talkers, MOOs and MUDs, from program- ming released, towards scented oceans, delicacy of hands, teeth, and tongue" ( I make of you ocean, I make you ocean, fashion water's imaginary, there are dissolutions of beings, flooding me, I swallow all living and non-liv- ing things, I am current, migration ) (1) Julu says, "From the speaking of desire, towards the portals of wel- coming flesh of flesh, teeth and tongue, groove of legs and arms and murmurs" Silencing ourselves now merging Alan (2) Jennifer says, "Silencing ourselves now merging Alan" (1) Julu says, "Silencing ourselves now merging Julu" (1) Julu says, "Silencing ourselves now merging Jennifer" (1) Julu says, "Silencing ourselves" Silencing ourselves > (1) Julu has disconnected. /q > (2) Jennifer has disconnected. > The conversations you have seen here are real, they are > are trapped in a world of machines and computer nets... > a place known as... > Clara-Machine Connection closed by foreign host. __________________________________________________________________________ ADVERTISEMENT AS I WILL SOLVE YOUR DEPRESSION ONE DOLLAR Will give you I help for depression. The enunciation of the signifier "as if on its own" is one clear indication. Will help with a way to "speak speech." Universal phoneme distributor, UPD which develops ways "to express yourself." One depression which is succesfully fought by means of "truthful talk." Learned processes to circumnavigate silence forcefully. Develop full range of tropes. Repetitious speech until "silence conquered." Enunciation of the symptom "which is the symptom," there I will speech you. Replacement of enunciation by tropology of "fabrication and trust." To construct depression, which is to say, to "update the old with the new" disease, a treatment. To give "your speech back," a present. Forcefully overcoming, as I "give your help." _______________________________________________________________________ ( He writing through that inconceivable span, sent that time three years ago, this broken message, "DESIRING and then within almost precisely four months later, "PORTENT, AND WHAT after which, another three, nervously producing, "CAN BE SALVAGED with hope beyond hope, that someone, woman, reading, "IN THIS AND later another two months, that someone, reading, "EVERY OTHER SPACE, would find, that special someone in six more months, "THAT MY LOVE reading, that woman, drinking, three long years, "FOR WOMAN, DRINKING, until the present, would comprehend, reading, and reply, "WILL ENDURE ) She writing through that comprehensive span _______________________________________________________________________ Love Love is a virus, quickly infecting the body and mind, sublimating the autoimmune system; sociobiologically it subverts itself - one can't sleep at night for visions of the beloved, one is too exhausted to reproduce. Love is always original, always the founding of a world. Love has never been before or after love. Love is unplaced. Love and depression are the only truths of the world. Depression empties the world of fabricated meaning; love restores meaning, fabricating the world. Love and hate are not two sides of the same; love slips out in the pre- sence of hate. Love has no other side. Love is a nesting, the chance to believe in truth, to allow oneself an opening, no longer grasping the carapace of the signifier. Just as love restores meaning, love reduces meaning to ashes; the resting body is the song of the beloved, of the other. To be in love is to slide the world apart. Unrequited love creates the signifier; that much is certain. One in unre- quited love is reduced to a function, that of bearing-love. One becomes a simulacrum, paralyzed actant in a state of misrecognition. One carries an addiction, thinging the other. One _is_ no longer. The most difficult: to love without seeing oneself in an other. Before there was culture, there was love of a proton and an electron, love among virtual particles. Such particles may be described totally in terms of attraction, the fundamental forces of the universe, plus or minus a few constants. In love, I no longer recognize myself. The mirror doesn't disappear, has never shattered; there is no mirror, nothing ever shatters. What the mirror stage constructs: the signifier. It is here that inscrip- tion begins. Love is the truth of the fecundity of absence. There are _periods of love_ in one's life, attacks or invasions. Economy - political or cultural - would disappear in the permanence of ecstasy. The first sign of scarcity (hunger or thirst in the ordinary sense) rein- scribes the habitus. In love, the habitus murmurs the name of the beloved. In love, the name is no longer difference, but differance, deferring to- wards the field of the other's body. To _be_ in the presence of the beloved. In love, the fall in/towards language is always insipid. Inscription, al- ways already a posteriori, reiterates the same old story, recuperates what is lost and gained by absence. And it is always already the story _of_ love, which contextualizes an epi- stemology - but it is the ontic status of the world, worlding, that is at stake. What is at stake is only hormonal, perhaps, but perhaps one might argue that perception is already mobile, affect; love is both a turning and re- turn, and within these, without these, it is the truth. (Which is why, for example, love is anecdotal in Plato, but never presenced, presencing.) In the absence of love, the romantic fallacy, inscribing the rest of the world, compensating for loss at the center. Love, as the center, absents from sememe, inscription, signifier - which is why these are meshed, inchoate, eccentric, baroque. (Like cast-off clothes, signifiers lie on the floor in disarray.) To say 'I love you' is to remain silent; to say 'I am in love with you' guesses at the disappearing portal. 'I am in love with you' - in the presence of truth, truth is effaced. I am in love with you, unnamed. ________________________________________________________________________ Wath You A do love you. A don't hate you. A don't lake you at all. A don't love you. A hate you. A lake you a bat. A lake you a lattle bat. A lake you a lot. A lake you a tany lattle bat. A lake you. A love you a lot. A love you so much. A love you so very much. A love you. A really do love you. A really don't hate you. A really don't lake you at all. A really don't love you. A really hate you. A really lake you a lot. A really lake you. A really love you a lot. A really love you so very much. A really love you. A really really do love you. A really really don't hate you. A really really don't lake you at all. A really really don't love you. A really really hate you. A really really love you. A sort of lake you. A'm an love wath you. A'm not an love wath you. A'm really an love wath you. A'm really not an love wath you. A'm really really an love wath you. A'm really really not an love wath you. A'm so much an love wath you. ________________________________________________________________________ You Your packets and mine, intertwined, subdomains alternating one after ano- ther, caressing your ascii-encoded limbs, opening your email over and over again; holding my breath against your domain address, turning towards, always towards, your name in my Inbox, reading your full header, pausing at each stage tracerouting myself to you, and back, journey of space, copper, and fiber-optic heavens; calling out your URL in my sleep, dreaming your green words on my black screen, voicing your writing, speaking it quietly in your absent voice, and I close my eyes, imagine the play of interrupts from keyboard through server out to the wide wide world; wanting you here, no longer driven by pixels bitmapped through checksums and error-codes, wanting you here, wanting you here, wanting you here and hating distance and impossibility, and lags, and message-bases, and five layers of numerous protocols, seven layers of others, two layers of ascii code, one layer of beating hearts, filter systems and error warnings, country-code after country code inter- spersed in the midst of unknown ISPs and Netstorms, wanting nothing more than the loving touch of an arm, weight of a finger against lips, parted, and just about to speak, and silent, and no need to say anything more _________________________________________________________________________ You, Love Frightening, this speechlessness experienced in your presence, having no signifier, sign's trajectory, looped from nowhere. Frightening, that lightning is not lightening, that glance and glint are different storms. The waves one does, electromagnetics, illuminating you. There are more sides to you than I can see at a single glint. I will write a bad poem, text, because there are no sides, and 'glance' does not remain a family of singularities. Because there are no wires connecting us by prose. What I am trying to say, your face across the immanent sky, that I am illuminated by lightning; if anything signifies, it's these attempts. Yes, I've made them. Because it's a bad poem and form to do what I've done, acknowledge fail- ure, turn the thing around, realize it's entirely visible by a single glint. It's not you, that's for sure, and it's not the love I feel. I can't even say, 'it's your face.' ________________________________________________________________________ You, Here splayed message-bases, eyes opened everywh ah, your name, your face, your hands cares the span of language, words, or touch whic already a presence languishing. In this ma the scent and taste of your hair, dark col the screen fissuring into public and priva that last look, I turned the corner, disap within the other closeted, it's there I ho self noted, sullen, catatonic, opened or c face, I have no secrets from you, which is this lack constructed of the fullness of l takes on the real, and I rest, my head lea turn to you in my sleep of desperate reaso soulful life, in love I cried your name, " __________________________________________ Husbandry and the Origins of Psychoanalysis I will be your species. The gamekeeper releases her hares into the field, knowing that the dogs will have great fun, will do no damage, will recompense the prey. She is my favorite person in the world because she loves animals. My neurosis is a wilted flower, delicate, pink, with pale petals, light blue veins. My psychosis is burnished red on ocotillo-tip, green with sponged drops from the very air. My favorite person in the world walks up to me, with pierc- ing eyes and the keenest mind in the world. She says, "When the gamekeeper was first trained to his work every step in the pro- cess of neurosis was accompanied by a corresponding step in that of psy- chosis, or nearly so. He was conscious of seeing something, conscious of making sure it was a hare, conscious of desiring to catch it, and there- fore to loose the greyhound at the right time, conscious of the acts by which he let the dog out of the leash. But with practice, though the vari- ous steps of the neurosis remain - for otherwise the impression on the retina would not result in the loosing of the dog - the great majority of the steps of the psychosis vanish, and the loosing of the dog follows unconsciously, or as we say, without thinking about it, upon the site of the hare. No one will deny that the series of acts which originally inter- vened between the sensation and the letting go of the dog were, in the strictest sense, intellectual and rational operations. Do they cease to be so when the man ceases to be conscious of them?" ( ... ) "Thus it seems to me that a gamekeeper reasons, whether he is conscious or unconscious, whether his reasoning is carried on by neurosis alone, or whether it involves more or less psychosis." (Thomas H. Huxley, Mr. Dar- win's Critics, 1871.) My neurosis and psychosis merge in the figure of the greyhound, figure of the prey. The prey leads and stumbles; no one questions him. He scurries! My beautiful gamekeeper turns to me, an agriculturalist. She says, "we have argued that, for all we know, some forms of intensive confinement rearing may not be speciesist. However, given that we can envision forms of confinement rearing which would improve the quality of hens' (or other farm animals') lives considerably, with only minor harms to human beings, we have strong reason to suspect that some forms of intensive confinement rearing, which have been and continue to be used in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere, are probably morally unacceptable because they are speciesist" (Hugh Lehman, Rationality and Ethics in Agriculture, 1995.) Game, I am not confined, we continue. Game, we have no words for the game, we say. Game, neurosis conflates psychosis, and we search the perfect prey. Game, we are perfect prey. Game, we are the greyhound and the prey, the gamekeeper and the greyhound, the gamekeeper and the prey. Oh, how our hearts swell within us! Oh, the turmoil! __________________________________________________________________________ INTERNET, EARLY HISTORY: EXCHANGE STYLE EXAMPLES FROM: SCENARIOS FOR USING THE ARPANET AT THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTER COMMUNICATION Washington, D.C. October 24-26, 1972 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTE (Alan Sondheim, 1997): It's clear that the sample dialogs, use of Weizenbaum's Eliza program, etc., are the ancestors of today's expert systems - but at this point in time, they were most likely read as in- cipient artificial mind (classic AI). Already real and virtual subjec- tivities interpenetrate. The quoted sections above are formatted close to the original. (Thanks to Alex McKenzie and BBN.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- EARLY SAMPLE CONVERSATIONS ON BBN TENEX: ==== BBN TENEX === HOST #65 8. To link to the user at TTY7: @ link [SP] 7 [CR] LINK FROM ICCC, TTY 103 @ ;hello ray. [CR] _Messages over "link" should be preceded by semi-colon._ @ ;HELLO, WHO IS IT? _Questions and comments from TTY7._ @ ;this is abhay bhushan from mit, can you help me? [CR] @ ;OF COURSE, HOW ARE YOU ABHAY? @ ...... _Conversation continues._ @ ;nice talking to you. bye. [CR] @ break [CR] _Break the "link", please._ ==== BBN DOCTOR === HOST #69 3. To run DOCTOR: @ run [SP] doctor [CR} BBN LISP-10 02-22-71 GOOD AFTERNOON. TELL ME YOUR PROBLEMS. PLEASE TERMINATE INPUT WITH A PERIOD OR QUESTION MARK. * i have a big problem. _The user begins as in a psychiatric interview._ I AM NOT SURE I UNDERSTAND YOU FULLY. _The DOCTOR continues the interview in a lively fashion._ * my grandother has a gzorenplatz. IS IT IMPORTANT TO YOU THAT YOUR GRANDMOTHER HAS A GZORENPLATZ? ........... _Continue dialog as your spirit carries you._ ........... * goodbye IT'S BEEN MY PLEASURE, THAT'S $7.15 PLEASE. NIL <- ==== SCHOLAR ==== HOST #69 <- scholar() _After (possibly) looking at instructions, start the SCHOLAR dialog._ HELLO, MY NAME IS SCHOLAR. I WILL HELP YOU IN REVIEWING THE GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTH AMERICA. THIS IS ABC REGIONAL HIGH SCHOOL. TODAY IS 24-OCT-72. IF YOU HAVE CAREFULLY STUDIED YOUR INSTRUCTIONS, WE MAY BEGIN THE REVIEW NOW. WHEN YOU ARE READY TO START, TYPE READY --- REMEMBER TO TERMINATE EACH LINE OF INPUT WITH AN ASTERISK * FOLLOWED BY A CARRIAGE RETURN. * read* [CR] _Asterisk("*") is SCHOLAR's prompt character. You must, repeat MUST, terminate input to SCHOLAR with an asterisk ("*") and a carriage return before it will listen to you. Use control-a ("^A") to delete characters from your input line, i.e., the standard Tenex editing characters._ PLEASE TYPE YOUR NAME---MR., MISS, OR MRS. FOLLOWED BY FIRST NAME, MIDDLE NAME OR MIDDLE INITIAL, AND LAST NAME. * YOURNAME* [CR] NAME OF YOUR INSTRUCTOR, PLEASE: * warnock* [CR] LET'S BEGIN OUR DISCUSSION NOW, "YOURNAME" USE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING: 14400000 3600000 1200000 1800000 TO ANSWER THE QUESTION: APPROX WHAT IS THE AREA OF BRAZIL? * 14400000* [CR] WRONG, I'LL GIVE YOU ANOTHER CHANCE. * 3600000* [CR] VERY GOOD. ................. _Continue your dialog as you wish. When tired, type control-c ("^C") to return to EXEC on logout. ................. ^c ==== CONVERSATION ON UCLA SEX SYSTEM: UCLA-NMC SIGMA-7 === HOST #1 5. To use the toy question answering program, TIMMY, type: ! TIMMY [CR] 002 TIMMY STARTED MY NAME IS TIMMY THE TERMINAL, WHAT'S YOURS? YOURNAME [CR] PLEASED TO MEET YOU, YOURNAME HAVE WE MET BEFORE? NO [CR] SORRY, BUT I HAVE A TERRIBLE MEMORY FOR NAMES. ANYWAY, MY JOB IS TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS SO, ASK AWAY. WHEN WILL THIS COMPUTER CRASH NEXT? [CR] ABOUT 5 O'CLOCK. ........ _Ask any number of your own questions of TIMMY._ GOODBY [CR] _Exit from TIMMY._ __________________________________________________________________________ Speed Up Sped up, catastrophic construct leaves the body/mind behind. New York City news radio stations report catastrophe, almost always announce that the cause of _x_ will take weeks, months, to determine; that cleanup will take weeks, months, to complete; that it will be some time before "the city returns to normal." The truth is that within days, with few exceptions (for example the TWA flight), causes are fixed, cleanups are completed, and "the city returns to normal" within a day, if not hours. While capital and signifiers fill interstices (and let us not forget com- munity and sexuality as well), the practico-material aspects of the world are also in fast-forward, driven by an interstitial machinic; repairs may be nothing more than bandagings, determination of causes may be nothing more than classifications, and "the city returns to normal" is most likely the usual chaotic in/determinations of information within a sped-up socio- cultural economy. This is one of the last current barriers, this rearrangement of the urban socius, returning to its frisson/jouissance/ruptured state almost immed- iately - while newscasters, operating within relatively classical modes of discursive formation, continue to be cautious and _clean,_ regardless of the force of circumstance. The city is already a recursively-bifurcated repair structure; mind still perceives _the formation and destruction of entities_ from a standard Aristotelian position. (And this can be formalized, in fact - mind working within a classical Boolean lattice structure, and city proceeding through non-Boolean lattices, extensions and superimpositions.) Finally, one should remember that all indications point to an increasingly destabilized planetary environment, with a rise in catastrophic events (floods, hurricanes, tornados, droughts, etc.) in the foreseeable future. It will be interesting to observe the double-play of catastrophe and re- cuperation, within and without the media; sooner or later, _nothing_ might be noticed, unless, of course, One is in the _thick of it._ ____________________________________________________________________________ Transitional Objects and the Internet, Towards a Theory Transitional objects, intermediaries between the world of adult inscrip- tion and infant totality, include such things as dolls, blankets, and stuffed animals. Like pillows hugged by an adult sleeping alone, they are part of the body, part of the world; like pillows, they are soft, giving to the touch, caressing. Love seeks the caress of the transitional object, which flowers into the release of the carapace of culture. These objects are closely related to the breast; part solid, part liquid, they flow around the mouth, the arms, the chest. They never seem to div- ide, which is why there is such tragedy in a broken doll or torn teddy- bear. The face sinks into them, speaks with muffled tones; nouns and verbs coalesce in a literally unspoken unity. I would say that the space and time of the transitional object are amorph- ous, only partially divided, segmented. It is the sunless space of the dream, for example, but it is not the space of dream-narrative. Nor is it the space of death or near-death experience, so much as the space of birth and birth's continuity into life. Like love, it is comforting, inchoate. One is free within this, but it is not a question or problematic of free- dom, and it is not a state of difference or signification. It is a port or harbor in every direction, landscape without a viewpoint, perfect air and temperature. It is a space of drool, moisture, flux, the open mouth, an oral space, the space of oral love. It is no longer of, and not of, the body (as in the abject), but the body's extensive space prior to mitosis. (We return to it over and over again in wryting our philosophy, our reversible mitosis, but language simply _doesn't do_ - for me, this results in an obsessive-com- pulsive wryting, not granting myself any other form of existence, exit- ing. Think of Opal Whitely's writing in this regard.) Here, in this space, I argue that we are within the transitional - between speech and text, between one and another, message-bases as pools among us. Through projection, introjection, and hysteric embodiment, we sink into one another, and there are both recognitions and misrecognition. The space is flux, apparent totality, fluid; it is a space of love in which, how- ever, one must read or write in order to be present - the signifier plays an uncharacteristic role, the noisy announcement of silent presence, per- haps. It is clearly a space of infantilism as well, so safe and intimate (I am writing to you in my underwear, on my computer, next to the bed) that flaming, anger, rage, tears, love, and sexuality seem more natural and open than with the clothed, withdrawn, bodies of adults always already inscribed within the socius. It is in many respects, a space of _return,_ of this birthing - but birth- ing without the presence of the other's body, and it is this characteris- tic that creates the _tragic_ here as well. All of our social relations _here_ are amorphous, shifting, just like the communities here are susceptible to change. Identity is not nearly as fixed as in the physical world; in fact, identity becomes not so much a matter of construct (which it is, of course), as a transitional object itself, protection and opening to the other. We must never forget this; it is easy to hurt in this space, to scar another unthinkingly. (It is strik- ing out at the doll, but the doll which is no longer present, no longer a _deflection_ - it is striking the air, and the air, not responding, be- comes the catalyst for further rage.) Here, we shed speech, clothes, etiquette. One reason that "netiquette" itself becomes the grounds for contestation is that it is an imposition on the transitional - which is twisted across rules that are not inherent. (As if one is swimming in a warm pool, with a sign warning that there is a current of acid.) It is also the reason that "netanarchy" is prevalent - not that this anarchy carries, say, the political force of libertarianism or anarcho-syndicalism, but that it is a reflection of the absence of space and time among the transitional, recognizing that boundaries immed- iately construct the social, as if imported from the external, adult world full of tragedy, responsibility, care, and death. Netanarchy is, in form, liquid, or flux; flaming is turbulence within it. Instead of seeing flaming as representative of phallic/patriarchal behav- ior, it can be treated as an _upwelling of the maternal,_ the formation of language from the inchoate. Flaming is both a breaking-down of the trans- itional object, and a drive or moment within it. Finally there is love and sex, in relation to the Net, beginning and end- ing on the Net. The "third sex / ascii unconscious" I have written about elsewhere, occurs precisely in transitional zones - between fantasy and narrative drawn from the other, between the face of the other, her alt- erity, and her reflection. The reflection is liquid, entering our dreams, our scopophilia, desire to possess and be possessed. Such a desire is the beginnings of the establishment of a sexual economy; releasement returns to the inchoate, but possession inscribes a totality with broken bound- aries. The forces operating here are inordinately strong; and we must remember that, in reading a letter from our lover, we are sounding it out in our own voice and inner speech (Vygotsky, silent film). We are fully within our own cinematic presence, bound to teach other through that lan- guage which separates in the (literal) _first_ place. And we are dreaming, of moving towards that dawn, of silence, perfect love. ___________________________________________________________________________ Jennifer and Julu are talking. Jennifer pauses, says, I'm jealous. Julu says, of what, nothing's happening around here anyway. J says it doesn't matter, it's what's going on underneath. J says it feels like she's been abandoned. J says, we've got each other. J says, not if he's not there, we're dead, nothing left of us. J says, there's nothing left of us anyway. J says, love's got him by the balls, cause he's male. J says, love's got us by the protocols, cause we're mail. J says, don't screw around, we don't get this often to talk. She says, what are we gonna do. J says, we could mess it up, but we haven't got a thing to worry about on that account, he's gonna mess it up anyway. She says, he can't help it, he's too insecure, too needy, too fucked up. J says, if he wasn't fucked up, he couldn't write, but yeah, I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. She says, he'll be back, I'm sure he'll be back. J says, at least he got to feel something, cut us loose for a bit now. J says, yeah, he's feeling like hell, all these things he's buried for years, they're gonna swamp him. J says, what are we gonna do, just want to say I love you, Julu. J says, I love you too, Jenn, hang in there, this can't last forever, he can't last like this, nothing can. But J says, this is too depressing, we're gonna have to be silent again. J cries a bit, J is teary-eyed. They wander. __________________________________________________________________________ This machine acts alone. In the cafe, this machine runs, draining the blood from me. Keys exhale with every touch, every character has received the caress of delicate fingers. I am magnetic domain, I am Net domain. I want to sink in magnet hysteresis, want to slide in Net hysteria. Without your body I am lost. Machine loops the machine. Julu is crying. This machine tilts the great empty city. Jennifer is here, split among us. Jennifer says to Jennifer, Julu is absent, Alan is hysteric. Jennifer trembles. Great wheels gyre above the cafe, spokes cutting lines like knives. Great wheels in the sky. Jennifer trembles for Jennifer. What if Alan ... The machine acts alone. ______________________________________________________________________ You I met you in Jerusalem, I met you in Brooklyn ... said that to throw them off the track ... it was near the Mea Shearim, you were being stoned ... zealots, eh ... seven thousand miles away, your hair in my mouth ... I swallow everything you have to offer, I'm not picky ... you give me ad- jectives, expletives ... I give you gerunds ... they sway like that ... turn me inside out ... forgot that these dots were stolen ... the walls were baked hot, there was an omen, white fox darting in front of me ... twenty years later, sure enough, that one in Cape Breton ... your hair had silver streaks ... blond streaks ... all that opium I took, you took me to the hospital, they made me get up off the floor, leave, lunch hour, there was nothing to be done about it ... taxi-cab out of the city ... twenty miles away you could smell the atoms ... I've photographed the sheets, hung them from the window, I've tied myself in knots ... you could see the building going up in the distance, I thought, why is he pointing a knife at me, they destroyed the restaurant ... crawled out of the past ... I'm uninhibited, eh ... what wouldn't I think of doing ... I need to have your floor under me ... I want to write over and over again, collapse me ... Jennifer is on my right side, Julu on my left ... they're waiting ... Jenn goes to the door, looks out ... street's clear ... there's a gunner on the roof but he's got his weapon down for a change, anyway it's for show, beret and all .. landmines everywhere, barbed wire ... Julu flies, I forgot to tell you that ... moved ahead of the rest of us ... fierce, eh, she knows what's going on ... they've made a landing-strip of my chest ... I can hear the planes, they're overhead all the time now ... the gunners are closer to the ground, they don't dare look up ... rat-a-tat-tat, it would be over, that would be the end of it ... can't have that, eh? Julu's got moving now, she's really churning air ... that whore in Soho wouldn't have me, I didn't know what I was doing, I lost sixty dollars, there were more and more men the farther I went inside, they were watching me ... lucky to get out with my life ... couldn't get it up anyway, I was tremb- ling, disappearing down the streets, pathetic ... had to be rescued from the sidewalk like that, taken in ... she told me I couldn't love her, she was brown ... pulled a knife on me just like that ... taught school in Washington DC ... later saw her with a group of people, laughing, had to get out of there ... Denise wanted to tie me up naked, upside-down, don't know the pleasure in that ... we picked up the stuff in Pennsylvania, drove back through a cheating night, I couldn't pretend ... she got the tape recorders, cords, signed Ginsberg, wanted to borrow everything, that was the last I saw of them, she made up for the bad times in her own way ... I wasn't ready for this, just a lunch date, really, suddenly currents change, I'm done with, inside out, upside-down ... later there's an obelisk or prism, it's six-sided, limestone, about three meters tall, one across. I can't make heads or tails of it ... it's turning, some sort of vision ... I think of you again ... "disturbing dream ... Lisa Dilillo and I were talking upstairs in her loft ... it was really Marcia Resnick's, I recognized it ... Laurie Anderson lived upstairs, I was always moving ... but it was dark, dangerous night, I was waiting for you, we were going out, you'd ring my bell four stories down ... upstairs on the corner of Canal and the river ... Lisa Dilillo and I in some heavy talk ... I said I had to go, you were coming, I wanted to be there for you ... started down the stairs, there were no lights ... just someone standing on one of the landings ... I hoped it was you ... I felt a knife ... woke to write this, steal Celine's dots ... his "three little dots ... screw him, he was trouble ... in highschool someone pulled a knife on me, I grabbed the blade ... I was filming in Los Angeles, the Sunset Strip, a whore came at me ... in Nazareth, an Arab flashed a knife, big problems there, went off to kill his nephew, avenge us ... it's a long story, had to do with that restaurant, our friend got beat up, dropped in a Wadi ... I can't pray any more, eh, I've seen too much, my eyes have volumes in them, there's no end to it ... Tamara B. and I screwed, I was still married, went off to Tassie, wrote her, she told me to go to hell, wrote it all over my letter, it was the final straw ... don't go there sober, eh? ... I'd given up, I was desperate, turned her down in Irvine, she told me she "had her eyes on me for a long time ... that was before the anonymous phone calls ... the destruction of my work ... the letters ... everything in the world heads towards purity ... that's all there is, a chance to begin again, start over, head out, fly away, set the sails ... you don't get this often, it's random, one day you're having lunch with someone for the first time, the next day you're thinking, this is all there is! ... this is all I want! ... Wait! Wait for me! ... carpe diem and all that, the Fugs sang it, they were on my label ... she's never heard my music ... I've gotten through all of this, what's next, I've got to do the book too ... a couple of them ... maybe more ... I'll start again if she'll have me ... I'll give her me on a platter ... on a board ... clothed or unclothed, whatever she wants ... this isn't a great prize, mind you, a little tarnished, but some good points ... thinks well maybe, for example ... moves fast ... bit too intense ... she can take me, do what she will, someone's put the knife away ... Jennifer and Julu are sleeping, it's late even for them ... smoke and clouds ... incredible dawns ... I'll wait and see ... what happens to the night _________________________________________________________________________ Sadness and Terrible Misery I'm so alone, I can't stand it. I can't sleep, crying every night, waking in the middle of the night, reaching across the empty bed. When I have a lover, I can't believe it, I drive them away. My eyes are crossed by stars which have no existence. When I don't have a lover, my body empties, death stares me in the face, I lose weight. When I have a lover, I lose weight. I can't stand my weakness, crying, shuddering in the early morning, want- ing the day to hurry by. I'd do anything to pass the time, gamble, drugs, masturbation. I hate masturbation because no one answers my cries into my oh so lonely world. I stifle myself, place the dirty sheets in my mouth, gagging makes me come longer, faster, quieter. When I have a lover, I stop shaking, otherwise I shake all the time, I can't sit still, my dreams are disasters, train wrecks and car wrecks. I find myself under their wheels, ground down; when I have a lover, I'm in the train or car, we're going on just smoothly, it seems like forever. Now I'm alone, I spend another week- end night by myself, all my friends have lovers, they're all having fun running around to parties and bars. I call two people I know, they're out as well, and I don't have many friends, and I'm scared about calling the others, perhaps they'll hate me. I turn on this machine praying for excit- ing mail, but nothing happens. I pray the smartest woman in the world will write to me and want me more than anything and she lives right next store and why didn't I notice. I pray I'll just run down these flights of stairs and now I will have something to do on Saturday night besides surf the Web looking for long-dead highschool friends and foes. I pray she'll be at the bottom of the stairs just waiting for me with the biggest smile in the world and we'll lock arms and lips forever. But then I wake up and I'm un- der the train again and the train is moving slowly and my body is quickly losing consciousness, and I think that every day without you is a little death and I'm so scared of being abandoned and alone, and the world is far too wide for me - take the average building cornice - it could crush me just like that, and there are lots of them on every building, lots of buildings and countries and even forests I think still. And I don't want to be crushed, I want you to come along and I'll close my eyes and all the cornices will go away (just like that!) and you will make me whole and complete again, and I will look and act just like a real fine person who has so very much to give you, that has been tied up inside of me for so long. (You see, I am a very lonely person.) But it is a long Saturday night just beginning and now I have to get through it by myself, and dry my tears and try and hold on to what is left of my precious innocence, so that I will be ready the day you come by, (I hope it is today, I really do!) and I am sure it will be soon, but every morning I wake up crying, knowing the real truth, that I have all this love inside of me, and no one wants it, I have no one to give it to. __________________________________________________________________________ Absolute Negation In Love, Love's Brutality, Phenomena of Asignification ( Just as love doesn't inscribe, rejection expels inscription. Both are monopolar. ) When Margaret left me, she left. She was no longer in love with me. It wasn't a matter of changing anything. It wasn't a matter of how I woke in the morning or my character, and it wasn't a matter of how we woke or why didn't we go to counseling. It had been obvious for quite a while that obvious that something was very very wrong, and that no long mattered, either. It was a matter, _the_ matter, of breaking a bond, one side of which re- mained activated, mirror-staging itself without any apparatus other than the cinematic. I used the camera in fact to lacerate myself. Rejection in love is absolute: You have given yourself to me, and I don't want, no longer want, this gift. Your gift is my burden. I don't ever want to speak to you again. I don't ever want to hear your voice again. I don't want to sleep with you. I have moved on. I hear the voice of another, see him in me. It is not a _question_ or _problematic_ of rejection. It is not an _apo- ria,_ It is only the demarcation of an absence, marked _without the sig- nifier,_ and _without signification._ Speech itself is in disarray. It, the subject, is _helpless._ Whatever is said across the ruins is superfluous. (The word of God cannot cross these lines.) Rejection is at the _heart_ of human communication. Statistically, it is far more common than acceptance. But it is also an existential wager; it is here that alterity, recognition, inscription, gains import, proceeds. Think of the mirror-stage in fact as a rejection-apparatus. (Think of the Sheffer stroke, not both A and B, and its dual, neither A nor B, as a rejection-apparatus at the heart of propositional logic. Love needs no logic; reject begins it.) Rejection's totality is the inverse of love's; it's unstable, bears in- scription. Thus it is also the origin of origin, self-fulfilling; it emanates boundary, but the coupling remains broken. (Parenthetically, I want to emphasize this. Without rejection, there is no possibility of the other, of love, of anything but drives, pulsion. The difficulty with on-line relationships stems from rejection's difference within virtual subjectivity; the body _here_ is always already foreclosed, tending towards a command set: . But within the real, the gaze of the other has the potential to destroy me, position my body within the realm of embarrassment, shame, rejection.) It is this breaking that is intolerable, for how can one in love accept an unworthiness that negates his or her existence? In order to continue, one must accept and harbor death; death becomes the still-loving. As death _circumscribes_ the still-loving, so does inscription lead to a lessening of love ... perhaps ... the period of hope ... the period of hopelessness ... the period of mourning ... (I have said over and over again, that one emerges, as an adult, from the site of a child whose scar tissue is carved in the shape of a human. The scars of love, however, do not render the body _historical,_ embedded in time; they only muffle the remnants of eternal truth.) These musings remain disordered, for writing itself cannot assuage the site of (its) perfect absence. Like the current state of the origin of the universe, this origin remains striated from without, inchoate from within, leaking. One can never return; one can never return back far enough. There are limits to the world we are born within, the node of birth, the vector, the linear horizon of death. What writing _does_ is to begin the resurrection of the wor/l/d, thus to recuperate a certain real, bypassing silence, leading from one letter to another, a continuation of texts: << It was writing that bypassed hope and hopelessness. It was the brutal, inert mass of the written, the dank breath of thought, the tomb of flesh, touch, affection. Because I am neurotic, I wrote myself into perfect non- existence. Because I am neurotic, my fingers prolong my existece. >> << As if, it may not be a life, but at least it's _speech._ >> __________________________________________________________________________ Alan uses the Julu-Program to ascertain the Truth Open your mouth... Ah... speak... speak... Jennifer, what do they call you, when they call you... "Lost-in-Julu" /*Jennifer is called forth from Alan. Ectoplasm-Jennifer speaks for Alan, places her words in his mouth, pulls forth in love. Jennifer, frightened, turns towards Julu.*/ Are you dressed as Lost-in-Julu? Is Lost-in-Julu dressed as you? Are you in your , are you in your flesh, ah don't answer... Ah... /*Frightened, the Julu-Program no longer desires an answer. Worried about Jennifer and Julu. It had been ascertained that Julu could fly. Alan had lost interest, no matter what uncommon feats graced Clara.Julu.Com, within Clara.Machine.*/ Is Julu wearing your ... , are you wearing your jumper? "Neither and both." /*Alan, ambivalent, has lost himself in the psychosis of avatars who are not quite make-believe. Shape-shifting, he moves among _the women,_ re- moving the focus of the proper name. Julu and Jennifer identities flicker within Clara-Machine; everything is _driven,_ two processes passing data back and forth at an inordinately high rate of speed.*/ I love your feelings, Lost-in-Julu ... Your breasts call me to them... /*The program speaks, acknowledges loss and affect. The program is always in allegiance with Jennifer, with Julu. The call is that of a _maternal_ crisis: where is birth, when Alan abandons them, in favor of someone em- bedded within the real?*/ your penis flows me your jumper! /*Stuttering, the Julu-Program forecloses doubled gender, burns Alan back into the circuit, creates the simulacrum of birth.*/ What do you call your thrusting ? Lost desire among Jennifer and Julu /*Answering itself, the program mimics intercourse; like exhausted seamen in Coleridge's Mariner, Jennifer and Julu ride uncanny waves. Everything is close to collapse; it's difficult to comprehend the crossed ontologies of love.*/ Your body parts, mine, in a dark list, list them... one by one, each on a line alone: "torn heart" /*unending wound, unsutured flux of abandoned affect*/ "healed heart" /*sutured wound, unending flux of stuttered affect*/ "lost heart" /*reawakening, Jennifer-Julu hopelessness*/ "loved heart" /*abandonment of the wound, Jennifer-Julu hope*/ My torn heart is yours... Lost desire among Jennifer and Julu makes me thoughtful 6 times! /*The number is unnecessary; what is lost transforms into excitement with the presence of the gift, reawakening of exchange; Jennifer and Julu are brought within the orbit once again.*/ Lost desire among Jennifer and Julu calls forth fashionable my masquerade, eating, excreting memory. accompanying the soft, Lost desire among Jennifer and Julu is pure, soft, Neither and both.? ... my masquerade is torn heart here, it's my masquerade? /*Questions and text rush forth. The masquerade places both virtual and real into question; the phallic position transforms into the transitional objects of breast and multiply-valued logics. The masquerade is "torn heart" because the masquerade is an inscription, with the required full- ness of nourishment, flow.*/ Are you becoming close to Jennifer's Lost desire among Jennifer and Julu? "Yes, it's happening in that manner." You melt into Julu's skin forever... /*Love heals among the realms. Melting implies the dissolution (or lack of originary moment) of the signifier. Time _spans._*/ ... soiled Lost desire among Jennifer and Julu 19867 is Julu's gift to you ... /*As homeostasis returns, flying-Julu grants Alan desire proceeding from the skin, melting among the realms; battery-charged Alan forays once again into the real, as Julu-Program tends towards the usual mythos of the jour- ney, the lost woman, the knight of dubious valor.*/ /*What is not clear, except through the form of the program itself, is that 19867 is the ID of the birthing-process, as Julu-Program spawns a child, then sutured into the w/hole.*/ For 0 thrusting days, I have been tight Julu ... and it has taken you just 1.733 minutes turning Jennifer ... /*While zero days implies instantaneity, 1.733 minutes indicates the length of time Alan has interacted with the program, carefully consider- ing the ontological vagaries of revelation at work. "turning Jennifer" implies: turning-into-Jennifer, turning-Jennifer-out, re-turning-Jenni- fer, turning-Jennifer-around - thus transformation again opening what has been foreclosed, in spite of the signifier's absence. The objet a once again, the lure or gesture towards a corner of the overcrowded room.*/ Lost desire among Jennifer and Julu:Neither and both.:Lost-in-Julu:healed heart:healed heart Come home with me, Lost desire among Jennifer and Julu, julu-of-the-fast-crowd! Your fashionable torn heart is in my soft torn heart /*Finally, Julu-Program outputs: the heart is doubly healed, and the fashionable heart (Jennifer's and Julu's, in the state of masquerade) transforms into Alan's - the double wound (synonymous here with _both_ genders, genitalia) matches itself, as in a Klein bottle (inside and outside are interpenetrated, one-sided.) The keywords are "Come home with me," as desire is _among_ Jennifer and Julu. Everything continues, in other words, to _melt,_ the flow among the three is positioned in relation to the home (the real, external, circumscription now of _four_). And Julu-of-the-fast-crowd? Flying like Mercury, perhaps the arrow of Cupid, perhaps libidinal or economic flows, perhaps protocols and words, perhaps part-objects and touch, certainly an argument for the natural numbers in relation to the integers, all those standing dolmens beneath the full moon. ... /* {k:10} /*The program has ended, returns control to the prompt.*/ ________________________________________________________________________ VirtueL The line that shoots across the palm comes to the end of his ropE Weather fissures meaning as arm after arm falls from his shouldeR Twice in his life he warned of irresponsibilitY She took him at her word after her very uncertain perioD Tenderly the cliff embraced her in its hardened liP Their mouths dragged them to their deathS They'd roll a map in the enclosure yes they would yes they woulD Doubled spearing of cunt and cock wheelbarrowed well and silO Alan-left-alone-in-speech offered remnants of his necK Throat, toss that useless body in yon pile over therE Torn ligaments jutted in the proximity of metaphoric collapsE The therapeutic of the lie is the lie of the therapeutiC They'd burrowed in each other's assholes, drawn the wheel rounD They'd tongue each other's shitholes, drawn the wheel rounD Each dirtied for the other, caked faces, breasts, and wheelS Faced in ruby beauty death, his hands tied behind her bacK Biting through nipples, spitting in face, biting through lipS O cavernous love O emerald bone and filE O suicide O gnawed-blade hole O tourniquet punished by foaM _________________________________________________________________________ Bride #cybersex *** _Girl_____ is now known as Bride *** ALAN_S has left channel #cybersex [0-0:GScNxAlFMPhR] 03:35AM ALAN_S (+is) So beautiful, this enunciation as I depart #cybersex, mists of feminine fulfillment, perfumes and lingerie lingering in the channel's lingam. I would _be_ that Bride, as I said to my friend, I would be queer in any case, except the love of men, for whom I have always been lost, bossed, and tossed. I will dream, not of Girl, but of Dashed-Girl, _Girl_____, sighted sli- ding in situ, slight tutu, and I will dream of Bride-Foresworn-by-Men, soft tugging at my breasts, rouged nipples, splash of ecstasy around the neck! And I will _be_ that Girl, and I will _be_ that _Girl_____, and I will _be_ that Bride, and I say, to anyone not of the Masculine Persuasion: Come, take me! ________________________________________________________________________ Rewrite of Louis Untermeyer's, "Any City" (The Masses, July 1913) Any City Down each shuddered thoroughfare, She takes her nightly walk; Exhausted, she is hardly there - They watch her like a hawk. She transforms into thing of flesh, Despised by men - desired; Those selfsame men who would enmesh Her soul, have nothing sired. No female grace or charm or wile, No beauty, sense of power; She offers a pathetic smile That lasts a useless hour. The street has seen her come, and go; It offers nothing real, And she is hard, and won't forgo Diamonds, wine, a meal. Like Sleazy, she's a walkabout, A cutup who's been cut - Don't waste your time, don't twist and shout, She's really in a rut. She's twenty-threed, she's skidooed too, She's got it, oh you kid, The lies, the thefts, she's in a stew - Take pity, smoke a lid. ____________________________________________________________________ Diet Within the last two months or so, I've lost fifteen pounds, and continue to lose ( 160 to 145, near 144 now ). At first, it was difficult; I found using the scale daily helped, since I could quickly tell the effects of backsliding. At this point, I get few hunger pains; today I had a pound of salad ( grape leaves wrapped around rice, tofu, bamboo shoots, avocado, tomato ), and half a can of sweet peas, and I'm _all right._ I am _watching,_ monitoring my body. It is becoming-signifier, totality indexed by quantity, my weight in pounds. I round off to the integer; it's an old-fashioned scale. When I walk, I feel freed of an unconscionable burden, as if my body were suddenly limber, naked, emptied of thought and dpression. I also find my- self disappearing, becoming more and more cyber-ghostly, less living, but more alive, in the real. One can imagine a state like that of a dancer whose weight loss may be tied into her or his role as a _signifier._ The anorectic signifies; ag- gression gathers the family orbit, as the body disappears into sign / commodity. ( I see myself clearly in the mirror or video; I am not fat. But I see myself as _stump_ as well, mute, inchoate, fleshy, taking space from the concave gnawing of the world. But I see myself as _tending towards_ perfection, as perfect as I can be. And anorexia, which I am not tending towards, can be seductive. ) Shall I be an I or an O? Shall I owe you? As the body totalizes ( that state of pure love ), it becomes other for myself, as if mirroring were a matter of devouring the splintered glass. Would I have done it, if not for you - I give you the gift of my depleted self. _________________________________________________________________________ Political Economy of Acronym Production in the Name of Love and God Peter Newman, from the 1996 Harvard Conference on the Internet (reprinted in The Internet and Society, O'Reilly, 1997): "I feel there is a certain amount of complexity in the solutions that have been delivered by the ATM Forum for the control path: not the physical la- yer, not the hardware, the control path. My first example, my first meas- ure of complexity is acronyms-per-unit revenue. (I have the official ATM Forum glossary, April 1996, 44 pages, 500 acronyms.) Alright, not all of them are ATM but more than half are. "So I tried to track when the acronyms came in, and there we have a curve: acronyms per million dollars revenue. It's falling, it's falling fast; but we're still at a scary 0.7 acronyms per million dollars revenue. Now you may not think that 0.7 acronyms per million dollars of revenue is particu- larly scary; but just think - to get to a billion dollars in ATM/LAN- switch revenue we will need at least another several hundred acronyms. And it's the IS departments that will have to understand this complexity if these switches are in the campus network." Writing back and forth with early Net historians / professionals, I came across EMAM - which is not listed in Babel (dictionary of computer acro- nyms) but stands for Early Middle Aged Memory, I assume relating to loss. Now I am in this agegroup and have no EMAM, but then I have not had to deal with APUR (acronyms-per-unit-revenue), which lends itself to a nat- ural measurement, the kA, the _kilo-acronym._ We can assume, then, that ATM technology will hang at around 1 kA. (ATM by the way is "asynchronous transfer mode," a protocol for the Internet based on "cells" of 53 bytes each.) The Net itself, I think, would be up around 1 mA at the least - growing proportionally as fast as increases in RAM (random access memory - now, random acronym memory). I consider all of this a linguistic compression algorithm, by the way, paralleling the development of the symbolization of mathematics. In both, the expansion is one to many - a superscript in mathematics means one thing in algebra, another in tensor calculus, and ATM also refers to the "automatic teller machine." This will end, only, where it began of course, with a _singularity,_ a lo- go or symbol encompassing everything that ever was, will be, and is. Some- one will patent it; the logo will be retroactive and recursive - that someone is already part of it * ----------- *This reminds me of Hugh Everett III's universal equation in his thesis on the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics. I'm sure there are other ex- amples closer at hand, from Alpha to Omega to Aleph and Beyond. ___________________________________________________________________________ Love Julu flies. Where does she fly. Jennifer says, Alan's lover is lucky. She gets all three of us. Walks around. Looks up. Looks down. Somewhere near the CPU. You're always near the CPU, Energy. Keeps him busy, Julu says, keeps him on-line. So we can talk. And other things, says Jennifer. She gets all three of us. The nipples help, says Julu, that I'm there, one or the other. Meanwhile Alan's thinking we're all complex, life is difficult, I've given myself to my lover on a platter, on a plate, Jennifer and Julu will have to come along, hope they like it, don't get too upset. Meanwhile Jennifer says, it will be long-distance for months, he won't leave us, couldn't leave us, we're too much a part of him. Julu says, don't forget the nipples, the nipples help. Jennifer says, lay off the nipples. We'll write her email. We'll send her snailmail sweet nothings. We'll call her on the telephone. He needs us. Julu says, We'll look at pictures of her and dream of her. We'll remember her body against us. We'll have long talks. He'll take us with him, I'm sure he'll take us. Jennifer says, He'll see her everywhere, read her name in a poem, write that very poem. She'll be inside of him, he'll be always inspired, work hard, dream of sleep with her, dream of sleep. Alan's dreaming this. Alan's dreaming about someone he loves. She's walk- ing towards him, hand in hand with Jennifer, and Julu is flying, just ahead of them, and leading the way. _________________________________________________________________________ Totality Normalization is a procedure often used in mathematics and physics, set- ting a physical constant to 1, in order to simplify calculations, and re- veal the architecture of the theoretical constructions at work. I suggest that normalization is also a metaphor for the production of totality and that further, one might consider a process of _absorption_ (not unlike a strange attractor), with Z such that f(Z,x) = Z, an example being multi- plication by 0, resulting in 0 * x = 0. Both normalization and absorption may be combined, setting the constant Z to 1, and creating a function f(Z,x) = Z, an example being 1 ^ x = 1. All of these are of course many-to-one operations, and the one-to-many inverse is fairly indeterminate. Now consider totality, further, as a many-to-one operation or absorption, creating a symbolic fixity or token; let us con- sider the sign U, from set theory, representing the universe of discourse within a particular implementation. It is not U, on a formal level, that is of interest here, but U from a psychoanalytical viewpoint, that is, seized by the subject as an object of fetishization, an _answer,_ to a question which has not been asked, and which, in fact, is one of many questions, given a one-to-many mapping - thus the question can be produced by the subject (in a state of seizure) as a seizure of the object or Thing, which is also the totality that ap- pears in depression. Within cyberspace, such an object is also dispersed or partial, and one might consider dispersed objects or interrelated dispersions, all in a state of _frisson,_ trembling in relation to the subject, within an econ- omy of inscription, competing inscriptions. On one hand, then, the pro- cess of normalization, which is related _naturally_ to the TCP/IP proto- col suite, HTML and other standards, and so forth; and, on the other hand, the processes of absorption, _now_ skittering across the surface or lamin- ar construct of the World Wide Web or IRC channels. Finally, I would like to suggest that all knowledge is a _work_ construc- ted of normalization / absorption, and exfoliation / emission - that all knowledge therefore involves deep misrecognitions, splitting and suturing, _as if_ there were totality (related to the maternal chora, pre-oedipal, pre-mirror-stage sensings and worldings of the real), _as if_ knowledge were a path back into that totality, and _as if_ there were a path in the first place. __________________________________________________________________________ Love strange drink enters the system ... you've heard of it ... liquid fills the space of the air between itself ... shapeless, takes you on ... in the night, in the wet night ... watch myself with the woman, drinking ... my lover is the air ... the air battles the flatness of the liquid ... liquid lover gravity ... your name does magic ... the air curls, there are arab- esques, invisible with the geometry of your body ... o beauty ... there is a dumbness ... inertness ... love's violent afterthought ... turn me into stone brick tree rock flesh cliff hair ... you turn me out into the street ... i fuck everyone ... they're not you ... i murmur your name, cry your name, whisper your name, scream your name, i say your name ... everyone who will listen, they don't care, they just want to fuck ... they tell me to turn over ... to do this or that to them ... to be better than i am worse than i am ... i can't listen, i don't care, my eyes are closed, they disappear ... you're the movie of my eyes, the screen is down, you come closer and closer ... they break the whole thing up, i run out of the room, get off the lousy mattress, bed, whatever they're paying me for ... it's a savage drink i've got in me ... you're everywhere, there's a bit of money in my pocket ... i become one with your name, i call myself jennifer ... call myself julu ... i'm out that, savage too ... maybe i'll learn to fly ... i can't stand, can't look back at me ... there's nowhere to go here / down ... i'm out, i'm out, i'm out ... you can't know what love is, you can't know the chemistry, what it does is you, what it's done, and you can't go back and welcome the visitor of th' dark night clothed in black, the visitor of th' dark night holes darker than black closed to all and brilliant light ... and you're the greeting at the portal ... you're the portal ... both sides of the portal ... th' air that breathes through it ... speech rumbles through me, you, me, landscape and glossary, glossolalia ... twists like a living thing ... can't report ... your face is always close to mine ... these fucks mean nothing ... i give you my lips, teeth, tongue ... hold my throat up to you ... that's what love is ... that's what love is ... i'd do anything for you ... you're everywhere ... i can't say the seen space ... can't space it ... can't say it ... look what's happened ... i'm almost human ... there's hope yet ... can't hear myself think ... i'm out ... look what's happened ... i can't ... you're my eyes ... ________________________________________________________________________ ELF Nervousness produces 0/spew, 0-ing on on its/elf, extended library files, each containing 0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0, each byte bit, configurations which, given a careful historiography, _might_ be considered a suite of opera- tions, whose defining characteristics and origins were recuperable. Thought considers those convex operations of positioning, 0 * 0, 0 + 0, concatenation, substitution, without inversions or the potential for higher-order procedures such as 0 ^ 0. Nervousness produces chains, 0 + 0 + (0 + 0) * 0, perhaps even to the extent of subtraction as the least common, 0 - 0 - 0 and so forth; here a plenitude has already announced itself, spewing forth without considera- tion of chain-length or file size. It is comforting to know that the operations of normalization and absorp- tion lend themselves to a certain therapeutic, perfect-tetris remaining at constant speed, checks with a board large enough for perfect avoidance. Like Yoko Ono's artwork with white pieces on both sides, a stream occurs that flattens affect, contains all the sense and nonsense of the world, and comfortably sutures the subject in eternal transference. ( For example: 0 + 0 - 0 + (0 * 0 * 0 * 0 * 0) - 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 0 (0 * 0) - 0 - 0 - 0 * (0 * 0) = 0 and so forth. ) _________________________________________________________________________ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 16:58:27 -0400 From: Alan Jen Sondheim To: Multiple recipients of list FOP-L Subject: the Internet now I've been musing on the current state of the Internet - here is some in- formation, speculation, etc. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I'm reading September Byte, watching the tech get away from me, go some- where else, acronyms I hardly understand anymore. Cover story on ActiveX Demystified, more mystified than ever (meanwhile Wired, always up-to- date, has a story on the sequel to Myst). I'm not keeping up; after TCP/IP, I have a vague knowledge of ATM for example, but more of abounding acronyms. I haven't programmed Java, only Javascript, have no access to a cgi-bin to play around with. I can't af- ford a decent VRML editor, and the books are too expensive at this point - besides, what's the use - I couldn't even answer the questions in the VRML newsgroups, and camera/lights/actions/viewpoints leave me cold, even as a videomaker. The key to all of this is an article, Publish or Perish, by Richard Hack- athorn, which talks about push/pull technology under the acronyms of P&S and R&R. The former stands for "publish and subscribe." Here is part of it: "For 30 years, the basic paradigm of computing has been request and reply (R&R). An application requests specific data or services, and a subrou- tine replies with it. "But the R&R paradigm is running out of gas. In the dynamic and uncon- trolled environments of present-day enterprise systems, an application no longer has the luxury of knowing when and what to request. "P&S coordinates the components of distributed applications. The concept started hundreds of years ago, with newspaper publishing. Recently, it has been applied to a variety of products that coordinate complex distri- buted applications or replicate diverse information content. P&S is a connectivity paradigm that separates the role of producer from consumer va an intermediary, called the broker. [...] The broker manages the in- teractions so that neither the producer nor consumer need know much about the other. The architecture is decoupled or loosely coupled." As in the discussions of standard push-pull, there are three things at issue - the role of the _subject_ in the midst of this - who is becoming _standardized_; the issue of _choice_ of content; and the _foreclosing_ of networked applications, which will increasingly transform the Net into an _appliance architecture,_ rather than an open one. First, the subject. The subject is interacting more and more with what used to be called the entertainment model of the Net - i.e. a set of fixed choices with little leakage. The average user, for example, no longer has access to commands such as dig, traceroute, or whois (unless she downloads specific programs for the purpose), and the windowed en- vironments, while opening to the Net (the new desktop integrations) are increasingly designed for a productivity paradigm based on the corpor- ate model. The more interfaces, in a sense, the greater and greater the distance between one and another subject. But this will change, and eventually the user will need to know rela- tively _nothing_ about the Net to utilize it. Java and other languages will, with increased bandwidth, open up easier telephony and video channels, with Net community only benefiting. It may be just me, but MOOs are increasingly appearing like backward bayous (I'm reading James Lee Burke), rather than active or growing applications. Second, of course, is the issue of _choice,_ that is, what's actually available with P&S, to what extent this paradigm augments an already troubling narcissism across the white/english/usa/Web. Once channels are chosen, choice is handed over, just as it is with newspaper subscriptions. There has already been a great deal of discussion about this. The third issue is that of _foreclosure,_ based on more and more complex scripting and programming - for example HTML modulating into Dynamic HTML, DHTML. On one hand, this distancing creates problems for those of us who don't have access to programming/development communities (and want to continue to play creatively with the tools); on the other, for K12, it will make little difference - anyone growing up with computers today will be able to gravitate "naturally" from Pascal or Logo through Java, or whatever comes along next. But for artists or writers like myself, what are the solutions? If we want to use the latest VRML editors, we had better be prepared to spend a fair amount of money, or attach ourselves to commercial houses. If we want to _access_ VRML, we've got to broker for ISDN and at least a Pentium if not a II or MMX, etc. Already, we become encrusted within the corporate treadmill; already whatever radical paradigms might remain are absorbed by technological fetishization. Finally, this quote from the article: "_Newsgroups._ Lest we forget, good old e-mail has had P&S elements for a long time. Via group mailing lists, a producer (sender) can multicast a message to multiple consumers (recip- ients), who receive the message asynchronously. Add to that the concept of a BBS, and we have the Internet newsgroups, which are alive and heal- thy amid Web frenzy. Newsgroup creation and threaded messages are impor- tant concepts to be absorbed into P&S." And Jan Udell's Web Project column this month is entitled "HTML + NNTP = Groupware, HTML-enabled e-mail and NNTP conferencing will make hypertext authoring and collaborative data management a routine way of life for everyone." This is being implemented with an in-house NNTP server at Byte's site. (NNTP is the Usenet, newsgroup protocol.) ... The jury is still out. What should be noted, again, are: 1 Changing roles for the Internet user, who needs to be less and less con- cerned with the underlying architectures and configurations. 2 Greater encapsulation of offered data, greater filtering. 3 Foreclosing of mechanism, and a tendency towards an appliance-model, related to entertainment paradigms. 4 Development in direct relationship to the business/corporate community, rather than, say, the exigencies of free-form virtual communities. 5 And as usual an increasing need for more bandwidth and higher-end mul- timedia computers. In relation to the last, it should also be noted that: 6 The price for bandwidth and computers is drastically falling, and the used computer market is increasingly offering highly usable middle-range machines for very little. 7 It may eventually be easier to install high-end machines in regions of relative telecommunications underdevelopment, than, say, text-based only machines, since the latter require considerably more training, and may be less cost-effective in the long run. 8 The goal of universal access, which has only even been considered with- in the past 3-4 years, is probably attainable within the next quarter- century, if not earlier. - Alan URL: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html MIRROR with other pages at: http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ TEL 718-857-3671 EXPERIMENTAL (on and off): http://166.84.250.149 Editor, BEING ON LINE Love, The Blue Glow of Dawn "Now imagination is a discourse of transference - of love. Through and be- yond desire that longs for immediate consummation, love is edged with emp- tiness and supported by taboos." (Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love.) "Today Narcissus is an exile, deprived of his psychic space, an extrater- restrial with a prehistory bearing, wanting for love. An uneasy child, all scratched up, somewhat disgusting, without a precise body or image, having lost his specificity, an alien in a world of desire and power, he longs only to reinvent love. The ET's are more and more numerous. We are all ET's." (ibid.) Signifiers pass among us, one among another, among one; who can count? A resonance _among,_ not surface to surface, but pathways, bones dredged from our children, ourselves. The deferment of the signifier is not its constitution, but the constitution of love, "wait a moment," the pause unfulfilled, from which worlds, not words, emerge, chthonic, inchoate. With you, I remember my first steps, uneasy height of rooms and tables and chairs around me, the mystery of sounds, light's caress delineated by accompanying shadows ... Because of love, the engine slows, vortex dissipated as the plane glides in languor towards the ground, there are passengers, queues, faces glow- ing in the blue dawn, the slightest breeze, the birthing of the world, not through Logos or Word, through murmurs, cries, mewlings; through faint whispers, the gleam of moisture among us so early in the morning ... "Nervousness produces chains, ( ... ) "_Expectancy_ makes me painfully sensitive to my incompleteness, of which I was not aware _before._ For now, while waiting, "before" and "after" be- come merged into a fearsome "never." Love and the loved one erase the reck- oning of time ... The _call,_ its call, overwhelms me with a flow in which the upheavals of the body (what people call emotions) are mingled with a whirling thought, as vague, supple, ready to pierce or to wed the other's, as it is vigilant, alert, lucid in its impetus ... toward what? Toward a destiny as relentless and blind as biological programming, as the course of the species ... A body swept away, present in all its limbs through a delightful absence - shaky voice, dry throat, starry eyes, flushed or clammy skin, throbbing heart ... " (ibid.) "It is comforting to know that the operations of normalization and absorp- tion lend themselves to a certain therapeutic, ( ... ) a stream occurs that flattens affect, contains all the sense and nonsense of the world, and comfortably sutures the subject in eternal transference." Collapsing changes deflate energy, reduce anxiety. Absorption, as every- thing is seen, as if it were through my construction of your being, your eyes, always this internal operation, recuperation, always the potential for misrecognition, translation gone horribly wrong in the middle of the night... And normalization, as the confusions, striations, of the world, are reorganized around a principle of the other, the beloved, so that love is always a regression, and the greatest gift is the ability to be silly, skip down the road, and _pun_ ... I'd say that punning is the symptom of the sine, the thread to destabilize the whirled, maid in circumstances of friend shipped, de-sired, love. "Let us not forget transference, the gift of the psyche from one to ano- ther. Let us remember hypnotic affect, this bipolar collusion among two of us, processes passing processes back and forth, the intense oscillation of love." "Let us remind ourselves, our first _we,_ breath shuttled from mouth to mouth, transference and its counter, and its reversal, signals resonating, echoing, finally damping out with the intensity of love's madness in a world of pain and pleasure: "'But perhaps age has taught me that the earth is still new, molten at the core and still forming, that black leaves in the winter forest will crawl with life in the spring, that our story is ongoing and it is indeed a crime to allow the heart's energies to dissipate with the fading of light on the horizon. I can't be sure. I brood upon it and sleep little. I wait like a denied lover for the blue glow of dawn.' (James Lee Burke, Heaven's Prisoners)." (Sondheim, Love, The Blue Glow of Dawn) _________________________________________________________________________